The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
31-08-2020
Submarine could explore seas of huge Saturn moon Titan
Submarine could explore seas of huge Saturn moon Titan
A submarine could explore alien seas just a few decades from now.
Researchers have been crafting a concept mission that would send a submarine to Saturn's huge moon Titan, which sports lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons on its frigid surface.
Such a mission, if approved and funded by NASA, could be ready to launch in the 2030s, potentially paving the way for even more ambitious submarine exploration down the road, the concept's developers said.
"We feel that the Titan submarine is kind of a first step before you go do a Europa or Enceladus" sub mission, Steven Oleson, of NASA's Glenn Research Center in Ohio, said last month during a presentation with the agency's Future In-Space Operations working group.
Europa and Enceladus — moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively — both harbor huge oceans of liquid water. But these two water bodies are buried under ice shells and would therefore be tougher to drop a sub into than Titan's surface seas.
A weird and potentially habitable world
At 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers) wide, Titan is the second-largest moon in the solar system. The only one bigger is Jupiter's Ganymede, which has Titan beat by just 75 miles (120 km).
But size isn't all that makes Titan special. For example, the giant moon is the only world beyond Earth known to host stable bodies of liquid on its surface — those seas and lakes of liquid methane and ethane, some of which are bigger than North America's Great Lakes.
In addition, Titan's thick atmosphere likely hosts complex chemistry involving organic molecules, the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it. As a result, many astrobiologists view Titan as a promising potential abode for life, suggesting that native organisms could be swirling in the moon's air or swimming in its lakes and seas.
Those swimmers would be very different from anything that exists here on Earth, given that they'd be making a living in liquid methane or ethane rather than water. Titan's surface is far too cold for water to remain liquid, but scientists think the moon hosts a salty sea of the stuff deep underground, like Enceladus, Europa anda number of other solar system bodies.
It's therefore possible that Titan hosts two completely different and separate ecosystems — a surface world of "strange life" that overlies a realm of more familiar (to us, anyway) water-reliant organisms.
Most of what we know about Titan we've learned from the $3.2 billion Cassini-Huygens mission, which studied Saturn and its many moons up close from 2004 through 2017. The bulk of this work was done by NASA's Cassini Saturn orbiter, but significant contributions also came from the Huygens lander, a European Space Agency-Italian Space Agency probe that touched down on Titan in January 2005.
NASA is working on a Titan spacecraft of its own — an eight-rotor drone called Dragonfly, which is scheduled to launch in 2026. If all goes according to plan, Dragonfly will land on Titan in 2034, then study the moon's complex chemistry and potential habitability at a number of different locations.
A submarine could be the next step in Titan exploration. The agency has not selected the Titan sub idea as an official mission, but Oleson and his team did get two rounds of funding from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, which seeks to spur the development of potentially game-changing exploration ideas and technologies. Those two NIAC grants, worth $100,000 and $500,000, were awarded in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
The main goal of the NIAC work was to draw up a basic engineering blueprint of a potential Titan sub, Oleson said.
"Is it possible?" he said during the FISO presentation. "What kinds of technologies are needed? What's unique about that environment?"
The uniqueness is multilayered. For instance, though Titan is huge for a moon, it's much smaller than Earth, sporting just 14% of our planet's gravitational pull. That means a Titan sub wouldn't experience nearly as much pressure on its hull as a sub would at the same depth on Earth.
And the Titan sub would be cruising through a different medium than the ones here on Earth do. But that's not necessarily a negative, either. A submarine could push through liquid hydrocarbons fairly easily, Oleson said, and the stuff is transparent to radio signals, enabling communication with the craft even while it's submerged.
Those communications could reach the sub directly from Earth or be relayed via a Titan orbiter, depending on the mission architecture.
A standalone Titan submarine would need to be big — about 20 feet (6 meters) long, with a weight (on Earth) of 3,300 lbs. (1,500 kilograms) — to accommodate the requisite communications equipment, Oleson said. A sub with an orbiter companion, by contrast, could fit the same science instrumentation into a body just 6.5 feet (2 m) long, with a weight of about 1,100 lbs. (500 kg).
That science gear should include, at the bare minimum, a chemistry package that analyzes liquid samples, a surface imager, a depth sounder, a weather station and an instrument that measures the physical properties of the surrounding sea, Oleson and his team determined. Additional instruments could analyze seafloor samples and image the ocean bottom, among other tasks.
The researchers also investigated the possibility of staying on the surface with a boat, which would probe the Titanic depths intermittently with small, instrument-laden devices called dropsondes. This would be a less risky option, but the reward would be lower as well, Oleson said.
"We're losing out on science, just from the fact that we can't submerge and do a lot of these tests," he said of the boat idea.
A standalone submarine or a sub-orbiter duo would likely be flagship missions, Oleson said. Flagships are NASA's most expensive and ambitious missions, with price tags generally in excess of $2 billion these days. Examples include Cassini-Huygens, the Mars rover Curiosity and the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance, which launched toward the Red Planet in late July.
NASA might be able to pull off a Titan boat mission via its New Frontiers program, Oleson said. New Frontiers missions, such as Dragonfly and the New Horizons Pluto probe, cost significantly less than flagships. Proposals for the latest round of New Frontiers funding, which resulted in Dragonfly's June 2019 selection, had to abide by a cost cap of $850 million (not including launch or mission-operations costs).
All versions of a Titan sea explorer would be nuclear-powered, just like Cassini and Dragonfly. Saturn lies 10 times farther from the sun than Earth does, so sunlight is spread pretty thin on Titan. (And a solar-powered submarine would probably be a bad idea even here on Earth, given that such vehicles make a living plying dark depths.
Launch in the 2030s?
Titan's high northern latitudes host almost all of the moon's lakes and seas, including the two most intriguing submarine-exploration targets, Kraken Mare and Ligeia Mare.
Both of these bodies are enormous. Kraken Mare covers about 154,000 square miles (400,000 square km) and is at least 115 feet (35 m) deep. Ligeia Mare has an area of 50,000 square miles (130,000 square km) and a maximum depth of 560 feet (170 m).
Like Saturn, Titan has seasons that last around seven Earth years apiece. It would be best to explore Kraken or Ligeia during Titan's northern summer, when a spacecraft could image shorelines in visible light and communicate directly with mission controllers on Earth, Oleson said.
A 2045 arrival at Titan would therefore be a good choice, he said. If the mission included an orbiter for communications, arriving during the northern springtime, around 2040, is also an option, Oleson added.
The journey to Saturn takes about seven years, so a Titan sub mission of any type would need to launch in the 2030s (unless we want to wait another three decades for the seasons to shift again).
That timeline "would be fine with us — to be able to get this ready in the next decade to push there," Oleson said.
Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life.
SCREENSHOT FROM A VIDEO OF THE SD-03 FLYING CAR MODEL TEST FLIGHT BY SKYDRIVE.
PHOTO: SCREENSHOT/SKYDRIVE
Looks like futuristic fantasies of flying cars zipping through the sky just became closer to reality.
Japanese company SkyDrive Inc. announced on Friday, August 28, that it had successfully conducted a public test flight for its new SD-03 flying car model—billed as the first demonstration of its kind in Japan.
The SD-03 was tested at 10,000-square-meter (approximately 2.5-acre) Toyota Test Field, one of the largest test fields in Japan, the company said in a statement.
The single-seater aircraft-car mashup was manned by a pilot who circled the field for about four minutes before landing. The company said that the pilot was backed up by technical staff at the field who monitored conditions to ensure flight stability and safety.
SkyDrive CEO Tomohiro Fukuzawa said the company hopes to see its technological experiment become a reality by 2023.
“We are extremely excited to have achieved Japan’s first-ever manned flight of a flying car in the two years since we founded SkyDrive in 2018 with the goal of commercializing such an aircraft,” Fukuzawa said.
“We want to realize a society where flying cars are an accessible and convenient means of transportation in the skies and people are able to experience a safe, secure, and comfortable new way of life,” he added.
Designed to be the world’s smallest electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) model, the flying car measures two meters high by four meters wide (six feet high by 13 feet wide). It takes as much space on the ground as two parked cars.
“We believe that this vehicle will play an active role as your travel companion, a compact coupe flying in the sky,” said Takumi Yamamot, the company’s design director. “As a pioneer of a new genre, we would like to continue designing the vehicles that everyone dreams of.”
The company has not listed a price for the aircraft as of yet, though executives feel confident that sci-fi enthusiasts and busy commuters alike will take to the new mode of transportation. According to the company’s timeline, they envision the SD-03 to be operating with “full autonomy” by 2030.
“The company hopes that its aircraft will become people’s partner in the sky rather than merely a commodity and it will continue working to design a safe sky for the future,” the company said in its statement.
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Underground city in Chiapas (Mexico): Mystery in the depths of the Earth
Underground city in Chiapas (Mexico): Mystery in the depths of the Earth
Today our article is going to touch on a fascinating underground mystery , which has Chiapas , Mexico , as the axis of a legendary story centered on the Mayan mystery , and its secrets.
Many of his references seem to link with La Cueva de los Tayos , in a subject that, as I always say, is not exhausted. I invite the reader to join me in the search for an enigmatic lost city, its golden library, and hidden tunnels.
Let’s discover the Veil of Isis.
Fray Diego de Landa – Maya Bibliographic Holocaust
“These people also used certain characters or letters, with which they wrote their ancient things and their sciences in their books. And some signs in the figures, they understood their things, and they gave them to understand, and they taught. Let us find them large numbers of books of these, their letters, and because they had nothing, in which there was no superstition, and falsehoods of the devil. We burn them all ”. Manuscript of Relationship of the things of Yucatan. Diego de Landa. Century XVI.
To try to understand the events that we are now going to relate, we must center our first clue on the figure of Diego de Landa Calderón . Who would later become, one of the most controversial figures of his time, came to the world in Cifuentes , Alcarría de Guadalajara , Spain , 1524-1579.
At the age of twelve he entered the Franciscan convent of San Juan de los Reyes de Toledo . When he was 27 years old, he was sent to Yucatán to begin his evangelizing mission. In the beginning, Fray Diego de Landa, tried to carry out a protective task with the natives, whom he tried to educate in the new faith.
However, frustrated by the persistence of the still latent pagan beliefs, which made his pastoral work difficult, he decided to summon an Inquisitor Court . What happened later would be recorded forever, as one of the most atrocious acts carried out during the cruel colonizing period.
“On the night of July 12, 1562, a bonfire lit up the dark streets of Maní , Yucatán . That fire was fed with sacred objects, and above all, with the forty codices in which the entire life and history of the Mayans was explained ”.
Landa was convinced that in Yucatan there existed “a clandestine network of Mayan apostates”, practitioners of the most deeply rooted Satanism. Many indigenous Mayans, subjected to cruel torture seeking to break their silence, later ended up committing suicide.
Later Landa, marked by a great repentance, would publish the famous Relationship of the things of Yucatán , 1566, presenting his personal interpretation of the mysterious Mayan language. Despite his good will, the translation proposed by Landa , considered a reputed Mayanist, would prove useless. One of the first scholars to recognize this difficulty was the French abbot, geographer and scholar, Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bouborg , 1814-1874, who admitted his bewilderment with what Landa had done .
During his stay in Chiapas, Brasseur de Bouborg , who in addition to being a missionary held the position of ecclesiastical administrator, later wrote a book, Voyage sur l’Isthme de Tehuantepec dans l’état de Chiapas et la République de Guatémala , 1861, narrating his experiences in Mexico and Guatemela , appearing inserted in it, curious references about a people of enigmatic customs called the Lacandones .
According to Brasseur de Bouborg:
“From time to time a group of natives of small stature and white skin would appear in the border cities and towns of Chiapas and Western Guatemala, bartering merchandise, and they would quickly go to their great stone temple where they said they lived, already who tried to follow them, disappeared, or turned up dead ”.
This story about a tribe alien to the traditional cultures of Central America , although similar to the Mayan ethnic group in the words of some testimonies, we will see reported by several authors, although its written transmission contains slight variations. Let’s tackle the tracks.
Lacandones. People of true men
One of the oldest mentions about the Lacandones, a term that according to this tribe alludes to “the people of true men”, comes from a 15th century manuscript, Historia de la Provincia de Chiapas y Guatemala, by the Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez de Quesada (1550-1620), who was also a translator of the Popol Vulh, describes in this work, his encounter with a Lacandon prisoner.
With the arrival of the 19th and 20th centuries, rumors began to be heard about an ancient Mayan city lost in the Mexican jungle, guarded, according to what they say, by a mysterious people. One of the first to collect this story was the American writer John Lloyd Stephens , who, in Travel Incidents in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán , 1841, presents an intriguing oral testimony bequeathed by a Spanish priest:
“Four days down the highway that leads to Mexico , entering the other side of the great sierra, there is a living, large and populous city, hidden underground. According to the traditional account of the Chajul Indians , no white man has ever reached her. The inhabitants speak in the Mayan language, they know that a foreign race has conquered everything, and they kill anyone who tries to enter their territory. They have no currency or other means of calculation, they lack horses, cattle, mules or other domestic animals, only poultry that they hide underground ”.
The priest also told Lloyd Stephens that a Spanish guide told him:
“They possessed a great light that shines in the underworld, the secret of which seems to have been entrusted to them long ago, by those who have previously lived underground.”
Another author who will also echo this rumor about a lost city, will be the famous British explorer and journalist, Harold Tom Wilkins , 1891-1960, who in his book Mysteries of Ancient South America , 1945, delivers revelations about a mysterious lost race, sighted in the vicinity of Chiapas , and that Wilkins identifies as linked to the Mayans or perhaps Aztecs.
Wilkins writes :
“They only come into contact with Indians, barter some products, and they disappear as quickly as they arrived. Officials Mexicans and Guatemalans never comment on them. People traditionally place them as custodians of the entrance to an underground city, where an ancient civilized race lives that ruled Mexico before the waters. No foreign man knows the part of the jungle that they inhabit, where this tribe develops as their parents did, maintaining the same majestic buildings, stone, palaces and temples, large courtyards and elevated towers with high terraces of stairs, which mark the site. . This tribe still sculpts in stone the mysterious hieroglyphs that no modern scholar has been able to decipher in Yucatan ”.
Cueva de los Tayos, and the Mayan connection
At the beginning of my research on Cueva de los Tayos, I had access to certain reserved material, made up of certain pieces of Mayan origin. This legacy would have belonged to Julio Goyén Aguado , a close friend of the enigmatic Juan Móricz, who revealed to the world the discovery of a gold library in the Ecuadorian jungle, in addition to other finds.
The truth is that one of those plates accompanied by other objects, are of Mayan origin. Although it is not yet possible to elucidate all the questions, about what happened to the Cueva de los Tayos and its treasures, certain connections between South and Central America , may perhaps begin to be understood if we focus our attention on the issue of the underground tunnels. Up to this point.
Conclusion
Mexico has a long underground tradition, although many of its stories are lost in legend. The history of the Mayans is still in full reconstruction, as well as their legacy that we are just beginning to discover. The decoding of its complex writing still worries the experts, which, due to the destruction practiced at the time of the Conquest , prevents us from advancing in its better understanding.
Perhaps that is why it is not unreasonable to think that the ancient Mayans believed that they preserved their documents, perhaps heirs, as some think, of previous civilizations. Chiapas and its mysteries is just the tip of the iceberg. The future may bring us surprises about this enigma, it is just a matter of waiting. To be continue.
NASA'sLucy spacecraft is one step closer to getting up close and personal with a host of strange space rocks as assembly begins.
Lucy will make an ambitious journey across the asteroid belt out to Jupiter's neighborhood, studying a total of eight different space rocks over nearly a decade. But before the spacecraft can begin its trip at the launchpad, currently scheduled for October 2021, it needs to become, well, a spacecraft. And, thanks to a recent milestone permitting integration of the instruments and main vehicle, that's exactly what will happen next.
"Each phase of the mission is more exciting than the last," Hal Levison, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado and principal investigator for the Lucy mission, said in a statement. "While, of course, Lucy still has several years and a few billion miles to go before we reach our real goal — exploring the never-before-seen Trojan asteroids — seeing this spacecraft come together is just incredible."
While NASA has built plenty of asteroid missions before, the agency has never visited Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, which orbit the sun in two large clusters — one behind Jupiter and one ahead of it. (Lucy will also check out a main-belt asteroid it will pass along the way.)
Scientists hope that the mission will give them up-close looks at the main types of space rocks found in Jupiter's Trojan clusters, all of which likely hide water deep below their surface. And because Trojans formed around the same time as the solar system, they serve as individual fossils that could help scientists understand how our whole neighborhood formed.
But first, Lucy needs to finish up its agenda here on Earth. By passing a standard NASA milestone dubbed Key Decision Point-D (KDP-D) recently, Lucy engineers got the greenlight to assemble and test the spacecraft and its instruments, NASA announced on Aug. 28.
(Image credit: Lockheed Martin Space)
Despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the spacecraft is on track to receive its instruments beginning in October, which will also see another procedural milestone called the Mission Operation Review.
By July, NASA says, the spacecraft will be ready to head to Florida for last-minute launch preparations. Lucy's launch window opens on Oct. 16, 2021, and the spacecraft will make its first asteroid flyby in April 2025.
"This team has been truly incredible," Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, Lucy's project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "Building a spacecraft is never easy, but seeing the team persevere through all of the challenges that they have encountered is inspiring."
Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels.
Wormholes – we love them in science fiction novels and movies, and we wish they existed more than just about anything else created by the fertile minds of the Bradburys and the Roddenberrys. Wormholes are especially enticing and frustrating because they offer such a nice clean way of traversing space and time while being impossible under the General Theory of Relativity. Or are they? Two physicists have proposed a loophole that would allow humans to safely pass through wormholes without destroying themselves, the universe, life and everything. Is it true or have they been in quarantine too long?
“Traversable wormholes are a staple of the science fiction literature. In classical general relativity, they are forbidden by the average null energy condition [1, 2, 3]. Interestingly, they are allowed in the quantum theory, but with one catch, the time it takes to go through the wormhole should be longer than the time it takes to travel between the two mouths on the outside.”
That opening paragraph is the last one understandable by non-theoretical physicists in the paper, “Humanly traversable wormholes,” written by Juan Maldacena, Princeton professor of theoretical physics, and Alexey Milekhin, Princeton graduate student of astrophysics. Fortunately, Universe Today breaks it down into terms this humble writer can understand. The key sentence is the one about the time it takes to travel between the two mouths on the outside – anything else would violate the General Theory of Relativity, which science fiction does all of the time. Even worse, wormholes are short-lived and volatile, so you might not make it to the other side before being crushed out of existence. Finally, this would only seem to work with matter at the particle level – no starships can fit nor shrink that small.
“The Randall-Sundrom II model was based on the realization that this five-dimensional spacetime could also be describing physics at lower energies than the ones we usually explore, but that it would have escaped detection because it couples with our matter only through gravity. In fact, its physics is similar to adding many strongly interacting massless fields to the known physics. And for this reason it can give rise to the required negative energy.”
Maldacena and Mikekhan propose using a quantum physics model with a fifth dimension (yes, we’ve entered a new Age of Aquarius) to provide the negative energy (the fifth dimension) required to keep the wormhole stable and maintain the tunnel until the body passes through the other end. They used charged massless fermions (particles like the electron but with zero mass) which exist in black holes and travel in circles. That would make the wormholes look like black holes, but all of that negative energy would require the ship to exert a sudden boost of energy to pass the midpoint in the tunnel. Finally, this wormhole would allow speeds far greater that the speed of light, allowing a ship to cross the Milky Way in ten seconds.
Oh, and one more thing (maybe two) …
“[F]or astronauts going through the wormhole it would take only 1 second of their time to travel 10,000 light-year distance (approximately 5000 billion miles or 1/10 of Milky Way size). An observer who does not go through the wormhole and stays outside sees them taking more than 10,000 years. And all this with no use of fuel, since the gravity accelerates and decelerates the spaceship.”
No fuel and no violation of the General Theory of Relativity! That’s not exactly good news – the Enterprise arrives 100,000 years too late to stop the Romulan fleet from destroying Earth. But it keeps wormholes in the realm of the possible – at least the quantumly possible. Maldacena and Milekhin admit traveling them is well beyond current technology and protection against exposure to massive amounts of cosmic radiation. But it’s something to strive for.
Quite a challenge for a species that still can’t get flying cars flying at the speed of cars.
This video is just amazing. Youtube user LMX2001 was watching the Hayle Beach live cam when he noticed a glowing light in the distance. It shoots across the water, hovers in place, powers up glowing powerfully, then shoots straight up at incredible speed. This is proof that UFOs exist off the coast of the UK and even have an alien base off of Hayle Beach, but is it an alien underwater base or a human military underwater base? I did notice that this craft does resemble the USAF TR3B craft when it glows powerfully. The TR3B would be harder to fly straight by a person...because it wobbles slightly as you see in the video. And I heard that the USAF had project Aurora testing a TR3B in the UK black in the 1990s...so...is this ours...or is this theirs? Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
Tuned in to Hayle Beach Live Webcam to watch a sunset and noticed a strange small light hovering above the sea so i used a desktop screen recorder to capture it. The light then suddenly darts to the left over a distance at high speed then stops sharply where it just hovers again. Then towards the end of the video it shoots straight up through the sky very fast and is gone. Watch full screen for better clarity!!
Glowing Orb Close Up In Australia Mountain, July 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Glowing Orb Close Up In Australia Mountain, July 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: July 10, 2020 but released today Location of sighting: Mount Buffalo, Victoria, Australia Here is an interesting video of a bight glowing orb at night over Victoria, Australia recorded back in July but released today. The orb is moving slowly, but its evident that its moving to the left. Australia is well known for its glowing orbs and this is the closest one I have ever seen coming from Australia. It appears to be observing the person on the ground, watching the human recording them. It wants to be seen, it wants to be recorded and its watching and measuring the persons reactions. So...who's watching who? Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Guys here are some structures and ships I found on earths moon and planet mercury this last week. These were on my work computer at school that I use during lunch breaks. Just thought that some of you would really like to see what alien structures actually look like. They look nothing like human structures and nothing like the movies depict them. Thought it would be a shame to delete them without posting them first. Almost did though. I would really like to confront NASA about these structures...mostly to watch them squirm and make lies on the spot for whats seen in them.
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Crashed Alien Craft In Mexico Transported To Wright-paterson Air Force Base
Crashed Alien Craft In Mexico Transported To Wright-paterson Air Force Base
AUGUST 25, 1974 …………..COYAME MEXICO
On 25 Aug 74, at 2207 hrs, US Air Defense radar detected an unknown object approaching US airspace from the Gulf of Mexico. Originally the object was tracked at 2,200 (2,530 mph) knots on a bearing of 325 degrees and at an altitude of 75,000 feet, a course that would intercept US territory about forty miles southwest of Corpus Christi, Texas.
After approximately sixty seconds of observation, at a position 155 miles southeast of Corpus Christi, the object decelerated to approximately 1700 (1,955 mph) knots, turned to a heading of 290 degrees, and began a slow descent.
It entered Mexican airspace approximately forty miles south of Brownsville, Texas. Radar tracked it approximately 500 miles to a point near the town of Coyame, in the state of Chihuahua, not far from the US border. There the object suddenly disappeared from the radar screens.
During the flight over Mexican airspace, the object leveled off at 45,000 feet, then descended to 20,000 feet. The descent was in level steps, not a smooth curve or straight line, and each level was maintained for approximately five minutes.
The object was tracked by two different military radar installations. It would have been within range of Brownsville civilian radar, but it is assumed that no civilian radar detected the object due to a lack of any such reports. The point of disappearance from the radar screens was over a barren and sparsely populated area of Northern Mexico. At first it was assumed that the object had descended below the radar’s horizon and a watch was kept for any re-emergence of the object. None occurred.
At first it was assumed that the object might be a meteor because of the high speed and descending flight path. But meteors normally travel at higher speeds, and descend in a smooth arc, not in “steps.” And meteors do not normally make a thirty-five degree change in course. Shortly after detection an air defense alert was called. However, before any form of interception could be scrambled, the object turned to a course that would not immediately take it over US territory. The alert was called off within twenty minutes after the object’s disappearance from the radar screen.
Fifty-two minutes after the disappearance, civilian radio traffic indicated that a civilian aircraft had gone down in that area. But it was clear that the missing aircraft had departed El Paso International with a destination of Mexico City, and could not, therefore, have been the object tracked over the Gulf of Mexico.
It was noted, however, that they both disappeared in the same area and at the same time.
With daylight the next day, Mexican authorities began a search for the missing plane. At Approximately 10:35 hours, there came a radio report that wreckage from the missing plane had been spotted from the air. Almost immediately came a report of a second plane on the ground a few miles from the first. A few minutes later an additional report stated that the second “plane” was circular shaped and apparently in one piece although damaged. A few minutes after that the Mexican military clamped a radio silence on all search efforts.
The radio interceptions were reported through channels to the CIA. Possibly as many as two additional government agencies also received reports, but such has not been confirmed as of this date. The CIA immediately began forming a recovery team. The speed with which this team and its equipment was assembled suggests that this was either a well-rehearsed exercise or one that had been performed prior to this event.
In the meantime, requests were initiated at the highest levels between the United States and Mexican governments that the US recovery team be allowed onto Mexican territory to “assist.” These requests were met with professed ignorance and a flat refusal of any cooperation.
By 21:00 hrs, 26 Aug 1974, the recovery team had assembled and been staged at Fort Bliss. Several helicopters were flown in from some unknown source and assembled in a secured area. These helicopters were painted a neutral sand color and bore no markings. Eye witness indicates that there were three smaller craft, very probably UHl Hueys from the description. There was also a larger helicopter, possibly a Sea Stallion. Personnel from this team remained with their craft and had no contact with other Ft. Bliss personnel.
Satellite and aircraft overflight that day indicated that both the crashed disk and the civilian aircraft had been removed from the crash sites and loaded on flat bed trucks. Later flights confirmed that the convoy had departed the area heading south.
At that point the CIA had to make a choice; either to allow this unknown aircraft to stay in the hands of the Mexican government, or to launch the recovery team, supplemented by any required military support, to take the craft. There occurred, however, an event that took the choice out of their hands. High altitude overflights indicated that the convoy had stopped before reaching any inhabited areas or major roads. Recon showed no activity, and radio contact between the Mexican recovery team and its headquarters had ceased. A low altitude, high speed overflight was ordered.
The photos returned by that aircraft showed all trucks and jeeps stopped, some with open doors, and two human bodies laying on the ground beside two vehicles. The decision was immediately made to launch the recovery team, but the actual launching was held up for the arrival of additional equipment and two additional personnel. It was not until 14:38 hrs that the helicopters departed Ft. Bliss.
The four helicopters followed the border down towards Presidio then turned and entered Mexican airspace north of Candelaria. They were over the convoy site at 16:53 hrs. All convoy personnel were dead, most within the trucks. Some recovery team members, dressed in bioprotection suits, reconfigured the straps holding the object on the flatbed truck, then attached them to a cargo cable from the Sea Stallion.
By 17:14 hrs the recovered object was on its way to US territory. Before leaving the convoy site, members of the recovery team gathered together the Mexican vehicles and bodies, then destroyed all with high explosives. This included the pieces of the civilian light plane which had been involved in the mid-air collision. At 17:46 hrs the Hueys departed.
The Hueys caught up with the Sea Stallion as it reentered US airspace. The recovery team then proceeded to a point in the Davis Mountains, approximately twenty-five miles northeast of Valentine. There they landed and waited until 02:25 hrs the next morning. At that time they resumed the flight and rendezvoused with a small convoy on a road between Van Horn and Kent. The recovered disk was transferred to a truck large enough to handle it and capable of being sealed totally. Some of the personnel from the Huey’s transferred to the convoy.
All helicopters then returned to their original bases for decontamination procedures. The convoy continued non-stop, using back roads and smaller highways, and staying away from cities. The destination of the convoy reportedly was Altanta, Georgia.
Here the hard evidence thins out. One unconfirmed report says the disk was eventually transferred to Wright-Patterson AF Base. Another says that the disk was either transferred after that to another unnamed base, or was taken directly to this unknown base directly from Atlanta.
The best description of the disk was that it was sixteen feet, five inches in diameter, convex on both upper and lower surfaces to the same degree, possessing no visible doors or windows. The thickness was slightly less than five feet. The color was silver, much like polished steel. There were no visible lights nor any propulsion means.
There were no markings. There were two areas of the rim that showed damage, one showing an irregular hole approximately twelve inches in diameter with indented material around it. The other damage was described as a “dent” about two feet wide. The weight of the object was estimated as approximately one thousand, five hundred pounds, based on the effect of the weight on the carrying helicopter and those who transferred it to the truck.
There was no indication in the documentation available as to whether anything was visible in the “hole.”
It seems likely that the damage with the hole was caused by the collision with the civilian aircraft. That collision occurred while the object was traveling approximately 1700 knots (1,955 mph). Even ignoring the speed of the civilian aircraft, the impact would have been considerable at that speed.
This is in agreement with the description of the civilian aircraft as being “almost totally destroyed.” What was being taken from the crash site was pieces of the civilian aircraft.
The second damage may have resulted when the object impacted with the ground. The speed in that case should have been considerably less than that of the first impact.
No mention is made of the occupants of the civilian aircraft. It is not known if any body or bodies were recovered. Considering the destruction of the civilian light aircraft in mid-air, bodies may well not have come down near the larger pieces.
Unfortunately what caused the deaths of the Mexican recovery team is not known. Speculation ranges from a chemical released from the disk as a result of the damage, to a microbiological agent. There are no indications of death or illness by any of the recovery team.
It would not have been illogical for the recovery team to have taken one of the bodies back with them for analysis. But there is no indication of that having happened. Perhaps they did not have adequate means of transporting what might have been a biologically contaminated body.
Inquires to the FAA reveal no documents concerning the civilian aircraft crash, probably because it did not involve a US aircraft. NOTE: The above image is CGI.
Aliens Abductions Are Related To Alien-Human Hybrid Beings, Survey Suggests
Aliens Abductions Are Related To Alien-Human Hybrid Beings, Survey Suggests
British online newspaper Express carried out a survey about alien abductions and hybrid beings, and its results were shocking.
According to Express, of the 9,300 people surveyed, 5487 (59%) responded that “they were ‘absolutely convinced’ they [abductions] are taking place and the evidence for them is ‘compelling’”, while 3,813 (41%) affirmed “they believed the claims from so called alien abductees were just the stuff of dreams and fantasy”.
This research was conducted alongside the publication of a series of reports about alien abductions and experimentations with alien-human hybrid beings.
The British news site mentioned the story of a pair of twins that affirmed “they were abducted by ‘bald aliens’ repeatedly from the age of five”. “They [the twins] told a sinister story of how they would tell their parents the ‘bald men are coming’ in the run up to another cosmic kidnap”, stated Express.
This story was released by UFO researcher Audrey Starborn Hewins at the 26th Annual International UFO Congress held in Fountain, Arizona.
Ms Hewins, a native from Maine, United States, said she attended the congress “to give ‘therapy’ to ‘alien abductees’”. She added that she have had “contact with aliens since the age of just five”.
Express also mentioned the case of a French-Canadian woman who believes she “was implanted as a so-called hybrid by aliens”.
“Lisa, whose surname is not revealed in a video, which broke the story, says her mother was supposedly pregnant with just a son in 1975, when she was born”, stated the article. “She is now convinced she was implanted into her mother by aliens after they ‘visited her while she was pregnant’”.
About this issue, a UK researcher called Miguel Mendonça expressed in an interview that “aliens have been secretly implanting extraterrestrial DNA into pregnant humans”. In his opinion, “the so-called alien-hybrid community is expanding on Earth and is vital to the future of the human race because of how they are helping us evolve into higher beings”.
Draw your own conclusions…
Aliens ARE abducting humans: ‘Evidence is compelling’ for cosmic kidnaps survey finds
NEARLY 60 percent of people surveyed said they are convinced aliens are regularly abducting humans for experiments and other research.
Express.co.uk has conducted a poll asking readers if they think “people are abducted by aliens” after a series of shocking claims from alleged victims.
Around 9,300 people have responded to the survey, with a whopping 59 percent (5,487)saying they were “absolutely convinced” they are taking place and the evidence for them is “compelling”.
The remaining 41 percent (3,813) said they believed the claims from so called alien abductees were just the stuff of dreams and fantasy.
Express.co.uk carried out the poll alongside a series of reports of claims being made on UFO conspiracy theory websites, where people had sworn to have been abducted, and even that they were the alien-human hybrid children of bizarre experiments involving their parents.
This month we told how a pair of twins claim they were abducted by “bald aliens” repeatedly from the age of five.
They told a sinister story of how they would tell their parents the “bald men are coming” in the run up to another cosmic kidnap.
The tale was revealed by Audrey Starborn Hewins at the 26th annual International UFO Congress in Fountain Arizona.
Ms Hewins, 43, from Oxford, Maine in the United States, attended the conference which aimed to give “therapy” to “alien abductees”.
She claims to have had contact with aliens since the age of just five.
She told how her identical twin, Debbie, was also visited by grey aliens as they grew up in Athens, Ohio.
Last month we told the story of a 6ft 3in, green-eyed blonde French Canadian woman, who was a SURPRISE second twin, and claims she was implanted as a so-called hybrid by aliens.
Striking Lisa claims her mother gave birth to twins after a bizarre encounter with two aliens.
Lisa, whose surname is not revealed in a video, which broke the story, says her mother was supposedly pregnant with just a son in 1975, when she was born.
She is now convinced she was implanted into her mother by aliens after they “visited her while she was pregnant”.
Her bizarre story was revealed for the first time by UFO researcher Luigi Vendittelli from Montreal, Canada, on the Earth Mystery News YouTube channel.
Express.co.uk has revealed a number of these bizarre stories over the past 18 months.
In May 2016, we exclusively revealed how green energy expert, Miguel Mendonça, 43, who helped shape UK renewable power policies, said he was convinced aliens have been secretly implanting extra terrestrial DNA into pregnant humans, in a book he wrote about it.
Mr Mendonça now claims the so-called alien-hybrid community is expanding on Earth and vital to the future of the human race because of how they are helping us “evolve into higher beings”.
Mr Mendonça, who suffers with MS, the illness that leaves suffers with neurological symptoms, muscle pain and severe physical and mental exhaustion, even feels better with increased energy levels for having regular contact with the hybrids, although he stressed it could not cure his condition.
He said: “It’s made no difference to my condition, but I do feel better on some levels.”
In his book, Meet The Hybrids: The Lives And Missions of ET Ambassadors On Earth published by Amazon and co-authored with Barbara Lamb, he spent time interviewing eight people who claim they have grown up with implanted alien DNA in their bodies and are part of a mission to improve mankind.
Take part in our survey and tell us if you are also convinced by these stories.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Here Is Why David Hoffman Believes UFOs Are Real
Here Is Why David Hoffman Believes UFOs Are Real
About:
I am not a documentary filmmaker who believes in conspiracy theories. And I am not a scientist or an astronomer. I made this video for my subscribers because I do believe that unidentified flying objects (UFO) and aliens are real because of what happened to me – the story that I tell in this video. My friends and colleagues think that I am crazy or in fantasyland when I bring up this issue. So I for the most part keep it to myself. Until now. Does it make me nervous or uncomfortable to think that aliens are around us? Yes. Is there anything I can do about it? No. And as I say in the video, I do believe that if they meant us harm, they would have done us in all long time ago. I do not expect this video to change your opinion one way or the other but hope that you find my presentation and the old documentary of interest. And as always, you are welcome to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Thank you.
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Take a couple of minutes and have a little fun with this new video from NASA
Take a couple of minutes to check out this new video from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, released August 14, 2020:
So you’ve somehow rigged up your spaceship to travel almost at the speed of light? … Before you fly off all willy-nilly, however, there are some important things you should probably know about approaching the speed of light.
Enjoy!
If you take a trip at near the speed of light, you won’t just feel younger when you get back. You’ll BE younger! (compared to friends who stayed behind.) See more postcards like this, from NASA.
Bottom line: New animated video from NASA on traveling near the speed of light.
Although Roswell is the most famous alleged UFO crash, it is not the only one, nor is it the first. Some researchers believe there may have been dozens of UFO crashes. Below is a collection of some of the more well-known cases in the United States.
Aurora, Texas, 1897
In 1896 and 1897, news of mysterious airship sightings was sweeping the nation. Many of these reports were similar to modern UFO sightings and consisted of strange lights darting around the sky. Other stories, however, referred to giant dirigibles (lighter-than-air aircraft). Even though there were a few inventors building dirigibles at the time throughout the world, for the most part, this explanation has been dismissed. There were no known successfully built dirigibles in the United States. The descriptions were also often much larger and flew much faster than the experimental blimps of this era.
An abandoned windmill in Texas, similar to the one described n the UFO crash.
Credit: Steve Schowiak
Some witnesses reported seeing human-looking occupants in the airships. A few newspapers, including TheWashington Times, went so far as to speculate that these were visitors from Mars. One of the last reports of mysterious airships was the curious report of S.E. Haydon in the Dallas Morning News on April 17, 1897. In his article, Haydon claimed that witnesses spotted an airship at 6 a.m. in the town of Aurora, Texas, on April 16. It flew low to the ground, descending until it finally collided with a windmill on the property of Judge J.S. Proctor. The collision resulted in a massive explosion, “scattering debris over several acres of the ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge’s flower garden.”
According to the article, the townspeople were surprised to find the pilot’s body among the debris. It appeared to “not [be] an inhabitant of this world.” The local signal service officer speculated that he was from Mars. They also allegedly found papers containing strange hieroglyphics, which they assumed comprised a journal of the pilot’s travels. They were unable to determine the craft’s method of propulsion, but they did recover metals that appeared to be a mixture of aluminum and silver.
Original newspaper article describing the incident, by S. E. Haydon, “A Windmill Demolishes It,” The Dallas Morning News, April 19, 1897, p. 5.
Nearly seventy-six years later, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), decided to take a closer look at this UFO legend. By then, rumors had circulated that Haydon had fabricated the entire story. When Haydon wrote the story, the town of Aurora was reeling from a string of bad luck. Several residents had died from typhoid that winter, cotton crops had failed, and a railroad planned for the city had gone broke. It was believed that Haydon, a local cotton buyer, created the story to try and breathe some new life into the town. MUFON investigators found surprising evidence; however, that supported the idea that something extraordinary may have taken place.
According to MUFON’s report, Texas state director, Bill Case, found two individuals who testified that their parents had witnessed the events described by Haydon in his article. The first was Mrs. Mary Evans, who says that she was fifteen-years-old when her parents went to the crash site and when they returned home, described to Mary the explosion and the small man who was killed in the crash. She recalled they had informed her the townsfolk buried what was left of the pilot in the local cemetery. The other witness was Charlie Stephens, whose father said he had seen the crash, which caused a massive fire that could be seen for three miles.
Using the witness testimony, MUFON investigators found what they believed to be the site of the crash. Radiation levels were checked and were typical for the area. The investigators found metal fragments with metal detectors that indicated something had crashed and spread debris over a two-or-three-acre area east of where the windmill was located. One-piece, in particular, caught their attention.
The mysterious piece of metal was found beneath four inches of soil and appeared to have been in a molten state when it penetrated the Earth and smashed against a limestone rock where it was found. Under analysis, the metal was determined to be a very pure form of aluminum alloy, oddly devoid of traces of copper, which is typically seen with this sort of manufactured aluminum. It had also gone through a heating-and-cooling stage consistent with that of an explosion.
The next part of MUFON’s investigation was to find the remains of the UFO pilot. They located a headstone with a triangle and some circles carved into it, possibly an etching of the craft. The metal detectors also alerted to metal below the surface at this location. Paperwork was submitted to exhume the body, but townsfolk vehemently denied the request and asked that researchers not enter the cemetery. Soon after MUFON’s investigation, the headstone disappeared altogether, leaving the location of the grave unknown.
In an article published in the Houston Chronicle in 2007, Aurora business owner Karen Tedrow said she understood the townspeople’s reluctance: “My parents are buried there, and I don’t want them digging around. Earthly body or not, they ought to let it rest in peace.”
In the end, MUFON investigators determined that there was more to the story than previously believed and that they had found “sufficient evidence to cast reasonable doubt on the hoax theory.”
Aztec, New Mexico, 1948
Another famous alleged UFO crash case occurred in March 1948 in the remote town of Aztec, New Mexico, in the northwest corner of the state. This story began with the publishing one of the first UFO books, Behind the Flying Saucers, written by Frank Scully in 1950.
Scully was a writer for the entertainment magazine Variety. He says some of his Hollywood friends recommended that he get in touch with Silas Newton, a successful oilman, who had some interesting UFO crash stories. Newton shared his stories with Scully and explained the electromagnetic nature of the propulsion of crashed UFOs. Newton, along with an anonymous scientist referred to as Dr. Gee, became the primary source for Scully’s book.
According to Newton and Dr. Gee, advanced radar stations in New Mexico caused the crash of a disc-shaped UFO near Aztec. The craft was mostly intact with just a puncture near one of the windows. Scientists, including Dr. Gee, who were first to arrive on the scene, saw bodies inside the craft. Without visible doors on the object, the scientists were eventually able to get into the craft by sticking a pole inside and pressing a button on a wall that opened a hidden door.
Inside, the scientists found sixteen charred bodies of beings that were humanoid in form but only three-to-four-feet tall. They appeared to have been killed by a fire inside the craft. The craft was made of a solid material that looked similar to aluminum and was very lightweight. Eventually, the aircraft was disassembled and taken to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, which is often rumored to be the home base for recovered extraterrestrial objects.
Once Scully’s book was published, it quickly became a bestseller. However, doubts about the credibility of the main witnesses began to surface. J.P. Cahn, a freelance reporter, wrote an investigative piece for True magazine, claiming that the whole book was based on lies. Cahn claimed that he could prove that the metals Newton was purporting to be from an alien spacecraft were just a standard grade of aluminum used in pots and pans. He also said that he discovered the true identity of Dr. Gee.
According to Scully, Dr. Gee was a very accomplished scientist, with “more degrees than a thermometer.” However, Cahn discovered that Dr. Gee was a business associate of Newton’s by the name of Leo GeBauer. GeBauer owned a radio-and-television-parts company in Phoenix, Arizona. Although technologically inclined, GeBauer did not have the myriad of degrees claimed in Scully’s book. Scully’s response to this accusation was that GeBrauer was only one of many scientists represented by Dr. Gee in the book.
Cahn also uncovered that, although never formally charged, Newton had been accused of making false claims regarding stocks and oil prospects. Cahn believed that Newton and GeBrauer conned Scully into accepting their story to convince investors that they had access to secret alien technology capable of finding oil fields.
All of this has tarnished Scully’s book; however, there are UFO investigators who believe they have found evidence that supports the Aztec crash happened, including FBI documents. One such report can be found in Timothy Good’s book, Above Top Secret. In the book’s appendix, there is an FBI document from March 1950 that includes the report of an air force investigator on rumors of a crashed “flying saucer” discovered in New Mexico with three small bodies inside. It says the crash was the result of nearby “very high-powered radar.” Skeptics believe that Newton and GeBrauer had been peddling this story everywhere, and it eventually got back to the air force and the FBI.
Researchers Nick Redfern and Scott Ramsey obtained additional FBI documents regarding the Aztec crash. Ramsey says that these documents describe Newton as a very successful businessman and philanthropist. Although Newton told some tall tales to his investors, Ramsey says the investors seemed to be mostly happy with Newton’s results.
Ramsey has also been able to unearth alleged witnesses to the actual crash. Ken Farley claims he was driving from Durango, Colorado, to San Diego, California, on March 25, 1948, when he stopped outside Aztec to visit a friend. Having heard recent talk of emergency vehicles headed into the desert, Farley and his friend decided to check out what was going on. They arrived at a mesa with a large disc sitting next to it. There were several oilfield workers and a couple of police officers at the scene. They described an object much like the one Scully had written about, which appeared to be undamaged. Police eventually asked them to leave.
Another witness was nineteen-year-old Doug Noland, a gas company employee. He says that on that day, he had picked up his boss, Bill Ferguson, and drove to the desert to put out a brush fire. When Noland and Ferguson arrived at the scene, oilfield workers that were already on the scene told them that the fire was under control and showed them a mysterious large disc-shaped object.
Ramsey says he started as a skeptic, but twenty years later is still finding evidence that convinces him there may be something more to the crash at Aztec, New Mexico.
On December 10, 1965, newspapers across the country reported events that took place the prior evening. Witnesses from Pennsylvania to Illinois, and even as far north as Canada, reported seeing a fireball race across the sky. In Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, debris was reported falling from the fiery object. Outside of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, witnesses reported a flash of light and a fire in the nearby woods.
On the evening of December 9, Robert Gatty, writer for the Tribune-Review out of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, was asked to report on an alleged UFO crash site in a forest outside Kecksburg. When he arrived, Gatty found the area was roped off by police expecting the arrival of “Army engineers and, possibly, civilian scientists.” Gatty claims that police threatened to arrest him if he proceeded into the forest. He reported that the roads were jammed with curious spectators and news reporters.
One of the other newsmen on location was John Murphy, the news director for one of the local radio stations, WHJB. According to his wife, Murphy arrived before the authorities, took pictures, and recorded some witnesses’ audio interviews. He would later put this all together in a radio documentary called Object in the Woods. Murphy later told listeners that he left out some conversations because the witnesses feared reprisal by the police or the army. Murphy’s wife and a coworker both have since said Murphy was visited by men claiming to be with the government. They confiscated some of his recordings and photographs.
To this day, the military maintains that it did not find anything in the forest that night. Nonetheless, Stan Gordon, a local UFO researcher, has gathered several witnesses who attest to the event and the object. Witnesses at the scene reported seeing an acorn-shaped object in the forest that was the size of a “Volkswagen.” Some witnesses later reported seeing the army hauling the tarp-covered object away, revealing only the lower lip of the object. Others reported a band of strange hieroglyphs around the base of the object.
This acorn shaped UFO was created as a prop for a TV show and is now on display in Kecksburg.
Credit: Kecksburg Volunteer Fire Department
Some scientists have speculated that the object was just a meteorite seen in Lake Erie’s vicinity that night. Russia’s Cosmos 96 space probe re-entered the atmosphere over Canada that day, and some have speculated that this is what landed in the woods. Witnesses claimed that the object changed direction several times before slowly falling in a downward trajectory towards the forest. Neither a Russian space probe nor a meteorite would change directions.
In 2002, inspired by Gordon’s work, the Syfy channel decided to investigate the Kecksburg case and, to do so, enlisted the help of journalist Leslie Kean. Together, they formed the Coalition for Freedom of Information (CFI). According to Kean’s report on the CFI website, the team set out to obtain official documents from NASA using the procedures allowed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In doing so, the CFI team was determined to “not accept the usual ‘no records’ responses” that are usually given for such requests.
Their initiative caught the attention and support of President Bill Clinton’s then Chief of Staff, John Podesta. He joined a press conference held by the Syfy channel on October 22, 2002, in which the CFI announced the efforts to obtain NASA files on the Kecksburg incident. Podesta stated before the press,
I think it’s time to open the books on questions that have remained in the dark on the question of government investigations of UFOs… It’s time to find out what the truth really is that’s out there. We ought to do it because it’s right; we ought to do it because the American people quite frankly can handle the truth; and we ought to do it because it’s the law.
John Podesta
Credit: Center for American Progress
The CFI focused on obtaining records from NASA instead of the air force or army because Gordon had previously received files from NASA, indicating that there were more files yet to be uncovered. In particular, CFI pursued the “Fragology Files,” which were described as “reports of space objects’ recovery, [and] analysis of fragments to determine national ownership and vehicle origin.” NASA responded that the files were destroyed, and, in a separate letter, NASA claimed that the records had been missing since 1987.
NASA continued to stall and claim that it had no relevant files, even files that had already been retrieved by Gordon. The CFI appealed the NASA responses and won, but NASA continued to stall. The CFI was then forced to sue and announced its intentions at a press conference on October 21, 2003. NASA finally agreed to send specific files, but only sent unhelpful pieces of information. CFI continued to pursue the lawsuit.
During this time, the chief scientist for orbital debris at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Nicholas Johnson, reviewed whether the Kecksburg incident could have been a human-made object that simply re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. In an interview on October 10, 2003, he told Kean, “I can tell you categorically, that there is no way that any debris from Cosmos 96 could have landed in Pennsylvania anywhere around 4:45 p.m.” Kean’s report demonstrates that “Johnson’s data shows that no man-made object from any country entered our atmosphere and landed in Pennsylvania on the afternoon of December 9.”
Although Johnson made strong statements to the contrary, in 2005, NASA spokesman David Steitz told the Associated Press that “the ‘UFO’ [Kecksburg object] was a Russian satellite, but government records documenting it have been lost.” This response was particularly strange in part because NASA had said that it did not even investigate the Kecksburg case. So, where did Steitz get this information? Kean tried to follow up with Steitz to clear up these discrepancies but could not obtain any particularly useful explanation.
Illustration of the UFO described by witnesses.
Credit: Michael Schratt
Finally, after being tied up in court for two years, the final hearing on the CFI’s case against NASA occurred on March 20, 2007. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, clearly dissatisfied with NASA’s conduct in the case, reprimanded NASA’s attorney and, at one point, stated, “heads should roll” at NASA, and “I can sense the plaintiff’s frustration because I’m frustrated. It’s totally frustrating.” Judge Sullivan ruled in favor of the CFI and required NASA to pay for all legal fees for the case, to reexamine the files, and declassify relevant documents if necessary, explaining any redactions.
NASA sent more files to Kean, but none of them pertained to the Kecksburg incident. NASA searched hundreds of boxes. Kean feels that NASA made a genuine effort in the end, but that the filing systems were so weak that it was difficult to find anything. She concluded, “In summary, we’ll never know whether any documents in the missing or destroyed boxes might have shed light on the Kecksburg incident, even if only by providing a small lead that could open doors for researchers. It only takes one page to change everything.”
A version of this article originally appeared in Issue #8 (June/July 2011) of Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.
Hanging on the wall near the British government’s UFO Desk was what one of the men who occupied that desk called “the most spectacular UFO photo ever sent to the Ministry of Defence (MoD).” The photo has since disappeared, but the story of how the picture was obtained, and what it showed, has not.
Nick Pope ran the MoD’s UFO project from 1991 to 1994. When he was first assigned to the position, he was not excited about it. He felt the issue was ridiculous and he was not looking forward to having to deal with a bunch of UFO nuts. However, over the years, Pope found there were credible cases of incredible things, and began to see there was something truly mysterious about the phenomenon. One of the cases that lead him to this conclusion had to do with a photo that was made into a poster that he found hung in the office near his desk when he began working the UFO desk.
A recreation of the Calvine UFO photo poster.
(Credit: Channel 5)
“I first came across this story in 1991, when I joined the UFO project,” writes Pope on his website. “A poster-sized enlargement of the best photo was prominently displayed on the office wall.”
“The X-Files first aired in the UK in 1994 and I acquired the same nickname (Spooky) as Fox Mulder, for obvious reasons,” Nick continues. “Mulder famously had his ‘I want to believe’ UFO poster on his office wall and though uncaptioned, I suppose this was my equivalent.”
The photo showed a picture of a large diamond shaped craft with a jet in the background. When he asked about the photo, Pope was told that they had officially determined the image was real. They estimated the craft to have been 25 meters (over 80 feet) in diameter.
However, if asked, they were instructed to answer, “no definite conclusion had been reached regarding the large diamond-shaped object.”
Pope learned that the object had been photographed on August 4, 1990. Two people had been walking near the town of Calvine in Scotland when they spotted the large diamond-shaped object. They described the object as looking metallic. It sat in one position, hovering silently for several minutes before taking off vertically at, as Pope writes, “a massive speed.”
During the sighting, the witnesses also saw a military aircraft that they thought might be a harrier jet, but they were unsure whether the jet was escorting the craft, chasing it, or whether the jet pilot was even aware of the diamond-shaped UFO.
The witnesses had taken several photographs and sent them to the Scottish Daily Record newspaper. The paper contacted the MoD, and the MoD was somehow able to convince the paper to hand over the photographs along with the negatives.
” The photos were then sent to the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) who then sent them on to imagery analysts at JARIC (Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre). Yet at the time, MoD hadn’t even publicly acknowledged that there was any intelligence interest in UFOs at all,” Pope explains.
“We implied and sometimes stated that we didn’t ‘investigate’ UFOs, but merely ‘examined sightings to see if anything reported was of any defence interest’ – as if the two were somehow different!”
Pope say the MoD was actually very interested in these cases, but often less interested in where the craft came from than what they could learn from it. They had hoped to identify some sort of technology they would be able to appropriate.
Nick Pope, former MOD UFO investigator, at the International UFO Congress.
(Credit: Peter Beste/Open Minds)
Either way, the Calvine UFO photos impressed the UFO desk investigators enough that they hung the poster in the office.
“At one particularly surreal briefing on the UFO phenomenon my DIS opposite number indicated the photo and pointed his finger to the right: ‘It’s not the Americans’, he said, before pointing to the left and saying ‘and it’s not the Russians.’ There was a pause, before he concluded ‘and that only leaves …’ – his voice trailed off and he didn’t complete the sentence, but his finger was pointing directly upwards,” recalls Pope.
The office where the UFO desk was located also housed other non-UFO related projects.
Pope says the reaction of some colleagues who came to visit unaware of the UFO program had amusing reactions to the poster.
Pope writes, “You’d have this surreal moment when they’d stop mid-sentence, stare at it, point and say ‘what the hell’s that?’ – this wasn’t the archetypal distant, blurred UFO photo. This was up close and personal, reach out and you can touch it stuff. ‘I don’t know what it is, but it’s not one of ours’ was our stock answer to the inevitable question.”
Eventually, around 1994, Pope says his superior determined the craft was a secret American aircraft or drone. Pope says they had already asked the U.S. if the craft or something similar of theirs was being tested over the UK, and were told they were not. Pope believes his boss had decided to support a potential cover-up by the Americans and the MoD and removed the poster. It was never to be seen again.
Although Pope has discussed these photographs in the media and has posted an article on his website, no one has come forward to claim they took the photos. Nor has anyone at the Scottish Daily Record come forth to discuss any involvement. The case remains a mystery.
Earth’s building blocks may have had far more water than previously thought
Earth’s building blocks may have had far more water than previously thought
Meteorites suggest that H2O in the mantle comes from local origins, contrary to expectations
A study of enstatite chondrites (one shown), a type of meteorite similar to the material that formed Earth, suggests that Earth’s primordial building material had plenty of water, even though the planet is thought to have been born in an interplanetary desert.
Earth’s deep stores of water may have been locally sourced rather than trucked in from far-flung regions of the solar system.
A new analysis of meteorites from the inner solar system — home to the four rocky planets — suggests that Earth’s building blocks delivered enough water to account for all the H2O buried within the planet. What’s more, the water produced by the local primordial building material likely shares a close chemical kinship with Earth’s deep-water reserves, thus strengthening the connection, researchers report in the Aug. 28 Science.
Earth is thought to have been born in an interplanetary desert, too close to the sun for water ice to survive. Many researchers suspect that ocean water got delivered toward the end of Earth’s formation by ice-laden asteroids that wandered in from cooler, more distant regions of the solar system (SN: 5/6/15). But the ocean isn’t the planet’s largest water reservoir. Researchers estimate that Earth’s interior holds several times as much water as is found at the surface.
To test whether or not the material that formed Earth could have delivered this deep water, cosmochemist Laurette Piani of the University of Lorraine in Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy, France, and colleagues analyzed meteorites known as enstatite chondrites. Thanks to many chemical similarities with Earth rocks, these relatively rare meteorites are widely thought to be good analogs of the dust and space rocks from the inner solar system that formed Earth’s building blocks, Piani says.
She and her team measured the abundance of hydrogen in these meteorites — a proxy for how much H2O they could produce — and calculated that local interplanetary debris had the potential to deliver at least three times as much water as is found in all the oceans. The meteorites don’t contain water, Piani says. Rather, they house enough of the raw ingredients to create water when heated.
In the meteorites, the team also found a close match to the type of water found in Earth’s mantle. A smattering of all water molecules on Earth contain a heavy variant of hydrogen known as deuterium. The ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in the enstatite chondrites lies within the range measured in Earth’s deep water. That similarity, the team argues, makes a strong case for local building blocks being the source of much of the planet’s water.
“This work is something I wanted to do myself or had been waiting for someone to do,” says Lydia Hallis, a planetary scientist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. In 2015, she led a team that measured the deuterium abundance in lava plumes that tap deep into Earth’s mantle (SN: 11/12/15). “I’m really happy that [the new data] sits within the region where our previous data from deep mantle samples is sitting.”
Hallis and others stress that these new measurements are difficult. Once the meteorites hit the ground, they quickly absorb hydrogen from Earth’s environment. “They did a really good job of picking the right meteorites and making the right measurements,” she says. “This is pretty convincing that this hydrogen that’s measured is from the enstatite chondrites rather than from terrestrial contamination.”
The enstatite chondrites could have also contributed a lot of water to the oceans as well — but they are not the full story. The deuterium-hydrogen ratio in ocean water, which is a bit higher than that of mantle water, is better matched to the ratio found in icy asteroids from the outer solar system. “We still need a bit of water coming from the outer solar system,” Piani says. So, while local materials may have delivered the bulk of Earth’s water, the oceans were likely topped off a bit later by collisions with remote space rocks.
Underground Base Found At Area 51, Possible Tall White Aliens Hive, UFO Sighting News.
Underground Base Found At Area 51, Possible Tall White Aliens Hive, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: Aug 29, 2020 Location of discovery: Area 51, Groom Lake, Nevada, USA Coordinates: 37°10'22.29"N 116°11'34.37"W I was using Google earth map at Area 51, when I came across an underground base. This base has three entrances, one large 18 meters by 9 meters. And Two other smaller ones. There are air ventilation pipes coming out of the largest one and two pipes coming out of the top of the hill. All this was just a few kilometers from where I had discovered a 30 meter UFO parked on a runway and having a hanger built around it. I really am thinking about those tall white aliens that Charles Hall said he worked with behind Nellis AFB. Because this is behind Nellis...same military land, and it is behind a firing rage of sorts...where hundreds of bombs were tested underground leaving only crater reminders. This could be...the tall whites military entrance to their base. Scott C. Waring
Seems URL fails to take us there. Click on Mercury map at that location...lots of fun stuff there. SCW
Now these maps at Planetary Cesium Viewer are great, huge, parts edited, but half of the parts are original. The map is laggy on my computer but on a new computer its probably not noticeable. It took a whole 3 minutes to find this blade structure. I'm surprised more people don't search for them. The structure is very tall, coming above the crater rim all the way from the crater floor. Thats got to be at least 2 miles tall. The structure is even throwing a 5 mile long shadow. Only aliens could make a structure this thin and this tall...no way it could be made in nature. This is 100% proof that aliens exist on Mercury. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
I was looking at a new planetary map and found these structures on Venus. The structure above is over 5 miles across. Many human-like alien contact cases constantly reveal Venus as their home world. A world shared by many species in underground cities. Here we see even the surface of Venus has structures. One structure even has a human-like face on it. A chubby little guy with curly hair and a cigar in his mouth. How can I be sure these are structures you may ask? I have been doing this since 1976 when I was first to discovery the face at Cydonia, Mars. Experience over decades builds up. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Both the above structure and below screenshot are the same face, one close up one far.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
NASA solar probe caught giant UFO leaving the Sun
NASA solar probe caught giant UFO leaving the Sun
Aplasma burst from the surface of the Sun? No, it is more likely a enormous alien spaceship that appears to leave the Sun.
Images taken from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) - (SDO AIA 171) and uploaded to Helioviewer (Solar and heliospheric image visualization tool) this week, show a cigar-shaped UFO of truly staggering proportions emerging from the sun.
In reality there many different types of alien spaceships and many of them are active around the sun. For example,several years ago, a huge alien craft has been photographed by NASA's Lasco C2 satellite on May 29, 2016 and shows the spacecraft at the moment it shoots a beam of light into the sun.
Since they access our solar system by using the sun as a stargate, these giant UFOs are no stranger to the earths atmosphere or space itself.
It is quite possible that this kind of alien craft, often depicted on very old drawings, have been seen since ancient times.
A new study suggests there are more rogue, free-floating planets – unconnected to any star – than stars in our Milky Way galaxy. NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is expected to begin finding hundreds of them.
Artist’s concept of rogue planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9. Researchers now think there could be more such nomadic planets than stars in our galaxy.
Image via ESO/ L. Calçada/ P. Delorme/ Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)/ R. Saito/ VVV Consortium.
There are some 100 to 400 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists now say there may be as many, or more, exoplanets or planets orbiting those distant stars. That’s incredible to ponder, but now consider this. Researchers at Ohio State University just announced a new study suggesting there may be more free-floating rogue planets – planets not orbiting any star – than stars in the Milky Way. Wow!
The theoretical, but fascinating, peer-reviewed conclusions were published in The Astronomical Journal on August 21, 2020.
What’s more, these scientists say, an upcoming NASA mission, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, should be able to find hundreds or more of these rogue planets. Astronomer Samson Johnson at Ohio State – lead author of the study – commented:
This gives us a window into these worlds that we would otherwise not have. Imagine our little rocky planet just floating freely in space; that’s what this mission will help us find.
As our view of the universe has expanded, we’ve realized that our solar system may be unusual. Roman will help us learn more about how we fit in the cosmic scheme of things by studying rogue planets.
Illustration of a rogue planet floating through space between the stars.
Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC).
These rogue worlds are called free-floating planetary-mass objects (FFPs) and have masses similar to planets that orbit stars. Scientists don’t yet know how they came to be cosmic wanderers, untethered to any stars, but it’s possible that they were once part of regular solar systems, and somehow broke free of their stars’ gravity. Roman should be able to provide more clues, and provide a better idea of how many are out there. According to Scott Gaudi at Ohio State, a co-author of the paper:
The universe could be teeming with rogue planets and we wouldn’t even know it. We would never find out without undertaking a thorough, space-based microlensing survey like Roman is going to do.
If scientists can start to build a census of the numbers of FFPs, that itself would help them figure out how they formed. Do they form around stars just like other planets and then get ejected from those planetary systems? Or do they form from gas and dust independently of stars? It’s also thought that the ejection of planets from their home planetary systems might be more common in denser star clusters, since more frequent encounters between stars in dense clusters will make the planetary systems unstable.
Animation depicting how gravitational microlensing can reveal rogue planets. When an unseen rogue planet passes in front of a more distant star from our vantage point, light from the star bends as it passes through the warped space-time around the planet. The planet acts as a cosmic magnifying glass, amplifying the brightness of the background star.
Roman will test various theories and models to see which ones come closest to explain these enigmatic worlds.
It is expected that Roman will be 10 times more sensitive in detecting these objects than previous searches. Roman will focus on searching for FFPs between our sun and the center of the galaxy. That search will span about 24,000 light-years in total. Johnson said:
There have been several rogue planets discovered, but to actually get a complete picture, our best bet is something like Roman. This is a totally new frontier.
According to the new paper, it is expected that Roman should find at least 250 FFPs, even ones as small as Mars.
Artist’s rendering of NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Exoplanets orbiting stars can be difficult to detect, and rogue exoplanets even more so. How will Roman find them? It will use a technique called gravitational lensing, which relies on the gravity of stars and planets to bend and magnify the light coming from stars that pass behind them, from the telescope’s viewpoint. This technique can find exoplanets thousands of light-years from Earth, and is based on Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. According to co-author Matthew Penny at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge:
The microlensing signal from a rogue planet only lasts between a few hours and a couple of days and then is gone forever. This makes them difficult to observe from Earth, even with multiple telescopes. Roman is a game-changer for rogue planet searches.
Of course, another question is whether any rogue planets could support life. Johnson said it is probably unlikely since they have no stars for heat and energy:
They would probably be extremely cold, because they have no star.
Samson Johnson at The Ohio State University, lead author of the new study.
Discovering how rogue planets came to be will help astronomers figure out what makes them so unique and also better understand how regular planetary systems form. Johnson said:
If we find a lot of low-mass rogue planets, we’ll know that as stars form planets, they’re probably ejecting a bunch of other stuff out into the galaxy. This helps us get a handle on the formation pathway of planets in general.
Rogue planets are enigmatic objects, essentially planets as we know them but with no stars to call home. And there may be many more of them than ever thought possible.
Bottom line: New research shows that there could be more rogue, free-floating planets than stars in our galaxy. An upcoming NASA mission, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, should be able to find hundreds or more of them.
Such tunnels in the fabric of space could show up via unusual gravity waves
A wormhole, illustrated here, is a tunnel through spacetime that connects different parts of the universe. Scientists report that a black hole circling a wormhole would emit a special pattern of gravitational waves — one unique to wormholes.
Gravitational wave detectors have already spotted mysterious black holes. But what they turn up next might be even stranger: wormholes.
Physicists have long suspected wormholes might exist. If wormholes exist, from the outside they might appear similar to black holes. But an object that falls into a black hole would become trapped inside it. In contrast, anything that falls into a wormhole should be able to pass right through to the other side.
The force we experience as gravity actually results from the curving of spacetime.
It can be hard to picture, so consider this: Planets orbit around the sun because the sun makes a bowl shape in the fabric of space. (The planets are a bit like marbles circling around and around inside that bowl.) Black holes curve spacetime into chasms so deep that nothing can escape. But spacetime could also curve into other weird shapes, such as tunnels.
Spacetime can curve, but it also can ripple. Those ripples are called gravitational waves, or sometimes gravity waves.
Scientists know how to detect these small tremors when two black holes swirl around each other and collide. There might also be patterns of gravity waves they haven’t seen yet. A black hole spiraling into a wormhole should create an odd pattern of ripples in spacetime. And with the right tools, certain observatories might be able to pick that up.
That’s the conclusion of a new July 17 report at arXiv.org. The waves from the black hole-and-wormhole pair would blink off and on as the black hole passed through the wormhole and then came back out again.
But are they real?
To be sure, no evidence yet exists for wormholes.
“These are speculative for sure, with a capital S,” says William Gabella. He’s a physicist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. However, he adds, if wormholes do exist, researchers should have a chance of detecting them. It would just take the right conditions and a gravity-wave detector.
Gabella is part of a team that wondered what ripples from a wormhole might look like.
That team considered a black hole with a mass five times that of the sun. They imagined it orbiting a wormhole about 1.6 billion light-years from Earth. As the black hole swings around the wormhole, they calculated, it should begin spiraling inward. This would release gravity waves. At first, these would look just like gravity waves from two black holes. The pattern of waves, called a chirp, would increase in frequency over time. But when it reached the wormhole’s center, or “throat,” the black hole would pass through.
The researchers then considered what would happen if the black hole emerged in a distant realm. For instance, it might come out in another universe. In that case, the gravitational waves in the first universe would abruptly end. In the second universe, the black hole would shoot outward before spiraling back in again. Then, it would pass back all of the way through the wormhole and into the first universe again.
As the black hole returned, it would initially spiral outward from the wormhole. This might produce an “anti-chirp” — a pattern of gravitational waves opposite to a chirp’s — before plunging back in with a chirp.
Over time, the black hole would continue bouncing between the two universes. This should cause repeated bursts of gravity waves. In between would be periods of silence. Once the black hole lost enough energy to those gravity waves, its journey would end as it settled down in the wormhole’s throat.
It all depends on those chirp detectors
“You can’t reproduce that [pattern] with two black holes,” says Dejan Stojkovic. “So it’s a clear-cut signal of a wormhole.” A physicist at the University at Buffalo in New York, Stojkovic was not involved with the new research. In the end, he says, the waves would be so unusual that their pattern “should be sticking [out] like a sore thumb.”
The general theory of relativity describes gravity as the result of the curvature of spacetime. And that theory suggests wormholes are possible. But actually detecting one would imply that there also exists some strange type of matter that physicists don’t understand. To keep a wormhole’s throat from collapsing, some substance with negative mass must prop it open. Right now, no known material could do that.
A few gravity-wave detectors now exist. Advanced LIGO is made up of two U.S. detectors. (Its acronym stands for Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory.) Another detector, in Italy, is known as Advanced Virgo. Both Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detect ripples from black holes or from dense stellar corpses known as neutron stars.
Scientists are now skilled at spotting such mergers. They have confirmed more than a dozen. Even more await confirmation. But at some point, physicists will need to start focusing on more unusual possibilities, says Vítor Cardoso. He’s a physicist at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal. Says Cardoso: “We need to look for strange but exciting signals.”
After decades trying to directly detect gravitational waves, the recently upgraded Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, now known as Advanced LIGO, has succeeded. This has ushered in a new era of astronomy.
In the depths of Venus' hellish atmosphere, a layer of mysterious haze could be home to life, a new study finds.
Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, a broiling world where temperatures can reach 870 degrees Fahrenheit (465 degrees Celsius), more than hot enough to melt lead. And this scorching heat causes any water on the surface of Venus to boil away, leaving the rock extraordinarily dry.
Previous research has suggested that Venus might once have been a habitable desert world as recently as 1 billion years ago. But over time, escalating temperatures caused steam to build up in the atmosphere of Venus, which trapped heat that vaporized still more water, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect that boiled all the oceans off the planet. Nowadays the Venusian atmosphere is about 50 times as arid as the driest place on Earth, the Atacama Desert, at midday in summer, researchers noted.
If any life on Venus survived this runaway greenhouse effect, a possible haven for it may be the planet's clouds, a region spanning from about 30 to 37 miles (48 to 60 kilometers) in altitude, according to the new research.
Although such a possibility might seem far-fetched, "Earth itself has an aerial biosphere," study lead author Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Space.com. "Microbial life does not stay up there permanently, but it can get transported up and stay a week or two before coming back down again."
In the skies of Venus, the researchers determined, life would likely need to shelter within cloud droplets. But such cloud droplets repeatedly merge and grow, eventually getting large enough they fall out of the atmosphere. And although such a tumble is rarely a problem for airborne microbes on Earth, it would likely prove deadly to Venusian life.
Now Seager and her colleagues have discovered a scenario in which hypothetical microbes could survive in the skies of Venus, escaping a fate where they rain down onto the planet's hellish surface to die.
Prior work found that below the lowest clouds of Venus, at altitudes of 29.5 to 20.5 miles (47.5 to 33 kilometers), is a layer of mysterious haze. Scientists don't know what particles make up the haze, just that they measure between 0.4 to 4 microns wide. (In comparison, the average human hair is about 100 microns wide.)
"People don't really know why this haze layer is there," Seager said. "There's a lot we don't know about Venus."
The researchers suggested that Venusian microbes could fall into this haze layer and stay there, suspended in the air, just as similarly-sized haze particles have. In order to survive the heat of the lower atmosphere, the microbes would have to go dormant, becoming inactive, dessicated spores that could better resist their hazardous surroundings.
An artist's depiction of lightning in the atmosphere of Venus. (Image credit: ESA)
Updrafts could pull spores up from this haze depot to more temperate layers of the atmosphere. The spores could then attract droplets of fluid around themselves, much as dust and potentially microbes do in Earth's atmosphere, and return to active life. During their time aloft, the microbes could grow and reproduce, potentially living in these droplets for hours to months to even years. Eventually, the droplets would grow too large and fall into the lower atmosphere, beginning the cycle anew.
"People talked before about life in Venus' atmosphere, but they never thought through what that would mean," Seager said.
If it were permanently confined to an aerial biosphere, life on Venus would have to get all its nutrients from the atmosphere and would have to be photosynthetic, like plants on Earth.
Although the scientists assumed the spores would passively stay in temperate layers until their droplets grew enough to fall downward, microbes could also potentially employ active means of remaining aloft. Seager noted that renowned astronomer Carl Sagan proposed a number of ways life could potentially stay aloft in Jupiter's atmosphere, such as sucking in gases that could help them stay buoyant.
If just 1% of one-thousandth of the mass of Venus' lower haze layer is dried spores, there could be 5,500 tons (5,000 metric tons) of microbes there, the researchers calculated. Assuming these desiccated microbes weigh about 0.4 trillionths of a gram each, as they might on Earth, there could be about 10^22 spores (a 1 with 22 zeroes behind it) within the haze of Venus. In comparison, scientists estimate that Earth has about 10^24 cells in its aerial biosphere, and more than 10^30 free-living single-celled microbes altogether.
Life in the Venusian atmosphere would still prove extremely harsh compared to its Earthly counterpart. In addition to the extraordinarily dry air constantly threatening to dehydrate any microbes, Venusian life would also have to contend with the local clouds, which are rich in sulfuric acid.
"There are a lot of challenges to life on Venus," Seager said.
Although microbes can survive in hyper-acidic environments on Earth, such as the Dallol Geothermal Area in Ethiopia, Venusian clouds are more than 100 billion times more acidic than that environment, the researchers said. Still, any Venusian microbes might potentially be able to survive these deadly conditions by forming sulfur shells around themselves, the scientists suggested.
And thinking about how life might survive on Venus could shed light on how it might exist elsewhere. "Could some exoplanets have life in their clouds? Could planets like Jupiter or Neptune have life in their clouds?" Seager said. Future missions to Venus could help shed light on just how extreme life could get across the universe.
The scientists detailed their findings online Aug. 13 in the journal Astrobiology.
Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi.
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Elon Musk has put a new spin on the expression “guinea pig” by trotting out a live pig to perform in his much-anticipated “Neurolink” demonstration. This was a real porker, not a rodent, and Musk played the ‘rat’ in the demo by touting it as a major breakthrough and attempting to recruit human volunteers while comparing the whole thing to the dystopian science fiction series, “Black Mirror.” Is Musk electrically driving us into a real-life Twilight Zone?
“In a lot of ways, it’s kind of like a Fitbit in your skull, with tiny wires. I could have a Neuralink right now and you wouldn’t know. Maybe I do.’”
Fitbit not in your skull … yet
Wannabe comedian Musk tried to put the audience in a pseudo Joe Rogan interview as he introduced a group of pigs. (Watch the entire presentation/demonstration here.) One was said to have had a ‘Link’ implanted and later removed, to demonstrate that the process is safe (for pigs, at least). Before you start thinking that this doesn’t sound too bad, the Link is about 23 millimeters (.9 inches) by 8 millimeters (.3 inches) and …
“Getting a link requires opening a piece of skull, removing a coin size piece of skull, robot insets electrodes and the device replaces the portion of skull that is closed up with super glue.”
If getting sawed open, probed and superglued by a so-called “sewing” robot is on your bucket list, the line starts at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco. However, you may want to talk to a former employee first. Some of them spoke out to STAT on the run-up to the demonstration that the company’s Muskian philosophy to “move fast and break things” has many employees “completely overwhelmed” – which turns them into ex-employees and explains why Musk used the pig demonstration to appeal for more workers … not pigs, of course. He’s more likely looking for engineers who don’t want to be left behind, but instead want to be part of his weird wide world where memories will be unloaded, downloaded, off-loaded and more.
“You could upload, you could basically store your memories as a backup, and restore the memories, and ultimately you could potentially download them into a new body or a robot body. The future’s going to be weird.”
Disappointingly, most of Musk’s ‘demonstration’ was videos and gonna-be-great commentary and predictions – like that the Neuralink could potentially be used for gaming or summoning your Tesla. If you’re interested in upping your game or your Tesla summoning, volunteers need to meet one more criteria, according to The Verge:
“The first clinical trials will be in a small number of patients with severe spinal cord injuries, to make sure it works and is safe. Last year, Musk said he hoped to start clinical trials in people in 2020. Long term, Musk said they will be able to restore full motion in people with those types of injuries using a second implant on the spine.”
There you go – you knew Musk had to have a noble cause hidden among the boasts of “general anesthesia,” “30 minutes or less” (If it takes longer, is it free? Asking for a friend), “like a Fitbit in your skull” and “Black Mirror.” Speaking of that last one, Musk likes the comparison because “I guess they’re pretty good at predicting.”
So were George Orwell and Rod Serling. Speaking of Orwell, do you think the pigs on “Animal Farm” would stand in line on their two legs to get a Fitbit in their brains from Elon Musk?
As a follow-up to my previous article (titled “Dead Aliens or Dead Humans? From Roswell to Underground Bunkers”) I have decided to put a few things straight regarding my Roswell research – mainly because I’m done with certain scum who seem determined to try and derail it (that will be the theme of another article soon). They have a big surprise coming for them. I’ve written two books on Roswell (Body Snatchers in the Desert in 2005 and, most recently, 2017’s The Roswell UFO Conspiracy). In both of those books I concluded that aliens never crashed outside of Roswell in the summer of 1947. Rather, the Roswell legend was born out of a series of highly-classified experiments using human guinea-pigs, lifting-bodies, and huge balloon arrays. Time and again, I have heard (and particularly from the debunkers and the skeptics) words to these effect: “How come Nick Redfern got this story, but no one else did?” Well, the fact is that I’m actually not the only one who was given the story. In fact, quite the opposite. Let’s take a look at the data at the heart of this article. Namely, and in reality, I was actually just one of many who got the real story of Roswell. I just happened to have been the one who chose to publish the story at length.
Back in the early 1990s (which was long before I was on the Roswell research scene), the late Karl Pflock (Ufologist and CIA employee) wrote: “Even if there were bodies – and I believe there were – they may not have been of unearthly origin. In which case, Roswell turns out to be a significant chapter in early Cold War history, akin to the currently unfolding disclosures about the U.S. government radiation experiments spawned in the same era.” When we met in 2002, and had further chats, it was clear Karl knew much more about this angle of “experiments spawned” than met the eye. He was very careful, however, as to how far he was willing to go. Now, let’s take a look at another aspect of all this. This gets further into the bodies angle, and the data given to me – and to others – concerning how some of the people secretly used in the experiments were Japanese.
Melvin E. Brown was a man who was stationed at the Roswell Army Air Field at the time of the mysterious crash in early July 1947. In an interview with Timothy Good, one of Brown’s daughters – Beverly – made a very intriguing and revealing statement. She said the bodies her father saw back in 1947 “looked Asian [italics mine],” but had larger than normal heads and lacked any hair. There is also this from Beverly to Timothy Good: “They could have passed for Chinese [italics also mine].” As with the revelations from Karl Pflock (as well as the data he held back), the Good / Brown story was independent and had nothing to do with me. But, it fits in very nicely with the “secret experiment” angle of all this that I later chased down. It’s one thing to say the bodies looked somewhat Asian; however, specifically stating the bodies which Melvin Brown saw “could have passed for Chinese” strongly suggests they were extremely human-looking. That’s because they were.
During the Second World War, Fort Stanton, New Mexico held a number of Japanese “internees.” The fort is situated barely spitting distance from the Foster Ranch – which is where the wreckage and the bodies were found. Indeed, they are both in Lincoln County, New Mexico. Researcher and writer John A. Price received a letter from “an acquaintance” who he had known for some time. Price said: “In the letter he told me that the aliens I was looking for were at Fort Stanton.” Price’s source told him that at some undisclosed point: “There were some pretty deformed young men there, several of which could be of alien nature. We only went by what we were told; please don’t tell anyone. Mongoloid large heads, small ears, pin heads who could function and had shrill voices.” Price took the story seriously, and mused on the possibility that the government may have grabbed handicapped people who had “no paper trail, no social security number, and no traceable family connections.”
In 1990, UFO researcher Leonard Stringfield was given an intriguing story from a man named Timothy Cooper. According to Cooper, he had then recently met with a nurse who knew something of all this. In Cooper’s own words: “She casually mentioned to me over coffee that ‘bodies’ were being flown to Los Alamos periodically from late 1945 to sometime in 1947. I asked her if she had seen these ‘bodies’ and she said no, but others had. I asked her where these ‘bodies’ were coming from. She said she did not know but it was rumored that they were human experiments for biological and nuclear medicine research. She thought they may have come from Japan after the war [italics mine]. I asked her why she thought that. She said that they were small bodies with deformed heads and limbs. The eyes were abnormally big, she was told. She did have some view of them in the morgue very briefly for a few minutes at some distance.”
The story continues: “I asked her why she was allowed to be present at the autopsies. She told me that she was asked to assist in the preparation and cleanup. I asked her again about the bodies. She said they were being flown in on special transport planes equipped with refrigerator units to keep the bodies from decomposing. The flesh was badly burned and charred. There was no hair on the heads and had a grayish-yellow color. That’s all she knew.” Interestingly, it wasn’t long after this story reached Stringfield’s eyes and ears that Cooper was suddenly fed – by shadowy characters – a large amount of highly controversial, and clearly bogus, documents. They were focused on dead aliens, wrecked UFOs, autopsies of ETs, and the mythical Majestic 12 group. Clearly, and quickly, someone was intent on diverting Cooper away from the human experimentation angle and equally intent on pushing him in the direction of bogus tales of crashed Flying Saucers. With so much controversy, Cooper eventually quit Ufology. That was very likely the goal of whoever it was that wanted Cooper derailed. Moving on…
Months after Body Snatchers in the Desert was published in June 2005, I received an out-of-the-blue email from a well-respected Australian UFO researcher, Keith Basterfield. He said: “Months before the publication of Redfern’s book, and six years before the release of Jacobsen’s work, I heard a similar story, right here in Adelaide, South Australia.” Keith, whose data came from a trusted source, added: “One night during one of these experiments with one of these craft an incident occurred. They had previously used monkeys and other animals such as pigs on board. Prisoners could volunteer for dangerous missions in return for early release but were not used in these experiments. Two to three live people were needed. The government got people with hydrocephalus – water on the brain – from a facility…They put these people in the craft – either the balloon ruptured early or blew off course and came down. Retrorockets went off and set fire to it. It landed and a farmer/rancher saw it and reported it. One of the humans on board was still alive. The authorities were very concerned that the rancher had hidden souvenirs from the wreckage. The balloons were of chrome plated cellophane to reflect the heat. The experiments were conduced at night so balloons would not explode in the daylight.”
The late Kathy Kasten was a feisty and outspoken contributor to the now-defunct online discussion forum, UFO Updates. She was also a good friend. On August 7, 2012, Kathy died from a cardiac arrest. As far back as 2005, I had been corresponding with her on matters relative to Roswell and her suspicions that the incident had nothing to do with aliens, but everything to do with post-war experiments on human guinea-pigs. At the time of her death, Kathy was working on a full-length book on her theory – parts of which closely matched the findings I detailed in Body Snatchers in the Desert, which was encouraging. It was shortly after Kathy died that her family got in touch with me, as they had decided to donate to me all of Kathy’s research files, correspondence, and much more – and not just her Roswell-based material. Which was, of course, extremely generous of them. A week or so later, a large amount of files turned up on the doorstep, collectively contained in heavy cardboard boxes. To say there were thousands upon thousands of pages of material, dating back decades, would not be an exaggeration.
In Kathy’s files, and while going through them in 2013, I found something interesting written in a notepad – and which she had later turned into a Word document. It read: “My research has uncovered the fact that the American Government was testing many different types of aircraft at the time of the Roswell crash; some of it for the purpose of forming the basis for a future space program, and perhaps even one that involved American-Japanese ex-internees from a New Mexico detention camp.” There’s very little doubt Kathy was talking about Fort Stanton. Particularly notable is the fact that the date of Kathy’s original note was March 23, 1992. This was, of course, long before the Japanese / secret experiment angle of Roswell was on the radar of almost no-one in Ufology. Certainly, my Body Snatchers in the Desert book would not be published for another thirteen years. We now know, however, that as far back as the 1990s, Kathy was pursuing a near-identical angle to the one I was exposed to in the early 2000s.
This is just the tip of the iceberg: there are plenty of people (some in Ufology, and others previously in government) who were given the same account to me – of “secret experiments” and not of aliens. In other words – and finally putting the situation correct – this is not “Nick Redfern’s theory” or “Nick Redfern’s story” (as it has been described). There are multiple sources. Unfortunately, two of those in Ufology who can add significantly to this whole story of top secret tests (and zero aliens) have chosen not to and, instead, prefer to stay silent. I can only see one reason for this: they don’t want to be ostracized by their colleagues in the UFO research community. I call it lacking in a pair of testicles.
Recently, astronomers detected a very strange white dwarf as it spins two times per second with a rotation period of approximately 29 seconds per revolution while sucking in materials from its nearby companion. As a matter of fact, it is thefastest spinning white dwarfthat has ever been found.
White dwarfs are the core remnants of collapsed sun-like stars. Their oxygen and carbon masses are normally very close to that of our sun although they are quite a bit smaller (approximately the size of Earth). It takes white dwarfs billions of years to emit all of the residual heat into space and it takes millions of years to become cold enough to appear invisible as a black dwarf.
Artist’s interpretation of a white dwarf sucking materials from a minor planet.
The binary system is called CTCV J2056-3014 or J2056 and it is located approximately 850 light-years from Earth. White dwarfs contain tons of charge particles and when they spin, the particles create magnetic fields that stretch outwards, ultimately affecting anything close to them and causing materials from other celestial bodies to be sucked onto the white dwarf’s surface.
If the magnetic fields are weak, the hydrogen that’s being sucked from its companion turns into a normal disk of matter that goes onto the white dwarf. If they are strong, the gas from its companion wraps around the white dwarf and hits the poles, causing a type of aurora borealis. Now, if the magnetic fields are in the middle (not too strong or weak), they are considered to be “intermediate polar” which means that they aren’t strong enough to totally disturb the accretion disk but are strong enough to suck in the gas of its companion. This makes the white dwarf flare and flicker in a manner that is highly unpredictable.
Since J2056 is an “intermediate polar” system, the white dwarf has trouble collecting the gas from its companion onto its surface. Its companion completes a full orbit around the white dwarf in just 1.76 hours. Another strange fact about J2056 is that it doesn’t release much X-ray radiation which is quite unusual for that type of system.
Artist’s interpretation of debris around a white dwarf.
As for the reason why the white dwarf spins so fast, it may be because of its magnetic fields sucking material onto its surface, therefore, making it spin at incredibly fast speeds. And since its magnetic fields aren’t strong enough to slow it down, it keeps spinning. The study can be read in full here.
It’s still unclear whether J2056 is just a very unusual white dwarf or if it in fact represents a new type of cataclysmic variable stars. Whatever it may be, it is very interesting and the information gathered from its unusual characteristics will surely help experts in studying how white dwarfs and their magnetic fields work.
As many of you will know, my views on the Roswell “UFO crash” of 1947 have changed significantly. Certainly, until the 1990s I was pretty sure that aliens – and their craft – had plummeted to the ground on the Foster Ranch, Lincoln County, New Mexico. By the 2000s, however, I was of the opinion that aliens did not crash in the summer of 1947. As I conclude in my 2017 book, The Roswell UFO Conspiracy, the Roswell legend was born out of a top secret program using people in balloon-based, high-altitude flights – several of which went drastically wrong. One of those failures was the Roswell affair. That said, even though I am no longer of the opinion that aliens died on that aforementioned ranch, I still take a deep interest in the claims of deceased ETs held by the U.S. military (or, maybe, by the intelligence community). Some of those stories are intriguing and thought-provoking.
Others are downright bizarre – which brings us to the following:
Leonard Stringfield was a UFO researcher who collected and disseminated reports of crashed UFOs and dead aliens for decades. What was perhaps the most bizarre account related to Stringfield concerned an allegedly live alien on the loose at the Ohio-based National Museum of the United States Air Force (s it is called now) that had supposedly escaped from its confines within the bowels of Wright-Patterson! It was a Sunday in 1965 when “R.M.” and his wife decided to pay a visit to the museum. With his wife engrossed in examining a German V-2 rocket, R.M. wandered off and found himself lost and heading down a corridor with a double door marked OFF LIMITS. Going through the door, he suddenly found himself confronted by “a being so incredible looking that all he can remember in his numb state was saying ‘Hi,’ to which he got no response.” The creature was small, and its eyes were large under a heavy brow; there was no nose and only a slit for a mouth. Standing in stark amazement, R.M. could only stare in awe as the creature shuffled towards him and pointed its elongated fingers into his face. At that point, alarms began to scream, lights flashed and R.M. made a hasty retreat. Military police were everywhere, ushering people to the exits.
“The cause for the emergency evacuation [R.M] opined, was without question the creature who probably had escaped from its confinement,” said Stringfield. Intriguingly, according to a retired Air Force colonel known to R.M., at the time two live alien creatures were reportedly held at Wright Patterson – American scientists having developed an “incubative [sic] atmosphere” to sustain them. As Stringfield stated: “Live aliens! Loose in the Air Force Museum? Fantastic, of course, but the Wright-Patterson complex is vast and so are its underground facilities. It is conceivable, if truly live aliens exist, that one may have slipped by the guards into the passageways and surfaced in an upper chamber of the museum.” Stringfield, however, was not alone in collecting such incredible tales. Victor Marchetti, for example, a former executive assistant to the Deputy Director and Special Assistant to the Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), recalls that during his tenure with the Agency, UFOs came under the category of “very sensitive activities.” More significantly, Marchetti states that he heard from “high levels” within the CIA that the bodies of an undisclosed number of “little gray men” and their crashed UFO were stored at the Foreign Technology Division (FTD) of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Of course, this is not the only occasion that the involvement of the FTD in the crashed UFO controversy has surfaced. In 1993, commenting on data concerning crashed UFOs and dead alien bodies acquired from “half a dozen former and current intelligence sources,” Far Out magazine stated, “An extensive but little-known complex of underground bunkers, rooms, vaults and tunnels [at Wright-Patterson] did conceal such secrets up through the early 1970s, when following the close of U.S.A.F. Project Blue Book, everything was moved to a ‘consolidated location’ elsewhere. According to these same sources, nothing ‘alien’ now remains at Wright-Pat except perhaps for some ‘Special Control Channel’ documentation and a few left-over scraps of wreckage material retained by the old Foreign Technology Division (FTD), which is now known as Foreign Aerospace Science and Technology Center (FASTC).”
There are numerous sources who claim to have seen dead aliens – and/or know where they are stored. On the other hand, I have a large number of informants who are sure that Roswell involved human guinea-pigs and not aliens. Clearly, one is a clever cover-story for the other. You may be persuaded by the alien angle. Me? I’ll stay with the “secret experiments” angle. Unless, that is, 100 percent verifiable evidence surfaces to the contrary. I’m not holding my breath though.
The oldest artwork ever found in Britain was discovered on the Channel Island of Jersey (specifically at Les Varines in southeast Jersey) between 2014 and 2018. The artwork that dates back at least 15,000 years appear to show a scene from the Ice Age with mammoths in now-drowned lands that could have been Doggerland which was once a land bridge that connected Britain to Europe before rising waters from the North Sea submerged it around 8,000 years ago.
The images were drawn on ten fragments of plaquettes (flat stone) and seem to depict mammoths in addition to some abstract patterns that were etched on top on each other. The abstract patterns were made with straight and curved lines while the other drawings seemed to show the body of what could be an ox or bison with mammoth tusks on top of it. An additional overlaid portrait seemed to depict a human face as it had several circular lines. The drawings, which were engraved by using ancient stone tools, were more than likely created by the same person in a very short amount of time. (Pictures can be seen here.)
The drawings engraved on the stone plaquettes from the ancient site on the Channel Island of Jersey are thought to be about 15,000 years old, making them the oldest artworks found in Britain.
Some of the ancient drawings are overlaid on each other. The engravings on this stone fragment are thought to show a bovid animal like an ox or bison; the outline of a mammoth; and circular scratches that could portray a human face.
(Image credit: Silvia Bello/Natural History Museum London)
Archaeological project at Les Varines in 2013.
It was actually because of a local farmer that the drawings were even found. Ed Blinkhorn, who is a geoarchaeologist from University College London and was the director of the excavations, stated that when a farmer was ploughing the fields, he found fragments of flint and since it isn’t local to the area, it must have been brought in from another location.
“We traced this flow of material to its source — a largely intact saddle of land between an ancient sea stack [a coastal rock formation] and a buried granite cliff,” he explained to Live Science. At that point, excavations began and they found several pits, big granite slabs, numerous hearths that were used for fires, and ochre.
As for the artwork, three of them were discovered underneath a granite slab while the rest of them were located close to one of the hearths. In a statement, Chantal Conneller, who is an archaeologist at Newcastle University in England and a co-author of the study, said, “These engraved stone fragments provide exciting and rare evidence of artistic expression at what was the farthest edge of the Magdalenian world.”
Previously found engraved plaquettes that were unearthed in Portugal, Spain, France, southern part of Germany, and Belgium, were connected to the Magdalenians who were hunter-gatherers that thrived between 23,000 and 14,000 years ago.
Another picture of an archaeological project at Les Varines in 2013.
Since the island of Jersey is only 9 miles in width, the large animals that may have been depicted in the artwork would have lived in the areas that are now submerged in water. In fact, numerous artifacts from the Stone Age as well as human remains have been uncovered beneath the waters of Dogger Bank. It is possible, however, that the Magdalenian people did stay at the site at Les Varines on a temporary basis even though the intentional artwork suggests they may have stayed longer.
Connoller explained this by stating, “The engraved stones are firmly domestic art.” “The people at Les Varines are likely to have been pioneer colonizers of the region, and creating engraved objects at new settlements may have been a way of creating symbolic relationships with new places.” Whether they stayed there for a short amount of time or on a more permanent basis, the artwork is very important and symbolic nevertheless.
UFO Crahses Into Lake Erie, New York 8-17-2020, MUFON, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Crahses Into Lake Erie, New York 8-17-2020, MUFON, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Aug 17, 2020 Location of sighting: Fredonia, New York, USA Source: MUFON #111180 This video just came into MUFON today. A dark thick disk was recorded falling from a cloud...making a thin vapor trail. I made some close ups and slowed down the video 5x because this UFO was really in a hurry to get to the entrance of an underground base. I think this UFO was falling out over Lake Erie, then went to the lake floor where it found an entrance to an underground base. Remarkable footage and for it to be this big...I would say its the size of a city bus. Absolute proof of aliens live below New York. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan Eyewitness states:
I was filming the lighting in the distance and caught a dark object appear out of nowhere and then it disappeared out of frame. At first I thought it was a bird, but it has a trail and is moving very quickly. Also seems large for the percieved distance. It appears at 0:03. Coordinates video was taken from 42.386, -79.373. Facing North East level with horizon.
I found a face in a gigapan photo. Its not human-like at all, but has a very old, strong looking face. Faces were important to this old martian species. I find a lot of faces, each shows a unique person and features allowing us to better understand their values of beauty, respect, admiration. But most importantly, it lets us know what this species of intelligent alien once looked like.
Scott C. Waring
Below I colored the face to make it easier to see what I see. Crown is yellow, hair is green and face pink eye blue.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Declassified Russian Hydrogen Bomb Video Has UFO And Alien Figure, Oct 30, 1961, UFO Sighting News.
Declassified Russian Hydrogen Bomb Video Has UFO And Alien Figure, Oct 30, 1961, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Oct 30, 1961, but released today. Location of sighting: Russia I was watching the recently declassified Russian video of the testing of the Ivan RDS-220 hydrogen bomb when I noticed two mysterious moments in it. First, I noticed that at 27:36 into the video...we see two pilots in the cockpit of a bomber and on the dashboard in the center of the window...is an alien grey bust. Perhaps this is some aircraft instrument that accidentally used a head, neck and shoulder of an alien grey...but who knows? Second at 40:20 on the far right, I noticed that the cameraman on the plane was watching the cloud forming after the explosion, then...he wandered off pointing the camera off the the right...at a mysterious anomaly. This object looks a lot like a large UFO disk seen from the side and tilted. Obviously the cameraman suspected it may be something too. Its a well known fact that aliens have taken a huge interest in American military which has been recored on documents over many decades of mysterious sightings over bases and even sightings of alien greys walking around the fences of the bases and UFOs deactivating US nuclear missiles. So it only goes to say that is logical that aliens would be equally interested in Russian military and weapons since US and Russia are equally powerful. You can also bet they have similar interests and activities with the Chinese military. So the real question is...when are aliens going to stop playing these games with humanity and reveal themselves? That is what the world really wants to know. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Above is original screenshot and below is focused with added contrast.
Andrew Pollard had travelled with his young son from Maltby to Doncaster to watch aeroplanes coming down to land, taking photos and videoing them as they flew low over their heads.
After watching the jets in a fun evening, they went home and thought nothing of the photos and footage until he was about to delete the film, which he claimed he accidentally recorded in slow motion.
He noticed a mysterious object streaking across the screen. Andrew said he must have recorded it at the wrong speed, and just before he deleted it, he saw what seemed like a rod flying across. He found it really strange. When someone freeze-framed the footage, it looked like a disc, Andrew said.
He reportedly reported it to the airport and that they were quite interested in it. Andrew claimed to have a vast knowledge about this kind of thing but thought it could be a UFO because it was really unusual.
Andrew has used audio recordings as part of ghost investigation groups around Yorkshire, investigating the unexplained phenomenon, but said he wasn’t very good with video recordings.
He thought the UFO was too fast to be a drone and did not believe it was a bird either.
The mysterious object appears in his clip around three seconds of the video recording. It appears on the right-hand side of the screen and moves quickly to the left-hand side in what looks to be a straight line. By the 6 seconds mark, it vanishes from the frame.
Andrew believes he wouldn’t have noticed it if he recorded it at full speed.
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Thirty years ago, thousands of Belgian citizens reported mysterious platforms flying silently over rooftops. The Royal Belgian Air Force got involved and cooperated fully with civilian investigators. To this day, however, the origins of these craft remain unknown.
It’s hard to convey the excitement caused by the Belgian UFO wave if you were not following UFO news back in 1989 and the early 1990s. There was no shortage of UFO reports back then, and interest in the phenomenon was at a high. The sightings and photos from Gulf Breeze, Florida, dominated the American scene, wild UFO reports and stories coming out of the old Soviet Union received huge international media attention, and the Mexican video wave took off in 1991. Yet the Belgian wave seemed to top all of these stories for awhile. The reports out of this small country, headquarters of both the European Commission and NATO, received unprecedented coverage, making even the front page of the Wall Street Journal on October 10, 1990, with a story entitled, “Belgium Scientists Seriously Pursue A Triangular UFO.”
The classic triangular-shaped UFO described by hundreds of eyewitnesses during the Belgium wave: sketch by witness used to create reconstruction of the object seen at the top of story.
Credit: SOBEPS
There were many reasons for the interest generated by the Belgian wave. One was the quality of the reports themselves, the bulk of which were registered in the French-speaking region of Wallonia. There were no landings or humanoid sightings but lots of detailed multiple-witness sightings of flying platforms moving slowly and silently above rooftops. Shapes varied, but the predominant form was triangular or delta-shaped crafts. Some of the descriptions were so precise that traditional explanations of misidentified natural phenomena or conventional aircraft were ruled out. Instead, stealth fighters and other U.S. secret military aircraft became the favorite explanations suggested by skeptics, but these were quickly ruled out by the Royal Belgian Air Force (RBAF). Another reason for the wave’s importance was that it was carefully investigated and documented by a local UFO organization called SOBEPS (Belgian society for the study of space phenomena).
SOBEPS was formed in 1971 by Lucien Clerebaut, Michel Bougard, and others, and built a small but highly dedicated cadre of field investigators. By the end of the wave in 1993, SOBEPS had collected over two thousand eyewitness reports comprising twenty thousand pages, four hundred hours of audio tapes, and six hundred full inquiries. Five hundred and forty cases remained unexplained. SOBEPS also had the assistance of top-notch scientists, including Léon Brenig, a nonlinear dynamics theorist at the Free University in Brussels, and Professor Auguste Meessen, a physicist from Catholic University at Louvain. Regarding his work with SOBEPS, Dr. Brenig has said, “here is an opportunity where we can apply the scientific method.” Brenig himself became a witness of the so-called Belgian triangle while driving in the Ardennes on March 18, 1990. The whole dossier was eventually published by SOPEPS in two massive volumes, five hundred pages each, entitled Vague d’OVNI sur la Belgique (UFO Wave ver Belgium), published in 1991 and 1994 respectively. Due to financial difficulties, SOBEPS dissolved on December 31, 2007, but some of its members formed a new, smaller organization called COBEPS (Belgian committee for the study of space phenomena) to preserve the archives and work done for thirty-six years.
The two volumes published by SOBEPS entitled, “UFO Wave Over Belgium.” Credit: SOBEPS
A final and key element in the credibility of the Belgian UFO wave was the participation and validation by the RBAF, which showed an unusual degree of openness. As the Belgian wave gained steam, the Belgian Ministry of Defence was deluged with queries from the public and the media. The task fell upon the chief of operations of the air force, Col. Wilfried De Brouwer, who was later promoted to major general and deputy chief of the RBAF. Now retired from the service, Gen. De Brouwer has continued to speak about the wave. He was one of the many international officials who spoke at the famous event at the National Press Club (NPC) in Washington, DC, in November 2007, organized by filmmaker James Fox and journalist Leslie Kean. “The Belgian UFO wave was exceptional and the air force could not identify the nature, origin and intentions of the reported phenomena,” said De Brouwer at the NPC. He also gave a detailed presentation on the wave at the MUFON International UFO Symposium in San Jose, California, in July 2008, and was one of five generals to write an essay in Leslie Kean’s new book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record.
Although the RBAF scrambled jets on three occasions during the wave, Gen. De Brouwer has explained on various occasions that they didn’t have the manpower or resources to mount a full-fledged investigation of their own, so instead they took the unusual route of cooperating fully with SOBEPS. The radar data was turned to Prof. Meessen for analysis, and Gen. De Brouwer agreed to write the postface for SOBEPS’s first volume when he was still in the service. “I must acknowledge that I somewhat hesitated when SOBEPS asked me to contribute my share to this book,” he wrote. “Indeed, I am not a UFO specialist and, moreover, it is quite delicate for somebody who occupies an official function to put on paper his personal ideas on such a disputed issue. However, I estimate that I would not have been honest towards the SOBEPS if I had refused. The air force always played a fair game on this subject and I regard this postface as a complementary element to the exceptional file written by the people of SOBEPS.”
THE EUPEN INCIDENT
Although some sightings were reported in October 1989, the first important incident of the Belgian wave took place a month later on November 29 around the small town of Eupen, which is in a region of Belgium near the German border. This initial case put the so-called “Belgian triangle” on the map and led to the start of the RBAF’s involvement. There were both daytime and nighttime sightings, although the latter were lengthier and more detailed. Gen. De Brouwer explained in his essay for Leslie Kean’s book, “a total of seventy reported sightings made on November 29 were fully investigated and none of these sightings could be explained by conventional technology. The team of investigators and I estimate that approximately fifteen hundred people must have seen the phenomenon at more than seventy different locations from different angles during this afternoon and evening.” There were a total of thirteen gendarmes (policemen) who saw the UFO from eight different locations around Eupen. Prof. Meessen summarized the case in SOBEPS’s book:
On November 29, 1989, a large craft with triangular shape flew over the town of Eupen. The gendarmes von Montigny and Nicol found it near the road linking Aix-la-Chapelle and Eupen. It was stationary in the air, above a field which it illuminated with three powerful beams. The beams emanated from large circular surfaces near the triangle’s corners. In the center of the dark and flat understructure there was some kind of “red gyrating beacon.” The object did not make any noise. When it began to move, the gendarmes headed towards a small road in the area over which they expected the object to fly. Instead, it made a half-turn and continued slowly in the direction of Eupen, following the road at low altitude. It was seen by different witnesses as it flew above houses and near City Hall.
In his 2008 MUFON lecture, Gen. De Brouwer provided additional details on this sighting: “The UAP [Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon] emitted repeatedly and simultaneously two red light beams with a red light ball at the spearhead of the beam. Subsequently, the red balls returned to the craft.” There was also apparently a second triangular craft, which made “a forward tilting maneuver, exposing the upper side of the fuselage,” continued De Brouwer. “They [gendarmes] saw a dome with rectangular windows, lighted up at the inside. It then disappeared to the North.” Two more gendarmes saw one of the craft from a monastery nearby; “one is currently the head of the police in that area, he was scared like hell,” added De Brouwer.
Statistical chart of Belgian sightings between October 1989 and September 1990, showing peaks in the November-December period and a second one in April.
Credit: SOBEPS
The Eupen incident was followed by many other UFO sightings, including several reported on December 11, 1989. One of the witnesses that evening was a personal acquaintance of Gen. De Brouwer, Col. André Amond, a civil engineer in the Belgian Army. Col. Armond worked next door to Gen. De Brouwer and wrote a detailed report for the Ministry of Defence. Col. Armond was driving with his wife around 6:45 p.m., when they noticed a strange object with flashing red lights. They stopped the car and got out to see it better. “Suddenly, they saw a giant spotlight, about twice the size of the full moon, which approached them to an estimated distance of 100 meters,” wrote De Brouwer, adding that “the colonel’s wife was frightened and asked to leave.” In his report to the Ministry, Armond “ascertained that this craft was not a hologram, helicopter, military aircraft, balloon, motorized Ultra Light, or any other known aerial vehicle.”
Various shapes were reported throughout the wave, including round, rectangular, and cigar-shaped, but the majority were triangular objects. Gen. De Brouwer notes that the differences may also be due to the eyewitnesses’ viewing angles. Researcher Marc Valckenaers listed some of the characteristics of the UFOs in SOBEPS’s second volume about the wave, including: irregular displacement (zig-zag, instantaneous change of trajectory, etc.), displacement following the contours of the terrain; varying speeds of displacement (including very slow motion), stationary flight (hovering), overflight of urban and industrial centers, and sound effects (faint humming to total silence).
Reconstruction of the incredible rectangular flying platform seen by two factory workers on April 22, 1990, described as “an aircraft carrier turned upside down.”
Credit: SOBEPS
One of the strangest reports came from two factory workers from the town of Basècles, southwest of Brussels, who saw a huge trapezoid flying platform (330 x 200 feet) just before midnight on April 22, 1990. The object moved slowly and silently, covering the entire factory courtyard. In the SOBEPS report, the factory workers described the UFO as “an aircraft carrier turned upside down.” Despite the science-fiction quality of this sighting, an almost identical report was filed nearly a year later, on March 15, 1991, by an electronic engineer in Auderghem, near Brussels, who woke up in the middle of the night when he “heard a barely audible, high-frequency whistling tone. He looked out the window and saw a large rectangular craft at very low altitude with irregular structures on the bottom,” wrote Gen. De Brouwer.
One characteristic of the Belgian wave was how close the objects were flying above the rooftops, as shown with this flying rectangular platform.
Credit: SOBEPS
Another view of the rectangular flying platform above the rooftop and sketch showing where the witness saw it.
Credit: SOBEPS
THE F-16 SCRAMBLE EPISODE
If the Eupen multiple-witness sightings of November 1989 triggered the Belgian wave, the jet fighter scramble incident during the night of March 30, 1990 marked the peak of public interest and global media coverage. The Belgian Air Force had scrambled jets on two prior occasions without positive results. The December 5, 1989 scramble was unsuccessful; when the jet reached the sky, the UFO was gone. Additionally, the December 16, 1989 case turned out to be a false alarm; the authorities quickly determined that it was a laser projection reflected by a cloud layer. Following these two fiascos, the RBAF implemented a new policy that jets would be scrambled only when a sighting was detected on radar and was visually confirmed on the ground by the police.
The SOBEPS team visiting the Royal Belgian Air Force radar facility at Glons: in the center group, left, the Society’s chairman Lucien Clerebaut and right, physicist Prof. Auguste Meessen, next to military officer.
Credit: SOBEPS
As put in a preliminary report prepared by Major P. Lambrechts of the RBAF, entitled “Report Concerning the Observation of UFOs During the Night of March 30 to 31, 1990,” the incident began at 10:50 p.m. on March 30 when the gendarmerie telephoned the radar “master controller at Glons” to report “three unusual lights forming an equilateral triangle.” More gendarmes confirmed the lights. When the NATO facility at Semmerzake detected an unknown target at 11:49 p.m., a decision to scramble two F-16 fighters was made. The jets took off at 12:05 a.m. from Beauvechain, the nearest air base, and flew for just over an hour. According to Major Lambrechts’s report:
The aircraft had brief radar contacts on several occasions, [but the pilots]…at no time established visual contact with the UFOs…each time the pilots were able to secure a lock on one of the targets for a few seconds, there resulted a drastic change in the behavior of the detected targets…[During the first lock-on at 12:13 a.m.] their speed changed in a minimum of time from 150 to 970 knots [170 to 1,100 mph] and from 9,000 to 5,000 feet, returning then to 11,000 feet in order to change again to close to ground level.
When Col. De Brouwer showed the computerized radar images of the UFO tracked by the F-16 onboard radar system in a heavily attended press conference at the Ministry of Defence on July 11, 1990, the international media went into a frenzy. Transcripts of the radio communications between ace fighter pilots, Capt. Yves Meelbergs, Lt. Rudy Verrijt, and the Glons Control Reporting Center near Liege, were also released and provide some dramatic moments. The transcripts paint a picture of the jets chasing ghost radar echoes that appear and disappear and then reappear again, but at no time are the pilots able to establish visual contact with the supposed objects. Belgium’s Electronic War Center (EWC) eventually undertook a detailed technical analysis of the F-16 computerized radar tapes, completed by Col. Salmon and physicist M. Gilmard in 1992, and later reviewed by Prof. Meessen.
An F-16 jet fighter of the Royal Belgian Air Force like the ones scrambled on the night of March 30-31, 1990.
Credit: Bernard Thouanel
Although some aspects of this case still remain unexplained, Meessen and SOBEPS accepted the Gilmard-Salmon hypothesis that most of the radar contacts were really echoes caused by a rare meteorological phenomenon. This became evident in four lock-ons, explained Meessen, “where the object descended to the ground with calculations showing negative altitude…. It was evidently impossible that an object could penetrate the ground, but it was possible that the ground could act as a mirror.” Meessen explained how the high velocities measured by the Doppler radar of the F-16 fighters might result from interference effects. He pointed out, however, that there was another radar trace for which there is no explanation to date. As for the visual sightings of this event by the gendarmes and others, Meessen suggested that they could possibly have been caused by stars seen under conditions of “exceptional atmospheric refraction.”
One frame from the F-16 onboard radar system showing the UFO lock-on during the March 1990 scramble episode, shown by the RBAF at a famous press conference in July 1990.
Credit: RBAF/ Bernard Thouanel
In a 1995 telephone interview, Gen. De Brouwer summarized his reflections on this complex case: “We always look for possibilities which can cause errors in the radar systems. We can not exclude that there was electromagnetic interference, but of course we can not exclude the possibility that there were objects in the air. On at least one occasion there was a correlation between the radar contacts of one ground radar and one F-16 fighter. This weakens the theory that all radar contacts were caused by electromagnetic interference. If we add all the possibilities, the question is still open, so there is no final answer.” De Brouwer took a more detached view of the F-16 scramble episode, however, in his 2008 MUFON lecture and his 2010 essay included in Kean’s book: “The conclusion of the Air Force, therefore, was that the evidence was insufficient to prove that there were real crafts in the air on that occasion.”
THE PETIT-RECHAIN PHOTO
The famous color slide of the Belgian triangle photographed in Petit-Rechain in early April 1990.
Seldom has the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words become more true than in the case of the extraordinary photograph of a flying triangle taken in the small town of Petit-Rechain in April 1990. This color slide became the emblematic symbol of the Belgian UFO wave. It has been published and broadcast in television programs all over the world, and it appears on the cover of the two SOBEPS volumes on the Belgian wave. It’s also one of the most analyzed UFO photos in the history of ufology. During my trip to Brussels in 1995, I had the opportunity to talk at length with Patrick Ferryn, the investigator who researched the case initially and wrote the chapter about it in the SOBEPS book. Ferryn gave me copies of the photo and samples of computer enhancements made by Marc Acheroy, professor of electricity at the Royal Military School, where the image was analyzed by the Signal Treatment Center. The details of how the photo was taken are fairly simple and straightforward.
The photographer, P.M. (who wants privacy, but has fully cooperated with SOBEPS), was a twenty-year-old factory worker, who lived in the small community of Petit-Rechain, near Verviers. He was at home with his girlfriend on the night of either April 4 or 7, 1990 (he can’t pin down the exact date), when his girlfriend first noticed the object between 11:00 and 11:30 p.m. as she took the dog to the courtyard. According to P.M.’s statement to Ferryn, he was alerted by his girlfriend, went outside, and “saw the object practically stationary towards the southwest, at about a forty-five-degree elevation. It consisted of three white round lights on a barely perceptible triangular surface. In the center there was a blinking spot of the same color, or maybe a bit more reddish than the other lights.” P.M. grabbed his camera, a Praktica model BX20 with a 55-200 mm zoom and a “Cokin” 1A 52 mm skylight filter. He shot the last two frames of a roll of 36-200 ASA Kodak color slide film. The UFO then moved slowly towards Petit-Rechain, until it was hidden by the roofs in the village. The entire episode took about five minutes.
The roll of film was sent by mail to a development house offering a special discount, and when P.M. received the slides, he noticed only frame #35 had captured the UFO; frame #36 was entirely black. Ferryn estimated that “the photo was probably taken with a focal distance between 55 and 200 mm, and with exposition time ranging from 1 to 2 seconds.” P.M. showed the photo to his factory coworkers (all of whom were later interviewed by Ferryn), but otherwise didn’t do anything to analyze or commercialize the picture. One of his coworkers knew a local photo-journalist from Verviers, Guy Mossay, who immediately saw the image’s potential value. P.M. sold the photo rights to Mossay for a small fee. Mossay then proceeded to copyright it with SOFAM (Belgium’s multimedia society for visual arts authors).
Skeptics have naturally pointed to the possibility of a hoax with profit motive. However, if that is the case, why did P.M. sell the rights to Mossay for a minor fee? Moreover, hoaxers never supply original slides or negatives for scientific analysis, as was done by P.M. Having checked his background, interviewed acquaintances, and so on, Ferryn noted that “the account of the main witnesses was coherent.” Gen. De Brouwer spent quite a bit of time explaining the details of this case during his MUFON lecture, saying of the witness that, “this guy is genuine, he is a guy who would not fake at all, I can assure you of that.” More importantly, the Petit-Rechain photo has been subjected to more scientific analysis than practically any other UFO photo in history.
When the Petit-Rechain photo is overexposed, the triangular outline of the object appears clearly.
The list of experts and institutions that have analyzed this photo include Prof. Acheroy of Belgium’s Royal Military Academy; Prof. François Louange, an expert in photo interpretation of satellite images for the French space agency, CNES; Dr. Richard Haines, a retired senior NASA scientist and respected UFO researcher; Belgium’s Royal Institute of Artistic Patrimony; and André Marion, a nuclear physicist with France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), who conducted an analysis in 2002 with improved technology. The technical details of these analyses are too numerous for this article, but suffice it to say that evidence of photographic trickery has never been found. Furthermore, of several efforts to duplicate the photo using a dark cardboard triangular model with holes and light bulbs, only one made by members of the Astrophysics Institute at Liege University somewhat resembled the Petit-Rechain photo. But the luminosity of the spots in the replica was uniform, while those in the original exhibited different shapes and spectral effects. The most recent CNRS study by Dr. Marion confirmed the previous analysis and found, as put by Gen. De Brouwer, a “halo around the craft with patterned structure,” which could have been caused by the object’s “propulsion system” of “magnetoplasma dynamic.” Marion also stated that “it would be extremely difficult to fake such a photograph.”
In the end, it’s almost impossible to guarantee the authenticity of a UFO image. There will always be a difference of opinions, but the verdict in the Petit-Rechain case appears highly favorable. Triangular UFOs were seen throughout Belgium during the early 1990s. Dozens of fuzzy videos and grainy photos were taken, but they were generally not impressive. Petit-Rechain was the great exception.
Note: Since the writing of this article, the photo turned out to be an admitted hoax.
NO EVIDENCE OF SECRET AIRCRAFT
Due to the high credibility of most witnesses in the Belgian wave and their descriptions of a silent, triangular craft being so precise, trying to explain the wave in terms of hoaxes, misidentified natural phenomena, or conventional aircraft seemed fruitless. Therefore, a number of skeptics and aviation journalists focused on trying to prove the hypothesis of secret U.S. aircraft flying over Belgium. A series of candidates were proposed, from the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) to secret airships, from the F-117A stealth fighter to some other revolutionary U.S. secret military aircraft such as the alleged TR-3A Black Manta. First, you have to ponder why the U.S. would conduct tests of their most-secret aircraft in such a highly populated area like Wallonia, which is not only a U.S. ally, but also headquarters of the NATO alliance. Gen. De Brouwer put it bluntly in a 1991 interview with the French magazine, OVNI Présence: “Why would the Americans conduct tests here in Europe, without permission and with the risk of having an accident that could create a diplomatic incident on a global scale? This doesn’t involve only Belgium, but NATO, where its concept itself could be put in question. I don’t believe that the Americans could take such a risk, it’s evident.”
Major General (Ret.) Wilfried De Brouwer, who was the Royal Belgian Air Force point man for the UFO wave, during his trip to Washington, DC to participate at the National Press Club event in 2007.
Credit: Bernard Thouanel
Guy Coeme and Leo Delcroix, the two Belgian Ministers of Defence during the wave, denied emphatically the theory that the UFOs were actually U.S. aircraft and based their denial on official inquiries with the U.S. Embassy in Brussels. In a 1993 letter to French researcher Renaud Marhic, Minister Delcroix wrote: “Unfortunately, no explanation has been found to date. The nature and origin of the phenomenon remain unknown. One theory can, however, be definitely dismissed since the Belgian Armed Forces have been positively assured by American authorities that there has never been any sort of American aerial test flight.” A declassified 1990 document from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) entitled, “Belgium and the UFO Issue,” supports Delcroix’s position. After describing the basic events of the wave that had transpired up to that point, the unnamed U.S. official wrote at the very end of this memo: “The [U.S. Air Force (USAF)] did confirm to the [Belgian Air Force] and Belgian [Ministry of Defence] that no USAF stealth aircraft were operating in the Ardennes area during the periods in question. This was released to the Belgian press and received wide dissemination.”
Thirty years have now passed since the Belgian UFO wave, and no new significant evidence has been produced to prove that the sightings were caused by secret military aircraft. The reported cases remain unexplained. It seems certain that something massive and technologically advanced flew over Belgian territory during the 1989-93 period. Why and who was behind it are questions that remain to be answered. A suitable conclusion, for now, is to repeat what Gen. De Brouwer wrote at the end of his famous postface to the SOBEPS’s first volume: “The day will come undoubtedly when the phenomenon will be observed with technological means of detection and collection that won’t leave a single doubt about its origin. This should lift a part of the veil that has covered the mystery for a long time. A mystery that continues thus present. But it exists, it is real, and that in itself is an important conclusion.”
The author (left) with SOBEPS’ chairman Lucien Clerebaut at the Society’s headquarters in Brussels in 1995. The map in the background shows the locations of sightings in Belgium.
Credit: Antonio Huneeus
A version of this article originally appeared in Issue #5 (December/January 2011) of Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.
The universal speed limit, which we commonly call the speed of light, is fundamental to the way the universe works. But human imagination knows no real limits. In science fiction, you often hear about ‘wormholes’, which are objects that enable faster-than-light travel by instantaneously transferring passengers from one point in spacetime to another.
Although the General Theory of Relativity and the Standard Model of Physics can theoretically support the existence of wormholes within their frameworks, they forbid traversable wormholes.
But physicists at Princeton flexed some serious mathematical muscles and found a loophole. By exploiting quirks of quantum mechanics within a five-dimensional universe, the researchers claim that it may be possible to create a wormhole large enough for humans and their spacecraft to travel through it and instantly emerge somewhere else at the other side of the universe. Alas, such a thing likely cannot exist in nature and an artificial traversable wormhole would be impossible to create with today’s technology.
Plausible? Perhaps. Practical? Definitely not
A wormhole or a Lorentzian wormhole is a sort of theoretical ‘tunnel’ through space-time, often used as the preferred mode of interstellar travel in movies like Star Trek. The opening is a shortcut through intervening space to another location in the Universe. That seems to be in stark contrast to a black hole which is less of a tunnel and more of a meat grinder. However, some physicists claim that there are many characteristics which both black holes and wormholes share.
The existence of wormholes was first proposed by Karl Schwarzchild, whose solutions to Einstein’s field equations form the basis for the inference of black holes. Sometimes, blackholes or blackhole binary systems may form connections between different points in spacetime.
The problem is that these wormholes collapse almost immediately, which would block matter from crossing from one end to the other. All hope isn’t lost yet, though.
Juan Maldacena, the Carl P. Feinberg Professor of theoretical physics from the Institute of Advanced Study and Alexey Milekhin, a graduate student of astrophysics at Princeton University, wrote a new paper in which they discuss the conditions that may allow the existence of traversable wormholes.
In their paper, the two physicists outline some very exotic circumstances that may allow wormholes stable enough for humans to cross through. This includes the existence of negative energy, for instance.
In the theory of general relativity, we usually assume that the energy is greater than zero, at all times and everywhere in the universe. This has a very important consequence for gravity: Energy is linked to mass via the formula E=mc². So negative energy would consequently also imply negative mass. Positive masses attract each other, but with a negative mass, gravity could suddenly become a repulsive force.
Quantum theory, however, allows negative energy. According to quantum physics, it is possible to borrow energy from a vacuum at a certain location, like money from a bank. In their paper, the authors mention the Casimir Effect, in which quantum fields may produce negative energy while propagating along a closed circle.
“However, this effect is typically small because it is quantum. In our previous paper, we realized that this effect can become considerable for black holes with large magnetic charge. The new idea was to use special properties of charged massless fermions (particles like the electron but with zero mass). For a magnetically charged black hole these travel along the magnetic field lines (In a way similar to how the charged particles of the solar wind create the auroras near the polar regions of the Earth),” Maldacena and Milekhin explained to Universe Today.
These sort of wormholes would be allowed by the Standard Model of particle physics. However, they would be so tiny, not even a strand of human hair would have room to pass through. What’s more, they would only exist over equally tiny distances.
In order to support wormholes large and stable enough for humans to use, the physicists had to think outside the Standard Model box. The pair of researchers turned to the Randall-Sundrum II model, also known as the 5-dimensional warped geometry theory, which describes the universe in terms of five-dimensions.
This five-dimensional model of spacetime can enable scientists to describe physics that would normally be undetectable, allowing negative energy to exist.
The produced wormholes would look like medium-sized, charged black holes. They would be large enough for a spacecraft to travel through, however, the pilot would have to navigate very powerful tidal forces.
If the pilot could somehow navigate through this chaos, entering the wormhole would instantly propel the crew to another point in spacetime — but the instant factor is only true from the perspective of the traveler. From the perspective of an outside observer, the travel would take as much time as light would take to travel from point A to point B, which is consistent with the Theory of General Relativity.
However, it would be next to impossible for this to work. Such wormholes do not exist in nature and artificially creating them would involve engineering negative mass.
In other words, it’s unlikely that wormholes will ever become a practical means of traveling through space. Nevertheless, it’s always fascinating to hear about concepts once solely thought to be of the realm of fiction that may actually be plausible.
The paper was published in the pre-print serverarXiv.
I’m not saying that the bacteria you just killed after cleaning your counter for the umpteenth time today with antibacterial wipes is aliens … but a new study suggests it could be. Not only that, researchers have figured out how entire colonies of tiny alien beings could survive and even thrive on a three-year trip from Mars and beyond. In fact, these alien bacteria may have been our ancestors due to a strange new method of panspermia called massapanspermia. I’m not saying WE’RE aliens, but …
“The origin of life on Earth is the biggest mystery of human beings. Scientists can have totally different points of view on the matter. Some think that life is very rare and happened only once in the Universe, while others think that life can happen on every suitable planet. If panspermia is possible, life must exist much more often than we previously thought.”
A space rock or a spaceship?
Dr. Akihiko Yamagishi, a Professor at Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences, not only believes panspermia is possible, he’s spent years trying to prove how it works. He has been the lead investigator for the Tanpopo space mission which put microorganisms on the outside of the International Space Station to test whether they could survive. Three Deinococcus species known for their ability to live in extreme conditions on Earth — D. radiodurans, D. aerius and D. aetherius – were sent into space for varying lengths of time, then brought back for study. The results of this research have recently been published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology and summarized in a press release.
“After three years, the researchers found that all aggregates superior to 0.5 mm partially survived to space conditions. Observations suggest that while the bacteria at the surface of the aggregate died, it created a protective layer for the bacteria beneath ensuring the survival of the colony. Using the survival data at one, two, and three years of exposure, the researchers estimated that a pellet thicker than 0.5 mm would have survived between 15 and 45 years on the ISS. The design of the experiment allowed the researcher to extrapolate and predict that a colony of 1 mm of diameter could potentially survive up to 8 years in outer space conditions.”
In other words, the researchers found that D. radiodurans (listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the World’s Toughest Bacterium) needed a colony only 1 mm in diameter (.03 inches) and .5 mm thick (.015 inches) tucked in a crack on a space rock to survive up to 45 years in space. The D. radiodurans that may have made it to Earth on one such panspermic ride would have been protected by a shell of dead comrades. This aggregate mode of survival and transportation is known as the Borg Collective – just kidding, it’s known as massapanspermia, although even the study found some similarities.
“Comparison of the survival of different DNA repair-deficient mutants suggested that cell aggregates exposed in space for 3 years suffered DNA damage, which is most efficiently repaired by the uvrA gene and uvdE gene products, which are responsible for nucleotide excision repair and UV-damage excision repair. Collectively, these results support the possibility of microbial cell aggregates (pellets) as an ark for interplanetary transfer of microbes within several years.”
Mom?
Similarly to the Borg, the microorganisms repaired their own DNA damage, the arks were more like pellets (two Borg ships were spheres), the aggregate resembles the Collective and the conclusion even used the word “Collectively”!
Does all of this “collectively” prove panspermia and the theory that micro-ancestors came to Earth from another planet? Not yet … but it moves the needle slightly closer to it. Next step is to see if D. radiodurans could survive a crash landing on a meteor.
For the first time in history, dozens of exoplanets were discovered not by humans but by artificial intelligence. Science has certainly come a long way since the first exoplanet was discovered back in the 1990s.
In 1992, Aleksander Wolszczan found the first three planets outside of our solar system. They were orbiting a pulsar named PSR B1257+12 (a pulsar is a fast rotating neutron star which is the remnants of a massive star after it went supernova). But another huge discovery was just a few short years later when, in 1995, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz found 51 Pegasi b and it was the first exoplanet that was detected orbiting a sun-like star.
And now, nearly thirty years later, AI is finding exoplanets. The fifty newly discovered exoplanets were found by using a new machine-learning algorithm that scientists from the University of Warwick created. It studied data from NASA’s telescopes and was able to tell the difference between real planets and fakes ones by analyzing thousands of potential exoplanet candidates. It was able to detect the exoplanets by comparing them to a database of those that have been confirmed as well as the ones that have been categorized as false positives.
The newly discovered exoplanets ranged in size from being smaller than Earth to as big as Neptune (the fourth largest planet in our solar system and approximately four times larger than our planet). While some of the newfound exoplanets have extremely short orbits that last just one day, others can last up to 200 days.
Dr. David Armstrong, who is from the University of Warwick Department of Physics, explained the significance of this project, “The algorithm we have developed lets us take 50 candidates across the threshold for planet validation, upgrading them to real planets.” “We hope to apply this technique to large samples of candidates from current and future missions like TESS and PLATO.”
The size of Neptune compared to Earth.
While previous machines have been used to rank exoplanet candidates, this is the first time ever that AI has actually identified them as real planets. “Rather than saying which candidates are more likely to be planets, we can now say what the precise statistical likelihood is,” Armstrong said, adding, “Where there is less than a one percent chance of a candidate being a false positive, it is considered a validated planet.”
This is another great way for future confirmation of potentially a lot more exoplanets out in space as Armstrong noted, “Almost 30 percent of the known planets to date have been validated using just one method, and that’s not ideal.” “You can also incorporate new discoveries to progressively improve it. A survey like TESS is predicted to have tens of thousands of planetary candidates and it is ideal to be able to analyze them all consistently.”
Another biblical location gets an archeological certification as a site on the Sea of Galilea excavated 32 years ago has finally been confirmed to be the location of the once famous and later cursed city of Bethsaida. Does this end the curse or merely reclassify it as a veiled threat?
“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the miracles done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you! And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be thrown down to Hades! For if the miracles done among you had been done in Sodom, it would have continued to this day. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for the region of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you!” (Matthew 11:20–24)
Things don’t look good for Bethsaida – the home of disciples Philip, Andrew and Peter — in this passage from the book of Matthew, which is duplicated in the book of Luke. In fact, despite the tales of Bethsaida hosting the biblical miracles of the feeding of 5,000 people and a blind man seeing, Bethsaida appeared to have disappeared from maps and records around the 3rd century CE. There was some evidence that el-Araj might be its current location, but in 1988 Professor Rami Arav of the University of Nebraska at Omaha began pushing for e-Tell as the true location of the lost and cursed Bethsaida. Located close to one another, Arav felt that el-Araj was more like a Roman army camp serving Bethsaida than the actual location.
In new revelations reported by Haaretz, Arav talks about discoveries in e-Tell of a city gate, granaries and a stele depicting the moon god, indicating that e-Tell was probably the capital of the Iron Age (10th century BCE) kingdom of Geshur, mentioned in the early books of the Hebrew Bible well before the coming of Philip, Andrew, Peter and Jesus. At that time, Arav says e-Tell was named Zer, which he claims was eventually morphed into Bethsaida.
What about the curse on Bethsaida?
Interpretations of the story say that Jesus was upset with residents of Bethsaida for not believing in him, while Bethsaida’s people were embarrassed because Jesus led the blind man out of the city before curing him – a cure that took two applications of spittle, indicating how bad things were in Bethsaida. Telling the man not to go back to Bethsaida was both an embarrassment to the city and a warning of what was to come. The man probably missed it because what is often said to be the end result of the curse was a massive earthquake in 363 C.E. followed by another two years later that destroyed Bethsaida and covered the area in silt.
The debate on the location of Bethsaida has gone on for nearly 2,000 years, and Arav’s confident pinpointing it at e-Tell will not end it. However it’s a good enough case that modern residents might do well to think twice before ignoring a blind man.
De mooiste verhalen over onbekende vliegende objecten in de lucht zijn die van getuigen, mensen die dingen met eigen ogen hebben gezien.
Zoals enkele lezers uit België die geen idee hadden dat ze in Oelan Bator een vreemde nacht zouden meemaken toen ze die avond gingen slapen.
Enkele dagen geleden schreven wij een artikel over de vreemde cirkelvormige objecten die weer opnieuw zijn waargenomen in de Amerikaanse staat Minnesota, nadat de eerste meldingen daarover in 2018 waren begonnen.
Het is een zeer typerend verschijnsel dat ook op andere plaatsen is waargenomen en als reacties op dat artikel ontvingen wij het volgende verhaal van een lezer uit België (dank!).
In 1997 zijn wij aan een non-stop wereldreis begonnen per fiets, die we twaalf jaar hebben volgehouden. Wij zijn erg realistisch ingesteld en eerder sceptici dan believers maar dit fenomeen heeft ons perplex doen staan en wij hebben het twaalf jaar verzwegen tot we na de reis in België enkele boeken schreven over ons avontuur en het verhaal over de UFO in het boek opnamen.
Wij hebben alles op internet afgeschuimd en de ufo-site van de Nasa doorzocht maar nergens gelijkaardige beelden ontdekt. De beelden die jullie tonen gelijken er het best op. Ik heb wel contact gehad met een luchtvaart generaal die onderzoek deed naar UFO's en ons verhaal als zeer geloofwaardig bestempelde, overeenkomend met zijn bevindingen maar ons aanraadde nooit gewag te maken van de benaming UFO’s anders zou de media ons gek verklaren.
Wij verbleven in een guesthouse, in een ger, op de toppen van de heuvels rond Ulan Bator.
Hier gaat ons verhaal gekopiëerd uit ons reisboek.
Tot op de dag van vandaag worden er nog steeds onbekende vliegende objecten waargenomen en nog steeds zijn de meningen verdeeld over of we nu te maken met buitenaardse objecten, of geavanceerde maar geheime toestellen van menselijke makelij (of een combinatie).
Een bijkomende complicatie waar wij tegenwoordig mee te maken hebben is dat er zo goed als geen enkel stukje beeldmateriaal meer te vertrouwen is, omdat vervalsers er een fulltime bezigheid van hebben gemaakt om het internet te vervuilen met nep ufovideo's.
Soms echter duikt er een opname op die echt zou kunnen zijn, maar aangezien niemand daar enige garantie op kan geven, zou ook die zomaar toch weer nep kunnen zijn.
Het is een opname gemaakt door een webcam in Groot-Brittannië die is gesitueerd in St. Ives Bay, het uiterste puntje van Cornwall.
Op 7 augustus zat de maker van onderstaande video te kijken naar een webcam in St. Ives toen hij daar een vreemd licht ontdekte. Het hing net boven het wateroppervlak en hij gebruikt een software programma (een zogenaamde screenrecorder) om het beeld vast te leggen vanaf het scherm van de desktop computer die hij gebruikte.
Op een gegeven moment beweegt het licht naar links waar het vervolgens ongeveer in het midden van het scherm blijft hangen.
Tegen het einde van de video zie je het licht opeens recht omhoog de lucht in verdwijnen.
De volgende anderhalf minuut durende video laat zien wat er gebeurde:
De volgende video geeft hetzelfde beeld, maar dan meer ingezoomd op het object:
De vraag zoals altijd is ook in dit geval: is hier sprake van een echte opname of is ook dit weer één van de vele gemanipuleerde beelden.
Commentaren onder de video zijn over het algemeen van mening dat we hier wel met een echte opname te maken hebben, al zeggen sommigen dat het wel erg toevallig is dat de ufo precies midden in het scherm weet te stoppen alvorens omhoog te schieten.
Alle bekende ufokanalen vragen echter of ze de beelden mogen gebruiken en wat ook vaak een indicator is, is wie degene s die de beelden online heeft gezet. Wanneer je met professionele neppers te maken hebt, zie je op hun kanaal vaak meerdere opnames van ufo’s, maar in dit geval zijn bovenstaande twee video’s de enige twee op het kanaal. Het zou dan ook voor degene in kwestie weinig zin hebben om daar een nepvideo op te plaatsen.
Vooralsnog gaan we ervan uit dat die beelden echt zijn, en dan is het natuurlijk wel een hele mooie opname uit een streek waar regelmatig vreemde onbekende vliegende objecten worden waargenomen.
Project 'Looking Glass' - Time Travel Technology from a Crashed UFO
Project 'Looking Glass' - Time Travel Technology from a Crashed UFO
Project ‘Looking Glass’ – Time Travel Technology from a Crashed UFO
COAST TO COAST AM – Dr. Michael Salla is known for his work exposing policies on ET life. He spoke about a secret project called “Looking Glass” that allegedly worked with time travel technology taken from a crashed UFO or at the very least, back-engineered from one.
In a landmark study, scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have mapped the immense envelope of gas, called a halo, surrounding the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest large galactic neighbor. Scientists were surprised to find that this tenuous, nearly invisible halo of diffuse plasma extends 1.3 million light-years from the galaxy—about halfway to our Milky Way—and as far as 2 million light-years in some directions. This means that Andromeda’s halo is already bumping into the halo of our own galaxy.
This illustration depicts the gaseous halo of the Andromeda galaxy if it could be seen with the naked eye. At a distance of 2.5 million light-years, the majestic spiral Andromeda galaxy is so close to us that it appears as a cigar-shaped smudge of light high in the autumn sky. If its gaseous halo could be seen with the naked eye, it would be about three times the width of the Big Dipper—easily the biggest feature on the nighttime sky.
Credits: NASA, ESA, J. DePasquale and E. Wheatley (STScI), and Z. Levay (background image)
They also found that the halo has a layered structure, with two main nested and distinct shells of gas. This is the most comprehensive study of a halo surrounding a galaxy.
“Understanding the huge halos of gas surrounding galaxies is immensely important,” explained co-investigator Samantha Berek of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. “This reservoir of gas contains fuel for future star formation within the galaxy, as well as outflows from events such as supernovae. It’s full of clues regarding the past and future evolution of the galaxy, and we’re finally able to study it in great detail in our closest galactic neighbor.”
“We find the inner shell that extends to about a half million light-years is far more complex and dynamic,” explained study leader Nicolas Lehner of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. “The outer shell is smoother and hotter. This difference is a likely result from the impact of supernova activity in the galaxy’s disk more directly affecting the inner halo.”
A signature of this activity is the team’s discovery of a large amount of heavy elements in the gaseous halo of Andromeda. Heavier elements are cooked up in the interiors of stars and then ejected into space—sometimes violently as a star dies. The halo is then contaminated with this material from stellar explosions.
The Andromeda galaxy, also known as M31, is a majestic spiral of perhaps as many as 1 trillion stars and comparable in size to our Milky Way. At a distance of 2.5 million light-years, it is so close to us that the galaxy appears as a cigar-shaped smudge of light high in the autumn sky. If its gaseous halo could be viewed with the naked eye, it would be about three times the width of the Big Dipper. This would easily be the biggest feature on the nighttime sky.
Through a program called Project AMIGA (Absorption Map of Ionized Gas in Andromeda), the study examined the light from 43 quasars—the very distant, brilliant cores of active galaxies powered by black holes—located far beyond Andromeda. The quasars are scattered behind the halo, allowing scientists to probe multiple regions. Looking through the halo at the quasars’ light, the team observed how this light is absorbed by the Andromeda halo and how that absorption changes in different regions. The immense Andromeda halo is made of very rarified and ionized gas that doesn’t emit radiation that is easily detectable. Therefore, tracing the absorption of light coming from a background source is a better way to probe this material.
This illustration shows the location of the 43 quasars scientists used to probe Andromeda’s gaseous halo. These quasars—the very distant, brilliant cores of active galaxies powered by black holes—are scattered far behind the halo, allowing scientists to probe multiple regions. Looking through the immense halo at the quasars’ light, the team observed how this light is absorbed by the halo and how that absorption changes in different regions. By tracing the absorption of light coming from the background quasars, scientists are able to probe the halo’s material.
Credits: NASA, ESA, and E. Wheatley (STScI)
The researchers used the unique capability of Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) to study the ultraviolet light from the quasars. Ultraviolet light is absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere, which makes it impossible to observe with ground-based telescopes. The team used COS to detect ionized gas from carbon, silicon, and oxygen. An atom becomes ionized when radiation strips one or more electrons from it.
Andromeda’s halo has been probed before by Lehner’s team. In 2015, they discovered that the Andromeda halo is large and massive. But there was little hint of its complexity; now, it’s mapped out in more detail, leading to its size and mass being far more accurately determined.
“Previously, there was very little information—only six quasars—within 1 million light-years of the galaxy. This new program provides much more information on this inner region of Andromeda’s halo,” explained co-investigator J. Christopher Howk, also of Notre Dame. “Probing gas within this radius is important, as it represents something of a gravitational sphere of influence for Andromeda.”
Because we live inside the Milky Way, scientists cannot easily interpret the signature of our own galaxy’s halo. However, they believe the halos of Andromeda and the Milky Way must be very similar since these two galaxies are quite similar. The two galaxies are on a collision course, and will merge to form a giant elliptical galaxy beginning about 4 billion years from now.
Scientists have studied gaseous halos of more distant galaxies, but those galaxies are much smaller on the sky, meaning the number of bright enough background quasars to probe their halo is usually only one per galaxy. Spatial information is therefore essentially lost. With its close proximity to Earth, the gaseous halo of Andromeda looms large on the sky, allowing for a far more extensive sampling.
“This is truly a unique experiment because only with Andromeda do we have information on its halo along not only one or two sightlines, but over 40,” explained Lehner. “This is groundbreaking for capturing the complexity of a galaxy halo beyond our own Milky Way.”
In fact, Andromeda is the only galaxy in the universe for which this experiment can be done now, and only with Hubble. Only with an ultraviolet-sensitive future space telescope will scientists be able to routinely undertake this type of experiment beyond the approximately 30 galaxies comprising the Local Group.
“So Project AMIGA has also given us a glimpse of the future,” said Lehner.
The team’s findings appear in the Aug. 27 edition of The Astrophysical Journal.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.
Banner image: This illustration depicts the gaseous halo of the Andromeda galaxy if it could be seen with the naked eye. At a distance of 2.5 million light-years, the majestic spiral Andromeda galaxy is so close to us that it appears as a cigar-shaped smudge of light high in the autumn sky. If its gaseous halo could be seen with the naked eye, it would be about three times the width of the Big Dipper—easily the biggest feature on the nighttime sky. Credits: NASA, ESA, J. DePasquale and E. Wheatley (STScI), and Z. Levay (background image)
Contacts and sources:
Claire Andreoli NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Ann Jenkins / Ray Villard Space Telescope Science Institute
“Metamaterials”- The Strange alleged Artifacts or Debris from UFOs Recoveries
COAST TO COAST AM – There are often fractious online debates over intricate details of cases, such as the Gimbal UFO video, said UFO Joe. Silva talked about his research into “metamaterials”– alleged artifacts or debris from UFOs. The materials, he said, are thought to be held by the government, or hidden in looser organizations such as “special access” programs.
UFO Joe got to know some of the Naval vets involved in the “Tic Tac” sightings on the USS Nimitz and Princeton. Most people believe that the Tic Tac UFOs are not human-made technology, yet “if it turns out to be ours,” Joe said, it’s even “a bigger story than extraterrestrials, I think…if we have that technology, right away we change the world. It could change everything about energy.”
UFO Size OF 747 Seen Off Coast Of Dubai, Aug 25, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Size OF 747 Seen Off Coast Of Dubai, Aug 25, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Aug 25, 2020 Location of sighting: Ja Beach, Dubai Watching this video makes you wonder if its real or not, but the mans reaction and how he seems transfixed on it and how the woman is transfixed on recording the guy...all is normal. I looked for glitches and could find no evidence of manipulation in the video. The UFO appears to be the size of a 747 jet and its far away, about 1.5km distance. Its sitting over the ocean off Dubai. The bottom of the craft is rotating one time every 1 second. I just wish she continued recording so we can see how it moves...a UFOs movement really tells us a lot about it. Its real, no doubt about it. Looks like this UFO just came out of the ocean...was ready to travel, but has to wait for all the water to drip off the crafts surface so that it can travel through our atmosphere and into space safely. Why, because the water will boil on the surface of the ship and as they enter space...if any water still exists on the surface it will unstably freeze, causing an unstable drop in heat on the skin of the craft...which could cause hair line fractures in the spacecraft hull. Looks like there is an alien base not far off the coast of Dubai. Scott C. Waring
Now I found this UFO that had landed near a crater on earths moon. It chose this location to appear as a shadow from a long distance, but clearly it failed. The above screenshot is and below are the same, but I added focus to one...and deepening to the other. Two different techniques to focus them, each worked and shows different detail of the craft. Now the map ruler puts this craft at 50 meters exactly, but the map is off. It would estimate the correct length to be closer to 75 meters long. This ship appears to be in perfect working condition. Its sitting on small legs so its not actually resting its belly on the surface, but just above it. What you want to bet that Elon Musk gets this ship first? Musk if you do, you better reserve a permeant cabin for me!
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Arecibo Telescope Puerto Rico damaged on purpose and shut down because mysterious space object?
Arecibo Telescope Puerto Rico damaged on purpose and shut down because mysterious space object?
Something very mysterious has happened over the course of a week.
On August 11, 2020, the large Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico sustained serious damage due to a snapped cable. The cable damaged the giant radio telescope's reflector dish forcing it to shut down temporarily.
The Arecibo Observatory is the sole facility of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC) and the source of data for the SETI
(Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence).
But the cable failure is highly suspicious as they are always doing maintenance and especially focusing on the cables to make sure they are sturdy and secured. It is more likely that the Arecibo radio telescope has been damaged on purpose.
On August 16, 2020 asteroid ZTFODxQ aka 2020QG flew within 1,830 miles over the Southern Ocean near Antarctica which makes this asteroid the closest space rock ever.
Astronomers had no idea the asteroid existed until it passed by which is very unusual. Even the Palomar Observatory in California first detected the space rock about six hours after it flew by Earth.
Below an image of the so-called asteroid ZTFODxQ aka 2020QG.
The Arecibo radio telescope was knocked out of commission just a few days before, lands the possibility that this was a coordinated effort, so they could not see that this asteroid coming in, or what it actually was, a cigar-shaped UFO.
Then we have the very unusual story of the Russian cosmonaut catching UFOs over Antarctica. UFO pictures were released on August 20, 2020 taken from the International Space Station by Russian cosmonaut, Ivan Vagner over Antarctica.
But it is not only about alien spacecraft, according to Dark Journalist, TTSA increasingly steering toward the "threat to national security" narrative which is nothing more then a set up of the CIA and TTSA to create a false flag UFO threat.
With the sabotage of the Arecibo radio telescope, the supposed asteroid which was a cigar-shaped UFO and the remarkable UFO images taken by cosmonaut Ivan Vagner, we can conclude that there is a lot more of activity going on in space then we know and it runs very very deep!
This and much more in the next video from Dark Journalist, Daniel Liszt.
The video of the aurora over Antarctica appears to have shown several unidentified flying objects (UFOs) moving through outer space. Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner, who’s currently working onboard the International Space Station, has shared a 60-second video on his Twitter page on Wednesday. The clip appears to show at least five mysterious objects emerging from the dark and moving in space slowly before disappearing completely.
Vagner joined the ISS crew on April 9 through Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft along with fellow cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka as well as NASA’s Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan to the space outpost.
From 9 to 12 seconds of the video, five objects can be seen flying alongside the same distance. Vagner said that the footage was sent to the management of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, as well as to the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the nation’s leading rocket and space scientific centre TsNIIMash for further analysis.
Several Twitter users have suggested that the breathtaking video captured UFOs in space. Others, meanwhile, indicated that these UFOs could be a new batch of Starlink satellites launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX a day before the sighting.
Starlink is a satellite network with the advanced ability to provide people on Earth with broadband internet access. The project started in February 2018 amid SpaceX’s plans to launch around 12,000 such satellites into outer space.
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for the latest UFO videos & photos.
Microscopic, Injectable Robots Could Soon Run In Your Veins
Microscopic, Injectable Robots Could Soon Run In Your Veins
“What should I do, doc? Take two microrobots and call me in the morning.” Transhumanism is the ultimate merging of technology with the human, and the drive to do so is relentless. Their endgame is life-extension and then immortality, with a dose of omniscience along the way. ⁃ Technocracy News and Trends Editor Patrick Wood
Scientists have created an army of microscopic four-legged robots too small to see with the naked eye that walk when stimulated by a laser and could be injected into the body through hypodermic needles, a study said Wednesday.
Microscopic robotics are seen as having an array of potential uses, particularly in medicine, and US researchers said the new robots offer “the potential to explore biological environments”.
One of the main challenges in the development of these cell-sized robots has been combining control circuitry and moving parts in such a small structure.
The robots described in the journal Nature are less than 0.1 millimetre wide — around the width of a human hair — and have four legs that are powered by on-board solar cells.
By shooting laser light into these solar cells, researchers were able to trigger the legs to move, causing the robot to walk around.
The study’s co-author Marc Miskin, of the University of Pennsylvania, told AFP that a key innovation of the research was that the legs — its actuators — could be controlled using silicon electronics.
“Fifty years of shrinking down electronics has led to some remarkably tiny technologies: you can build sensors, computers, memory, all in very small spaces,” he said. “But, if you want a robot, you need actuators, parts that move.”
The researchers acknowledged that their creations are currently slower than other microbots that “swim”, less easy to control than those guided by magnets, and do not sense their environment.
The robots are prototypes that demonstrate the possibility of integrating electronics with the parts that help the device move around, Miskin said, adding they expect the technology to develop quickly.
“The next step is to build sophisticated circuitry: can we build robots that sense their environment and respond? How about tiny programmable machines? Can we make them able to run without human intervention?”
Miskin said he envisions biomedical uses for the robots, or applications in materials science, such as repairing materials at the microscale.
“But this is a very new idea and we’re still trying to figure out what’s possible,” he added.
I got this photo from Midnightplanets.com and yes it is a official NASA website. I first had to clean up the photo. What I mean is there are lots of line in the photo, so I got rid of them. Then I added light and found that there were two faces in the bottom center of the photo. One face is dragon like, I painted it yellow with a blue eye. The other is wearing a mask or tattoo and it is human-like, although I do not see the chin but can see the lower lip. I assume the chin in below the surface of the dirt. The human nose, ridges forehead two lips...all appear to be human like, but this face is not human. Its alien and this mask or tattoo seems to be thick and probably has a function of some sort. It almost appears to be a super hero of sorts and perhaps it was. The heads are both over 1.5 meters tall...so if they are statues, then wow...they were big ones. But if they were alive...then they stood almost 2 floors tall. Its a shame we can only see the heads. It would be something to see when it was whole.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Strange Black Creature Holding Onto Cliff In Iceland, Ancient Alien Species, UFO Sighting News.
Strange Black Creature Holding Onto Cliff In Iceland, Ancient Alien Species, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Aug 2020
Location of sighting: Dettifoss Waterfall, Iceland
In this video was see a black thin creature moving slightly while hanging off the edge of the cliff. Sadly the person didn't see it until he got home otherwise we would have a better view of it. The creature almost looks like a black robot..you know the one from Boston Dynamics, but much smaller, squirrel size. Very odd. Perhaps the ancient Iceland belief in the little folks they call Huldufolk, which are mystical beings like tiny elves and fairs are not so far from the truth. There are small alien species that exit, Apollo 20 William Rutlege told me about a tiny species of aliens they found after entering a abandoned alien ship in Delporte Crater on earths moon. These small beings if on earth and if they were seen by humans...would be easily mistaken for fairies or elves. So...we may have one on video here...strange creature.
Scott C. Waring
Video states:
Icelandic singer Vigdís Howser Harðardóttir has videotaped what appears to be a mysterious creature hiding next to a cliff. The strange incident occurred at the Dettifoss waterfall located in the Jökulsárgljúfur national park. What is your opinion on the video? Is it an elf? Another kind of mystical creature? Or do you have a logical and rational explanation?
Aliens have had a high interest in cattle for decades, here we see the outcome. Aliens are interested in cattle because most of the population of this planet values beef. That beef will one day enter humans and then cause and effect take place depending on the viruses, mutations, genes, chromosomes, DNA and so on of the cattle. These are non important things to us, but since most of us eat beef every week, some every day...its bound to have its effects on humanities future. Aliens pride themselves on being intelligent and being able to predict what humans will do next. Thats why they do this to cows, pigs, sheep...to determine the correct probability of causes and effects the meat will have on human systems. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
News states:
On Friday, a local resident named Gustavo contacted infopico.com to say during the afteroon, a group of cyclists had found a mulitate cow in Speluzzi. According the man, the animal "was missing its anus and part of the flank. There were no footprints or blood trails - only the cows's own prints, pointing to the direction from which it had come." Gustavo briefly added that "we found it odd, as such events had not occurred for a long time." He further submitted a video to be shared with the public.
Weird sound in the sky over Medellin, Colombia is coming from 'something that is invisible'?
Weird sound in the sky over Medellin, Colombia is coming from 'something that is invisible'?
Once again people have heard strange jet-like sounds in the sky, but in all cases there were no airplanes. According to the latest reports and published by Linda Moulton Howe, a weird loud noise came from the sky over Medellin, Colombia on August 24, 2020.
(Translated) - El Tiempo newspaper in Colombia, South America wrote: "What was the loud noise that caused terror in Medellin on August 24, 2020?"
A cell phone video of unexplained, strange, jet-like sky sounds recorded over Medellin by Eduardo de Grieff at 10:06 pm local time began circulating in twitter on Monday evening, August 24, 2020.
The night sky was dark and cloudy. There were no aircraft visible while the strange and loud jet-like sound alarmed people and provoked social media comments about “ghosts to aliens from outer space” causing the scary night disturbance.
See full report on the loud noise in Medellin at Earthfiles:
Huge Asteroid will fly by Earth at 0.3 times the distance to the Moon on Sept 1, 2020
Huge Asteroid will fly by Earth at 0.3 times the distance to the Moon on Sept 1, 2020
On August 16, 2020, a car-sized asteroid flew within 2,000 miles over the Pacific Ocean and now another huge asteroid, which has a condition code of 7 at the time, with 0 being good and 9 being highly uncertain, will fly by Earth at 0.3 times the distance to the Moon on September 1, 2020.
Asteroid 2011 ES4, which measures approximately 150ft (50m) across, is expected to hurtle past the Earth at staggering speeds of 18,253mph (29,375kmh).
However, despite Space Agencies giving this space rock a condition code of 7, they say as usual, it is of no threat to Earth because asteroid 2011 ES4 will pass safely, so let's just say it's a reminder that Earth has been vulnerable to cosmic impacts in the past, and will continue to be in the future.
Yet an asteroid called “2018 VP1“ will pass within about 300 miles of our planet on November 2, 2020 which is one day before the presidential election, but don't worry, according to NASA also this asteroid is of no treat to Earth.
Rusland geeft beelden vrij van grootste nucleaire explosie ooit: ‘Paddenstoelwolk 7 keer zo hoog als Mount Everest’ in Buitenland 26 augustus 2020 14:00 11 Reacties 5,160 Bekeken
Rusland geeft beelden vrij van grootste nucleaire explosie ooit: ‘Paddenstoelwolk 7 keer zo hoog als Mount Everest’
Het atoomagentschap van Rusland, Rosatom, heeft zeldzame beelden vrijgegeven van de ontploffing van de Tsar Bomba op 30 oktober 1961. Met een kracht van 50 megaton was dit de krachtigste door mensen veroorzaakte ontploffing ooit: 10 keer de kracht van alle explosieven samen die in de Tweede Wereldoorlogzijn gebruikt.
Ter vergelijking: de krachtigste bom die de Verenigde Staten ooit hebben getest, had een kracht van 22 megaton. En de bom die de Japanse stad Hiroshima in 1945 verwoestte, had een kracht van ‘slechts’ 16 kiloton. De Tsar Bomba was ongeveer 1325 keer krachtiger.
In een documentaire van Rosatom is te zien hoe de gigantische bom – 8 meter lang en 2 meter breed – op een treinwagon wordt geladen en naar een vliegbasis ten zuiden van Moermansk wordt verscheept.
Om de bemanning van de bommenwerper de kans te geven weg te vliegen, was de bom voorzien van een enorme parachute om de val te vertragen. De Tsar Bomba ontplofte boven Nova Zembla in het uiterste noorden van Rusland op een hoogte van 3000 meter, om ‘de straling te minimaliseren’.
7 keer zo hoog als de Mount Everest
De explosie is vanuit verschillende hoeken gefilmd. De seismische schok ging drie keer de aarde rond. De paddenstoelwolk die opsteeg, bereikte een hoogte van ruim 60 kilometer, 7 keer zo hoog als de Mount Everest.
In de film is ook te zien hoe wetenschappers per helikopter naar de plek van de inslag reizen. Sommigen van hen dragen niet eens een beschermende uitrusting. Ook is te zien dat de meeste sneeuw is gesmolten als gevolg van de extreme hitte. De hitte van de explosie was zo groot dat hij op een afstand van 100 kilometer derdegraads brandwonden had kunnen veroorzaken.
De explosie was zichtbaar tot in Finland en de drukgolf veroorzaakte daar zelfs glasschade. Tot op honderden kilometers van de ontploffing gingen ramen aan diggelen en werden houten gebouwen verwoest.
Bekijk de beelden van de ongekende explosie hieronder (vanaf 23:00):
UFO Shoots Across Landing Passenger Jet At Yorkshire, England Airport, Aug 26, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Shoots Across Landing Passenger Jet At Yorkshire, England Airport, Aug 26, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: August 26, 2020 Location of sighting: Yorkshire, Northern England This footage was recorded in Yorkshire today and shows a dark grey disk shooting across the background of this short video. It was posted to Twitter today with the simplistic question..."What do you think?" Now I see when the UFO is on the right side of the video...the UFO shoots so fast it turns invisible even to the camera then comes back into focus. This object is huge, about the size of a car and yet the control tower and airport workers had no idea it was even there. It goes to show you how ancient our radar technology really is. On the right side of the screen the UFO is out of focus, but on the left side its focused. This UFO came so close I'm surprised it didn't collide with the jet. These things or so highly skilled they can make such mauves as this...its just insane! That UFO came with less than a meter of the jet with hundreds of passengers on it. Sounds like aliens care more about data they gather than human lives. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Moon Size Alien Ship Recorded Entering Our Sun On Aug 23, 2020, Raw Footage! UFO Sighting News.
Moon Size Alien Ship Recorded Entering Our Sun On Aug 23, 2020, Raw Footage! UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: August 23, 2020
Location of sighting: Sun
This UFO was recorded by Terry's Theories of Youtube. He said he used a sun filter on his Nikon P1000 and has been catching strange objects shooting in and out of our sun. In this video you can see a large rigid object heading into our sun. But when I took a screenshot and added focus, I see a spaceship. There is no doubt about it. Its an alien craft flying into our sun. For us to see it and for it to be that big...we are talking moon size or more. Yes its possible, when you are an alien who lives forever...time means little to you. You can accomplish so much more when you have endless time.
Mysterious radio burst from deep space just 'woke up' right on schedule again
Mysterious radio burst from deep space just 'woke up' right on schedule again
The so-called Fast Radio Burst 121102 (FRB) appears to follow a cyclical pattern of activity like clockwork. Arriving from deep space, the FRB blasts very frequent radio flares lasting a thousandth of a second toward our planet.
Then, after 90 days of activity, the FRB falls silent for 67 days. This mysterious radio burst from a galaxy 3 billion light years away that appears to repeat every 157 days and it just 'woke up' right on schedule again.
Scientists have so far been unable to determine how these radio bursts are created or why they are so accurately repetitive.
The mystery has challenged the scientific community since 2007 when the very first FRB was accidentally discovered in a dataset, reports Dailymail.
Some scientists have hinted at an extraterrestrial source, including Harvard astronomer Abraham Loeb who argued earlier this year all theories, including ETs, need to be on the table.
Once a massive a star runs out of hydrogen fuel, it is ready to pull the curtains — and it does so with a bang! Supernovae are the most powerful explosions in the known universe, during which the dying star expels all sorts of heavy elements previously fused by nuclear reactions. Earth and the solar system at large are regularly showered by the products of supernovae.
Now, a recent study is highlighting tangible evidence pointing to such ongoing phenomena, describing rare isotopes of iron found in deep-sea sediments that are at least 33,000 years old.
The findings were described by researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) who analyzed sediments buried deep underwater in the Indian Ocean.
“These clouds could be remnants of previous supernova explosions, a powerful and super bright explosion of a star,” Professor Anton Wallner, a nuclear physicist at ANU, said in a statement.
In five sediment samples, the astronomers were able to identify iron-60, a rare isotope with a half-life of 2.6 million years. Since it should completely decay within 15 million years, it’s impossible that the isotope was incorporated during Earth’s formation billions of years ago. Without a doubt, its source is extraterrestrial and supernovae seem to be the likely culprits.
Previously, iron-60 was also found in Antarctic snow and in previously dated seabed deposits, ranging from 2.6 million to 6 millions years ago.
The presence of iron-60 in the newly described sediments suggests it was deposited at a rate of around 3.5 atoms per squar centimeter per year over the past 33,000 years. This slow rate of deposition suggests that the seeding supernova must have flooded interstellar space with its isotopic products.
Although the origin of the supernova cannot be determined, the researchers believe the explosion occurred millions of years ago, and its products must still be flowing through the Local Interstellar Cloud (LIC) — the interstellar cloud in the Milky Way through which the solar system is currently moving.
In the future, the astronomers would like to refine their timeline and come to an exact idea of when these isotopes made their way to Earth and confirm whether or not the LIC is the likeliest source.
“There are recent papers that suggest iron-60 trapped in dust particles might bounce around in the interstellar medium,” Professor Wallner said.
“So the iron-60 could originate from even older supernovae explosions, and what we measure is some kind of echo.
Scientists havefound new evidence that Earth has been moving through the remains of exploded stars for at least the last 33,000 years.
In a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of Australian researchers describe how they extracted a special isotope of iron called iron-60 from five deep-sea sediment samples using mass spectrometry.
That’s illuminating, because as the researchers wrote in their paper, the isotope is “predominantly produced in massive stars and ejected in supernova explosions.” In other words, iron-60 is left over after a star explodes.
And because iron-60 is radioactive and decays in 15 million years, the theory is that our planet is continuously being dusted with the stuff as it’s moving through the “Local Interstellar Cloud,” a region of unclear origins made up of gas, dust, and plasma.
“These clouds could be remnants of previous supernova explosions, a powerful and super bright explosion of a star,” Anton Wallner, nuclear physicist at the Australian National University, and lead author of the paper, said in a statement.
The researchers were trying to validate other iron-60 findings in samples from the Antarctic by sampling deep-sea samples dating back to 33,000 years ago.
It’s far from the first time researchers have found traces of iron-60. Previous samples showed traces of the isotope dating back to as far back as 2.6 to six million years ago.
By looking at samples of a far more recent era in our planet’s history, Wallner and his team was attempting to find answers to the mysteries behind the cloud our planet is moving through: what it’s made of and where it came from.
But what they found is bringing up more questions than answers. Traces of iron-60 seemed to appear consistent over a large span of time. In other words, if there was a supernova event in the past, we would’ve seen a spike or at least a change in the amount of the isotope — the older the samples, the lower the levels at least, as Science Alert points out.
“There are recent papers that suggest iron-60 trapped in dust particles might bounce around in the interstellar medium,” Wallner said in the statement. “So the iron-60 could originate from even older supernovae explosions, and what we measure is some kind of echo.”
The UFO phenomenon has a habit of appearing all over the place, affecting the lives of countless people from all walks of life. Although the common image is that these things only happen to bumpkins living out in the sticks, this can’t be further from the truth. All manner of people have claimed to have seen UFOs, including those in high up positions. It is these stories from people from upstanding circumstances that really make people sit up and take notice, and one of these must surely be the time a doctor, former assistant attorney general, and member of the Board of Medical Practice of the U.S. state of Vermont came forward with a series of very strange UFO encounters that are hard to really write off.
As far as credentials go, those of Terry Lovelace are impeccable. He was assistant attorney general of the US Territory of American Samoa, general counsel for the LBJ Tropical Medical Center there, president of the American Samoa Bar Association, a member of the Board of Medical Practice of the U.S. state of Vermont, and Assistant Attorney General for Vermont up to his retirement. As far as reliable witnesses go, you can’t really ask for much better, and Lovelace has quite the bizarre tale to tell. The story begins back in 1973, when Lovelace joined the U.S. Air Force right after graduating high school and trained as a medic/EMT. His post was at Whiteman Air Force Base, in the state of Missouri, previously known as Sedalia Air Force Base, and serving variously as a B-2 bomber base and a missile base, home of the 351st Strategic Missile Wing and holding numerous Minuteman II nuclear-armed ICBM silos spread out all over the rural area. Here he was assigned as a base medic driving an ambulance, and at the time of his experience he worked the graveyard shift from 11 PM to 8 AM, along with a partner he calls “Toby.” In January of 1975 they were out on their usual shift, and it started like any other night, with the two of them sitting outside the ambulance looking at the stars and waiting for a call while Toby, an amateur astronomer, excitedly explained the constellations and planets. Their shifts were typically uneventful, with whole evenings going by without anything happening, but this night would turn out to be very eventful indeed, and would change their lives forever.
Terry Lovelace
At 2 AM they were roused out of their wistful daydreaming by a call that a missile technician had fallen into one of the missile silos, about 18 miles away across rows of endless soybean fields. They tore off in response to the call, and were surprised to arrive to find the place crawling with armed security police, who told them to go no further. As Lovelace looked over the scene wondering what all of the commotion was about he said that his attention was drawn to a “matt-black diamond shaped object” about the size of a van hovering over the missile silo. The strange object hung there for an estimated 15 minutes before it “just shot off to the east from a dead stop to the speed of a bullet without accelerating.” He claims that after that both he and Toby were debriefed and told in no uncertain terms that they were not to talk about or disclose anything of what they had just witnessed, and the explanation they were given was that it was a type of experimental helicopter. And that was that. Both of them knew that what they had seen was no helicopter, but there was no further information and they tried to put it out of their minds.
Fast forward 2 years and Lovelace and Toby were still working the same shift at Whiteman AFB, and one day they decided to use some of their vacation leave to go camping, something neither one of them had ever actually done before and wanted to try. Since Lovelace was an amateur photographer, Toby suggested that they take their trip to a place called “Devil’s Den,” which had a high plateau perfect for stargazing, as well as plentiful nature and wildlife to photograph. They drove out there and decided to go deep into an off limits nature preserve area away from the main camping area, where they would have more peace and quiet and better scenery. Lovelace was upset that he had forgotten his camera, but it was such a nice area that he soon didn’t mind too much, and they set up their tent planning to stay for two nights. That night, they would have the first of a series of odd encounters. Lovelace would say:
On our first night we were exhausted from a hike we took when we first arrived, a long drive and setting-up a campsite. About 9:00 PM Toby noticed three stars on the horizon. They made a perfect triangle. They were small at first and moved in perfect unison. It became obvious this was one solid object and not three independent lights orchestrated to move in perfect formation. We watched it ascend and grow closer and much larger until it was directly over top of our campsite. We noticed that as it passed through a star field, it blotted them until it had moved past. Then they would blink back on. So, it was one solid object. It was odd that at first this thing in the sky made us anxious but that soon dissipated. We noticed the whole forest was now dead silent when an hour earlier it had been alive with crickets and tree frogs. While this thing was over our heads we became abruptly disinterested. We were also suddenly drowsy. Not tired but almost sedated. At midnight we just decided to get in the tent and go to sleep. The apathy puzzles me to this day.
The weirdness would continue at 3 AM that same evening, when Lovelace claims to have woken to brilliant multicolor lights that lit up the entire tent and made night seem like day. Since they were out in the middle of nowhere, well away from other campers, the only source of the light they could think of was the strange object they had seen earlier. As the brilliant lights flickered and danced around them, the only thing protecting them the tent’s thin sheet of fabric, Lovelace says that he overcame his building sense of unease in order to take a peek outside. He says of what he saw:
I pushed Toby aside, so we could both look outside toward the meadow. There was an enormous UFO as large as a five-story office building. It was a triangle with each leg being about a city block in length. It was fifty feet tall and sat stationary, thirty feet over the meadow floor. There was a noise too. It was a low bass hum or drone. Not so much loud as it was powerful. It was like standing nest to a running diesel train engine or a large industrial machine.
We saw what I first took to be children walking around the meadow underneath the triangle. There was a column of white light, about thirty feet in diameter shining down from the center of the triangle. We watched as these little people walked into the light and just dissolved, one by one until they were gone. The hum stopped and the corner lights all returned to brilliant white. The white cylinder from the middle stopped and the thing rose about like a hot air balloon. It made a one-third (clockwise?) rotation and continued its ascent, picking up speed until it was high in the sky and then gone. While we were apathetic earlier, now were scared out of our wits. We abandoned our campsite and ran to the car and drove back to base.
Lovelace claims that the incident had left red, raw skin like a bad sunburn all over their bodies, including even the soles of their feet, and that they were hospitalized at the base for two days with severe dehydration. During their time there, Lovelace claims that they were separately interrogated on several occasions by men identifying themselves as being from the “Office of Special Investigations,” and that his home and car were searched for the camera they were certain he had been carrying, despite his insistence that he had forgotten it. He was also ordered to have no further contact with his partner Toby, who was reassigned to another base, and the whole incident would give him intense nightmares and have profound psychological effects on him for years. He explains of some of this:
Ever since 1977, I am uncomfortable being outside in open spaces especially after dark. I sleep with a light or the television on. I keep a loaded .380 by my bedside table and a high intensity flashlight. I am uncomfortable around elderly Asian women for some odd reason. I feel anxious at the mall when we walk past a window display with naked mannequins in the window. Something bad happened to us at Devils Den.
He also claims that he had physical effects as well, such as a spot on his leg that would often go numb and was found to have a metal object embedded within it, despite no scarring present. He has written a whole terrifying account of it in his book Incident at Devils Den, a true story by Terry Lovelace, and one is left to wonder what to think of all of this. Looking at his credentials and standing it is hard to argue with what he claims he saw, but was there perhaps some misunderstanding or even an effort at creating a mystery? If so, why would he do such a thing? Whatever the case may be, he has continued to maintain that it is all true, and considering his standing as a highly reliable witness it leaves us to wonder.
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Some 313 million years ago, two creatures trekked across sand dunes in what is now the Grand Canyon and now paleontologist have uncovered evidence of their journey.
A massive boulder fell from the Mankacha Formation during a collapse and imprinted in the red stone are two pairs of the oldest recorded vertebrate tracks.
Researchers say the footprints belonged to four-legged shelled-egg-laying animals and reveal such animals traveled up sand dunes eight million years earlier than previously believed.
The newly discovered tracks record the passage of two separate creatures of the same species walking a few hours or days apart from each other.
One pair of tracks consists of 28 imprints with claws in each impression while the other set suggests the animal may have had an injured right foot - as there were no claw marks present on that side.
Scroll down for video
Some 313 million years ago, two creatures trekked across sand dunes in what is now the Grand Canyon and now paleontologist have uncovered evidence of their journey. A massive boulder fell from the Mankacha Formation during a collapse and imprinted in the red stone are to pairs of the oldest record of vertebrate tracks
The 'surprising discovery' was made by Norwegian geology professor Allan Krill, who was hiking with his students through the canyon.
Krill noticed a boulder lying next to the trail with suspicious markings along one side.
He snapped a photo and sent it to his colleague Stephen Rowland, who is a paleontologist at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
'These are by far the oldest vertebrate tracks in Grand Canyon, which is known for its abundant fossil tracks' Rowland said.
Researchers say the footprints belonged to four-legged shelled-egg-laying animals and reveal such animals traveled up sand dunes eight million years earlier than previously believed (artist's impression)
The newly discovered tracks record the passage of two separate creatures of the same species walking a few hours or days apart from each other
'More significantly,' he added, 'they are among the oldest tracks on Earth of shelled-egg-laying animals, such as reptiles, and the earliest evidence of vertebrate animals walking in sand dunes.'
The researchers' reconstruction of this animal's footfall sequence reveals a distinctive gait called a lateral-sequence walk, in which the legs on one side of the animal move in succession, the rear leg followed by the foreleg, alternating with the movement of the two legs on the opposite side.
Living species of tetrapods―dogs and cats, for example―routinely use a lateral-sequence gait when they walk slowly,' says Rowland.
'The Bright Angel Trail tracks document the use of this gait very early in the history of vertebrate animals. We previously had no information about that.'
The boulder fell from a collapse
The team looked deeper into the tracks to learn more about these animals that trekked across the sand dunes millions of years ago.
Trackmaker 1 appeared to drift to the right as it walked and was moving slower than its counterpart.
Each row has four footprints that are about three inches apart and its feet had claws at the end that pointed forward.
The second set, from Trackmaker 2, appears to be of the same species and came after the other set, after more sand gathered on the surface.
Each row has four footprints that are about three inches apart and its feet had claws at the end that pointed forward. Pictured is a look at what is now the US is now millions of years ago
'Two of the animal's claws on three of its feet apparently penetrated just deeply enough to leave small impressions preserved in the same bedding plane in which Trackway 1 had been preserved, perhaps a few hours or days before,' reads the study published in PLOS.
Researchers noticed something interesting about Trackmaker 2 – it may have had an injured foot.
The prints show a missing row of claw marks on the right foot and occasionally one of the left suggesting it may have been limping to ease the pain of wound.
Footprints found in the Grand Canyon, Arizona, reveal the journey that two creatures took when they walked up the sand dunes approximately 313 million years ago. The footprints were discovered when a huge boulder fell down in the Pennsylvanian Manakacha Formation, revealing the imprinted tracks.
The footprints belonged to a couple of four-legged shelled-egg-laying creatures belonging to the same species but they didn’t go together as they traveled up the sand dunes a few hours or even days apart from each other. Researchers found 28 footprints (each row containing four footprints three inches apart) with claw marks pointing forward from one of the creatures while the other set of prints didn’t contain claw marks on the right side which may suggest that its right foot could have been injured, causing it to limp. More specifically, the first creature walked towards its right side and traveled slower than the second animal.
Grand Canyon
The footprints were found by a Norwegian geology professor named Allan Krill who was out for a hike with several of his students when they came across the fallen boulder. When they examined their “surprising discovery”, they noticed the footprints and immediately sent a picture to Krill’s colleague Stephen Rowland, who is a paleontologist at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
Rowland explained how incredible this discovery was, “These are by far the oldest vertebrate tracks in Grand Canyon, which is known for its abundant fossil tracks.” He went on to say that “they are among the oldest tracks on Earth of shelled-egg-laying animals, such as reptiles, and the earliest evidence of vertebrate animals walking in sand dunes.” Several pictures of the footprints can be seen here.
Grand Canyon
The researchers found that the creatures that left the footprints walked in a specific gait pattern called a lateral-sequence walk which means that its legs on one side would move in sequence as its rear leg would move first, followed by its foreleg, and then the two legs on the opposite side of the animal would move forward. Basically, it would look similar to when cats and dogs walk slowly. “The Bright Angel Trail tracks document the use of this gait very early in the history of vertebrate animals. We previously had no information about that,” Rowland explained. Their study on the ancient footprints can be read in full here.
Which is harder to believe – that our Sun once had a twin or that it helped capture and hold Planet 9? They are obviously related and equally unbelievable – expect to a famous dynamic duo of astrophysicists who believe the twin sun idea is the only one that explains Planet 9. Should we believe either, both or none of the above?
According to a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by Harvard astrophysicists Dr. Avi Loeb and Amir Siraj, the mysterious Oort cloud of space debris at the hairy edge of our solar system becomes easier to explain with the theory that our Sun had a twin born at the same time. Most theories about the Oort cloud have it forming after the birth of a single Sun and our planetary system as debris kept being flung father away from the solar mass. However, that theory never matched the density of the Oort cloud, which has too much stuff to be left over from a singe star birth. Enter the twin and the idea that the Oort cloud was captured, not formed. A press release from the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard explains:
“Binary systems are far more efficient at capturing objects than are single stars, If the Oort cloud formed as observed, it would imply that the Sun did in fact have a companion of similar mass that was lost before the Sun left its birth cluster.”
In illustration of binary stars.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
OK, let’s avoid asking the obvious question for a minute and consider the fact that this actually makes scientific sense. Also, if this binary system was powerful enough to capture enough passing object to make the Trans-Neptunian Oort cloud, if may have been possible to capture an actual Neptunian.
“The puzzle is not only regarding the Oort clouds, but also extreme trans-Neptunian objects, like the potential Planet Nine. It is unclear where they came from, and our new model predicts that there should be more objects with a similar orbital orientation to Planet Nine.”
Loeb and Siraj speculate that Planet Nine was captured by the binary stars as it passed close enough – possibly being pulled from another nearby solar system. If the twins could capture one, they could have captured more planets Ten through X orbiting even father from the Sun. Which brings us back to the obvious question. We have only one Sun today – what happened to its theoretical twin?
“Passing stars in the birth cluster would have removed the companion from the Sun through their gravitational influence. Before the loss of the binary, however, the solar system already would have captured its outer envelope of objects, namely the Oort cloud and the Planet Nine population. The Sun’s long-lost companion could now be anywhere in the Milky Way.”
It was a cosmic gift exchange – we take Planet Nine from a star and it takes our Sun’s young twin before they had a chance to become the inspiration for some other civilization’s movie Tatoo. While this theory is certainly plausible, it’s nearly impossible to prove with today’s technology. Siraj thinks the Vera C. Rubin Observatory might be able to find Planet Nine after it goes operational in 2021 – a daunting task when there is little consensus that it even exists. Then again, Loeb and Siraj are the same guys who keep trying to convince us that the ‘Oumuamua interstellar space object could be alien technology.
Here are a few of the discoveries that I made on Earths moon that I thought might not be significant enough to report. I decided not just say the truth, but show you the truth. I find a lot, and usually only post 1 out of 20 discoveries. But there are thousands of structures on Earths moon just waiting for someone to find. Here are some that I almost didn't post. Still have more on the other computer. All found in the last 7 days. A little effort and faith goes a long ways.
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Ancient Diseases Released By Rapid Permafrost Meltdown Threaten Europe
Ancient Diseases Released By Rapid Permafrost Meltdown Threaten Europe
“Another” scientist has warned about ancient diseases released by melting permafrostin the Arctic Circleand the potential harm that could result. Adding to the list of scientists warning that climate changewill spark a resurgence of ancient diseases, Dr Vladimir Romanovsky from the University of Alaskahas now included smallpox, zika virus, and dengue, as conditions in the northern hemisphere become warmer and provide expanding livable habitats for the yellow fever mosquito that spreads all these diseases. Ancient diseases released by melting permafrost could cause new pandemics.
The Accelerating Arctic Permafrost Melt Is Well Documented
If you’ve been awake over the last decade you might already be sick of reading headlines about the threat of ancient diseases released by climate change in the planet’s Arctic region. For example, this BBC article explains how long-dormant bacteria and viruses, trapped in ice and permafrost for centuries are springing back to life as the Earth's climate warms. This BBC article came soon after Scientific American published a story in August 2016 about an incident in a remote corner of Siberian Yamal Peninsula where twenty people were hospitalized and a 12-year-old boy died after being infected by anthrax. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , permafrost in the northern hemisphere will have “a 25 percent decrease by 2100.”
Arctic tundra melting in late June in northern Russia and ever year the melting begins earlier and expands further.
(GRID-Arendal / CC SA-BY 2.0)
According to Birgitta Evengard, from Sweden's Umea University , “ignorance is a major concerning problem.” The doctor explained that in July 2020 a 30-square-mile (77-square-kilometer) section of ice broke off the Milne Ice Shelf , which she says was the “last remaining ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic that was fully intact.” As the permafrost thaws as a result of global warming, microorganisms trapped in soil particles begin to thrive again and are released into the environment.
Global Warming Is a One-way Street to More Diseases
Genomics professor Jean-Michel Claverie from Aix-Marseille University explained that scientists have now been able to revive “ancient Siberian viruses from over 30,000 years ago” and he also said these microorganisms had once attacked Neanderthals, mammoth and other ancient populations. Dr Claverie warns that there may be “a resurgence of anthrax, smallpox and influenza” that have been frozen in permafrost for hundreds of years, as was evident in the shocking 2016 anthrax death cited above.
Furthermore, global warming will also allow mosquito populations to thrive in northern parts of Europe. Jeanne Fair from the Los Alamos National Laboratory told Science Times that mosquitoes are now able to overwinter in some temperate regions and that the species, Aedes aegypti, carries “dengue, zika, malaria, and eastern equine encephalitis diseases.”
The yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, loves your blood and is expanding its year-round territory further and further north as global warming intensifies.
Another threat from melting permafrost occurred in July 2014 when images circulated around the media of an enormous crater that appeared in the Siberian tundra that was suspected to have been an underground buildup of methane gas that had been released as the permafrost thawed. Climate scientist Sue Natali of the Woods Hole Research Center said “It's not something that any Arctic scientists talk about, to have land explode because of a build-up of methane below the ground, and it still surprises me now.”
Ignorance Is Not Bliss When Ancient Diseases Reappear
Two days after the Siberian methane crater appeared in 2014 my agent was contacted by History Channel . And two weeks later I was in a production meeting in Los Angeles assembling a new science show looking at the projected effects of climate change and how it might affect human populations through mass-migration and “the release of ancient diseases.” For this show I interviewed Dr Alan Robock a highly-respected climate scientist who studies the potential benefits and risks of geoengineering, and is a world-leading expert on the climatic effects of nuclear war, volcanic eruptions, and soil moisture. To add to his authority, he has been a member of scientific teams that have won Nobel Peace Prizes. I was privileged to have him inform me on certain aspects of climate change effects.
As part of the investigation, the production team and I set up a dangerous scientific experiment in the Californian desert at the Salton Sea that included 100 film crew members, two fire engines, an ambulance, and a movie stunt crew. Together, we set up a wooden box representing a section of permafrost and filled it with two tons (4,480 pounds) of soil, which we froze with liquid nitrogen before pumping 20 lbs (9 kg) of methane gas into the frozen soil. Then, “Action” and BOOM. That explosion sent shockwaves across the desert using only 20 lbs of methane. Climate scientists have estimated that thawing permafrost throughout the Arctic could be releasing an estimated 300-600 million tons of net carbon per year to the atmosphere, according to the NOAA.
Since 2014, when I personally witnessed ground-zero in a reconstructed climate change event, it has saddened me that so little is being done to prevent the escalation of such explosions. And today, I am equally as concerned that a death in 2014 from an ancient anthrax virus has had almost no effect on how we live, or what we are doing to combat the release of these once-frozen microbial killers.
With so little having been done, one day, very soon, these ancient spores might be ejected into the skies of the northern hemisphere. And when they drift southwards and settle in Europe the death toll will make Covid-19 seem like a bad cold. If we are struggling to create a vaccine for a two-year old virus, what chance do we have with a 30,000-year old strain of anthrax?
Top image: In this photo you can see a collapsed block of ice-rich permafrost along Drew Point, Alaska. Ancient diseases released from such rapid change pose a dire threat to 21st-century human populations.
Source: Benjamin Jones, U.S. Geological Survey / Public domain
Editor’s Note. This article was edited on 20/8/2020 to remove incorrect reporting regarding Dr Alan Robock’s involvement in the Californian Desert experiment (he was not there) and and incorrect attribution of the estimated amount of green-house gases there are locked in permafrost.
I was looking at a map of Rhea, a moon of Saturn when I came across some structures in its southern polar region. The structures are huge, about 2-4km across and each has a unique shape. One even is a head of the very alien species that created these structures. The species looks more like an animal. It has ears of a bear, head of a bear like animal, but who knows what creature is fortuante enough to evolve to the dominate species on each planet out there. This one seemed smart enough to survive and explore, making a home in our solar system. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
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Triangle-shaped UFO over Orlando, Florida 1-Aug-2020 | Top secret military object?
Triangle-shaped UFO over Orlando, Florida 1-Aug-2020 | Top secret military object?
This UFO video was filmed in the sky above Orlando in Florida on 1st August 2020. The person who uploaded the footage, Ovni Vids, suggests that this could be some top secret military project.
A time capsule of the earliest days of the solar system may be the first clue in explaining a long-standing puzzle for those who study life: It appears to be stubbornly asymmetrical.
The story begins in 2012, when scientists discovered a golf-ball-sized hunk of rock now known as Asuka 12236 on the icy expanses of Antarctica. Asuka 12236 wasn't just any rock, it was a space rock — and not just any space rock either. Researchers think it's a particularly old meteorite, perhaps containing material even older than our solar system, and that makes it the stuff of scientists' dreams.
"It's fun to think about how these things fall to Earth and happen to be full of all this different information about how the solar system formed, what it formed from, and how the elements built up in the galaxy," Conel M. O'D. Alexander, a meteorite scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., and co-author on the new research, said in a NASA statement.
And when scientists ground up a tiny chunk of Asuka 12236 and compared the results with other meteorite samples, they realized this particular space rock stood out. In fact, it could hold the key to a longstanding mystery about life. Life, it turns out, is asymmetrical at a very tiny level. Amino acids — the building blocks of proteins, the large molecules that run our bodies and everyone else's — each come in two mirror-image forms, which scientists have dubbed left- and right-handed. But all the life that scientists have studied uses exclusively left-handed amino acids; right-handed versions of these molecules exist but don't make it into proteins. No one knows why.
Asuka 12236, the scientists realized, was particularly rich in amino acids, and just like life, the amino acids in the meteorite favored left-handedness. But unless the sample was contaminated by terrestrial life — always a possibility scientists must consider — there must be some other reason for the imbalance in the meteorite
An artist's depiction of a meteorite entering Earth's atmosphere. (Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Declan McKenna)
"The meteorites are telling us that there was an inherent bias toward left-handed amino acids before life even started," Daniel Glavin, lead author on the new research and an astrobiologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in the same statement. "The big mystery is why?"
Glavin and his colleagues suspect that the key may lie in what happened to the meteorite back when it was a part of an asteroid whizzing through space. Inside asteroids, forces like water and heat can affect the chemistry of the space rock, including producing — but also destroying — amino acids.
Some particular balance of such effects is likely responsible for the unusually high levels of amino acids in Asuka 12236 and may also explain the asymmetry between left- and right-handed varieties, as compared with other meteorites.
"It is pretty unusual to have these large left-handed excesses in primitive meteorites," Glavin said. "How they formed is a mystery. That's why it's good to look at a variety of meteorites, so we can build a timeline of how these organics evolve over time and the different alteration scenarios."
An artist's depiction of the processes an asteroid undergoes. (Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Declan McKenna)
And if the imbalance in the meteorite isn't the result of terrestrial contamination, the same process responsible may also address the mystery of life's asymmetry, the researchers hope. Glavin and his colleagues are going to keep looking at meteorites in hopes of better understanding how amino acids manifest in space rocks.
But the researchers have another tactic up their sleeve as well: sample-return missions, the spacecraft-enabled equivalent of meteorite deliveries. Unlike meteorites, spacecraft-carried samples can be protected from the harsh journey through Earth's atmosphere, keeping the rock more pristine than even the best-preserved meteorite.
Two asteroid missions are currently working on just such deliveries: NASA's OSIRIS-REx, which is preparing to grab a sample of an asteroid called Bennu, and Japan's Hayabusa2, which is trekking back to Earth with pieces of an asteroid called Ryugu to deliver home in December. Conducting similar analysis on these samples may help scientists better understand how amino acids form and change in space rocks, the researchers hope.
The research is described in a paper published on Aug. 20 in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.
Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow uson Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Astronomers have learned that the pull of gravity can sometimes overcome the strong magnetic fields found in great star-forming clouds in space. The resulting weakly magnetized gas flow can feed the growth of new stars.
See the lines – called streamlines by scientists – in this composite image of the Serpens South star cluster? They’re from magnetic fields in this great star-forming cloud. Notice the lower left, where magnetic fields have been dragged into alignment with a narrow, dark filament. In that area, astronomers say, material from interstellar space is flowing into the star-forming cloud and fueling star formation.
Image via NASA/ SOFIA/ T. Pillai/ JPL-Caltech/ L. Allen/ USRA.
Astronomers have known for decades that stars like our sun form when giant clouds of gas and dust in space – sometimes called molecular clouds – collapse under their own gravity. But how does the material from interstellar space flow into these clouds, and what controls the collapse? The image above helps illustrate an answer to these questions. It’s a composite, made with data from SOFIA – an airborne telescope designed for infrared astronomy – overlaid on an image from the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope. This composite shows that the pull of gravity can sometimes overcome the strong magnetic fields found in great star-forming clouds in space. And it shows that, when that happens, weakly magnetized gas can flow – as on a conveyor belt – to feed the growth of newly forming star clusters.
A statement from the Max Planck Institute in Bonn, Germany, explained:
A major finding in the last decade has been that extensive networks of filaments permeate every molecular cloud. A picture has emerged that stars like our own sun form preferentially in dense clusters at the intersection of filaments.
Now look back at the image above, which shows the Serpens South star cluster, a star-forming region located some 1,400 light-years from Earth. In that image, you see a dark filament in the lower left. Now notice the “stripes” on the image, which astronomers call streamlines. They represent magnetic structures, discovered by SOFIA. The astronomers said these magnetic structures act like rivers, channeling material into the great star-forming cloud.
As you can see in the image, these magnetic streamlines have been dragged by gravity to align with the narrow, dark filament on the lower left. Astronomers say this configuration helps material from interstellar space flow into the cloud.
This is different from the upper parts of the image, where the magnetic fields are perpendicular to the filaments; in those regions, the magnetic fields in the cloud are opposing gravity.
Astrophysicist Thushara Pillai led the study showing that magnetic rivers feed star birth in the Serpens South star-forming region.
The scientists said in a statement from Universities Space Research Association (USRA) that they are:
… studying the dense cloud to learn how magnetic fields, gravity and turbulent gas motions contribute to the creation of stars. Once thought to slow star birth by counteracting gravity, SOFIA’s data reveals magnetic fields may actually be working together with gravity as it pulls the fields into alignment with the filaments, nourishing the birth of stars.
The results were published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy on August 17. The lead author of the new study is Thushara Pillai of Boston University and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.
In 1835, the French philosopher Auguste Comte wrote of the unknowable nature of stars:
On the subject of stars, all investigations which are not ultimately reducible to simple visual observations are … necessarily denied to us. While we can conceive of the possibility of determining their shapes, their sizes, and their motions, we shall never be able by any means to study their chemical composition or their mineralogical structure … Our knowledge concerning their gaseous envelopes is necessarily limited to their existence, size … and refractive power, we shall not at all be able to determine their chemical composition or even their density…
He was, famously, wrong.
He couldn’t have envisioned the range of tools available to modern astronomers. It’s a beautiful thing that, nowadays, astronomers can not only learn about the compositions of stars via their studies of their spectra, but also probe the deeper mysteries, going all the way to the births of these colossal, self-luminous balls in space.
SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. The HAWC+ polarimeter on board SOFIA was used for the observations of the magnetic field in the Serpens South star-forming region.
Bottom line: Astronomers have learned that the pull of gravity can sometimes overcome the strong magnetic fields found in great star-forming clouds in space. The resulting weakly magnetized gas flow can feed the growth of new stars.
Get your white flag and start waving it at the nearest calendar – especially if you live in the U.S. NASA is warning that a near-Earth asteroid will make a near Earth pass on November 2nd – one day before the country’s presidential election. Is this the universe letting us know we’re not as important as we think we are?
NASA Asteroid Watch @AsteroidWatch Asteroid 2018VP1 is very small, approx. 6.5 feet, and poses no threat to Earth! It currently has a 0.41% chance of entering our planet’s atmosphere, but if it did, it would disintegrate due to its extremely small size.
That tweet by NASA was made after the mainstream, space-watching and conspiracy media came out with blaring headlines warning that Asteroid 2018VP1 will be very close to Earth – with a non-zero chance of impact – on November 2nd, the day before an election that is dominating the news and the attention of most Americans. Of course, the impact could occur anywhere on Earth, but we self-important Americans always make these things about us, don’t we? While a “0.41% chance” sounds pretty small (except when discussing the upcoming election – there we go again!), it’s actually 1-in-240, which SOUNDS much more probable.
Are those better odds than Las Vegas?
Why haven’t we heard about this sooner? If you know anything about asteroids or you have an intuitive mind, you’ll either know or figure out that “2018VP1” means this asteroid was discovered in 2018 and has been tracked ever since. Ironically, 2018VP1 was discovered on November 3rd, 2018 by astronomers at the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory in Southern California. During the brief period it was visible (about 13 days), astronomers determined it had the potential to cross Earth’s orbit and potentially collide with the planet.
What if it did?
The answer to that is a good news/bad news response. The good news, as NASA points out, is that the chance is very low and it will probably pass no closer than 4,700 miles. Even if it did make a direct hit, at a diameter of 6.5 feet (2 meters), 2018VP1 will probably burn up in the atmosphere like almost all asteroids of that size do on a regular basis. The bad news is, ‘almost’ means it could survive the entry. If it’s made primarily of ice, 2018VP1 will put on a spectacular sky show to remind everyone to vote the following (there we go again). If it is primarily solid metal, 2018VP1 or pieces of it could impact the surface but their size – even if it landed whole – would make damage minimal. If you look at ‘minimal’ as ‘non-extinction-causing’ or ‘non- Chelyabinsk’, that’s good news. If you get hit by a piece (the odds are not zero), it could be fatal – but at least you’ll be famous and you probably won’t take anyone else with you.
In september 2018 waren er verschillende mensen in de Amerikaanse staat Minnesota die een vreemd cirkelvormig object waarnamen in de lucht. Later bleek dat een vergelijkbaar iets ook was gezien in andere landen, waaronder Nederland, en nu is het weer terug in Minnesota.
Misschien is er een heel logische verklaring voor en heeft het allemaal niets te maken met ruimteschepen van eventueel buitenaardse afkomst, maar feit is dat voor zover ons bekend niemand nog een verklaring heeft kunnen vinden voor dit vreemde verschijnsel.
Een object dat bij ons precies twee jaar geleden in beeld kwam toen het werd waargenomen boven de Amerikaanse staat Minnesota.
Het zag eruit als op de volgende afbeeldingen en werd door diverse mensen gezien.
Hier volgt een video opname van hetzelfde fenomeen:
Iemand die ergens op een weg reed in Minnesota en hetzelfde zag:
In april 2019 wordt eenzelfde soort object waargenomen in China:
En nu, meer dan een jaar later duikt het weer opnieuw op in Minnesota. De volgende opname is gemaakt door iemand uit Lakeville, Minnesota, vanaf de veranda van zijn huis.
Degene in kwestie heeft de opname vervolgens opgestuurd naar Mufon voor verder onderzoek.
Wat het ook mogen zijn, het lijkt duidelijk dat we hier wederom te maken hebben met hetzelfde object.
Om het verhaal compleet te maken hierna nog een getuigenverslag van iemand uit Nederland die jaren geleden (1996) eenzelfde object waarnam in het zuiden van ons land.
This evening while looking at your site I saw “Ruimteschip hangt vier minuten boven weg Update”
This gave me the goosebumps! This is exacly what my X wife and myself saw in 1996 From Oeffelt To Our House In Boekel, I didn’t have a camera with me so I didn’t take a picture but now I see it and thank you for that.
Op die website staat inderdaad het hele verhaal wat er die zomeravond in juni 1996 gebeurde tijdens een autorit van Oeffelt naar Boekel, een afstand van zo’n 26 kilometer.
De man in kwestie was samen met zijn toenmalige vriendin op bezoek geweest bij vrienden die in een vrij afgelegen boerderij in de buurt van Oeffelt woonden.
Hij kan zich die avond van 22 juni 1996 nog goed herinneren, want dat was de avond dat Nederland tegen Frankrijk speelde voor de wereldkampioenschappen.
Rond middernacht vertrekt het stel omdat de volgende dag een werkdag was en ze een beetje op tijd in bed moesten liggen. Het eerste wat de man ziet is een rond object met vele lichten dat rondcirkelt boven de boerderij waar ze op bezoek waren. Het was identiek aan die die nu wordt waargenomen in Minnesota.
Het was een kilometer of 7 richting snelweg vanaf de boerderij en de weg was verlaten en liep door een vrijwel onbebouwd gebied. De vriendin kon vanuit de auto zien dat het object hen volgde rechts van de auto en exact dezelfde snelheid aan hield. Toen de man gas gaf accelereerde de UFO ook en toen hij een bocht naar rechts maakte volgde de UFO.
De man werd een beetje overmoedig, stopte de auto en stapte uit om beter te kunnen kijken. Het object draaide rond tegen de richting van de wijzers van de klok in en stopte boven een huis aan de rechterkant van de weg. Toen begon het met de richting van de wijzers van een klok mee te draaien en bewoog zich richting auto en de man had het gevoel alsof het object met hem communiceerde. Hij schat de grootte ervan op enkele voetbalvelden, geen kleintje dus. Bovendien maakte het geen geluid. Het vloog enkele keren over de auto en tenslotte stapte de man weer in.
Omdat ze op een gegeven moment onder een bladerdak van bomen reden dachten ze het object kwijt te zijn, maar niets was minder waar. Een minuut later was het weer terug aan de passagierskant van de auto. De vrouw vroeg hem om sneller te gaan rijden en de auto zo snel mogelijk thuis de garage in te rijden, hetgeen geschiedde.
Thuis gekomen was de man toch weer nieuwsgierig geworden, liep naar buiten en zag het object hangen boven het huis van de buren. Omdat het object nu heel dichtbij was en onder een bepaalde hoek hing, had de man heel sterk het gevoel dat ze naar hem keken. De man riep naar zijn vriendin en de babysitter om snel naar buiten te komen en toen ze dat deden schoot het object weg met hoge snelheid. Het verdween van het ene op het andere moment, zonder enig geluid te maken.
De man was een voormalig sergeant bij de luchtmacht en is daardoor wel goed in staat om onderscheid te maken tussen bijvoorbeeld een helikopter en een onbekend object.
Even later kwam het object nogmaals terug en werd toen ook gezien door de babysitter en de buurman die net zelf terugkwam van een feestje. Uiteindelijk verdween het object opnieuw en ze hebben het daarna nooit meer gezien. Wel bleek later dat er die avond veel UFO meldingen waren geweest in dat gebied.
Tot zover dit verhaal.
Tips ter opheldering van dit fenomeen of eigen ervaringen zijn altijd welkom via redactie apenstaart niburu.co
Pentagon is forming new task force to investigate UFO sightings over US military bases - defense officials say - after US senators demand answers
Pentagon is forming new task force to investigate UFO sightings over US military bases - defense officials say - after US senators demand answers
Two defense officials said a new task force that hunts and investigates UFOs seen by military aircraft will be unveiled in the next few days, reported CNN
It will be headed up by Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist, they said
US senators are demanding more transparency from the Pentagon over mysterious encounters in the skies
In July, it emerged the Pentagon's once secret UFO hunting department was still in operation despite official claims it was disbanded in 2012
The Pentagon released three videos in April showing US Navy pilots encountering UFOs flying over military bases
The need to investigate UFOs comes from concerns US adversaries such as China and Russia could have made technological leaps in espionage
The Pentagon is forming a new task force to investigate UFO sightings over US military bases, according to defense officials.
Two defense officials toldCNN the task force will hunt and investigate UFOs that have been seen by military aircraft and will be headed up by Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist.
The task force will be officially announced over the next few days, they added.
This comes just weeks after it emerged the Pentagon's once secret UFO hunting department continued to operate over the past decade despite claims it was disbanded in 2012.
US senators have demand more transparency from the Pentagon over mysterious encounters in the skies.
The Pentagon (pictured) is forming a new task force to investigate UFO sightings over US military bases, according to defense officials
Details of the new task force - including its name and whether its investigations will be made public - are not yet clear.
It is also not clear whether the new task force will replace the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force which the New York Times revealed last month was still in operation.
A secret multi-million dollar program named the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program first began in 2007 under the Defense Intelligence Agency before moving to the Office of Naval Intelligence.
In 2017, the Pentagon acknowledged funding the program to investigate UFO sightings but defense chiefs claimed it ended in 2012 citing 'other, higher priority issues that merited funding'.
In July, the Times reported that people who worked with the UFO program through to 2017 and beyond confirmed it continued to exist - but under a different name and office.
Members of the unit insisted some of the objects discovered were items humans 'couldn't make ourselves' and 'vehicles not made on this earth'.
In April, the Pentagon released footage from three sightings of unidentified objects (pictured)
The grainy black and white footage had previously been leaked and the Navy acknowledged they were genuine videos
Donald Trump expressed skepticism over the validity of the footage calling it 'one hell of a video' and saying 'I just wonder if it's real'
In June, US senators demanded to see the Pentagon's UFO files as they pushed for influence over the secretive Navy program.
The Senate Intelligence Committee wanted defense chiefs to publish a report on the Pentagon's UFO program and any phenomena it observes.
The committee said it 'supports the efforts of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force' - appearing to also confirm such a program still existed - but said the public should be better informed of its activities.
The Pentagon's UFO department could now be forced to give reports to the public every six months.
The push for transparency from the Senate came after the Pentagon released three videos showing US Navy pilots encountering UFOs flying over military bases back in April.
The grainy black and white footage had previously been leaked and the Navy acknowledged they were genuine videos.
One of the videos was shot in November 2004 and the other two in January 2015.
In one, a weapons sensor operator appears to lose lock on a rapidly moving object which seconds later suddenly accelerates away to the left and out of view.
The new UFO task force will be headed up by Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist (pictured), according to officials
In another video which is tracking an object above the clouds, one pilot wonders if it is a drone.
The Department of Defense said it was 'releasing the videos in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos.'
Donald Trump expressed skepticism over the validity of the footage calling it 'one hell of a video' and saying 'I just wonder if it's real'.
'Hazard reports' about the unexplained encounters were then released the following month.
'The unknown aircraft appeared to be small in size, approximately the size of a suitcase, and silver in color,' one report about an incident in 2014 read.
The need to investigate the existence of UFOs stems less out of concern over extraterrestrials, however, and more from the threat posed by real-world US adversaries such as China.
The Pentagon admitted in June that a nuclear detonation in space by Russia or China was among the possible threats to US interests.
The US is particularly worried about China's espionage capabilities, including use of drones and other aerial technology.
Earlier in July, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told CBS that he was concerned about unidentified aircraft flying over US military bases.
He claimed that China or Russia may have made 'some technological leap' that 'allows them to conduct this sort of activity'.
'Maybe there is a completely, sort of, boring explanation for it. But we need to find out,' he added.
Honestly guys, I'm getting sensory overload on this whole photo. Just too many ancient artifacts, and only 1 in 20 I will show you. Mostly because the other 19 are less detailed, less understandable, less significant. I found a face of a young girl, looks to be a chubby young girl with curly hair. The face is highly detailed and facing outward from the hillside. It looks human-like, if the human were 7 years old. I found a few standing figures, a few words engraved deeply into the stone, a few doorways, a few oddities that just cannot be explained by anything except as an ancient city. But my estimates are that those that lived here were a mere 3-5 inches tall. Right now you doubt me, but honestly, why do you think intelligence is limited by size? Some of the smartest people I ever met...were some of the shortest too. Scott C. Waring
Below is a (Side View) face looking up to the sky, only see the nose, chin cheeks, crown, neck.
Standing figure is only about 3-6 inches tall. Wearing a suit, hoody off, naked bald head seen from back.
Below is a male figure, wearing a pointy hood hat bending over the rock. I made him grey to make him stand out more easily for you. His face is very clear.
This is a white structure...which I call the white ceramics. These structures are near impossible to photograph due the powerful reflection of light bouncing off of them. I added contrast and they came into focus. I added yellow to the building area so you can see exactly what I see. It does take years of practice and patience to allow your eyes to adjust to not only the black and white photos, but to search for similar signs of structures that I have found in the past ten years. This has to be one of the top ten. The map ruler is not accurate, its true size is close to 300 meters across. and 50 meters high. Don't just glance at the screenshots here...allow your eyes to get use to looking at it. Search for the defining shading and edges. Take a few minutes and search the screenshots...finding these structures takes practice.
Kinds of structures I have found on the moon.
1. Once found elongated 6 sided 24k gold ship, flat, huge cross-like vein covered its surface only.
2. Found some transparent pyramids...very difficult to focus the pictures due to mass reflections. But experienced searcher could see it easily.
3. Metallic grey metal structures, often smaller and near edges of larger non reflective black structures.
3. White Ceramic structures, had to find some in focused due to light reflection, but if in a bit of shadows, can be focused.
4. Non reflective (stealth fighter black) black structures. Massive in scale, largest of all structures on Earths moon. Usually mistaken for shadows by inexperienced searchers.
Time, patience and practice...and you can accomplish the impossible.
This is an interesting find on the beach of Oveson, Norway. The person states on Reddit that they found the object on the beach and are asking for help identifying it. Some comments believe it to be a sinker for fishing, but its huge size puts that in doubt since most sinkers are now plastic and styrofoam making a sinker out of zinc would be very impractical and expensive, especially one of this size. I believe that this object fell from our atmosphere and while it did, it became damaged. Observe the molten uneven outer coating of the object. Observer the deep meteorite like craters on its surface. This is not caused by the salt water and rust, because we see no sign of decay or rust. It has be heated to extreme temperatures. I believe this object did not hit the ocean, but hit the beach itself. You can see that there is some non metal material that has been lodged inside the molten metal and burned. That material is from the beach. This is an alien probe, the kind that are often seen darting from cloud to cloud. Its value is immeasurable since it surly has keys to AI within its material itself. What I mean is, the systems...the computer, the AI, the propulsion are all built into micro scale into the metal itself. If there are sections left undamaged within it...then the micro technology found in it could change the world forever advancing humanity thousands of years ahead. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
High speed UFO stops midair and shoots straight up through the sky caught on Live Webcam
On August 17, 2020, witness lmx2001 tuned in to St Ives Hayle Beach Live Webcam UK to watch a sunset and noticed a strange bright light hovering above the sea so he used a desktop screen recorder to capture it.
The light then suddenly darts to the left over a distance at high speed then stops sharply where it just hovers again.
Then towards the end of the video it shoots straight up through the sky very fast and is gone.
The first video is the original recording of the UFO, while the second video shows a closer look at the UFO.
Daytime footage of a solid object flying in the sky above Westland in Michigan. This was taken on 30th June 2020.
Witness report:
Son and I saw this thing in the sky and I took a video of it. My son and I were in front of our local metro PC’s store waiting to buy a new phone and I was looking around and saw what at first glance looked like a large balloon in the shape of a donut flying across the sky. But when it dawned on me as to the largeness of this thing and my poor distance eye sight without my glasses was amazing and new it couldn’t possible be a balloon, so I started filming and showed my son.
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The Pentagon's footage from these sightings, which has been made public, depicts objects zooming quickly through the sky, as recorded by military pilots. Though these objects fit the technical definition of a UFO — meaning an unidentified flying object — they may not adhere to the folk understanding of "UFO" as synonymous with an extraterrestrial spacecraft. That's because there isn't exactly any evidence that these objects are of extraterrestrial origin, or that they defy any existing laws of physics that might hint at their development by a more scientifically advanced species.
"To understand the videos, all you need to do is ask any fighter pilot familiar with the FLIR camera system," Brian Dunning, a professional scientific skeptic and podcaster, told Salon by email. "What looks like great speed and wild maneuvers is just a common optical illusion combined with the effects of the FLIR's gimbal and glare filter." FLIR cameras, short for forward-looking infrared cameras, are capable of seeing slightly into the infrared spectrum, meaning that heat sources light up on FLIR camera footage.
Dunning zeroed in on a released video that appears to show a bat-winged shaped craft, noting that "the object you're seeing is a single point of heat from an unidentified plane, probably a distant commercial jet, flying away from the F-18. The camera is looking out the side of the F-18 which is speeding past nearby clouds, making the object appear to be moving relative to the clouds."
He added, "Its bat-wing shape is how the FLIR's glare filter always depicts single bright points (there are plenty of examples of this on YouTube), and whenever the object appears to turn, this is simply the FLIRs gimbal rotating to keep the target in view as the F-18 maneuvers. The other videos also have similarly prosaic explanations."
Timothy Caulfield, a law professor at the University of Alberta who also hosts a TV series that debunks pseudoscience (titled "A User's Guide to Cheating Death"), explained to Salon that there are a number of potentially innocuous explanations — many of them involving military or other highly secretive scientific experiments — that get ignored due to sensationalism.
"I get why people are fascinated by this topic. It's exciting, it's intriguing, it's mysterious," Caulfield said. "But the idea that these things are UFOs and alien sightings, and that there is alien material left on our planet, is scientifically implausible and highly unlikely. It's an Occam's Razor story. I think there is probably a more straightforward explanation, but we will just never know with the deep uncertainty. People want answers."
"When people look at those kinds of videos and the reaction of the pilots, for example, I think that's often also used to give them more credibility with these expert pilots, often military pilots, commenting on the behavior of the shifts," Caulfield explained. "I'm not a physicist, I'm not an engineer. I can understand what people are intrigued. They don't know what this object is and it's moving in a manner that seems impossible given our current technology."
Alexander Wendt, an international relations professor at Ohio State University who has become a prominent amateur ufologist, pointed to the reactions of the military pilots as a sign that these new UFOs should be taken seriously.
"I challenge anybody to do better than the Navy to explain what's in those videos. If the Navy couldn't do it..." Wendt told Salon, before adding that "they had every reason to want this off their plate."
As Wendt pointed out, "I think what's unique about these Navy videos is that the whole issue arose from the pilots... I think the upset pilots is really a key thing. These guys are the experts on what's in the sky. They have thousands of hours of experience flying up there. You see some of the interviews with these pilots and they think something is going on, and they were the ones that pushed this whole issue to the front."
Another Ohio State University professor, political scientist Thomas Wood, opened up to Salon about why people embrace UFO conspiracy theories.
"If you look at the data on public opinion on this, it is really sort of incredible," Wood explained. (A Gallup poll last year found that 33 percent of Americans believe that some UFO sightings were caused by alien visitation; a YouGov poll last month found that 56 percent of Americans believe that the government would hide UFO evidence from the public.) "The American public fascination with UFOs is one of the very durable conspiracy theories in the American public's imagination. Most conspiracy theories may become popular and then quiet quickly — for instance, the Barack Obama was born in Kenya theory, the American government planned the 9/11 terrorist attack theory. The UFO conspiracy theory is one of those that just sort of stuck around."
Dunning was quite cynical about the reasons for people believing in UFOs.
"Two words: Sensationalism sells," Dunning emailed Salon. "Nobody is excited about the artifacts of the FLIR glare filter; everyone is excited about the prospect of the Pentagon hiding the 'truth about aliens.'"
He added, "Humans are hardwired for anecdotal thinking. Our brains gravitate toward the simple and the desirable, and away from the complicated and the boring. The people in the business of selling TV programming are well aware of this, and that's why we see UFOs, ghosts, psychics, and miracle cures dominating pop culture."
Many famous people claim to have encountered either UFOs or aliens, from singers Elvis Presley and Blink-182's Tom DeLonge and President Jimmy Carter. They were able to have successful careers despite the stigma associated with such an alleged experience, though many other believers were not.
Earlier this year, the TV series "Unsolved Mysteries" devoted an episode to a group of people from a small town in western Massachusetts who claim they encountered a UFO in 1969. They described being socially rejected, viciously bullied, and in one case even harassed to the point where they moved away. it makes sense why they wouldn't go to the police or the local press at the time with their story. Many other reports of UFO sightings and encounters follow the same pattern — those who come forward suffer for doing so. As one of the people in the episode puts it, the town devolved from "Norman Rockwell to Salvador Dali" as public opinion and un-visited citizens turned against the purported witnesses.
MATTHEW ROZSA
Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer for Salon. He holds an MA in History from Rutgers University-Newark and is ABD in his PhD program in History at Lehigh University. His work has appeared in Mic, Quartz and MSNBC.
Ivan Vagner joined the ISS crew on 9 April, when a Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft sent him along with fellow cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka as well as NASA’s Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir to the space oupost.
Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner, who is currently woking on board the International Space Station, has shared a video of the aurora over Antarctica which showed several unknown objects flying through outer space.
In the 60-second clip that Vagner posted on his Twitter page on Wednesday, at least five mysterious objects are seen emerging from the dark and slowly moving in space before completely disappearing.
"[…] In the video, you will see something else, not only the aurora. At 9-12 seconds, 5 objects appear flying alongside with the same distance. What do you think those are? Meteors, satellites, or…”, the cosmonaut tweeted.
He added that the footage was sent to the management of the Russian space agency Roscosmos as well as to the country’s leading rocket and spacecraft scientific centre TsNIIMash and the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences for "further analysis".
Several Twitter users have, meanwhile, suggested that the "breathtaking" video captured nothing but a new batch of Starlink satellites that were launched by Elon Musk's SpaceX on Tuesday.
Starlink is the next-generation satellite network capable of providing Earth's inhabitants with broadband internet access. The project's implementation began in February 2018 amid SpaceX’s plans to launch a total of about 12,000 such satellites into outer space.
There have been hundreds of sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) around the world.
Lincolnshire is certainly no different - there have been all sorts of strange sightings in the skies of our county over the years.
Last year, Boston was named as one of the top ten places in the UK to spot a UFO.
The most recent sighting - showed flickering lights the sky over the A151 near Bourne.
This sighting is just one of a number of other, more mysterious sightings,that still can't be explained.
Here are our picks of the weirdest UFO sightings across Lincolnshire.
Amazing footage captures UFO sighting in sky above Lincolnshire - July 2020
A man has captured video footage of a possible UFO flying in the sky above Lincolnshire.
The footage, which was filmed over the A151 by Alex Platts, shows flickering lights in the sky overhead on Monday, July 27.
He posted online: "UFO I’ve just been watching over Bourne.
"Headed off North Easterly direction. Any ideas??"
The video caused a stir, with a lot of people commenting with ideas of what they thought it was.
One said: "Very odd. That’s not something easily explained.
(Image: Alex Platts)
"I do love a good UFO sighting."
Another suggested: "The light flashing pattern makes me think it's a helicopter."
Alex, however, says he believes it's not a helicopter - as there was no rotor noise and the way the lights "flowed from front to back" was not like that of a helicopter.
"It looks like several of whatever they are," another person commented.
Mysterious object over the Lincolnshire coast - October 2019
A man in Ingoldmells spotted this very strange image in the sky in October last year.
The man who took the photo, Gary Couldwell, said: "It was so weird. At first I thought it was a lantern, but the way it moved in the sky I don't think it could have been.
"It just stayed in that position for such a long time before shooting up so quickly.
"I don't believe in any of that, really. I'm a doubter. But after this, seeing it with my own eyes - I'd say I'm inbetween."
(Image: Gary Couldwell)
Shiny round object in the sky over Boston - May 2017
In May 2017, a video of a shiny round silver object in the sky which appeared and disappeared over Boston was posted on YouTube.
Five strange lights spotted over Lincoln Cathedral in broad daylight - April 2014
People in Lincoln spotted five lights in a pentagon shape April 2014.
The person who captured the footage claimed they were absolutely not Chinese lanterns and has labelled the phenomenon a UFO.
Hovering, flashing lights spotted over Heckington - August 2013
This example has seen plenty of exposure since it came to light seven years ago.
An eyewitness, Pete Willerton, from Heckington, said he saw the lights from his home.
Speaking in 2013 he said: "It looks a bit like a chinese lantern but it flashes and changes colour from orange to red to white. It moves around slightly then just disappears.
Strange object seen over Lincoln - May 2019
Simon Carrison photographed this object in the sky from his home in College Close, Lincoln just after 6.30pm on May 23 2019. He had no idea what the object could have been.
(Image: Simon Carrison)
Object burning in the night sky - September 2017
In 2017, Zoe Fletcher took to Facebook at about 9pm on Monday, September 4 and wrote that she'd seen something burning through the night sky.
She wrote: "Me and Nathan were in the garden and heard a strange whirring noise in the sky like an aircraft but ranging from low pitch to high pitch.
"It looks like something burning through the atmosphere," she added.
Mysterious lights floating over Skegness for seven hours - 1996
Mysterious lights were seen in the sky over Skegness for seven hours, and the object was spotted on a military radar.
But the RAF were told to ignore it after it was “overruled at the highest level” and files show that RAF Coningsby wanted to scramble aircraft to the scene.
A letter from an unidentified government official criticised the government's defence secretary at the time, writing: "I am very concerned about an incident that occurred off the Anglian Coast recently, involving a visual unidentified flying craft sighting which was correlated by various different military radar systems.”
It added that it was "incredible" that "no aircraft were scrambled when an uncorrelated target was picked up so close to the coast” and that “this raises serious issues about the way in which we police the UK’s Air Defence Region”.
Large, dark object hovering over Lincolnshire - 2016
This image was taken in 2016 and appears to show a mysterious dark object floating in the sky in Lincolnshire.
It is not known exactly where the video was filmed but it was uploaded to YouTube with the title 'UFO Sighting Over Lincolnshire, UK August 20, 2016'.
"Is it a plane or a UFO?" - May 2014
A Lincolnshire allotment keeper spotted this mysterious object in the skies above the county.
Hunting cameras installed to identify people breaking into sheds and stealing chickens showed a strange light in the sky.
Allotment holder Gary Ingham said: "Is it a plane or a UFO?"
Grimsby Live has also reported a number of strange sightings and events in North Lincolnshire. One woman claimed to have been abducted by aliens from her home in Tetney the same day UFOs were spotted over Grimsby.
They report some of their strangest sightings below.
March 2000 - Woman claims to have been abducted by aliens
A woman claimed to have been abducted by aliens at her home in Tetney on the same day UFOs were sighted over Grimsby.
She said that at around 9.30am that morning she was transported from her bed to an alien space ship that was constructed entirely of a steel-like material.
She explained: “I was in bed and felt myself getting weaker and weaker, like I was collapsing. The next thing I knew, I was in this corridor.”
While on board the alien ship she opened a door and was shocked to find a human male “spread-eagled” on a table, while aliens “peeled back his skin to look at his insides”.
The woman added: “There was a female being, who was milky white and wearing some sort of wig, I think it was to try and make her look less frightening, and more human.
“She communicated to me, telling me not to worry about my cats and dog, that they would be looked after.
“She didn’t speak to me in words, just put these thoughts in my head. She didn’t scare me, I think she was trying to help."
She said she thought she was going to die, but the next thing she knew she was back in her bed and only 11-and-a-half minutes had passed.
“I was so shocked to be back, I thought I was gone for good,” she said.
The woman said she knew people would perceive her as “mad” but honestly believed it was a real abduction.
September 1970 - Fatal crash sparks strange theories
The downing of fighter jet XS894, piloted by American Captain William Shaffner on a September evening in 1970, has been officially documented as a tragic accident.
But reports of bizarre flying transparent spheres, unusual blips on the radar and the fact the aircraft was discovered with its cockpit empty and canopy shut fast has left the story open to discussion.
On the night of September 8 1970, Captain William Schaffner, an American pilot based at RAF Binbrook took off from the flight-line out into the skies over Grimsby and headed across the Humber, and out over the North Sea, heading to Flamborough. Shortly after 10.30pm his plane ditched into the North Sea, five miles south of Flamborough Head.
An air and sea search and rescue operation was launched but it would take a further four days for the joint American and British operation to cease their search.
On October 7, 1970, it was revealed that the plane had been found when navy divers sailed to Flamborough onboard the HMS Kedleston but their search still did not provide answers and they returned empty handed.
August 1999 - 'Disc' hovers over Scartho Fork
A UFO was spotted over Scartho Fork. A vast glowing disc hovered over the roundabout and then sped upwards, according a Springfield Road resident.
He added that he had seen the object a total of five times.
He said: "The first time I saw the UFO, I was frightened. The disc gave off a warm red glow and then turned green.
"The disc spun off in to the night sky, moving this way and that in an apparently random way. Who knows where it was going.''
April 2000 - Several sightings of strange phenomenons
Grimsby Telegraph readers flooded the telephone lines with sightings of strange phenomenons.
A Cleethorpes couple got the shock of their lives when an unidentified red ball hurtled towards their house and passed through one of their bodies.
A woman was on the telephone when her husband shouted to at her to look through the window.
She said: ''I left the phone dangling as I saw a two-inch red ball of fire come through the window and pass through my husband's chest.
“We immediately lifted his shirt to see if it had left a mark, but there was nothing there – we daren’t tell anyone at first, it was very frightening. People will think we’re mad but there was nothing in the sky and not a soul around.”
The man involved said: “I’m too old to be scared, it didn’t hurt but we both saw it and my wife never drinks.”
Meanwhile, one Cleethorpes woman's husband thought she was “cuckoo” after she told him she had seen a “bright light travelling really slowly across the sky down the Humber” when she put her washing out.
She described the object as “round and big”.
Another reader saw a “really bright light” hovering above Blundell Park.
He said: “It was like a comet, it was so quick it couldn’t have been an aeroplane or a helicopter. It vanished in a split second. It was travelling at a height between 3,000 to 5,000 feet – I can’t describe it, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
October 2003 - UFO spotted near Freeman Street
A couple spotted what they believe was a UFO "turning over and over in the sky" near Freeman Street in Grimsby.
The UFO was in the air above their Bodiam Way home for several minutes before Steve went inside and grabbed his video camera.
The footage showed an intriguing black object coming in and out of view and catching the light at regular intervals.
September 2005 - Mysterious animal and unidentified flash
Ashby-cum-Fenby was visited by both a UFO and a large black cat, according to a resident.
During one weekend, his CCTV camera caught images of a mysterious animal walking in a field near his house as well as an unidentified flash.
March 2009 - 'Protractor-shaped' flashes
Two people saw “protractor-shaped” flashes in the sky at about 8pm on March 23. Three others spotted a multi- coloured flashing object hovering in the sky above Grimsby’s Grafton Street.
January 2009 - Witnesses say UFO damaged wind turbine
Witnesses in the Conisholme area claimed damage to a wind turbine was caused by a UFO.
One person described seeing a “massive ball of light” with “tentacles going right down to the ground”.
The story garnered international attention as was reported on the front page of The Sun.
It was later reported that "bolts securing the blade to the hub of the turbine failed due to material fatigue".
September 2010 - 'Strange red aircraft lights' spotted near Tetney
A second appeal for sightings was printed in the Telegraph, following initial reports of “strange red aircraft lights” near Tetney earlier in the week. The story followed an e-mail from another reader who said they had “possibly just seen two UFOs travelling in an easterly direction over Fulstow village, heading towards the North Cotes area”.
September 2019 - Unusual lights over Grimsby
Several people got in touch to say they spotted unusual lights over Grimsby shortly before dawn one morning.
The unidentified objects were seen flying low over the town centre and are said to have disappeared mysteriously quite suddenly. Witnesses also said there was no sound accompanying the lights.
One picture sent to us appeared to show three distinct lights which did not seem to be connected by any visible object.
Dwarf Planet Ceres is Water-Rich World, New Research Suggests
Dwarf Planet Ceres is Water-Rich World, New Research Suggests
High-resolution observations from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft of mysterious bright spots (faculae) in Occator crater on the dwarf planet Ceres suggest the existence of a brine reservoir — which is about 40 km (25 miles) deep and hundreds of km wide — that emerged to the surface through long-lived cryovolcanic activity as a consequence of the impact that created the crater.
This false-color image shows the dwarf planet Ceres.
“Dawn accomplished far more than we hoped when it embarked on its extraordinary extraterrestrial expedition,” said Dawn’s mission director Dr. Marc Rayman, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“These exciting new discoveries from the end of its long and productive mission are a wonderful tribute to this remarkable interplanetary explorer.”
Long before Dawn arrived at Ceres in 2015, astronomers had noticed diffuse bright regions on the dwarf planet with telescopes, but their nature was unknown.
From its close orbit, Dawn captured images of two distinct, highly reflective areas within Occator crater, which were subsequently named Cerealia Facula and Vinalia Faculae.
Scientists knew that micrometeorites frequently pelt the surface of Ceres, roughing it up and leaving debris. Over time, that sort of action should darken these bright areas. So their brightness indicates that they likely are young.
Trying to understand the source of the areas, and how the material could be so new, was a main focus of Dawn’s final extended mission, from 2017 to 2018.
The research not only confirmed that the bright regions are young — some less than 2 million years old; it also found that the geologic activity driving these deposits could be ongoing.
This conclusion depended on scientists making a key discovery: salt compounds concentrated in Cerealia Facula.
On Ceres’ surface, salts bearing water quickly dehydrate, within hundreds of years. But Dawn’s measurements show they still have water, so the fluids must have reached the surface very recently.
This is evidence both for the presence of liquid below the region of Occator crater and ongoing transfer of material from the deep interior to the surface.
The researchers found two main pathways that allow liquids to reach the surface.
“For the large deposit at Cerealia Facula, the bulk of the salts were supplied from a slushy area just beneath the surface that was melted by the heat of the impact that formed the crater about 20 million years ago,” said Dawn principal investigator Dr. Carol Raymond.
“The impact heat subsided after a few million years; however, the impact also created large fractures that could reach the deep, long-lived reservoir, allowing brine to continue percolating to the surface.”
Dawn captured pictures in visible and infrared wavelengths, which were combined to create this false-color view of a region in 92-km- (57-mile-) wide Occator crater on the dwarf planet Ceres. Recently exposed brine in the center of the crater was pushed up from a deep reservoir below Ceres’ crust. In this view, it appears reddish. In the foreground, is Cerealia Facula, a 15-km- (9-mile-) wide region with a composition dominated by salts. The central dome, Cerealia Tholus, is about 3 km (1.9 miles) across at its base and 340 m (1,100 feet) tall. The dome is inside a central depression about 900 m (3,000 feet) deep. The area depicted in this scene is about 2.1 km (1.3 miles) wide in the foreground, about 11 km (7 miles) wide across the dome, and 56 km (35 miles) wide in the background, where the crater rim rises against the black sky. The distance from the near point (at the bottom) to the far point (at the top) is about 52 km (32 miles).
Dawn got as close as 35 kilometres to Ceres' surface, enabling it to create image mosaics like this one of Cerealia Facula.
(NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI)
This artist's concept shows NASA's Dawn spacecraft arriving at the dwarf planet Ceres.
(NASA: JPL)
Scientists are confident there's a deep brine reservoir under Occator crater.(NASA: JPL)
In the Solar System, icy geologic activity happens mainly on icy moons, where it is driven by their gravitational interactions with their planets.
But that’s not the case with the movement of brines to the surface of Ceres, suggesting that other large ice-rich bodies that are not moons could also be active.
Some evidence of recent liquids in Occator crater comes from the bright deposits, but other clues come from an assortment of interesting conical hills reminiscent of Earth’s pingos — small ice mountains in polar regions formed by frozen pressurized groundwater.
Such features have been spotted on Mars, but the discovery of them on Ceres marks the first time they’ve been observed on a dwarf planet.
On a larger scale, the Dawn scientists were able to map the density of Ceres’ crust structure as a function of depth — a first for an ice-rich planetary body.
Using gravity measurements, they found Ceres’ crustal density increases significantly with depth, way beyond the simple effect of pressure.
The authors inferred that at the same time Ceres’ reservoir is freezing, salt and mud are incorporating into the lower part of the crust.
The findings were published in a series of papers in the journals Nature Astronomy, Nature Geoscience and Nature Communications.
All related videos, selected and posted by peter2011
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C.A. Raymond et al. 2020. Impact-driven mobilization of deep crustal brines on dwarf planet Ceres. Nat Astron 4, 741-747; doi: 10.1038/s41550-020-1168-2
M.C. De Sanctis et al. 2020. Fresh emplacement of hydrated sodium chloride on Ceres from ascending salty fluids. Nat Astron 4, 786-793; doi: 10.1038/s41550-020-1138-8
Heavy Rains Filled Lakes and Rivers on Early Mars, New Research Suggests
Heavy Rains Filled Lakes and Rivers on Early Mars, New Research Suggests
Planetary researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center have used dry paleolakes and riverbeds to determine how much precipitation was present on Mars 3.5-4 billion years ago.
Open and closed lakes on early Mars.
Image credit: University of Texas at Austin.
The climate of the ancient Mars is something of an enigma to scientists. To geologists, the existence of riverbeds and paleolakes paints a picture of a planet with significant rainfall or snowmelt.
But planetary scientists who specialize in computer climate models have been unable to reproduce an ancient climate with large amounts of liquid water present for long enough to account for the observed geology.
“This is extremely important because 3.5 to 4 billion years ago Mars was covered with water,” said study lead author Dr. Gaia Stucky de Quay, a postdoctoral researcher in the Jackson School of Geosciences and the Center for Planetary Systems Habitability at the University of Texas at Austin.
“It had lots of rain or snowmelt to fill those channels and lakes.”
“Now it’s completely dry. We’re trying to understand how much water was there and where did it all go.”
In the study, Dr. Stucky de Quay and colleagues found that precipitation must have been between 4 to 159 m (13-520 feet) in a single episode to fill the Martian lakes and, in some cases, provide enough water to overflow and breach the lake basins.
“Although the range is large, it can be used to help understand which climate models are accurate,” Dr. Stucky de Quay said.
“Climate models have trouble accounting for that amount of liquid water at that time. It’s like, liquid water is not possible, but it happened. This is the knowledge gap that our work is trying to fill in.”
The scientists looked at 96 open-basin and closed-basin lakes and their watersheds, all thought to have formed between 3.5 billion and 4 billion years ago.
Using satellite images and topography, they measured lake and watershed areas, and lake volumes, and accounted for potential evaporation to figure out how much water was needed to fill the lakes.
By looking at ancient closed and open lakes, and the river valleys that fed them, they were able to determine a minimum and maximum precipitation.
In 13 cases, the authors discovered coupled basins — containing one closed and one open basin that were fed by the same river valleys — which offered key evidence of both maximum and minimum precipitation in one single event.
“Our study takes previously identified closed and open lake basins, but applies a clever new approach to constrain how much precipitation these lakes experienced,” said study co-author Dr. Tim Goudge, also from the Jackson School of Geosciences and the Center for Planetary Systems Habitability at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Not only do these results help us to refine our understanding of the ancient Mars climate, but they also will be a great resource for putting results from NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover into a more global context.”
A paper on the findings was published online in the journal Geology.
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Gaia Stucky de Quay et al. Precipitation and aridity constraints from paleolakes on early Mars. Geology, published online August 13, 2020; doi: 10.1130/G47886.1
A group of citizen scientists working with a NASA citizen science project called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 has discovered 95 new brown dwarfs in the sun’s nearby neighborhood.
Artist’s concept of one of the 95 new cool brown dwarfs in the neighborhood of our sun. A companion white dwarf star is in the distance. Brown dwarfs are sometimes said to be star-planet hybrids. They’re not massive enough to ignite thermonuclear fusion reactions in their interiors, and so shine as stars do. Yet they’re too massive to be considered planets.
Image via NOIRLab/ NSF/ AURA/ P. Marenfeld/ William Pendrill/ JPL.
Almost every week, astronomers announce new discoveries such as exoplanets found orbiting distant stars, asteroids whizzing past Earth, and faraway galaxies with their massive black holes blazing at the edge of the universe. On August 18, 2020, NASA announced yet another discovery – made by members of the public assisting with a citizen science project – in this case of another 95 new cosmic neighbors – brown dwarfs – many within just a few dozen light-years of our solar system.
The findings are currently pending publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
These citizen scientists helped to find the brown dwarfs through a NASA-funded project called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9. Like other such projects, this one is a collaboration between scientists and volunteers. It relies on data – lots of data – from various sources, including NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) satellite, from NASA’s now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope and the National Science Foundation’s ground-based NOIRLab program, which involves five major obervatories. Sifting through the mountains of data collected by all these instruments is a huge task. That’s why citizen scientists are so helpful, said Aaron Meisner of NOIRLab. He co-founded Backyard Worlds, and he’s lead author of the new study:
Vast modern datasets can unlock landmark discoveries, and it’s exciting that these could be spotted first by citizen scientists. These Backyard Worlds discoveries show that members of the public can play an important role in reshaping our scientific understanding of our solar neighborhood.
Comparison of the typical masses of exoplanets, brown dwarfs and stars.
Jackie Faherty of the American Museum of Natural History in New York said:
This paper is evidence that the solar neighborhood is still uncharted territory and citizen scientists are excellent astronomical cartographers. Mapping the coldest brown dwarfs down to the lowest masses gives us key insights into the low-mass star-formation process while providing a target list for detailed studies of the atmospheres of Jupiter analogs.
Brown dwarfs are fascinating objects that are too small and not massive enough to be stars, but too large and too massive to be considered planets. Some brown dwarfs can have temperatures in the thousands of degrees, but that’s not enough to fully “ignite” and become stars. Others are much colder, and many of the newly discovered ones are in this category. Some are colder than the boiling point of water, while others are actually have temperatures close to that of Earth. There is also evidence that, just like gas giant and ice giant planets, brown dwarfs can have very stormy atmospheres. The brown dwarf Luhman 16A may look a lot like Jupiter.
Astronomer Aaron Meisner of NOIRLab. He is lead author on a citizen-science effort that led to the discovery of 95 new brown dwarf neighbors.
If these brown dwarfs are so relatively close to us, why weren’t they discovered until now?
The answer is that, since they’re relatively cool objects, they shine only faintly in visible light. They can also be seen in infrared light, but because of their cool temperatures, they’re faint in infrared as well.
These new brown dwarfs are a missing link in the types of brown dwarfs known to exist, these scientists said. By learning more about them, they said they can learn more about how these objects form, and how they relate to other stars and planets in our sun’s neighborhood.
Some brown dwarfs are cold enough to have water vapor clouds, similar to earthly clouds. There is evidence for this on the coldest known brown dwarf, WISE 0855, which was discovered in 2014 and is only about seven light-years away. With a temperature of minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 23 degrees Celsius, some scientists thought it might actually be a rogue planet, floating freely in space between stars. The new discoveries now help to put WISE 0855 in the context of other cool brown dwarfs. According to astrophysicist Marc Kuchner, principal investigator of Backyard Worlds: Planet 9:
Our new discoveries help connect the dots between 0855 and the other known brown dwarfs.
Artist’s concept of turbulent weather on a brown dwarf.
Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ University of Western Ontario/ Stony Brook U.
And just how did the citizen scientists find the new brown dwarfs?
The volunteers – over 100,000 of them – were approached by Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 to examine telescopic images consisting of trillions of pixels. Ultimately, 20 different citizen scientists from 10 countries became coauthors of the new study. They used sky maps produced from observations by WISE and NEOWISE and scoured additional archival datasets, such as those from the Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory and Víctor Blanco 4-m Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), both programs of NOIRLab. As one citizen scientist, Les Hamlet in Springfield, Missouri, said:
Being that this will be the first scientific paper that I’m a coauthor on, its publication will definitely be the highlight of working with Backyard Worlds so far. Also, being connected in some way with the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope through this paper is kind of special to me.
These new brown dwarfs are just the latest to be discovered; Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 has previously found over 1,500 such cool worlds.
So … what’s next?
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will soon image the entire southern hemispheric sky over 10 years, which should be yield many more cool brown dwarfs, among other discoveries. The upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be able to study some of these brown dwarfs more closely to find more clues as to how they form as well as other planet and atmospheres.
Brown dwarfs are enigmatic worlds, and scientists are now starting to learn how they came to be, in their cosmic place between planets and stars.
Artist’s concept of the brown dwarf Luhman 16A (not one of the newly-discovered brown dwarfs), which may have Jupi
ter-like bands. Image via Caltech/ R. Hurt (IPAC).
Bottom line:A group of citizen scientists working with Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 has discovered 95 new brown dwarfs in the sun’s neighborhood.
According to a new study, citizen scientists have recently discovered nearly 100 brown dwarfs located fairly close to our sun. Several members of the public, which includes volunteers as well as professional scientists, were part of a citizen science project that was funded by NASA and called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9.
During the project, over 100,000 citizen scientists analyzed data from NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (or NEOWISE) satellite as well as other data that was gathered by WISE between 2010 and 2011 in addition to information collected from the Spitzer Space Telescope and the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab.
They were able to locate 95 brown dwarfs which are space objects that are too small to be stars but too big to be planets. And they are relatively close to our sun with some of them being just a few dozen light-years away.
Even though they are called brown dwarfs, they are actually orange/red or magenta in color. While some brown dwarfs can reach temperatures as hot as thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, they can also be cooler than the degree at which water boils, and some have temperatures pretty close to Earth which would allow them to have water clouds.
The coldest brown dwarf ever found is called WISE 0855 and it was discovered in 2014. It has temperatures of around minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius) which is by far the coldest brown dwarf that has been detected. In fact, it is so cold that some experts questioned whether it was instead a rogue exoplanet.
It’s quite exciting to think that citizen scientists made such a significant discovery. “These Backyard Worlds discoveries show that members of the public can play an important role in reshaping our scientific understanding of our solar neighborhood,” said Aaron Meisner, who is an assistant scientist at NSF’s NOIRLab and the lead author of the study.
Jackie Faherty from the American Museum of Natural History in New York and who is a co-author of the study, weighed in by stating, “This paper is evidence that the solar neighborhood is still uncharted territory and citizen scientists are excellent astronomical cartographers,” adding, “Mapping the coldest brown dwarfs down to the lowest masses gives us key insights into the low-mass star-formation process while providing a target list for detailed studies of the atmospheres of Jupiter analogs.”
In total, volunteers for Backyard Worlds have so far detected over 1,500 cold worlds pretty close to our sun and the newly discovered 95 brown dwarfs were the most ever found through a citizen science project. Many more are probably just waiting to be found and the James Webb Space Telescope will surely help with the findings when it is launched next year.
MUFON Canada UFO Primer: Interview with Victor Viggiani
MUFON Canada UFO Primer: Interview with Victor Viggiani
MufonCanada has launched a new Podcast feature on our YouTube channel. These will feature interviews with Ufologists from around the world, witness interviews from our cases files and other exciting news as we follow the US Navy Intelligence UAP Task Force. Listen now to the first of many to come.
Victor Viggiani is currently the News Director of ZlandCommunications an international news service. His study of anomalous aerial phenomenon, research and analysis of Extraterrestrial issues spans over 30 years. His experience involves UFO sightings report investigation, academic and radio journalism with a primary focus on UFO/ET government Disclosure. Victor has addressed the media and audiences in Sydney and Brisbane Australia, Washington D.C., at the Washington D.C. National Press Club, Rochester NY, CBC and CTV Toronto television news programs and at Convocation Hall University of Toronto. Victor is a co-host on the Richard Syrett Show on AM 740 Radio in Toronto.
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Unknown flashing object over Cleveland, Ohio 19-Aug-2020
Unknown flashing object over Cleveland, Ohio 19-Aug-2020
This bright UFO was seen and recorded in the sky above Cleveland, OH on August 19, 2020.
Witness report:
On 08/19/20 at approximately 10:00 hours I was assigned to assist with traffic in downtown Cleveland. There were 4 other parties assigned to the intersection of E.9th & Bolivar to repair telephone lines. During our time at the intersection I was discussing the buildings surrounding area. We began discussing the cable that was stabilizing a communication tower and the insulator in the middle which we thought was odd. In the video you can see the insulator, which can be mistaken for a hovering object. At 10:23 hours I noticed an object fly out from behind one of the buildings. The crew I was working with had also noticed it. I took out my phone and attempted to capture video of the object. In the video, we can all be heard acknowledging the object. The object appeared to have an erratic flight path. It flew to my left and flashed a few times and then moved to my right and flashed a few times then shot off into the sky. I believe I found one view of it. As it was flashing and moving so quickly it was almost impossible to capture.
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It was a strange interstellar comet, it was a stranger spaceship, it was an interstellar asteroid, it was something else, and the latest — it’s a frozen hydrogen-sicle. And now, the cigar-shaped unknown space object from another solar system is back to being a spaceship … or at least a piece of alien technology. That’s the latest from two leading astrophysicists who have been watching and commenting on ‘Oumuamua ever since it showed up unannounced in 2017 and has been inspiring debates, exploration suggestions and occasional concern ever since.
“The first interstellar object observed in our solar system, 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua), exhibited a number of peculiar properties, including extreme elongation and acceleration excess. Recently, Seligman & Laughlin proposed that the object was made out of molecular hydrogen (H2) ice. The question is whether H2 objects could survive their travel from the birth sites to the solar system.”
Like this, only hyrdrogen?
Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist, and Thiem Hoang, an astrophysicist at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, sprang into action as soon as astrophysicists Darryl Seligman, University of Chicago, and Greg Laughlin, Yale University, released their research paper in May 2020 proposing that ‘Oumuamua was formed in a giant molecular cloud (GMC) and is composed of molecular hydrogen ice – a giant cigar-shaped interstellar hydrogen iceberg. Seligman and Laughlin tied their theory to the idea that outgassing or evaporating hydrogen ice wouldn’t be visible from Earth — explaining the mystery of how ‘Oumuamua could be a comet if it didn’t have a tail, especially when it accelerated out of the solar system.
“Assuming that H2 objects could somehow form in the densest regions of GMCs, we found that sublimation by collisional heating inside the GMC would destroy the objects before their escape into the ISM [interstellar medium]. We also studied various destruction mechanisms of H2 ice in the ISM. In particular, we found that H2 objects are heated by the average interstellar radiation, so that they cannot survive beyond a sublimation time of tsub ~ 10 Myr for R = 300 m (see Figure 1). Only H2 objects larger than 5 km could survive.”
“Not so fast!” said Loeb and Hoang. In their response, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, they point out that the closest GMC is too far away for a hydrogen iceberg to survive the trip (due to the heat generated by cosmic collisions) and would probably not even survive an exit from a GNC. Loeb admits that, while this knocks ‘hydrogen iceberg’ off the “What’ is ‘Oumuamua?” list, we still don’t know for certain what it is. Fortunately, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (VRO) is scheduled to become operational next year and he believes it will detect “one ‘Oumuamua-like object per month.” If they can’t figure out what it is with that kind of data, they need to turn in their astrophysicist club membership cards.
‘Oumuamua as alien technology disguised in a crust of space debris – proposed by Loeb in 2019 – was never disproved, just pushed down on the list of possibilities. With hydrogen iceberg joining the “Nope” list, it can move up again until the VRO collects more data or a human spaceship launched in time to catch ‘Oumuamua before it leaves the solar system.
Place your bets on your favorite now.
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Hey guys, hope you all are having a great weekend. I'm just chilling at my computer and found a few things that seem significant to me and hopefully it will be significant to you too. I found a structure on Mars. There is a window in it, even a doorway if you add much more light, but the door is only about 15% visible. Near the structure is a face wearing a Aztec animal like mask. I've seen this before in faces on Mars, its nothing new. The thing that made me excited was the white fungus seen growing under the rock. Its round and tube-like...a plant stemming out to find more space to grow. People say its impossible to discover life or evidence of life on other planets...but its what I do on a daily basis. Everything seems impossible until you put forth a little effort into it. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
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Drone caught Fastwalker speeding over Entre Ríos Province, Argentina
Drone caught Fastwalker speeding over Entre Ríos Province, Argentina
Anew drone footage shows one of the mysterious fastwalkers flying through our skies without we seeing them with the naked eye. The drone camera accidentally recorded the fastwalker moving at an incredible speed over Villa Valle María, Entre Ríos Province, Argentina on August 22, 2020.
The drone at that time was 400 meters high.and the video has been shot by Alan Gerstner in 1080p (Full HD) at 50 frames per second.
“Fastwalker” is a term used by NORAD and branches of armed forces to describe unidentified aerial phenomena moving and/or changing directions at high speed far beyond what current aerospace technology is capable of.
The fastwalker is marked with a yellow circle, in slow motion and in the last part of the video with zoom. The right image above has been edited and shows specific details of the fastwalker.
Nearly 4,000 light-years away, there’s a star called VY Canis Majoris. It is, in a word, huge. It’s 270,000 times as bright as the Sun, and if you plunked it down in the middle of our solar system, it would burn Saturn.
VY Canis Majoris is a hypergiant star. And perhaps it is no surprise that there’s a tech startup humbly eponymizing it: Hypergiant Industries, a company that aims, its website explains, to be “the guiding light that solves humanity’s most challenging problems.”
Hypergiant was founded just two years ago, in 2018, but the company has already worked with the likes of Booz Allen Hamilton, Shell, NASA, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Department of Homeland Security. The company spun up so quickly in part because it didn’t just build from scratch. It fused already-extant elements: buying image-analysis companies, investing in AI developers, and scooping up space technology, in the service of delivering on its slogan: “Tomorrowing today.”
That all sounds pretty legit: Serious government agencies, serious firms, serious fortune, and Fortune 500. And that clout is probably part of why Hypergiant’s R&D division can, without risking too much blowback, now take a risk on something farther-out: UFO research. This may actually be more grounded, and profitable, than it sounds.
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Hypergiant was founded by CEO Ben Lamm, a serial entrepreneur who sold his previous companies to big names like Zynga and Accenture. This company, though, he intends to hang on to.
Once Lamm decided he wanted to start Hypergiant, he said in an interview, he and his team started brainstorming where AI could still make a big difference. They settled on three main areas: infrastructure, like supply chains and logistics; defense; and space.
On the list of those projects on the company’s website, though, the new UFO endeavor isn’t listed. The company’s website does list some projects as “redacted,” however.
But Lamm does talk about UFOs, though he calls them UAP: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. It’s the term insiders and the government have introduced to ditch the baggage that the decades-old “UFO” has amassed. If you look at the intersections Hypergiant’s three main interests, says Lamm, “UAPs are the X at the cross center.”
He’s interested in finding out whether those UAP come from here, or out there. “The question of whether we’re alone in the universe is kind of like ‘Is the Earth flat?’” he says (“no” being the answer to both, in his mind).
The US government has recently vocalized its interest in UFOs: the Navy has crafted new guidelines for soldiers to report sightings; Congresspeople have gotten classified briefings; officials speak of strange stuff in the sky as an imposing national-security threat.
Notably, there’s no evidence that directly supports the interpretation that UFOs are of extraterrestrial origin. In fact, signs point in a different direction: the Navy has said that UAP sightings are on the rise “consistent with the wide proliferation and availability of inexpensive unmanned aerial systems,” which are just cheap drones. Military definitions of “UAP” include objects that are simply unauthorized, not necessarily unidentified.
Lamm accepts that the phenomena might just be earthly technology, and he wants Hypergiant to help find whatever truth is out there.
“If this is a brilliant lady and guy who build insane technology in a garage in Iowa, we should know about that,” he says. “Regardless of what the UAP is and whether it has a terrestrial origin or not, I think it’s important for people’s safety.”
Hypergiant’s research trajectory homes in on exactly what UAP investigators have never nabbed: hard data collected in a systematic way. In this case, data largely from Earth-watching satellites.
The company plans to scrutinize that data with software it’s developing called CONTACT: Contextually Organized Non Terrestrial Active Capture Tool. Although it’s still in early stages, it will, the company hopes, burrito together adapted versions of Hypergiant’s existing tools, like the Disaster Mapping System, and new ones, to parse orbital and aerial images in search of Anomalies.
In its future final form, CONTACT will analyze 3-dimensional satellite data. Or ”volumetric” information, that reveals not just where a craft is in terms of its latitude, longitude, and altitude. CONTACT will spot the differences between satellite images and throw up a flag if, say, a mothership flies into a field of view at noon when it wasn’t there yesterday, and then determine whether it’s actually just a jet at a weird angle.
For that task, the team is developing a neural network that can recognize known aircraft. “This is xyz helicopter,” says Lamm. “This is xyz Raptor. This is a Boeing 737.” Those go in the digital trash.
To help train these aircraft-spotting algorithms, Hypergiant is creating a siphon that sucks up public information about creepy sky sightings that people think are unidentified and tags them with locations and times. The software will then dive into satellite and drone archives, gather images of the right regions and hours, and use computer vision to find fliers. After comparing whatever it finds against known airline flight paths, and screening out all the Boeings, the researchers will use what’s left as training data, to help AI identify UAP in future observations.
Hypergiant positions CONTACT as a way to investigate cosmic mysteries: to toss out terrestrial knowns in search of possible extraterrestrial unknowns. But the tool would be equally adept at identifying terrestrial unknowns: experimental drones, and advanced military aircraft tests, for example. Because of this, Lamm believes that CONTACT would be of keen interest to officials with extremely earthly concerns. “It’s highly valuable to big defense contractors, the Air Force, radar operators,” says Lamm.
If things go well, which they often don’t in space, Hypergiant engineers will start gathering their own data. On a rocket scheduled to launch in March, Hypergiant will send up its first instrument that can take 3-D observations, in the form of a payload piggybacked on a larger satellite. Data should start to rain down in April or May.
Assuming that works, the first satellite of Lamm’s 30+ orbiter constellation will go up in the fall, on the Cygnus NG-14 and SpaceX SpX-21 missions. And then, presumably, the other 29 or so. And then, perhaps, the startup will data that will illuminate what we talk about when we talk about UAP, UFOs, or whatever acronyms someone comes up with later. To see whether or not all of that happens, we’ll have to wait till today becomes tomorrow.
Luis Elizondo, former head head of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), will join us to talk about recent developments. We’ll discuss the Department Of Defense’s announcement of the creation of a UAP Task Force, his History channel show Unidentified, the history of inaccurate statements made about him by the DoD and more.
Has the Biblical Moses Been Identified in Secular Egyptian Records? READ LATER
Has the Biblical Moses Been Identified in Secular Egyptian Records?
Moses was a prophet and a leader according to Abrahamic religions, but many scholars view him as a legendary figure rather than a real historic person. They do concede that a Moses-like figure could have existed in history, so is it possible to track this person down through historic records? It is the view of this writer that this is very possible and that in fact the Moses figure can be traced as that of the primary confidant of none other than Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut. The trail begins with Th Exodus.
The Exodus and Moses Birth
What is the date of the Exodus ? To find Moses in the Egyptian records, the first requirement is to fix the date of the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt.
If we use the Bible as our primary source, we know that this occurred during the ‘ New Kingdom ’ period of Egypt, when the powerful Egyptian families of the south reasserted themselves and drove out the Hyksos invaders , who had been entrenched in the power centers of northern Egypt for over 100 years.
The Hyksos’ stay in Egypt is known in history as the ‘Second Intermediate Period’. However, there is a difference of opinion among biblical scholars as to when, during the New Kingdom, the Exodus occurred. So, can we find anything to help us pin it down?
If one accepts the biblical dating of Solomon’s time , we know that he started building his famous temple in 960 BC, and the text of 1 Kings 6 v1 states that this was 480 years since the Exodus . Thus, we can fix a date for the Exodus of 1440 BC, when Moses was 80 years old. This would mean that he was born around 1520 BC and is an adult in the court between 1500 and 1480 BC.
Where Does the Name Moses Come From?
1500 – 1480 BC is the time of the pharaoh Queen Hatshepsut, and she had a close confidant, described by the well-known Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley in her book on Hatshepsut, as the ‘Greatest of the Great’.
The father of Hatshepsut was Thutmose l , and his name means ‘son of Thoth’, the god of wisdom, ‘mose’ meaning ‘son’. This is a common use of the word ‘mose’ as in ‘Ra meeses’, son of the sun god Ra, etc.
The biblical text tells us that it was the pharaoh’s daughter who named Moses. Exodus 2 v 10 states that, “she called him Moses because she said, ‘I drew him out of the water’”.
But we will not find a Prince Moses in the court in Egypt because another bible reference, Hebrews 11 v 24, states that “ Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter”.
Instead, we find that the close confidant of the queen is a man called ‘ Senenmut’. This appears to be a unique name, and one of its meanings is ‘mother’s brother’. Hatshepsut was born in the early 1530s, so they were close in age, so such a name makes sense.
Why Would the Royal Heiress Adopt a Slave Child?
If Hatshepsut is the woman who rescued and adopted Moses, what would make a woman of such high standing adopt a slave child? After her mother, Hatshepsut was the highest woman in the land, and such a woman would not consider saving the life of a slave child, let alone adopt him as her son. But when we look at the past, it is hard for us to remember that the people we are observing are just like us. They have thoughts and feelings like us, and Hatshepsut, at the time she found the abandoned baby in the basket, was a little girl, with the instincts to protect the helpless that we see so often in children. The text of Exodus 2 v 6 says “she saw the child, he was crying, and she took pity on him”.
Hatshepsut knew that he was a Hebrew child, as the rest of the verse tells us. But she was too young to look ahead and understand the enormity of her action. Almost immediately she must have formed an attachment to him, and as he grew the attachment grew, and her loyalty to him would alter the course of her life.
So, What Do We Know of Hatshepsut?
We know that Hatshepsut married her brother, Thutmose II, becoming his ‘Great Royal Wife’, his principal queen. She bears him two daughters but no sons and, following his death after a reign of only 13 years, his son by a harem woman is made the pharaoh, becoming Thutmose III .
This new pharaoh is an infant and Hatshepsut is made regent. She is effectively the ruler of the land, holding all the power already, and so it seems odd to Egyptologists that after just two years she makes herself pharaoh.
Did she have ambitions to put her adopted son on the throne? This she could do if she were pharaoh, but not if she were only regent. She reigns as the senior pharaoh, jointly with Thutmose III for 22 successful years, until her death.
She rules the country well. She sets up trading expeditions with the lands south of Egypt. She keeps a firm grip on Nubia, Egypt’s southern neighbor from which vast resources are acquired, including gold, cattle, slaves, and soldiers. She carries out extensive building works, both in Waset, the ancient name for Luxor, and around the country.
Life-sized statue of Hatshepsut. She is shown wearing the nemes-headcloth and shendyt-kilt, which are both traditional for an Egyptian king. The statue is more feminine, given the body structure.
She extends the Temple of Amun in Waset, erecting 4 huge obelisks in his honor, two of which are still there, one still standing. It bears engravings as clear as they were when it was erected 3,500 years ago, reading – “Raised for the glory my father Amun that I may be given life”. She builds a magnificent mortuary temple for herself , where the gods are honored, known as the Temple of Deir el Bahri, which still stands and is visited by thousands of tourists every year.
What Happened to Hatshepsut’s Memory After Her Death?
Hatshepsut ruled her country well and was buried honorably, probably with her father Thutmose l in tomb KV 20, a tomb she had built for a double burial.
After the death of his stepmother, Thutmose III continued his long reign of over 50 years, spending much of that time campaigning in the Levant, defeating the power of the Hittites to the northwest and the Mittani to the northeast and bringing the wealthy city states of Canaan firmly under Egyptian control. He is known as the ‘Napoleon of Egypt’ for his success as a military man.
But 30 years after her death, all records of Hatshepsut came under attack. Her statues were removed from the temples, smashed and buried in a pit, and her reliefs were excised from the walls of the temples. In subsequent years, Hatshepsut’s name was omitted from the King Lists , a thing done to no other pharaoh except the great heretic pharaoh Akenaten but not to the one previous female pharaoh Sobekneferu who reigned briefly at the end of the 12th Dynasty.
Removing all record of Hatshepsut’s name was intended, by the Egyptians, as the ultimate punishment, known as ‘damnatio memoriae’. All records of a person removed from history as if they had never lived resulted in the death of their soul for eternity. This effectively removed Hatshepsut from Egyptian history until all memory of her and why she had been so hated was lost.
She was forgotten for over 1,000 years, until vague references to her were found by the priest Manetho in 300 BC when he was asked by the Greeks in power at that time to search out and list the pharaohs of Egyptian history. He found references to a female pharaoh called Amensis, who was identified by later Egyptologists as Hatshepsut, and recorded her as the fifth pharaoh of the New Kingdom Dynasty, but nothing more was known of her.
It was thought that Hatshepsut’s mummy had been lost, but it has recently been identified lying abandoned in the tomb of her royal nurse Sitre, tomb KV 60. It was identified by a tooth fragment known to belong to Hatshepsut, and the mummy appeared to have been left without ceremony, perhaps in haste to hide it from those who would have destroyed it. The Egyptians believed that the preservation of the body was essential to survival in the afterlife, hence the lengths they went to, to preserve them. It was the ultimate punishment to destroy a person’s body.
So, Who Would Have Tried to Remove Hatshepsut From History?
The action against Hatshepsut’s (and Senemut’s) memory occurs either late in the reign of Thutmose III, when his son Amenhotep II was sharing the throne, or after Thutmose’s death, when Amenhotep II was reigning alone. It seems therefore to be Amenhotep II who is responsible for this destruction.
He would be at the correct time to see the return of Moses demanding the release of the Hebrew slaves. The story of the Exodus describes great hardship for Egypt, and one can understand Amenhotep’s fury against both Hatshepsut and Senenmut and wishing to destroy their memory. Being wiped out of history for the Egyptians was tantamount to eternal damnation.
When Were Hatshepsut’s Statues Discovered and What Did They Reveal?
During the 1800s, wealthy gentlemen such as James Breasted went to Egypt specifically with the hope of finding evidence to prove the biblical record . These men effectively established the science of Egyptology.
But at that time, the statues of Hatshepsut still lay buried in the pit where they were thrown 30 years after her death. They remained there undiscovered until found by Herbert Winlock an American Egyptologist employed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Boston, United States in 1927, by which time the world at large was no longer interested in trying to prove the Bible. But not only was a hoard of statues of Hatshepsut discovered just east of the first court of her mortuary temple at Deir el Bahri. Another pit was found, containing over 20 hard stone statues of Senenmut, a huge number for a non-royal. In fact, to date, 26 hard stone statues of Senenmut have been identified which causes Egyptologists to wonder what was it about this man that he was given such status.
Kneeling statue of Senenmut, Chief Steward of Queen Hatshepsut.
The first thing to confront us when looking at the records of Senenmut are the many beautiful statues of him as a young lad holding Hatshepsut’s elder daughter, the Princess Neferure . She is there wrapped in his cloak as a baby as he sits on the ground.
He is holding her in his arms the way a woman would hold a child. In some examples he sits on a chair holding her on his lap. Some are of him standing holding Neferure as a toddler, but altogether they show a level of intimacy between the two of them, as we would have in photos taken of our children together.
He is said to be the tutor to Neferure, but statues of a royal child being held like this had never been made before this date. And this is breaking protocol because a non-royal is not allowed to touch a royal child in this way.
And we know that Senenmut is not royal because he names his parents in one of his tombs, and they have no titles at all, showing that they are of humble origin. But the extraordinary thing about Senenmut is that he is treated as a royal.
He has two beautiful tombs built for himself, one, TT 353 has the oldest known star chart, a work of great expertise, on the ceiling. And this tomb is actually within the sacred precinct of Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple. This is a sacred space and to have Senenmut’s tomb in such a place, sacred in itself, but also the personal space of the pharaoh, shows a degree of closeness between them that is shocking, unless there is an explanation for it.
The other tomb TT 71 has decorations described by the Egyptologist Peter Dorman in the book ‘ Hatshepsut from Queen to Pharaoh’ , page 131 as being clearly done “by artists from the royal ateliers”. Dorman also dismisses the suggestion that Senenmut may have been Hatshepsut’s lover. In this tomb TT 71, a sarcophagus belonging to Senenmut was found. It is made of quartzite, a material only allowed to be used by the royals.
We know that Moses neither dies nor is buried in Egypt. And Senenmut is not buried in either of his tombs but disappears from Egyptian records.
Besides the statues of Senenmut holding the infant princess, there are many statues made of him making offerings to the gods. These statues were made to stand in the presence of the gods, and again, it is not permitted for a non-royal to enter the presence of the gods; having your statue there was the equivalent of you being there in person.
Here again he is treated as a royal. And all these statues are of a very young man, so it must be Hatshepsut who ordered these statues to be made. To be in the presence of the gods was a very favored position, because you would receive the continual blessings of the gods.
We also find a number of reliefs carved in the most sacred space of all in the Deir el Bahri Temple, in the sanctuary of Amun itself. One is even carved in the back wall of the sanctuary, where the ceremonial boat which carried the idol of Amun was placed overnight before its return journey to Waset. For the images of a common citizen to be placed in such a sacred space, breaks every rule in the book, but Hatshepsut must have done this, and done it because Senenmut was the son she had adopted, and she was ambitious for him to rise high in Egypt.
During the course of his years at the court of Hatshepsut, Senenmut is acknowledged by experts in Egyptology, to have held many of the highest titles in the land, showing that he truly was the ‘Greatest of the Great’, in Hatshepsut’s court.
Senemut’s high standing in the court during the reign of Hatshepsut, coupled with him being wiped from the Egyptian historical narrative, and the correlation between the biblical and Egyptian dating, would suggest therefore that he was the person we know from the Bible as Moses.
Having discovered the story of Hatshepsut and Senenmut, I decided to present it as an historical novel. It was published in October 2018 by Mirador. It is called ‘ The King and her children’ and is available from Waterstones and Amazon.
Top image: Moses crossing the Red Sea. Source: Davy Cheng / Adobe Stock.
Thunderstorms on Jupiter are so strong that ammonia-rich hail known as "mushballs" may fall from the sky.
New observations from NASA's Juno spacecraftat the gas giant planet could have implications for our understanding of giant planet atmospheres in general, which are largely made of gas and are subject to much higher pressures than what we are familiar with on Earth.
These observations also suggest that Jupiter has "shallow lightning", which happens in clouds containing ammonia and water. That's quite different than on Earth, where lightning originates in water clouds, according to a NASA statement.
This illustration uses data from NASA's Juno spacecraft to depict electrical storms on Jupiter. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Heidi N. Becker/Koji Kuramura)
"Juno's close flybys of the cloud tops allowed us to see something surprising – smaller, shallower flashes – originating at much higher altitudes in Jupiter's atmosphere than previously assumed possible," Heidi Becker, Juno's radiation monitoring investigation lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said in the same statement. Becker is also lead author of a new paper in Nature, one of three new studies describing Juno's work.
Thunderstorms on Jupiter and Earth do have one thing in common: these natural phenomena move water about in the atmospheres of both planets. When NASA's Voyager spacecraft first spotted lightning at Jupiter in 1979, it was thought that both planets had similar kinds of lightning.
This infographic shows the evolutionary process of “shallow lightning” and "mushballs" on Jupiter. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/CNRS)
Voyager spotted lightning in Jupiter's cloud tops, which suggested the phenomenon originated in deep water clouds. Juno's new observations of nighttime flashes on Jupiter, however, reveal a more subtle story.
On Jupiter, the thunderstorms are thought to form about 31 miles (50 km) below the visible bands and storms on the planet, where temperatures are close to the freezing point of water. Some of these storms are so powerful that they whisk crystal water-ice into the planet's upper atmosphere.
"At these altitudes, the ammonia acts like an antifreeze, lowering the melting point of water ice and allowing the formation of a cloud with ammonia-water liquid," Becker added in the same statement. "In this new state, falling droplets of ammonia-water liquid can collide with the upgoing water-ice crystals and electrify the clouds. This was a big surprise, as ammonia-water clouds do not exist on Earth."
The shallow lightning may also show why ammonia appears to be missing (or depleted) from Jupiter's atmosphere, and why ammonia appears in different concentrations in Jupiter's atmosphere.
"Previously, scientists realized there were small pockets of missing ammonia, but no one realized how deep these pockets went or that they covered most of Jupiter," Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said in the same statement.
"We were struggling to explain the ammonia depletion with ammonia-water rain alone," Bolton added, "but the rain couldn't go deep enough to match the observations. I realized a solid, like a hailstone, might go deeper and take up more ammonia. When Heidi discovered shallow lightning, we realized we had evidence that ammonia mixes with water high in the atmosphere, and thus the lightning was a key piece of the puzzle."
The "mushballs" and depleted ammonia are described further in work published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets in two parts, available here and here. When ice crystals combine with ammonia (a plentiful substance in Jupiter's atmosphere), the ammonia creates an "antifreeze" effect and changes the ammonia from ice to liquid.
When the mushballs fall into Jupiter's lower atmosphere, they drag down ammonia and water with them before eventually evaporating in the warmer temperatures. "That explains why we don't see much of it in these places with Juno's microwave radiometer," Tristan Guillot, a Juno co-investigator from the University of Côte d'Azur in Nice, France, and lead author of the two-part paper on ammonia and the mushballs, said in the NASA statement.
"As it turned out, the ammonia isn't actually missing; it is just transported down while in disguise, having cloaked itself by mixing with water," Bolton added. "The solution is very simple and elegant with this theory: When the water and ammonia are in a liquid state, they are invisible to us until they reach a depth where they evaporate – and that is quite deep."
Juno arrived at Jupiter almost exactly four years ago, on July 4, 2016, to better understand the origin and evolution of the planet. Juno's findings not only inform our understanding of solar system planets but also gas giant exoplanets, especially those of a similar size and formation history to planets in our solar system.
Editor's Note:This article was updated with new information, video and images from NASA.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow uson Twitter @Spacedotcomand on Facebook.
In space, nobody can hear you scream, but with the right equipment, it is possible to detect a roar. That's what scientists discovered back in 2006 when they began to look for distant signals in the universe using a complex instrument fixed to a huge balloon that was sent to space. The instrument was able to pick up radio waves from the heat of distant stars, but what came through that year was nothing short of astounding.
As the instrument listened from a height of about 23 miles (37 kilometers), it picked up a signal that was six-times louder than expected by cosmologists. Because it was too loud to be early stars and far greater than the predicted combined radio emission from distant galaxies, the powerful signal caused great puzzlement. And scientists still don't know what is causing it, even today. What's more, it could hamper efforts to search for signals from the first stars that formed after the Big Bang.
The mission's science goals — as ARCADE floated high above Earth's atmosphere, free of interference from our planet — were to find heat from the first generation of stars, search for particle physics relics from the Big Bang and observe the formation of the first stars and galaxies. It accomplished these goals by scanning 7% of the night sky for radio signals, since distant light becomes radio waves as it loses energy over distance.
ARCADE was able to make "absolutely calibrated zero-level" measurements, which means it was measuring the actual brightness of something in real physical terms rather than relative terms. This was different from typical radio telescopes, which observe and contrast two points in the sky. By looking at all of the "light" and comparing it to a blackbody source, ARCADE was able to see the combination of many dim sources. It was then that the intensity of one particular signal became apparent, albeit over many months.
"While it might make a good movie to see us surprised when we see the light meter pop over to a value six-times what was expected, we actually spent years getting ready for our balloon flight and a very busy night taking data," said NASA scientist Dale J. Fixsen. "It then took months of data analysis to first separate instrumental effects from the signal and then to separate galactic radiation from the signal. So the surprise was gradually revealed over months." That said, the impact was still huge.
Since then, scientists have looked to see where the radiation is coming from while looking to describe the properties of the signal. The latter became apparent rather quickly.
"It's a diffuse signal coming from all directions, so it is not caused by any one single object," said Al Kogut, who headed the ARCADE team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "The signal also has a frequency spectrum, or 'color,' that is similar to radio emission from our own Milky Way galaxy."
Scientists call the signal "radio synchrotron background" — background being an emission from many individual sources and blending together into a diffuse glow. But because the "space roar" is caused by synchrotron radiation, a type of emission from high-energy charged particles in magnetic fields, and because every source has the same characteristic spectrum, pinpointing the origin of this intense signal is difficult.
"It has been known since the late 1960s that the combined radio emission from distant galaxies should form a diffuse radio background coming from all directions," Kogut told All About Space in an email. "The space roar is similar to this expected signal, but there doesn't seem to be six-times more galaxies in the distant universe to make up the difference, which could point to something new and exciting as the source."
The Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission (ARCADE) mission's balloon is inflated prior to launch (Image credit: NASA)
Is the space roar coming from the Milky Way?
Whether or not this source is inside or outside the Milky Way is under debate.
"There are good arguments why it cannot be coming from within the Milky Way, and good arguments for why it cannot be coming from outside the galaxy," Kogut said.
One reason it probably isn't coming from within our galaxy is because the roar doesn't seem to follow the spatial distribution of Milky Way radio emission. But nobody is saying for certain that the signal isn't from a source closer to home — only that the smart money is on it coming from elsewhere.
"I wouldn't quite say that scientists have largely ruled out the possibility of the radio synchrotron background originating from our galaxy," said Jack Singal, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Richmond in Virginia, who recently led a workshop on the matter. "However, I would say that this explanation does seem to be less likely.
"The primary reason is that it would make our galaxy completely unlike any similar spiral galaxy, which as far as we can tell do not exhibit the sort of giant, spherical, radio-emitting halo extending far beyond the galactic disk that would be required. There are other issues as well, such as that it would require a complete rethinking of our models of the galactic magnetic field."
Fixsen agrees wholeheartedly. "In other spiral galaxies there is a close relation between the infrared and radio emission, even in small sections of these others," he said. "So, if it is from a halo around our galaxy, it would make the Milky Way a weird galaxy, while in most other respects it seems like a 'normal' spiral galaxy."
For those reasons, experts think the signal is primarily extragalactic in origin. "It would make it the most interesting photon background in the sky at the moment because the source population is completely unknown," Singal said. But since the universe is so vast this doesn't exactly narrow things down that much, which is why scientists have been working hard to come up with multiple theories for the signal's source.
American physicist David Brown, for example, said the space roar could be "the first great empirical success of M-theory," a broad mathematical framework encompassing string theory. "There might be a Fredkin-Wolfram automaton spread across multitudes of alternate universes, yielding recurrent physical time with endless repetitions of all possible physical events," Brown wrote on the FQXi Community blog. What this supposes is that the early universe had much more real matter than today, accounting for the powerful radio signal.
The space roar could be "the first great empirical success of M-theory," a broad mathematical framework encompassing string theory.
- Physicist David Brown
But if that is too far out, there are other theories to get your teeth into. "Radio astronomers have looked at the sky and have identified a couple of types of synchrotron sources," Fixsen said.
Synchrotron radiation is easy to make, he said. "All you need is energetic particles and a magnetic field, and there are energetic particles everywhere, produced by supernovas, stellar winds, black holes, even OB stars," which are hot, massive stars of spectral type O or early-type B. "Intergalactic space seems to be filled with very hot gas, so if intergalactic magnetic fields were strong enough [stronger than predicted], they could generate smooth synchrotron radiation," he said.
It is also known that synchrotron radiation is associated with star production. "This also generates infrared radiation, hence the close correlation," Fixsen said. "But perhaps the first stars generated synchrotron radiation yet, before metals were produced, they did not generate very much infrared radiation. Or perhaps there is some process that we haven't thought of yet."
So what does this leave us with? "Possible sources include either diffuse large-scale mechanisms such as turbulently merging clusters of galaxies, or an entirely new class of heretofore unknown incredibly numerous individual sources of radio emission in the universe," Singal said. "But anything in that regard is highly speculative at the moment, and some suggestions that have been raised include annihilating dark matter, supernovae of the first generations of stars and many others."
Some scientists have suggested gases in large clusters of galaxies could be the source, although it's unlikely ARCADE's instruments would have been able to detect radiation from any of them. Similarly, there is a chance that the signal was detected from the earliest stars or that it is originating from lots of otherwise dim radio galaxies, the accumulative effect of which is being picked up. But if this was the case then they'd have to be packed incredibly tightly, to the point that there is no gap between them, which appears unlikely.
Could gases from large clusters of galaxies be the source of the space roar? (Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, RELICS)
How the 13-year-old mystery will be solved
"Of course, there is also the possibility that there has been a coincidence of errors among ARCADE and the other measurements to date that have mismeasured the level of the radio synchrotron background," Singal said. "This does seem unlikely, given that these are very different instruments measuring in quite different frequency bands."
Whatever the signal is, it's also causing issues when it comes to detecting other space objects. As NASA has pointed out in the past, the earliest stars are hidden behind the space roar, and that is making them more difficult to detect. It's as if the universe is giving with one hand and taking with another, but to have uncovered something so unusual is immensely exciting. When you're ruling out an origin from primordial stars and known radio sources such as gas in the outermost halo of our galaxy, it's a mystery any scientist would savour with relish.
"Beyond that, I think we may need some brilliant new origin hypothesis that nobody has thought of yet."
- Astrophysicist Jack Singal
In order for scientists to finally resolve this 13-year conundrum, more research and evidence is sorely needed. As it stands, there is a debate over sending ARCADE back up given the advent of new technology, and given its precise set of instruments, immersed in more than 500 gallons of ultra-cold liquid helium to make them even more sensitive, there would certainly be no harm in doing so.
But there are also new projects emerging which could help. "One of them will use the 300-foot [91 meter] radio telescope at Green Bank, West Virginia, to map the radio sky to higher precision than before," Kogut said. "Perhaps this will shed some light on the mystery."
Singal certainly hopes so. He is working on the Green Bank Telescope project, making use of the largest clear-aperture radio telescope in the world to measure the level of the background as a primary, rather than ancillary goal. It will do this using a definitive, purpose-built, absolutely calibrated zero-level measurement taken at the megahertz (MHz) frequencies where the radio sky is brightest. (A megahertz is equal to a million hertz.)
"This measurement is currently being developed by a team which I am on, utilizing custom instrumentation which will be mounted on the telescope," Singal explained. There is also going to be another measurement attempt, this one looking to measure or further limit the so-called "anisotropy," or variation of the radio synchrotron background, again at the MHz frequencies where it dominates.
"That is not its absolute level, but rather the small differences from place to place in the sky," Singal said. "With some collaborators, I am trying a first attempt at that using the Low-Frequency Array [LOFAR] in The Netherlands. Both of these measurements in concert can help nail down whether the radio synchrotron background is primarily galactic or extragalactic in origin. Beyond that, I think we may need some brilliant new origin hypothesis that nobody has thought of yet."
Additional resources:
Read more about the Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission (ARCADE) mission from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Researchers have discovered a giant atmospheric wave-like phenomenon in Venus’ lower atmosphere, unlike anything else seen in the solar system. Evidence shows it has existed since at least 1983, but went completely undetected until now.
Sequence of infrared images of the lower clouds on Venus, showing a consistent pattern of a planetary-scale cloud discontinuity. This type of giant atmospheric wave has never been before on any other planets in our solar system.
Scientists have announced something new and unexpected: a giant atmospheric “wave” or disruption in Venus’ lower atmosphere. It’s unlike anything else seen in the solar system. The researchers say it has been rapidly moving at about 30 miles (50 km) above the planet’s surface for at least 35 years. It went completely undetected until now.
The amazing discovery is reported in a new peer-reviewed study, published May 27, 2020, in Geophysical Research Letters.
Venus is the planet next-inward to the sun from Earth. It’s completely covered by thick clouds. These clouds are so dense that we can’t peer beneath them to view Venus’ surface. For this reason, the lower atmosphere and surface of Venus have remained largely mysterious. We know the clouds of Venus consist mostly of carbon dioxide, with droplets of sulphuric acid. Strong wind patterns have been observed before in the atmosphere of Venus in ultraviolet and infrared light.
The new atmospheric feature – a giant wall of acidic clouds – is different from previous observations in part because it’s the first huge atmospheric wave found at the lower cloud level in Venus’ atmosphere, at altitudes between 29.5 and 35 miles (47.5 and 56.5 km). This wall of clouds is massive, extending as far as 4,700 miles (7,500 km) across the equator of Venus, from 30 degrees north to 40 degrees south.
According to the researchers, it rotates around the planet in five days, at about 204 miles per hour (328 kph). It’s been doing that since at least 1983.
The Japanese space agency JAXA’s Venus orbiter Akatsuki made the discovery. The phenomenon looked like an atmospheric wave, only much larger than what’s typically seen. It was found by Akatsuki as the spacecraft acquired detailed infrared images of Venus’ nightside, studying the mid and lower layers of the planet’s atmosphere.
Animation showing Venus’s lower clouds (about 30 miles/ 50 km above the surface) in infrared light. Bright clouds are more transparent to thermal radiation emitted from the ground than darker clouds.
Pedro Machado – of the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences, part of the University of Lisbon in Portugal – said in a statement:
If this happened on Earth, this would be a frontal surface at the scale of the planet, and that’s incredible. Under the follow-up campaign, we went back to images I took in the infrared in 2012 with the Galileo National Telescope in the Canary Islands, and we found precisely the same disruption.
The Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences has had a long-running research program studying Venus’ winds. It also contributed follow-up observations with NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii, coordinated with the new observations from Akatsuki.
Huge cloud patterns have been observed before in Venus’ atmosphere, such as the Y wave, a dark Y-shaped structure found in the upper atmosphere that covers nearly the whole planetary disk. It is only visible when observed in ultraviolet light. There is also a 6,200-mile-long (10,000-km-long) bow-shaped stationary wave, also in the upper clouds layers, thought to be caused by the planet’s huge mountain ranges.
Meanwhile, in visible light, Venus’ dense atmosphere looks very bland.
Example of undulations behind the atmospheric discontinuity on the night side of Venus on April 15, 2016.
Finding this phenomenon in the lower atmosphere is interesting, not only because it wasn’t noticed before, but also because this region in the atmosphere of Venus is thought to be responsible for the planet’s hellish greenhouse effect. This effect causes the heat of the sun to be retained near Venus’ surface. It keeps the surface at a sizzling temperature of 869 degrees Fahrenheit (465 degrees Celsius), hot enough to melt lead. The dynamics of Venus’ atmosphere are still not well understood overall, so planetary-scale waves such as this might help scientists better understand how the planet’s surface and atmosphere interact.
Since the disruption cannot be observed in the ultraviolet images sensing the top of the clouds at about 43-mile (70-km) height, confirming its wave nature is of critical importance. We would have finally found a wave transporting momentum and energy from the deep atmosphere and dissipating before arriving at the top of the clouds. It would therefore be depositing momentum precisely at the level where we observe the fastest winds of the so-called atmospheric super-rotation of Venus, whose mechanisms have been a long-time mystery.
Ultraviolet image of the Y wave in Venus’ upper atmosphere, from the Pioneer Venus Orbiter on February 26, 1979.
This newly discovered cloud front on Venus is essentially meteorological. Basically, we’re talking here about the weather on Venus. The feature appears to be unique; it’s never been seen before on any other planets in the solar system. It’s therefore difficult to know for certain what is happening, even though the researchers have devised computer simulations to try to mimic the cloud feature. The mechanisms that can create such a giant and long-lasting atmospheric wave are still unknown.
One possibility is that this atmospheric disruption may be a physical manifestation of a type of Kelvin wave, a class of atmospheric gravity wave that shares some important common features with this disruption. Kelvin waves can maintain their shape over long periods of time, and in this case, propagate in the same direction as Venus’ super-rotating winds. Kelvin waves can also interact with other types of atmospheric waves, such as Rossby waves, which naturally occur as a result of the rotation of the planet. Like Kelvin waves, they can be seen in both atmospheres and oceans. On Venus, they may transport energy from the super-rotation of the atmosphere – where the atmosphere rotates faster than the planet itself – to the equator.
The researchers looked at images of Venus going as far back as 1983. They were able to confirm the presence of the same features that were seen by Akatsuki. But how did this particular – and huge – wind formation go unnoticed for so long? According to Machado:
… we needed access to a large, growing and scattered collection of images of Venus gathered in the recent decades with different telescopes.
Javier Peralta, a team member of the Akatsuki mission who led the new study.
Finding such a large atmospheric phenomenon on Venus, after its being undetected for so long, was a big surprise for scientists. The discovery will help them learn more about the planet’s complex atmosphere and how it interacts with the planet itself.
Bottom line: Researchers have discovered a giant atmospheric wave-like phenomenon in Venus’ lower atmosphere, something not seen anywhere else in the solar system.
An astronaut is reporting a possible UFO sighting from the International Space Station. Plus, Finnish researchers claim they’ve found the elusive cure for a hangover. Richard Southern reports.
A new study suggests that distant stars in our Milky Way galaxy might be orbited by as many as 7 Earth-like planets, in the absence of a gas giant planet like Jupiter.
Artist’s concept of habitable zones – zones in which liquid water can exist – in our solar system in contrast to the Trappist-1 system, about 40 light-years away. The Trappist-1 system has 3 planets in its habitable zone (the green area). Our solar system has just 1, our Earth.
A new computer model developed by astrobiologists at University of California, Riverside suggests that – in the absence of a gas giant planet like Jupiter – some stars in our Milky Way galaxy could have as many as seven Earth-like planets. That’s in contrast to our solar system, which has a Jupiter and only one planet in its habitable zone, our own Earth.
So far, Earth is the only planet in the universe where we know for certain life exists. It’s only logical that life exists elsewhere, though. When astrobiologists talk about other worlds that might host life, they tend to focus on those in the habitable zone, the zone around a star where liquid water can exist. Astrobiologist Stephen Kane has been studying the nearby planetary system system Trappist-1, which caused a sensation when it was discovered this system has at least seven planets, including three Earth-like planets in its habitable zone. Kane said in a statement:
This made me wonder about the maximum number of habitable planets it’s possible for a star to have, and why our star only has one. It didn’t seem fair!
Kane’s team created a computer model simulating planets of various sizes orbiting their stars. An algorithm accounted for gravitational forces and helped test how the planets interacted with each other over millions of years. The researchers found that it’s possible for some stars to support as many as seven planets in the habitable zone. Kane commented:
More than seven, and the planets become too close to each other and destabilize each other’s orbits.
This is Jupiter as seen by the Juno spacecraft in April 2018. Does this giant world prevent our solar system from having more than one inhabited planet?
Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ SwRI/ MSSS/ Gerald Eichstad/ Sean Doran.
What determines this abundance of planets in a star’s habitable zone? The answer doesn’t lie within the star itself. These scientists said a star like our sun could potentially support six planets with liquid water. But it doesn’t. Why?
One factor is the shape of the planets’ orbits. It helps, these scientists explained, if the planets’ movements in orbit around their star are more circular than, for example, Earth’s orbit. Our planet’s orbit is very nearly circular, but still somewhat elliptical, like a circle someone sat down on. Earth’s elliptical orbit explains why our planet is closest to the sun in early January (Northern Hemisphere winter) and farthest from the sun in early July (Northern Hemisphere summer). A more circular orbit – rather than a more eccentric or irregular orbit – minimizes close contacts between planets in the system and helps maintain stable orbits, these scientists explained. And it makes sense that a stable orbit – a constant distance from a star – would be beneficial to life as it’s evolving. It wouldn’t do to have ice ages coming and going on timescales of hundreds of years, for example – rather than thousands as on our own planet – as you would have on a planet with a highly elliptical 100+-year orbit.
There’s also another big factor in our solar system that has kept more planets from being in our sun’s habitable zone. And that is our solar system’s biggest planet, giant Jupiter. Jupiter has a mass 2 1/2 times that of all the other planets in the solar system combined. Kane explained:
It has a big effect on the habitability of our solar system because it’s massive and disturbs other orbits.
These scientists are the first to point out that the Trappist-1 system is a rarity for earthly astronomers thus far; only a handful of stars are known to have multiple planets in their habitable zones. Moving forward, Kane plans to search for more stars like Trappist-1, surrounded entirely by smaller planets with no big gas giants like Jupiter. He said these stars will be prime targets for direct imaging with NASA telescopes like the one at Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Habitable Exoplanet Observatory.
Kane’s study identified one such star – Beta Canum Venaticorum, aka Beta CVn – which is relatively close by at 27 light-years. Because it doesn’t have a Jupiter-like planet, it will be included as one of the stars checked for multiple habitable zone planets, these scientists said.
Bottom line:A new study suggests that some stars could have up to 7 planets in their habitable zones.
In a first, astronomers spotted a space rock turning into a comet
In a first, astronomers spotted a space rock turning into a comet
The process won’t be complete until 2063
Space rocks called centaurs could someday become brilliant comets, like the one shown in this artist’s illustration. Astronomers have spotted a centaur that is expected to become a comet in about four decades.
Like the mythical half-human, half-horse creatures, centaurs in the solar system are hybrids between asteroids and comets. Now, astronomers have caught one morphing from one type of space rock to the other, potentially giving scientists an unprecedented chance to watch a comet form in real time in the decades to come.
“We have an opportunity here to see the birth of a comet as it starts to become active,” says planetary scientist Kat Volk of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
The object, called P/2019 LD2, was discovered by the ATLAS telescope in Hawaii in May. Its orbit suggests that it’s a centaur, a class of rocky and icy objects with unstable orbits. Because of that mixed composition and potential to move around the solar system, astronomers have long suspected that centaurs are a missing link between small icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune and comets that regularly visit the inner solar system (SN: 11/19/94).
These “short-period” comets, which are thought to originate from icy objects in the Kuiper Belt, orbit the sun once a decade or so, and make repeat appearances in Earth’s skies. (Long-period comets, like Halley’s Comet, which visits the inner solar system once a century, probably originate even farther from the sun, in the Oort cloud (SN: 10/25/13).)
All previously found short-period comets were spotted only after they had transitioned into comets (SN:8/6/14). But LD2 just came in from the Kuiper Belt recently and will become a comet in as little as 43 years, Volk and colleagues report August 10 at arXiv.org.
“It’s weird to think that this object should be becoming a comet when I’m retiring,” Volk says.
In 2019, she and colleagues showed that there’s a region of space just beyond Jupiter that they call the “Gateway”. In this area, small planetary objects hang out while warming up and transitioning from outer solar system ice balls to inner solar system comets with their long tails. It’s like a comet incubator, says planetary scientist Gal Sarid of the SETI Institute, who is based in Rockville, Md.
After hearing about LD2, Volk, Sarid and their colleagues simulated thousands of possible trajectories to see where the object had been and where it is going. LD2’s orbit probably took it near Saturn around 1850, and it entered its current orbit past Jupiter after a close encounter with the gas giant in 2017, the team found. The object will leave its present orbit and move in toward the sun in 2063, where heat from the sun will probably sublimate LD2’s volatile elements, giving it a bright cometary tail, the researchers say.
“This will be the first ever comet that we know its history, because we’ve seen it before being a comet,” Sarid says.
The fact that LD2 is fairly new to the inner reaches of the solar system suggests that it’s made of relatively pristine material that has been in the back of the solar system’s freezer for billions of years, unaltered by heat from the sun. That would make it a time capsule of the early solar system. Studying its composition could help planetary scientists learn what the first planets were made of.
The orbital analysis looks “very reasonable,” says Henry Hsieh, a planetary astronomer with the Planetary Science Institute who is based in Honolulu and was not involved in the study. But studying just one transition object is not enough to open the solar system time capsule.
“What we really need to do is study many of these,” he says. “Study this one first, and then study more of them, and figure out whether this object is an outlier or whether we see a consistent picture.” Future sky surveys, like the ones planned using the future Vera Rubin Observatory (SN: 1/10/20), should discover more balls of ice shifting into comets.
Sarid and colleagues think LD2 could be a good target for a spacecraft to visit. NASA has considered sending spacecraft to centaurs, although no missions have been selected for development yet. But considering that LD2 will become a comet in just a few decades, scientists don’t have much time to plan, build and launch a mission to visit it. “The windows are closing,” Sarid says. “We really need to be doing this now.”
August 10 612 BC: Nineveh, the Largest City in the World, Fell
Assyrian soldiers carry beheaded heads of their prisoners as depicted on a wall in the South-West Palace at Nineveh, during the “First” Fall of Neneveh.
Source: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin / CC BY-SA 4.0
August 10 612 BC: Nineveh, the Largest City in the World, Fell
On this day, 2,632 years ago, the ancient metropolis of Nineveh fell. “ ABC 3 ” is a historiographical text from ancient Babylonia which records August 10th 612 BC as the date of this dramatic occurrence. At that time, Nineveh was the largest city in the world and the capital of Assyria. This all came to an abrupt end when Nabopolassar, the Chaldean king of Babylonia and a central figure in the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, siezed Nineveh. This marked what historians know as one of the most shocking events in ancient history: The “First” Fall of Nineveh. The “second” Fall of Nineveh occurred in 2015 with more destruction by ISIS.
The Discovery of Nineveh: A Unparalleled Archaeological Find
Ancient Mesopotamia was a cradle of civilization in the northern part of western Asia’s Fertile Crescent, corresponding to modern Iraq, Kuwait, eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and areas along the Turkish–Syrian and Iran–Iraq borders. In 1839, Paul-Émile Botta of France excavated a series of mounds in the Iraqi desert that led to the incredible discovery of Nineveh, the vast ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia located on the outskirts of modern-day Mosul in northern Iraq.
This discovery in mid-19th-century Europe was truly amazing, because it meant that at least one of the ancient cities and cultures mentioned in the Bible actually existed. This gave the Holy Bible a breath of newfound esteem at a time when scientists were demanding the empirical testing of supernatural claims, replacing time worn myths with logic and reason. The discovery of ancient Nineveh changed everything.
Ancient Nineveh: A Royal City Envied Far And Wide
The Assyrian Empire started to become unstable after the death of King Aššurbanipal in 631 BC when the Babylonians ended their independence. Around 627 AD the Babylonian general Nabopolassar defeated the Assyrians in a battle near Babylon and became king, marking the beginning of the Babylonian Empire which lasted until Nineveh was captured by the Persian Cyrus the Great in October 539 AD.
Assyrian military campaign in southern Mesopotamia, 640-620 BC, from an alabaster bas-relief located in the South-West Palace at Nineveh.
Although he had liberated Babylonia, Nabopolassar also wanted destroy its capital cities including the religious center at Aššur, the first Assyrian city, and the administrative center at Nineveh. To prevent this, which would have caused a major shift of power in the Near East, the Egyptians offered military support to Assyria. The Fall of Nineveh Chronicle says that on 25 July 616 AD Nabopolassar defeated an Assyrian force on the banks of the Euphrates to the south of Harran. However, soon after he retreated when an Egyptian army closed on his forces. By at the end of the following year, the Medes, a tribal federation living in modern Iran, seized the moment, amidst all the unrest, and had took control of Nineveh.
This image, taken in April 2017 during a UNESCO mission to Nineveh, which was heavily destroyed and excavated by ISIS in the "second" Fall of Nineveh in 2015.
Nabopolassar tactfully signed a treaty with the Medes king Umakištar (Cyaxares). The Babylonian crown prince Nabû-kudurru-usur (Nebuchadnezzar) is said to have married Amytis, who many historians hold to have been the daughter of Cyaxares' son Astyages. The joint Medes-Babylonian army invaded Nineveh in May 612 AD the city finally fell in July. According to an article on Livius after the suicide of King Sin-šar-iškun, “the looting of Nineveh continued until 10 August, when the Medes finally went home,” and that the fall of Nineveh “shocked the ancient world.” From distant Greece, the poet Phocylides of Miletus reported of the destruction of this ancient city
ISIS soldiers in the Museum of Mosul destroying ancient Nineveh artifacts with sledgehammers in 2015. (Aljazeera / Screenshot)
2015: The “Second” Fall of Nineveh By ISIS Destruction
While Nineveh fell for the first time over 2500 years ago, destruction of the ancient city continued in 2015 when a priceless Assyrian winged bull was demolished at the Nineveh site. An article in The Guardian discussing the destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) described the destruction as a “war crime.” At the same time, the terrorist organization attempted to attract a sympathetic audience to gain new recruits in their homeland, while provoking reactions in the West.
A 2015 Aljazeera video shows the destruction of several 7th century artifacts from Nineveh on February 26 2015, when ISIS publicly destroyed the Mosul Museum. Many other artifacts were stolen and put up for sale in foreign markets. However in 2019, the BBC announced that since Iraqi troops recaptured Mosul in 2017, part of the Mosul Museum has been restored and reopened to exhibit contemporary art, while the rest of the museum remains closed “to protect what is left,” said the museum director. If the first Fall of Nineveh was incredible, the second fall of Nineveh was both tragic and disturbing.
Top image: Assyrian soldiers carry beheaded heads of their prisoners as depicted on a wall in the South-West Palace at Nineveh, during the “First” Fall of Neneveh.
Russian astronaut Ivan Vagner got on Twitter and posted a video from the space station. In it are five glowing objects of unknown origin. One leading and four lined up in military formation. Even Ivan states, "In the video, you will see something else, not only the aurora." Ivan give a subtle hint that its aliens...that what he recorded was a fleet of UFOs. He is correct. I made some close up screenshots and one was really focused. The UFOs are colorful, pink purple and green. All calming colors, meaning the aliens can identify the ships on sight. Absolutely amazing confession from a Russian Astronaut. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Fireball Breaks Into Three Over New York State, Aug 20, 2020, UFO Sighting News. MUFON Report.
Fireball Breaks Into Three Over New York State,Aug 20, 2020, UFO Sighting News. MUFON Report.
Date of sighting: August 20, 2020 Location of sighting: Utica, New York, USA Source: MUFON #111080 This bright bering fireball looks like a UFO caught on fire traveling into our atmosphere from space. The object...which is fall downward from the sky, is a single piece and then breaks into three equal parts. Its traveling at 1/10 the speed of a meteor so thats ruled out. Space junk would have been reported, but the Chinese do have a lot of stuff falling apart and burning up entering the atmosphere this year. But since NASA would have reported a warning about it...I would rule out that too. It looks like a UFO...damaged trying to make it back to its alien base to make repairs or it could be an alien ship trying to disguise as a meteor, but at 1/10 the speed...they failed. Aliens in New York...yep, kinda knew that already. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan Eyewitness states:
I'm not sure if these were ufo crafts or fireballs. At first they were all together then split into 3 and all sizes were the same. Recorded on Aug 20 2020 in Utica NY.
They Said it Will Hit on Sunday, September 20, 2020
They Said it Will Hit on Sunday, September 20, 2020
What would we do if we discovered a large asteroid on course to impact Earth? that was the high-consequence scenario discussed by attendees at an Oct. 25, 2016NASA-FEMA tabletop exercise in El Segundo, California.
The drill simulated a possible impact four years from now -- a fictitious asteroid imagined to have been discovered this fall with a 2 percent probability of impact with Earth on Sept. 20, 2020.
The simulated asteroid was initially estimated to be between 300 and 800 feet (100 and 250 meters) in size, with a possibility of making impact anywhere along a long swath of Earth, including a narrow band of area that crossed the entire United States.
In the fictitious scenario, observers continued to track the asteroid for three months using ground-based telescope observations, and the probability of impact climbed to 65 percent.
Then the next observations had to wait until four months later, due to the asteroid's position relative to the sun.
Once observations could resume in May of 2017, the impact probability jumped to 100 percent. By November of 2017, it was simulated that the predicted impact would occur somewhere in a narrow band across Southern California or just off the coast in the Pacific Ocean.
Coincidence or not, but asteroids are getting very close to Earth lately. On August 16, 2020, a car-sized asteroid flew within 2,000 miles over the Pacific Ocean, far east of Australia,, the closest ever recorded.... but NASA missed it!
And what about asteroid called “2018 VP1“, which is about 6 feet diameter. this asteroid will pass within about 300 miles of our planet on November 2, 2020 which is one day before the presidential election.
Of course there are always a lot of speculations and doomsday scenarios on these kind of events, and although an asteroid named 2017 SL16 will pass Earth on September 20, probably nothing will happen that day, but we may wonder whether this so-called “drill” could go live like so many other exercises have in the past?
There's something very strange happening high above South America and the nearby Atlantic Ocean, and NASA is on the case.
Meet the South Atlantic Anomaly, a strange dent in Earth's magnetic field that is growing and splitting. It's been there for decades, but over time the anomaly has slowly changed. Although you'd never notice anything was wrong from the ground, for satellites, changes to the magnetic field that envelopes Earth can be a big deal — hence NASA's interest in the anomaly and its activities.
The connection comes because the magnetic field blocks charged particles spewed out by the sun from reaching Earth. But at the South Atlantic Anomaly, the field is dented, lowering the protective barrier above that part of Earth. The lower barrier means that more radiation bombards satellites as they fly over this region, triggering occasional shutdowns to avoid potential damage to the hardware, according to a NASA statement.
An artist's depiction of Earth's magnetic field, with the sun in the background. (Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)
The International Space Station is one of the many spacecraft that fly through the anomaly, but it carries extra shielding to protect the astronauts who live and work in orbit from radiation. Other spacecraft that fly through the anomaly send NASA valuable observations about how the feature is changing, like the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON), which the agency launched last year in part to monitor the weak spot in the field after the retirement of its Solar, Anomalous, and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer (SAMPEX) mission in 2012. Among other changes, those observations have shown that the "dent" is moving westward and splitting in two.
These observations are valuable because of the complexity of studying the magnetic field, which traces its roots to liquid metal moving within Earth's core, then is shaped by a range of phenomena as it ripples out from the center of the planet, according to NASA.
Those interactions mean that more data about changes in the magnetic field can lead to a host of valuable results — not just a better understanding of what the anomaly is doing now in order to warn approaching satellites, but also more nuanced models of what's happening deep inside the Earth, and of course, more accurate predictions of how the anomaly will change into the future.
"Even though the SAA [South Atlantic Anomaly] is slow-moving, it is going through some change in morphology, so it's also important that we keep observing it by having continued missions," Terry Sabaka, a geophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in the statement. "Because that's what helps us make models and predictions."
Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow uson Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said this week that it has now been officially informed that its Hayabusa2 space capsule – carrying precious dust captured from the surface of near-Earth asteroid Ryugu – is approved for landing in Australia.
Artist’s concept of JAXA’s Hayabusa2 sweeping past Earth, as its sample-return capsule – carrying precious grains from the surface of asteroid Ryugu – plummets to Earth’s surface.
On February 22, 2019, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) touched down briefly on near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryuguand fired a bullet into the asteroid’s surface. The spacecraft collected a sample of dust puffed up during the maneuver, and now the spacecraft – carrying its precious cargo of an asteroid sample within a capsule on board – is headed back to Earth. The spacecraft will sweep past Earth, and the capsule will drop to Earth’s surface via parachute on December 6, 2020. JAXA said in an announcement on August 19, 2020, that it has now been officially informed that the capsule is approved for landing in Australia.
JAXA said:
The Hayabusa2 re-entry capsule will return to Earth in South Australia on December 6, 2020 (Japan Time and Australian Time). The landing site will be the Woomera Prohibited Area. The issuance of the AROLSO [Authorization of Return of Overseas-Launched Space Object] gave a major step forward for the capsule recovery.
Ryugu as seen by Hayabusa2 on June 26, 2018.
Image via JAXA/ University of Tokyo/ Kochi University/ Rikkyo University/ Nagoya University/ Chiba Institute of Technology/ Meiji University/ University of Aizu/ AIST.
Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft captured this image in February 2019, during its ascent after touchdown on asteroid Ryugu. You can see the shadow of Hayabusa2 and a region of the surface of the asteroid apparently discolored by the touchdown.
Replica of the Hayabusa2 sample-return capsule, which measures about 16 inches (40 cm) in diameter. The capsule is scheduled to land, via parachute, in Australia’s Woomera Prohibited Area on December 6, 2020.
Hayabusa2 was launched from Earth on December 3, 2014. The spacecraft rendezvoused with asteroid Ryugu on June 27, 2018. The mission follows an earlier JAXA Hayabusa mission (the name means Peregrine falcon), which, in 2010, returned samples from asteroid 25143 Itokawa, the first-ever asteroid to be the target of a sample return mission and the only other mission so far to have returned asteroid samples to Earth.
Hayabusa2 surveyed Ryugu for a year and a half. It left the asteroid with the precious sample safe inside its capsule in November, 2019.
After Hayabusa2 flies past Earth to deliver its sample capsule in late 2020, it is expected to retain 30 kg (66 lb) of xenon propellant, which can be used to extend its service and to fly by new targets to explore. As of August 2020, there are two scenarios under consideration for a mission extension. First, a Venus flyby in 2024 would set up the spacecraft for a November 2029 encounter with a small, quickly spinning near-Earth asteroid called 2001 AV43. During the flyby, Hayabusa2 could also conduct infrared observations of Venus. Alternatively, the spacecraft could be sent toward a rendezvous with another near-Earth asteroid and another fast rotator – 1998 KY26 – in July 2031.
A live webcast showed Hayabusa2 scientists nervously monitoring Hayabusa2’s February 22, 2019 touchdown on distant asteroid Ryugu.
Bottom line: The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said this week that it has now been officially informed that its Hayabusa2 space capsule – carrying precious dust from the surface of near-Earth asteroid Ryugu – is approved for landing in Australia. If returned safely as planned on December 6, 2020, this asteroid dust will be only the second asteroid sample ever returned to Earth.
Nasa is monitoring a "small but evolving dent" in the Earth's magnetic field that could cause major problems for satellites and spacecraft.
The Earth's magnetic field wraps around our planet, bouncing away charged particles that come to us from the Sun. But there is an unexplained gap in it, where the magnetic field is weak, hovering over South America and the southern Atlantic Ocean.
What's more, the region is spreading and continuing to weaken, leading to fears that the problem could get worse.
Researchers refer to the gap as the "South Atlantic Anomaly, or SAA", and fear that it could cause significant problems for equipment that is used on Earth. Within the anomaly, particles are able to get closer to the surface than usual, meaning that satellites and computers that pass through it could be hit by problems.
That has led Nasa to devote resources to tracking the dent, in an attempt to better understand where it is and what could be causing it.
At the moment, there is no obvious consequence of the SAA for anyone living on Earth. But detailed observations have suggested that it is getting more extreme and that it is expanding to the west, as well as splitting so that there are two points at which the anomaly is least strong.
The Earth's magnetic field – and the changes it undergoes – are happening beneath our feet. Underneath the Earth, in its outer core, metals are churning that create electric currents that then go on to produce the important magnetic field.
Over time, those conditions within the core change, and so does the magnetic field. It is those changes that lead to phenomena such as the SAA.
But the greatest concern about the magnetic fields for the time being is it effects on equipment away from Earth's surface. Ordinarily, the magnetic field keeps the satellites that are around the Earth safe – including inhabited ones like the International Space Station – but the changes mean they lack the protection as they fly through the area covered by the SAA.
At the moment, operators are forced to shut down specific components as they pass through the area. That is one of the reasons that tracking the SAA is important to Nasa, since it needs to know exactly where it is so that those changes can be made most accurately.
With better data in the future, Nasa hopes to be able to more accurately predict how the SAA could be changing and therefore what danger it might pose to satellites and the instruments on them. Future missions will better inform those models, Nasa says, and can also be used to better understand the processes in the Earth that are leading to the changes.
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Arecibo Observatory’s main collecting dish, which is among the world’s largest single-dish radio telescopes, was badly damaged when a cable snapped on Monday, Aug. 10. (Image credit: University of Central Florida)
TheArecibo Observatory— a gargantuan telescope in Puerto Rico famous for scouring the cosmos for asteroidsand alien life — went quiet this week, following a devastating accident that left the telescope's reflector dish in pieces.
On Monday (Aug. 10) at approximately 2:45 a.m. local time, a metal cable at the facility snapped, slashing through the radar dish and tearing open a 100-foot-long (30 meters) hole, according to a statement from the University of Central Florida, which operates the National Science Foundation-owned facility. The snapped cable also smashed through several other cables and platforms that support the dish, causing debris to rain down on the ground below and making it harder for technicians to access the site.
"We have a team of experts assessing the situation," Francisco Cordova, the director of the observatory, said in the statement. "Our focus is assuring the safety of our staff, protecting the facilities and equipment, and restoring the facility to full operations as soon as possible, so it can continue to assist scientists around the world."
Arecibo began operating in 1963 from the bottom of a natural sinkhole in Puerto Rico. At the time of its completion, Arecibo was the world's largest single-dish telescope, stretching 1,000 feet (305 m) in diameter. While you may not know the telescope by name, you might know it by sight, thanks to the 1997 movie "Contact." That film's protagonist is an astronomer working at Arecibo, who hopes to make first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. (The observatory's gargantuan reflector dish alsostole the show at the end of the 1995 James Bond flick, "GoldenEye.")
Though we're still waiting for that epic first DM from aliens, Arecibo has played a central role in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) since the 1970s. In 1974, astronomers used the radio telescope to transmit a binary code toward a dense cluster of stars 25,000light-years away, hoping the message might get picked up by another technologically-advanced civilization. (It wasn't).
SETI experiments have remained a key part of the observatory's agenda — and so has planetary defense. Arecibo's Planetary Radar Project, part of NASA's Planetary Defense program, is responsible for detecting and studying near-Earth objects, such as asteroids, that could pose a threat to our planet.
That project, along with all other Arecibo projects, has been suspended due to the damage. But Arecibo has bounced back from damage before, including the fallout from earthquakes and Hurricane Maria, and this accident will hopefully be no exception. Still … it would be a lousy time for the aliens to finally return our call.
When we think of aliens, we tend to think of biological creatures. But, what about extraterrestrial robots? There are a number of such cases on record.Gareth Medway says: “The Christiansen family of Wildwood, New Jersey, who had seen a UFO on 22 November 1966, were interviewed by ‘the strangest looking man I’ve ever seen,’ wearing a thin black coat, who introduced himself as ‘Tiny’ from the ‘Missing Heirs Bureau.’ He spoke in a high, ‘‘tinny’ voice, in clipped words and phrases like a computer, ‘as if he were reciting everything from memory.’ His black trousers were too short, and ‘they could see a long thick green wire attached to the inside of his leg, it came up out of his socks and disappeared under his trousers’ John Keel commented that he had not heard of this feature in other MIB cases: ‘Was Tiny wearing electric socks? Or was he a wired android operated by remote control?’ [italics mine]. He departed in a black 1963 Cadillac.”
In the summer of 1997, one of the most controversial UFO-themed books ever written was published. Its title: The Day After Roswell. Ghosted by William Birnes, the editor of the now-defunct UFO Magazine and of History Channel’s also defunct UFO Hunters, the book tells the story of one Philip Corso. Specifically, Lieutenant Colonel. Philip J. Corso. U.S. Army. Corso’s story was both amazing and groundbreaking. But, was it true? While some in the field of Ufology embraced the story, many certainly did not, preferring instead to view the book as either government disinformation – intended to confuse the truth of what really happened at Roswell, New Mexico back in the summer of 1947 – or nothing more than an elaborate and ingenious hoax.
Contrary to what the UFO community said or assumed, Corso never explicitly stated that the Roswell corpses were extraterrestrial. In fact, what he really said was quite the opposite. In Corso’s story the so-called “Grey aliens” are actually created, built, or grown to perform specific tasks. As for the creators of the Greys, it was they, Corso maintained, who were the real aliens. Corso also said that, as far as he was aware, no-one has ever seen the real aliens, only ever their black-eyed, large-headed worker-drones. William Birnes said that Corso described the Greys as “…an android or biological robot [italics mine]. “The entities ” had no digestive system whatsoever” and were “connected electronically to the navigation controls of the spacecraft.”
One of the most intriguing, but also baffling, UFO encounters occurred in Scotland on November 9, 1979, at around 1o:39 a.m. The Telegraph newspaper stated: “…Robert Taylor, a Scottish forestry worker employed by the Livingston Development Corporation, parked his truck at the bottom of Dechmont Law and took his red setter for a walk up the hill. By his account, as he emerged into a clearing he came across a strange metal sphere about 20 ft across ‘like a spaceship, a huge flying dome.’ It appeared to be made from a dark metallic material with a rough texture like sandpaper.” The BBC stated: “[Taylor] told how two-spiked spheres then rolled out towards him and, as he passed out, he was aware of being grabbed on either side of his legs. Mr Taylor woke up in a disheveled state 20 minutes later…After the spiked objects rushed out and tried to grab hold of him, all he could remember was a strong smell of burning. When he came to, the clearing was empty, apart from a pattern of deep regular marks on the ground. He went to his van but was so shaken he drove it into a ditch and had to stagger home in ‘a dazed condition.” Were those spiked spheres actually robots, dispatched to perform a specific task? Maybe so. Finally…
It was late one night, at some point in the latter part of 1956, said “John Hanks,” when he came face to face with a strange creature in Falls City, Richardson County, Nebraska. He was confronted by a creature in excess of nine feet in height, one that was humanoid in shape, but which most certainly could never be termed a member of the human race. That much, at least, we can ascertain from Hanks’ description. Ken Gerhard says, with a great deal of justification, that “[Hanks’] description of the creature sounds reminiscent of something out of an H.P. Lovecraft story.” Ken is not wrong. In fact, he is right on target. Hanks’ nightmarish thing had a pair of fifteen-foot-wide wings that, rather oddly, appeared to be made of bright, shining, aluminum! Not only that, the wings appeared to be strapped to the creature; almost grafted onto its body in definitive cyborg-style [italics mine].
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This Top Secret UFO Aircraft Has Just Been Revealed At An Aviation Show But There's A Catch via Unexplained Mysteries
This Top Secret UFO Aircraft Has Just Been Revealed At An Aviation Show But There's A Catch via Unexplained Mysteries
This top secret concept aircraft has just been revealed at an aviation show but there’s a catch. Today, we take a look at this top secret concept aircraft that’s just been revealed.
Unidentified flying objects have been a topic of mystery and confusion. Various groups have given their opinions on these mysterious objects, with some believing that they originate from space, while others are of the idea that they are man made, and belong to top secret governments from around the world. Due to recent announcements this has only caused some to get onboard with this idea.
I found a doorway that was standing all alone at the base of hillside on Mars. I found it in Sol 1381 and the detail is fantastic. The archway is about 18 inches tall or 45 cm, however I believe the bottom of the doorway is buried below some dirt from the hillside, so it may be 2X taller. The doorway is of course part of a larger structure that no longer exists. The accents of the timing around the doorway is very beautiful. Any doorway that leads you to a deeper understanding of yourself is a worthwhile one. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Heys guys whats up? The detail of this abandoned ship is incredibly great. I want to apologize to those frightened. Its not my intention to shock or frighten anyone. I just want you to be in awe of the universe as much as I am.
I was searching NASAs moon map...the LROC when I came across this long black structure laying along side a crater. I added a bit of darkness and sharpening and I found an old ship...a once spacefaring craft, now derelict and forgotten.
As I have said before, there three main types of structures and ships I have found. The grey metal structures, the white reflective structures and the non reflective black structures. This fits in the last category. Its only about 40 meters across, but its not the size that matters, but the detail of the structure.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Othello: It is the very error of the moon; She comes more nearer earth than she is wont And makes men mad. Othello (V.ii.109-111)
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Eleven Energy Entities Seen Over Lakevielle, Minnesota, Aug 14, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Eleven Energy Entities Seen Over Lakevielle, Minnesota, Aug 14, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Aug 14, 2020
Location of sighting: Lakeville, Minnesota, USA
Source: MUFON #111041
Now one of the hardest things to catch on video or photos is energy beings. Energy beings don't have a solid ship, but instead they travel in a group. This looks like a disk above, but its not. I see ten energy beings in an oval an one on the upper right of it. Why no video you ask? Probably because it just wont help much, just cant capture energy beings so well since they are 80% transparent.
I Scott C. Waring, have witnessed such a sight in front of my whole family at midnight here in Taiwan. I recorded over 15 min but neither camera nor camcorder could focus it much. So, yes...I know about this kind of sighting first hand. Its real, its hard to describe since they are light. Hardest and most paranormal of all UFO sightings...witnessing energy beings first hand. Oh...and yes, I'm sure they saw him too and stayed a bit to observe the humans. Energy beings are highly curious and playful. But don't often come down out of the clouds as far as I have seen.
Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states:
Large bright white light circular shape..was quiet lasted about 5 minutes...noticed at night was on our Deck was white then the circle lit up with various colors and then moved away and took off high into the sky at like 45 degrees.
Dark Flying Saucer Caught During Sunset At Prescott, Arizona, Aug 19, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Dark Flying Saucer Caught During Sunset At Prescott, Arizona, Aug 19, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Aug 19, 2020 Location of sighting: Prescott, Arizona, USA Source: MUFON #111051 Here is a great UFO capture during a sunset in Arizona. The photo was taking with a great camera and enlarging the UFO was no difficulty. Also when I enlarged the craft, I noticed that there was some clouds around one end of it. This is significant since in means it was coming from behind the cloud. That gives us both a distance and a huge size. The size is roughly about that of 30 meters across. Its distance is about 1km up. Arizona...a known UFO hotspot. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan Eyewitness states:
I was watching some nice cloud formations & started taking photos w/my cell phone. I am in central Arizona at about 5,200’ we do have some bugs flying around right now but nothing like the places at lower altitudes. At one point, I saw a cloud that resembles a UFO and thought, how cool. I continued to snap photos and then thought a bug or dirt fell on my viewfinder. I tried to wipe it off and realized it was part of the photo. I just figured it was a bug or small bird that must have flew in front of the camera without me noticing. After snapping a few more photos I went back to lol at them. When I came to the odd photo o studies for a long time. Normally with my camera if I catch a photo of a moving object, it will show the object’s motion when flipping from photo to photo and then it stops for the “still.” This did not happen with this photo. I am terrible with estimating distance but it appears to be pretty far from where I was standing (on my second floor deck).
What Do Alien Civilizations Look Like? The Kardashev Scale
What Do Alien Civilizations Look Like? The Kardashev Scale
The observable universe is a big place that has been around for more than 13 billion years. Up to two trillion galaxies made up of something like 20,000 billion billion stars surround our home galaxy.
In the milky way alone scientists assume there are some 40 billion earth like planets in the habitable zone of their stars. When we look at these numbers it is hard to imagine that there is nobody else out there.
The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy they are able to use. The measure was proposed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964. The scale has three designated categories:
A Type 1 civilization, also called a planetary civilization - can use and store all of the energy available on its planet. Currently, the civilization of Type I is usually defined as one that can harness all the energy that falls on a planet from its parent star (for Earth–Sun system which is about four orders of magnitude higher than the amount presently attained on Earth.
A Type 2 civilization, also called a stellar civilization - can use and control energy at the scale of its planetary system. A civilization capable of harnessing the energy radiated by its own star—for example, the stage of successful construction of a Dyson sphere.
A Type 3 civilization, also called a galactic civilization - can control energy at the scale of its entire host galaxy. a civilization with access to the power comparable to the luminosity of the entire Milky Way galaxy,
Kardashev believed that a Type 4 civilization was impossible, so he did not go past Type 3. However, new types (0, 4, 5, 6) have been proposed. Some scientists suggest there might be type 4 and Type 5 civilizations, whose influence stretches over galaxy clusters or super-clusters, structures comprising thousands of galaxies and trillions of stars.
Ultimately, there might be a Type Omega civilization, able to manipulate the entire universe and possibly others. Type Omega civilizations might be the actual creators of our universe, for reasons beyond our comprehension!
And what about the current status of human civilization?
Well, at the current time, humanity has not yet reached Type 1 civilization status. If humans increase their energy consumption at an average rate of 3 percent each year, they may attain Type 1 status in 100–200 years, Type 2 status in a few thousand years, and Type 3 status in 100,000 to a million years.
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Former Defense Official Advocates Serious Investigation On UFO Phenomenon
Former Defense Official Advocates Serious Investigation On UFO Phenomenon
Former Defense Department intelligence official urges the government to take UFO reports seriously. Christopher Mellon, ex-deputy assistant of defense for intelligence, believes this is a topic the oversight Committee should seriously lookinto.
Mellon, the Pentagon’s third highest-ranking intelligence post, is referring to the supposed plan of Pentagon to release more information on the famed UFO sighting by U.S. Navy pilots who reported a UFO moving in a way world technology wouldn’t do.
Eric Davis, a contractor and Pentagon consultant, said he had briefed a Defense Department agency this spring on research that showed the Navy discovered vehicles, not on this earth.
Mellon, also a television host, suggests that assertion should be taken seriously. The reports and the pending release of Pentagon are making UFO reports switch from decades-old fiction to real phenomenon now.
Mellon pointed out the article published by the Scientific American itself, saying the scientific community should take the subject seriously and investigate it. He said that the Defense Department and the Navy have stood up and publicly acknowledged that the UFO phenomenon is real, happening and that our Navy pilots are encountering these vehicles.
Reacting to the explanation that modern technology might be the cause of the recent findings of UFOs behaving in a way this world doesn’t yet allow, Mellon, called it “too simplistic.” He explains that we had information from multiple systems, multiple personnel in the ground, and the air, tracking these UFOs performing intelligent maneuvers beyond any capability we possess.
While studies on wildlife have linked plastics to several health problems, their effects in humans are still mostly unknown. Now, a new study has found evidence that human organs and tissue absorb both nano- and microplastics, which could help us understand their impact on our health.
Credit Oregon State University
Plastics are one of the most severe environmental problems of our time. They are very durable, even in the most extreme environmental conditions, making them the worst kind of material to be floating around the ocean or washing up on pristine beaches.
But that’s not all; they can also easily break down. Researchers define microplastics as plastic fragments less than 5 mm, or about 0.2 inches, in diameter. Nanoplastics are even smaller, with diameters under 0.001 mm. Exposure to such plastic in wildlife can lead to cancer, infertility, and inflammation/
“You can find plastics contaminating the environment at virtually every location on the globe,” said Charles Rolsky, co-author of the study, in a statement.
“There’s evidence that plastic is making its way into our bodies, but very few studies have looked for it there. And at this point, we don’t know whether this plastic is just a nuisance or whether it represents a human health hazard.”
Rolsky and a group of researchers from Arizona State University wondered if the tiny particles accumulate in human organs. To find out, they analyzed 47 samples from lungs, liver, spleen, and kidneys, organs likely to be exposed to plastics, obtained from a repository of brain and body tissues.
The team created a technique to extract plastics from the samples and analyze them. They also developed a computer program that converts information on plastic particle count into units of mass and surface area. The tool will be shared with other researchers so all results can be reported in a standardized manner.
The method can detect dozens of types of plastic components within human tissues, including polycarbonate (PC), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polyethylene (PE). The team found plastic contamination in all the analyzed samples. Bisphenol A (BPA), used in food containers, was found in all samples.
“We never want to be alarmist, but it is concerning that these non-biodegradable materials that are present everywhere [may] enter and accumulate in human tissues, and we don’t know the possible health effects,” Varun Kelkar, one of the researchers that participated in the study, said in a statement.
Going forward, the researchers hope to compare the levels of microplastics in the tissues of donors with information about their lives, which is typically collected along with the tissue itself. This could draw some links between certain activities, foods, even jobs, and the prevalence of microplastics in each person’s tissue.
NASA has posted a sampling of some of the most awe-inspiring photos of Mars, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the launch of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They are proof that Mars is a very photogenic world.
View larger. | Sand dunes and ripples in Proctor Crater on Mars, as seen by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on February 9, 2009.
Mars is a dry desert world, covered in reddish sand. In our lifetimes, spacecraft have revealed its amazing scenery and sweeping landscapes. It’s a world at once reminiscent of Earth, yet alien and strange. This week, to celebrate the launch of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter 15 years ago, NASA has shared some of the orbiter’s most breathtaking images. We found these images very beautiful and think you will, too, whether you’re a Mars aficionado or a newbie.
The Mars Reconnaussance Orbiter (MRO) has three cameras: The Mars Color Imager (MARCI), which has a fisheye lens for a daily global view of the planet; the Context Camera (CTX), which provides 19-mile-wide (30-kilometer-wide) black-and-white terrain shots; and the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), which produces the beautiful and jaw-dropping images that MRO has become famous for. HiRISE takes the highest-resolution orbital images of the Martian surface ever obtained, and in full color. They show sand dunes, avalanches, craters, dust devils, old river and lake beds, mountains, gullies and more in exquisite detail. MRO has even been able to photograph rovers such as Curiosity and Opportunity, on the planet far below. It has also photographed the two small Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos.
The image at top of the sand dune and ripples in Proctor Crater is in enhanced color to bring out details. Like other images of still-active sand dunes, it shows that Mars isn’t a completely inactive, motionless world. Leslie Tamppari, MRO deputy project scientist at JPL, said in a statement:
The more we look, the more we discover. Before MRO, it wasn’t clear what on Mars really changed, if anything. We thought the atmosphere was so thin that there was almost no sand motion and most dune movement happened in the ancient past.
View larger. | Recurring slope lineae (RSL) in a crater in Valles Marineris.
In the image above, we see dark streaks, called recurring slope lineae (RSL), on a steep crater wall in Valles Marineris. There is still much debate as to whether those might be small streams of briny liquid water.
MRO has also watched dust storms on Mars, as seen in the image below. Most storms are fairly small and regional, but others can grow to encompass the entire planet, about once or twice a decade. These are called “planet-encircling dust events.” MARCI took the images in the summer of 2018. This was the storm that darkened the skies over the Opportunity rover and caused it to run out of power from its solar panels.
In the view from May, we see the Valles Marineris chasms (left), Meridiani Planum (center), an autumn dust storm in Acidalia Planitia (top) and the early spring south polar cap (bottom). The same regions are in the view from July, but completely obscured by dust.
View larger. | Global dust storm seen by MRO in the summer of 2018 (right).
Dust storms aren’t the only dusty phenomenon that MRO has seen. The next image below is a good example of a serpent-like dust devil, captured on February 16, 2012. The image was taken in a late spring afternoon in the Amazonis Planitia region of northern Mars.
The plume is about 98 feet (30 meters) in diameter, and based on the length of the shadow, is more than half a mile (800 meters) tall!
A westerly breeze created the S-like arc in the plume. Just like on Earth, Martian winds get their energy from the sun, even though Mars is much farther from the sun than Earth. Even though winds have lessened this time of year, they are still strong enough to produce dust devils like this one.
Dust devils have also been seen up close on the ground by the rovers Opportunity, Spirit and Curiosity.
View larger. | A twisting dust devil in the Amazonis Planitia region of northern Mars.
Dust storms and dust devils aren’t the only way that Mars is still active. Avalanches are another common occurrence, especially when seasonal ice vaporizes in the warmer spring.
In the image below, taken on May 29, 2019, MRO captured avalanches on 1,640-foot-tall (500-meter-tall) cliffs at Mars’ north pole. The avalanches also had the effect of exposing hidden layers of ice and dust in the cliffs, going back millions of years or more. For scientists, these layers are like reading the book of Mars’ history, providing clues as to how the environment changed in the region over time.
View larger. | Avalanches on steep cliffs near the martian north pole on May 29, 2019.
Another thing that MRO is good at is finding new craters. Such “fresh” craters can be identified by the new-looking ejecta blanket of rocky debris around them. Many more of these can be seen on Mars due to the planet’s very thin atmosphere, which doesn’t burn up larger meteors as easily as Earth’s atmosphere. More of them therefore actually impact the planet.
MRO has found over 800 new impact craters so far during its mission. The one pictured below is about 98 feet (30 meters) across. The impact was strong enough to throw ejecta as far as 9.3 miles (15 km).
On Mars, craters also last much longer than they do on Earth, again because of the thin atmosphere that erodes them more slowly.
View larger. | A new impact crater, spotted by MRO on November 19, 2013.
MRO has been orbiting Mars since 2006, and has taken no less than 6,882,204 images, generating 194 terabytes of data. Those views of the red planet have helped to revolutionize our knowledge about this familiar yet alien world.
MRO has also taken images of mud volcanoes, and a recent study showed that mud which flows from them will flow in a manner similar to lava on Earth.
As well as taking incredible images, MRO also studies Mars with multiple other instruments. It measures the temperature of the atmosphere and dust and water vapor using Mars Climate Sounder (MCS), peers beneath the surface with radar using Shallow Radar (SHARAD) and analyzes different minerals on the surface in rocks and sand with the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM).
View larger. | NASA’s Curiosity rover in Gale Crater, as seen by MRO from orbit.
View larger. | Conical hills thought to be mud volcanoes, in Coprates Chasma on Mars, photographed by MRO.
Image via Petr Bro¸/ MRO/ NASA/ JPL/ University of Arizona/ The Conversation.
View larger. | Enhanced-color image from MRO of the future landing site of the Perseverance rover in Jezero Crater in February 2021. An ancient river delta is still clearly visible.
The images sent back by MRO have been some of the most incredible of any planetary mission, and are the perfect way to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the launch. Along with all the other data to date, they have forever changed our view and understanding of the red planet.
More information about MRO is available on the mission website. Check out the HiRISE website for many thousand more images! You can even make a request for the spacecraft to take images of specific targets.
Bottom line:NASA has posted amazing photos of Mars to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the launch of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The mysterious “bag” of the Gods: represented in Sumeria, America and Göbekli Tepe
The mysterious “bag” of the Gods: represented in Sumeria, America and Göbekli Tepe
The mysterious purse of the gods displayed by various ancient civilizations separated by more than 12,700 kilometers apart, from Sumer to Mesoamerica.
This mysterious bag is observed in sculptures and bas-reliefs of Sumeria of 6,000 years ago (the Anunnaki carried it) and in the temple of Göbekli Tepe of the millennium 10 BC. C. It is also carried by Mesoamerican deities (the Olmecs, Toltecs, Aztecs , etc.) and Australia . Its symbology is enigmatic, it could represent a type of universal standard weight measure or be part of the equipment of alien gods with futuristic technology.
The mysterious purse of the Gods: paradigmatic pictographs
The Sumerians from the beginning of their civilization in 4,500 BC. They portrayed the Anunnaki with peculiar artifacts , such as the pine cone , a type of “wrist watch” and this mysterious bag . Many pictographs show a winged god holding a pine cone in one hand and the divine purse in the other.
Other images show Adapa, Dagon or the fish god Oannes holding it. This aquatic god emerged from the waters of the Persian Gulf and founded civilizations , according to Mesopotamian mythology. 12,700 kilometers away , in Mesoamerica, sculptures of the Mayans, Aztecs, Toltecs and Olmecs show the same artifact.
The most prominent Mesoamerican example is from the Olmecs , at the La Venta archaeological site in Mexico . There is a stone engraving of the god Quetzalcoatl holding the same bag of the gods that the Anunnaki carried . This site was founded in 1750 BC.
Atlanteans of Tula and Göbekli Tepe
Another impressive example is in the monumental Toltec statues of the Atlanteans of Tula (in Tula, Mexico). They are representative warriors of Quetzalcóatl and carry the enigmatic contraption, although it is thought to be an atlat or dart thrower .
In Göbekli Tepe we found it. This massive temple located in Turkey is considered the oldest in history , from the 10th millennium BC. C. The artifact appears on Pillar 43 , in a row of three bags and on figures of animals such as birds and snakes.
Also tribes of ancient Australia painted images of this bag of the gods, in addition to the Native Americans of California , United States, mainly for the Coso petroglyphs . It should be noted that in Ancient Egypt a similar device is noted: the ankh or Egyptian cross , which is loaded in a similar way.
Symbol of a standard weight?
According to the book Ice Age Language: Translations, Grammar and Vocabulary by Dr. Robert Duncan-Enzmann and Jay R. Snyder, the symbol on the bag expresses a standard weight , a standard of weighing. This “standard weight” also denotes a “weight of authority” or “weight of power” , as it was always drawn being held by the Anunnaki or by Sumerian kings (authorities with power).
Another more futuristic explanation is in that of the ancient astronauts , that these artifacts could have been bags for cosmonaut equipment , since they are similar to those used today and because those ancestral gods were celestial travelers .
The interpretation of the standard weight makes sense but does not explain why various ancient civilizations of the world engraved the same bag of the gods . You might think that the Anunnaki and the ancient gods of places like Mexico, Guatemala, North America and Australia were the same deities .
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Japan's asteroid-sampling mission is officially clear to return its precious cargo to Australia in December, according to statements from both countries' governments.
The Hayabusa2 spacecraft is trekking back to Earth with a sample capsule full of material snagged from a near-Earth asteroid called Ryugu. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which runs the mission, has long planned to deposit that capsule in the vast desert of Australia, but the new announcement marks that country's official approval of the plan.
"I am delighted to have given the tick of approval for the Hayabusa2 to land at the Woomera Prohibited Area and am thrilled JAXA has chosen to partner with us on the capsule's re-entry," Karen Andrews, Australia's Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, said in a statement. "This mission is a very important scientific and technical feat, as the first ever sub-surface asteroid sample to be returned to Earth."
Over the course of its stay at Ryugu, Hayabusa2 collected samples from the asteroid's rocky surface, shot the asteroid to create an artificial crater, and collected some of the subsurface material uncovered by that impact as well. The diversity of samples means that scientists will be able to learn more about Ryugu's interior and how it has responded to the harsh forces of outer space, like the solar wind, a constant stream of highly energized particles called plasma flowing off the sun.
But even with advanced spacecraft, scientists can always do more detailed analyses in laboratories on Earth, hence the need to land that capsule. Hayabusa2's predecessor, another asteroid sample-return mission called Hayabusa that visited a space rock called Itokawa, also returned its material to Australia, and the current mission will follow suit, with the deposit scheduled for Dec. 6.
An artist's depiction of the Hayabusa2 spacecraft after inserting its capsule into Earth's atmosphere for sample delivery. (Image credit: JAXA)
"The approval to carry out the re-entry and recovery operations of the Hayabusa2 return sample capsule is a significant milestone. We would like to express our sincere gratitude for the support of the Australian government as well as multiple organizations in Australia for their cooperation," JAXA president Hiroshi Yamakawa said in a statement. "We will continue to prepare for the successful mission in December 2020 in close cooperation with the Australian government."
However, unlike Hayabusa, the current spacecraft will not return in full; it will only deposit a sample capsule back to Earth. JAXA is evaluating sending the Hayabusa2 probe on to visit a second asteroid about a decade from now.
Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow uson Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
This photograph shows the laser-ranging facility at the Goddard Geophysical and Astronomical Observatory in Greenbelt, Maryland trying to hit the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) with green laser light. For the first time, another facility in Grasse, France successfully bounced a laser (using infrared light) off the LRO's onboard mirror.
For the first time, scientists have successfully bounced a laser off a mirror that's attached to a spacecraft whirling around themoon.
Bouncing lasers off mirrors on the lunar surface is an old trick. Astronauts walking on the moon first left reflectors behind in 1969. And since then, researchers have bounced lasers off those reflectors to make precise measurements of the distance between the moon and Earth, using the speed of light and the time it takes for the laser beam to return to Earth.
But hitting a laser in orbit around the moon is a much trickier task. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has orbited the moon with a mirror on its back since 2009. But nearly a decade went by without a single successful laser bounce. In an Aug. 6 paper in the journal Earth, Planets and Space, a team of researchers report the first successful laser contact: Twice on Sept. 4, 2018 and twice again between Aug. 23 and Aug. 24, 2019, technicians at the Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) station in Grasse, France, shot laser bursts at the LRO and saw the light return 2.5 seconds later.
To make sure that the light bouncing off the LRO returns in the direction from which it came, the mirror on its back is more complicated than the one in your bathroom. Like the older mirrors on the lunar surface, it's a "corner cube" — a series of three-dimensional mirrors, each literally shaped like the inside of one corner of a cube. When a laser hits it, the light bounces three times before the geometry of the mirror returns it in the precise direction from which it came.
An animation illustrates how corner cube reflectors bounce light back in the direction from which it came. (Image credit: V.pantaloni/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)
Tracking the movement of the LRO over time is an interesting scientific project in its own right. But, the researchers wrote, these four successful laser contacts don't offer enough data to track that movement. The LRO is still moving too fast and too unpredictably to reliably hit with a laser, and all four contacts were made under what the researchers described as ideal conditions. The moon, LRO and France were all lined up perfectly to improve the odds of laser contact.
Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin holds two experiments that he and Neil Armstong left behind on the moon. In his right hand is a corner cube reflector, the first of five that NASA astronauts eventually deposited on the lunar surface. (Image credit: Neil Armstrong/NASA)
Over the long-term, studies of the LRO mirror could help resolve a tricky problem impacting the mirrors left on the lunar surface. All of those mirrors have become less reflective over time, and researchers aren't sure why. But that lost quality is making precise measurements more difficult. The issue could be that long-term exposure to solar radiation just weakens the mirrors. In that case, the LRO's mirror should weaken over time at the same rate. Alternatively, lunar dust or faint haze from the moon's thin atmosphere could be obscuring the mirrors, the researchers wrote. In that case, the LRO's reflectivity should remain more or less unchanged over time high in orbit, even as the surface mirrors degrade.
The circled streak in the center of this image is asteroid 2020 QG, which came closer to Earth than any other non-impacting asteroid on record. It was detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility on Sunday (Aug. 16), six hours after its closest approach, which took place that day at 12:08 a.m. EDT (Saturday, Aug. 15 at 9:08 p.m. PDT).
The record-breaking asteroid 2020 QG won't soon forget its run-in with Earth.
Early Sunday morning (Aug. 16), the car-sized 2020 QG zoomed just 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) above the Indian Ocean, making the closest known flyby by an asteroid that didn't end up slamming into our planet.
Though 2020 QG survived the encounter, its path through space was altered significantly, scientists said.
"It's really cool to see a small asteroid come by this close, because we can see the Earth's gravity dramatically bend its trajectory," Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement. "Our calculations show that this asteroid got turned by 45 degrees or so as it swung by our planet."
Researchers didn't learn of 2020 QG's existence until the Zwicky Transient Facility, a survey telescope in Southern California funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and NASA, captured an image of the asteroid zooming away from Earth, six hours after closest approach.
That image shows 2020 QG as a blurry streak — no surprise, considering that the space rock was rocketing along at about 29,000 mph (46,700 kph). As speedy as that is, it's a little slower than average for a near-Earth asteroid, Chodas said.
There are many millions of near-Earth asteroids out there about the same size as 2020 QG, which is thought to be 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 meters) wide. Such tiny space rocks are very hard to detect, but they pose no danger to life on Earth.
This illustration shows asteroid 2020 QG's trajectory bending during its close approach to Earth on Aug. 16, 2020. It came within 1,830 miles (2,945 kilometers) to Earth, the closest ever seen without an impact. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
"If it [2020 QG] had actually been on an impact trajectory, it would likely have become a fireball as it broke up in Earth's atmosphere, which happens several times a year," NASA officials wrote in the same statement. (Fireballs are meteors that blaze more brightly than Venus in our skies.)
Big asteroids are a bit worrisome, however. For example, scientists think a 6-mile-wide (10 km) space rock did in the dinosaurs when it barreled into Earth 66 million years ago.
NASA has found and tracked more than 95% of the mountain-sized asteroids in Earth's neighborhood, and none of them pose an impact risk in the foreseeable future. The space agency is currently working to compile a similarly comprehensive catalog of the near-Earth asteroids at least 460 feet (140 m) wide, which would do devastating damage on a regional scale if they hit.
Such work has practical applications beyond simply warning people about an impending impact. With enough notice — at least a few years, preferably — humanity could deflect an incoming asteroid, experts say.
Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
While The New York Times dances in and around the linked stories of the USS Nimitz Tic Tac UFOs seen and recorded by military pilots and the Pentagon’s announcement that it still has a funded investigation group that may or may not have pieces of non-human-made objects, Salon has followed a different path and talked to camera experts and experts in how humans think who debate the “I’m not saying it’s humans … but it’s humans” side of the discussion. Let’s hear what they have to say, courtesy of Salon.
“What looks like great speed and wild maneuvers is just a common optical illusion combined with the effects of the FLIR’s gimbal and glare filter.”
“The object you’re seeing is a single point of heat from an unidentified plane, probably a distant commercial jet, flying away from the F-18. The camera is looking out the side of the F-18 which is speeding past nearby clouds, making the object appear to be moving relative to the clouds.”
Still image from the footage of the “tic-tac” UFO
Brian Dunning is the controversial host of the Skeptoid podcast and he believes FLIR (Forward-Looking InfraRed) cameras are known to create optical illusions – as all cameras are, which is why this is a common refute of many videos of UFOs, particularly orbs and faraway cylinders.
“When people look at those kinds of videos and the reaction of the pilots, for example, I think that’s often also used to give them more credibility with these expert pilots, often military pilots, commenting on the behavior of the shifts.”
Timothy Caulfield, a host of “A User’s Guide to Cheating Death,” refers to the Occam’s razor principle which states that the simpler of two explanations (in the Tic Tac case, that they are non-Earth UFOs) is generally more likely to be correct, and it is bolstered in this case by the fact that it’s presented by respected military pilots. From this writer’s standpoint, while interesting, this seems to be more opinion than fact. Dunning defends his position.
“Two words: Sensationalism sells. Nobody is excited about the artifacts of the FLIR glare filter; everyone is excited about the prospect of the Pentagon hiding the ‘truth about aliens.'” Humans are hardwired for anecdotal thinking. Our brains gravitate toward the simple and the desirable, and away from the complicated and the boring.”
Alexander Wendt, a ufologist and international relations professor at Ohio State University, sticks up for the pilots and makes an interesting observation about the Navy response.
“I challenge anybody to do better than the Navy to explain what’s in those videos. If the Navy couldn’t do it… they had every reason to want this off their plate.”
Wendt thinks the Navy was hoping for an easy “Case closed” but the obvious stress of the credible pilots wouldn’t let their explanation be the “Occam’s razor” one, even if it was correct. Ohio State University professor and political scientist Thomas Wood seems to agree, citing the long-lasting yet non-scientific support the general public has for UFO conspiracy theories.
“If you look at the data on public opinion on this, it is really sort of incredible. The American public fascination with UFOs is one of the very durable conspiracy theories in the American public’s imagination.”
So, this Salon debate ultimately boils down to a fact about FLIR camera as versus a fact about the innate human preference for the simple explanation. In the end, without a sophisticated recreation of the Nimitz sighting in identical circumstances and lighting with identical cameras – a scientific test, in other words – Dunning loses the round to human nature.
Isn’t that how it seems to always work these days?
Did you know that an asteroid just flew by our planet at an extremely close distance? The good news is that it was only about the size of a car, but the bad news is that NASA had absolutely no idea that it was coming. In fact, NASA only discovered it about six hours after it had passed us. If NASA could not see that asteroid coming straight at us, what else is heading toward us that they cannot see? It has been estimated that “about 17,000 big near-Earth asteroids remain undetected”, but the truth is that we don’t really know how many giant space rocks are floating around out there. Of course scientists all around the world are doing their best to catalog new potential threats all the time, but what most people don’t realize is that this is an area where our technology is still very limited.
The asteroid that almost entered our atmosphere on August 15th was hurtling toward us at 27,600 miles per hour.
In other words, it was traveling at almost 8 miles per second.
pass by our home planet all the time. But an SUV-size asteroid set the record this past weekend for coming closer to Earth than any other known NEA: It passed 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) above the southern Indian Ocean on Sunday, Aug. 16 at 12:08 a.m. EDT (Saturday, Aug. 15 at 9:08 p.m. PDT).
In astronomical terms, that is an extremely close shave, and NASA is openly admitting that “we didn’t see it coming”…
The flyby wasn’t expected and took many by surprise. In fact, the Palomar Observatory didn’t detect the zooming asteroiduntil about six hours after the object’s closest approach. “The asteroid approached undetected from the direction of the sun,” Paul Chodas, the director of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, told Business Insider. “We didn’t see it coming.”
This admission surprised many Americans, because most people assume that NASA would give us plenty of advance notice if a civilization-killing asteroid really was heading our way.
Of course that is not necessarily true at all. There are many giant space rocks floating around out there that are exceedingly difficult to detect, and that is especially true if they are coming at us from the direction of the sun…
There’s not much we can do about detecting inbound asteroids coming from the sunward direction, as asteroids are detected using optical telescopes only (like ZTF), and we can only search for them in the night sky. The idea is that we discover them on one of their prior passages by our planet, and then make predictions years and decades in advance to see whether they have any possibility of impacting.
NASA has a plan to improve our ability to detect incoming asteroids, and that will be welcome news for those that are concerned that a civilization-killing asteroid may be heading our way.
But the bad news is that the space telescope at the heart of NASA’s plan will not be launched until 2025…
NASA has a plan to address these gaps in its asteroid-hunting program. The agency is in the early stages of developing a space telescope that could detect asteroids and comets coming from the sun’s direction.
NASA’s 2020 budget allotted nearly $36 million for that telescope, called the Near-Earth Object Surveillance Mission.
If funding continues, it could launch as early as 2025.
We have about five years to wait before this plan is implemented, and so let us hope that a giant space rock is not headed our way before then.
But we do know that a fairly sizable asteroid will be making a very close approach to our planet next month. On September 1st, a 150 foot rock known as “asteroid 2011 ES4” will fly past us at more than 18,000 miles per hour, and it will do so “at a far closer distance than the Moon”…
Asteroid 2011 ES4, which measures approximately 150ft (50m) across, is expected to hurtle past the Earth at staggering speeds of 18,253mph (29,375kmh) next month. And although the size and speed of the asteroid is not that unusual, this space rock will fly past Earth at a far closer distance than the Moon.
I want to stress that scientists do not expect this asteroid to hit us, and I do not expect it to hit us either.
But the fact that it is flying by us at just “0.00048 AU” is definitely alarming…
The CNEOS database reveals the asteroid will pass by the Earth on September 1 at 3.49pm BST (10.49am ET).
Asteroid 2011 ES4 will fly by at 0.00048 AU (Astronomical Units) away – approximately 44,618 miles).
This distance is far closer to Earth than the Moon, which usually orbits at a distance of 238,855 miles (384,399km) distant.
But just because this one won’t hit us doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be concerned.
Earlier this month, I wrote an article about what scientists have discovered would happen if a very large asteroid hit the Atlantic Ocean. It is estimated that the resulting tsunami would send waves that are hundreds of feet high toward the east coast of the United States, and millions of people would perish. Of course most Americans that live on the east coast never even imagine that such a thing could happen, but the truth is that we have been repeatedly warned about such a potential disaster.
I truly hope that NASA will be able to give us as much advance warning as possible when that day finally arrives.
But NASA didn’t see the asteroid that almost entered our atmosphere a few days ago.
And there have been countless other asteroids over the years that NASA didn’t see until they were past us.
This is an area of research that I am particularly interested in, and at this point I don’t have a whole lot of faith in NASA’s ability to see what is coming.
In addition, even if they do see a giant space rock heading directly toward our planet, that doesn’t mean that they will actually tell us.
Rather than alarming the general public, they would probably start implementing plans behind the scenes to save those that are deemed to be “essential”.
Of course they might finally inform the rest of us just before it hit, but by then it would be far too late to do much about it.
***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.***
About the Author:
My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com. By purchasing the book you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe. I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help. During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.
Sustained Planetwide Storms May Have Filled Lakes, Rivers on Ancient Mars
Sustained Planetwide Storms May Have Filled Lakes, Rivers on Ancient Mars
A new study from The University of Texas at Austin is helping scientists piece together the ancient climate of Mars by revealing how much rainfall and snowmelt filled its lake beds and river valleys 3.5 billion to 4 billion years ago.
New research from The University of Texas at Austin has used dry Martian lake beds to determine how much precipitation was present on the ancient planet.
Credit: Gaia Stucky de Quay
The study, published in Geology, represents the first time that researchers have quantified the precipitation that must have been present across the planet, and it comes out as the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is making its way to the red planet to land in one of the lake beds crucial to this new research.
The ancient climate of Mars is something of an enigma to scientists. To geologists, the existence of riverbeds and paleolakes — eons-old lake basins — paints a picture of a planet with significant rainfall or snowmelt. But scientists who specialize in computer climate models of the planet have been unable to reproduce an ancient climate with large amounts of liquid water present for long enough to account for the observed geology.
“This is extremely important because 3.5 to 4 billion years ago Mars was covered with water. It had lots of rain or snowmelt to fill those channels and lakes,” said lead author Gaia Stucky de Quay, a postdoctoral fellow at UT’s Jackson School of Geosciences. “Now it’s completely dry. We’re trying to understand how much water was there and where did it all go.”
Although scientists have found large amounts of frozen water on Mars, no significant amount of liquid water currently exists.
In the study, researchers found that precipitation must have been between 13 and 520 feet (4 to 159 meters) in a single episode to fill the lakes and, in some cases, provide enough water to overflow and breach the lake basins. Although the range is large, it can be used to help understand which climate models are accurate, Stucky de Quay said.
“It’s a huge cognitive dissonance,” she said. “Climate models have trouble accounting for that amount of liquid water at that time. It’s like, liquid water is not possible, but it happened. This is the knowledge gap that our work is trying to fill in.”
The scientists looked at 96 open-basin and closed-basin lakes and their watersheds, all thought to have formed between 3.5 billion and 4 billion years ago. Open lakes are those that have ruptured by overflowing water; closed ones, on the other hand, are intact. Using satellite images and topography, they measured lake and watershed areas, and lake volumes, and accounted for potential evaporation to figure out how much water was needed to fill the lakes.
By looking at ancient closed and open lakes, and the river valleys that fed them, the team was able to determine a minimum and maximum precipitation. The closed lakes offer a glimpse at the maximum amount of water that could have fallen in a single event without breaching the side of the lake basin. The open lakes show the minimum amount of water required to overtop the lake basin, causing the water to rupture a side and rush out.
In 13 cases, researchers discovered coupled basins — containing one closed and one open basin that were fed by the same river valleys — which offered key evidence of both maximum and minimum precipitation in one single event.
Another great unknown is how long the rainfall or snowmelt episode must have lasted: days, years or thousands of years. That’s the next step of the research, Stucky de Quay said.
As this research is published, NASA recently launched Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover to visit Jezero crater, which contains one of the open lake beds used in the study. Co-author Tim Goudge, an assistant professor in the UT Jackson School Department of Geological Sciences, was the lead scientific advocate for the landing site. He said the data collected by the crater could be significant for determining how much water was on Mars and whether there are signs of past life.
“Gaia’s study takes previously identified closed and open lake basins, but applies a clever new approach to constrain how much precipitation these lakes experienced,” Goudge said. “Not only do these results help us to refine our understanding of the ancient Mars climate, but they also will be a great resource for putting results from the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover into a more global context.”
This study was supported by a grant through NASA’s Mars Data Analysis Program.
Contacts and sources:
Monica Kortsha
The University of Texas at Austin
Publication:
Precipitation and aridity constraints from paleolakes on early Mars Gaia Stucky de Quay; Timothy A. Goudge; Caleb I. Fassett Geology (2020) http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G47886.1
lowing Wheel UFO Seen Over London On Aug 19, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
lowing Wheel UFO Seen Over London OnAug 19, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Aug 19, 2020
Location of sighting: London, England
This exact same UFO has been seen worldwide and appears to be a wheel within a wheel. I myself have reported seeing it here in Taiwan just one week after seeing it on TV news in China. This little bugger gets around. Think of a glowing disk seen from its side. There you have it. Absolute amazing footage.
UFOs are actually commonly seen over the London Area for some unknown reason, but I would guess because its the capital and has such a historical importance.
Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states:
So I saw this last night in Croydon London and I was absolutely gobsmacked! If I didn’t see it with my own eyes I wouldn’t believe it guys! What do you all think?!
Incredible Raw Footage Of Four UFOs Over Montreal, Canada Aug 6, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Incredible Raw Footage Of Four UFOs Over Montreal, Canada Aug 6, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Aug 6, 2020
Location of sighting: Montreal, Canada
The eyewitness saw four glowing lights over Montreal, Canada two weeks ago. The person captured an amazing video of three lights and every so often you can see a fourth light. Very strange. I took the screenshot and added light to them. These glowing craft are not one, but all separate. If its a drone, then its four flying in unison. I don't believe it to be drones. Drones break formation. This is just amazing.
Hey I found an alien body caught in some rock and fossilized. The creature looks bipedal...has two legs and feet. Has two arms and its head is large, two long eye sockets, open mouth with two big buck teeth. I can't but help feeling sorry for the little guy. It looks like he got stuck and almost was smiling, but then...something killed him in place. Perhaps a poison or something? This object he is stuck too looks like a rock now, but thousands of years ago, may have been a living animal...like coral or sea sponge. The person is small...about 7 inches or 17.7 cm tall. The arms and legs have a more octopus or seal appearance to them. I do not see toes or fingers, but the hands and feet appear to be one piece, but might be covered in a cloth. Life existed on Mars, most people will deny it, but that because they never saw this photo of the little alien yet. Please check out my video below. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan Sorry, video uploading...stuck at 0% processing...waiting on Youtube to finish it. O_o Also cant upload the other photos. It took 30 min to get these two screenshots on it...something odd going on.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Cosmonaut ISS captured 5 UFOs flying over Antarctic
Cosmonaut ISS captured 5 UFOs flying over Antarctic
Acosmonaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has captured footage of bright unknown objects that some insist are man-made satellites and others speculate may be of extraterrestrial origin.
Cosmonaut Ivan Vagner recently captured footage of the auroras over the Antarctic. "5 objects" appeared in the the time-lapse according to Vagner in a tweet. The imagery was sent to Roscosmos for analysis.
Ivan Vagner reported on his Twitter page "Seeing five objects appear that fly in parallel course at the same distance from each other. What do you think it can be - meteors, satellites or ....?"
Vladimir Surdin, senior researcher at the P.K. Sternberg suggested "It's almost obvious that this is Elon's squadron of companions (Starlink satellites). While they are flying together, then they will scatter, satellites do not fly in such flocks, but after they are launched in a row, they really move for some time."
Now, I not buy the explanation of Vladimir Surdin. Starlink satellites are launched in series of 40 to 60 simultaneously and even if they will scatter and move for some time, then you still see the most of the satellites flying across the sky as a "train" and that is not the case here!
Besides, the orbits of the Starlink satellites are somewhat similar to ISS but significantly lower.and what we see here are 5 Unidentified Flying Objects flying through space at a much higher altitude than the Starlink satellites, therefore it may be assumed that these objects are not Starlink satellites.
Huge bright UFO flying over Vancouver, Canada 17-Aug-2020
Huge bright UFO flying over Vancouver, Canada 17-Aug-2020
This huge bright UFO was caught flying in the sky above Vancouver, Canada on 17th August 2020.
Witness report:
The objest had very bright light. Was stationary for about 5-7 minutes over a building. Went behind the building. It went down behind the building in a straight line, came up.again in.a straight line, waited for a few seconds and changed direction and flew away.
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The Mars Sample Return Campaign is an effort to bring samples of Martian rocks and soil back to Earth(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
If everything goes well, Martian rocks will hypersonically pancake themselves into the Utah desert.
But first, lets start from the beginning.
When Swati Mohan was in the third grade, the television show Star Trek: The Next Generation changed her life. One episode, in particular, displayed an artist’s rendition of everything space had to offer – stars, nebulas, and galaxies. From that moment on, she knew she had to be a part of something bigger than herself.
Now, years later, she is one of the primary actors in a project which could potentially change how we look at Mars, and space in general. From that third-grader, she has risen to become the lead of Guidance, Navigation, and Control Operations for the Perseverance Rover.
The Volvo-sized Perseverance (aka the 2020 Rover) and her sidekick, the helicopter Ingenuity, are the first stages of NASA’s sample return project. If all goes as planned, the duo will be landing at the Jezero Crater in February 2021.
Jezero Crater is a 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer) crater on the western edge of Isidis Planitia, a giant impact basin just north of the Martian equator. Between three to four billion years ago, a river there flowed into a body of water the size of Lake Tahoe, depositing sediments packed with carbonite minerals and clay. The Perseverance science team believes this ancient river delta could have collected and preserved organic molecules and other potential signs of microbial life.
“So the mission can be thought of in three separate phases,”Mohan told ZME Science.“One is launch cruise that’s getting from the surface of the Earth to Mars. The second phase is Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) from basically the top of Mars all the way down to the surface of the ground safely. The third mission is the surface mission. The actual portion where we drive around and do science is so complicated that in each of those phases there are separate missions, separate vehicles with all different hardware and software that goes along with it. You can think of it as each one of those phases has the complexity of a whole mission in it of itself.”
The returned samples have the potential to “change our understanding of the origin, evolution and distribution of life on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a July 28 news conference.
If successful, the Mars Sample Return (MSR) Campaign will bring samples of Martian rocks and soil back to Earth, where they can be investigated in detail, using all the capabilities of terrestrial laboratories. The return program is part of an even larger Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Martian planet.
Perseverance
Credit: NASA/JPL.
The nuclear-powered Perseverance is the first rover to bring a caching system to Mars that will package samples for return to Earth by a future mission. Rather than pulverizing rock the way Curiosity‘s drill does, Perseverance’s drill will cut intact rock cores that are about the size of a piece of chalk and will place them in sample tubes that it will store until the rover reaches an appropriate drop-off location.
Built at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the rover is loaded with all sorts of scientific instruments, advanced computational capabilities for landing and other new systems. With a chassis about 10 feet (3 meters) long, Perseverance is also the largest, heaviest robotic Mars rover NASA has ever built.
The demanding science goal requested of the rover requires a new suite of instruments to tackle the question from many angles. While, at first glance, it may look like Perseverance wears the same uniform as Curiosity, it does contain a few improvements.
“Perseverance actually takes a lot of heritage from the Curiosity rover,”said Mohan. “The cruise stage that we’re flying is very similar. The EDL system is very similar. We’ve made some upgrades to Perseverance in order to improve our entry, descent and landing performance. And the rover shares the same kind of fundamental structure and body but it has all new set of instruments that are geared for searching for biosignatures.”
Among the technologies aboard Perseverance mission is the rover’s Terrain-Relative Navigation system (TRN). Part of the landing system, TRN is the primary reason Perseverance can explore a place like Jezero. It will enable the rover to quickly and autonomously comprehend its location over the surface and modify its trajectory during descent. This will be able to provide invaluable assistance for both robotic and crewed missions landing on the Moon and is a must for future robotic and crewed exploration of Mars.
Engineers have also given Perseverance more self-driving smarts than any other rover, allowing it to traverse more ground in a day’s operations without having to wait for engineers on our home planet to send up instructions. Calculated over the length of the mission, this lack of turn-around time will translate into more science.
The Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument, which can detect organic matter, and the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL), which measures the composition of rocks and soil, will allow Perseverance to map organic matter, chemical composition and texture together at a higher level of detail than any Mars rover has done before. These instruments — two of the seven total onboard — will play a particularly important role in Perseverance’s search for potential signs of life.
Perseverance also carries a technology demonstration coined the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment — or MOXI, because what is science without a good acronym. This instrument will produce oxygen from Mars’ carbon dioxide atmosphere, demonstrating a way that future explorers might produce oxygen for rocket propellant as well as for breathing. The Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) was also created with future human exploration in mind. MEDA will provide information about the current martian weather and climate, as well as the nature of the dust on the surface. The Mars Science Laboratory Entry, Descent and Landing Instrumentation 2 (MEDLI2) package, a next-generation version of what flew on the Mars Science Laboratory mission that delivered the Curiosity rover, was also geared for future human exploration in mind, providing data about the entry and descent of the spacecraft through the atmosphere.
At one time, cameras were considered a waste of space on planetary explorers. Who would want to see images when there was so much science which could take up that space on the vessel. Thank God, those arguments have past for those of us who like to visually see the planetary landscapes (and for those of us who might want Martian backgrounds on their computer desktop…not naming names).
Perseverance is carrying the most cameras in any craft in the history of interplanetary exploration. The rover has 19 cameras that will deliver images of the landscape. The other parts of the spacecraft involved in EDL carry four additional cameras, potentially allowing engineers to put together a high-definition view of the landing process after the rover safely touches down on Mars.
Ingenuity
In this illustration, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter stands on the Red Planet’s surface as NASA’s Perseverance rover (partially visible on the left) rolls away.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
And what is a superhero without its trusty sidekick.
For Vaneeza Rupani, a high-school student in Northport, Alabama, second place didn’t turn out to be that bad. Rupani originally submitted the name Ingenuity for the Mars 2020 rover, before it was named Perseverance, but NASA officials recognized the submission as a terrific name for the helicopter, given how much creative thinking the team employed to get the mission off the ground so to speak.
“The ingenuity and brilliance of people working hard to overcome the challenges of interplanetary travel are what allow us all to experience the wonders of space exploration,”Rupani wrote. “Ingenuity is what allows people to accomplish amazing things.”
“It’s super cool,”said Mohan of Ingenuity. “The Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997 had a little rover called Sojourner and it was not even the size of a cereal box, and it was an add-on. That rover is the genesis of how we have the Perseverance rover now and all this complexity and capability so it’s super exciting that we’re taking that next step with ingenuity to do the first powered flight.”
Ingenuity is what is known as a technology demonstration – a project that seeks to test a new capability for the first time, with limited scope. Previous groundbreaking technology demonstrations include the Mars Pathfinder rover Sojourner and the tiny Mars Cube One (MarCO) CubeSats that flew by Mars in 2018.
Ingenuity features four specially made carbon-fiber blades, arranged into two rotors that spin in opposite directions at around 2,400 revolutions per minute – many times faster than a passenger helicopter on Earth. It also has innovative solar cells, batteries and other components. However, the little chopper doesn’t carry science instruments and is a separate experiment from Perseverance.
Because the Mars atmosphere is 99 percent less dense than ours, Ingenuity has to be light, with rotor blades that are much larger and spin much faster than what would be required for a helicopter of Ingenuity’s mass here on Earth.
Temps are another experiment with the little ‘copter. Nights at Jezro dip down much cooler than cardigan weather at minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 90 degrees Celsius). While Ingenuity’s team on Earth tested the helicopter at Martian temperatures and believes it should work on Mars as intended, the cold will push the design limits of many of Ingenuity’s parts.
In addition, flight controllers at JPL won’t be able to control the helicopter with a joystick. Like all our Martian rovers, commands will need to be sent well in advance, with engineering data coming back from the spacecraft long after each flight takes place. In the meantime, Ingenuity will have a lot of autonomy to make its own decisions about how to fly to a waypoint and keep itself warm.
NASA officials say that Ingenuity is intended to demonstrate technologies needed for flying in the Martian atmosphere. If successful, these technologies could enable other advanced robotic flying vehicles which might be included in future robotic and human missions to Mars. They are hoping what is learned through a helicopter could offer a unique viewpoint not provided by current orbiters high overhead or by rovers and landers on the ground, provide high-definition images and reconnaissance for robots or humans and enable access to terrain that is difficult for rovers to reach.
“The Ingenuity team has done everything to test the helicopter on Earth, and we are looking forward to flying our experiment in the real environment at Mars,”said MiMi Aung, Ingenuity’s project manager at JPL.“We’ll be learning all along the way, and it will be the ultimate reward for our team to be able to add another dimension to the way we explore other worlds in the future.”
Sample Return Mission
The ultimate dream for those interested in space science is finding life on another planet. That starts with sample return missions. Perseverance is that first step.
Three launches will be necessary to accomplish landing, collecting, storing and finding samples and delivering them to Earth.
Once soil samples are collected by the rover, it will deposit samples in tubes at select locations, called depots, which will be collected at a later date by the European Space Agency’s Earth Return Orbiter.
“The lander goes, lands near one of these depots, and collects the samples which have been placed on the surface,”explains Dave Spencer, the Mars Sample Return Campaign Mission Manager at JPL. “The lander has a European rover onboard, called the sample fetch rover. This rover will be placed on the surface we’ll go out and grab the samples from this depot, bring it back to the lander and put them in an orbiting sample container, which is basically a soccer ball sized container, then put into the Mars Ascent Vehicle on the lander, that can launch it up into Mars orbit.
Illustration of Mars Sample Return process
(Credit: ESA)
As currently envisioned, the lander that will gather the samples launches in 2026 and arrives at Mars in 2028, touching down close to the Mars 2020 rover near Jezero Crater. It deposits the fetch rover to pick up the stashed samples and transfer them to the rocket. Another option is for the Mars 2020 rover to retain some of its collected samples onboard and deliver those samples directly to the rocket. The rocket would then become the first ever to launch off another planet, transporting the sample return container into orbit around Mars.
“We also designed it so that the Mars 2020 rover, assuming it’s still alive, if it’s still got more samples onboard, it can come up and provide samples to be loaded into the orbiting sample container as well,” said Spencer.“So we can receive samples from either the fetch rover or the 2020 rover.”
That’s where a separate orbiting spacecraft, provided by ESA and also launched from Earth in 2026, would rendezvous with the sample return container and ferry it back to Earth.
A NASA-provided payload on the orbiter would provide the capabilities needed to capture and contain the samples, placing them in an Earth entry vehicle that would land the samples safely on U.S. soil.
Spencer explains:
“So now we’ve got this orbiting sample container, the soccer ball-sized container that’s been delivered by this Mars ascent vehicle into Mars orbit. And it’s going to be up at around 300 kilometers (186 miles) of altitude above the surface of Mars. And the European orbiter, this Earth Return Orbiter is going to go up and autonomously rendezvous and capture this orbiting sample container. And once it captures, there’s a big canister basketball hoop basically, that we steer the vehicle such that the orbiting sample contains canister goes into this basketball hoop, close the door on and capture it and then very carefully put it through a robotic process.”
The canister will contain all of the materials inside the orbiting sample container. However, scientists need to be careful not to return any uncontained material back into the Earth’s biosphere, such as dust on the canister. In order to keep this from occurring, the capsule contains a redundant containment system where the engineers put a containment vessel around the orbiting sample canister, and then turn around and put that unit into another containment vessel.
“Now we’ve got this enclosed set of samples and we put them into an earth Earth entry vehicle that gets delivered back to Earth. It’s then on put on an impact trajectory, so it’s actually going to crash land in Utah. And it comes in directly from the interplanetary trajectory. So it’s going to be coming in at hyper-sonic speeds through the Earth’s atmosphere and impact in the mudflats at a place called the Utah test and training rage.”
And then if all goes well, it will be recovered intact.
And if all goes better, we will make some amazing discoveries. Hopefully, discoveries that will propel us to search for sample returns on further bodies in the future.
As Alex Mather of Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia, eloquently wrote in his winning essay naming the Perseverance rover, “We are a species of explorers, and we will meet many setbacks on the way to Mars. However, we can persevere. We, not as a nation but as humans, will not give up.”
According to researchers at the University of Illinois, a supernova 65 light-years from Earth likely caused a mass extinction event during the Late Devonian period, 359 million years ago.
The researchers found radioactive isotopes in rocks that may be able to confirm such an event, as detailed in a new paper published in the journal Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences.
During the Late Devonian period, when most life was found in the oceans, one of the worst mass extinctions in Earth’s history gravely damaged its ecosystem. Yet it’s never been clear what caused it.
To explain the event, the team looked at rocks that contain ancient plant spores. These spores appeared to have been severely sunburnt by ultraviolet light, likely the consequence of a long-term lack of ozone in the atmosphere.
“Earth-based catastrophes such as large-scale volcanism and global warming can destroy the ozone layer, too, but evidence for those is inconclusive for the time interval in question,” astronomy and physics professor Brian Fields, lead author, said in a statement. “Instead, we propose that one or more supernova explosions, about 65 light-years away from Earth, could have been responsible for the protracted loss of ozone.”
It would have been quite the event, lighting up the skies.
“To put this into perspective, one of the closest supernova threats today is from the star Betelgeuse, which is over 600 light-years away and well outside of the kill distance of 25 light-years,” graduate student and study co-author Adrienne Ertel added.
The team also looked at other ozone depletion causes, including meteorite impacts, and gamma-ray bursts, but those wouldn’t have caused a depletion in the longer term.
They suggest that the violent supernova flooded our planet with dangerous UV, X-, and gamma rays, irradiating the ozone layer with effects that would have lasted for up to 100,000 years, according to the researchers.
To confirm their suspicions, the team is now looking for the “smoking gun” — two specific radioactive isotopes of plutonium, originating from the Late Devonian period, that only could have come to Earth from cosmic explosions.
“The overarching message of our study is that life on Earth does not exist in isolation,” Fields explains. “We are citizens of a larger cosmos, and the cosmos intervenes in our lives — often imperceptibly, but sometimes ferociously.”
NASA is tracking a vast, growing anomaly in Earth's magnetic field
NASA is tracking a vast, growing anomaly in Earth's magnetic field
NASA is actively monitoring a strange anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensityin the skies above the planet, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa.
This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for years, and perhaps none more so than NASA researchers. The space agency’s satellites and spacecraft are particularly vulnerable to the weakened magnetic field strength within the anomaly, and the resulting exposure to charged particles from the Sun.
The South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) – likened by NASA to a ‘dent’ in Earth’s magnetic field, or a kind of ‘pothole in space’ – generally doesn’t affect life on Earth, but the same can’t be said for orbital spacecraft (including the International Space Station), which pass directly through the anomaly as they loop around the planet at low-Earth orbit altitudes.
During these encounters, the reduced magnetic field strength inside the anomaly means technological systems onboard satellites can short-circuit and malfunction if they become struck by high-energy protons emanating from the Sun.
These random hits may usually only produce low-level glitches, but they do carry the risk of causing significant data loss, or even permanent damage to key components – threats obliging satellite operators to routinely shut down spacecraft systems before spacecraft enter the anomaly zone.
Mitigating those hazards in space is one reason NASA is tracking the SAA; another is that the mystery of the anomaly represents a great opportunity to investigate a complex and difficult-to-understand phenomenon, and NASA’s broad resources and research groups are uniquely well-appointed to study the occurrence.
“The magnetic field is actually a superposition of fields from many current sources,” explains geophysicist Terry Sabaka from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The primary source
This post was originally published by Nexus Newsfeed on . Please visit the original post to read the complete article.
Scariest UFO Documentary Ever! Astounding Compilation Of The Leading Experts On UFO's, The Illuminati, Freemasons, And The New World Order. Awesome Video!
Scariest UFO Documentary Ever! Astounding Compilation Of The Leading Experts On UFO's, The Illuminati, Freemasons, And The New World Order. Awesome Video!
Scariest UFO Documentary Ever! – Conspiritus Remake by Xendrius – Proper / Full Version
Featuring Ted Gunderson, Fritz Springmeier, Cathy O’Brien, Chuck Missler, Bill Cooper, John Todd, Aaron Russo, John Wheeler, Jacque Vallee, and more.
All aliens are demons or fallen angles or elohim or bene ha’elohim. All these evil entities can take human form and are walking among us today. Most of the rulers of the world today are elohim or bene ha’elohim. There is a firmament over us so no entities can leave or come to earthy.
Fellow Spiritual Warriors: This is an absolute MUST WATCH! I’ve been kicking around the planet long enough to know that much of what this amazing compilation contains is sickeningly ACCURATE. . . Xendrius has an amazingly strong Spirit and stomach to have been able to create this astounding historical overview that seamlessly blends together such seemingly disparate elements. CONSPIRITUS remade should be dessimated throughout the Multiverse as far as I’m concerned.
NASA Misses Another Asteroid via LIve Israeli News
NASA Misses Another Asteroid via LIve Israeli News
NASA Misses Another Asteroid
A Car Sized Asteroid came dangerously close to Earth only 1800 miles away and NASA never saw it coming. Friends those who claim there are no asteroids coming because they track them are trusting sites like NASA to know what’s coming but that’s not always the case as we see NASA misses objects coming from the direction of the Sun.
We don’t need to brace for impact we need to pray for guidance to know what to do and to be sure we have our lives in order. There is no greater time to know Jesus as your savior than now!
Woman Has Been Recording The Sound of UFOs... It's Weird!
Woman Has Been Recording The Sound of UFOs... It's Weird!
Woman Has Been Recording The Sound of UFOs… It’s Weird!
Let us know what you think of the Sounds of UFOs in the comments section. What sound do you think they make?
A media phenomenon, Coast to Coast AM deals with UFOs, strange occurrences, life after death, and other unexplained (and often inexplicable) phenomena.
Channel Managing Agent Zohar Entertainment Group International Inc, USA
I found a dark black ship parked on the edge of a crater on earths moon. The structure is very sharp, modern style and exactly what you would expect to see if you were watching a scifi movie...but this is no movie...its real life and this...is real too. Map ruler puts it at close to 75-100 meters long. Imagine how powerful Taiwan would be if we got hold of this ship first! This is as good as it gets. There is no evidence out there that will be more blunt, more direct, more to the point than this. You probably are asking yourself, whats Scott get out of this? I get the knowledge that it exists, I get the chance to share it with others so they may learn that it exists. For too many people such discoveries are impossible...and yet...we make them possible. If every US governor and congressman laid eyes on this...there is a chance that they would demand that the US government meet and devolvge all information pertaining to the existence of aliens. The files are extensive, the information being hidden has one purpose only...to keep the US a world power. There is no equality among such words. Power should be equal, knowledge should be shared. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Blue UFO making maneuvers in the sky above Sun City Center, Florida 11-Aug-2020
Blue UFO making maneuvers in the sky above Sun City Center, Florida 11-Aug-2020
Check out this interesting UFO sighting that happened in the sky above Sun City Center in Florida on 11th August 2020.
Witness report:
Spotted star like object moving in the skies in strange ways and started filming. On 8-11-20 around 8:30 pm I looked outside my window to view a beautiful sunset. While looking up at the sky I noticed what looked like a star. I knew it couldn’t be a star because the sky was filled with dark clouds. While further watching it I noticed it started moving in strange ways. I continued watching when all of a sudden it turned into a blue color, flickered out and disappeared. I knew this was something strange so I grabbed my camera and went outside with the hope of finding and filming it. While outside I saw nothing for almost 10 minutes then to my surprise I spotted it and starting filming.
Three videos showing U.S. Navy pilots encountering mysterious, fast-moving objects emerged in 2017 and 2018. The videos were made public due to reporting by The New York Times and efforts by To The Stars Academy, a research, development and media center for cutting-edge science and technology.
One of the UAP videos was taken in November 2004, and the other two were shot in January 2015. All were captured by Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet jets with pilots utilizing Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) technology, hardware that detects heat and creates images.
The three released UAP videos are called "Gimbal," "GoFast" and "FLIR1" (also known as the "Tic Tac" video).
Last week, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) announced the creation of a task force to analyze and understand the "nature and origins" of UAPs. The Department of the Navy, under the cognizance of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, will lead the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF).
The mission of the UAPTF "is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security," DoD officials said in a brief statement released on Friday (Aug. 14).
But before you set up greeting signs and start tossing out welcome mats for the incoming aliens, a little perspective and context are in order. I asked some UFO specialists what they thought of the newly announced task force.
Cautiously optimistic
"The formation of a task force on UFOs is another welcome development in the recent renewed interest and attention to these reports by government agencies and political actors," said Mark Rodeghier, president and scientific director of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies in Chicago.
Without further details, it's impossible to judge how well-positioned the task force will be to seriously investigate reports, Rodeghier added, "but I remain cautiously optimistic for now."
Rodeghier said he understands the need for secrecy. However, "I would hope that as much information as possible is released to the public so we can all be informed on this potentially world-shattering subject," he told Inside Outer Space.
"I have no doubt that military intelligence services around the world have always been interested in ‘UFO reports' — whether or not a real 'unexplainable' phenomenon is behind a few of them."
That's the view of Jim Oberg, a noted space journalist, historian and a debunker of a slew of UFO sightings. He's an admitted "lifelong space nut" and professional rocket scientist whose career includes 20-plus years at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
There are many non-extraterrestrial reasons why the Defense Department is interested in UFO reports, Oberg said.
First, to identify and ameliorate instrumental "funnies" in new sensory technology, to make sure we don't accidentally misinterpret or overlook future readings.
Second, to determine how detection "funnies" might be deliberately induced by hackers and real enemies, and what we can do to frustrate such efforts.
Third, to deliberately induce anomalous targets into the range of our own new detection/tracking technology, as a way of testing it.
Fourth, to test enemy detection systems with deliberate pokes to identify exploitable weaknesses.
Fifth, to assess which reports from within or near adversary nations are indicators of their classified military testing and operations that we need insight into.
Sixth, to determine which detections (at home or abroad) accidentally reveal highly classified operations of our own that might be revealed to enemy nations that are also looking for such indications, so as to improve our masking, misdirection and stealth.
Seventh, in so far as observations of UFO reports from adversary nations are indicators of leaked observable clues to military capabilities, to do nothing to provoke such regimes from curtailing their own news media coverage of the "pseudo-UFOs." Never announce how such innocent (to them) news items can be exploited.
Eighth, in so far as our own domestic UFO reports may be authentic indicators of classified military activities, to purposefully create camouflage and masking reports to distract, confuse or lull foreign observers and analysts.
"Perceptive observers of the UFO scene over the last two-thirds of a century have noted a telltale feature of the evolution of reports," Oberg said. "Their nature has been changing, keeping uncanny pace with the progress in human observation and detection technologies."
Oberg added that, year by year, the "old UFOs" fade away just before the advent of new technologies that would have unambiguously documented them come online, to be replaced by a new flavor of "anomalies" that precisely match the limits of vision of new technologies.
"I don't think this [task force] is as significant as some people are suggesting," said writer and UFO skeptic Robert Sheaffer. "It's just a response to all the publicity generated by To The Stars leaking the three Navy infrared videos, which the Pentagon later released."
In the military, a task force is something that is put together to deal with a specific situation or problem, Sheaffer said. It is expected to produce a report and recommendations concerning that issue and is disbanded when such work is complete.
"So, this is not something open-ended and ongoing, like Project Blue Book. It does not suggest an ongoing government interest in unidentified objects," Sheaffer observed. Conducted by the United States Air Force, Project Blue Book appraised the UFO situation starting in 1952 and officially closed down in 1970.
Intruding into their sandbox
Military operations areas (MOAs) are clearly designated on aviation maps, and civilian aircraft are generally supposed to avoid them, Sheaffer pointed out.
Most of the recent Pentagon comments about "unidentified objects" mention "range incursions," Sheaffer added — i.e., unknown objects that seem to be entering one of these MOAs.
"So, it seems that the military is worried about unidentified objects that might be intruding into their sandbox. If unidentified objects turn up elsewhere, the military doesn't care," Sheaffer said. "The 'Tic Tac' and 'Gimbal' videos appear to show distant jets, which are probably well outside the MOA, quite far away. The military is investigating out of an abundance of caution, and a sensitivity to criticism."
"First, I'd say that the establishment of a task force to investigate and understand UAP makes sense and could, if done systematically and scientifically and transparently, provide data useful in interpreting pilots' sightings," Scoles told Inside Outer Space.
And it also makes sense, she said, that the Department of Defense — whose job it is, of course, to protect the U.S. from threats — is undertaking this endeavor.
"However, I think those expecting big, exotic conclusions from the task force would do well to temper their expectations," Scoles said. "If you look at what the official announcement actually says, it's not quite as extraordinary as it might seem at first glance."
Boundary-crossing objects
Last week's three-paragraph DoD release, Scoles added, uses language similar to that of other, previous statements about UAPs. For example, a September 2019 statement from Joseph Gradisher, spokesman for the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare defining "UAP," reads, "The 'Unidentified Aerial Phenomena' terminology is used because it provides the basic descriptor for the sightings/observations of unauthorized/unidentified aircraft/objects entering/operating in the airspace of various military-controlled training ranges."
Scoles said that "UAP" technically could include aircraft or objects that are simply unauthorized, as well as aircraft or objects that cannot be immediately identified. "That means that, if a pilot sees something they cannot explain, but someone else explains it a few hours later, it could still fall under the definition of UAP."
The task force press release uses very similar wording to talk about DoD interest.
"It very specifically states that the DoD is concerned with boundary-crossing by objects that are — right when an observer sees them — unidentified," Scoles said. "It says nothing so specific about objects that remain forever unidentified and mysterious. It certainly says nothing nor implies anything about alien aircraft."
But, like all things UFO, Scoles concluded, "vague and somewhat weaselly wording leaves enough room for people to interpret this latest development very differently."
Leonard David is author of "Moon Rush: The New Space Race" (National Geographic, 2019). A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. This version of the story published on Space.com.
“Because Americans suddenly came back to this topic, it is difficult to say for sure. But every now and then this topic always comes up. About a year ago, Trump announced that they were considering such unidentified phenomena and should systematize them. Now, perhaps, this is due to some political events, which it would be good to draw the attention of our citizens and the world community, and at the same time receive some dividends …”
“This topic” is UFO investigations and the alleged speaker is said to be Brigadier General Vladimir Popov, the head of the Federal Aerospace Search and Rescue Directorate of the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Defense. A long statement apparently about the most recent announcement that the Pentagon has officially set up a new task force to investigate UFOs and UAPs is given as the reason for this alleged statement that appears to have started at the Soulask.com website. , although Ovnihoje.com has a longer quote. The numerous qualifications on this explanation are necessary because, although Brigadier General Vladimir Popov is a real person and appears to hold that title, no other source was found for this quote, so we don’t know if it’s real, where it was given, who the audience was, etc. However, its content warrants a look and some speculation anyway.
“I do not exclude the possibility that the topic of UFOs will give the American military the opportunity to expand secret intelligence. Hidden behind the study of UFOs, already in the post-war years and especially in the 60-70 years of the last century, the Americans carried out active intelligence activities.”
The quote proposes that the rennet announcement was politically driven by both the current presidential campaign and the desire to generate a smoke screen to cover up possible ulterior motives by the U.S. military, specifically …
“It is quite possible that the Pentagon, under the guise of “UFO research”, will place secret intelligence facilities somewhere in Norway, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia. In short, closer to our borders. I don’t know what to say about UFOs, but the Pentagon probably wouldn’t mind watching our new hypersonic missiles.”
The general seems to be boasting about Russia’s new missiles and alleges the Pentagon hide intelligence operations inside UFO investigations. That’s certainly plausible. In fact, so far the alleged statement makes sense as a cynical, propaganda-ish response to the Pentagon announcement. However, this section which seems to refer to the Roswell incident is … well, read it for yourself.
“That is why we have always been cautious about UFO claims. As a rule, it was later discovered that the “alien apparatus” was a huge balloon probe with all kinds of spy equipment. We weren’t even ready to talk about it at that time, and the Americans had already launched these devices. We used to slaughter them and get information about them.”
“Slaughter them” sounds like a Soviet-era boast, but the Roswell incident was during that regime so a boast that the USSR “slaughtered” US balloons to get information about them seems plausible as well. At the end, the statement sounds like it was made in response to demands by the Russian people to reveal what the Russian military is doing, now that the Pentagon revealed it’s investigating UFOs (again).
We don’t need a UFO task force.
“I don’t think that today we would need to create a UFO structure like the one Americans claim. We designed the scheme to study incomprehensible objects in principle. All information of this type is taken into account by our command posts and on-call services. It is fixed and transmitted upwards. But as it is studied further, it is no longer so much about the military, but about scientists.”
Oooh, a response to the Russian public plus a dig at the Americans that the Russian government is more concerned about scientists than the military. If this is indeed a response to a Russian public request for UFO disclosure, then it sounds real. It would help if there was a Russian press release or media site to confirm it, but that may pop up soon. In the meantime, it’s interesting to ponder their viewpoint that the Pentagon announcement is both a political ploy and a military smokescreen to cover up spy operations.
Should we trust the Russian view? Do we trust the Pentagon? The current administration’s comments on UFOs?
Is the UFO field becoming too political to get anything done?
Lying off the southern tip of Japan’s Ryukyu archipelago, which includes Okinawa Island, is a small 11.5 square mile speck of land called Yonaguni Island. It is the westernmost inhabited island in Japan, lying just 75 miles off the coast of Taiwan, and its azure waters, rich biodiversity, and large populations of hammerhead sharks that gather in great numbers off the coast every year have made this place a haven for daring scuba divers from around the world. Indeed, it was the sharks that brought here a diver in the 1980s who would make a spectacular discovery in that inviting blue water, for down there in the depths he discovered a strange set of ancient ruins that have gone on to be discussed and debated to this day.
In 1986, a diving instructor by the name of Kihachiro Aratake, who was also the director of Yonaguni-Cho Tourism Association, was at Yonagumi looking to photograph and study the many hammerhead sharks that congregate here every winter. While scouting out a good spot from which to observe the sharks, he came across something very unusual. There on the bottom was what at first looked like an enormous cliff face, only here there were obvious geometrical terraces, nearly perfectly flat horizontal surfaces with sharp edges, walls, platforms, columns, vertical stone blocks, a road, and even a star-shaped platform. One of the structures was a massive, rectangular formation measuring 500 feet long, 130 feet wide and 90 feet tall, with closely placed pillars which rise nearly to the surface, as well as a ledge that circles the whole thing. For all appearances it seemed to be some sort of vast, manmade structure, evidently crafted out of the sand and mud stones of the area and in some cases seemingly directly merged with the bottom itself, but what was it doing out there under the water in the first place? What did this all mean?
It was not long at all before the word got out on this mysterious place, and one of the first scientists to arrive to seriously study it was marine seismologist Masaaki Kimura, who came to what is now called the “Yonaguni Monument” in 1990 with his team from the University of the Ryūkyūs, and he would spend the next two decades studying them. According to Kimura, the structures are most definitely and clearly manmade, likely carved thousands of years ago at a time when the site sat above water. He has claimed to have found a mysterious script carved into some of the stones, as well as quarry marks, various monuments, rudimentary sculptures, a triumphal arch, five temples, and even a pyramid and a stadium within the complex, in addition to various pottery, stone tools and fireplaces scattered throughout. Kimura has said of this place:
I think it’s very difficult to explain away their origin as being purely natural, because of the vast amount of evidence of man’s influence on the structures. The characters and animal monuments in the water, which I have been able to partially recover in my laboratory, suggest the culture comes from the Asian continent. One example I have described as an underwater sphinx resembles a Chinese or ancient Okinawan king. The largest structure looks like a complicated, monolithic, stepped pyramid that rises from a depth of 25 meters [82 feet].
He has said in the past that he believes the structures to be possibly remnants of the legendary ancient lost Pacific continent of Mu, or perhaps the remains of the lost 1st century Japanese city of Yamagai. Adding to Kimura’s assertion that the ruins are artificial in origin are the sheer number of perfect 90-degree corners and sharp, straight edges to be found, as well as the sheer number of these structures in such a small area. Not everyone is so convinced that this is evidence of a lost civilization, though, and there are others who believe this is nothing more than anomalous looking natural formations caused by earthquakes, natural erosion from the strong currents of the area, and fracturing. One Robert Schoch, a professor of science and mathematics at Boston University, has personally seen the site up close, and has said of it:
I’m not convinced that any of the major features or structures are manmade steps or terraces, but that they’re all natural. It’s basic geology and classic stratigraphy for sandstones, which tend to break along planes and give you these very straight edges, particularly in an area with lots of faults and tectonic activity.
In the end there has been no conclusive answer to just what the mysterious Yonagumi Monument actually is, but it has certainly become a popular diving destination for curiosity seekers. Interestingly, the ruins are not designated as important cultural artifacts and are not under any sort of protection. They might as well be just rocks lying on the bottom for all the government seems to care, which seems to be strange considering more research could definitely be done here. Whatever their origins, largely the formations have remained just forgotten curiosities and a cool dive site. What is the meaning and purpose of this place, if any? Was this crafted by some lost civilization for inscrutable reasons or is it just a neat geological formation? The mystery remains.
All related videos, selected and posted by peter2011
rvEen grafische voorstelling van de passage van asteroïde 2020 QG langs de aarde.
WETENSCHAP Nooit eerder passeerde een ruimterots zo dicht bij de aarde als asteroïde 2020 QG afgelopen weekend - toch volgens de metingen. Het gevaarte, ongeveer zo groot als een wagen, scheerde op nog geen 3.000 km langs onze planeet, wat als een ‘bijna-botsing’ wordt beschouwd. Opvallend: de asteroïde werd pas zes uur na haar passage ontdekt.
Mocht de asteroïde ons zondag daadwerkelijk geraakt hebben, dan zou ze waarschijnlijk in de atmosfeer zijn opgebrand. Dat gebeurt in dat geval op zo’n hoogte en het ruimtegevaarte was ook zo klein dat we op de aardbodem zelf geen schade zouden ondervinden.
Onrustwekkender dan de eventuele impact van 2020 QG op onze planeet is dat we haar niet zagen komen, ondanks verscheidene programma’s die allerlei gevaarlijke ruimterotsen tijdig zouden moeten opsporen. Een daarvan, gefinancierd door NASA, spotte uiteindelijk toch de asteroïde, maar dan wel zes uur na haar bijna-botsing met de aarde.
2020 QG is de dichtst bij de aarde gepasseerde ruimterots ooit gemeten, met uitzondering van asteroïden die in het verleden al op de aarde insloegen. NASA kent maar een fractie van deze ‘aardscheerders’ of, in het Engels, NEO’s (near-earth objects). Heel wat aardscheerders ontsnappen aan de aardse telescopen. Dat kan gevaarlijk zijn, als de verkeerde asteroïde of planetoïde door de mazen van het net glipt en op onze planeet neerstort. Tienduizenden aardbewoners zouden dan kunnen omkomen.
Minor Planet Centre/International Astronomical UnionAsteroïde 2020 QG scheerde op 16 augustus langs de aarde. De gele pijl duidt de richting van de zon aan, de blauwe lijn die van de aarde, en de groene de locatie van de asteroïde.
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Secret Black Triangle Manta Spacecraft Appears Over Texas
Secret Black Triangle Manta Spacecraft Appears Over Texas
A red glowing triangular antigravity craft has been caught on video while it was parked in the sky over Texas on August 16, 2020.
The witness said that the craft made no sound and did not move at all, it was just sitting there in the night sky. The small lights you see are from the electromagnetic field around the object.
Although the craft is very similar to the infamous TR3-B it also could be the TR3-A Black Manta which is the name of a surveillance aircraft of the United States Air Force, speculated to be developed under a black project.
The exceptional video clip of the Black Manta craft, which by the way does not exist officially, starts at 1.55.
This Individual Has Just Released This Secret Recording Taken At Area 51 via Unexplained Mysteries
This Individual Has Just Released This Secret Recording Taken At Area 51 via Unexplained Mysteries
This individual has just released this secret recording taken at area 51. Today, we take a look at this secret recording that was made at area 51.
Area 51 is shrouded in mystery. Although the base has been a talking point for years, featured in movies and visited by countless people, it’s secrets are still well hidden.
Every so often someone will come forward with interesting photographs that allegedly show UFOs. When a UFO is captured it usually gets a lot of attention from those interested in the topic, but when a UFO is sighted at a place like area 51 it gets even more attention. This is because of the history of the base, and the alleged stories of UFO’s being housed there.
These recent photographs allegedly show a UFO at area 51. The craft is disc shaped, and can be seen slowly hovering above the nearby hill. When these photographs started to make the rounds on social media people got excited, and soon started to speculate about what the object was.
I found a human size foot on Mars in a gigapan photo today. Its taken from Mars Sol 855 and it has incredible detail to it. The foot has muscles and veins showing though the skin surface. I believe this to be a real foot, because most of the statues on Mars are less quality and detail. Perhaps this is a foot of an alien that was part of an invasion force. The foot does not have five toes but instead has only two large areas in the front...probably toes, but would seem less weak than five toes would. Interesting really. There is no shoe or sock covering it...just the foot and upper ankle area. If this was found in Greece pulled from the ground...there would be no doubt that it was an ancient foot of person long ago...so how could we not do the same for Mars? Scott C. Waring
This amazing cloud is holding a UFO within it, creating the cloud as a way of flying low to the ground and monitoring humans without frightening them. The cloud has amazing disk like shape and edges. The sides seem very thick on this one and the top and lower bellies are smooth and curved like a disk. Its just a matter of time before someone catches such a cloud with an actual disk or UFO half in and half out of such a cloud. Mark my words, it will happen.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Below is a close up, original untouched, above is added contrast and focus.
August 16, 2020 UFO Sighting Capture in Volusia County, Florida, Video, UFO Sighting News.
August 16, 2020 UFO Sighting Capture in Volusia County, Florida,Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Aug 16, 2020 Location of sighting: Volusia County, Florida, USA Source: MUFON This UFO video seems a bit blurry, but the eyewitness was at the beach for fun, and we are lucky she was able to catch what she did. The woman notices a strange object moving across horizon over the water. It moves to the right and she is capturing it, when suddenly it stops and darts to the left. The woman gasps in surprise at this. The whole video is 100% real. I had trouble focusing the screenshots but eventually got it. The object has a disk shape to it! Its a classic flying saucer disk with a hump on its upper middle and thicker at its center. Many UFO sightings have been caught off the coast of Florida over the years and this one convinces me that there is an alien base off the coast of Volusia County, Florida. The base is about 5 miles off of the coast line and 5km below the ocean floor. This UFO is huge! Close to fishing boat size...50 meters at least, but may be as big as 100 meters across. This video is incredible. I am just blown away by it. Its 100% proof that there is an alien off Florida. Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states:
On vacation went out on the balcony and noticed a black disk-shaped object from a far distance on the beach just hovering in one spot for about minute or two that's what caught my attention. It then started to move and I lost it. I grabbed my phone to record hovering and then I thought I lost because the sun was shining so bright I could barely see or sit on the balcony. Then I noticed I found the object again it seemed to be scanning the same spot and then it took off so fast I could barely see because of the sun in my eyes I had to put the phone down to see where it went; but it kept hovering that area of the water drop real low go back up and shoot across the water and then disappear from my eye view.7
At this moment, the UFO stopped going right and tilted to turn left. Its propulsion was powered high causing the blur around it. The actual shape is impossible to make out. Then it shoots off to the left fast.
Jellyfish Like UFO Seen Over Colorado, Is Gov Trying To Cover It Up? Aug 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Jellyfish Like UFO Seen Over Colorado, Is Gov Trying To Cover It Up? Aug 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Aug 10, 2020 Location of sighting: Mendano Pass, Colorado, USA Source: MUFON #110988 Now this looks like similar unknown craft flying over Carolina, Georgia and Alabama last month. Back then, the gov claimed it was not a UFO, but an invention by Google create internet. But I'm not buying it. You see, these balloons could create a flight hazard for on coming jets. Imagine the destruction one balloon could do if it got caught on the windshield of a passenger jet or worse...in the engine intake...the plane could crash. I don't think Google would risk lives to make such an invention. I do however believe that the US gov would lie about UFOs and call them explainable...when in reality, they are trying to cover up the truth...that its a alien craft. I already know first hand how Google is working with the US gov to use an algorithm that attacks all UFO researchers so our posts get 5% the views they did 3 years ago...and google owns youtube using the algorithm to limit the UFO video views...which was 20X more 3 years ago. Thats called control. 100% Proof Google is part of the problem of keeping the public in the dark. Don't believe me? Ask any UFO channel or Youtube or blogger if its true...they will all tell you its absolutely correct. Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states:
Was on Medano Pass by Great Sand Dunes National Park about 10,000 feet up camping on a mountain. When packing up around 7am, I noticed a weird object that was really small slowly moving across the sky. It's likely a weather balloon, but thought I'd report to make sure since I got decent photos of it. Pictures taken with a Canon Mark IV using a 100-400mm lens.
Multiple lights flying over Blackwood, New Jersey 16-Aug-2020
Multiple lights flying over Blackwood, New Jersey 16-Aug-2020
New footage of a multiple lights in the sky above Blackwood in New Jersey. This was taken on 16th August 2020.
Witness report:
Several objects seen in sky that disappeared and re appeared and blinked. While driving down the highway noticed 2 aircraft flying close together to low and close to be airplanes had a fire glow to them. After getting of the highway I saw several of them just floating in the sky. I wanted to pull over and get a better picture and video. It when I tried to take video it would not work on my phone. I was having trouble making phone calls during this time and got freaked out and took off thinking I did not get any pictures or videos. After leaving the area I was able to use my phone and did indeed get a few seconds of videos and pictures. In the different pictures the objects appear to be different shapes upon zooming in.
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Earthquakes usually start small and then extended outwards, causing tremors in and around their path. They may have aftershocks, but after a while, it’s over. But sometimes, earthquakes can go ‘boomerang’, spreading away from the initial rupture and then returning back at higher speeds.
Now, for the first time, researchers have detected such a boomerang earthquake.
A reconstructed image of the Romanche fracture zone
An international group of researchers found evidence of an unprecedented boomerang earthquake that affected the seabed of the Atlantic Ocean back in August 2016. It took place in the Romanche fracture zone, which is located near the equator, mid-way between the east coast of Brazil and the west coast of Africa. The earthquake, detected by undersea seismometers in the region and by distant monitoring stations, had a 7.1 magnitude.
In a new study, researchers showed that the temblor went one way first but then turned around and came back for more, increasing its speed in the process, the authors argued. It was an ultra-fast earthquake.
“Whilst scientists have found that such a reversing rupture mechanism is possible from theoretical models, our new study provides some of the clearest evidence for this enigmatic mechanism occurring in a real fault,”said lead researcher and seismologist Stephen Hicks from Imperial College London in a press release.
Reviewing the seismic data, the authors argued that the earthquake had two phases. First, the rupture went upward and eastward to where the fracture zone meets the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Then, it unusually expanded westwards, with the tremors going to the center of the fault at a speed of up to six kilometers per second.
The explanations behind the phenomenon are only speculative so far. Nevertheless, the researchers believe that the first phase of the earthquake released enough fracture energy in order to start the reversal rupture in the westerly underwater land. Further studies would be needed to verify this theory.
It’s not the first-time seismologists looked at backward-propagating earthquakes, but until now the evidence was sparse and based on theoretical models. That’s why the researchers behind the study argue this is a first-of-its-kind type event, detecting a boomerang earthquake in the real world. Boomerang ruptures were also observed in the past in slow earthquakes, which progress slowly over days or months, Jean-Paul Ampuero of the Université Côte d’Azur in France told National Geographic. There were also hints of these events in other quakes. For example, the Tohoku earthquake may have had a boomeranged rupture.
But the circumstances of this particular earthquake are unique. The researchers believe that the study will now allow other scientists to find similar patterns in other earthquakes.
This will add new scenarios into their modeling and improve earthquake impact forecasts in the future, highly relevant to prevent damages.
“Studies like this help us understand how past earthquakes ruptured, how future earthquakes may rupture, and how that relates to the potential impact for faults near populated areas,” Kasey Aderhold, a seismologist with the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, told National Geographic.
Astronomers have called Ceres many things: the largest object in the asteroid belt; a dwarf planet; a cold, barren rock. But ‘ocean world’ is not something they would have even considered — until very recently.
This animation shows dwarf planet Ceres as seen by NASA’s Dawn. The map overlaid at right gives scientists hints about Ceres’ internal structure from gravity measurements. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Ceres lies within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. First considered to be a planet in the 19th century, it is now known to be an asteroid, and classed as a dwarf planet, like Pluto.
Now, a flurry of studies forces us to rethink Ceres once again, as astronomers report evidence indicative of a salty ocean beneath its surface.
“We can now say that Ceres is a sort of ocean world, as are some of Saturn’s and Jupiter’s moons,” Maria Cristina De Sanctis, from Rome’s Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica and one of the study authors, told AFP.
De Sanctis and colleagues analyzed images sent from NASA’s robotic Dawn spacecraft, which entered orbit around Ceres in 2015. As Dawn approached Ceres, it offered an unprecedented glimpse into the planetoid, showing impact craters and signs of cryovolcanic activity (volcanism that erupts frozen water, ammonia, or methane, instead of molten rock). Now, researchers also analyzed infrared images, which showed the presence of a rock called hydrohalite.
A fracture system inside the rim of the Occator Crater, where the new studies found evidence of water. Image credits: NASA.
As the name implies (hydro=water, halite=rock salt), hydrohalite is a mineral that forms in salty waters and has until now only been observed on Earth. The deposit seems to have built up during the last two million years, which is extremely recent in geologic history, suggesting that the processes behind it are still very much active. In other words, it seems that brine is still ascending from the planet’s interior, a “smoking gun” for liquid water.
“That material is unstable on Ceres’ surface, and hence must have been emplaced very recently,”said co-authors Julie Castillo-Rogez, from the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Another published paper found evidence of cryovolcanism that started around 9 million years ago and lasted for several million years, also indicative of a deep brine source. Gravity data and thermal modeling also imply an extensive deep brine reservoir beneath the Ceresian surface.
A crater on Ceres in enhanced color. Image credits: NASA.
In a separate paper, researchers used remote sensing to analyze the crust of Ceres, finding evidence of density and rheological variations, which are also consistent with a liquid ocean under the surface. Whether or not this is still an active ocean or just a remnant of one is unclear.
This finding could have massive implication for the field of astrobiology. Not only does Ceres (a seemingly dull object in the asteroid belt) feature liquid water beneath its surface, shielded from radiation — but it also features salt.
According to De Sanctis, the ingredients of life seem to be lining up nicely on Ceres.
“The material found on Ceres is extremely important in terms of astrobiology,” she said.
“We know that these minerals are all essential for the emergence of life.”
Journal References:
C. A. Raymond et al. Impact-driven mobilization of deep crustal brines on dwarf planet Ceres, Nature Astronomy (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-1168-2
A. Nathues et al. Recent cryovolcanic activity at Occator crater on Ceres, Nature Astronomy (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-1146-8
R. S. Park et al. Evidence of non-uniform crust of Ceres from Dawn’s high-resolution gravity data, Nature Astronomy (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-1019-1
M. C. De Sanctis et al. Fresh emplacement of hydrated sodium chloride on Ceres from ascending salty fluids, Nature Astronomy (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-1138-8
B. E. Schmidt et al. Post-impact cryo-hydrologic formation of small mounds and hills in Ceres’s Occator crater, Nature Geoscience (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-020-0581-6
An animation stitches together images showing briny deposits, colored in reddish, splaying across Occator Crater on Ceres, as seen by NASA's Dawn mission.
Posted byDeborah Byrd in ASTRONOMY ESSENTIALS | TODAY'S IMAGE
This visualization by Ian Webster and Peter Jenniskens uses NASA data to render known Perseid meteoroids in space. Don’t miss this!
Perseid meteor stream visualization. It looks blurry because it’s a screen shot from a video. Be sure to click into the interactive page; it’s awesome! Visualization via Ian Webster.
This visualization uses NASA data to render known Perseid meteoroids as they move through the space of our solar system. What’s a meteoroid? It’s simply the name for a bit of debris in space before it has entered Earth’s atmosphere and vaporized, thereby becoming a meteor or fiery streak in our night sky. Meteors originate in the bodies of comets. The Perseids, in particular, come from Comet Swift-Tuttle, which last visited the inner solar system in 1992. Ian Webster developed this visualization of the Perseid meteor stream in space, using meteor data provided by Peter Jenniskens. The visualization was created with the help of theSETI Institute with the goal of making it easier to understand the natural phenomenon of meteor showers.
What’s so cool about the interactive page of this visualization? It’s always great to have an aid for picturing a three-dimensional aspect of outer space. This visualization is especially effective because it lets you click into the view from various perspectives. For example, the view below is the Perseid meteor stream as seen from Earth; be sure to click into the page to see the meteors coming toward you!
Perseid meteor stream from Earth’s perspective in space. Click into the interactive page to see the meteors coming toward you. Click the box in the upper left that says “Watch from Earth.” Visualization via Ian Webster.
Bottom line: Two screen shots from Ian Webster and Peter Jenniskens’ wonderful visualization showing Perseid meteoroids in space.
Dream Chaser, which is built by Colorado-based company Sierra Nevada Corp., is the world's only non-capsule private orbital spacecraft. The winged vehicle will launch vertically atop a rocket but end its missions with runway landings, like NASA's now-retired space shuttle orbiters used to do.
This spring, the company unboxed the wings for the first operational Dream Chaser vehicle, bringing it one step closer to delivering supplies and science to and from the International Space Station. Sierra Nevada also announced the spacecraft's name: Tenacity.
This reporter had the opportunity to visit Sierra Nevada's Louisville, Colorado, production facility in March to get a sneak peek at the space plane. At that time, Tenacity's wings remained boxed up, but the space plane was still a sight to behold.
"It's an SUV for space — a Space Utility Vehicle," said Kimberly Schwandt, Sierra Nevada's communications director.
Once it's up and running, the space plane will carry cargo to and from the space station for NASA. Dream Chaser's runway landings will allow efficient retrieval and removal of scientific gear coming back to Earth, which will also enjoy a relatively smooth ride down to the ground, Sierra Nevada representatives said.
"The gentle landing protects science," Schwandt said.
SNC's Dream Chaser Spaceplane wings are unboxed in Colorado (Image credit: Sierra Nevada Corporation)
Tenacity of flight
Dream Chaser was originally designed to carry people, and Sierra Nevada won several rounds of funding from NASA's Commercial Crew Program to develop the vehicle. However, the company lost out to Boeing and SpaceX when NASA awarded astronaut-ferrying contracts in 2014.
But in 2016, NASA selected the space plane for its Commercial Resupply Services 2 contract, awarding Sierra Nevada a contract to fly six uncrewed cargo missions to the space station by 2024.
Sierra Nevada needed to change out only about 20% of Dream Chaser's module to transition from a passenger vehicle to a cargo plane, said Anna Hare, a company communications representative.
Sierra Nevada therefore hasn't ruled out a crew-carrying future for the space plane at some point. "To go back to a crew ship wouldn't be so hard," Hare said.
Dream Chaser by itself can carry roughly 2,000 lbs. (900 kilograms) of supplies and cargo on board. A 16-foot-tall (4.9 meters) cargo module called Shooting Star can be attached to the space plane to provide an additional 10,000 lbs. (4,500 kg) of carrying capability.
After cargo is loaded onto the space station, astronauts can fill the Shooting Star with their trash. As Tenacity re-enters Earth's atmosphere, the Shooting Star will detach and disintegrate.
Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser mission control room sits empty but in 2021, when the space plane takes flight, it should be more crowded. (Image credit: Nola Redd/Space.com)
Because Dream Chaser carries relatively safe propellant, technicians can approach it quickly after landing. The back of the plane opens, providing rapid access to precious cargo. That can be key when the cargo is science experiments meant to operate in the low gravity of space.
"When the capsule sits on Earth, you kind of lose science," Schwandt said.
The space plane itself flies fully automated, without the requirement of a human pilot. My recent tour revealed a simulated cockpit that allowed technicians to practice handling the plane, as well as flying it.
According to Hare, Tenacity's initial flight most likely won't be full, giving the space plane a chance to stretch its wings. "But after that, we intend to fill the whole vehicle up with cargo," she said.
Eventually, Sierra Nevada would like to have more Dream Chasers join Tenacity in traveling to and from space. However, expanding the number of operational space planes depends on customer demand.
"Our dream is to have a whole fleet of space planes," Schwandt said.
Follow Nola on Facebook and on Twitter at @NolaTRedd.
Lightning sprites – aka red sprites – are electrical discharges taking place high in Earth’s atmosphere, above thunderstorms.
View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Stephen Hummel, who works at McDonald Observatory in West Texas, captured this fleeting lightning sprite – aka a red sprite – on July 2, 2020. McDonald Observatory is spearheading a Dark Skies Initiative in its region. Stephen commented, “Dark skies help you see faint objects like sprites.” Thank you, Stephen!
Did you know that lightning sprites – like the one captured in the image above – exist above some thunderstorms? Sprites aren’t terribly well known, except to meteorologists, nature photographers and others who study the skies. They aren’t especially rare, but they’re fleeting. They’re not easy to capture on film. Lightning sprites are electrical discharges high in Earth’s atmosphere. They’re associated with thunderstorms, but they’re not born in the same clouds that send us rain. Thunderstorms – in fact all earthly weather – happen in the layer of Earth’s atmosphere called the troposphere, which extends from Earth’s surface to about 4 to 12 miles (about 6 to 19 km) up. Lightning sprites – also known as red sprites – happen in Earth’s mesosphere, up to 50 miles (80 km) high in the sky.
So when you’re standing on Earth’s surface and you spot one, it appears relatively small, even though, in fact, sprites can be some 30 miles (50 km) across. As Matthew Cappucci of the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang said in an article about lightning sprites last year:
Imagine one electrical discharge spanning the distance from Baltimore to Washington, D.C.
Cappucci also commented:
Although sprites are poorly understood, atmospheric electrodynamicists have figured out the basics behind their formation. Sprites are often triggered by a strong, positive bolt of ordinary lightning near the ground. They’re thought to be a balancing mechanism that the atmosphere uses to dispense charges vertically. It’s a quick process that takes less than a tenth of a second.
That’s what makes hunting for sprites so tough. Blink and you’ll miss them.
The fleeting aspect of lightning sprites probably explains why – when people first see photos of them – they’re surprised that such a strange-looking weather phenomenon even exists.
Also, it hasn’t been that many years since lightning sprites were confirmed. In the 20th century, pilots spoke of “flashes above thunderstorms.” Lightning sprites as we know them today weren’t captured and their intricate structure didn’t begin to be recorded on film until as late as 1989, when experimental physicist John R. Winckler (1916-2001) happened to capture one while testing a low-light television camera.
Today, people around the world routinely capture photos of lightning sprites. You’ll find many photos of them in this gallery from SpaceWeather.com.
To photograph a sprite, you need a dark sky and a clear view toward a distant thunderstorm. The sky needs to be dark, because you’ll be taking long exposures; too much stray light in your sky will wash out your photo and make capturing sprites impossible. One of the most successful sprite photographers in the U.S., and likely in the world, is Paul M. Smith. He captured the sprite below in June 2020. You can follow him on Twitter: @PaulMSmithPhoto. Or find him on YouTube.
Bottom line: Lightning sprites, or red sprites, often occurring in tandem with lightning, are short-lived electrical discharges that flash high above thunderstorms in the mesosphere layer of the atmosphere.
All related videos, selected and posted by peter2011
Monica Grady, Professor of Planetary and Space Sciences,
The Open University
Next spring is going to be a busy time for Mars. In close succession, three spacecraft will arrive at the planet, joining the dozen or so craft already circling Mars. Two of the spacecraft were launched in the past couple of weeks by newcomers to martian exploration: the United Arab Emirates’Al-Amal (meaning Hope) and China’sTianwen-1 (which means Question to Heaven).
The third vessel will be NASA’s Mars 2020, containing the Perseverance rover, which just took off successfully from Florida. While this rover will be just one of many on the red planet, it is our best bet for finding life there for the time being.
The sudden flurry of activity is a result of planetary dynamics: every two or so years, the orbits of Earth and Mars align so that the two bodies are at their closest to each other. This results in a shorter interplanetary transit time, of just over six months. The next such launch window will not be until 2022 – when it is expected that the European Space Agency’s ExoMars 2022 will join the throng.
It is legitimate to question why we keep sending rockets to Mars. Surely we have acquired enough images of the surface and its landscapes to know that water used to be there, but has now vanished? True enough – but there are still mysteries to solve: when did the water go, and why? And, of course, the biggest question of all: is (or was) there life on Mars?
The three missions have different objectives: Hope will orbit the planet for at least two Earth years (one Martian year), acquiring data on Mars’ weather – just like the weather satellites orbiting Earth. Tianwen-1 will orbit Mars and is carrying a rover that will be parachuted down to the surface at Utopia Planitia, where it will analyse the soil and take images of the surface.
Perseverance will arrive almost at the same time – but a couple of thousand kilometres away in Jezero Crater. It will be deposited on the surface by sky-crane technology (see the video below), the same method that delivered Curiosity so successfully in 2012.
Perseverance carries a full complement of scientific instruments that will measure all the usual things that get measured on Mars: the chemistry and mineralogy of the rocks and soil, the amount and type or organic material present at and just below the surface, and so on. But there are two other features of the mission that make it unique.
First of all is the helicopter/drone – called Ingenuity - that will be released from beneath the rover. This will fly from Perseverance and circle around before landing away from the rover. It is not certain what the range of the drone will be – although the flight will only last a few minutes and Ingenuity will land only a few metres away from the rover.
The idea behind the flight is to test the concept of atmospheric flight on Mars. Eventually, it is anticipated, drones will be able to fly for much longer and for greater distances. This could help guide rovers, identifying features worth investigating and hazards to avoid.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The second unique feature is a drilling and caching system. Perseverance is the first rover to have the capability to drill a core, about ten centimetres long and one centimetre in diameter, and extract it intact from the drill hole. Perseverance will take samples from a range of different rock types as it traverses the crater floor. The drill cores will be left in a small pile - a cache – for collection, possibly in early 2027, and subsequent transport back to Earth (estimated arrival time is still not known, but maybe around spring 2032).
Sample return
Why is it so important to bring samples back from Mars? The instruments carried by Perseverance will be able to undertake fairly sophisticated chemical analyses of the rocks and soil. But even though the instruments and measurements are a tremendous achievement, they do not have the full range of equipment that we employ on Earth to squeeze every drop of information from a rock.
Tests to check for organic compounds – and whether they might have a biological origin – require a chain of different analyses that are far too elaborate and complex to be undertaken on Mars. Boiling acids, alcohol rinses, addition of chemicals, subtraction of solids, are steps in the chemistry needed to extract and separate organic molecules from their rocky hosts. This just cannot (as yet) be done on Mars.
The rocks will be weighed and measured practically on a grain-by-grain basis and analysed, in some cases down to the individual atoms from which the material is composed. This will be an international effort – there is already a multi-national panel (called MSPG-2) which will draft the requirements for the first sets of analyses and how the samples will be stored, curated and subsequently distributed to the wider scientific community.
There is another set of reasons to bring samples back from Mars – the future of human exploration of Mars. If we send humans to Mars, we have to know how to bring them back again. We have not returned anything directly from another planetary body since the Apollo 17 astronauts left the Moon in December 1972. Yes, we have captured bits from a comet and an asteroid and returned them to Earth – but those missions did not land, collect and come back.
We have been investigating Mars for a long time: for over 150 years by telescope, 50 years from orbit and 20 years by rovers. Only another 12 years, then, before we can analyse Mars in our own laboratories.
Perseverance to get things done is a gift of humanity. Here’s hoping that the rover will live up to its name.
It's not every day that two Indian schoolgirls spot a space rock that scientists haven't yet, but that's exactly what happened this summer in a stroke of cosmic good luck.
Radhika Lakhani and Vaidehi Vekariya, two students in Surat, a city in Gujarat in western India, were taking part in a citizen-science project using astronomical data when they realized they were seeing something new. That something turned out to be an asteroid now dubbed 2020 OE6.
It was an exciting moment for the space-minded schoolgirls. "This was a dream. I want to become an astronaut," Vekariya told CNN.
"I don't even have a TV at home, so that I can concentrate on my studies," Lakhani told Reuters.
The 2020 OE6 designation is a standardized nomenclature that reflects the object's discovery date. But someday, Lakhani and Vekariya could propose a more accessible name to the International Astronomical Union, the body that oversees all names in the solar system, an opportunity they told Reuters they were excited about.
Lakhani and Vekariya made their find through a campaign with a citizen-science project called the International Astronomical Search Collaboration. The group connects people around the world with data from two key asteroid-hunting observatories, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) in Hawaii and the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona. Both projects specialize in scanning huge swaths of the sky frequently, enabling newly seen moving objects to stand out against the steady background of the stars.
That said, it's unusual for human eyes to actually discover asteroids these days, and Lakhani and Vekariya got lucky to do so, Paul Chodas, who leads the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, told Space.com in an email. Typically, algorithms do the hard work of spotting an unexpected object moving across the frame.
But for this particular asteroid, those algorithms didn't have enough information to spot the space rock. Lakhani and Vekariya found it in images taken by Pan-STARRS on June 23. The observatory's view is an arrangement of squares, with narrow seams between them that block out certain parts of the sky in each image. And the newly discovered object spent too much time in those seams for the observatory's algorithms to detect it in those images..
Although the asteroid slipped through the net that night, however, scientists would have detected it sooner or later, Robert Weryk, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii, told Space.com in an email. And it turns out that the newly discovered asteroid has turned up before: Weryk was able to track it down in images from another asteroid-hunting observatory and in images taken in 2013 and 2017, as well as in July 2020, a month after the images the students had used.
In the context of some media reports about the discovery, which have labeled the asteroid "Earth-bound," that delay might be worrying. But 2020 OE6 is 50 million miles (70 million kilometers) away from Earth right now and will stay at more or less that distance for at least centuries if not millennia, Chodas said. (For comparison, the moon is about 240,000 miles or 390,000 km away, making this particular asteroid about 200 times more distant.)
All the observations combined have allowed scientists to identify the object's orbit quite precisely, Weryk said. The asteroid takes a bit more than three Earth years to orbit the sun and is perhaps between 1.2 and 3 miles (2 to 5 kilometers) wide. And 2020 OE6 is what scientists call a Mars-Crosser, which means it orbits at around the same distance from the sun as Mars does, although despite the name, the two bodies' paths don't actually cross, according to Chodas.
That's not a particularly unusual type of asteroid — in fact, scientists have discovered more Mars-Crossers than near-Earth asteroids, although both tallies pale in comparison to main-belt asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, which represent the vast majority of asteroids scientists have discovered to date.
The coronavirus pandemic has put a damper on Lakhani and Vekariya's celebrations, according to news reports. But International Astronomical Search Collaboration Director Patrick Miller, a mathematician at Hardin-Simmons University in Texas, told Space.com that the group is preparing commemorative plaques and organizing a ceremony for the pair in New Delhi.
Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels.
On Aug. 7, the helicopter's six lithium-ion batteries were powered up and charged for the first time in space. The 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity, which is currently stowed beneath Perseverance's belly, receives its charge from the rover's power supply, according to a Thursday (Aug. 13) statement from NASA.
"This was a big milestone, as it was our first opportunity to turn on Ingenuity and give its electronics a 'test drive' since we launched on July 30," Tim Canham, the operations lead for Mars Helicopter at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, said in the statement. "Since everything went by the book, we'll perform the same activity about every two weeks to maintain an acceptable state of charge.
Charging the batteries took eight hours, during which NASA tested and analyzed their performance. The batteries were charged only to 35% of their maximum level, in order to maintain optimal battery health, according to the statement.
Perseverance is scheduled to land on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. At some point after that, Ingenuity will detach from the rover, descend to the Red Planet surface and take a few pioneering test flights. (After deployment on Mars, the helicopter's batteries will be charged by its own solar panel.)
If the experimental test flights go according to plan, Ingenuity will prove that robotic flight is possible on Mars, opening the door for extensive aerial exploration on future missions.
"This charge activity shows we have survived launch and that so far we can handle the harsh environment of interplanetary space," MiMi Aung, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter project manager at JPL, said in the statement. "We have a lot more firsts to go before we can attempt the first experimental flight test on another planet, but right now we are all feeling very good about the future."
Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13.
Follow uson Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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Scientists Have Shown There's No 'Butterfly Effect' in the Quantum World
Scientists Have Shown There's No 'Butterfly Effect' in the Quantum World
In a new paper, scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory show that time can be reversed in a quantum system to recover scrambled information without it spiraling into chaos. Wait, uh, what?
Of all the reasons for wanting to time-travel—saving someone from a fatal mistake, exploring ancient civilizations, gathering evidence about unsolved crimes—recovering lost information isn’t the most exciting. But even if a quest to recover the file that didn’t auto-save doesn't sound like a Hollywood movie plot, we’ve all had moments when we’ve longed to go back in time for exactly that reason.
Theories of time and time-travel have highlighted an apparent stumbling block: time travel requires changing the past, even simply by adding in the time traveller. The problem, according to chaos theory, is that the smallest of changes can cause radical consequences in the future. In this conception of time travel, it wouldn’t be advisable to recover your unsaved document since this act would have huge knock-on effects on everything else.
New research in quantum physics from Los Alamos National Laboratory has shown that the so-called butterfly effect can be overcome in the quantum realm in order to “unscramble” lost information by essentially reversing time.
In a paper published in July, researchers Bin Yan and Nikolai Sinitsyn write that a thought experiment in “unscrambling” information with time-reversing operations would be “expected to lead to the same butterfly effect as the one in the famous Ray Bradbury’s story ‘A Sound of Thunder’” In that short story, a time traveler steps on an insect in the deep past and returns to find the modern world completely altered, giving rise to the idea we refer to as the butterfly effect.
“In contrast," they wrote, "our result shows that by the end of a similar protocol the local information is essentially restored.”
"The primary focus of this work is not 'time travel'—physicists do not have an answer yet to tell whether it is possible and how to do time travel in the real world,” Yan clarified.
“[But] since our protocol involves a 'forward' and a 'backward' evolution of the qubits, achieved by changing the orders of quantum gates in the circuit, it has a nice interpretation in terms of Ray Bradbury's story for the butterfly effect. So, it is an accurate and useful way to understand our results."
What is the butterfly effect?
The world does not behave in a neat, ordered way. If it did, identical events would always produce the same patterns of knock-on effects, and the future would be entirely predictable, or deterministic. Chaos theory claims that the opposite: total randomness is not our situation either. We exist somewhere in the middle, in a world that often appears random but in fact obeys rules and patterns.
Patterns within chaos are hidden because they are highly sensitive to tiny changes, which means similar but not identical situations can produce wildly different outcomes. Another way of putting it is that in a chaotic world, effects can be totally out of proportion to their causes, like the metaphor of a flap of butterfly wings causing a tornado on the other side of the world. On the tornado side of the world, the storm would seem random, because the connection between the butterfly-flap and the tornado is too complex to be apparent. While this butterfly effect is the classic poetic metaphor illustrating chaos theory, chaotic dynamics also play out in real-world contexts, including population growth in the Canadian lynx species and the rotation of Pluto’s moons.
Another feature of chaos is that, even though the rules are deterministic, the future is not predictable in the long-term. Since chaos is so sensitive to small variations, there are near-infinite ways the rules could play out and we would need to know an impossible amount of detail about the present and past to map out exactly how the world will evolve.
Similarly, you can’t reverse-engineer some piece of information about the past simply by knowing the current and even future situations; time-travel doesn’t help retrieve past information, because even moving backwards in time, the chaotic system is still in play and will produce unpredictable effects.
Information scrambling
Unscrambling information which has previously been scrambled is not straightforward in a chaotic system. Yan and Sinitsyn’s key discovery is that it is nonetheless possible in quantum computing to get enough information via time-reversal which will then enable information unscrambling.
According to Yan, the fact that the butterfly effect does not occur in quantum realms is not a surprising result, but demonstrating information unscrambling is both novel and important.
In quantum information theory, scrambling occurs when the information encoded in each quantum particle is split up and redistributed across multiple quantum particles in the same quantum system. The scrambling is not random, since information redistribution relies on quantum entanglement, which means that the states of some quantum particles are dependent on each other. Although the scrambled result is seemingly chaotic, the information can be put back together, at least in principle, using the entangled relationships.
Importantly, information scrambling is not the same as information loss. To continue the earlier analogy: information loss occurs when a document is permanently deleted from your computer. For information scrambling, imagine cutting and pasting tiny bits of one computer file into every other file on your machine. Each file now contains a mess of information snippets. You could reconstruct the original files, if you remembered exactly which bits were cut and pasted, and did the entire process in reverse.
Physicists are interested in information scrambling for two main reasons. On the theoretical side, it’s been proposed as a way to explain what happens to information sucked into a black hole. On the more applied side, it could be an important mechanism for quantum computers to store and hide information, and could produce fast and efficient quantum simulators, which are used already to perform complex experiments including new drug discovery.
Yan and Sinitsyn fall into the second camp, and construct what they call a “practically accessible scenario” to test unscrambling by time-travel. This scenario is still hypothetical, but explores the mathematics of the actual quantum processor used by Google to demonstrate quantum supremacy in 2019.
Yan says: “Another potential application is to use this effect to protect information. A random evolution on a quantum circuit can make the qubit robust to perturbations. One may further exploit the discovered effect to design protocols in quantum cryptography.”
The set-up
In Yan and Sinitsyn's quantum thought experiment, Alice and Bob are the protagonists. Alice is using a simplified version of Google’s quantum processor to hide just one part of the information stored on the computer (called the “central qubit”) by scrambling this qubit’s state across all the other qubits (called the “qubit bath”). Bob is cast as the “intruder”, much like a malicious computer hacker. He wants the important information originally stored on the central qubit, now distributed across entangled quantum particles in the bath.
Unfortunately, Bob’s hack, while successful in getting the information he wanted, leaves a trail of destruction.
“If her processor has already scrambled the information, Alice is sure that Bob cannot get anything useful,” the authors write. “However, Bob’s measurement changes the state of the central qubit and also destroys all quantum correlations between this qubit and the rest of the system.”
Bob's method of information theft has altered the computer state so that Alice can also no longer access the hidden information. In this case, the damage occurs because quantum states contain all possible values they could have, with assigned probabilities of each value, but these possibilities (represented by the wave function) “collapse” down to just one value when a measurement is taken. Quantum computing relies on unmeasured quantum systems to store even more information in multiple possible states, and Bob’s intrusion has totally altered the computer system.
Reversing time
Theoretically, the behaviour of a quantum system moving backwards in time can be demonstrated mathematically using what’s called a time-reversed evolution operator, which is exactly what Alice uses to de-scramble the information.
Her time-reversal is not actually time travel the way we understand it from science fiction, it is literally a reversal of time’s direction; the system evolves backwards following whatever dynamics are in play, rather than Alice herself revisiting an earlier time. If the butterfly effect held in the quantum world, then this backwards evolution would actually increase the damage Bob had caused, and Alice would only be able to retrieve the hidden information if she knew exactly what that damage was and could correct her calculations accordingly.
Luckily for Alice, quantum systems behave totally differently to non-quantum (classical or semiclassical) chaotic systems. What Yan and Sinitsyn found is that she can apply her time-reversal operation and end up at an "earlier" state which will not be identical with the initial system she set up, but it will also not have increased the damage which occurred later. Alice can then reconstruct her initial system using a method of quantum unscrambling called quantum state tomography.
What this means is that a quantum system can effectively heal and even recover information that was scrambled in the past, without the chaos of the butterfly effect.
“Classical chaotic evolution magnifies any state damage exponentially quickly, which is known as the butterfly effect,” explain Yan and Sinitsyn. “The quantum evolution, however, is
linear. This explains why, in our case, the uncontrolled damage to the state is not magnified by the subsequent complex evolution. Moreover, the fact that Bob’s measurement does not damage the useful information follows from the property of entanglement correlations in the scrambled state.”
Hypothetical though this scenario may be, the result already has a practical use: verifying whether a quantum system has achieved quantum supremacy. Quantum processors can simulate time-reversal in a way that classical computers cannot, which could provide the next important test for the quantum race between Google and IBM.
So, while time travel is still not in the cards, the quantum world continues to mess with our classical conception of how the world evolves in time, and pushes the limits of computing information.
While the most frequently active volcano in Iceland – Grímsvötn – is overdue and making noises like the next eruption is coming, an unusual alleged cryptid sighting at a famous waterfall in that country has some wondering if underground rumbling may be causing hidden monsters to arise. Has anyone in Iceland checked on the Lagarfljót worm lately? How about the elves?
feverdreamofficial Feel like this creepy video that I posted on my story needs an answer. Shot on the cliff of Dettifoss, Iceland. Close to the capital city of elves, Ásbyrgi. No people in front of us and only a cliff so steep it could not carry anyone. We even went too far in my taste. I then noticed much later this little creature in my video and then a head popping up in the end 😰 Looking like the girl from Ring 😂 No drones, no birds, no plastic bags, what is it?? I am not crazy right it looks hella wack?
Hella wack? That’s something beyond ‘wack’ (duh) or absurd and it seems to be a useful description for the video (watch it here) posted on Instagram by Icelandic feminist rapper and poet Vigdís Howser Harðardóttir (aka Fever Dream). She says she was at the Dettifoss waterfall (in the background) in the Vatnajökull National Park at the edge of a cliff when she spotted what looks like a small, dark figure. For the non-elf-aware, she points out that Ásbyrgi canyon is believed by many Icelanders to be the magical capital of elf world. Did she record one of the elves or the Huldufólk (Hidden people)? While she tells Fréttablaðið (The Newspaper) that she’s “not saying this is an elf,” she believes only “a black elf or even some kind of devil” could perch on such a precarious precipice, and that it resembles other videos she’s seen posted by people claiming to see an elf.
If it’s not an elf or a ‘devil’, what the devil is in the video? It could be a small or young person with incredible climbing ability and balance – Vigdís Howser Harðardóttir doesn’t say how long it was there or when it disappeared. Belief in elves is strong and deep in Iceland, but it has some other cryptids – most famously the Lagarfljót worm, an alleged monster in Lagarfljót lake. The legend of a giant serpent, worm or slug in Lagarfljót dates back to the 1300s but it’s limited to the lake, which is 170 km (105 miles) from Dettifoss. Another candidate could be a Merman, the more evil counterpart of mermaids, but Dettifoos is a long way from the coastal waters where they’re allegedly seen.
That leaves an elf or a huldufólk – the main difference between them is size (huldufólk are human-sized, elves are small) and coffee preference (huldufólk like it). Others may scoff at the idea, but there must be some reason why polls find about 54 percent of Iceland’s 300,000+ residents would not deny the existence of elves.
Being a feminist rapper means Vigdís Howser Harðardóttir is a controversial figure, but that may not stop true elf believers from siding with her on this one.
Take a look again. (See the video here.) What do you think? Is the volcano stirring things up?
Prehistoric armored sea bugs called trilobites that lived nearly half a billion years ago had disco-ball-like-eyes that are remarkably similar to those of modern bees and dragonflies. Trilobites were a marine arthropod with many legs that lived at the bottom of the seafloor during the Cambrian time period (543 million to 490 million years ago) until becoming extinct around 250 million years ago.
Numerous fossils from the sea bug’s strong exoskeleton were discovered by paleontologists and surprisingly its eye was very well preserved. Actually, the remains of the eye were initially found in 1846 close to Loděnice in the Czech Republic but it’s only been recently studied in great detail.
Fossil of a trilobite.
The researchers analyzed the left eye of a type of trilobite called Aulacopleura koninckii from approximately 429 million years ago (pictures can be seen here), specifically the light-sensitive receptor cells in the lenses that suggested a very early evolution of compound eyes. As a matter of fact, trilobites from as far back as 522 million years also appeared to have had compound eyes which suggest that those types of eyes may have evolved a lot earlier than previously thought, maybe in shell-less creatures. Their protruding oval-shaped eyes are situated on the back part of its head.
They studied the eye using microscopy and found hundreds of optical units called ommatidia that make up the compound eyes that are found in today’s insects and crustaceans. According to the scientists, the ommatidia found in the trilobite’s left eye had eight cells that detected light “forming a kind of rosette”. The cells were gathered around a translucent cylinder that channeled light that’s called a rhabdom in addition to there being a thick lens that covered the top of the ommatidia. They also found that the dark-colored rings of pigmented cells created a “cellular basket” surrounding the optical units as well as a thin crystalline cone “although its shape is not very distinct”. You put all of that together and you have a compound eye that looks similar to a disco ball.
3D model of a trilobite.
Based on the fact that the Aulacopleura koninckii’s eye facets were just 0.0001 inches in diameter, the creature would have had a vision of around 200 “pixels” which would have helped it to glide around the waters and avoid predators. It “surely was day active and lived in shallow, light-flooded waters,” Brigitte Schoenemann, who is a paleontologist in the Institute of Biology Education at the University of Cologne in Germany and the lead author of the study, explained in an email to Live Science.
She finished off by stating that today’s insects and crustaceans have vision that is “an enormously old and effective system, quite unchanged since our trilobite”. Things change over the course of hundreds of millions of years but apparently the eyes of crustaceans and insects remained the same. That reminds me of the old saying, “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”.
“It’s pronounced YOUR-a-nus, not your-ANUS, you blankety-blank-blank!”
Get that frustration out of your system now and we’ll promise not to do any more Uranus probe double entendres. OK? Finished? Good.
“A new theoretical method paves the way to modelling the interior of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune, thanks to computer simulations on the water contained within them.”
The Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA – International School of Advanced Studies) in Trieste, Italy, announced this week a new way of determining what is inside planets far too distant to land rovers or ground-penetrating landers. Until now, space scientists have had to settle for theories based on features and reflections of surface matter and magnetic field studies. To get a better X-ray of Uranus and Neptune, scientists at SISSA and the University of California at Los Angeles developed a new computer model using data about the water on and inside Uranus.
“In such exotic physical conditions, we cannot think of ice as we are used to. Even water is actually different, denser, with several molecules dissociated into positive and negative ions, thus carrying an electrical charge. Superionic water lies somewhere between the liquid and solid phases: the oxygen atoms of the H2O molecule are organised in a crystalline lattice, while hydrogen atoms diffuse freely like in a charged fluid.”
In a statement on their study published in Nature Communications, SISSA professors and study co-authors Federico Grasselli and Stefano Baroni describe how they used their model to simulate the three stages of water on Uranus – ice, liquid and superionic (a part-liquid-part-ice condition caused by extremely high temperatures and pressures.) the charges show these states have different positive and negative ions than Earth water and they’re more dense than what comes out of our taps. These simulations told them a lot about the evolution of the planets and what may be deep inside of them.
Different in many ways
“In particular, the heat conduction properties that emerge from our study allow us to hypothesise that the existence of a frozen core may explain the anomalously low luminosity of Uranus as due to an extremely low heat flux from its interior towards the surface.”
They show that the planetary layers below the fluid layer that generates a planet’s magnetic field are predominantly superionic water, which may help explain the behavior of these fields on these distant planets. This will aid future research in determining how these so-called gas giants formed and how they cooled into space bodies made up of a water that is not liquid or solid – where hydrogen atoms are free but oxygen atoms are locked in a lattice formation. A planetary slushie?
If you’ve been keeping score, we’ve made it through the article without another double entendre about scientists using a computer model to peek inside YOUR-a-nus.
You’re welcome.
NOTE:
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WETENSCHAP & PLANEETWetenschappers hebben voor het eerst deeltjes microplastic en nanoplastic gevonden in menselijke organen. Die resultaten, waarover The Guardianbericht, hebben Amerikaanse onderzoekers vandaag voorgesteld op het congres van de American Chemical Society
De vervuilende impact van plastic is wereldwijd voelbaar. Straten, stranden en oceanen: overal zijn de gevolgen van onze wegwerpcultuur te zien. Amerikaanse onderzoekers hebben nu zelfs kleine plastic deeltjes gevonden in het menselijk lichaam.
De wetenschappers vonden deeltjes van microplastic (met een diameter kleiner dan 5 mm) en nanoplastic (met een diameter kleiner dan 0,001 mm) in alle onderzochte organen van deze studie. De deeltjes in de concreet 47 onderzochte longen, levers, milten en nieren werden vermoedelijk ingenomen via voedsel en water.
In totaal konden ze tientallen soorten plastiek ontdekken in de organen. Het gaat onder meer om polyethyleentereftalaat (PET), waarvan plastic drankflessen worden gemaakt, en polyethyleen, dat voor plastic zakjes wordt gebruikt.
Ongerust
Hoewel de impact op onze gezondheid nog niet bewezen is, maken de onderzoekers zich zorgen. Zo is de schade van microplastic al eerder gebleken bij onderzoek naar zeedieren. Toen konden wetenschappers een verband vaststellen tussen de blootstelling aan de kleine deeltjes en onvruchtbaarheid, ontsteking en kanker.
“We willen geen paniek zaaien, maar het is verontrustend dat deze niet-biologisch afbreekbare materialen in het menselijk weefsel terechtkomen en zich daar kunnen ophopen zonder dat we de impact ervan kennen”, zei mede-auteur Varun Kelkar aan The Guardian.
De onderzoekers hopen nu dat deze resultaten leiden tot diepgaander onderzoek naar het effect van vervuiling op ons lichaam. “Als we beter zicht hebben op hoeveel stoffen er in onze weefsels zitten, kunnen we epidemiologische studies uitvoeren om het effect op de menselijke gezondheid te bestuderen. Op die manier kunnen we de potentiële gezondheidsrisico’s in kaart brengen.”
Kunststof
Naast de deeltjes microplastic werd in alle proefmonsters ook de chemische stof Bisfenol A aangetroffen. Die schadelijke stof wordt voornamelijk gebruikt bij de productie van kunststoffen. Het Amerikaanse Beschermingsinstituut maakt zich zorgen om de aanwezigheid van de stof wegens de impact op het menselijke lichaam. Zo kan het onder meer de ontwikkeling en voortplanting aantasten.
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Wederom vreemde cirkels op Buienradar
Wederom vreemde cirkels op Buienradar
Het is niet de eerste keer dat er vreemdsoortige cirkels verschijnen op de populaire buienradar.
Niet alleen in Nederland hebben wij dit soort vortexen eerder gezien, maar ook op radarschermen naast de Popocatepetl vulkaan in Mexico.
Vorig jaar november ontvingen wij via een lezer een aantal afbeeldingen van Buienradar waarop tijdens onweersbuien een soort vreemde cirkel waar te nemen was.
Voor zover ons bekend heeft niemand daar ooit een verklaring voor kunnen vinden.
De afgelopen dagen deed zich weer een vreemd verschijnsel voor op Buienradar. Weer een cirkel en weer in combinatie met onweer, alleen ziet die cirkel er nu als volgt uit.
Hierna volgt een video met talloze voorbeelden van het vreemde verschijnsel op Buienradar.
Dan wordt er natuurlijk al heel snel gespeculeerd over wat dit zou kunnen veroorzaken en dan komt ook al snel het woord HAARP om de hoek kijken.
Volgens Martin Vrijland kunnen we daar kort en duidelijk over zijn, het is niet een effect dat door HAARP wordt veroorzaakt.
De perfecte cirkel die buienradar laat zien is namelijk een gevolg van de grondradar en heeft niets met HAARP te maken.
Waar we eerder iets dergelijks op een weerradar hebben gezien is op 28 oktober 2012 in Mexico. Die cirkel/vortex zag er als volgt uit:
Ook hier is nooit een verklaring voor gevonden, maar er was hier wel degelijk iets bijzonders aan de hand. De dag ervoor werd de wereld opgeschrikt door beelden van een enorme cilindervormige ufo die met grote snelheid in de krater van Popocatepetl vulkaan verdween.
Dit fenomeen is bij ons niet echt in het mainstream nieuws geweest, maar in landen als Mexico des te meer, waar er uitgebreid over werd gesproken op de televisie.
Dat was in Mexico, wij hebben geen vulkanen met grote kraters waar ufo's met grote snelheid in kunnen verdwijnen, dus de cirkels op Buienradar zullen een andere oorzaak hebben.
We gaan nog even terug naar Vrijland die zegt dat volgens hem HAARP dan wel niet die cirkel veroorzaakt op de Buienradar, maar wel voor een ander heel actueel effect kan zorgen en dat zijn exosomen.
Voor hen die niet weten of vergeten zijn waar HAARP precies voor staat, hier een uitleg uit een eerder artikel:
Ondertussen zijn veel mensen bekend met het High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), een Amerikaans militair en civiel onderzoeksinstituut in Alaska dat formeel gezien onderzoek doet naar de ionosfeer. Dr. Nick Begich heeft het verband aangetoond tussen HAARP en de beïnvloeding van bewustzijn. Hij is geregeld als getuige-deskundige opgeroepen door het Europees Parlement. Volgens Dr. Begich schiet HAARP een gerichte elektromagnetische straal in de bovenste laag van de atmosfeer. Zie het als een geavanceerde ionosferische kachel. De ionosfeer is de elektrisch geladen laag bovenin de atmosfeer. De laag bevindt zich op 60 tot 100 kilometer boven het aardoppervlak. HAARP is eigenlijk een omgekeerde radiotelescoop omdat het apparaat een antenne heeft die signalen uitzendt in plaats van ontvangt. Met HAARP wordt een technologie getest die de ionosfeer met een gerichte straal op bepaalde plaatsen opwarmt. Elektromagnetische stralen worden vervolgens teruggekaatst naar de Aarde en penetreren alles.
Door het op bepaalde plaatsen opwarmen van de ionosfeer kan men dan ook vrij gemakkelijk dingen doen zoals het weer beïnvloeden, maar boven alles hebben die teruggekaatste stralen ook een effect op het menselijk lichaam en geest.
Zoals we hierboven zagen heeft het een effect op het bewustzijn van de mens, maar zorgt het ook voor de uitscheiding van exosomen.
Exosomen is een bepaalde genetische uitscheiding van de cellen die voor komt, wanneer de cellen worden aangevallen of onder stress staan.
Exosomen zijn blaasjes met een diameter van 50 tot 100 nm die worden uitgescheiden door een grote verscheidenheid aan cellen in het menselijk lichaam.1 Ze ontstaan in de cellen via een complex mechanisme, waarbij celinhoud zoals eiwitten en RNA-strengen in de blaasjes wordt ingekapseld.
En wat belangrijk is dat bij de PCR testen zoals die voor covid-19 worden gebruikt, de aanwezigheid van exosomen zal worden uitgelegd als positief en de persoon in kwestie zal (onterecht) het label: "besmet met covid-19" opgeplakt krijgen.
En dat is dan hetgeen dat Vrijland bedoelt als hij het volgende schrijft:
Een ander effect wat die HAARP straling op kan leveren, is gebaseerd op de ‘terrain theory’ waarbij het lichaam de straling als vervuiling ervaart en daarmee zogenaamde exosomen gaat aanmaken. Louis Pasteur, de bedenker van de ‘germ theory’, die door de gehele wetenschap is overgenomen, maar waarvan hij zelf op zijn sterfbed zei dat die onjuist was, bleek niet alleen te hebben gefraudeerd, maar gaf dus toe dat die terrein theorie de enige juiste was (ziedit artikelen dit artikel).
Kortom, met HAARP kan men naar hartelust op ieder gewenst moment, op iedere gewenste locatie net zoveel besmette coronapatiënten leveren als ze op dat moment nodig hebben.
Several days ago, Vigdís Howser Harðardóttir posted a weid video on Instagram showing a small dark creature that suddenly appears and climbs over the edge of a cliff at Dettifoss waterfall in Iceland.
Credit image: Vigdís Howser Harðardóttir.
Vigdis states:Shot on the cliff of Dettifoss, Iceland. Close to the capital city of elves, Ásbyrgi. No people in front of us and only a cliff so steep it could not carry anyone.
We even went too far in my taste. I then noticed much later this little creature in my video and then a head popping up in the end. No drones, no birds, no plastic bags, what is it? I Feel like this creepy video that I posted needs an answer.
Indeed very strange, I have no explanation for the strange appearance, but some people say that the creature looks like a human figure with something covering its head while others talking about a cryptid, a creature whose existence is unsubstantiated.
Credit image: Vigdís Howser Harðardóttir.
Vigdís did indeed captured something extraordinary or there is an explanation for the strange appearance?
I have found a structure within a crater on planet Mercury today. The structure has three long segments to it. Each part is along side the next. NASA map says this is 2.5km across by 2.5km high. Thats a huge structure. The way its laying down and the way the three segments are side by side make me think this is a ship and can move from place to place. It may have been docked in this location in the crater to make it easier to find and accessible. But...I wonder...where did the captain and crew go? Their must be an underground base near this location or why park the ship there? One answer...brings many more questions. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Really fast UFO filmed over Atlantic ocean (Florida beach) 16-Aug-2020
Really fast UFO filmed over Atlantic ocean (Florida beach)16-Aug-2020
This really fast unidentified flying object was spotted in the sky above Atlantic ocean. It was filmed from Volusia county, Florda on 11th August 2020.
Witness report:
Object seem to be hovering with no sound miles and miles from the hotel I was at. It made no nosie it looked dark grey. On vacation went out on the balcony and noticed a black disk shaped object from a far distance on the beach just hovering in one spot for about minute or two that’s what caught my attention. It then started to move and I lost it. I grabbed my phone to record hovering and then I thought I lost because the sun was shining so bright I could barely see or sit on the balcony. Then I noticed I found the object again it seemed to be scanning the same spot and then it took off so fast I could barely see because of the sun in my eyes I had to put the phone down to see where it went. But it kept hovering that area of the water drop real low go back up and shoot cross the water and then disappear from my eye view.
A visual tour of Ceres, where astronomers found evidence of a subsurface ocean
A visual tour of Ceres, where astronomers found evidence of a subsurface ocean
Recent evidence has just made Ceres one of the more interesting places in the solar system.
Ceres is the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. It’s also considered a dwarf planet, much like Pluto. In a flurry of new studies, astronomers report strong evidence of a salty ocean beneath the surface
Ceres
The Dawn spacecraft entered the orbit of Ceres in March 2015, offering an unprecedented close view of a surprisingly dynamic environment. Far from being a cold, barren, and dull planetoid, Ceres is remarkably active.
Researchers now believe its rigid crust harbors a subsurface ocean, an ocean which may have once been on the surface.
What’s inside Ceres? Gravity can tell. The map overlaid on the right gives scientists hints about Ceres’ internal structure from gravity measurements. Image credits: NASA.
Landing on Ceres would be very challenging logistically and would risk contaminating the planet, so instead, researchers use remote sensing from Dawn’s instruments to measure the Ceresian galaxy, estimating its composition and interior structure, in addition to its topography. Maps such as the one above (right side) help researchers estimate its composition and interior structure.
“Ceres has an abundance of gravity anomalies associated with outstanding geologic features,” says Anton Ermakov, a postdoctoral researcher at JPL.
Occator Crater is one of the more interesting features on Ceres — and one that researchers looked at to infer the presence of subsurface water.
Image credits: NASA/JPL.
Occator is an impact crater located on Ceres containing the brightest of the bright spots observed by the Dawn spacecraft. Astronomers have found evidence that some of the rocks on Occator are hydrohalite— a type of rock that forms in salt water.
Before this, hydrohalite had only been observed on Earth.
Fracture system inside Occator. Image taken by the Dawn shuttle at an altitude of 22 miles (36 kilometers). Image credits: NASA/JPL
Ceres seems riddled with minerals containing water suggesting that the dwarf planet once had a global ocean. What became of that ocean? Likely, it now only exists underground as a ‘fossil ocean’, recent NASA research indicates.
The Dawn team found that Ceres’ crust is a mixture of ice, salts, and hydrated materials — a type of crust also indicative of a former ocean.
This image of Occator Crater’s northern wall was obtained by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on June 16, 2018 from an altitude of about 21 miles (33 kilometers). Image credits: NASA/JPL.
It’s not just Ceres’ past that intrigues astronomers — its present seems quite interesting as well. Ceres is still geologically active in several ways and exhibits signs of cryovolcanism, quite possibly connected to its subsurface water.
The Dawn team also discovered what seems to be a softer, easily deformable layer beneath the rigid crust, a potential signature of residual liquid.
A false-color mosaic of Occator Crater pieced together from multiple Dawn photos. Image credits: NASA/JPL.
Ceres doesn’t benefit from internal heat generated by the gravitational interactions with a large planet (as is the case for some of Jupiter’s and Saturn’s satellites) yet, nevertheless, Ceres seems to be a water-rich world.
Recent evidence shows that the bright areas previously observed on Ceres were formed through hydrothermal activity that involves salt, which makes the dwarf planet even more tantalizing, as it seems to sport all the required ingredients for life.
The internal layer (the mantle) is dominated by hydrated rocks, like clays. Artistic depiction of the structure of Ceres. Image credits: NASA / JPL.
It’s not clear what this means for potential life on Ceres. Water is essential for life as we know it, and NASA regards Ceres as one of the more promising places to host life in our solar system. If Ceresian life exists, it is likely in the form of microbes, similar to bacteria. Even if there’s no life on Ceres anymore, it could still have harbored life in its past ocean. Ceres truly is one of the more interesting places in the solar system.
“More and more, we are learning that Ceres is a complex, dynamic world that may have hosted a lot of liquid water in the past, and may still have some underground,” said Julie Castillo-Rogez, Dawn project scientist and co-author of the studies, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
Ceres has plenty of interesting features. Here, a mosaic of Cerealia Facula, another bright spot area.
Image credits: NASA/JPL.
It’s remarkable just how much the Dawn mission has revealed about Ceres. Yet again, we’ve learned that one body which didn’t seem all that interesting harbors plenty of fascinating information. Our solar system is becoming more interesting every year.
“Dawn accomplished far more than we hoped when it embarked on its extraordinary extraterrestrial expedition,” said Mission Director Marc Rayman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “These exciting new discoveries from the end of its long and productive mission are a wonderful tribute to this remarkable interplanetary explorer.”
This mosaic of Ceres’ Occator Crater is composed of images NASA’s Dawn mission captured on its second extended mission, in 2018. Bright pits and mounds (foreground) were formed by salty liquid released as Occator’s water-rich floor froze after the crater-forming impact about 20 million years ago.
Every living creature requires energy in order to subsist, multiply, and pass on its genes. How much energy an animal requires depends on their habitat and size, among many other things. But some cells require so little energy, it just boggles the mind.
Recently, researchers have identified microbial cells that live in sediments kilometers beneath the ocean floor that require a tiny fraction of a calorie to survive. In fact, many of these cells may be up to 100 million years old, something that is owed to their suspended animation state.
Speaking to Quanta Magazine, James Bradly, a geobiologist at Queen Mary University of London and the lead author of a new study that modeled the suboceanic biosphere, said that “This entire biosphere of cells, equivalent in size to the world’s soils, hardly has enough energy to survive.”
Bradly, along with colleagues from universities across the world, employed existing data from previous drilling operations and lab experiments, which they modeled to extrapolate a detailed profile of sub-seafloor sediments.
Researchers projected values like the age of the sediments, the density of cells living inside them, which nutrients are available to these cells, and the rate at which the cells metabolize the nutrients. The findings were quite staggering.
When the researchers calculated the power consumption of the dormant cells living inside the sediments, they found that they were close to the absolute theoretical limit for energy requirements to sustain life.
These sub-seafloor microbes use only 0.1% of the power consumed by creatures living in the upper 200 meters of the ocean. The buried microbes survive at power levels orders of magnitude lower than any organism ever measured in a laboratory, the authors reported in the journalScience Advances.
Previously, in 2015, Douglas LaRowe and Jan Amend, both at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, estimated the lowest amount of power required to sustain life. Even life that is dormant for millions of years in a zombified state waiting for the right conditions for reanimation needs at least some energy for fundamental biological processes like the repair of DNA damage.
Power per cell (watts) calculated on a global scale and depth-integrated for the (A) oxic, (B) sulfate-reducing, and (C) methanogenic sedimentary layers. White areas denote absence of the corresponding catabolic zone. Credit: Science Advances.
Even if an individual cell doesn’t divide, it would still need at least a zeptowatt, or 10−21 watts, in order to survive. The sub-seafloor microbes are just slightly above this threshold.
Some of these microbes may be up to 100 million years old, researchers report. Given their phenomenally low energy requirements, this all might change how biologists see cellular evolution.
The findings also open the possibility that life may exist in places that scientists had previously discarded as impossible habitats — and this includes other planets, as well.
The sediment samples that were used for the new theoretical model are around 2.6 million years old. However, deeper sediments might house even more starving cells, pushing energy requirements further to the brink.
The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force was launched earlier this month by Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist, boosting an effort by the Office of Naval Intelligence, officials said.
The Defense Department said Friday that it hopes to "improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs. The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security."
"The safety of our personnel and the security of our operations are of paramount concern. The Department of Defense and the military departments take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously and examine each report," the department said.
"This includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as UAP when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is observing."
The plans for the task force, which is expected to be officially unveiled in the next few days, were first reported by CNN on Thursday.
In 2017, The New York Times reported on the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which had previously been disbanded, according to the Pentagon.
The oldest known grass beds from 200,000 years ago included insect repellents
The oldest known grass beds from 200,000 years ago included insect repellents
The ancient bed remnants include fossilized grass, bug-repelling ash and aromatic leaves
South Africa’s Border Cave, shown here at its entrance, contains bits and pieces of the oldest known grass bedding, dating to around 200,000 years ago, researchers say.
People living in southern Africa around 200,000 years ago not only slept on grass bedding but occasionally burned it, apparently to keep from going buggy.
Remnants of the oldest known grass bedding, discovered in South Africa’s Border Cave, lay on the ashes of previously burned bedding, say archaeologist Lyn Wadley of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and her colleagues. Ash spread beneath bound bunches of grass may have been used to repel crawling, biting insects, which cannot easily move through fine powder, the researchers report in the Aug. 14 Science. Wadley’s team also found bits of burned wood in the bedding containing fragments of camphor leaves, an aromatic plant that can be used as a bug repellent.
Prior to this new find, the oldest plant bedding — mainly consisting of sedge leaves, ash and aromatic plants likely used to keep insects away — dated to around 77,000 years ago at South Africa’s Sibudu rock-shelter.
At Border Cave, chemical and microscopic analyses of excavated sediment showed that a series of beds had been assembled from grasses, such as Guinea grass and red grass. Guinea grass currently grows at Border Cave’s entrance. Bedding past its prime was likely burned in small fire pits, the researchers suspect. Remains of fire pits were found not far from Border Cave’s former grass beds.
Preserved grass fragments uncovered in a South African cave, left, are by far the oldest known examples of grass bedding, researchers say. Close-up images of those fragments taken by a scanning electron microscope, such as the one shown at right, helped to narrow down what type of grasses were used for bedding.L. WADLEY
Humans in southern Africa intentionally lit fires by around 1 million years ago (SN: 4/2/12). But Border Cave provides the first evidence that ancient grass bedding was burned on purpose.
Small, sharpened stones were also found among grass and ash remains, suggesting that people occasionally sat on cave bedding while making stone tools.
Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope revealed a large amount of dense hot gas moving outwards through Betelgeuse’s extended atmosphere. This gas might have cooled and formed a dust cloud that partially blocked the star’s light as seen from Earth, earlier this year.
This 3-paneled artist’s concept illustrates new research, explaining why the bright red supergiant star Betelgeuse suddenly became fainter for several months during late 2019 and early 2020. In panel 1, a bright, hot blob of plasma is ejected from the star. In panel 2, outflowing expelled gas rapidly expands outward and cools to form an enormous cloud of obscuring dust. In panel 3, the huge dust cloud partially blocks Betelgeuse’s light.
Image via NASA/ ESA/ E. Wheatley (STScI)/ CfA.
For us skywatchers, it was lots of fun – and entirely shocking – when the well-known bright star Betelgeuse unexpectedly dimmed in late 2019 and early 2020. Betelgeuse has been such a steadfast sight in the night sky throughout our lives (and some of us have been around awhile), shining with a red light at the shoulder of the easy-to-see constellation Orion the Hunter. The dimming of Betelgeuse was even more exciting because it’s a well-known fact that this star will someday explode. Was the sudden dimming of Betelgeuse a sign that it would explode soon? Speculation raged for weeks, as we gazed toward a fainter Betelgeuse than we’d ever seen before. The star did not explode. In fact, by February, it wasstarting to brighten again. Then last week – on August 13, 2020 – scientists released a new study suggesting that the sudden dimming of Betelgeuse was most likely caused by the ejection and cooling of dense hot gases. In the meantime, as I write this, it appears Betelgeuse is dimming once more, about a year earlier than expected.
A statement from the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) explained:
Between October and November 2019, Hubble Space Telescope observed dense, heated material moving outward through the star’s extended atmosphere at 200,000 miles per hour. The following month, several ground-based telescopes observed a decrease in brightness in Betelgeuse’s southern hemisphere, as if something was blocking light in this region of the star. By February 2020, the star had lost more than two-thirds of its brilliance, a dimming visible even to the unaided eye, creating buzz that the star might be going supernova. Continued ultraviolet light spectroscopic observations with Hubble provided a timeline for researchers to follow, like breadcrumbs leading back through time to pinpoint the source of the mysterious dimming.
Andrea Dupree is associate director of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and lead author of the study, which was published on August 13 in the peer-reviewedThe Astrophysical Journal. She said in the scientists’ statement:
With Hubble, we had previously observed hot convection cells on the surface of Betelgeuse and in the fall of 2019 we discovered a large amount of dense hot gas moving outwards through Betelgeuse’s extended atmosphere. We think this gas cooled down millions of miles outside the star to form the dust that blocked the southern part of the star imaged in January and February.
The material was two to four times more luminous than the star’s normal brightness. And then, about a month later the south part of Betelgeuse dimmed conspicuously as the star grew fainter. We think it possible that a dark cloud resulted from the outflow that Hubble detected. Only Hubble gives us this evidence that led up to the dimming.
This spectral plot is based on Hubble Space Telescope observations from March 2019 to February 2020. Hubble recorded a surprising outburst in the atmosphere of the nearby red supergiant star Betelgeuse. Measurements of emission from magnesium II were used to trace motion in the star’s pulsating atmosphere. Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph captured a dramatic increase in the brightness of magnesium emission in October 2019, in the southeast region of the star, as outlined by the white circle. (Betelgeuse is close enough and big enough for Hubble to resolve the star’s enormous disk.) This traumatic event was different from what is normally seen in the star’s 420-day pulsation period. At the same time in October, the star abruptly began dimming. This fading continued until February 2020, at which time the Hubble ultraviolet spectral data had returned to normal. The outburst is suspected to have ejected a cloud of hot plasma that cooled to form dust that blocked out a significant portion of the star’s light for a few months. Hubble’s long baseline of monitoring the star helped put the puzzle pieces together.
Image via NASA/ ESA/ A. Dupree (CfA)/ E. Wheatley (STScI)/ CfA.
Scientists’ models had suggested that – in this situation – the plasma should be ejected from the star’s rotational poles. The Hubble observations showed it was not, however. Dupree said:
Hubble observations suggest that material can be driven off from any part of the stellar surface.
Dupree added that recent activity on Betelgeuse was not normal for this star. Dupree noted that Betelgeuse is losing mass at a rate 30 million times higher than the sun, but that recent activity resulted in a loss of roughly two times the normal amount of material from the star’s southern hemisphere alone. She said:
All stars are losing material to the interstellar medium, and we don’t know how this material is lost. Is it a smooth wind blowing all the time? Or does it come in fits and starts? Perhaps with an event such as we discovered on Betelgeuse? We know that other hotter, luminous stars lose material and it quickly turns to dust making the star appear much fainter.
But, in over a century and a half, this has not happened to Betelgeuse. It’s very unique.
An image from NASA’s STEREO spacecraft shows the star Betelgeuse, circled. For several weeks in 2020, STEREO was the only observatory making measurements of Betelgeuse because of the spacecraft’s unique position in space. Between late June and early August 2020, STEREO observed Betelgeuse on five separate days, measuring the star’s relative brightness in comparison to other stars.
Image via NASA/ STEREO.
The star Betelgeuse, and its constellation Orion, are behind the sun as seen from Earth in early Northern Hemisphere summer. They always return to our early morning sky around late July and early August. While Betelgeuse was hidden behind the sun for earthly observers, scientists turned to NASA’s Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory – STEREO – to monitor the star’s brightness. Those observations revealed another surprise, the scientists said: more unexpected dimming.
Between late June and early August 2020, STEREO observed Betelgeuse on five separate days, measuring the star’s relative brightness in comparison to other stars. Dupree said:
Our observations of Betelgeuse with STEREO confirm that the star is dimming again.
Betelgeuse is a variable star, though its rising and falling in brightness isn’t noticeable to casual observers. It typically goes through brightness cycles lasting around 420 days.
Since the previous minimum happened in February 2020, this new dimming is over a year early, the scientists commented.
Dupree said she plans to observe Betelgeuse with STEREO again next year, during the star’s maximum, to monitor for unexpected outbursts.
People always want to know if Betelgeuse will explode. It is an old star and a supergiant star, and so the answer to that question is surely yes. When Betelgeuse dimmed so noticeably in late 2019 and early 2020, some scientists agreed it might be a sign that the star was about to go supernova. These scientists commented in their statement:
Betelgeuse is a bright star in our galaxy, near the end of its life, that is likely to become a supernova. When the star became very faint in February 2020, this was the faintest that it had ever been since measurements began over 150 years ago. The dimming was obvious to everyone when looking at the constellation Orion; it was very weird, Betelgeuse was almost missing.
At 725 light-years away, light – and dimming – seen from Betelgeuse today on Earth left the star in the year 1300. Dupree said:
No one knows how a star behaves in the weeks before it explodes, and there were some ominous predictions that Betelgeuse was ready to become a supernova.
Chances are, however, that it will not explode during our lifetime, but who knows?
Bottom line: An explanation for the mysterious dimming of Betelgeuse in late 2019 and early 2020.
Readers of the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad were startled to read the reports of an alien encounter close to the town of Jafr. According to the news reports, the desert community witnessed the landing of UFOs, piloted by creatures 3 meters (10 feet) in height.
The reports went on to describe the bizarre alien language from these gigantic humanoid creatures. Their voices, which the newspaper referred to as “squawking” were indecipherable to the terrified earthlings who witnessed the first contact.
Even more frightening than the appearance or sound of the creatures was the effect of their technology. All electronics in the region were knocked out, even as the intense heat from the UFOs scorched the nearby ground.
Al-Ghad recounted how many terrified residents of Jafr fled into the desert to escape the alien invasion. Much to everyone’s relief, after one hour and forty minutes, the mysterious alien visitors reboarded their spaceships and departed, without ever making their intentions known. All that remains of this close encounter are the scorch marks on the desert floor and horrifying memories to haunt the nightmares of the befuddled community.
All of this was reported as news. The only clue that it might not have really happened was in the date at the top of the paper: April 1, 2010. For those who noted the date, it might not have generated the skepticism it would have caused English readers. Al Ghad‘s readers were unaccustomed to seeing April Fool’s Day hoaxes in its pages, and many found the experience less than hilarious.
With their own version of the panic from the 1938 radio show “The War of the Worlds,” Jafr had to deal with the fallout from those who believed the story. Many residents, believing the story, huddled behind locked doors, fearing the worst. School absences skyrocketed as parents kept their children home from classes. The mayor of Jafr even considered the mandatory evacuation of the 13,000 residents but elected against it, fearing that people would be injured in the chaos.
Al Ghad‘s managing editor later apologized for the article, saying “We meant to entertain, not scare people.”
Out in the rural desert town of Jafr, in eastern Jordan, about 190 miles east of Amman, nothing much ever really happens. This is a simple, forgotten place in the unforgiving desert terrain well away from the rest of the world, a place that not even people in Jordan have ever really heard of, but this would change in 2010, when this rugged town of 13,000 suddenly got major national news coverage when Jafr was supposedly invaded by menacing, malevolent aliens from another world. And so would begin a panic unlike the region had ever seen before, which in the people’s minds at least involved towering aliens and their death machines out to kill them all.
On April 1, 2010, a major story ran on the front page of the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad. According to the report, UFOs had descended from the sky to land out in the desert boondocks surrounding the dusty town, piloted by massive, marauding aliens that were described as being a full 10 feet tall which spoke in a squawking language. During the night, the UFOs, which could supposedly shoot beams of intense heat, had reportedly flown about over town, lighting up buildings and city streets as if it were daylight, leaving scorch marks in the ground, and it was also said that some force they were generating had knocked out communications in the area. Panicked residents had reportedly run out into the streets in fear of their lives, and by the time the article made the rounds the populace was in a frenzied panic thinking the world was ending.
Jafr, Jordan
Through all of this, parents refused to send their children to school, many stores closed, and the mayor of the city, Mohammed Mleihan, was making preparations to evacuate the entire populace. He would say of this, “Students didn’t go to school, their parents were frightened and I almost evacuated the town’s 13,000 residents. People were scared that aliens would attack them.” When other news outlets picked up the story it seemed to take on a life of its own, with some saying that military personnel were being mobilized and that an alien invasion force was preparing to launch an attack from the desert. In the meantime, the mayor did have security forces patrol the outskirts of town, but they were unable to locate any UFOs or giant aliens.
As soon as the newspaper Al-Ghad realized what was happening, and became aware of the gravity of the uproar their article had caused, Moussa Barhoumeh, Al Ghad’s managing editor, came forward to say that the whole thing had been nothing but an April Fool’s joke, something many astute readers here might have already surmised by reading the date of the publication. According to the editor, it had just been a silly, good-natured prank “meant to entertain, not scare people.” The newspaper issued a formal apology for the inconvenience it had caused, but many of the people of Jafr, who had had their whole life momentarily upended, were furious, not the least of all Mayor Mleihan. He was so livid, in fact, that he threatened to sue the newspaper for their tasteless “big lie,” especially since he had allocated valuable resources to prepare for an alien invasion that had never come.
It does seem odd that Al-Ghad would decide to try and pull such a stunt. After all, whereas someone from the West might be accustomed to seeing fake April Fool’s Day news stories printed on April 1st and cast a skeptical eye at such spectacular headlines on this day, In Jordan it is different. They have no such custom, especially not in a rural, superstitious backwater like Jafr, where most people would not even know what an April Fool’s day prank was. Considering this, it does seem pretty odd that the Jordian newspaper would not only pull a front-page prank article, but also base it in Jafr. In America or Britain it probably would not have been a big deal, but in Jordan it had led to a mass panic and minor regional emergency amongst a populace not versed in such things.
It is in some aspects quite reminiscent of the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast of October 30, 1938, in which future filmmaker Orson Welles adapted the HG Wells classic of the same name as a Halloween radio show over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network, made up to sound like it was taking place as the alien invasion of the novel happened. It was clearly announced as a dramatization, but presented in a very realistic style of another program being interrupted by news of the invaders from Mars, so some people who caught the show midway through were said to have bought it all as real and flown into a panic due to this realistic “breaking news” style of storytelling used. The extent of this panic has been disputed in recent years, as it turns out that the show wasn’t listened to by all that many people and most of them met it with curiosity rather than fear, but there were no doubt a few who took it to be real and were not too happy about having been fooled. Even though the panic caused by the broadcast was nowhere near as bad as it has traditionally been portrayed, it still did gain quite a bit of backlash from people who did not appreciate its use of its deceptive news bulletin format, leading to stricter regulation of such programs by the Federal Communications Commission.
The Jafr alien invasion scare is the worst case scenario for fake news and questionable journalistic ethics, mixed with pranksters who perhaps went a little too far. This one story threw this little town into an absolute whirlwind of fear and apprehension, and it is a cautionary tale as to how skittish and gullible people can be, especially in an out of the way, undeveloped area where the populace is especially susceptible. It is certainly an intriguing little tale, and shows that the mainstream news is probably not the best place to play out practical jokes.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
The Great Pyramid, Built By the Nephilim, Has Many Stunning Mathematical Codes
The Great Pyramid, Built By the Nephilim, Has Many Stunning Mathematical Codes
Irish author Patrick Heron returned to the show to share “the last few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle” concerning the pyramids and Bible prophecy. The Great Pyramid has a number of stunning mathematical features and could not be replicated today. There is enough stone in it to build a 6 ft. wall that stretches from New York to Los Angeles, said Heron, who believes it is impossible that the Egyptians constructed the Great Pyramid.
Rather, he suggested that 5,500 years ago, the Nephilim, who were the “fallen angels” written about in Genesis, built the pyramids and other ancient structures. They were beautiful looking “spirit men,” who appeared human but were not bound by the same laws of physics as mankind, he explained. They mated with Earth women during two periods, before the Great Flood and afterwards, he added.
Heron said the Nephilim never died, but were entombed in an “abyss” or netherworld. According to prophecy in the Book of Revelation, a spirit man or “star” comes down to Earth with the “keys” to the bottomless pit. He identified this being as the Antichrist, whom people will be deceived into thinking is the Messiah, but he’ll actually lead the world into the prophesied Apocalypse.
MUFON: Two UFOs In Washoe Valley, Nevada 9-10-2019, UFO Sighting News. (NO SOUND)
MUFON: Two UFOs In Washoe Valley, Nevada 9-10-2019, UFO Sighting News. (NO SOUND)
Date of sighting: 9-10-2019 Location of sighting: Washoe Valley, Nevada, USA Source: MUFON #110943 Here is an amazing video of a pair of glowing white UFOs over some mountains in Washoe Valley, Nevada. Nevada is famous for Area 51, Area S4, Nellis AFB tall whites alien base, and of course...the extraterrestrial highways. Although this video is 1 year old, it was reported today to MUFON and its quality and focus is outstanding. This is true evidence...evidence of some of the glowing UFOs seen not only in Nevada, but also Colorado Rockies and around the world. We don't get to see them come or leave, but thats how people are...we look around, get board and assume objects in the sky will stay there for ten seconds or more...only to go back and see they have gone. I too have been guilty of such videos. 100% proof UFOs have active alien bases in Nevada desert. Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states:
I was eating lunch in our breakfast nook and noticed something shiny in the distance to the north, in the sky. At first i thought helicopter or plane or glider/ultralight (people fly those in this region), but the light did not move. I noticed it looked like actually two circular metallic objects. The were fixed in space, between my location on Aspen Creek and Slide Mountain, southwest of Reno NV. I took my phone and started recording video. I walked to the window to get a closer look and the objects remained in place. Moving closer I could not see any additional detail. I did not notice the pulsating while watching, but it came out on the video. The objects remained in the exact same position for a while so and stopped the recording. About a minute later I looked up again and they were gone, so I do not know if and how they moved.
Glowing Orb Over Draper, Utah Desert, MUFON, July 13, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Glowing Orb Over Draper, Utah Desert, MUFON, July 13, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: July 13, 2020 Location of sighting: Draper, Utah, USA Source: MUFON #110995 This just came in at MUFON today. A guy is reporting a glowing white orb coming very low and close to the rooftops of his home. It looks like its very late at night and they guys girlfriend is still in the house, because at the end of the video he gets irritated and says, "Hey Teresa! Get out here! Get up! You got to see this!" But by that time the glowing orb seemed to have moved off and disappears in the distance. I guess Teresa missed it, but its awesome he caught raw footage of the object for her and all of us to see. Its not a drone, drone lights are not that powerful and its not a plane or helicopter...because its silent and not far above the houses. I estimate it flying at 50 meters above the eyewitness. It noticed him, circled him but was distracted by other glowing lights nearby. Absolutely real, absolutely unexplainable. Scott C. Waring
I added some shadows and focus to the above and below. To the below, strangely it came out...like layered coral, but is correctly focused.
The band member of Blink, Tom Delonge has recently posted a photo of a UFO on his Instagram about 7 hours ago. The photo of a UFO disk viewed from its side with an orb below it had just a few words that didn't explain much..."Doesn't look supernatural to me." Sadly he has no possible explanation nor any clue as to this UFO sighting being real or not. His cryptic message to his Instagram users hints that he is looking for something more unique in sightings...and seems disappointed that its a mere classic disk design UFO even though its releasing an orb. The original video was released on Instagram last year and can be seen below. I believe there is a simple explanation to this video. The orb is the pilot of the UFO wanting to get a closer look at things on the surface, but doesn't want to risk being seen so takes an orb which seems to come out of the pilot area. A sphere should be easier to cloak on the ground than a disk, because of the light bending. This alien pilot was heading to land someplace. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Edgar Cayce The Location of Atlantis and the Hall of Records
Edgar Cayce The Location of Atlantis and the Hall of Records
Edgar Cayce expert, Dr. Greg Little, discussed the topic of Atlantis that came up numerous times during Cayce's readings, said Little.
The civilization, according to Cayce, began around 200,000 years ago and stretched from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Bahamas.
Its final destruction occurred around 10,000 BC, but priests who used crystals to "communicate with other worlds" were warned about the coming cataclysm. This led them to construct three "Hall of Records," which were located in Egypt (under the Sphinx), at Piedras Negras, Guatemala and near the Bimini Islands.
Little detailed his underwater investigations at Bimini and Andros Islands, his most recent trip there was in May 2005. In regards to what is called the "Bimini Road," he described a formation of six-sided rectangular slabs which are 2ft. by 3ft. each.
The stones were not actually part of a road, but rather composed a harbor works, that was used as a huge breakwater for maritime activity, he suggested. Little said that seven different categories prove these stones were man-made, and they probably date back at least 10,000 years.
Referring to theories about Atlantis mention the extensive use of crystals by Atlanteans, see our in-depth report on the Mystery of the Crystal Sphere of Atlantis.
Atlanteans allegedly harnessed the energies of the pyramids, using harmonics linked to crystals to that end. As we have the Great Pyramid at the center of the planet linked to the grid matrix that creates our reality, so, too, did the Atlanteans.
Their pyramid allegedly sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean which is a metaphor about returning to the collective unconsciousness or source of creation.
Atlantean crystals received power from a variety of sources, including the Sun, the Earth's energy field grid system or from each other.
Grids point are often marked by pyramids. The Atlanteans used this energy, combined with crystals, to transmit energy from one pyramid to another or, as aliens, to enter and leave the planet.XX
The Astounding Discovery of Dr. Ray Brown:
Known as Ray Brown’s Atlantean Crystal Sphere, the discovery of the sphere occurred during a scuba diving trip to the Bari Islands in the Bahamas in 1970.While diving, Ray Brown – a naturopathic doctor – became separated from his friends and while he searched for them, he came upon a strange pyramid structure.
Just what the purpose of the crystal sphere was, and what role it once played in the enigmatic instrument Brown found inside the sunken Bahaman pyramid, remains a mystery, though of course there are some interesting possibilities.
Though startled by the find, he investigated and was amazed that the sides of the pyramid were completely smooth and the joints between the individual blocks to be nearly imperceptible. Upon entering the pyramid, Ray was further astounded by the clean, smooth sides of the interior: no algae or coral grew on the walls.
Not only that, but he was able to see the interior clearly as the room was well lit but there was no detectable source of light. He tried to remove a a multi-faceted red gemstone attached to a metallic rod that descended from the center of the ceiling, but was unable to dislodge it.
About four feet below the point of the red gemstone, stood a bronze metal sculpture of two open hands, and resting upon the palms of the hands was a crystal sphere, about four inches in diameter. He was surprised that he could lift the crystal sphere easily....
UFO Discovery In 1973 Columbo Episode? A Mysterious Object Turns Up On Film
UFO Discovery In 1973 Columbo Episode? A Mysterious Object Turns Up On Film
A mysterious UFO aka UPA unidentified aerial phenomena? I was watching an old episode of Columbo in HD on my big home TV screen, and I noticed an unknown flying object. It was dark and it had no aviation lights. Let’s take a closer look!
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This distant galaxy – SPT0418-47 – surprised astronomers by being organized enough to have a spinning disk and a galactic bulge, early in the history of our universe.
Using the ALMA telescope in Chile, astronomers say they’ve found an extremely distant and therefore very young galaxy that surprised them by looking so much like our Milky Way. The galaxy is 12 billion light-years away. Thus we see the galaxy as it was 12 billion years ago, when – according to recent estimates of our universe’s age – the universe was only 1.4 billion years old. The galaxy is called SPT0418-47. It doesn’t appear to have spiral arms as our Milky Way does, these astronomers said, but it has two other features reminiscent of our Milky Way. It has a rotating disk, thought to be similar to the flat disk of our own galaxy, in which our own sun revolves around the galactic center. And it has a galactic bulge, a large group of stars packed tightly its center. This is the first time a bulge has been seen this early in the history of the universe, making SPT0418-47 the most distant Milky Way look-alike.
That’s surprising, these astronomers said, because they’d have expected galaxies at this point in the young universe to be “turbulent and unstable,” not organized enough to have disks and bulges. The astronomers’ statement said:
This unexpected discovery challenges our understanding of how galaxies form, giving new insights into the past of our universe.
Francesca Rizzo of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany led the research, which was published August 12, 2020, in the peer-reviewed journal Nature. Rizzo said in a statement:
This result represents a breakthrough in the field of galaxy formation, showing that the structures that we observe in nearby spiral galaxies and in our Milky Way were already in place 12 billion years ago.
The astronomers added that studying distant galaxies like SPT0418-47 is fundamental to our understanding of how galaxies formed and evolved.
In this ALMA image, the galaxy SPT0418-47 appears as a near-perfect ring of light. That’s because this image was obtained via gravitational lensing, a process involving a second massive galaxy between us and the more distant galaxy. The gravity of the intervening galaxy causes the light of the more distant galaxy to bend: hence, the ring. What is the more distant galaxy’s true shape? See the image below.
This image represents the distant galaxy’s true shape, as revealed by computer modeling that incorporated data from the lensed image and other observations of the galaxy.
In their statement, the astronomers explained how they were able to see SPT0418-47 despite its distance of 12 billion light-years:
Because these galaxies are so far away, detailed observations with even the most powerful telescopes are almost impossible as the galaxies appear small and faint. The team overcame this obstacle by using a nearby galaxy as a powerful magnifying glass – an effect known as gravitational lensing – allowing ALMA to see into the distant past in unprecedented detail. In this effect, the gravitational pull from the nearby galaxy distorts and bends the light from the distant galaxy, causing it to appear misshapen and magnified.
The gravitationally lensed, distant galaxy appears as a near-perfect ring of lightaround the nearby galaxy, thanks to their almost exact alignment. The research team reconstructed the distant galaxy’s true shape and the motion of its gas from the ALMA data using a new computer modeling technique.
Rizzo added:
When I first saw the reconstructed image of SPT0418-47 I could not believe it: a treasure chest was opening.
Simona Vegetti, also from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, is a study co-author. Vegetti said:
What we found was quite puzzling; despite forming stars at a high rate, and therefore being the site of highly energetic processes, SPT0418-47 is the most well-ordered galaxy disc ever observed in the early universe. This result is quite unexpected and has important implications for how we think galaxies evolve.
Will SPT0418-47 evolve into another Milky Way? These astronomers said they don’t think so. They said they expect it to evolve into a galaxy very different from our Milky Way, and to join the class of elliptical galaxies, which lack spiral arms, instead appearing a bit like American footballs.
Bottom line: Astronomers would have expected a galaxy seen at a distance of 12 billion light-years to be “turbulent and unstable.” They were surprised to find one – labeled SPT0418-47 – with a disk and bulge similar to our Milky Way. They say this galaxy is the most distant Milky Way look-alike yet found.
It’s August, which means it’s time for a monthly update to the seemingly never-ending saga of UFOs, the Pentagon, The New York Times, Tom DeLonge and the US Senate. This month our focus is on the Pentagon, which announced it is setting up a task force to investigate UFO sightings both in and out of the military. Feel free to insert your “Wait a minute … don’t they already have one?” here.
“Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist will help oversee the task force, which is expected to be officially unveiled in the next few days, according to the officials. Previous efforts to look into what the Pentagon dubs unidentified aerial phenomena were led by the US Navy as many of the documented encounters involved their aircraft.”
A still from the USS Nimitz footage
Credit CNN with breaking this story, and no other media sources seem to have anything more to say. CNN itself had no additional clarification or comments from the Department of Defense nor Deputy Secretary Norquist nor the two unnamed sources nor … anybody new. All it had was a rehash of the various ‘blockbuster’ announcements of the past two-going-on-three-how-time-flies years about the Navy UFO videos and the back-and-forth on the existence of the classified Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), begun in 2007 by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, secretly funded by Congress until 2012 and then secretly operated without funding ever since.
Remember all that?
Then a Senate committee hearing in June 2020 revealed the existence of the unclassified but still hush-hush Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force as successor to AATIP, and The New York Times article covering it had quotes about “off-world vehicles not made on this earth” and “actual materials” from these “off-world vehicles” in government possession … which was almost immediately walked back by the authors of the article and Harry Reid.
This has been a busy summer for UFO revelations/non-revelations/controversies hasn’t it?
Which brings us to the latest ‘announcement’. From what little was in the CNN article, it seems to imply that this is a different task force than Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force because it’s under the Department of Defense rather than the Office of Naval Intelligence. Both report directly to the President under separate directors. Seems like there should just be one task force … doesn’t it? That makes too much sense when you’re dealing with the U.S. government and the U.S. military.
Pentagon
Or is it because there are so many UFO encounters and possible “off-world vehicles” that one task force can’t investigate them all?
This seems to be turning from a potential chance that we’ll finally have some disclosure on UFOs/UAPs/ETs to a ball of confusion (see The Temptations) or the Keystone Cops (see the films of Mack Sennett) or a cover-up (see any book by Bob Woodward). All we can do is keep waiting and pointing out the obvious … we ain’t seen nothing yet (see Bachman-Turner Overdrive).
Note:
all related videos, selected and posted by peter2011
What mysteries lie beneath the surface of the oceans of our world? In early 2001, two marine engineers by the names of Pauline Zalitzki and her husband Paul Weinzweig were out on an exploration and survey mission with their Canadian company, Advanced Digital Communications, at a location off the Pinar del Río Province of the western coast of Cuba. They were there under commission by the Cuban government in order to carry out sonar surveys off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula, looking for shipwrecks dating back to the Spanish colonial era, often known to hold vast amounts of lost treasure, and several of which the team had already successfully located. However, on this day, the expedition was to discover something far stranger than a sunken Spanish galleon down there in the murk upon the sea floor. Thus would begin the strange tale of a purported ancient underwater city lying under the waters of Cuba, which has drawn to it all manner of debate and discussion.
At the time the crew were utilizing sonar in about 2,000 feet of water when they began getting startling images that baffled and perplexed all who were present. There flickering on the screen were sonar images of what appeared to be large structures resembling pyramids, massive blocks, and mysterious circular structures, sticking out there on the otherwise flat and barren seafloor of the area. They had no idea what they were looking at, but one thing they were sure of was that this was no shipwreck. Intrigued, they made a second trip to the location, this time bringing along a remote-controlled sonar submersible vehicle to confirm that not only were the structures really there, but they actually seemed to be arranged in a symmetrical grid along the bottom. The stone blocks used in the geometric structures also seemed to be smooth and polished granite, something that had no business being down there at the bottom of the sea. In fact, it looked to them like a vast, urban center of some sort, like a sunken city hiding there in the depths away from the rest of the world.
The story hit the news in a major way at the time, with sensational headlines exclaiming that an underwater lost civilization had been found off the Cuban coast. It was not long at all before people were mentioning the strange submerged ruins in the same breath as the legendary lost continent of Atlantis, UFOs, ancient aliens, and other such oddities. Even as this was all capturing the imagination of the public it was also capturing the attention of curious scientists, to mixed reviews. For the most part those who studied the images, including National Geographic magazine and others, admitted that the structures were anomalous, but they were wary of making any conclusions or endorsing the idea that this was some sort of lost city made by humans or aliens. Marine geologist Manuel Iturralde would notably concede that it was a cool discovery, but pointed out that the ruins were too deep to have possibly been manmade, as he estimated that it would have taken around 50,000 years for such a city to have sunk that low into the sea, putting it past the technology that would have been available at the time. He would say:
50,000 years ago there wasn’t the architectural capacity in any of the cultures we know of to build complex buildings. It would be cool if they were right, but it would be real advanced for anything we would see in the New World for that time frame. The structures are out of time and out of place.
Most scientists were of the mind that more data was needed to derive any conclusion about what was shown in the images, but theories swirled anyway. One idea was that there had perhaps been some catastrophe such as a massive tectonic event that had brought the city down to the depths, but there was no evidence at all that anything of sufficient magnitude had happened in that region at any point in history. Another idea was that the whole area had once been above sea level on a basin and that rising sea levels had submerged it all over time, similarly to what is thought to have happened to Atlantis, but it is considered improbable that this ever happened in the Caribbean, and Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews, of the site Bad Archeology, has said of this theory:
The depth of the alleged remains is the biggest problem of all: during the Pleistocene, sea levels dropped as water was locked up in the ice sheets that developed around the globe. At the maximum extent of the ice, the drop in level was around 100 m, which is very different from the 600-750 m depth of the alleged remains. At no point during the Ice Age would they have been above sea level unless, of course, the land on which they stand has sunk. This is the claim made for Atlantis: according to Plato’s account (the only primary source for it), it was destroyed σεισμῶν ἐξαισίων καὶ κατακλυσμῶν (“by violent earthquakes and floods”). However, if we take Plato at his word – as we must if we assume Atlantis to have been an historical place – the violence of its sinking makes it improbable that an entire city could have survived plunging more than 600 m into an abyss. Rapid sinking would devastate structures; the persistence of mud just below the surface suggests that the sinking was not to a depth of 600-740 m. Unless we are prepared to jettison Plato’s text – the sole source for the story of Atlantis – we cannot identify the features found by Paulina Zelitsky with Atlantis.
A computer generated mock-up of the supposed city
There have been other, even more fringe theories thrown around as well, such as that the city was intentionally built underwater or even that it was created by ancient aliens. For their part, Zalitzki and Weinzweig maintained that they believed it to be the remnants of a city that had been built by local peoples upon a land bridge connecting Cuba to the mainland at some point, although such a bridge is not known to have ever existed. Of course, another, more mundane notion is that this is simply anomalous looking natural structures. The problem is that all of this is mostly based on just those sonar images, which in itself has its own problems, as Fitzpatrick-Matthews explains:
The next problem involves trying to understand what the sonar shows. All the fancy graphics showing pyramid-like structures are computer generated: they are not photographs of things seen under the sea. All the detail is limited to the resolution of the side-scan sonar, which is not good enough to determine whether the supposed structures exhibit 90° angles, let alone confirm the claims that some stones are covered in hieroglyphs. The initial images, which do not have the three-dimensional data provided by the side-scanning sonar, show rectilinear but not rigorously right-angled features, so I suspect that the angularity of the generated images is an artefact of the processing, much like many of the details claimed for the ‘Face on Mars’. We have some interesting sonar images that are basically like ink-blot tests: they need interpreting and the interpretation is entirely dependent upon the preconceptions an biases of those looking at them. Paulina Zeltisky was predisposed to see artificiality, because that is what she was being paid to do (even if the artificiality she was specifically interested in involved sunken ships). Others have seen geological formations.
In other words, there is simply not enough imagery data, and the ruins might be anything. Interestingly, there seems to have been no real follow-up expedition to the site, which some have seen as rather suspicious and conspiratorial. One reason that has been proposed is that the Cuban government has initiated a cover-up and chased people away from the area, including the original crew that discovered it, but the more skeptical take is that it just hasn’t been seen as worthwhile enough for anyone to want to front all of the funding it would take to launch a proper expedition. Whatever the case may be, there has been very little in the way of follow-up, and the story of the amazing underwater city of Cuba went from a media sensation to just sort of fizzling out to be forgotten, only briefly getting a shot in the arm with an appearance on the TV show Ancient Aliens. What is this place and is there anything to it at all? If it really does exist, is it the work of an ancient civilization, aliens, or merely mundane geological forces? For now no one knows, no one has gone out there to really check it out, and all we can do is wonder and speculate.
An updated model suggests the shape of the sun’s bubble of influence, the heliosphere (seen in yellow), may be a deflated croissant shape, rather than the long-tailed comet shape suggested by other research.
Our solar system's protective bubble may not be comet-shaped after all.
Scientists have traditionally posited that the heliosphere, the huge bubble of charged particles that the sun blows around itself, has a rounded leading edge, where the solar system barrels through space, with a long tail streaming behind it. But the heliosphere's true shape is weirder and more complex, a recent study suggests — something akin to a deflated croissant.
It's tough to map out the heliosphere, because its closest edge is still a whopping 10 billion miles (16 billion kilometers) from Earth. Just two spacecraft, NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, have directly sampled the boundary, and two data points are far from sufficient to outline the heliosphere's contours.
So scientists have done so by other means. For example, they've studied measurements of galactic cosmic rays, super-energetic charged particles that zoom into our neighborhood from very far away. Researchers have also carefully tracked "energetic neutral atoms" that bounced sunward after interacting with the interstellar medium, the vast cosmic sea that lies beyond the heliosphere.
Such tracking has been done by a variety of spacecraft, including NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer and the Cassini Saturn probe. Scientists feed this information into computer models, which use it to map out the heliosphere's shape.
The recent study takes a new look at such data and also includes measurements of "pick-up ions" made by NASA's New Horizons Pluto probe, which is currently more than 4.3 billion miles (6.9 billion km) from Earth.
Pick-up ions are carried along by the solar wind, the stream of charged particles flowing continuously from the sun. (This flow is blocked by the interstellar medium to form the boundary of the heliosphere.) Pick-up ions are much hotter than the particles that make up most of the solar wind, which contributes to the heliosphere's weird shape, study team members found.
"There are two fluids mixed together. You have one component that is very cold and one component that is much hotter, the pick-up ions," lead author Merav Opher, a professor of astronomy at Boston University, said in a statement.
"If you have some cold fluid and hot fluid, and you put them in space, they won't mix — they will evolve mostly separately," Opher said. "What we did was separate these two components of the solar wind and model the resulting 3D shape of the heliosphere."
The heliosphere blocks many cosmic rays, shown as bright streaks in this animated image, from reaching the planets of our solar system. (Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab)
That shape, they determined, is croissant-like: a curving central bulge with two jets curling away from it.
"Because the pick-up ions dominate the thermodynamics, everything is very spherical," Opher said. "But because they leave the system very quickly beyond the termination shock, the whole heliosphere deflates."
The termination shock is the heliosphere boundary region, where solar wind particles begin pressing into the interstellar medium and slow to less than the speed of sound.
Gaining a better understanding of the heliosphere's shape has multiple applications, Opher and her colleagues said. For example, the bubble blocks about 75% of galactic cosmic rays, which can damage spacecraft and the DNA of voyaging astronauts. Knowing in detail which regions of space are protected could aid mission planners. (Life on Earth doesn't have much to worry about from galactic cosmic rays; our planet's magnetic field and atmosphere provide effective shielding.)
The study was published in March 2020 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
Now and again, people ask me for my views on the Crop Circle phenomenon. Well, I’m sure the vast majority of them are made by people, although calling the creators “hoaxers” is way off the mark. To understand my views on the phenomenon, check out this link which will take you to one of my earlier articles here at Mysterious Universe. Personally, I think that article gets to the heart of the matter – albeit in a very strange and alternative way. With that said, I’ll share with you a few of my many experiences in the weird world of the Crop Circle. Built on land that had come into the possession of the Earls of Chester as far back as the end of the 11th Century, Chartley Castle – which can be found in the county of Staffordshire, England, where I grew up – is a stone fortress founded in the thirteenth century by Ranulph Blundeville, the then Earl of Chester. And, in the summer of 2006, a striking Crop Circlewas found in a field directly next to the old castle. When word got out about the creation, I drove out to the site, as I was in the U.K. for several months. The Crop Circle was both large and intricately designed.
Chartley Castle, Staffordshire, England
(Nick Redfern)
Not only that, as I clambered down a steep, grassy embankment towards the formation, and made my careful way through thick brambles, lush bushes and a barbwire fence, I could not fail to see something highly strange strewn around the fringes of the Crop Circle: namely, a not inconsiderable pile of large and spectacularly colorful peacock feathers that were laid out in the form of a five-pointed star. And what was the deal with all those peacock feathers? Rumors were circulating in the area – the little villages, for the most part – that the formation and the peacock feathers/circle amounted to what one local called “black magic.” The mystery remained exactly that: a mystery.
The Chartley Castle Crop Circle, 2006
(Nick Redfern)
Moving on, in 1994, while I was digging through a then-newly-released government UFO file at the National Archives in Kew, U.K., I came across a fascinating Ministry of Defense document. As the file demonstrates, on March 23, 1964, T.E.T. Burbury, the Rector at Clifton Rectory, Penrith, Cumberland, wrote to the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington describing an encounter which had occurred some days previously. I quote from the rector’s letter: “Dear Sirs: Does an apparent column of blue light about 8-feet in diameter and about 15-feet high which disappears and leaves a mark of very slightly disturbed earth, the same diameter, mean anything to you? This occurred about 9.30 p.m. last Saturday night about 2 miles from here. It was seen by a person who is very short sighted who would have been unable to see anything, except the light, even if it had been present. I examined the ground which is about 100 Yards from the nearest building and there are no pylons near. There was no sign of burning, either by sight or smell, the grass growing between the exposed ground appeared quite normal. There were no signs of bird tracks or droppings: the ground simply appeared to have been lightly raked over in an almost perfect circle. “For your information only, I told the farmer to have a sample of the earth collected and analysed for bacteria content, but don’t know whether he has done so. Yours faithfully: T.E.T. Burbury.” Note the words of the rector: “…the ground simply appeared to have been lightly raked over in an almost perfect circle.” Does this not sound somewhat familiar?
Now, there’s the matter of Crop Circles of the tiny kind. One of the things that amazes many people about Crop Circles – regardless of who or what creates them – is there size. Sometimes they are gigantic. It’s a lesser-known fact, however, that others are barely the size of a car tire. Back in the 1990s, I spent a lot of time running around England in search of Crop Circles – chiefly in the circle-saturated county of Wiltshire, but sometimes elsewhere too. One of the things that interests me is the perception that many people have of Crop Circles – namely, that they are huge, sprawling designs of intricate design. Well, yes, some of them are. But, not all of them.
A huge Crop Circle formation with Silbury Hill, England in the background, 1997
(Nick Redfern)
While the photo above shows a huge formation – taken by me at ground-level in the summer of 1997 – with Wiltshire’s famous Silbury Hill in the background, the one below shows a very small Crop Circle, which I captured for posterity in a field in the summer of 1999. A natural event? Whatever the answer, it raises a thought-provoking question: How many similar circles of the small kind are overlooked each year, simply due to the fact that – for the most part – they are almost impossible to see, unless you happen to have reason to be in the relevant field where it “sits”? Perhaps, in a classic “not seeing the woods for the trees” scenario, the number of Crop Circles that manifest, appear or are made in England each and every year is far greater than we suspect. But, while focusing on the huge formations that certainly make for spectacular photographs and that reel in the media and the tourists, we are missing the equally intriguing, but far smaller, ones.
A Crop Circle of the tiny type, 1999
(Nick Redfern)
Maybe, one day, I’ll write a book on my days in Crop Circle land. There’s certainly enough material. All of it very weird…
Hugh Alien Triangle Ufo Encounter In Madison Wisconsin
Hugh Alien Triangle Ufo Encounter In Madison Wisconsin
AUGUST 4, 2020 ………..MADISON WISCONSIN
Large triangle object/ craft emitting extremely bright light and deploying smaller lights/ objects
This sighting took place over two nights/ mornings starting on August 4th, 2020.
August 4th, 2020- 0300 hours: I witnessed a large in scale object in the sky in a Northeast position above the State Capitol building in downtown Madison Wisconsin. It was emitting an extremely bright white light that was almost difficult to stare at due to it’s intensity. The object in question was mostly stationary in the sky only varying a pattern of clockwise movement in a minute fashion, and was slowly rotating on axis. In comparison to cargo jets flying nearby it was determined to be at least 4 to 5 times the size of a large jumbo jet (example being an Airbus A380).
The object in question was not a satellite or the ISS due to it’s size, placement within the atmosphere/ sky, and contradiction to ISS flight path per NASA source.
0330: I witnessed several small lights/ lighted objects dart out of the primary object in question, they flew out in all directions toward the horizon. The object maintained a super- vibrant light emission and proximity to the aforementioned.
0400: The object began to slowly move upward in the sky and diminish in size as if moving out of the atmosphere. Just after dawn broke it was gone.
August 5th, 2020- 0300: The object in question returned, but at a much higher altitude/ further distance than the prior night, it again maintained a somewhat fixed position for a period of time though was rotating on axis more. I maintained observation as able while performing work duties.
0330: I observed the object in question intensify and diminish it’s light projection, and begin to move to higher altitude/ outward toward atmosphere, then back to previous altitude.
0400: I observed several of the smaller lights/ objects move from west to east under the primary large craft in question, then spontaneously disappear just low and east of the large object. The large object had maintained the high intensity light emission once again.
0430: The large object in question once again moved upward and outward in a moderate consistent pace out of the atmosphere until it had disappeared from physical view right around dawn breaking.
Massive Event!! Asteroid Impact November Worries Worldwide!! - Must See Video
Massive Event!! Asteroid Impact November Worries Worldwide!! - Must See Video
Way 2020 has been going wouldn’t surprise me!
Yeah , there is a whole asteroid belt on its way. And nobody is talking about it. Oh and how about the movie that comes out tomorrow…called “green land” based on earth killer asteroids. Hmmm interesting
1:01 Nope, in September they’ve prepared aliens for us… the asteroid event is reserved for the 2020 season finale in December!
3 incoming asteroids– september 1, 22, nov 2 2020
September 1st must be the demonic elites letting us know that’s when they plan on a fake asteroid IMPACT causing an emp or something along those lines. All I know is that Jesus Christ is coming back soon before all hell breaks loose & America is overthrown by a coalition of nations.
You can’t eat gold. You can’t eat silver. You can’t eat Bitcoin. You can’t eat crypto currency.
The good book says we would see things never before seen and never to be seen again!
I think the focus should be to bring down the private banking families, or at least stop consenting to the tyranny and indoctrination regarding the PLANDEMIC!
There’s no asteroid impact coming. The collapse won’t happen all at once. It’s happening right now, as we speak.
UFO Shoots Over The Roof Tops Of Cambridge, UK Aug 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Shoots Over The Roof Tops Of Cambridge, UK Aug 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Aug 14, 2020 Location of sighting: Cambridge, UK To say this is fake would be jumping to conclusions. I really believe this video to authentic. The UFO that passes over the rooftops is seen for a mere few seconds and its blended in with though overcast sky. This UFO may have been taking advantage of covid19 lockdowns and the weather. UFOs are often attracted to lighting, possibly using the powerful strikes as added energy. This craft is rotating as it moves. The rotation apparent right before it leaves the video on the right side. Also there is a fuzziness around it...this blur is often seen around real UFO and its assumed the population systems are the cause. Cambridge...a city famous for being home to some of the greatest minds in history...like Stephan Hawking, Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton...it makes me wonder...was this UFO part of a bigger plan to find a pregnant woman and change her baby to be the next great mind? Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states:
Was trying to record the heavy lightning that was happening after these stupidly hot days in the UK. Ended up with this instead! Erm...ideas? I thought it was a flock of birds at first lol. Looks sectioned?
Here is an interesting structure in a crater on Mercury. According to the map ruler, the structure is 5 km wide and 10 km tall. The crater it sits in must be about 12km deep because the structure does not exit the crater ceiling area. Why oh why would aliens want to build a structure directly in the middle of a crater where it obviously stands out? With a species able to construct a 10km tall structure...its just absolute proof of intelligent beings out there. Even with less gravity on Mercury...still an incredible achievement.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Mysterious UFO filmed during thunderstorm over Cambridge, UK
Mysterious UFO filmed during thunderstorm over Cambridge, UK
Paul Bryan was recording the heavy lightning over Cambridge, UK on August 13, 2020 when suddenly a strange object came into view flying at low-altitude.
At first, Paul thought it was a flock of birds, but after a closer look it seems the object is sectioned and there are no visible propulsion characteristics.
Despite the object being similar to a so-called Fastwalker, could it be that he has captured a new type high tech (military) drone or was it something not of this earth?
This UFO video was filmed back in September 2019 but it was just published on MUFON’s website today. This happened over Washoe Valley in Nevada.
Witness report:
I noticed two glowing spheres out my breakfast nook window. I was eating lunch in our breakfast nook and noticed something shiny in the distance to the north, in the sky. At first i thought helicopter or plane or glider/ultralight (people fly those in this region), but the light did not move. I noticed it looked like actually two circular metallic objects. The were fixed in space, between my location on Aspen Creek and Slide Mountain, southwest of Reno NV. I took my phone and started recording video. I walked to the window to get a closer look and the objects remained in place. Moving closer I could not see any additional detail. I did not notice the pulsating while watching, but it came out on the video. The objects remained in the exact same position for a while so and stopped the recording. About a minute later I looked up again and they were gone, so I do not know if and how they moved.
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The mysterious bright spots on Ceres caused a sensation when the Dawn spacecraft first spied them in 2015. Now, they’re known to be salt deposits from a recent or ongoing percolation of briny water from a large reservoir in Ceres’ interior.
Images of Occator Crater on Ceres, which is the biggest dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The white areas in the crater are salt deposits. Numerous images – seen in false-color – were pieced together here to create this animated view.
As the Dawn spacecraft was approaching Ceres in 2015, it spied some mysterious bright spots on the surface of this dwarf planet.Something on Ceres was so highly reflective that, for a time, onlookers joked about alien lights. Scientists were puzzled at first, wondering what was causing the reflectivity. It turned out there are multiple bright spots on Ceres, and they’re now known to be salt deposits on this little world’s surface, mostly composed of sodium carbonate. Scientists said the spots likely came from liquid that had percolated up to Ceres’ surface and evaporated, leaving behind a salt crust. But percolated up from where? In October 2018, as Dawn’s mission was ending, the spacecraft dipped to less than 22 miles (35 km) above Ceres’ surface. The craft saw new details in the bright areas that have now enabled scientists to explain the bright spots’ origins.
Dawn scientists now say that the salty liquid on Ceres’ surface came from a reservoir of brine, or salt-enriched water, deep in Ceres’ interior. Scientists say this brine reservoir is about 25 miles (40 km) deep and hundreds of miles wide. Ceres itself is less than 600 miles across (1,000 km) across. So, in other words, Ceres is now understood to have a relatively vast interior reservoir of briny water.
The findings, which also reveal the extent of geologic activity in Occator Crater – home of Ceres’ most famous bright spots – appear in a special collection of papers published by Nature Astronomy, Nature Geoscience, and Nature Communications on August 10, 2020.
In 2015, as NASA’s Dawn spacecraft approached dwarf planet Ceres, it saw 2 strange bright spots on Ceres’ surface. Onlookers joked about “alien headlights,” but couldn’t explain the spots yet. Now they’re known to be relatively recent salt deposits. This image is from February 19, 2015, acquired from a distance of nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 km). It revealed that the brightest spot on Ceres has a dimmer companion, which lies in the same crater, now called Occator Crater.
Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ UCLA/ MPS/ DLR/ IDA.
Ceres’ bright spots from just 240 miles (385 km) above its surface (lower than the International Space Station is above Earth).
Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ UCLA/ MPS/ DLR/ IDA.
An image of Occator Crater – and the bright spots – draped over a digital terrain model, providing a 3-D-like perspective view.
Ceres – reclassified as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 2006, at the same time Pluto was demoted from full planet status – was formerly called asteroid Ceres and was the first asteroid to have been discovered in 1801.
There were hints of bright regions on Ceres long before Dawn’s arrival in 2015. Peering through telescopes, scientists had noticed diffuse bright areas of an unknown nature on the dwarf planets. The scientists’ statement said they:
… knew that micrometeorites frequently pelt the surface of Ceres, roughing it up and leaving debris. Over time, that sort of action should darken these bright areas. So their brightness indicates that they likely are young. Trying to understand the source of the areas, and how the material could be so new, was a main focus of Dawn’s final extended mission, from 2017 to 2018.
The research not only confirmed that the bright regions are young, some less than 2 million years old. It also found that the geologic activity driving these deposits could be ongoing. This conclusion depended on scientists making a key discovery: salt compounds (sodium chloride chemically bound with water and ammonium chloride) concentrated in Cerealia Facula. The scientists explained:
On Ceres’ surface, salts bearing water quickly dehydrate, within hundreds of years. But Dawn’s measurements show they still have water, so the fluids must have reached the surface very recently. This is evidence both for the presence of liquid below the region of Occator Crater and ongoing transfer of material from the deep interior to the surface.
In our solar system, icy geologic activity happens mainly on icy moons, where it’s driven by their gravitational interactions with their larger planets. But that’s not the case with the movement of brines to the surface of Ceres, because this little world isn’t particularly near any large bodies in space that might be pulling on it. Instead, the scientists found two main pathways that allow liquids from Ceres’ interior to reach its surface. Dawn principal investigator Carol Raymond said:
For the large deposit at Cerealia Facula, the bulk of the salts were supplied from a slushy area just beneath the surface that was melted by the heat of the impact that formed the crater about 20 million years ago. The impact heat subsided after a few million years; however, the impact also created large fractures that could reach the deep, long-lived reservoir, allowing brine to continue percolating to the surface.
The discovery of this presumably ongoing activity on Ceres – this movement of briny water from its interior to its surface – suggests that other large ice-rich bodies in our solar system that are not moons might also be active.
This mosaic image uses false color to highlight the recently exposed brine, or salty liquids, that were pushed up from a deep reservoir under Ceres’ crust. In this view of a region of Occator Crater, they appear reddish.
Dawn is the only spacecraft ever to orbit two extraterrestrial destinations: Ceres and the giant asteroid Vesta. This dual mission was made possible by Dawn’s ion propulsion system. The scientists’ statement explained:
When Dawn used the last of a key fuel, hydrazine, for a system that controls its orientation, it was neither able to point to Earth for communications nor to point its solar arrays at the sun to produce electrical power. Because Ceres was found to have organic materials on its surface and liquid below the surface, planetary protection rules required Dawn to be placed in a long-duration orbit that will prevent it from impacting the dwarf planet for decades.
Dawn accomplished far more than we hoped when it embarked on its extraordinary extraterrestrial expedition. These exciting new discoveries from the end of its long and productive mission are a wonderful tribute to this remarkable interplanetary explorer.
This mosaic of Ceres’ Occator Crater is composed of images NASA’s Dawn mission captured on its second extended mission, in 2018. Bright pits and mounds (foreground) were formed by salty liquid released as Occator’s water-rich floor froze after the crater-forming impact about 20 million years ago.
Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ UCLA/ MPS/ DLR/ IDA/ USRA/ LPI.
Bottom line: Scientists studying data from spacecraft Dawn now say that the salt deposits on Ceres’ surface came from a reservoir of brine, or salt-enriched water, deep in the dwarf planet’s interior. This brine reservoir is estimated to be about 25 miles (40 km) deep and hundreds of miles wide … remarkable on a little world less than 600 miles (1,000 km) across.
Mystery as assailants torture, mutilate and kill horses in spate of gruesome attacks that have stunned France and left baffled police probing possible satanic links
Mystery as assailants torture, mutilate and kill horses in spate of gruesome attacks that have stunned France and left baffled police probing possible satanic links
In the most recent case, a young filly had its ear cut off and eyes gouged out
Police are struggling to find the culprits, or a motivation behind the killings
There have been around 10 similar cases in France since the start of the year
French police are investigating a spate of mysterious 'barbaric' killings of horses involving mutilation of the animals' bodies that have stunned rural France.
The latest in Cortambert, a village in the Saone-et-Loire region, occurred overnight on Friday.
The one-year-old filly's right ear was cut off, one of its eyes was gouged out, its neck slashed and its genitals had been cut away.
But police are struggling to identify the perpetrators or find a motivation behind the cruel killings, and are probing possible satanic links.
A woman discovered the body of a horse over the weekend that had been mutilated, and was the latest in a string of similar cases in France that have shocked the rural community. Pictured: Horses in pasture, Guillestre, France (file photo)
A woman discovered the horse over the weekend in a secluded meadow while walking near the village in the Burgandy region.
A Paris police spokeswoman said there had been about 10 similar cases across France since the start of the year, most in the north and many taking place in secluded meadows.
Jessica Martin, a police captain, said: 'Everything leads us to conclude that the horse was tortured. It's utterly barbaric.'
She said there were also cases between 2014 and 2016 and that similar killings and mutilations of horses had been reported in the past in Belgium and Germany.
But the high number in France was unprecedented over such a short period.
'We do not understand the motivation. Is it a satanic rite, insurance fraud, some macabre trophy hunt or an internet challenge? We don't know. It is very traumatising,' she said.
She said several different breeds of horses had fallen victim, as well as one donkey, and that mutilation of an ear was a common factor. No meat had been taken from the carcases.
The latest series of killings began of February 12 of this year, when a staff member at the agricultural college in Moselle, near France's eastern border with Germany, found the corpse of a horse lying in its paddock.
Thee days later, the son of a racehorse trainer found the body of Démon du Médoc, with an ear removed.
The trainer, Philippe Boutin, said 'I think they made him gallop and he died of heart failure, and then they cut off his ear.'
French police said there have been around 10 similar attacks on horses since the beginning of the year, but are struggling to find any suspects or motivation behind them
Mr Boutin said that he has known some cases of horses being shot and killed illegally for their meat, but noted that this motive had been ruled out in the recent cases.
In one instance, a horse had been electrocuted, believed to be with a portable generator, while others appeared to have been stunned or killed by a blow with a large stone before then being mutilated.
In April, a two-year-old horse was found dead by the daughter of a woman who breaks in horses.
Stéphanie Gachelin said: 'At first we thought it was a natural death, then we discovered traces of wounds, and one of her ears was missing.'
Two other horses were found with wounds - on on the head and the other on the haunch, according to The Daily Telegraph.
National police are assisting local investigations of cases, and France has sent alerts to other European countries' forces, police captain Martin said.
In France, those who commit 'acts of cruelty or mistreatment of an animal' face up to two years in prison and a fine of €30,000 (£26,973).
The vast majority of unexplained animal mutilation cases in the U.S. are cattle, with many centered along an infamous corridor across Middle America that coincides with many UFO incidents. Cattle mutilations are also the norm in other countries where animal mutilations occur, unless the area is known for Chupacabras or other alleged bloodsucking creatures. That’s why a new rash of attacks is so unusual – they’re centered in France and the target animals are horses.
“French police are investigating a series of mysterious “barbaric” horse murders involving the mutilation of the bodies of animals that have stunned rural France. The last one in Cortambert, a village in the Saône-et-Loire region, occurred on Friday night. The one-year-old filly’s right ear was cut off, one of her eyes was gouged out, her neck was cut, and her genitals were cut. But the police are struggling to identify the perpetrators or find any motivation behind the cruel killings, and probe for possible satanic links.”
The killings generally occur at night.
Fr24news.com and other French media sites are using words like barbaric, torture and unprecedented to describe a recent dramatic increase in strange horse killings that appear at first glance to be the work or a cult. The latest was a horse belonging to Jean-Michel and Virginie Martinot, owners of a riding school. The fact that the right wing was cut off has brought this to the attention of the French National Gendarmerie (police force) because the large number of killings since February 2020 (at least 10) have all had that in common. The incidents include a racehorse that the owner believes was run until it had a heart attack before it was killed. Others showed signs of being electrocuted with a portable generator, hit on the head with a large stone or held with a nose twist. All had one ear cut off and many were said to be “sociable” animals with no fear of humans.
“Hello, The ever more abundant news of violent attacks of all kinds of equines for about 2 years, is at the origin of the creation of this group. Here, the goal is to rescind at the National, all the attacks to which our horses, donkeys and other equines can be victims. This is to make it possible to give the alert in all the regions, to follow the evolution and perhaps also to help the investigations in progress by collecting information which could allow cross-checking between the various cases.”
A Facebook page has been set up for people to register killings or suspicious activities in order to help the national police solve the cases. The killings include donkeys and ponies but no other forms of livestock, and have spread from northern France (Moselle, Yvelines, Aisne, Somme, Seine-Maritime, Oise) to other areas as well as Germany and Belgium, as Franceinfo reports.
Why would anyone risk being convicted of “acts of cruelty or mistreatment of an animal” which carries a sentence of up to two years in prison and a fine of € 30,000 ($35,500 US)? The speculation centers on a Satanic or other cult, but has gravitated towards a possible Internet challenge.
One thing that sets these cases apart from large animal mutilations in the U.S. is that no reports suggest it might be extraterrestrials. Do the French not believe as strongly in UFOs and aliens as Americans do? There have certainly been plenty of UFO encounters and abduction cases in that country. One difference is that, although some of the horses have had organs other than an ear removed, none of the reports say anything about blood being drained – another hallmark of US cattle mutilations.
The cause of these mysterious French horse mutilations has yet to be determined and the stress level – particularly among horse owners – is increasing. Is it a cult? An Internet challenge? Aliens? Or just more cruelty courtesy of the year 2020?
Throughout history there have been various mysterious texts, scrolls, and manuscripts claiming to have secret or even forbidden knowledge that lies beyond our ability to comprehend it. These manuscripts come creeping up upon us through the mists of time, wreathed in mysteries that we may never understand, and they have served to propel the imagination since time unremembered. One such text must surely be an ancient Indian manuscript, which purportedly hold the secrets to amazing, fantastical flying machines well before their time, and the veracity of which has been debated right up into the present.
In 1952, a G.R. Josyer, founder of the “International Academy of Sanskrit Research,” came forward to unveil a previously unknown text at an event exhibition of rare Sanskrit manuscripts. The text was called the Vaimānika Śāstra, meaning “The Science of Aeronautics,” supposedly dictated between the years of 1918 to 1923 to a G. Venkatachala Sharma by the mystic Pandit Subbaraya Shastry, who said the information had come to him in flashes and dreams, and considered himself the earthly conduit of the information from the real author, the ancient sage Maharshi Bharadwaja, itself claimed to be thousands of years old and put out there freely for “the benefit of all of mankind.” The mysterious text itself was devoted to the vimānas, which were the fantastical flying chariots, thrones, carts, and palaces, vehicles of the gods mentioned in ancient Sanskrit epics, but which according to this manuscript were actually advanced flying machines far predating any known airplanes. A news publication would say of the unveiling of this mysterious manuscript
Mr. G. R. Josyer, Director of the International Academy of Sanskrit Research in Mysore, in the course of an interview recently, showed some very ancient manuscripts which the Academy had collected. He claimed that the manuscripts were several thousands of years old, compiled by ancient rishis, Bharadwaja, Narada and others, dealing, not with the mysticism of ancient Hindu philosophy of Atman or Brahman, but with more mundane things vital for the existence of man and progress of nations both in times of peace and war. One manuscript dealt with Aeronautics, construction of various types of aircraft for civil aviation and for warfare. Mr. Josyer showed some types of designs and drawing of a helicopter-type cargo-loading plane, specially meant for carrying combustibles and ammunition, passenger aircraft carrying 400 to 500 persons, double and treble-decked aircraft. Each of these types had been fully described.
The text styles itself as sort of a treatise on ancient Indian flying machines, giving exhaustive descriptions, diagrams, and illustrations of aerodynamics, propulsive devices, materials, and metallurgy, as well as definition of an airplane, a pilot, aerial routes, food, clothing, metals, metal production, mirrors and their uses in wars, varieties of machinery, and others. The text goes into great depth on a variety of different flying vehicles. For instance, there is the Shakuna Vimana, which is shaped like a bird, measures 80 by 56 feet in dimension, and is crafted from a super-light, advanced alloy called raja loha. There is the Sundara Vimana, a giant cylindrical cone that utilizes steam and vaporized oil for energy production and is equipped with five gas engines, electrical tube wheels, and lifting fans. The Rukma Vimana is a massive, 5-tiered construct that has a 100 or 1000-foot base dimension, a 20-foot height, and an 80-foot cone height and operates on solar power. Another is the Tripura Vimana, which can move in air, on land, or through water, and which is fashioned of a fire-resistant alloy.
Every single one of these outlandish contraptions is explained in great technical detail, with elaborate illustrations of their inner workings and designs, meticulous recipes for their fuels and alloys, and it all really boggles the mind that any of this could come from thousands of years ago, as claimed. Yet theVaimānika Śāstrabecame very popular immediately upon release, being translated into Hindi in 1959 and then English in 1973. Of course, considering that this information and the bizarre designs were claimed to be thousands of years old, its public reveal immediately drew the attention of UFOlogists and ancient astronaut theorists, who studied the Vaimānika Śāstrawith great interest and fascination. However, the work has also drawn its share of criticism. One of the main problems with all of this is that, although the information is claimed to be from mystic ancient sources and a great sage, it was more or less released in modern times by the self-professed medium Pandit Subbaraya Shastry, who then left it to his son, Shri Venkatrama Shastry, after which it found its way into the collection of Josyer. However, Shastry has been claimed to have been a humble, honest man who never intended for his work to get out into the public eye, and he never took personal credit for any of it. It doesn’t seem as if is was an intentional hoax perpetrated by Shastry, although it might have been by his son. However, this is probably the least of the worries the veracity of this text has.
Some of the designs
Even more damning are the findings made by scientists who actually went and checked out the viability of the designs contained within the text. For instance, researchers from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore checked it out in 1974, and it did not take them very long at all to come to the conclusion that, in reality, most of the designs in the Vaimānika Śāstra simply would never actually be able to practically fly. The team found that not only are the aeronautics and geometries of the craft all wrong, but that the proposed methods of propulsion are also not viable. They even went as far as to say that the designs offended the laws of physics, that the author of the manuscript had a poor understanding of aeronautics, and stated, “If the craft is taken to mean what the drawing and the text say, it can be stated that the craft is a decided impossibility.” The study would not mince words at all when it says;
Any reader by now would have concluded the obvious – that the planes described above are the best poor concoctions, rather than expressions of something real. None of the planes has properties or capabilities of being flown; the geometries are unimaginably horrendous from the point of view of flying; and the principles of propulsion make them resist rather than assist flying. The text and the drawings do not correlate with each other even thematically. The drawings definitely point to a knowledge of modern machinery. This can be explained on the basis of the fact that Shri Ellappa who made the drawings was in a local engineering college and was thus familiar with names and details of some machinery. Of course the text retains a structure in language and content from which its ‘recent nature’ cannot be asserted. We must hasten to point out that this does not imply an oriental nature of the text at all. All that may be said is that thematically the drawings ought to be ruled out of discussion. And the text, as it stands, is incomplete and ambiguous by itself and incorrect at many places.
Ouch. There was also the researcher J. B. Hare of the Internet Sacred Text Archive, who also is blunt and harsh when he says of the origin of the manuscript and its contents:
You just have to buy into the assumption that ‘channeling’ works. … there is no exposition of the theory of aviation (let alone antigravity). In plain terms, the VS. never directly explains how Vimanas get up in the air. The text is top-heavy with long lists of often bizarre ingredients used to construct various subsystems. … There is nothing here which Jules Verne couldn’t have dreamed up, no mention of exotic elements or advanced construction techniques. The 1923 technical illustration based on the text … are absurdly un-aerodynamic. They look like brutalist wedding cakes, with minarets, huge ornithopter wings and dinky propellers. In other words, they look like typical early 20th century fantasy flying machines with an Indian twist.
The proponents for the veracity of the texts will point out that the Vaimānika Śāstra is incomplete, and that these missing parts might fill in the blanks, as well as that these would be highly advanced machines beyond our understanding. We are left with these supposed ancient texts, given to us by a seer and medium, unleashed upon the world to try and explain these mysterious machines of the gods but coming up lacking by modern scientific standards. Whatever one makes of them, they add to the rich history of texts purporting to have secret ancient knowledge, which will always have a particular allure and effect on the imagination, whether they are real or not.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft was launched in 2011 and since its arrival at Jupiter it has taken some spectacular photos. One photo in particular that’s been recently shared shows red cyclones circling the Gas Giant’s North Pole area and it looks just like a pepperoni pizza.
What’s even more interesting is that when the infrared photos of the “lava-like” storms are observed under visible light, the clouds have more of a bluish glow. Scott Bolton, who is the principal investigator for the Juno spacecraft, went into further details in a statement, “It’s bluer in color up there than other parts of the planet, and there are a lot of storms,” adding, “There is no sign of the latitudinal bands or zone and belts that we are used to — this image is hardly recognizable as Jupiter.” “We’re seeing signs that the clouds have shadows, possibly indicating that the clouds are at a higher altitude than other features.”
Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter.
When NASA released the photo to their Instagram account, they received a lot of comments, such as “Forbidden pizza” and “Pizza Planet”. Several people commented with nothing more than a pizza emoji while another user suggested that the photo looked like a burnt pie. The photograph that has many people calling the planet a “pepperoni pizza” can be seen on NASA’s Instagram page as well as on their official website.
The Juno spacecraft has done a phenomenal job studying Jupiter but NASA is hoping to get even more detailed analysis of the Gas Giant when the James Webb Space Telescope is launched next year. According to NASA’s website, the telescope will be the “largest, most powerful and complex space telescope ever built and launched into space. It will fundamentally alter our understanding of the universe”. One of its projects will be to study Jupiter in much greater detail, such as measuring the wind speed, particles in the clouds, temperatures, the gas composition, and much more.
Is anyone else now craving a pepperoni pizza?
Imke de Pater from the University of California, Berkeley and Thierry Fouchet of the Observatory de Paris stated, “It will be a really challenging experiment,” adding, “Jupiter is so bright, and Webb’s instruments are so sensitive, that observing both the bright planet and its fainter rings and moons will be an excellent test of how to get the most out of Webb’s innovative technology.”
I know that I’m personally excited to find out what kind of new information the telescope will provide regarding Jupiter.
NASA shared a detailed image of Jupiter, but viewers said it looks more like ‘a pepperoni pizza.’ The Juno spacecraft has been probing the massive planet since 2011 and recently sent back a picture red swirling cyclones in the North Pole region
The American space agency shared the image on Instagram and users responded by comparing the features to the popular food. One user called it the ‘Pizza Planet,’ while another said it looked like a burnt pie
The infrared photo highlights ‘lava-like’ storms on Jupiter’s poles and when viewed under visible light, the clouds appear as a blue glow
The vast telescope, which has already cost more than $7 billion (£5 billion), is considered a successor to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope
UFO sightings observed by many witnesses are typically the best, most noteworthy cases, as the multiple witnesses’ testimony provides corroborating evidence. Although most sightings are not mass sightings, there are several high-quality cases involving many credible witnesses, and some of these mass sightings paint the best picture showing the mysterious reality of UFOs. One such sighting occurred in 1976 in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of Africa.
The Canary Islands
(Credit: Oona Räisänen/Wikimedia Commons)
In the mid-1990s, philanthropist Laurance Rockefeller financed a report that provided an overview of major UFO events and the evidence surrounding the UFO phenomenon. This report was intended to educate government officials about UFOs, and as such, it was sent to the White House and members of the U.S. Congress. The report, titled “Unidentified Flying Objects Briefing Document: The Best Available Evidence,” was drafted by Don Berliner, an aviation journalist and long-time ufologist. UFO journalist Antonio Huneeus and Marie Galbraith, the wife of investment banker Evan Galbraith (who was the U.S. ambassador to France during the Reagan administration, the Republican candidate for New York governor in 1994, and the chairman of William Buckley’s political magazine, National Review) also participated in the creation of this document. One of the incredible cases presented in the document is the mass UFO sighting that took place in the Canary Islands.
According to newspaper headlines, thousands of residents of the Canary Islands observed an unidentified luminous phenomenon on the night of June 22, 1976. The event was reported by witnesses on at least three different islands. The Spanish Air Force thoroughly investigated the incident. Although the files associated with this investigation were declassified in 1994, they had already been leaked back in 1976. For whatever reason, the classified air force reports were given to journalist Juan José Benítez in October 1976 by an air force general. Benítez included these in his book, UFOs: Official Documents of the Spanish Government.
Laurance Rockefeller
Records indicate that the commanding general of the Spanish Air Force’s Canary Islands Air Zone assigned an investigative adjutant to the case on June 25, 1976. Depositions were taken of at least fourteen witnesses. The air force divided these witnesses into four categories, ranking them from most credible to least credible. People found to be mentally challenged, illiterate, or under the influence of drugs or alcohol were put into the very unreliable category, while people like astronomers, pilots, and aeronautical engineers were placed in the most credible category. The sighting reports, like the witnesses, were grouped into four levels to evaluate the quality and quantity of evidence for each.
The witness depositions and a review of the evidence allowed the investigative adjutant to piece together what transpired on June 22, 1976. Based on his report, the first UFO sighting of the night occurred at 9:27 p.m. The unidentified object was observed by the entire crew of the Spanish Navy vessel, the Atrevida, which at the time, was located near the coast of Fuerteventura. According to the Atrevida’s captain, he and his crew observed “an intense yellowish-blue light” moving from the island’s shore towards the ship. They initially assumed the object was an aircraft with active landing lights, but the UFO stopped and hovered in the sky. The captain further described that the light “went out and a luminous beam from it began to rotate. It remained like this for approximately two minutes. Then an intense great halo of yellowish and bluish light developed, and remained in the same position for 40 minutes, even though the original phenomenon was no longer visible.”
The Spanish navy vessel Atrevida.
(Credit: José Juan Medina Cobacho/Wikimedia Commons)
The captain explained that, minutes after this “halo” of light appeared, he observed the following:
[T]he light split into two parts, the smaller part being beneath, in the center of the luminous halo, where a blue cloud appeared and the part from which the bluish nucleus had come, vanished. The upper part began to climb in a spiral, rapid and irregular, and finally vanished. None of these movements affected the initial circular halo in any way, which remained just the same the whole time, its glow lighting up parts of the land and the ocean, from which we could deduce that the phenomenon was not very far away from us, but was close.
The ship’s first officer echoed the captain’s statements. And the officers also confirmed that the ship’s surface radar detected nothing at the time of the sighting.
The depositions of the naval officers were considered to be some of the most-credible testimony regarding the UFO sighting. The deposition of a physician, however, was among the more strange accounts collected during the investigation. Dr. Francisco Padrón León was in a taxi on his way to see a patient in the town of Las Rosas on Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands. He explained that, when he had almost arrived at his destination, the taxi’s lights hit a luminous sphere hovering motionless just off the ground. He described that the sphere was electric blue in color and constructed of a “transparent and crystalline-like material.” He estimated that the UFO had a radius of approximately one hundred feet. Inside the sphere, Dr. Padrón saw a platform that looked like it was made of metal, and what appeared to be three control consoles. He also claimed to have seen two tall humanoid figures inside the sphere, whom he estimated were between eight and a half feet and ten feet tall. They wore brilliant red outfits and some type of head gear.
When the taxi arrived at the patient’s home, Dr. Padrón continued watching the sphere. He described it as follows:
I [then] observed that some kind of bluish smoke was coming out from a semi-transparent central tube in the sphere, covering the periphery of the sphere’s interior without leaking outside at any moment. Then the sphere began to grow and grow until it became huge like a 20-story house, but the platform and the crew remained the same size; it rose slowly and majestically and it seems I heard a very tenuous whistling.
The doctor raced into the patient’s house to inform the residents about the mysterious sphere. Everyone came outside to see the object that had ascended high in the sky. The UFO quickly accelerated, shooting away at an incredible speed. The doctor described that it “dissolved into a bluish spindle-shape with red underneath.” Similar to the description provided by the navy officers, Dr. Padrón said “a brilliant white halo was formed close to the object, which bit by bit was forming another very brilliant blue halo.”
A sketch of the sphere and its occupants as described by Dr. Francisco Padrón León.
(Credit: Spanish Air Force/Antonio Huneeus)
Although bizarre, the doctor’s testimony was corroborated by the taxi driver, as well as by witnesses at the patient’s house. But the investigative adjutant reportedly still debated whether he should accept the doctor’s deposition. It was his belief that the witnesses of the humanoid figures in the sphere, “facing the presence of an unusual phenomenon in the sky, narrated what their ‘minds’ made them see, mutually influencing each other.” He goes on to say in the records that he “doesn’t have the slightest doubt about their seriousness and sincerity. They told what they unquestionably ‘believed’ to have seen.”
Notably, there are other reports from the 1970s of sphere-like objects containing occupants. In 1970, a boy in East Aurora, New York reportedly witnessed a silent yellowish sphere moving slowly through the sky. According to his report, he clearly saw two occupants at the craft’s control panel. In 1973, a witness in Manchester, New Hampshire reported seeing an orange and gold globe that was “not totally opaque but had a peculiar translucent quality about it.” She claims that she saw a humanoid figure standing at the controls of this UFO. In 1978, a witness in San Antonio, Texas reported seeing a strange, “globular,” amber-colored object with a transparent section through which the witness claims to have seen two “creatures.”
In addition to the witness depositions, the Spanish Air Force’s file related to this case contains more than one hundred pages of questionnaires, illustrations, and other documents. The file also includes a color photograph of the UFO that was taken by a tourist. According to the lab where this photo was developed, “no trickery or modification of any kind was added.”
Photograph of the phenomenon over the Canary Islands on June 22, 1976.
(Credit: Spanish Air Force/Antonio Huneeus)
Following the investigation, and after reviewing all the available information, the investigative adjutant concluded that there was no aerial traffic or military exercises at the time of the incident that could account for the phenomenon, and that what witnesses observed on June 22, 1976 was, indeed, an “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon.”
Similar phenomena were witnessed in the Canary Islands around the same time period. One of these other sightings occurred in November 1976 and was witnessed by the commanding general of the Spanish Air Force’s Canary Islands Air Zone while he was aboard a transport aircraft. Interestingly, a large halo also accompanied this sighting. Personnel at an air base on the island of Gran Canaria and the crew of a Spanish navy ship also witnessed this phenomenon.
The investigative adjutant assigned to the November 1976 sighting in the Canary Islands concluded that, after looking at all of the similar cases around the islands from that time period, “we should have to think seriously of the necessity of considering the possibility of accepting the hypothesis that a craft of unknown origin, propelled by an equally unknown energy, is moving freely over the skies in the Canaries.”
This article originally appeared in Open Minds Magazine Issue 26 June/July 2014.
Crew Of A Navy Ship Witnessed An Alien Craft Over The Canary Islands
Crew Of A Navy Ship Witnessed An Alien Craft Over The Canary Islands
JUNE 22, 1976 ………CANARY ISLAND
One of the most bizarre reports of unusual phenomena occurred in 1976 in the Spanish Canary Islands. Although the case features a most extraordinary description of aliens and their craft, the occurrence is extremely reliable in that it includes multiple witness reports which agreed in all aspects of the case.
The phenomenon began on the night of June 22, 1976, as residents of Tenerife, La Palma, and La Gomera began reporting the sighting of unusual lights in the sky.
These lights and their maneuvers were different from anything residents of the area had seen before. Newspaper headlines the next morning proclaimed that “thousands of people” had witnessed a “spectacular phenomena” which lasted “twenty minutes.” The most sensational aspect was the sighting of the aforementioned “sphere” occupied by strange alien beings.
Three days later, the Commanding General of the Canary Island Air Zone named an “Investigative Adjutant” to make sense of the events. His findings were forwarded by a Spanish Air Force General to journalist J. J. Benitez in 1976, and the details of the case quickly reached beyond the scope of the Islands to the outside world. Benitez’s investigation would be the basis of his book, “UFOs: Official Documents of the Spanish Government.”
The case would regain momentum in 1994, when files of the investigation were released as part of the unveiling of Spanish records, a type of “Freedom of Information” act. The 1976 report was massive, containing over one hundred pages of testimony, evaluations, drawings, and more.
The official Air Force report of the incident was headlined by depositions of fourteen witnesses. A type of standard was established with witness reliability based on social status. A doctor’s report was considered a high priority, whereas a common laborer’s report was given little, if any, weight.
In this particular case, this unfair standard did not take away from the acceptance of the facts, since all involved were in full agreement as to what they saw. The report was very detailed, and presented chronologically.
The initial report of the Canary Island UFO came from the Navy’s armed escort ship, the “Atrevida.” The ship was located off the coast of Fuerteventura Island. The ship’s captain gave a detailed report of what he and his crew observed at 9:27 P.M. on June 22.
The entire crew saw an extremely bright yellow-blue light moving from the shore in the direction of the ship, located three and a half miles at sea. Several of the crewmen at first thought they were seeing a conventional aircraft with its landing lights on. The lights soon faded, and a type of beam began to rotate, similar to a lighthouse effect.
Afterwards, an intense halo of yellow and blue could be seen from the fantastic craft. Amazingly, the crew watched the craft for a full forty minutes. The craft seemed to be playing tricks with its lights, as they constantly changed from one form to another. Even though the light show was observed for a long period of time, no signature was evident on the ship’s radar of any flying craft.
Actual transcript-Captain of Atrevida.
“At 21:27 (Z) hrs. on 22 June, we saw an intense yellowish-bluish light moving out from the shore towards our position. At first we thought it was an aircraft with its landing lights on. Then, when the light had attained a certain elevation (15 – 18 degrees), it became stationary.
The original light went out and a luminous beam from it began to rotate. It remained like this for approximately two minutes. Then an intense great halo of yellowish and bluish light developed, and remained in the same position for 40 minutes, even though the original phenomenon was no longer visible.
“Two minutes after the great halo, the light split into two parts, the smaller part being beneath, in the center of the luminous halo, where a blue cloud appeared and the part from which the bluish nucleus had come, vanished. The upper part began to climb in a spiral, rapid and irregular, and finally vanished.
None of these movements affected the initial circular halo in any way, which remained just the same the whole time, its glow lighting up parts of the land and the ocean, from which we could deduce that the phenomenon was not very far away from us, but was close.”
Only a few minutes later, this same object was seen by residents of Canary Island proper. The bulk of the sightings were by citizens of three villages; Galdar, Las Rosas, and Agaete. A cross section of professions were involved; medical doctor, schoolteacher, farmer, taxi driver, and housewife, among others.
A thorough search of records by the Investigator Adjutant determined that there were no reports of “aerial traffic or military exercises at the time of the reports” that could possibly account for the sightings of the unknown object . The Adjutant, for the sake of clarity, divided the investigation into two different categories.
One was the larger craft observed by ship crewmen and others, and the second the smaller globe with the aliens aboard. By his own admission, and consistent with human nature, the Adjutant had no problem believing the reports of the larger craft, but had reservations accepting the orb since occupants were observed which were not consistent with human beings.
The Investigator General’s last word on the subject was: “The fact that a very strange and peculiar aerial phenomena occurred on the night of 22 June is a true and proven fact, as incredible as its behavior and conditions may seem.”
The incredible account of the sphere was submitted by Doctor Francisco Padron Leon, who lived in the city of Guia. His report is the most voluminous of the entire investigation. His background was thoroughly investigated, and he was found to be an upstanding, sane professional, whose word was considered truthful.
Padron had been summoned to make a house call, and commissioned a cab to take him to the location; the town of Las Rosas. As they rode along, the doctor and cab driver were engaged in light conversation. Suddenly, the car lights pointed out a slightly luminous object in the shape of a sphere.
The object was either landed, or hovering just above the ground. The object was made of a totally transparent and crystalline-like material. The doctor and driver both observed stars through the sphere. The object was bluish in color, with a radius of about 100 feet. The lower part of the orb contained a platform of aluminum-like material with three consoles. At each side of the center there were two huge figures from eight to ten feet tall. They were dressed in red, and always faced each other.
The beings were humanoid in shape, with large heads covered with a type of helmet. The doctor, hardly believing his own eyes, asked for confirmation from his cab driver.
“Are you seeing what I am?” he asked.
The driver exclaimed, “My God! What is that?”
The cab was only a short distance from the patient’s house, and upon arriving, the doctor observed a type of bluish smoke coming from a tube rising through the center of the object.
The doctor stated:
“We were talking about hunting… as we entered the last part of the road, the car lights pointed at a slightly luminous sphere that was stationary and very close to the ground, although I can’t say for sure if it was touching it.
It was made of a totally transparent and crystalline-like material, since it was possible to see through it the stars in the sky; it had an electric blue color but tenuous, without dazzling; it had a radius of about 30 m. [100 ft.], and in the lower third of the sphere you could see a platform of aluminum-like color as if made of metal, and three large consoles.
At each side of the center there were two huge figures of 2.50 to 3 m. [8.5 to 10 ft.] tall, but no taller than 3 m. [10 ft.], dressed entirely in red and facing each other in such a way that I always saw their profile.”
“Then I observed that some kind of bluish smoke was coming out from a semi-transparent central tube in the sphere, covering the periphery of the sphere’s interior without leaking outside at any moment.
Then the sphere began to grow and grow until it became huge like a 20-story house, but the platform and the crew remained the same size; it rose slowly and majestically and it seems I heard a very tenuous whistling.”
The sphere grew to an enormous size as it began to ascend into the sky. The doctor ran into the house, and told the family about what he had seen. Running outside, they observed the orb, which was now extremely high in the sky. It reached an enormous speed, accelerating toward Tenerfie.
Finally it dissolved into a smaller size, and disappeared. Another witness, a lady who was a relative of the patient, was watching television when suddenly the screen went blank, and her dogs began to bark outside. Running to a window, she saw the doctor’s cab, and the blue sphere above it. She also noted that the sphere was transparent, with two beings inside. Shocked, she closed the windows and doors, and began to pray.
There were several other sightings of a similar nature throughout the year of 1976 on the Island. The final “official” report was ambiguous at best.
The observance of the craft by all who saw it was accepted as genuine, although no “earthly” explanation was offered for its unique look and behavior.
On the other hand, although the witnesses of the smaller orb with aliens were classified as totally reliable, the actual presence of the beings was questioned. In other words, the witnesses were telling the truth, but what they saw was too far fetched to believe.
No other explanation was forthcoming on an official level, and the Canary Island phenomenon remains today as an authentic, well documented sighting of an unidentified flying craft with occupants.
The Incredible Fight To Reveal the Presence of Extraterrestrials on Earth!
The Incredible Fight To Reveal the Presence of Extraterrestrials on Earth!
Dr. James E. McDonald’s research into the UFO phenomenon was a significant push forward in regards technology and a science we know very little about. McDonald’s long and important battle to uncover the truth of the alien presence on Earth has distinguished him as one of the greatest pioneers of Ufology.
Presented by Ann Druffe Filmed by Lost Arts Media
All content on this channel is licensed, and or produced by Zohar Entertainment Group/Awakening Expo/Phenomena Magazine.
Egyptian American Artifacts In The Burial Mounds of North America
Egyptian American Artifacts In The Burial Mounds of North America
Historian Glenn Kimball provided updates of his research into ancient manuscripts as well as artifacts found in burial mounds in Southern Illinois (known as “Little Egypt”) that may show North America was visited by overseas travelers thousands of years before Columbus set sail.
According to Kimball, the Mississippi Valley is home to over 10,000 burial mounds, which contrary to widely held academic opinion were not all left behind by Native Americans. Black market relics found in the region, he explained, depict pharaohs, Moorish sailors, Christ on the cross, Jewish warriors, and Roman military imagery. Further, runes from artifacts found in Illinois, Michigan, California and Utah talk about migrations of people from the Middle East, Kimball said.
Kimball also discussed Atlantis, modern-day Mayans, 9 1/2 foot tall giants of the Yucatan, and the Bee Bible, which he reported has been used by the Chinese for 2,000 years.
The moon...which goes by the ancient Greek name of Selene, an goddess that rides her moon chariot around the earth. I was searching the LROC moon map and came across this unique and rare find. A structure sits in this crater, but it looks more like a ship. A ship could move from place to place easily, where a building would be more permanent and less useful in other location. Not to say there are no buildings on the moon, but there are...entire cities...but most have been covered up by NASA photo shop. So I search for smaller structures and ships that NASA overlooked. This...is what I found today. At a mere 100 meters long, its comparable in size to a cruise ship here on earth. I hope you like it. Scott C. Waring
Expert Says UFOs Mapping the Surface of the Earth to Make Chart of Universe
Expert Says UFOs Mapping the Surface of the Earth to Make Chart of Universe
Christopher Mellon, the former military intelligence adviser, claims thousands of the same sightings worldwide suggest extra-terrestrial craft are on a reconnaissance mission by making a map on the Earth’s surface to create a Google Map-style chart of the universe.
Mellon, who served as US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Intelligence under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, makes his shocking claim in a new TV documentary due to air sometime next month in the UK.
Mellon doesn’t think UFOs are ours, and his hopeful we can finally make progress in finding where they might be coming and how they work.
The former Pentagon boss stresses that if these UFOs are not ours, we have a lot to worry about. He believes they could spell a new and uncertain security threat.
He talks about his recent research in an upcoming episode of Sky History series Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation. The research features multiple massive objects shaped like equilateral triangles that have lights on each of their corners and seem capable of slowly drifting and departing with incredible bursts of speed.
These triangular UFOs have now been spotted above more than 50 American military installations, including Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, which is a strategic command center. Still, its high-tech equipment failed even to register the intruder.
Mellon said this type of craft bears zero resemblance to any advanced terrestrial air technology, such as stealth bombers, but has been spotted around the world for over 40 years. He believes that these UFOs would be capable of mapping in detail the surface below.
In 2016, when researchers were looking into the most effective waysto clean ocean oil spills. They were experimenting with fire whirlwinds when they accidentally generated a whirling, blue, soot-free flame that consumes all the fuel it encounters.
This elusive type of flame has puzzled researchers ever since, until now, when its mystery may have finally been cracked.
“The blue whirl is a small, stable, spinning blue flame that evolved spontaneously in recent laboratory experiments while studying turbulent, sooty fire whirls. It burns a range of different liquid hydrocarbon fuels cleanly with no soot production, presenting a previously unknown potential way for low-emission combustion,” the researchers describe the phenomenon in a new study.
Although fire whirls are dangerous, violent, and turbulent, they can be created in (relatively) safe conditions for laboratory study. What’s more, because the whirl burns without soot in a seemingly clean combustion, it might indeed be used for ocean clean-ups.
But even with lab experiments, researchers still couldn’t tell exactly what was going on with the flame.
Flames generally fall into two categories: premixed and diffusion flames. Premixed flames occur in homogeneous mixtures where the fuel and the oxidant are already mixed prior to the reaction (think of a Bunsen burner); premixed flames can in turn be rich or lean, depending on whether they have an excess or dearth of fuel relative to the oxidizer. Meanwhile, in diffusion flames, the fuel and the oxidant are initially separate, which limits how fast the fire can burn. The blue whirl seems to be neither, or rather, a bit of both.
Image credits: Chung et al (2020)/ Science Advances.
To crack the mystery, Joseph Chung and Xiao Zhang at the University of Maryland, College Park, and their colleagues created computer simulations of the flame.
They tweaked the model parameters more and more, until it finally started behaving like what they observed in experiments, and that’s when they finally understood what was going on.
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According to these simulations, the blue whirl consists of three different flames: a diffusion flame, a premixed rich, and a premixed lean flame. When they all meet together, they form a fourth structure — a triple flame forming a blue ring.
“The results also show that the flow structure emerges as the result of vortex breakdown, a fluid instability that occurs in swirling flows. These simulations are a critical step forward in understanding how to use this previously unknown form of clean combustion,” the researchers explain.
Image credits: Chung et al (2020) / Science Advances.
Aside from helping explain an interesting phenomenon, the study could also help researchers learn to harness the power of the blue whirl for a cleaner, more efficient combustion, for instance reducing emissions from burning hydrocarbons in power plants or stoves.
While burning hydrocarbons is far from ideal and we will hopefully transition to renewable energy as quickly as possible, it won’t happen overnight and any tool that could help us is more than welcome.
Cupid and his arrows gets all of the press but Greek mythology experts know the whole story about Cupid and his wife Psyche from the 2nd century CE novel Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass) by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis. Psyche was the most beautiful woman in the world who was tricked by a jealous Venus, only to be saved by Cupid (it’s more complicated than that, but this is a story about a different Psyche). Today’s space news concerns a different Psyche – the largest metallic asteroid in the Main Belt between Jupiter and Mars that is the target of the upcoming “Mission to a Metal World” scheduled for a 2022 SpaceX launch date. While its metallic content has long been known (and makes far uglier asteroidly-speaking than its namesake), the reason why hasn’t … until now.
“Psyche is an interesting body to study because it is likely the remnant of a planetary core that was disrupted during the accretion stage, and we can learn a lot about planetary formation from Psyche if it is indeed primarily metallic.”
Cupid and Psyche
Wendy K. Caldwell, Los Alamos National Laboratory Chick Keller Postdoctoral Fellow, is the lead author of a paper published in the journal Icarus about 2D and 3D computer simulations of possible causes of Psyche’s metallic composition. The models paid special attention to telescopic images of the craters on Psyche, which are far different than those on rocky or icy asteroids. A Los Alamos press release gives the big reveal that Psyche was most likely a young planet on the path to formation when it was battered by other space objects during its core formation phase, stopping its growth and leaving the metallic core exposed.
“Our ability to model the impact through the modification stage is essential to understanding how craters form on metallic bodies. In early stages of crater formation, the target material behaves like a fluid. In the modification stage, however, the strength of the target material plays a key role in how material that isn’t ejected ‘settles’ into the crater.”
(NASA simulation)
Then the Psyche mission – four shrinking orbits around the asteroid – will determine its metallic content, which many scientists believe is Monel, a strong nickel alloy based on ore found in the Sudbury impact crater in Ontario. A match would indicate that Monel is extraterrestrial in origin and the two current and former space rocks could possibly be related.
The Psyche mission won’t arrive at the asteroid until 2026, but this modeling emphasizes its importance in the study of how planets form, especially during their core phase. Unfortunately, it won’t help the other Psyche pass Cupid on the popularity list – Cupid still has Valentine’s Day and all that chocolate going for him.
Artist's conception of asteroid Psyche, whose composition has been proposed as
(Feature image is an artist’s conception of the Psyche mission, courtesy of NASA)
AFPESO maakte gebruik te maken van een nabijgelegen sterrenstelsel dat als een krachtig vergrootglas fungeert om SPT0418-47 te observeren, ook gekend als het zwaartekrachtlenseffect. SPT0418-47 toont zich als een bijna volmaakte ring van licht rond het lensstelsel, omdat de twee stelsels bijna precies op één lijn staan.
WETENSCHAPAstronomen hebben een extreem ver en dus zeer jong sterrenstelsel ontdekt dat verrassend veel op onze Melkweg lijkt, zo heeft de Europese Zuidelijke Sterrenwacht ESO vandaag bekendgemaakt. Het stelsel is zo ver weg dat zijn licht er meer dan 12 miljard jaar over heeft gedaan om ons te bereiken: we zien het zoals het was toen het heelal nog maar 1,4 miljard jaar oud was. Het is ook verrassend ordelijk, wat in strijd is met de theorie dat alle sterrenstelsels in het vroege heelal turbulent en instabiel waren.
Het gaat om sterrenstelsel SPT0418-47 dat zich met de ALMA-radiotelescoop in Chili liet verschalken. Hoewel het geen spiraalarmen lijkt te hebben, heeft het minstens twee kenmerken die karakteristiek zijn voor onze Melkweg: een roterende schijf en een centrale verdikking of ‘bulge’, een grote groep sterren die zich rond het centrum van het stelsel hebben verzameld. Het is voor het eerst dat zo’n bulge zo vroeg in de geschiedenis van het heelal is waargenomen, beklemtoont de ESO waarvan België stichtend lid is. Het maakt SPT0418-47 tot de verste dubbelganger van de Melkweg.
“De grote verrassing was dat dit stelsel, anders dan op grond van modelberekeningen en eerdere, minder nauwkeurige waarnemingen was verwacht, nogal veel op nabije sterrenstelsels lijkt”, zegt Filippo Fraternali van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. De jonge sterrenstelsels in het vroege heelal waren nog niet volgroeid. Daarom verwachtten astronomen dat ze chaotisch zouden zijn en niet de onmiskenbare structuren zouden vertonen die kenmerkend zijn voor volwassen stelsels zoals de Melkweg.
Het onderzoek van verre sterrenstelsels zoals SPT0418-47 is volgens de ESO essentieel voor ons begrip van hoe sterrenstelsels zijn ontstaan en zich hebben ontwikkeld. Het levert nieuwe inzichten op over het verleden van ons heelal.
Licht 12 miljard jaar onderweg
Dit sterrenstelsel is zo ver weg dat we het zien toen het heelal nog maar tien procent van zijn huidige leeftijd had. Zijn licht heeft er namelijk 12 miljard jaar over gedaan om de Aarde te bereiken. Door dit stelsel te bestuderen, gaan we terug naar een tijd dat de ontwikkeling van deze babystelsels nog maar net op gang was gekomen.
Omdat deze sterrenstelsels zo ver weg zijn, zijn gedetailleerde waarnemingen met zelfs de krachtigste telescopen bijna onmogelijk: de stelsels vertonen zich normaal gesproken als kleine, zwakke vlekjes. Het team kon dit obstakel overwinnen door gebruik te maken van een nabij sterrenstelsel dat als een krachtig vergrootglas fungeert - een verschijnsel dat het zwaartekrachtlenseffect wordt genoemd. Bij dit effect wordt het licht van het verre stelsel vervormd en afgebogen door de zwaartekrachtaantrekking van het lensstelsel.
Ver verleden
Met hulp van dit ‘lensstelsel’ kon ALMA ongekend gedetailleerd in het verre verleden kijken. Daardoor ziet het verre stelsel er veel groter uit en lijkt het misvormd. In dit geval vertoont SPT0418-47 zich als een bijna volmaakte ring van licht rond het lensstelsel. Dat komt doordat de twee stelsels bijna precies op één lijn staan.
Het onderzoek stond onder leiding van Francesca Rizzovan van het Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik in Duitsland. De resultaten staan in het jongste nummer van het vakblad Nature.
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Sunspot Could Send Solar Flares Toward Earth That May Disrupt The Power Grid
Sunspot Could Send Solar Flares Toward Earth That May Disrupt The Power Grid
A massive sunspot on the surface of the sun has the potential to shoot solar flares toward Earth, and this particular sunspot is one of concern. A solar flare could disrupt the power grid and take down some radio communications.
A massive flare is expected from sunspot AR2770. Not only is a massive flare likely, but this sunspot is also expected to grow in size and cause eruptions, The Financial Express reported. According to the report, the sunspot with an expected diameter of 50,000 kilometers is likely to release a huge amount of energy that will lead to solar flares and storms. This phenomenon is known as Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) which impacts radio waves and satellite communications.
This sunspot is about the size of the planet Mars. According to NASA, “solar flares are a sudden explosion of energy caused by tangling, crossing, or reorganizing of magnetic field lines near sunspots.”
According to NASA, very large flares can even create currents within electricity grids and knock out energy supplies. When Coronal Mass Ejections strike Earth they cause geomagnetic storms and enhanced aurora. They can disrupt radio waves, GPS coordinates, and overload electrical systems.
A large influx of energy could flow into high voltage power grids and permanently damage transformers. This could shut off businesses and homes around the world.
Make sure your preps are in place. This is only a “potential” for grid failure, but if it does happen and the power grid is down for an extended period of time, people will panic. Fear is a highly toxic and addictive emotion and with so many still cowering over the scamdemic, we could see massive riots and civil unrest.
The mainstream media has also been ignoring, for the most part, any changes in the sun while keeping attention diverted to a second lockdown and COVID-19 panic. The media (who are puppets of the government, who are puppets of the central banks) definitely wants the focus to be on this hoax of a pandemic, and perhaps it’s a distraction. Keep your eyes and ears open and be aware of what could happen. Refuse fear, and live freely. Knowing is the first half of the battle. Prepare both your home and your mind.
This article has been contributed by SHTF Plan. Visit www.SHTFplan.com for alternative news, commentary and preparedness info.
Antarctica Prison for Fallen Angels Explained By Jesus and Enoch
Antarctica Prison for Fallen Angels Explained By Jesus and Enoch
Learning How to Resist our Worst Enemies Using The Five Key Truths of Spiritual Warfare
Isaiah 14:12-15
As we open to Isaiah 14 this morning, we are viewing the spiritual realm beyond our physical world. Above all the vast reaches of the cosmos, above all the swirling galaxies, shining stars and circling planets God made some special creatures, fashioned for His own service—the angels.
And in this angelic host of the Almighty God in heaven, above the super-powerful archangels, above the fiery seraphim, and above the mighty cherubim, there was one angel that God chose to be the crown prince of them all.
His name was Lucifer. He was designed as the star of the morning. He was made the leader of the host of heaven. He was set up as the guardian of the throne of God.
Into Lucifer’s hands were committed all that the Lord God had made and all of the angels that He had created. He was beautiful. He was perfect. But in his God-given beauty, his God-given perfection, there arose some self-generated pride as Lucifer first thought, and then said, “I will be like the Most High God!”
The Origin of Satan
The Bible does not explain how Lucifer could fall into sin, as a perfect being in a perfect environment—God’s Word just declares that he did.
Ezekiel also gives us the description of what took place in Lucifer’s heart (Ezekiel 28:17) when he records “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor.” Lucifer became enamored with his beauty instead of God’s. Lucifer focused upon his splendor not God’s, and that produced in him the sin of pride, which led to his rebellion.
An extremely compelling case of an invading UFO occurred in Tehran, Iran in September of 1976. On the 19th, the Air Force of Iran began receiving calls from local citizens reporting an unusual, unidentifiable object in the skies.
The Air Force duty officer called the Assistant Deputy Commnder of Operations informing him of the situation, and asking for guidance in how to handle the situation. He knew there were no planes flying at the time that could account for the strange reports.
At first Yousefit thought the edgy citizens were seeing just stars or the planet Venus, but after even more inquiries, he decided to look for himself.
As he checked out the unknown object, he knew immediately that it was no star. It was much larger and brighter. He made the decision to scramble an F-4 jet from Shahrokhi Air Force Base to get a closer look at the unusual object. The plane left the runway at approximately 1:30 AM to intercept the UFO.
The plane sped toward the large, bright unknown which lay some 70 miles north of them. About half-way there, the plane began to experience communication problems.
Instrumentation was also faulty, so the pilot dropped off course, heading back to Shahrokhi. As the F-4 changed course, instrumentation and communication was suddenly restored.
Had the UFO compromised the plane’s functions as it approached, and then allowed them again as the plane dropped from its course?
Another F-4 left the air base, attempting to identify the UFO. As the second jet approached the UFO, they made radar contact. Crew members stated that the size of the radar return was similar to that of a 707 jet. The actual size of the object was impossible to determine visually because of the brilliance of the glowing object.
The jet drew nearer to the UFO.
For a time, the F-4 bridged the distance between itself and the UFO, but even flying above Mach 1, the UFO suddenly shot away from the F-4. This incredible burst of speed was confirmed by the plane’s radar and also visually.
The pilot of the F-4 was not able to gain any ground on the UFO, but managed to pace it as they sped through the skies.
The crew of the plane would later say that the UFO had strobing lights arranged rectangularly. The lights alternated from red, blue, green, and orange in color. The plane’s crew was astonished to see another, smaller object emerge from the large UFO. The plane and UFO were now flying south of Tehran.
The smaller object made a bee-line to the F-4 moving at incredible speeds.
Fearing for their very lives, the pilot aimed an AIM-9 missie at the approaching object, but just as he did, the weapons control panel went off line, and he lost all communication. The only course of action left was to dive to try to avoid a collision with the approaching UFO or weapon.
The approaching object followed the plane into its dive briefly, but then tailed off, and returned to the larger UFO. All functions were again on line as the UFO left the jet behind.
There was never an explanation for what two F-4 jets chased over the skies of Tehran.
The crew members stated that the UFO moved at incredible speeds and had the ability to disable the plane’s instrumentation. This is one of the best documented UFO / Plane chases on record.
I found another elephant on Mars...yes you heard me correct. I found an head of an elephant carved into stone on a hillside. The elephant has features not only of an elephant, but of an young elephant. This elephant and the one I found last year both have the exact same features including a defining one...small tiny ears. Yes thats important, because it means there may be a relation to elephants on earth. There are many legends about elephants in old mythology and religions of earth. Stories that last millenniums always are based on truth.
I think its time for NASA to face the elephant in the room. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Below is a screenshot of an elephant head I found last year on Mars. Clearly there is a connection.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Rainbow Flashing UFO Seen Over Michigan On Aug 13, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Rainbow Flashing UFO Seen Over Michigan On Aug 13, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Aug 13, 2020 Location of sighting: Michigan, USA This rainbow color changing UFO was seen over Michigan this week. The eyewitness was kind enough to keep the video original for us. When he zooms in on the object, I can see a hexagon shaped disk with a powerful glowing coming from its center. The colors could be done on purpose to get the attention of the human eyewitnesses and to put them at ease. What I mean is, some colors are less frightening than others and its showing a lot of purple/violet colors...which are considered soothing and meditative helping. Clearly the aliens wanted to be seen and wanted to make a good first impression on the humans watching. Its very possible this UFO came from an alien base below Lake Michigan, which has some very deep areas an has seen numerous UFO sightings every year. Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states:
I stepped out on deck just past midnight on 8-13-2020 and looked up at stars and spotted this one odd flickering saucer / elliptical shaped object in sky in the west, (slightly north of west pointing of camera). It stayed in that area. Was not a plane, jet or helicopter. Rapidly changing bright multiple colors were emitting from it. It didn't make any sounds, that I could hear anyway. After a couple of minutes I finally was able to zoom in enough to see the object better. I didn't want to crop this video at all even though at times I couldn't hold the camera steady on it. This is the whole video uncut so you can see it was in the sky the whole time I was out there observing it. Thanks for watching ! :)
This report just came in from Facebook. A white pillar shaped UFO was seen in the sky over Warsaw, Poland two weeks ago. The object which was seen during the day really stands out, but has taken a white appearance to match the clouds that it probably will hide within. This strange shaped UFO is tall, thicker on the bottom, thin on its top, with a single arm coming out. This is absolute a UFO, watching over Poland...possibly with the intentions of knowing how the Polish are dealing with both Coronavirus...and Polands aggressive neighbor...Russia. I have heard of such a UFO before, but it came from an astronaut report long ago...let me tell you about it. In June 1965, Major James McDivitt saw, filmed, and photographed an object, which approached the Gemini IV (3rd June – 7th June 1965) capsule in which they were orbiting the Earth, passing over Hawaii. The UFO had a long arm sticking out of it. Here is what Major James McDivitt repeated many times: "I was flying with Ed White. He was sleeping at the time so I don't have anybody to verify my story. We were drifting in space with the control engines shut down and all the instrumentation off (when) suddenly (an object) appeared in the window. It had a very definite shape - a cylindrical object - it was white - it had a long arm that stuck out on the side. I don't know whether it was a very small object up close or a very large object a long ways away. There was nothing to judge by. I really don't know how big it was. We had two cameras that were just floating in the spacecraft at the time, so I grabbed one and took a picture of (the object) and grabbed the other and took a picture. Then I turned on the rocket control systems because I was afraid we might hit it. At the time we were drifting - without checking I have no idea which way we were going - but as we drifted up a little farther the sun shone on the window of the spacecraft. The windshield was dirty - just like in an automobile, you can't see through it. So I had the rocket control engines going again and moved the spacecraft so that the window was in darkness again - the object was gone. I called down later and told them what had happened and they went back and checked their records of other space debris that was flying around but we were never able to identify what it could have been. The film was sent back to NASA and reviewed by some NASA film technicians. One of them selected what he thought was what we talked about, at least before I had a chance to review it. It was not the picture - it was a picture of a sun reflection on the window." Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
NASA you know that someone is staring at the Mars Rover Curiosity?
NASA you know that someone is staring at the Mars Rover Curiosity?
Awide white-balanced panorama was taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Dec. 19, 2019, the 2,620th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. showing the Western Butte on Mars. The rover's Mast Camera, or Mastcam, used its telephoto lens to produce the panorama, which includes 130 individual images stitched together.
But the image not only shows the landscape of the Western Butte. When zooming in onto the high resolution image a human-like figure becomes visible.
A person with a pale face, long wavy hair and possibly wearing sunglasses who is staring at the Mars rover Curiosity.
It is not the first time that human-like figures have been spotted in NASA 's Curiosity images, but it is often dismissed as pareidolia. But is that really the case here?
If you want to check it out for yourself you have to download the original source, high resolution PNG file, PIA23971_hires.png (41276 x 4228 pixels, 310 MB). This file may be too large to view from a browser; it can be downloaded onto your desktop
Flurry of Reports on UFO Sighting Over Denver Prompts US Officials to Investigate
Flurry of Reports on UFO Sighting Over Denver Prompts US Officials to Investigate
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) launched an investigation into a UFO sighting following a series of calls on a mysterious object in the skies this week above Denver, Colorado. Videos of the almost-transparent object have made the rounds online, prompting the local CBS channel’s curiosity about the object’s origin.
A journalist for CBS Denver Kelly Werthmann posted the video on Twitter and requested help in identifying it, setting off several conspiracy theories. The footage was captured by CBS 4 photojournalist Jeremiah Bellile, who noticed the UFO on Monday.
Werthmann said that the Denver TV station newsroom had received multiple calls from panicked locals. Bellile captured the UFO sighting video from the CBS4 rooftop.
FAA said that they hadn’t received reports of anything strange over East of Denver.
Werthmann’s post on social media received hundreds of comments, including from a former NASA official Joseph Gruber. According to Gruber, the object in question could have been one of Google’s high altitude balloons, known as Project Loon.
Gruber posted flight radar photos showing three such balloons that day of the UFO sighting in the sky over Denver. He added that they’ve been testing for a while in the area as well as in South America and Africa.
The FAA later confirmed this explanation, dismissing the sighting as a weather balloon from the Loon Project, a Google parent company Alphabet’s subsidiary.
The balloon that was spotted over northern Colorado had been flying at an altitude of around 53,000 feet. Project Loon is an initiative to provide internet service to remote areas by sending up balloons to the stratosphere with attached aerial Wi-Fi network equipment.
However, some stayed skeptical, such as YouTube username Cain Swanson, who believed there’s something mysterious on the object. He said that it was not a balloon but a UFO after seeing the object three times last week.
Deze website ontving een brief van een buurman van Berisso, Argentinië, waarin ze haar first-person ervaring met een UFO-waarneming in die stad vertelde, nadat ze in de vroege ochtend van 10 augustus 2020 vreemde geluiden had gehoord. Heb je een UFO gezien in Berisso?.
De brief van de buurman die de UFO in Berisso zag:
«Ik zou willen beginnen met te verduidelijken dat ik mijn naam of commentaar hierop aan niemand anders zal geven dan aan deze pagina, die ik al heel lang volg en ik denk dat deze zeer betrouwbaar is. Ik wil proberen uit te leggen wat er gisteravond met me is gebeurd.
Ik kom uit Berisso, provincie Buenos Aires, Argentinië. En zoals veel inwoners van de stad werd ik kort na één uur 's ochtends wakker met een vreemd geluid. Eerst dacht ik dat het een auto was die wachtte om je huis binnen te komen, of de uitgang van een buurman.
Het geluid was dat: dat van een auto die regelt, beweegt. Ondanks dat het geen hard geluid was, was het bijzonder vervelend.
Toen ik uit het balkon keek, was er geen auto op het blok, maar er was lawaai. Ik keek naar de lucht en ondanks de wolken was er geen storm, en hoewel het geluid niet als een storm was, leek het me het meest logische om te doen.
Het geluid ging door en hoewel, ik herhaal, het was niet verbluffend, het was vervelend genoeg om me niet langer dan 5 minuten per keer te laten slapen. Het was vervelender dan sterk, het verdoofde niet, maar het stoorde diep van binnen, als een andere sensatie.
Ik stond op het balkon en hoewel ik niets kon zien, was mijn zicht altijd midden op het braakliggende terrein voor me. Naast de begraafplaats Berisso park.
Het geluid ging door en dat vreemde gevoel ook. Terwijl ik naar het braakliggende terrein staarde, begon ik op te merken dat het geluid daar vandaan kwam. Ik probeerde uit te leggen dat ze zouden werken omdat ze soms dingen doen, ze komen binnen met busjes, maar wie zou er op dit moment werken, in het donker en met zoveel lawaai?
En toen zag ik het. Achter de wolken maar perfect. Ovaal, lichtblauw en helder. Ik heb nog nooit zoiets gevoeld. Een verkoudheid liep van het ene punt naar het andere door mijn lichaam en drong de achterkant van mijn nek binnen en ik had precies het gevoel dat ze mij op de een of andere manier ook zagen.
Gedurende de tijd dat hij in de lucht zweefde, kon ik me niet bewegen om de mobiele telefoon of iets anders te zoeken. Het was alsof ik verlamd raakte. Nooit in mijn leven heb ik me zo geobserveerd gevoeld.
Ik weet niet hoe lang de UFO in Berisso was, noch wat hij was, noch wat hij deed net boven die open ruimte naast het Parque Cementerio, maar ik weet dat het niets is dat we weten.
Toen hij wegging en ik terug kon naar mijn bed, was het 3:12 uur 's ochtends. Het geluid verdween na half drie.
Het gevoel dat ik me blootgesteld en geobserveerd voelde, alsof er iets achter me door mijn huis rende terwijl mijn herinneringen nog steeds niet waren verdwenen.
Ik zou graag willen weten of iemand anders het heeft gezien. Ik denk van wel, want het was heel duidelijk. Nu durf ik niet eens het balkon op.
Ik zou heel graag antwoorden willen hebben. Vriendelijke groeten."
Het is niet de eerste keer dat een UFO in Berisso wordt gezien en de autoriteiten zijn traag met het geven van een verklaring. Veel inwoners van de stad hebben het op sociale netwerken geuit, en ze zijn het er allemaal over eens dat het geluid erg sterk was en ze begrijpen niet wat het veroorzaakte.
Opgemerkt moet worden dat er een van de YPF-fabrieken in de buurt is, maar het bedrijf ontkent er iets mee te maken te hebben.
Deze zaak wordt toegevoegd aan de zaak die plaatsvond op 22 februari 2019, toen de Fundación Argentina de Ovnilogía (FAO) meldde «Last moment. Mysterieuze UFO doorkruiste de lucht van Berisso ».
In dat geval was het een pijlpuntvormig object vol licht dat door meer dan één getuige werd gezien. Er was sprake van overeenkomsten met wat in 1997 in Phoenix, Arizona, werd gezien.
“Op woensdag 20 februari om 20.45 uur, het echtpaar ANGELES. V. en JUAN. N. observeert samen met zijn kleindochter de beweging ZEER LANGZAAM en HOGE HOOGTE van een lichtgevend artefact in de vorm van een PIJLPUNT, waarvan de zeer open zijden 10 tot 12 sferische met elkaar verbonden lichten vertegenwoordigden. De indringer, in een schijnbaar noord-zuid traject, werd gedetecteerd vanuit de stad Berisso (Bs.As) gedurende 5 minuten en zonder enige waarneming van geluid of geluid ”. Het was wat de FAO destijds rapporteerde.
Phoenix lichten
De Phoenix-lichten waren een reeks UFO-waarnemingen die werden waargenomen in de lucht van de staten Arizona en Nevada (Verenigde Staten) en Sonora (Mexico) in de nacht van donderdag 13 maart 1997. Er waren twee verschillende gebeurtenissen bij betrokken die wekte de aandacht en verwondering van specialisten: een driehoek vol lichten en een reeks aan de hemel gefixeerde lichten in de omgeving van Phoenix.
Fife Symington, destijds gouverneur van Arizona, was een van de getuigen van die verschijningen. Later noemde hij deze waarnemingen iets dat 'uit een andere wereld' kwam.
Argentina is known to be a hotbed of UFO activity and Berisso, on the Atlantic coast across the river from Uruguay, is a hotpsot in the Buenos Aires Province. As in many other countries, officials are slow to respond to sightings and many questions remain unanswered. That’s why a recent report of mysterious loud noises and a UFO in Berisso on August 10, 2020, was kept anonymous by the UFO-Community.com website. Will this be the one that finally opens the disclosure door in Argentina?
“I am from Berisso, province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. And like many of the city’s residents I woke up shortly after one in the morning to a strange sound. At first I thought it was a car waiting to enter your house, or the exit of a neighbor.”
That doesn’t sound too mysterious or UFO-related, and the witness agreed … at first. The noise continued and “… it was annoying enough not to let me sleep more than 5 minutes at a time.” The witness, who the website says is a “neighbor,” went out on her balcony and determined the annoying sound was not from a storm but appeared to be coming from a vacant lot next to the Berisso park cemetery. However, before she could better identify it, the sky revealed something new.
“Behind the clouds but perfect. Oval, light blue and bright. I never felt anything like it. A cold ran through my body from end to point entering the back of my neck and I had the exact sensation that somehow they saw me too.
During the time that he was suspended in the sky, I couldn’t move to look for the cell phone or for anything. It was like I got paralyzed. Never in my life have I felt so observed.”
No photos or video from this witness, but local social media reports indicate others in Berisso heard the noise and posted a recording (listen here). This is not the first time strange noises have been heard in Berisso. The site Info Berisso interviewed Diego Bagú, the director of the UNLP Planetarium (La Plata Astronomical Observatory), in May about another incident (possibly this one in late March) and he had this to say:
“I cannot say what it is because we do not know for sure what causes it. I’ve seen videos and it really is very eye-catching. There is a consensus from the scientific point of view that these sounds come from the atmosphere: pressure changes are taking place in the upper atmosphere and this produces large volumes of gas that move generating a sound, but we do not know for sure what it is. that may be causing it. There are some ideas but we are not clear about what causes it, so there is enough to study in that sense.”
OK, but what about the UFO? For that, fingers start pointing at YPF S.A. (Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales), a large Argentine energy company with a plant in the area. In both reports, YPF denies having anything to do with the noise nor the UFO.
“… JOHN NAUMOVICH, neighbor of the central sector of Berisso (Bs. As) steps out to the bottom of his home and looks perplexed at the passage of a strange flying OBJECTO in straight west-east flight, that is, towards the Rio de la Plata. The artifact, with RED, YELLOW and WHITE lights, flew at moderate speed and regular height, resembling ′′ a rugby ball “. This mightily caught his eye, during the minute the passage lasted until he lost sight. This phenomenon has quite possibly been observed from other Bonaerenian sites.”
Are these UFOs connected to YPF, despite its denials? They could be drones or they could be the unexplained and mysterious UFOs often seen across South America over energy installation and mineral mines. Could the mysterious sounds be linked to YPF? The mysterious Windsor Hum in the U.S. has been linked to a manufacturing plant and others are suspected to be caused by corporate facilities that don’t want to be investigated. Energy and governments cover for each other, as do the military and governments, especially when it comes to UFOs and possible extraterrestrial contact. Is that the case in Berisso?
It seems to be a good idea to keep an eye on the skies and an ear to the gournd in Berisso, Argentina … especially when concerned witnesses say:
“The sensation of feeling exposed and observed, as if behind my back something was going through my house at the same time that my memories still did not go away.
I’d like to know if anyone else saw it. I think so, because it was very evident. Now I don’t even dare go out onto the balcony.”
In 1957, something strange and highly alternative occurred in the U.K. That was the year in which George King and his Aetherius Society attracted the secret attention of the world of officialdom, specifically in May of that year. It was on the 26th of the month that an eye-catching article appeared in the pages of a weekly U.K.-based publication called TheEmpire News. In an article titled “Flying Saucer Clubs Probe: Peace Messages ‘from outer space,'” the following was revealed: “‘Warnings’ from outer space against Britain’s H-Bomb tests published in a flying saucer magazine take a similar line to Moscow-inspired propaganda. The ‘warning’ – in a special issue of the magazine – is being scrutinized by Scotland Yard’s Special Branch [the origins of which date back to 1883 and which, in 2006, was absorbed into the Metropolitan Police Service’s Counter Terrorism Command]. It is suspected that a number of flying saucer clubs – and some spiritualists as well – are unwittingly being used by the communists. The warning appears in the magazine of the Aetherius Society, which circulates widely among flying saucer enthusiasts.”
Not only that, The Empire News revealed that George King had, as he put it, received a channeled message from advanced entities from the planet Mars. The decidedly anti-nuke message of the Martians went as follows: “Have not the latest peace moves come from Russia? You in the West blame Russia and say it is necessary to make these weapons to protect yourselves from them. You in Britain are in a favorable position to show the larger countries the way.” It’s hardly surprising that a body like Special Branch would sit up and take notice of (a) this development in the world of the Aetherius Society and (b) the pro-Russian words of the alleged Martians. King wasted no time in contacting Scotland Yard, demanding to know why, exactly, he and his group were now under surveillance by government authorities.
Well, given both the time-frame and the climate, it should have been glaringly obvious: the authorities saw King’s words (and those of his claimed Martian friends) as nothing less than outright propaganda designed to make the U.K. government look bad and the Russians look good. In a letter of May 26, King scolded Scotland Yard and did his utmost to try and put things straight. He wrote in his letter that the Aetherius Society was actually “a religious and occult society, which has contact with Intelligences on certain other planets. We are non-political and non-sectarian.” That’s certainly not how the authorities saw things, though.
As to how Special Branch became involved in all of this weirdness, and learned of the activities and statements of King, well, that’s all very simple. The Empire News was very much a right-wing newspaper. King’s political views were anything but right-wing. It transpires that one of the staff of The Empire News, concerned and pissed that King was using his Cosmic Voice publication to promote communism, contacted Scotland Yard just a couple of days before their planned article on King appeared. According to Special Branch, their source at the publication “wished to bring it to the notice of this department in view of the, in his opinion, Communist bias of part of the contents which refer to the atom bomb.” The result was that Scotland Yard opened a file on King and his colleagues. They did much more than that, though. After receiving King’s letter of disgust as to how his organization was being portrayed and presented, on May 31 an officer headed out to King’s home. The matter of King, his motivations, the goals of the Aetherius Society, the comments concerning Russia and nuclear weapons, and alien life were discussed frankly – and in a surreal situation, too.
The Special Branch officer who had the task of speaking with King wrote the following summarized report: “I disclosed my identity and told King that I had come to see him in connection with his letter to the Commissioner. I pointed out to him that in this letter he stated ‘The article purports to give a report of some recent work of this Society and states that the Society is being scrutinized by the Special Branch of Scotland Yard,’ whereas the article states, ‘The ‘warning’ – in a special issue of the magazine – is being scrutinized by Scotland Yard’s Special Branch.” Many might say – justifiably – there is very little difference between scrutinizing the words of the “warning” and scrutinizing the work of the Aetherius Society. The head-to-head at King’s home was not cordial. From then on, however, and for a couple of years, King and his followers were watched intensely. Interestingly, Special Branch officers took careful studies of King’s written output, too. Take note of the following, prepared by a Special Branch officer in May 1957:
“COSMIC VOICE (Special Emergency May 1957) consists of a cover page and three pages of cyclostyle printed matter stapled together and is printed and published by THE AETHERIUS SOCIETY, 88, The Drive Mansions, Fulham Road, S.W.6. In page 1 of the printed matter one George KING is referred to as the Chairman of the society. On page 1, which is headed ‘Introduction. You are responsible’ it is stated that KING is able to tune in telepathically to mental radiations from a Space Station in the orbit of the Earth, 1550 miles above its surface, which is controlled by an entity from the Planet Mars, referred to as Mars Sector 6. It also states that an appeal for the cessation of nuclear experimentation was transmitted on the 7th May, 1957 from the Space Station. Pages 2 and 3 give the text of this message in full. In brief, it is an appeal to the ordinary man to protest through spiritual progress against nuclear bombs. Reference is made on page 1 to the placing of blame by the West on Russia because it is said that it is necessary to make weapons for protection against this country, and the question is asked, ‘Yet, Western Civilizations, have not the latest Peace moves come from this country you condemn.’ The trend of the text is more religious than political in general. KING is obviously a crank. King claimed that some 600 copies of the Special Emergency Supplement of “COSMIC VOICE” dated 7th May, 1957 has been printed, and that copies had been sent to Buckingham Palace, No. 10, Downing Street, President Eisenhower at Washington, to 125 Members of Parliament, Prime Ministers of the Dominions, etc., as well as to Religious and Social Reform authorities and to many newspapers.”
Special Branch certainly viewed King as, in their words, a “crank.” As the extract from the previously-classified document above shows, however, Special Branch also came to quickly realize that King was highly motivated when it came to getting the word out regarding his views on nuclear weapons and the Russians. That alone was certainly a matter of deep concern to the authorities. The surveillance, hardly surprisingly, continued at a steady and secret pace. Another Special Branch document, from 1959, provides the following on the Aetherius Society: “It crusades for the suspension of the H-bomb tests and supports the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It took part in the 1958 Aldermaston March and holds public meetings from time to time. One was held on 23rd August 1959 when 200 persons formed a ‘quiet, amused’ audience. It was covered by Special Branch.”
Special Branch eventually discontinued its surveillance of the Aetherius Society. The strange affair – that involved the U.K. government, nuclear weapons, aliens, the planet Mars, and channeling – was finally over.
The dwarf planet Ceres, which is the biggest object located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is definitely a mysterious and strange world. For a long time it’s been believed that Ceres had a subsurface ocean at some point and that’s what NASA’s Dawn spacecraft was hopefully going to find out when it was launched back in 2007 to observe the dwarf planet. Although it was officially retired in 2018, Dawn certainly gathered some interesting data on the icy world.
While it was previously suggested that the ocean on Ceres would have froze a very long time ago, new analysis of odd features around recent craters indicate otherwise. Astronomers have been analyzing data for the past five years and they believe they have found evidence of large quantities of salty liquid on the surface of the dwarf planet. And based on its gravitational changes, a salt water reservoir stretching hundreds of miles and 25 miles deep may be present below the ice.
Haulani Crater is the white spot on the right side of Ceres.
In an interview with Astronomy, Maria Cristina De Sanctis, who is from the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome as well as a Dawn team member and a co-author of the study, explained, “Past research revealed that Ceres had a global ocean, an ocean that would have no reason to exist [still] and should have been frozen by now,” adding, “These latest discoveries have shown that part of this ocean could have survived and be present below the surface.” The fact that the water is so salty would explain why it would have remained in liquid form as salt lowers the freezing point.
If they can confirm that this liquid water still exists on Ceres, it would mean that salty, muddy liquid approximately the size of the Great Salt Lake in Utah (75 miles long by 28 miles wide) would cover the dwarf planet that’s only 590 miles across.
Julie Castillo-Rogez, who is a Dawn project scientist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), revealed, “Oceans should be common features of dwarf planets based on what New Horizons learned at Pluto and Dawn at Ceres.”
A salty ocean isn’t the only odd characteristic on Ceres as Dawn found a pair of shinning white spots inside two different craters (Occator Crater and Haulani Crater) that when the impact hit, it would have revealed the muddy salt water.
Occator Crater on Ceres.
Scientists conducted extensive studies on the Occator Crater (seven studies have been published about the crater and can be read here) and they think that a chunk of space rock hit the dwarf planet around 20 million years ago that would have broke the icy crust, revealing the salty water underneath. It would have, however, frozen back over within several hours but it would have left the liquid water underneath the crater and may have erupted from the middle part of the crater – which would have caused the mysterious white spots – as recently as just two million years ago.
Additionally, the European Space Agency’s Herschel Telescope noticed water vapor rising from the same area which would suggest that there were eruptions of liquid salt water even more recently. “It’s really kind of a smoking gun, because you would have expected it had gone away if it had been sitting there even close to the surface for millions of years,” stated Carol Raymond who is the Dawn Principal Investigator at JPL and another co-author of the study.
Several more pictures of Ceres and the Occator Crater can be seen here and here.
NASA scientists say that Ceres, a dwarf planet in the Asteroid Belt, is still holding onto pockets of a subsurface, liquid water ocean.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Occator Crater stretches across 57 miles (92 kilometers) in Ceres' northern hemisphere. Astronomers think the bright spots inside its walls formed when a space rock smashed into the dwarf planet, excavating a briny liquid from below.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Near the end of its mission, NASA's Dawn spacecraft captured intimate details of the mysterious white spots of Occator Crater in a region called Cerealia Facula.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI
Ceres' Haulani Crater, named for the Hawaiian goddess of plants, is one of the dwarf planet's youngest features. Scientists think that the impact may have excavated salty water from an ancient pocket of ocean hiding beneath the crater.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
NASA's Dawn spacecraft captured this composite image of Ceres in 2015 during its first science orbit around the dwarf planet.
With the number of space telescopes in orbit and arrays on the ground increasing in number and power, discoveries of new phenomena or new data about old phenomena are becoming commonplace, so a good sign that something is a big deal is when astronomers can’t stop talking or writing about it. That’s the case with SGR 1935+2154, a discovery that checks off multiple items on the ‘this is big’ list: neutron star, magnetar, fast radio bursts and located in the Milky Way. The press release for a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters shows just how excited astronomers are.
“A global collaboration of telescopes including ESA’s Integral high-energy space observatory has detected a unique mix of radiation bursting from a dead star in our galaxy — something that has never been seen before in this type of star, and may solve a long-standing cosmic mystery.”
Sandro Mereghetti of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Milan, Italy, and lead author of the study, says the fast radio bursts were detected on April 28, 2020, coming from the direction of SGR 1935+2154 – a known neutron (dead) star in the Milky Way that was recently identified as a magnetar because of its unusually strong (for a dead star) magnetic field. Word spread quickly and the FRB was also confirmed by astronomers using the Survey for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission 2 (STARE2) in the US, the ESA’s Spectrometer on Integral (SPI) and China’s Insight Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT). Analysis of the data from all of the telescopes was combined into the study which finally pinpointed the source of the FRB as the magnetar SGR 1935+2154 just 30,000 light years from Earth in the Milky Way – and came close enough for government work to solving the mystery of where fast radio burst originate. It’s not aliens.
Are you sure?
“Crucially, the IBIS imager on Integral allowed us to precisely pinpoint the origin of the burst, nailing its association with the magnetar.”
“This is the first ever observational connection between magnetars and Fast Radio Bursts.”
In other words, Sandro Mereghetti isn’t just saying it’s Fast Radio Bursts … it’s Fast Radio Bursts. And that’s a big deal worth talking about.
NOTE:
all related videos, selcted and posted by peter2011
Dark Outpost: Alien Black Eyed Children Paranormal Encounters
Dark Outpost: Alien Black Eyed Children Paranormal Encounters
What are black eyed children? According to contemporary legend, they are paranormal creatures that resemble children between ages 6 and 16, with pale skin and black eyes, who are reportedly seen hitchhiking or panhandling, or are encountered on doorsteps of residential homes. Tonight, we discuss this urban legend with Brice Watson of Esoteric Atlanta.
Leave the world you think you know behind and join us at the Dark Outpost.
I was looking over some NASA mars photos and came across something on a hilltop. A structure. Its upper walls were made with horizontal layers, but its doorway was made of vertical layers. That shows intelligent design. That is undeniably alien made. The structure is about 2 meters by 2 meters. So the species that made it had to be small enough to go through the doorway...which is about .7x.7 meters square. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Aliens Use Sun To Send Message Of Love To All In Our Solar System! Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Aliens Use Sun To Send Message Of Love To All In Our Solar System! Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: August 11, 2020 13:00
Location of sighing: Earths Sun
Source: EIT 171, SOHO
Strangely enough I was looking at some SOHO NASA images of our sun today and found this one. It has a giant number 2 on it in old time Roman Numeral font. At first I almost ignored it, because its impossible, and yet...even my own eyes had trouble believing it. I soon remembered that the number two has ancient meanings. Its clearly a sign...one that has important meaning behind it.
I quickly searched the data about 2 and one site caught my attention. The website ANGELNUBMER.ORG states that number 2 is usually associated to harmony, balance, consideration and love. When this number comes to you, it means that you should have more faith in your angels. You should believe in energies that exist in the Universe, which will help you understand better many things in your life.
That makes sense...aliens are trying to send a message of harmony, balance, consideration and love to all in our solar system. Such alien would be considered having angel like powers, thus making the division between alien and angel...indistinguishable.
UFO crash on Mars - UFO parts are scattered all over the place!
UFO crash on Mars - UFO parts are scattered all over the place!
It looks like a UFO has been crashed on the planet Mars. Since there are many UFO parts scattered all over the place it must have been a huge impact.
To recognize the several UFO parts, I have changed the images below into an extra large sized format (click on the images) as well as I have changed NASA's manipulated red color into true color.
Please check out the MSL Curiosity SOL 2594 image which has been uploaded by Keith Laney on his
Gigapan page. You can find the UFO parts on top of the mountain ridge.
The team investigates an alarming pattern of UFOS allegedly appearing near US. Air Force bases that house nuclear weapons, and nuclear-powered US warships. A new eyewitness account suggests these craft have an incredible ability. Connections to a historic sighting where a UFO allegedly interfered with a U.S. nuclear weapon are explored. Elizondo briefs former U.S. Senator Harry Reid who offers a stunning theory about UFOS.
Cigar-Shaped UFO Appears During an NBC News Report on Navajo Nation in Arizona
Cigar-Shaped UFO Appears During an NBC News Report on Navajo Nation in Arizona
A mysterious object that made an appearance during an NBC report on Navajo Nation’s water crisis has made the rounds online. It appeared towards the end of the news when the cameraman was getting a shot at a woman playing a hand drum and singing. The object, which shaped like a cigar, suddenly piercing a cloud and then zipping across the blue sky and vanishing into another cloud.
YouTube channel Hidden Underbelly 2.0, which dedicated to UFOs and other bizarre sightings, uploaded the video to the video-sharing site.
One commenter wrote that the strange object is attempting to camouflage itself with the clouds.
Another wrote that the Navajo Nation has so many sightings of unidentified flying objects, and they’ve seen UFOs themselves. However, they did not get these UFOs on video since they travel so quickly.
One user alleged that the strange object sprays coronavirus.
Some users were skeptical, however, saying that the object was simply a plane that looked like an extraterrestrial ship because it was far away from the camera.
Cigar-shaped objects have frequently appeared in different parts of the United States and other parts of the world, including Europe and Latin America.
As previously covered by Open Minds UFO News, The New York Times claims several former government officials are convinced crashed UFOs have been retrieved and studied by the US government. The article referenced two people associated with the To the Stars Academy (TTSA) and the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). However, missing from the conversation was Chris Mellon. Mellon is a former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and former Minority Staff Director of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). He is now an advisor for TTSA and a co-host of their television program on the History Channel, Unidentified.
Christopher Mellon hard at work in Season 2 of Unidentified.
Photo by Damien Maloney Copyright 2020
The SSCI, currently led by Marco Rubio, has submitted a request that the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) centralize UAP (aka UFO) reporting and provide reports on what military and FBI intelligence agencies know. Mellon has been an integral part of getting the Senate to take action on this issue. He wrote an article for The Hill suggesting this sort of request, and TTSA posted sample verbiage on their website. The similarity in Mellon and TTSA’s recommended verbiage and what the SSCI used indicates SSCI followed their advice.
The New York Times article referencing the UFO crash claims covered the SSCI UAP report request. It also claimed, “Mr. Elizondo (former AATIP chief) is among a small group of former government officials and scientists with security clearances who, without presenting physical proof, say they are convinced that objects of undetermined origin have crashed on earth with materials retrieved for study.”
Luis Elizondo giving a presentation for the Scientific Coalition for UAP Research.
Credit: Alejandro Rojas
“Eric W. Davis, an astrophysicist who worked as a subcontractor and then a consultant for the Pentagon UFO. program since 2007, said that, in some cases, examination of the materials had so far failed to determine their source and led him to conclude, ‘We couldn’t make it ourselves,'” claims The New York Times. “Mr. Davis, who now works for Aerospace Corporation, a defense contractor, said he gave a classified briefing to a Defense Department agency as recently as March about retrievals from ‘off-world vehicles not made on this earth.'”
Before The New York Times posted their article, rumors circulated that they would be posting a story regarding UFO crashes. Curious of Mellon’s thoughts on the matter, I asked Mellon in a recent interview his views on whether the government has collected crashed UFOs or UFO material. His answer was simply, “It’s a possibility. We’ll have to see.”
Last week CNN asked Mellon a similar question.
In an interview with CNN on August 1, 2020, Mellon was asked by anchor Michael Smerconish: “I was quoting Eric Davis — I know you’re familiar with his work — when I read that ‘New York Times’ paragraph a moment ago. Do you believe that there are objects in our possession, broadly defined our possession, that are from something other than this earth?”
“What I will say about that is that I think that assertion should be taken seriously,” Mellon replied. “I’m aware — I know Eric very well. I understand his arguments. I was present in his briefings on the Hill, and he tried to provide some leads for them to follow to enable them potentially to confirm this. It is an issue that should be taken seriously.”
There are two crucial parts to this answer. The first is that while Mellon does not say he is also convinced of UFO crashes, he does assert that it is an issue to be taken seriously.
“In fact, curiously, President Trump himself on Father’s day indicated on air while being filmed that he did have classified information about Roswell, New Mexico, which as most people know is the legendary site of an alleged crash of a — of a UFO and when asked by his son about that, about declassifying it, he said I’ll have to think about it,” Mellon added. “I don’t know what there is about Roswell that could be classified or interesting other than that one particular issue.”
The second important point from Mellon’s answer is how he framed Davis’ information. Mellon said Davis provided “leads…potentially to confirm this.” Mellon does not seem as convinced as some of the others in TTSA. The weight of Davis’s information follows suit with what Davis shared on Open Minds UFO Radio as to why he believed UFO crashes had occurred. He essentially said he’d been told this in confidence by people with clearances who worked on these programs. Davis says colleagues convinced him rather than having first-hand knowledge.
Eric Davis featured on the Hunt for the Skinwalker.
Credit: extraordinarybeliefs.com/Jeremy Corbell
Given headlines that have appeared since The New York Times article, what many are missing is that there is a stark difference between the credible UFO cases AATIP/TTSA have provided the public and potential UFO crashes. The UFO cases are well documented, have multiple witnesses, and are often backed by radar data, or in some cases, video. When it comes to UFO crashes, we only have individuals who are “convinced.”
However, discussing UFO crashes could serve a purpose. When asked about UFO cases they will be featuring on the second season of Unidentified, Mellon told me, “They’re going to add to the picture that we provided in season one. And I think they’re going to add to the impetus and the need for Congress to be asking questions and also begin to underscore the kinds of things or provide more reason to believe that a report of that nature should be able to produce some very interesting findings.”
In other words, it lets the intelligence agencies know we know there’s more to this than they have been letting on. Mellon gave the example of a NORAD case that was escalated to the “four-star level.” That better show up in the DNI’s UAP reports, or else we’ll know they are not entirely forthcoming.
This latest New York Times article goes even further. Now some TTSA members are on the record saying they are convinced the government also has crashed UFOs or UFO pieces in their possession. They will no doubt be expecting this issue to be addressed by the DNI UAP reports as well.
The question is, what if the DNI says they looked into it and there’s nothing to it. Do Davis and Elizondo have the receipt to prove otherwise?
In an interview with Elizondo on Open Minds UFO Radio in June 2019, I asked Elizondo to clarify a statement he made on Fox News that he believed the government had UFO material. I said I interpreted his response that the UFO material answer was something he felt, but couldn’t prove. Elizondo replied, “I didn’t say that.” He would not talk on the topic any further.
If this is true, what will it take for Elizondo to show his cards? Or will TTSA’s claims go unproven, only to be added to the lofty pile of unproven UFO crash allegations?
To examine what is known about alleged UFO crashes, we have been featuring articles on the topic so you can judge yourself. More to come.
They allegedly came from Space, appeared metallic, and prompted official investigations. Were the mystery objects downed in Canada, Bolivia, and Russia genuine UFOs or some sort of secret space probes?
There are dozens of reported downed UFOs around the globe—some better documented and more credible than others. This article will address three of the best international cases including the unknown “dark object” that splashed off the Atlantic Coast near the small fishing village of Shag Harbour in Nova Scotia, Canada, on October 4, 1967; the powerful impact of an unknown space object in a remote mountainous area in Bolivia’s Tarija Department, on May 6, 1978; and the crash of a mysterious probe on Hill 611 in the Russian Pacific city of Dalnegorsk on January 29, 1986.
Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1967
The author (center) with researcher Chris Styles (in black) on the site were witnesses gathered to sea the object that crashed in the ocean in 1967.
Credit: A. Huneeus
Dozens of witnesses saw unidentified lights falling into the Atlantic Ocean on the southeastern coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, on the night of October 4, 1967. The investigation and search effort to recover debris involved Canadian military and police agencies, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the ‘Air Desk’ at the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) in charge of UFO investigations, and the Coast Guard and Royal Navy Maritime Command, which coordinated a search effort with divers. Although widely reported by the media at the time, the case was quickly forgotten until 1993, when Halifax researcher Chris Styles began a new investigation into the incident.
Shag Harbour, as the case has come to be known, has a unique advantage over other alleged UFO crashes because, as Styles states, it offers an “official paper trail.” These are genuine officially released Canadian government documents, not some disputed memos commonly found in ufology. That’s why when a book about this incident, Dark Object, was published in 2001 by Styles and coauthor Don Ledger, it carried the subtitle of, “The World’s Only Government-Documented UFO Crash.”
A “Priority” telex to Canadian Forces Headquarters, dated October 5, 1967, titled, “UFO Report,” tells the story succinctly:
Night clear, no Moon. Cpl. (Corporal) Wercicky [sic] RCMP Barrington Passage outside Lower Woods Harbour, [Nova Scotia] & other witnesses – names known to RCMP Cpl. – dark object – in excess of 60 ft. – 4 white lights horizontally 15 ft. spacing – movement easterly low altitude down to water surface unknown but in excess of five minutes UFO descended rapidly to water with high whistling sound. Bright flash on hitting water. Single light floating on surface remained for long time sank before RCMP could get boat to it. Area searched extensively by [Canadian Coast Guard] lifeboat 101 and many small boats – nil results. Position of last sighting 4330.5N 6545W. All other possible leads ([aircraft], flares, etc.) checked – nil results. Follow up: at 03:21:57 Coast Guard Cutter 101 proceeding to area with RCMP on board to research area based on A/Ref Baton Point.
Canadian UFO report in the Shag Harbour UFO Incident summary.
(Credit: Canada Library and Archives)
I know his case quite well as I visited the area twice, once in 1996 and again in 2003, interviewing Styles and a couple of witnesses, including retired RCMP officer Victor Werbicki, who was one of the first Mounties to arrive on the scene. In a telephone interview from his home in Alberta, Werbicki stated,
From my investigation and talking to many people, some good witnesses who saw the object, I sincerely felt that something fell down, but we could find no evidence. It came down at an angle supposedly at the channel, it was just unexplained. I was convinced, and I still am, that these people were sincere. I was convinced from all the witnesses that something came down and I don’t know what.
Most accounts place the beginning of the Shag Harbour incident around 11 p.m., when dozens of fishermen and some policemen saw lights plunging into the ocean. Their initial reaction was that an airplane had just crashed. Many vessels rushed to the spot, expecting to rescue survivors, but instead found the whole area covered with yellow foam. One of the documents uncovered by Styles, however, was a report by Leo Howard Mersey, captain of the J.B. Nickerson ship, who saw a UFO in the area a couple of hours earlier, adding that the object was also detected by the ship’s radar. Mersey’s report to the RCMP detachment in Lunenburg described the sighting:
At about 9 PM, on the 4 OCT 67, I noticed an object with three flashing red lights. Radar indicated this object to be sixteen miles away. It was very clear that night and we could see the lights of Halifax. At the time our boat was 32 miles south of Sambro Light and the object was approximately 16 miles north east of us… At the same time there were three other objects on the radar and about 6 miles from the first object. I would say it disappeared about 11:00 PM, when it went up in the air. I could not see any shape or form to it because of the distance. When it went into the air it only had one flashing light. While the object was on the water, or close to the water, it had three real bright flashing red lights… It is not unusual to see the Navy, or aircraft, dropping things into the water there. I had never seen anything like that before but it sounds like the thing they are looking for down off Shelburne or Barrington Passage. When the object left it went straight up in the air with only one red light.
Other witnesses pick up the story about fifteen minutes later, as summarized by Chris Styles, “It began sometime after 11 o’clock October the 4th, which was a moonless clear night. People who were driving or in the area began to notice that there was a set of flashing lights in the sky…most of them reported four, some of them saw them at a sharp angle and saw only three.” The witnesses called the RCMP, and when three officers arrived on the scene, “they could still see a pale yellow object moving on the water that looked unusual, it was leaving a trail of refuse, heavy yellow foam on the surface of the water.” Lawrence Smith, the first seaman to reach the impact area, received a phone call and rushed to the dock, “and got on my boat and then proceeded onto the sea, to the area where this object had gone in the water. I saw like a foam on the water, a long strip of foam, long and narrow, and that’s all I saw that night.”
The search continued the following day and the Canadian Navy arrived at noon on October 6—by this time the event was making headlines in the Canadian press. The Chronicle Herald of Halifax had the banner headline: “COULD BE SOMETHING CONCRETE IN SHAG HARBOR UFO—RCAF.” Other papers talked of a “Hunt for Saucer,” and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation showed newsreels of the navy divers. “The Canadian naval search lasted until Sunday evening,” said Styles, “when the Maritime Command announced that the official naval search was canceled, but many witnesses seem to imply there was some kind of search effort going after that. The stated results of the military search was no results, they had recovered no debris and had no explanation for the object.”
Halifax’s Chronicle-Herald front page headline and other Canadian press stories about the Shag Harbour UFO crash.
Credit: Huneeus Collection
An official memorandum from Col. Turner, Director of Operations at the RCAF Air Desk, summarized the official results: “The Rescue Coordination Centre conducted preliminary investigation and discounted the possibilities that the sighting was produced by an aircraft, flares, floats, or any other known objects.” While the first phase of the Shag Harbour incident can be documented officially, another part of the story is still shrouded in mystery. Styles’ investigation turned up a complex plot involving a second, secret search effort several miles north near Shelburne, next to a then top secret submarine detection base run jointly by the U.S. and Canada, Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Shelburne, which closed down a few years ago. Because he doesn’t have the same level of official documentation, Styles refers to this episode as “the story.” It was told to him confidentially by some divers and other retired military sources.
According to this version, as Styles wrote in a paper for the 1996 MUFON UFO Symposium Proceedings, the crippled UFO that plunged into the ocean near Shag Harbour, “navigated its way, while submerged, to a point on the seabed which lay off Shelburne County’s Government Point.” He continued,
A flotilla of ships sat over the submerged UFO. Consideration was given to the possibility of attempting a recovery operation. Procrastination was due to the fact that a second UFO was on the scene repairing the first crippled craft. The Naval operation would continue for seven days. It remained a mission of observation only. On the seventh day a Soviet submarine violated the former twelve-mile international limit and began to close on the UFO’s position. The surface ships sailed towards the approaching intruder to show challenge. Shortly thereafter, both UFOs began moving while still submerged towards the Gulf of Maine. Later in open water they surfaced, became airborne, and then flew away at high speed. The story also claims that in spite of public denials from Maritime Command, debris was recovered at the Shag Harbour impact site. The Styrofoam-like and aluminum-like debris was collected and driven to the Defense Research Establishment facility in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
Styles concluded:
I really have trouble explaining this in conventional terms. I really try to avoid speculating, but I do feel that when you look at all the composite of evidence from the multiple witnesses, from the military response, from the implications of the physical evidence, I think it’s pretty suggestive that something, either extraterrestrial, extra-temporal or extra-dimensional is responsible. I opt for extraterrestrial myself, and that opens of course a myriad of other questions, but it did imply a nuts and bolt object that was both aerodynamic and hydrodynamic.
In 2003, an official Canada Post stamp was issued to commemorate this mysterious and still unresolved UFO case.
Shag Harbour postage stamp.
Credit: Chapel Hill Historical Society
Tarija Department, southeastern Bolivia, near the border of Salta Province, Argentina, 1978
Illustration from the Argentinean magazine Gente showing witnesses looking at the cylindrical object of Tarija. The Spanish caption reads, “Saturday 6 [May 1978], 17:15 Hours. The strange object falls in Bolivia.”
Credit: Huneeus Collection/Gente
The Tarija case is probably South America’s best documented and most credible UFO crash incident. There were dozens—probably hundreds—of eyewitnesses who saw a cylindrical-shaped object spewing smoke across the sky on the mid-afternoon of May 6, 1978, and crash on a remote mountain near the Bermejo River, which separates the border betweenBolivia’s Tarija Department and Argentina’s Salta Province. Others heard a loud explosion—a sonic boom heard that was heard within 120 miles that shattered windows of villages over 30 miles from the target site.Some saw a thick column of smoke rising from a mountain known in Argentina as El Taire, or El Zaire, and in Bolivia as Cerro Bravo. Although the incident was widely reported in the South American press, there was a great deal of confusion about the facts. For days it wasn’t clear if the space object had crashed in Bolivian or Argentinean territory, and there was further confusion about its origin—whether it was a meteorite, a man-made space probe, or a real UFO.
The involvement of the U.S. government in this affair provided additional intrigue. The South American press kept mentioning the arrival of NASA experts at the area, and two American military officers in civilian dress were photographed by the local press as they arrived in Tarija supposedly “on vacation.” Some reports allege that metallic fragments and even a large capsule were retrieved and quickly moved away in a U.S. Air Force Hercules cargo plane; other reports claim this was not true, and that something may still be buried under a rock slide. Yet the participation of American officials is not in doubt, as we know from a few documents released by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Air Force that Tarija indeed came under the eye of Project Moon Dust and Operation Blue Fly—two programs headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, which were tasked with retrieving sensitive space debris and “Unidentified Flying Objects,” as stated in a declassified November 1961 Air Force Intelligence memo. The two American officers in Tarija were not NASA scientists, but from the U.S. Defense Attaché Office (DAO) in La Paz, acting under Project Moon Dust guidelines.
The village of La Mamora with the “impact site” on the El Zaire Hill in Bolivia. The headline in the Argentinean weekly Radiolandia 2000 reads: “When the UFO fell, the earth trembled and we were overcome by panic.” Credit: Huneeus Collection/R. 2000
Eduardo Salmón and Bienvenido Ortega were Border Policemen with the 20th Detachment in Orán, Argentina, who were on duty in the village of Aguas Blancas on that May afternoon. A luminous flash caught their eyes, and they watched as an oval-shaped metallic-looking object crossed the sky in a northerly direction, trailing smoke. Seconds later they heard a loud explosion. The troopers were attending a soccer match, which had gathered some five hundred people at the local soccer field. Both players and spectators were astonished by the “fireball” that flew over their heads right before the explosion and the cloud of thick smoke. The closest villages to the impact area on the Bolivian side of the border were Padcaya, Mecoya, and La Mamora. Vélez Orozco was an engineer conducting a survey for a private company in Tarija when he too saw the cylindrical object. He estimated it was four meters in diameter and was conical-shaped in front. The explosion, he added, was louder than the one caused by the reentry of a meteorite a year earlier.
Corporal Natalio Farfán Ruiz was the highest military authority in La Mamora. He told Argentinean reporters:
I don’t know what would have happened if the UFO had fallen on their houses. Can you imagine? Some children live here. It was around 4:30 [p.m.] when a cylinder shook the Earth. I swear that it was horrible, I believed the end of the world was coming, but I had top have courage. After all, I was the authority.
Juan Hurtado, an agent with the Border Intelligence Service, described it this way:
It was like a huge wine container with a brilliant white color spewing smoke out of its back. I saw it quite clearly because it passed over my head. I was with three engineers of the Mining Bank in La Paz when I saw the object crash on the hill of El Zaire. The impact was so strong that it threw me down to the ground. In that moment, the whole Earth trembled.
Eventually, the Bolivian Air Force flew three single-engine AT-6 planes over the area and detected a large rockslide over the southern slopes of Cerro Bravo. The area is extremely rugged and of difficult access. Several expeditions attempted to reach the exact impact site, but only the second group, headed by Major Germán Callejas, was able to locate the rockslide around May 24. A great deal of confusion surrounded the case by that time. On May 14, the Buenos Aires newspaper Clarín reported that the object had been recovered—“a metallic-dull cylinder, four meters long and with some dents”—and that NASA officials would take charge of it. A sketch of the alleged retrieved object published by Clarín resembled a Gemini or Apollo space capsule. There was also a great deal of apprehension that it could be a Soviet nuclear satellite—Cosmos 954 had crashed in northern Canada only three months earlier on January 24, 1978. Finally, there was talk of a meteorite, although my own personal inquiries with the Smithsonian’s Scientific Event Alert Network (SEAN), which tracks natural disasters, showed no meteorite fall in Bolivia in May 1978.
The South American press was full of stories of NASA officials arriving in Tarija, but the truth is that the two military officers who showed up, Col. Robert Simmons and Major John Heisse, were most likely from the U.S. Defense Attaché Office (DAO) in La Paz, who were acting on behalf of Project Moon Dust, which oversaw the retrieval of downed space objects. We know the U.S. government was involved because at least some documents from the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Air Force were later obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Key among these documents is a May 18 telegram, classified “Secret,” and bearing the name of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, although it was drafted by Col. Robert Eddington from the State Department’s Bureau of Oceans, International Environment, and Scientific Affairs. The message indicated that the Tarija case, “has been checked with appropriate government agencies. No direct correlation with known space objects that may have reentered the earth’s atmosphere near May 6 can be made. However, we are continuing to examine any possibilities.” The message then referred the U.S. Embassy in La Paz to, “State Airgram A-6343 of July 26, 1973 which provides background information and guidance for dealing with space objects that have been found.” Secretary Vance concluded: “In particular any information pertaining to the pre-impact observations, direction or trajectory, number of objects observed, time of impact and a detailed description including any markings would be helpful.”
U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance’s “Secret” telex, “Report of Fallen Space Object,” concerning the May 1978 Tarija case.
Credit: Huneeus Collection
Additional data is provided by a couple of documents from the DAO in La Paz under the subject of Moon Dust. “This office has tried to verify the stories put forth in…the local press,” informed the DAO, adding that their office had contacted the chief of staff of the Bolivian Air Force and the commander of the Bolivian Army, both of whom indicated that search parties were “directed to go into the area to find the object but found nothing.” Two independent American investigators, the seasoned National Enquirer reporter Bob Pratt and Charles Tucker of the International UFO Investigating Bureau, actually visited the area and interviewed many witnesses, including the members of the Bolivian expeditions. Pratt tried to reach the crash site himself but couldn’t because of the difficulties of the terrain. In a 1984 letter, Pratt wrote that “a lot of misinformation has been published about this incident. I am certain, however, that the area was not cordoned off by the military, that no object was recovered by NASA or anyone else, that no Hercules picked up anything.” Pratt finished his letter by stating that, “I believe something crashed into the mountain and was buried under the landslide it created. But the six people I know who have personally inspected the site could find no debris of any kind. Whatever struck there is probably going to remain buried there.”
Dalnegorsk, Russian Pacific Coast, 1986
Although there are several reported UFO crashes in Russia and the republics of the old Soviet Union, the Dalnegorsk incident of 1986 is unique because it is one of the few cases where metallic fragments were recovered and analyzed by scientists with the results openly published. A number of unique circumstances made this possible. The principal investigator of the case, Dr. Valery Dvuzhilny, led a group from the Far Eastern Commission on Anomalous Phenomena, and the timing coincided with the then newly implemented policies of glasnost and perestroika issued by Mikhail Gorbachev, which allowed the publication of the case. Dvuzhilny also corresponded extensively with Western researchers, sending copies of his reports and photos of the recovered evidence.
Dalnegorsk is a small city near Russia’s Pacific Coast, on the Sea of Japan, just north of Vladivostok. The story begins at 7:55 p.m., on January 29, 1986, with the collision of an unknown object on Hill 611 in Dalnegorsk. One of the reports by Dr. Dvuzhilny summarized the events:
Residents of the settlements observed a reddish-orange sphere the size of a half full moon, which flew from the southwest at 260 degrees. Its altitude was 700-800 meters. The flight was parallel to the surface of the Earth, without the angles which are characteristic for meteorites. The witnesses heard absolutely no noises. The calculated speed by chronometer was 15 meters per second. There was no change of direction or altitude.
The object then approached the Izvestkovaya Mountain, or Hill 611, which has an elevation of 600 meters and is located at the center of the city. “The object made a dive and went at an angle of 60-70 degrees on the cliff ledge, where it ‘fell’ and burned for an hour,” continued the report, “some of the witnesses affirm that it rose and lowered itself six times, and that its light was intensified during its rise and weakened during its lowering.” Dvuzhilny and his team arrived on the scene on February 3, finding a number of physical traces, which included lead and iron balls, bits of glass, a fine mesh or netting, traces of high temperature activity, magnetic anomalies, and damage to nearby trees and stumps.
The materials were analyzed by several laboratories and research institutes; the results were quite enigmatic, leading Dvuzhilny and other scientists to conclude that the Dalnegorsk object was probably an artificial space probe of non-terrestrial origin. According to one report published in the influential newspaper, Socialist Industry (now Rabochaya Tribuna), “in the scales (or mesh), almost all the elements of the entire periodic table were found.” Special analysis of the lead balls, for instance, showed that besides lead, they contained silicon (20%), aluminum (10%), iron (15%), zinc (1.5%), titanium (2%), magnesium (1%) and silver (2%), as well as minute portions of copper, lanthanum, praseodymium, calcium, sodium, vanadium, cerium, chrome, cobalt, nickel, and molybdenum.
Metallic fragments consisting of a fine mesh or netting retrieved by scientists at Hill 611 in 1986.
Credit: ICUFON Archives/V. Dvuzhilny
The scales, or mesh, reacted in a very strange manner during the laboratory analysis. The Socialist Industry report described how one of the scientists, A. Makeev, “presented the [X-ray] structural analysis and showed that from one scale, after melting it in a vacuum, all of a sudden gold, silver, and nickel disappeared. But there appeared alpha-titanium and molybdenum. In another scale, the metals did not appear at all. And for some reason, after the heating, there appeared beryllium sulfide.”
There were still further surprises, such as “six areas of magnetized silica rock” (silica is a non-magnetic material) found on the crash site. These results were published by A. Petukhov and T. Faminskaya, members of the Council of Scientific and Engineering Sciences’ Commission on Paranormal Events. “Vivid interest was also evoked by the mesh, a carbon-based composite of unknown origin,” wrote Petukhov and Faminskaya, “the specimen was found to include quartz filaments 17 microns thick, and golden wires inside the filament.” All this evidence led some investigators to conclude that something alien had indeed crashed at Hill 611. V. Vysotsky, Doctor of Chemistry from Vladivostok, stated: “Undoubtedly, this is a high-technology product and not a thing of natural or terrestrial origin.” Dvuzhilny proposed that it was “an automatic scout probe” of alien origin, and rejected the alternative hypothesis that it could have been a natural plasmoid.
Still another hypothesis was offered by Yuli Platov, a senior researcher with the Institute of Earth Magnetism, Ionosphere, and Radiowave Propagation of the USSR Academy of Sciences as well as a noted UFO skeptic. Platov wrote that the Dalnegorsk phenomenon, “in reality was connected with the conduct of a technical experiment.” This is a polite way of saying the Hill 611 object was probably a secret Soviet military aircraft or spacecraft; yet, if this was the case why wasn’t Hill 611 immediately cordoned-off by Soviet troops and the material hushed away by the KGB? Why were scientists and technicians from the civilian, rather than the military industrial sector, allowed to conduct their investigation more or less openly and parade their puzzling results to the local and national media? Moreover, neither Platov nor anyone else ever produced any supporting evidence to back their experimental craft hypothesis. Dvuzhilny also noted that there were no rocket launches and no civilian or military traffic over Dalnegorsk on the night of January 29, 1986.
Regardless of its ultimate origin, the crash on Hill 611 was only the beginning of an intense UFO wave around Dalnegorsk. For instance, another report by Dvuzhilny indicates that, “on February 6, 1986, eight days after the UFO crash, there appeared from the north two yellow globes at 8:30 p.m. They approached the crash spot, made four circles over it and disappeared with a flash.” By and large, however, the largest display of UFOs occurred on the night of November 28, 1987. Dvuzhilny wrote: “On Saturday November 28, 1987, 33 UFOs were flying at a low height over the Eastern coast of Primorye. Their flights took place between 9:10 pm and midnight. They were of different shape: cylinders, cigars, globes. They were flying over five regions and twelve settlements.”
UFO photographed over Dalnegorsk.
Credit: ICUFON Archives/V. Dvuzhilny
Inquiries made by Dvuzhilny showed there had been no flights of civil or military aircraft at that time, and that no rockets were launched from Soviet Cosmodromes. In total, thirteen UFOs flew over Dalnegorsk itself. They were seen by over a hundred witnesses, including military personnel, militia (police), border guards, and sailors, as well as all kind of civilian workers who were questioned by the Far Eastern Commission. Still more sightings occurred in the months to come. The Commission recorded forty-five UFO sightings in 1987, fifteen in 1988, and thirty-two in 1989.Statistics for the 1990s were not included in the reports sent to the U.S. by Dr. Dvuzhilny, but what was included—all the evidence reviewed here—is quite extraordinary.
Reconstruction by the Far East Commission on Anomalous Phenomena of the UFO wave of November 28, 1987 around Dalnegorsk and other areas in Russia’s Pacific coast.
Credit: ICUFON Archives/V. Dvuzhilny
THE METALLIC SPHERES – A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY
Some of the Project Moon Dust documents declassified by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) include reports of mysterious metallic spheres found scattered in many countries around the world like Bolivia, Chad, and New Zealand. Other similar cases not in the DIA documents were reported in Argentina and Mexico. Usually these cases were readily identified as some kind of space junk, but occasionally they were treated as fragments from crashed UFOs. A couple of these spheres are even on display at the “Visión OVNI” (UFO Vision) Museum in Victoria in the province of Entre Ríos, Argentina. Among the Mexican cases, one was found in Chiapas in 1996, two in Tamaulipas in 1994 and 1996, and another obtained by famous TV journalist Jaime Maussán in 2008, all of which were claimed as possibly UFO-related fragments. Yet there can be little doubt that all these “space balls” are mundane parts of the Russian or American space programs and not real UFO artifacts.
One of the space spheres on display at the UFO Vision Museum in Victoria, Argentina; photo of George Adamski in the background.
Credit: Open Minds Production
Here is a representative Moon Dust memo from the Republic of Chad in Africa, dated October 10, 1970:
This report forwards photographs of object believed to come under Project ‘MOON DUST’. The object was seen falling in an area 30 kms N.E. of LAI (0924N-1618E) on 1 August 1970. It produced three loud explosions on landing and was said to have burned for five days. The sphere weighs 30 pounds and has a circumference of four feet. A second object was found in the same general area. It however, resembles au automobile shaft. Photographs of this object are forwarded.
A longer Moon Dust document, dated August 17, 1979, concerns “an unidentified object having been found on a farm near Santa Cruz” in Bolivia, described as “about three times the size of a basketball.” The document quoted the director of the Air Force Academy, Col. Ariel Coca, as stating, “The sphere is made of special light ally but very resistant, possibly a fuel tank or a part of a satellite! The object does not have any signs or marks that could identify its origin nor the country to which it belongs.”
Two space spheres on display in the patio of the Firmat Museum in Santa Fe, Argentina.
Credit: Open Minds Production
The argument in favor of the extraterrestrial origin of these spheres made by some ufologists in Mexico and Argentina is that they are extremely hard, almost impossible to burn or cut. But this is what you would expect of a fuel tank for a spacecraft, designed to be ejected for earth reentry once the fuel is used; it has to be made of metals able to withstand the space launch or the satellite or spacecraft could be in danger. Mexican engineer Luis Ruiz Noguez, a well-known UFO skeptic, explained that the alloy, which is composed of titanium, vanadium, and aluminum, shown in the 1994 and 1996 Mexican spheres “is chiefly utilized in the manufacture of fuel tanks for artificial satellites due to their high resistance to corrosion and temperature.” While the spheres at Argentina’s Visión OVNI Museum are exhibited as true UFO artifacts, another local museum in Paraná has a couple of similar spheres that the Russian space program has acknowledged as part of a Russian space probe.
A space sphere that fell in Mexico in 2008, now in the possession of Jaime Maussán. Notice the extensive damage inflicted due to reentry.
Credit: Open Minds Production
These spheres provide a useful cautionary tale in learning how to distinguish prosaic man-made space objects from true unknown devices. There is a good possibility that many so-called UFO crashes have a terrestrial origin, but others are still enigmatic and so far unexplained.
A version of this article originally appeared in Issue #8 (June/July 2011) of Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.
Don Schmitt has been one of the primary investigators of the alleged crash of a UFO in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. He and his colleagues have tracked down hundreds of witnesses who claim to have information about what happened. When putting together the Roswell UFO crash issue of Open Minds Magazine in 2011, we asked Don to write us an article on the best evidence that an actual pilot of the alleged spacecraft survived. The following is the article he provided us for the magazine.
Ever since the Roswell crash of a flying saucer with “little men” inside, one specific rumor has persisted: that one of those “little men” actually managed to survive the ordeal. For most of the years since the 1947 Roswell crash and the subsequent weather balloon explanation, stories about mysterious bodies associated with the crash remained, but the very notion that Earth was indeed the host to a living extraterrestrial visitor was beyond the pale of belief. But, the question remained: Did an extraterrestrial survive that ill-fated night?
Eye-Witnesses’ Accounts of the Surviving Alien
Dan Dwyer
In 1947, Frankie Dwyer Rowe, a twelve-year-old girl, witnessed her father being threatened and warned by the military authorities for what he saw at the Roswell crash site. Her father, now deceased, was a crew chief for the Roswell Fire Department at the time of the incident. When the call came into the fire station that there had been an airship crash north of town, Dan Dwyer and Lee Reeves were dispatched with the station’s “tanker” (a pickup truck with a large cylindrical water tank in the back) to the crash site. The Chavez County sheriff and a couple of his deputies were also following up the rear in fast pursuit. Arriving just before the military would secure the scene, Dwyer and Reeves witnessed something totally unexpected. It wasn’t an airplane at all, but an egg-shaped vessel of some sort that they did not recognize.
And the bodies! Dwyer could see three diminutive humanoid beings lying in the lee of the craft. With his focus riveted on the craft and the bodies on the ground, Dwyer noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye. There, walking in front of him, seemingly from out of nowhere, was something right out of a science fiction novel. According to the fireman, it was about the size of a ten-year-old child, with grayish skin, no hair, and a large head and eyes. Within moments the roar of approaching vehicles could be heard as the military finally took charge of the entire affair. The two firemen were escorted away from the immediate area and warned of the consequences if they should ever speak of the incident. To further demonstrate the seriousness of what was witnessed, Dwyer and his family were paid a visit by military police that very evening at their home. Dwyer and his wife were physically threatened and were told that authorities would kill their children should they utter a word about what was witnessed earlier that day.
Roswell fireman Dan Dwyer (left) and his crew in the mid-1950s.
Credit: Don Schmitt
George Wilcox
The Roswell incident left an impact on all those involved, especially then-Roswell sheriff, George Wilcox. Just before Wilcox’s widow Inez passed away, she related a story to her granddaughter Barbara, who since passed on the story: “The event shocked [George]. He never wanted to be sheriff again after that. My grandmother said, ‘Don’t tell anybody. When the incident happened, the military police came to the jailhouse and told George and I that if we ever told anything about the incident, not only would we be killed, but our entire family would be killed!”’ Barbara adds, “They called my grandfather, and someone came and told him about the crash. He went out there to the site; there was a big burned area, and he saw debris. There were four space beings. Their heads were large. They wore suits like silk. One of the ‘little men’ was alive.” Inez Wilcox reiterated to Barbara that her and George took the threats very seriously and kept the information from the family.
Sergeant Homer G. Rowlette
Sergeant Homer Rowlette in 1947. Gave a death bed confession of being part of the clean-up crew.
Credit: U.S. Army/Don Schmitt
Sergeant Homer G. Rowlette, Jr., was a member of the 603rd Air Engineering Squadron at the RAAF in 1947. He was a career military man and retired as an NCO after twenty-six years of dedicated service to his country. Before passing away in March 1988, he finally conveyed to his son, Larry the following startling information about his involvement with the “crash of the flying saucer.” Rowlette was part of a cleanup detail sent to the crash site north of Roswell. Larry was told that his father had seen everything. He handled the “memory material,” which according to Homer, was “thin foil that kept its shape.” If that wasn’t enough, he described the actual ship, which was “somewhat circular.” He also caught his son completely by surprise when he announced, “I saw three little people. They had large heads and at least one was alive!”
Master Sergeant Harry Telesco
Corroboration of Rowlette’s story has come from another member of the same squadron also stationed at Roswell at that time. Master Sergeant Harry Telesco had already passed away, when I located and contacted his family in 2007. According to his daughter, her late father had spoken many years ago of being at the crash site north of town and seeing the strange wreckage and little bodies there. He also testified that he had seen one that was still alive.
Richard Loveridge
In 1947, Richard Loveridge worked as a mechanical engineer for the Boeing Aircraft Company and was part of their crash-investigation team. When information came in about the crash of an aircraft outside of Roswell, Loveridge drove to the area believing it was one of their planes. It would not be until the last year of his life in 1993 that he would finally confess to his family about the true nature of the alleged “plane” crash. The Boeing crash investigator admitted that he “saw everything.” He saw the wreckage, which was not from a conventional aircraft, as well as three small, deceased “entities” and one that was still alive. Loveridge described them as “child-size” and “grayish” in color. He refused to elaborate any further to his family: “Don’t ask me any more about this. They can hurt you.”
Ervin Boyd
Ervin Boyd worked as a B-29 mechanic at the Roswell Army Airfield (RAAF) in 1947; he worked specifically in Hangar P3, which would later be known as Building 84. On the particular day in question, Boyd was taking a cigarette break on what he called a “hot summer day,” and the doors of the hangar were open on both ends of the building. As soon as he stepped outside the hangar doors, he observed a number of men and vehicles swarming towards the building. Startled by the situation, he quickly noticed that some of the men were carrying what he first thought was the body of a child. “Why didn’t they take it to the hospital?” he asked himself. As they passed by him, he was shocked to see that it was something else.
“It was child-size, four feet, maybe a little more, and a head that was larger than one on a normal body. The eyes were walnut-shaped and also larger than normal. From my angle, it didn’t look like it had much of a nose. The arms were a bit longer too, and the skin was ashy, gray and kind of scaly. I believe it was still alive.”
Suddenly, a number of officers grabbed Boyd and rushed him away from the area and started to get physically rough with him. One of them sternly stated, “Mr. Boyd, you didn’t see anything.” But, the civilian persisted. Finally, he was warned that if he ever said one more word, not only would he lose his job, but the lives of his wife and children would be at stake. It would not be until he suffered a stroke twenty-four years later that he would finally break his silence with his family.
Army Roswell clean up crews from the Roswell movie.
Credit: Paul Davies
Joseph Montoya
That same afternoon, Monday, July 7, 1947, New Mexico’s newly elected thirty-two-year-old lieutenant governor, Joseph Montoya, was in Roswell. It is not entirely clear how the politician came to be on the base at the RAAF on the exact day as some of the bodies, including the possible survivor from the crash. One possible scenario is that he was there on Independence Day weekend for the dedication of a new plane, and after the ceremony he was escorted over to the B-29 hangar just as the first military vehicles were bearing down with their “out-of-this-world” cargo.
Montoya would confide to close associates that he had seen “four little men.” He described how small they were, along with the stunning fact that “one was alive!” Montoya painted the beings as, “short, only coming up to my chest. [They were] skinny with big eyes shaped like tear-drops. [The] mouth was real small, like a knife-cut across a piece of wood, and they had large heads.”
Next, he described the scene inside the hangar. Each of the little men, including the one that was alive, was stretched out on a table brought over from the mess hall and set up for that purpose. “I knew that one was alive because I could hear it moaning.” Montoya said that it was moving, with its knee bent and rocking back and forth
After a frantic exit from the hangar, Montoya was picked up and driven from the base by associates. Montoya would always warn that “It’s too dangerous to talk about.” Even years later, he would continue to caution that “the government will get you.”
“Eli” Benjamin
Another man who himself admitsto having seen bodies was Elias “Eli” Benjamin (a pseudonym).His wife told me much about the incident, but it would be several years before Eli would tell me himself. As a retired career U.S. Air Force man, Benjamin feared for his pension—and still does—if he ever talked about Roswell. Benjamin and his wife had come to the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell in 2002 to see the exhibits. Against her husband’s wishes, Mrs. Benjamin stopped into the museum director’s office to tell someone about her husband. After hearing Mrs. Benjamin’s story, especially the part about bodies and the hospital, Julie Shuster, the museum director, felt that a private interview with Mr. Benjamin was warranted. It was soon apparent, however, that there was a major problem: Mr. Benjamin was nowhere to be found. He had left the building, when he observed his wife and the director looking around for him—he was a reluctant witness, to put it mildly.
Private first class Eli Benjamin in 1947. He escorted the bodies from hanger P-3 to the RAAF base hospital.
Credit: U.S. Army/Don Schmitt
Since that day, I have managed to track down the former member of the 390th Air Service Squadron and meet with him half a dozen times to try to gain his confidence. In the process, I learned that Benjamin’s main fear, similar to so many others who were and are reluctant Roswell witnesses, was his belief that he, as a retired air force veteran, might lose his pension if he said anything about those long-ago events. I assured Benjamin that I knew of no instances whatsoever of someone losing his pension for talking about Roswell. Besides, the secretary of the air force issued a proclamation in 1994 that absolved anyone with knowledge about the Roswell incident who believed that they were still subject to security or secrecy oaths regarding the matter. The other thing I noticed was that Benjamin was still deeply moved, if not troubled, by what he witnessed back in 1947, and he broke down in tears on several occasions when talking to me about it. His wife also revealed that her husband still has trouble sleeping comfortably and continued to wake up suddenly in the middle of the night, shaking. In 2005, the eighty-year-old Eli Benjamin agreed to tell his story.
In July 1947, Eli Benjamin was a private first class with the 390th Air Service Squadron at the Roswell Army Air Field. Possessing a top secret clearance, Private First Class Benjamin was authorized to provide security support for the most highly classified operations of the 509th Bomb Group—the first atomic-bomb wing in the world. In addition to his primary job of guarding the B-29 Bombers, one of his secondary duties was that of a recovery specialist, which involved the grim activities associated with the aftermath of plane crashes.
On the morning of Monday, July 7, 1947, Benjamin walked back to his barracks after a night of guard duty on the flight line followed by breakfast at mess hall. “Something’s going on” he thought to himself, as he stood at attention and saluted the playing of the national anthem and morning flag-raising ritual at the base headquarters on the south end of the esplanade. He knew that the base commander, Colonel William Blanchard, normally held his weekly staff meetings on Tuesday mornings, but on this day, Benjamin thought there were too many staff cars and other vehicles parked in the headquarters parking lot for a regular staff meeting. When Benjamin finally arrived back at his barracks, “Word was given to my squadron to be on the alert for special duty,” he said. Such was life in the 509th and the Strategic Air Command and sleep after his long shift would have to remain a secondary consideration. The word finally found Benjamin: “Benjamin! Get your gun and report to hangar P-3 for guard duty.”
Upon arriving at the B-29 hangar to report to the officer in charge, Benjamin walked into a commotion at the main entrance of the building. A number of military police were trying to restrain the very officer from whom Benjamin was supposed to get his duty instructions. The lieutenant colonel was clearly experiencing an emotional reaction to the situation at hand, which seemed to be the transfer of a number of gurneys over to the base hospital. Another officer quickly pointed to Benjamin and ordered him to complete the assignment.
While in the process, something under one of the sheets covering each litter appeared to be moving. Then, as each of the stretchers was loaded into the back of a waiting ambulance truck, a sheet fell away revealing the grayish face and swollen, hairless head that clearly was not human.
Surviving Roswell alien from the Roswell movie.
Credit: Paul Davies
The military police orders were to deliver the cargo to the base hospital emergency room (Building 317) and remain there until relieved. Once at the medical facility, a half-dozen hospital personnel and men in suits took control of one specific gurney. All eyes were on the covered arrival as they removed the sheet from a being with an over-sized head, which had large, slanted eyes, two holes in place of a nose, and a slit for a mouth. For a number of moments all surrounding the patient just stood staring with mouths agape. It was alive. As the last of the gurneys was wheeled in, Benjamin and the other military police were immediately dismissed, sent back to their squadrons, and sworn to secrecy. They were told the incident never happened.
Sixty-three years after the event, the fog of time prevents Eli Benjamin from recalling the names or faces of the other men assigned to “escort duty” that day. They may well have been from other squadrons on the base or even from other bases brought in from outside (known as augmentation troops) to prevent the comparing of notes later on.
For her part, Mrs. Benjamin confirms her husband’s account of his involvement in the Roswell events of July 1947. She further states that he confided the story to her with the promise that she would never tell anyone else. Eli’s memories of that night—seeing the swollen face and slanted eyes of the “species”—remain with, and haunt, him to this day.
Roy Musser
Roy Musser happened to be at the base that afternoon. He was a civilian contractor painting part of the hospital. Working in the rear, where the loading dock area was located, he claimed to have seen the arrival of the small bodies and the “creature.” Apparently uninjured, he observed it walking and said it looked like a “very slender child.”
The military warned Musser that he was never to mention what he had seen to anyone or he and his family would be in jeopardy. Musser kept quiet for a number of years before relating the experience to fireman Dan Dwyer.
Miriam “Andrea” Bush
All military hospital administrators had their own secretary. In the case of Lieutenant Colonel Harold M. Warne, his was a twenty-seven-year-old civilian woman named Miriam “Andrea” Bush. Miriam was a graduate of New Mexico State College at Las Cruces, where she had majored in business administration. She also had a top security job at the base hospital. But none of her prior experiences prepared her for what she was about to see.
As she was performing routine duties at the hospital, Dr. Warne took her by the arm and quietly mentioned that she should accompany him to the examination room. Upon entering, she was immediately surprised to observe a number of bodies on gurneys in the middle of the room. At first she thought they were children based on their size. Their skin was grayish to brown in tone, and white linens covered most of each body. But the heads were too large to be children and had large staring eyes. All at once, one of them moved. Miriam would never forget what she had seen that day in Roswell.
Miriam Bush and her sister-in-law Pat Bush in the 1980s. Miriam claims to have seen the alien bodies at the RAAF base hospital.
Credit: Don Schmitt
What Became of the Surviving Alien?
To date there remains no eyewitness testimony as to what ultimately became of the survivor and how it was transported from Roswell. There is reliable information, however, that the being did spend some time at Wright Patterson Air Force Base and was still there up to nine months later in 1948.
Wright Field, 1947, where the survivor from Roswell was reportedly taken for study.
Credit: U.S. Army/Don Schmitt
While on his deathbed in 1997, Lieutenant Colonel Marion Magruder, a highly decorated World War II flying ace, swore to his five sons that, while with the War College, he was assigned to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in April 1948 and allowed to briefly see the “live alien” at that time. He and the others in his company were instructed that the being was recovered from the crash in Roswell just the year before. His description was similar to all the other eye-witnesses. He emphasized that there was no question that it “came from another planet.”
As one of the personnel at the RAAF once remarked, “They sure weren’t from Texas.” And in the same vein, they weren’t from Japan, Germany, or anywhere else on Earth. That is one issue all of the witnesses remain unanimous on.
I found a UFO...unidentified flying object hovering over an area of the moon map. The object is metallic, smooth and shiny. It measures 25 miles across according to the moon map ruler. The craft is hovering, as if parked but not touching the surface of the moon. Its even making a shadow below it. Sure 25 miles is huge, but sitting in the shadows of the moon can easily go unnoticed by anyone astronomers. Absolute proof that aliens not only exist, but have massive ships on our moon. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Aliens Show UFO Fleet Across China Coast To Protect Taiwan! Taiwan News Video, UFO Sighting News.
Aliens Show UFO Fleet Across China Coast To Protect Taiwan! Taiwan News Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighing: Aug 9, 2020, Sunday Location of sighting: Matsu, China This fleet of UFOs was seen entering our atmosphere over the ocean off the coast of China a few days ago. The long glowing lights stood on end in the clouds between the Chinese islands of Matsu and Kinmen. This also happens to be the same day that here in Taiwan...the US secretary of Health visited with the Taiwan president. Its the first time in decades that such a high US official has visited Taiwan to show China that the US and Taiwan are friends and that the US will watch over us. Taiwan has taken Hong Kong already and wants to do the same with Taiwan. I believe this is a sign of military strength of alien to show China that they are there...they are watching...and peace is the only answer. How do I know? Because they are spread across the China coast area 100% covering the area of Taiwan 45 miles away. Aliens do interfere ..when they have calculated the odds of something happening...so they appear to try to changes the outcome they see occurring...changing the future. Perhaps they saw China attacking us on the 9th...the day the US diplomate came? I know China wanted to, but knew they couldn't risk such an attack...especial with the US diplomat here. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan Taiwan News states:
The night sky of Matsu and Kinmen is very mysterious in the early hours of Sunday morning! Because some people photographed the sky and clouds, there were particularly bright and unidentified light spots, and some netizens asked if it was an alien UFO that appeared? We asked meteorological experts, and the answer was revealed. In fact, this is a "light beam phenomenon," and it is also regarded as a "laser show of nature." It is indeed quite rare in the subtropics.
White Disk Seen Over Albany, New York, Aug 10, 2020, MUFON, UFO Sighting World News.
White Disk Seen Over Albany, New York, Aug 10, 2020, MUFON, UFO Sighting World News.
Date of sighting: Aug 10, 2020 Location of sighting: Albany, New York, USA Source: MUFON #110860 This UFO was seen over Albany, New York yesterday. The glowing white object is disk shaped and can be seen waving slightly as its moving forward at the end of the video. The object is incredibly bright...strangely so since its daytime and it should be more visible, but isn't. These kind of UFOs often dart from cloud to cloud, but when there are less clouds...and a bright blue sky background...they get easily seen. Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states:
I was sitting on my front steps when something caught my attention. A small tic tac shaped object streaking across the sky. I just watched it for a few seconds before I realized I could film it with my phone. It was closer than it looks in the video. Just over the top of the church
Could humans ever travel to other galaxies within their lifetime? The immense scale of the Universe seems to prohibit such voyages, after all the nearest galaxy is so far away that it takes light itself - the fastest thing in the Universe - 2.5 million years to complete the trip.
When you get back home from your journey, 7 years have past for you but 12 years for everybody back on earth. If journeying to even the nearest star meant that hundreds of years passed back home. Remarkably, there is a trick that might allow humans to accomplish this feat.
This is one of the most mind-blowing videos on deep space travel I've ever watched. It really makes you think what is out there!
Really fast UFO filmed over Albany, NY 10-Aug-2020
Really fast UFO filmed over Albany, NY 10-Aug-2020
This really fast daytime UFO sighting happened over Albany, New York on 10th August 2020.
Witness report:
I was sitting on my front steps when something caught my attention. A small tic tac shaped object streaking across the sky. I just watched it for a few seconds before I realized I could film it with my phone. It was closer than it looks in the video. Just over the top of the church.
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Some places in this world seem to draw to them mysterious forces beyond our understanding, little corners of the world that for whatever reasons have mysteries gravitate to them. Running through the expanse between the Australian state of Victoria and the island of Tasmania is a stretch of sea called the Bass Strait. The strait measures 300 km (190 mi) wide and 200 km (120 mi) from north to south, and although known for rough currents and winds it is a major shipping lane, and also sees a lot of air traffic, so it is not a particularly remote or uncharted place in modern times, yet the Bass Strait has long had a reputation as a place of mysterious phenomena and strange vanishings for centuries. Indeed, such is its reputation for weirdness, UFOs, and its hungry habit of swallowing ships and planes that this swath of sea has earned its nickname “The Bass Strait Triangle.”
The ominous reputation of the Bass Strait goes back to its very discovery in 1797, when the vessel Sydney Cove, one of the first ships to ever visit the east coast of Australia, wrecked on Preservation Island while delivering goods from Calcutta to Port Jackson. A salvage operation was launched to collect the ship and the handful of survivors who were castaways on the island, and one of these rescuers, the ship Eliza vanished off the face of the earth. The salvage operation led to the discovery of the Bass Strait, collected the first scientifically studied specimen of a wombat, and cemented early the strait’s reputation for disappearing ships. Over the ensuing decades the area would become notorious for ships just disappearing into thin air, and the 19th century had many notable instances of this through the 1800s, such as the British warship HMS Sappho, which vanished with 100 people aboard and left behind not a scrap of wreckage, as well the vessel Harlech Castle, and many, many others. Indeed, the strait became so notorious for ships going missing that few dared to make the north to south journey until Melbourne was established in 1835, and even then at least seven major vessels vanished without a trace travelling to the new port in rapid succession between the years of 1838 to 1840, their wrecks and crews never found. This was perhaps most likely due to poor sea conditions, hidden dangers such as reefs and the rocky coast, all compounded by inadequate charts, but it is still a high concentration of vanishing vessels compared to other areas at the time, and rumors were already brewing that this was an unlucky, possibly even cursed, treacherous place of mystery.
The early 1900s would see ships continue to disappear in the strait at a good rate, such as the coal ship SS Federal in 1901, the German cargo ship SS Ferdinand Fischer in 1906, and numerous other smaller vessels. In 1920 one of the more notable ship vanishings would occur here, with the disappearance of the schooner SS Amelia J, which went missing soon after entering the strait. During the ensuing major search and rescue effort launched by the military, another vessel in the operation, the SS Southern Cross would also vanish, as would a military Airco DH.9 aircraft. Oddly, some crew members involved with the search aboard the HMAS Swordsman would report having seen strange lights in the sky during the search operation.
It was not only ships that would vanish here, as in addition to the disappearance of the Airco DH.9 there were other major aircraft vanishings in the Bass Strait. In 1934 the airlinerMiss Hobartflew off the face of the earth with 11 people on board during a routine flight in perfect flying conditions and despite the fact that it was at the time a new, state-of-the-art Havilland DH86 aircraft. Not even a scrap of it was ever found, and making it all eerier was that the plane’s final transmission is the pilots explaining that the plane was surrounded by an unusual buzzing sound before contact was lost. Just one year later, in 1935 another airliner, the aircraftLoina went missing under very bizarre circumstances. In this case, theLoinawas actually making its final approach into Hobart with two pilots and three passengers aboard, but the plane’s radio communications suddenly went silent for no discernible reason right after the pilot informed of their approach and the plane disappeared. Wreckage of theLoinawould be found with a piece of floor holding an intense scorch mark just a few centimeters across, although what this means is anyone’s guess. None of the bodies of any of the five people aboard were ever found.
It was around this time that the strait became associated with a good amount of UFO activity, with strange things frequently reported from the skies here. Indeed, throughout World War II there were accounts of pilots encountering UFOs, such as one pilot who claimed to have been followed by a large bronze disc, another who was followed by a large dark shadow, and many others. These strange sightings may or may not have something to do with the large number of military planes that went missing over these waters during the war, but they disappeared at a good clip. At least 17 military aircraft were lost here while on training flights out of airbases such as RAAF Base East Sale near Sale, Victoria, with wreckage never being found in most cases. Is it just coincidence that this was going on during so much UFO activity? It is hard to say, but UFOs definitely feature in arguably the most famous disappearance associated with the Bass Strait.
Probably the most well-known and bizarre of any of the cases here is that of Frederick Valentich, who on October 28, 1978 departed on a training flight over the Bass Strait in Australia aboard a Cessna 182 Skylane light aircraft, on his way to King’s Island. During the flight, Valentich radioed Melbourne air traffic control to tell them that he was having engine troubles and that he was being followed by what first appeared to be some sort of large aircraft with four bright lights on it about 1,000 feet above him. He was then told that there were no other aircraft scheduled to be in that area at the time, nor were any showing up on radar, but Valentich insisted that he was witnessing one and that it was moving at very high speeds and getting closer, seemingly toying with him as it made several passes overhead. Valentich would say:
Delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne, it seems like it’s chasing me. What I’m doing right now is orbiting and the thing is just orbiting on top of me also. It’s got a green light and is sort of metallic like, it’s all shiny on the outside.
Frederick Valentich
When he was asked what model of plane it was Valentich couldn’t really determine it, not even if it was a civilian aircraft or a military one. All he was able to make out was that it had a “long shape,” that it was metallic and had lights, and that it was incredibly fast and maneuverable. At one point the strange craft then seemingly vanished, and Valentich complained that his engine was rough-idling. The mysterious aircraft then apparently appeared again out of nowhere, and Valentich made his last spooky transmission, the transcript of which follows:
My intentions are – ah – to go to King Island – ah – Melbourne. That strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again (open microphone for two seconds). It is hovering and (open microphone for one second) it’s not an aircraft.
The microphone is then left open for a full 17 seconds, during which time a strange, metallic scraping sound can be heard before the transmission goes dead. An air and sea search was launched soon after the incident, which covered 1,000 square miles without finding any trace of either Valentich or his plane and their fate remains a mystery to this day. It is especially odd, as flying conditions at the time were considered ideal, and Valentich had had enough fuel left to cover a further 800 kilometers. Considering the bizarre and baffling circumstances surrounding Valentich’s vanishing and the incredibly odd last radio exchange with air traffic control, the case has gone on to become almost legendary, with all manner of debate and theories flying about it.
On the more rational end of the spectrum we have the idea that Valentich simply got disoriented, and that the object he saw was merely the lights of his own plane reflected upon the water as he flew upside down before crashing. After all, he was not a particularly experienced pilot, with only about 150 total hours’ flying time under his belt and he had failed to get a commercial pilot’s license on several occasions, but this theory has been disputed due to the fact that flying conditions at the time were so perfectly clear. This has led to the theory that he committed suicide and intentionally crashed his plane into the sea, but there is no evidence of this, and even if he did want to kill himself why come up with the whole elaborate story he gave air traffic control? Some have suggested that Valentich staged his own disappearance, and this was all the according to his plan. This is somewhat supported by the fact that Valentich’s aircraft was never once actually picked up on radar, meaning he might not have even been where he said he was.
There is also of course the theory that Valentich really did encounter a UFO out there and that it had a role to play in the disappearance. Indeed, at around the time of the vanishing there had supposedly been a rash of UFO sightings in the area, and there were several eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen a UFO with a bright green light in the same area and at around the same time as Valentich’s strange incident. One of the weirdest claims made along these lines is that a man named Roy Manifold managed to capture a picture of a strange object in the sky with what looks like an exhaust trail as he was photographing the sunset off the coast with a time lapse camera just 20 minutes before the incident. Manifold claims that he did not notice the object until after the pictures had been developed and whatever it is appears to be moving fast. His son, Jason, would later claim to have been outside shortly after the picture was taken and heard the sound of a Cessna engine but seen nothing at all in the clear sky, after which the sound abruptly ceased “as if someone had turned a radio off.”
What is going on here? Whatever the case may be, neither Valentich nor his plane have ever been seen again and there has never been an explanation for the eerier metallic scraping noise heard before that final transmission ended. The case has been the subject of countless articles, books, and intense discussions, and we seem to be no closer to really knowing what happened. What happened to Frederick Valentich? Did he crash? Did he disappear on purpose or commit suicide? Was he abducted by aliens? We may never really know for sure. This all incidentally coincided with an intense wave of UFO sightings going on over the Bass Strait, along the coasts of Tasmania and Victoria in 1978 and 1979. People all over the place were reporting unexplained phenomena at a good rate, including a couple of motorists being trailed by a bright light hovering right over the road, a taxi driver forced to stop by a luminous green ball directly in front of him, and a local woman who spotted a “doorway of light” in her yard. Interestingly, in the following year, in December of 1979 a yacht called the Charleston was sailing through the strait along with five people aboard on its way to Sydney. It never arrived, and a complete search of the region turned up nothing of the ship or its crew and they remain missing.
What is is about this stretch of water that draws so many mysteries to it? Is this just the unpredictable sea and weather conditions conspiring against us, with the string currents carrying the remains away? Or is there something more at work? Could the good amount of UFO phenomena reported from here have some connection? There have been lots of ideas thrown around on why there have been so many ships and planes that have blinked out of existence in the Bass Strait, including pirates, portals, magnetic anomalies, ley lines, aliens, interdimensional phenomena, or a mixture of all of the above. We may never know, and the Bass Strait holds its mysteries close.
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NASA’s MAVEN Observes Martian Night Sky Pulsing in Ultraviolet Light
NASA’s MAVEN Observes Martian Night Sky Pulsing in Ultraviolet Light
Vast areas of the Martian night sky pulse in ultraviolet light, according to images from NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft. The results are being used to illuminate complex circulation patterns in the Martian atmosphere.
Mars’ nightside atmosphere glows and pulsates in this data animation from MAVEN spacecraft observations. Green-to-white false color shows the enhanced brightenings on Mars’ ultraviolet “nightglow" measured by MAVEN’s Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph at about 70 kilometers (approximately 40 miles) altitude. A simulated view of the Mars globe is added digitally for context, with ice caps visible at the poles. Three nightglow brightenings occur over one Mars rotation, the first much brighter than the other two. All three brightenings occur shortly after sunset, appearing on the left of this view of the night side of the planet. The pulsations are caused by downwards winds which enhance the chemical reaction creating nitric oxide which causes the glow. Months of data were averaged to identify these patterns, indicating they repeat nightly. Credits: NASA/MAVEN/Goddard Space Flight Center/CU/LASP
The MAVEN team was surprised to find that the atmosphere pulsed exactly three times per night, and only during Mars’ spring and fall. The new data also revealed unexpected waves and spirals over the winter poles, while also confirming the Mars Express spacecraft results that this nightglow was brightest over the winter polar regions.
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This is an image of the ultraviolet “nightglow” in the Martian atmosphere. Green and white false colors represent the intensity of ultraviolet light, with white being the brightest. The nightglow was measured at about 70 kilometers (approximately 40 miles) altitude by the Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph instrument on NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft. A simulated view of the Mars globe is added digitally for context. The image shows an intense brightening in Mars’ nightside atmosphere. The brightenings occur regularly after sunset on Martian evenings during fall and winter seasons, and fade by midnight. The brightening is caused by increased downwards winds which enhance the chemical reaction creating nitric oxide which causes the glow. Credits: NASA/MAVEN/Goddard Space Flight Center/CU/LASP
“MAVEN’s images offer our first global insights into atmospheric motions in Mars’ middle atmosphere, a critical region where air currents carry gases between the lowest and highest layers,” said Nick Schneider of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), Boulder, Colorado. The brightenings occur where vertical winds carry gases down to regions of higher density, speeding up the chemical reactions that create nitric oxide and power the ultraviolet glow. Schneider is instrument lead for the MAVEN Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument that made these observations, and lead author of apaper on this researchappearing August 6 in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Space Physics. Ultraviolet light is invisible to the human eye but detectable by specialized instruments.
The diagram explains the cause of Mars’ glowing nightside atmosphere. On Mars’ dayside, molecules are torn apart by energetic solar photons. Global circulation patterns carry the atomic fragments to the nightside, where downward winds increase the reaction rate for the atoms to reform molecules. The downwards winds occur near the poles at some seasons and in the equatorial regions at others. The new molecules hold extra energy which they emit as ultraviolet light. Credits: NASA/MAVEN/Goddard Space Flight Center/CU/LASP
“The ultraviolet glow comes mostly from an altitude of about 70 kilometers (approximately 40 miles), with the brightest spot about a thousand kilometers (approximately 600 miles) across, and is as bright in the ultraviolet as Earth’s northern lights,” said Zac Milby, also of LASP. “Unfortunately, the composition of Mars’ atmosphere means that these bright spots emit no light at visible wavelengths that would allow them to be seen by future Mars astronauts. Too bad: the bright patches would intensify overhead every night after sunset, and drift across the sky at 300 kilometers per hour (about 180 miles per hour).”
The pulsations reveal the importance of planet-encircling waves in the Mars atmosphere. The number of waves and their speed indicates that Mars’ middle atmosphere is influenced by the daily pattern of solar heating and disturbances from the topography of Mars’ huge volcanic mountains. These pulsating spots are the clearest evidence that the middle atmosphere waves match those known to dominate the layers above and below.
“MAVEN’s main discoveries of atmosphere loss and climate change show the importance of these vast circulation patterns that transport atmospheric gases around the globe and from the surface to the edge of space.” said Sonal Jain, also of LASP.
This is an image of the ultraviolet “nightglow” in the Martian atmosphere over the south pole. Green and white false colors represent the intensity of ultraviolet light, with white being the brightest. The nightglow was measured at about 70 kilometers (approximately 40 miles) altitude by the Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph instrument on NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft. A simulated view of the Mars globe is added digitally for context, and the faint white area in the center of the image is the polar ice cap. The image shows an unexpectedly bright glowing spiral in Mars’ nightside atmosphere. The cause of the spiral pattern is unknown. Credits: NASA/MAVEN/Goddard Space Flight Center/CU/LASP
Next, the team plans to look at nightglow “sideways”, instead of down from above, using data taken by IUVS looking just above the edge of the planet. This new perspective will be used to understand the vertical winds and seasonal changes even more accurately.
The Martian nightglow was first observed by the SPICAM instrument on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft. However, IUVS is a next-generation instrument better able to repeatedly map out the nightside glow, finding patterns and periodic behaviors. Many planets including Earth have nightglow, but MAVEN is the first mission to collect so many images of another planet’s nightglow.
The research was funded by the MAVEN mission. MAVEN's principal investigator is based at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, and NASA Goddard manages the MAVEN project. NASA is exploring our Solar System and beyond, uncovering worlds, stars, and cosmic mysteries near and far with our powerful fleet of space and ground-based missions.
NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission (or MAVEN) has been studying Mars since it was launched into space in 2013 and new images taken by the spacecraft reveals a stunning green “nightglow” on the planet.
In a statement released by NASA, Nick Schneider, who is a professor of astrophysical and planetary sciences at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) in Boulder, Colorado, as well as the lead author of the study, said, “MAVEN’s images offer our first global insights into atmospheric motions in Mars’ middle atmosphere, a critical region where air currents carry gases between the lowest and highest layers.”
The atmosphere on Mars pulses three times every night during the spring and fall. Additionally, the data collected by MAVEN revealed that waves and spirals occurred over the winter polar regions. And that’s not all; it also found that the ultraviolet “nightglow” was at its brightest over the cold poles.
Earth has spectacular auroras.
Mars’ bright green glow occurs when winds bring the gases down to the dense portion of the atmosphere and a reaction occurs that causes the nitric oxide to create the glow. However, it is only seen through ultraviolet light even though it is as bright as the northern lights here on Earth. This is disappointing news for future astronauts who may visit the Red Planet as they wouldn’t be able to witness the beautiful green auroras on Mars.
Additionally, the experts found that heat from the sun and the volcanic activity on the Red Planet affect the speed and number of waves in the atmosphere. “MAVEN’s main discoveries of atmosphere loss and climate change show the importance of these vast circulation patterns that transport atmospheric gases around the globe and from the surface to the edge of space,” explained Sonal Jain who is a research associate at LASP and another author of the study.
There are still many questions that need to be answered in regards to the atmosphere on Mars. Schneider said it best when he told CU Boulder Today, “The behavior of the Martian atmosphere is every bit as complicated and insightful as that of Earth’s atmosphere.” Zac Milby, who is a research assistant at LASP and another author of the study, weighed in by saying, “If we’re going to send people to Mars, we better understand what’s going on in the atmosphere.”
The pulsing green ultraviolet light in Mars’ atmosphere is absolutely breathtaking and the pictures as well as a video can be seen here.
Auroras on Earth seen from space.
This isn’t the first time that we’ve heard about green glows on Mars. I reported back in June of this year that the glows on Mars had been observed for the first time ever on a planet other than Earth. This beautiful phenomenon was captured by the Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery (NOMAD) instrument which was on the European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). The equipment has a special Ultraviolet and Visible Spectrometer (UVIS) that studied the atmosphere on Mars between April and December of 2019.
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When temperatures warm up here on Earth, our glaciers melt but it’s having the opposite effect on those found on Pluto. Of course, while our glaciers are made up of mostly snow and ice, the ones situated on Pluto contain methane and nitrogen.
According to a new research study, when the temperatures change on the dwarf planet, glaciers may expand and grow. The methane and nitrogen glaciers were noticed in 2015 when NASA’s New Horizons probe flew by the planet. And based on the images captured by the spacecraft, scientists were able to determine that the methane and nitrogen grains moved around when the temperatures on the planet heated up, potentially causing the glaciers to grow and expand.
Surface of Pluto taken by the New Horizons spacecraft.
It’s hard to believe that a planet that’s located 4.67 billion miles from Earth would have warmer seasons, but it is a true fact. It’s so far away from us that it takes Pluto 248 Earth years to complete a full orbit around the sun. Its “warmer” season is still more than minus 350 degrees as Pluto has a surface temperature that varies from minus 418 to minus 364 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 250 to minus 220 Celsius) between the seasons so it’s still extremely cold on the best of days.
Helen Maynard-Casely, who is a planetary scientist at the Bragg Institute, ANSTO and the lead author of the study, explained in a statement, “In the warmer seasons of Pluto, still about -220 C, both the methane and nitrogen molecules are freely rotating in the solids — the molecules are not bound together very well,” adding, “Studies of the mechanical properties of these materials at very low temperatures are really challenging, so we are missing useful information for the unusual conditions on the outer planetary bodies.”
The research team recreated conditions on the dwarf planet by using Wombat which is a high-intensity neutron diffractometer that’s situated in the OPAL Neutron Guide Hall at the Australian Center for Neutron Scattering. They studied how the molecules reacted to different temperatures and what they found was quite surprising.
Pluto
According to Maynard-Casely, nitrogen has two crystal structures based on the temperatures on Pluto. “The nitrogen story is really interesting because the molecules have the ability to cool into an ordered structure, which is the alpha nitrogen phase and at this point there is a big volume drop … Whereas at a slightly higher temperature, around 44 Kelvin [minus 380.47 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 229.15 Celsius], the nitrogen molecules are freely rotating in a plastic state.”
It’s incredible to think that anything can move around in such extreme temperatures but the methane and nitrogen glaciers on Pluto seem to prove that point.
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Anonymous: UFO Disclosure! "You Need to Hear This" - August 2020 Great Video
Anonymous: UFO Disclosure! "You Need to Hear This" - August 2020 Great Video
Extraterrestrial life is hypothetical life which may occur outside of Earth and which did not originate on Earth. Such life might range from simple prokaryotes to beings with civilizations far more advanced than humanity. The Drake equation speculates about the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
Unidentified flying object is the popular term for any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft.
Just 100 years ago, the nature of the Milky Way — and the universe itself — was still a matter of debate. On April 26, 1920, astronomer Harlow Shapley claimed our galaxy was the entire universe. Astronomer Heber Curtis countered that the blurry star clusters seen with a telescope were “island universes,” separate from, but analogous to, the Milky Way.
The Nibiru Movie ~ The Secret Origins Of Our World. Marduk and Tiamat War. Great Video.
The Nibiru Movie ~ The Secret Origins Of Our World. Marduk and Tiamat War. Great Video.
The Nibiru Movie ~ The Secret Origins Of Our World. Great Video.
Welcome to The Nibiru Movie! This is a special edition of The Sumerian Epic which combines the first 3 Episodes into an hour and a half long movie, with an additional 7 minutes of never before seen bonus footage scattered throughout the feature! The film at its core opens the floodgates of questions regarding the mysterious yet popular “conspiracy theory” of Nibiru, the supposed hidden planet that lurks in the farthest reaches of our outer solar system. It was nearly 50 years ago that the theory of Nibiru first reached the masses through Zechariah Sitchin’s first book “The Twelfth Planet”, which sought to explain that the oldest texts on the planet, the Cuneiform tablets of Sumer, were actually a series of encoded legends describing the origins of our solar system.
The Hidden Enemies Revealed on This World Stage
By Dr. Luke Prophet
Many of you have read books by an author named Zecharia Sitchin. He wrote about the Anunnaki and their planet which he called Nibiru. Sitchin was a total fraud and a tool for the Vatican, but several of the Anunnaki characters in his books are also mentioned in the King James Bible namely Anu, Enki, Enlil, and Marduk. Some of you who have read Sitchin’s books are waiting for the next arrival to earth of what they claim to be these benevolent extra-terrestrials. Nothing can be further from the truth.
The Anunnaki are not benevolent. They are extremely evil with the intention of causing mankind’s extinction. They are not extra-terrestrial or inter-dimension but rather they are part of the host of heaven who rebelled when they found out the first creation of man, referred to as 144,000 saints (Revelation 7:4) or those created for honorable use (Romans 9:21) were to rule over them. For those people watching for Nibiru to come to earth with the Anunnaki, I have some news for you. The Anunnaki are already here on earth and have never left the earth. Earth is a prison colony. Psalm 83:3-5 is a dual prophecy that in our day is telling us to beware of those in leadership positions in all countries (See also Jude 1:4 and Jeremiah 10:11)
I believe the Vatican wanted people to believe this lie to set people up for the alien deception as part of Project Bluebeam. After the Rapture occurs, the “Devil and Satan” will cause two delusions to fool the population. After the assassination of Trump and Pence and the Rapture, Trump and Pence will return in a spacecraft bringing with them many famous individuals who had previously died. The Anunnaki will claim to be the ones that created humankind. They will say that they have been responsible for those removed in the Rapture from earth as they would not have been willing to enter the next stage of man’s development, namely becoming gods themselves through connecting the brain through Neuralink to the Internet. This concept of man becoming gods is called Gnosticism and is a great lie. One of the fallen Watchers, Gadreel according to the book of Enoch, deceived Eve in the garden by telling her if she listened to what he said, she would become like a god. (Genesis 3:4) As all evil is back on earth today, Gadreel is back trying to deceive humankind once again. In Jeremiah 10:11 the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob tells us the future of the Anunnaki.
Thus you shall say to them, “The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens.” (Jeremiah 10:11)
The earth has a veil or firmament over it installed by the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob. Nothing can enter the earth’s atmosphere and nothing can escape. The Anunnaki are immortal. They do die like humans but unfortunately they always return through transmigration. The saints are also immortal through transmigration. Both the Anunnaki and the saints have always been with us, one group representing evil, and the other good.
That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So, there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9 NASB 77)
What has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9 The Berean Study Bible)
Using the gematria calculator on gematrix.org so you can follow along, I am matching the bible verse to the underlying meaning of the bible verse. We reduce the Gematria numbers to a single digit and if you get a match of three final numbers or witnesss of Holy Gematria, then we are confident that we have found a match.
What has been will be again
= 2174 or 74+21 or 95 or 9+5 = 14 or 7
= 1206 or 10+20+6 = 36 or 6
= 201 or 20+1 = 21 or 7
The Saints and Anunnaki transmigrate
= 1372 or 72-13 = 59 or 5+9 = 14 or 7
= 2184 or 2+1+8+4 = 15 or 1+5 = 6
= 364 or 64-3 = 61 or 6+1 = 7
The Saints and Anunnaki have transmigrated to earth and are immortal so they come back in human form all the time.
In 1933 we almost had a fascist coup d’état in America backed by bankers and wealthy businessmen led by J.P. Morgan against President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This coup was squelched by retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler. No one was arrested or jailed.
Thirty years later, in 1963 President John Kennedy was assassinated in another coup ’état orchestrated by rogue elements of the CIA and the Vatican with the main purpose of getting America deeply involved in the Vietnam civil war.
It is now fifty-seven years later and we are extremely close to experiencing another fascist coup ’état led by the same people as in 1963,namely the Bush family. The Bush families are Khazarian Zionists and George HW Bush and Menachem Schneerson were responsible for the introduction of the seven contrived Noahide laws passed by congress under the guise of “Education Day USA” on March 20, 1991 which also happens to be Schneerson’s birthday. I do not believe in coincidences. George HW Bush is not dead and is very much alive and living in Israel.
Prior to the Second World War, it was decided that the Zionist Khazars (those who say they are Jews but are not, but are of the Synagogue of Satan Rev. 3:9) would be in charge of the New World Order with a one world global government under the United Nations; a one world digital currency controlled by the Rothschild’s; and a one world Catholic Universal religion based on the Babylonian Talmud. Catholic means universal and it is a satanic religion as they worship Lucifer and idols. Enemies of this one world universal religion and fascist dictatorship will be the true Christian Israelites who follow Mosaic Law and do not adhere to the Talmud which Jeremiah 8:8 tells us was written by the lying pen of the Pharisee scribes. The true Israelite Christians base their faith on the word of God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob and not the interpretation of man. Catholics are not Christians as they follow man (a pope) rather than the word, and ordinances of God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob and the teachings of Jesus.
Flower Of Life Full Documentary Sacred Geometry And The 144,000 Bondservants Created As The Saints In Revelation 7. God Of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, The Creator Of All In All Is The Ultimate Mathematician! Great Video.
The Human History Movie. Great Video Showing How The Nephilim Came To Lemuria On Earth After Destroying Mars And Then Destroyed Lemuria. Only A Remnant Of Hebrews (The White Race) Survived. This Remnant Are The 144,000 Mentioned In Revelation 7 & 14 From The First Creation In Genesis 1. Great Video.
The Moon Has Serious UFO Traffic - Amazing Video Evidence
The Moon Has Serious UFO Traffic - Amazing Video Evidence
Live footage of several UFOs flying above the moon’s surface and of what looks like a massive explosion that appears under a UFO, after seeing a lit object descend to the moon. It looks like a war is going on up there but that is theoretical.
What if the UFOs Bruceseesall caught were actually missiles or bombs being launched on the moon like the similarities of war here on Earth.
A very revealing secret that nobody knows about what is going on…on the moon? We really get a glimpse at the activity on the lunar surface?
There is no proof from any association that his work is real and I want you to decide that for yourself after watching his video.
Understand to see this you must take a screenshot of the area of the map, add contrast, light and sharpening.
I found a huge black structure that is 45 miles or 72km across according to the NASA rule at the bottom of the map. Screenshot below shows the ruler. Near the black structure is a landed ship. The ship too is huge, about 30 miles or 48 km long. Way to big to park close to this structure, so its understandable to dock it further away. Remarkable structures indeed and it shows that aliens can make such huge structures because of their long lifetimes. Some don't die except from accidents...so they are very careful. They order some drones and robots to create a robot factory and then to mine, smelt the metals and create the structure, time is of no importance...and literally it could take hundreds or even thousands of years to finish. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
UFO Hidden In Cloud Over Sweden Came From Baltic Sea, Sept 2018. Photos, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Hidden In Cloud Over Sweden Came From Baltic Sea, Sept 2018. Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Sept 6, 2018 Location of sighting: NYKÖPING SWEDEN Source: Email report This email report was sent to me this week, but took place two years ago, however if we ignore the past, we are doomed to repeat it. So today it is shared with all. Here is another great example of a UFO hiding within a cloud. Now the UFO actually creates the cloud around it and it also controls the thickness and shape of the cloud so it wont dissipate or disappear. UFOs frequently cause violent changes in the weather. It must be flying low because it came from an underwater base in the ocean and was moving off to a new location. The city of NYKOPING is only 15km from the ocean...the Baltic Sea...a sea infamous for its UFO sightings. Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states:
I was working in my garden and suddenly observed this unusual cloud formation. A neighbor came over to me and together we looked at this phenomenon. It was shaped like a huge disc and remained for about an hour. Other clouds passed over, below and behind the cloud. Eventually the cloud dissolved and was gone. We looked at each other in amazement because of the massive size and estimated it to be approximately 1.5 to 2 kilometers in diameter. I wish it would happen again because it was an outstanding event.
Five Entrances To Alien Base Below South Carolina, Google Earth, UFO Sighting News.
Five Entrances To Alien Base Below South Carolina, Google Earth, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: Aug 9, 2020 Location of discovery: South Carolina, USA
I was using Google Earth map and found five entrances to an underground base in South Carolina. The location is just 50km away from the ocean so the underground base may extend out into the open sea and allow the UFOs to exit over there instead. However these old exits/entrances are still visible so they were obviously used a lot. The five islands are at a perfect 45 degree angle on the map according to the US geological service. The five ovals have a center oval that is largest and smaller and then smaller again as it goes outside. They are lined up parallel to each other. All this should be statistically impossible and yet...there it is. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
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UFO Traffic On The Moon
UFO Traffic On The Moon
Live footage of several UFOs flying above the moon's surface and of what looks like a massive explosion that appears under a UFO, after seeing a lit object descend to the moon. It looks like a war is going on up there but that is theoretical.
What if the UFOs Bruceseesall caught were actually missiles or bombs being launched on the moon like the similarities of war here on Earth.
A very revealing secret that nobody knows about what is going on...on the moon? We really get a glimpse at the activity on the lunar surface?
There is no proof from any association that his work is real and I want you to decide that for yourself after watching his video.
Everything we know about UFOS has changed. Now, the all-star team that got the U.S Navy to admit UFOs are real launches a new season of investigations aided by a fresh wave of exclusive, military eyewitnesses. These veterans testify to an extraordinary series of encounters between U.S. Military and UFOs dating to the Vietnam War. The team attempts to connect the dots. Are these the same unidentified craft shown in declassified U.S. Navy videos and have they been shadowing American forces for decades?
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for the latest UFO videos & photos.
What the End of the Universe Will Really Be Like, According to a Theoretical Cosmologist
What the End of the Universe Will Really Be Like, According to a Theoretical Cosmologist
“Just months before the end, after we’ve lost the outer planets to the great and growing blackness, the Earth drifts away from the Sun, and the Moon from the Earth. We too enter the darkness, alone.”
Apocalyptic visions have always percolated in humanity’s collective imagination, whether it’s the Rapture, Ragnarök, or a future asteroid impact like the one that killed the dinosaurs. In recent decades, however, scientists have managed to establish some rough parameters around the ultimate Doomsday: the death of the universe itself.
Katie Mack, a theoretical cosmologist at North Carolina State University, explores these terminal diagnoses for the cosmos in her new bookThe End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), which packs a huge amount of scientific research into forecasting the eventual fate of our universe.
“It doesn’t end well,” she warned in a call.
Before you scribble “end of universe” onto the list of things keeping you up at night, take comfort in the fact that the really bad stuff will happen in the far-future of the cosmos, at least tens of billions of years from now. You will be long dead, as will Earth and the Sun. The senescent universe will be a time and place totally alien from our own surroundings, far more fantastical than any the feverish apocalyptic visions of myth or fiction.
“I get asked a lot: How do you deal with thinking about these big topics, like ultimate destruction? How does it affect your outlook?” Mack said. “I think all you can do is go to the absurd in the sense that there’s no way to conceptualize this stuff with daily experience.”
“It’s like the universe is laughing at this idea that we can have an orderly and safe environment in which to live,” she added. “It very much upends our notion of stability in our world. I don’t know how to respond to that other than just laughing at it, because it’s not personal.”
We asked Mack to unpack a few of the juiciest apocalyptic scenarios in The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), which is out from Scribner on Tuesday.
Heat Death: When time ceases to matter
The universe will most likely perish in a state of total disorder known as Heat Death, when the direction of time as we experience it ceases to matter and just about anything may be possible, according to cosmologists.
In this scenario, space just keeps expanding until galaxies fall apart, all the stars burn out, and even atoms decay and disintegrate. At this point, the universe will have reached a point of maximum entropy, or disorder, rendering the “arrow of time”—the difference between the past and the future—meaningless.
“Time still happens, but you have lost the directionality in some sense,” Mack explained. “It’s based on the fact that the way we define past and future, from a strictly physics perspective, is that the only thing we know about that really cares about the difference between past and the future is the second law of thermodynamics, which is entropy.”
“If you can get to a point where entropy is maximized, where you can’t create more entropy, then it’s hard to say that time is really meaningful in a global sense anymore,” she said.
Needless to say, some trippy stuff could end up happening in a universe that has maxed out on entropy and faded into a vast and eternal bath of thermodynamic equilibrium. For instance, Mack describes the Boltzmann Brain problem, which involves “disembodied sentient brains popping in and out of existence,” according to the book. This, and anything else—a whale materializing next to a bowl of petunias, or a piano assembling itself from nothing—becomes increasingly likely in such a scenario.
Such wild imaginings stem from the sheer slowness of the Heat Death, a decay that could take a googol (10 to the power of 100) years to really get rolling. Those huge timescales boost the odds of totally bizarre random events occasionally happening in a fizzled-out cosmos—including, potentially, the birth of a new universe.
“The nice thing about the Heat Death is that you have a lot of time,” Mack said. “If you want to make sure that you get a lot done in your universe before it goes out on you, then maybe the Heat Death is the best option.”
The Big Rip: When gravity breaks and the Earth explodes
The Heat Death is the probable outcome of the accelerated expansion of the universe, but cosmic expansion may also lead to a less likely, yet far more violent, end of everything: the Big Rip.
In this scenario, objects in the universe don’t drift apart and decay into maximum entropy. Instead, a point is reached at which the expansion of the universe ultimately tears apart the fabric of spacetime itself, like a cloth sheet that splits when stretched, causing the force of gravity to lose its trademark grip.
In a chilling section of the book, Mack describes exactly what this fate would look like to us on Earth if it was approaching in the near-future. “Our night sky begins to darken,” she writes, “as the great Milky Way swath across the sky fades. The galaxy is evaporating.”
“We begin to find that the orbits of the planets are not what they should be, but are instead slowly spiraling outward,” she continues. “Just months before the end, after we’ve lost the outer planets to the great and growing blackness, the Earth drifts away from the Sun, and the Moon from the Earth. We too enter the darkness, alone.”
It sounds lonely, I know, but take heart: we would only have to bear this isolation for a few hours before the Earth blows up.
The explosion of Earth due to shredded spacetime certainly makes for a cinematically exciting scene. But if we are fated for a Big Rip, it is not likely to happen for about 200 billion years. That’s a lot sooner than the standard Heat Death scenario, but it is well beyond the lifespan of our solar system, Earth, and (probably) humanity.
That said, there may well be alien civilizations in the future, or perhaps descendants of our own species, that could have to face this horrifying reality. “I think it’s entirely possible that there could be life still around on those timescales,” Mack said.
If there are still sentient beings at that point, and the Big Rip does come to pass, all we can do right now is offer our sincere condolences to them from the distant past.
Vacuum Decay: A sudden end
Heat Death would kill the universe slowly and softly, while the Big Rip is a much swifter assassin. But if you’re looking for the fastest end to existence, Vacuum Decay is the cosmic Doomsday for you.
“I have a special place in my heart for Vacuum Decay,” Mack said. “Partly, because it’s just so out of left field and such a bizarre possibility that has only really been very seriously talked about in the last few years.”
“But also because it’s quick and painless and you don’t notice it,” she added. “So that’s nice.”
This outcome is a bit of a dark horse, though its profile has been raised thanks to the recent discovery of the Higgs boson particle by the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. One of the implications of this breakthrough is that our reality may not be all that fundamentally stable in ways that could have rather abrupt consequences for life, the universe, and everything.
The universe could be a “true vacuum,” which means that objects in it are always able to find their lowest energy state, creating some level of cosmic stability. However, the Higgs field appears to be “metastable,” which raises the possibility that the universe may be a false vacuum.
Theoretically, this means that if the Higgs particle were to sense a true vacuum, it would be attracted to that environment. This is very bad for us, because it would trigger the spontaneous destruction of the universe in what Mack calls “a bubble of quantum death.”
Unlike the creeping dread of the Heat Death or the Big Rip, the Vacuum Decay apocalypse would kill us all in a snap. The death bubble would simply expand its borders at the speed of light, incinerating everything in its path with ruthless efficiency.
“In terms of the aesthetics of it, or the practical implications of what actually happens to you, maybe vacuum decay is a nicer option,” compared to the Heat Death or the Big Rip, Mack said.
In principle, Vacuum Decay could happen at any time, but cosmologists think it is far more likely to happen tens of billions of years into the future, similar to the other end-times scenarios. We will need to keep pushing the boundaries of particle physics and cosmology in order to develop the idea, but it’s not considered a probable end to the universe at this time.
“It’s just a super fun thing to work on because the implications are so big,” Mack said. “We can learn a lot about our cosmos by assuming that it could happen.”
*****
The universe will likely continue to exist for several hundred billion years to come. But thinking about its ultimate end seems particularly resonant in 2020, a year that has taken on its own identity of apocalyptic mayhem.
It’s understandable to be exhausted by the horrors of the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic devastation it has wrought, or by the rapid onset of climate change with its myriad disasters, or by the threat of authoritarian leaders and brutal state violence.
Reading about the ultimate death of the universe may not assuage those fears, but it will immerse you in the astonishing weirdness of our wider surroundings, and remind you of the ingenuity of scientists who have spent centuries trying to read the cosmic tea leaves.
“There is a kind of luxury about being able to think about things that are disconnected from you and not just everyday survival,” Mack said. “It’s real and it’s destructive and everything is torn apart, but maybe that’s a way to displace some of the feelings of angst and desperation that you might have in daily life.”
‘Exotic’ lightning crackles across Jupiter’s cloud tops
‘Exotic’ lightning crackles across Jupiter’s cloud tops
The flashes of light could form thanks to ammonia antifreeze
Wispy, white “pop-up” clouds on Jupiter, seen in this enhanced image from NASA’s Juno spacecraft, could mark spots where ice crystals are thrown upward by raging storms below. Those ice crystals could then help form newfound lightning in Jupiter’s cloud tops.
GERALD EICHSTÄDT, SEAN DORAN, MSSS, SWRI, JPL-CALTECH/NASA (CC BY-NC-SA)
Small, frequent lightning storms zip across Jupiter’s cloud tops. NASA’s Juno spacecraft spotted the flashes for the first time, scientists report August 5 in Nature.
“It’s a very exotic thing that doesn’t exist on Earth,” says physicist Heidi Becker of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Previous spacecraft have revealed high-energy “superbolts” on Jupiter. That lightning originates 50 to 65 kilometers below Jupiter’s cloud tops, where liquid water droplets form. Scientists think superbolts form like lightning on Earth does: Colliding ice crystals and water droplets charge each other up, then stretch the charge between them when they separate (SN: 6/25/20).
Juno, which arrived at Jupiter in 2016, got much closer to the giant planet’s cloud tops than previous missions. Becker and her team turned the spacecraft’s navigation camera — which normally observes stars to track Juno’s position — on Jupiter’s nightside in February 2018. To the team’s surprise, the clouds crackled with electricity.
Newly observed lightning showed up as bright dots (indicated with arrows) on Jupiter’s nightside, seen in this composite image from one of Juno’s cameras. The insets are pixelated representations of the events’ brightness (yellow is more bright; blue is less bright).H.N. BECKER ET AL/NATURE 2020
Superbolts are up to 100,000 times as strong as these small flashes. But the cloud-top lightning is 10 times as frequent. Strangely, the smaller bolts appeared to come from just 18 kilometers below the cloud tops, where it’s too cold for liquid water to exist alone.
Shallow lightning must have a different origin than the deeper lightning, Becker says. Perhaps ammonia in the upper cloud decks acts as antifreeze, creating droplets of ammonia and water combined. Juno has also seen evidence that violent storms in deeper cloud layers sometimes toss ice crystals high above where they’re normally found. When those crystals collide with the ammonia-water droplets, they may charge up and create lightning, Becker and her colleagues reason.
Similar small lightning storms may happen on other planets, including exoplanets, Becker says (SN: 5/13/16). “Every time you have a new realization, it feeds into new theories that will be developed not only for our solar system but for other solar systems.”
‘The End of Everything’ explores the ways the universe could perish
‘The End of Everything’ explores the ways the universe could perish
A new book looks at the Big Crunch, the Big Rip and more terrifying scenarios
If the universe culminates in a Big Rip, galaxies, stars, planets and spacetime itself would be torn apart, as illustrated here. That’s just one of several possible end times discussed in The End of Everything.
Eventually, the universe will end. And it won’t be pretty.
The universe is expanding at an accelerating clip, and that evolution, physicists expect, will lead the cosmos to a conclusion. Scientists don’t know quite what that end will look like, but they have plenty of ideas. In The End of Everything, theoretical astrophysicist Katie Mack provides a tour of the admittedly bleak possibilities. But far from being depressing, Mack’s account mixes a sense of reverence for the wonders of physics with an irreverent sense of humor and a disarming dose of candor.
Some potential finales are violent: If the universe’s expansion were to reverse, the cosmos collapsing inward in a Big Crunch, extremely energetic swells of radiation would ignite the surfaces of stars, exploding them. Another version of the end is quieter but no less terrifying: The universe’s expansion could continue forever. That end, Mack writes, “like immortality, only sounds good until you really think about it.” Endless expansion would beget a state known as “heat death” — a barren universe that has reached a uniform temperature throughout (SN: 10/2/09). Stars will have burned out, and black holes will have evaporated until no organized structures exist. Nothing meaningful will happen anymore because energy can no longer flow from one place to another. In such a universe, time ceases to have meaning.
Perhaps more merciful than the purgatory of heat death is the possibility of a Big Rip, in which the universe’s expansion accelerates faster and faster, until stars and planets are torn apart, molecules are shredded and the very fabric of space is ripped apart.
These potential endings are all many billions of years into the future — or perhaps much further off. But there’s also the possibility that the universe could end abruptly at any moment. That demise would not be a result of expansion or contraction, but due to a phenomenon called vacuum decay. If the universe turns out to be fundamentally unstable, a tiny bubble of the cosmos could convert to a more stable state. Then, the edge of that bubble would expand across the cosmos at the speed of light, obliterating anything in its path with no warning. In a passage a bit reminiscent of a Kurt Vonnegut story, Mack writes, “Maybe it’s for the best that you don’t see it coming.”
Already known for her engaging Twitter personality, public lectures and popular science writing, Mack has well-honed scientific communication chops. Her evocative writing about some of the most violent processes in the universe, mixed with her obvious glee at the unfathomable grandness of it all, should both satisfy longtime physics fans and inspire younger generations of physicists.
Reading Mack’s prose feels like learning physics from a brilliant, quirky friend. The book is sprinkled with plenty of informal quips: “I’m not going to sugarcoat this. The universe is frickin’ weird.” Readers will find themselves good-naturedly rolling their eyes at some of the goofy footnotes and nerdy pop-culture references. At the same time, the book delves deep into gritty physics details, thoroughly explaining important concepts like the cosmic microwave background — the oldest light in the universe — and tackling esoteric topics in theoretical physics. Throughout, Mack does an excellent job of recognizing where points of confusion might trip up a reader and offers clarity instead.
Mack continues a long-standing tradition of playfulness among physicists. That’s how we got stuck with somewhat cheesy names for certain fundamental particles, such as “charm” and “strange” quarks, for example. But she also brings an emotional openness that is uncommon among scientists. Sometimes this is conveyed by declarations in all caps about how amazing the universe is. But other times, it comes when Mack makes herself vulnerable by leveling with the reader about how unnerving this topic is: “I’m trying not to get hung up on it … the end of this great experiment of existence. It’s the journey, I repeat to myself. It’s the journey.”
Yes, this is a dark subject. Yes, the universe will end, and everything that has ever happened, from the tiniest of human kindnesses to the grandest of cosmic explosions, will one day be erased from the record. Mack struggles with what the inevitable demise of everything means for humankind. By contemplating the end times, we can refine our understanding of the universe, but we can’t change its fate.
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A new image of the planet-forming disk around the young star RU Lup reveals a beautiful and unexpected massive spiral of gas, reminiscent of a spiral galaxy.
In a surprising discovery, the ALMA telescope in Chile captured this image of a massive spiral of gas surrounding the planet-forming disk of the young star RU Lup.
Image via ALMA (ESO/ NAOJ/ NRAO)/ J. Huang/ AUI/ NSF/ S. Dagnello.
Planets form in orbit around stars, in great spinning wheels of dust and gas. In recent decades, scientists have acquired images of these protoplanetary disks, and for the most part the disks look quite similar to each other, with discernible gaps in them planets are forming. Now new observations of one such disk, around the young star RU Lup, show that some protoplanetary disks are more complex and chaotic than first thought. Astronomers announced on August 3, 2020, that the disk surrounding RU Lup isn’t only larger than previously known, but also has a distinctly spiral shape, not unlike a spiral galaxy.
The new observations, by scientists at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA), were made using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, and the peer-reviewed results were published in The Astrophysical Journal on the same day.
RU Lup is located in our sky in the direction of the constellation Lupus. The star is estimated to be about 400 light-years from Earth. ALMA had taken high-resolution images of the RU Lup disk before, but the new ones focused more on the gas in the disk instead of the dust. They revealed not only the originally seen protoplanetary disk with its gaps where planets are forming, but also a much larger, encompassing, more complex structure that looked like a mini-galaxy with spiral arms.
The spiral structure around RU Lup extends to nearly 1,000 astronomical units (AU) from the star – that is, 1,000 Earth-sun units of distance – much farther than the star’s dust disk, which extends to about 60 AU. Jane Huang of CfA, lead author of the new paper, said:
We discovered a complex set of spiral arms in carbon monoxide (CO) emission extending to nearly 1,000 astronomical units from the young star RU Lup, which has previously been found to exhibit signs of ongoing planet formation via concentric dust gaps in its protoplanetary disk. The CO emission reveals complex structures in the planet-formation environment that are invisible in dust observations alone.
ALMA image of the galaxy-like spiral formation of gas around the protoplanetary disk of the young star RU Lup. The inset shows a previous observation of the central dust disk.
Image via ALMA (ESO/ NAOJ/ NRAO)/ J. Huang/ S. Andrews/ AUI/ NSF/ S. Dagnello.
Previous observations with ALMA had already shown evidence of planetary formation in this disk. Huang said:
But we also noticed some faint carbon monoxide (CO) gas structures that extended beyond the disk. That’s why we decided to observe the disk around the star again, this time focusing on the gas instead of the dust.
Protoplanetary disks can look very organized, with neat, regular rings of dust surrounding a star. Unusual stellar brightness variations had been seen at RU Lup before, however, and were not yet explained. Huang said:
The planet-forming environment can be much more complex and chaotic than implied by the numerous, well-known images of concentric ringed protoplanetary disks mapped in millimeter continuum emission.
The fact that we observed this spiral structure in the gas after a deep observation suggests that we have likely not seen the full diversity and complexity of planet-forming environments. We may have missed much of the gas structures in other disks.
Protoplanetary disks are known to contain much more gas than dust, but seeing this gas around RU Lup in such a massive spiral formation was surprising.
The star RU Lup is located in the constellation Lupus.
Image via IAU/ Sky & Telescope/ NRAO/ AUI/ NSF/ S. Dagnello.
As usually happens, the new observations raise more questions than they provide answers. How did these huge spiral arms form? Huang’s team suggests that the disk may be collapsing under its own gravity due to its significant mass, or it may be accreting interstellar matter through environmental interactions. But neither of those are a simple answer, according to Sean Andrews, CfA astrophysicist and co-author on the paper:
None of these scenarios completely explain what we have observed. There might be unknown processes happening during planet formation that we have not yet accounted for in our models. We will only learn what they are if we find other disks out there that look like RU Lup.
Huang commented that a broader approach to studying “planet factories” – that is, stars with protoplanetary disks – might be needed:
The RU Lup results show that some important information about the disk structure can only be identified through mapping the molecular emission. These results indicate that it will be important going forward to invest as much time in surveying molecular emission as has been invested in surveying dust emission.
The process of planet formation seemed fairly straightforward when images of protoplanetary disks showed nice orderly disks of concentric rings around the stars, with the planets forming in the gaps. But the new observations of RU Lup indicate that view is too simplistic.
A spiral galaxy, NGC 1232, as seen on September 21, 1998, by ESO. Interestingly, in the early 20th century, some astronomers believed that the spiral-shaped objects seen through their telescopes – called spiral nebulae at the time – were indeed forming solar systems.
There are many other spiraling forms in nature as well, including snail shells, flower petals, pine cones, snakes, storms, DNA and curly hair. Here’s a great collection of photos on Pinterest of spirals in nature, for you to browse.
Spirals are common in nature. The spiraling Fibonacci sequence can be easily seen at the hearts of sunflowers.
Russo-Chinese outer space and lunar cooperation fits the national and strategic interests of both Moscow and Beijing, says international affairs and security analyst Mark Sleboda, who sheds light on the hidden strings in Washington's bold moon programme Artemis.
Russia's State Corporation for Space Activities (Roscosmos) envisions launching a manned flight to the Moon by 2030, according the agency's chief, Dmitriy Rogozin, who recently named China as the most likely partner for Russia to create a brand new base on the Earth's natural satellite.
The US, which has been developing its own ambitious Artemis project, is eyeing the unfolding Sino-Russian lunar collaboration with skepticism and apparent displeasure: "Rogozin would prefer that Russia join with China as a space partner. For a variety of reasons, the move would seem to be crazy from the point of view of Russia’s national interests", The Hill claimed on 19 July. Earlier, on 5 May, Reuters reported that despite longstanding Russo-American cooperation on the ISS, the Artemis Accords do not include Russia "as an early partner".
Washington's Artemis Accords & 'Privatisation' of Space
"The US has a nasty habit of declaring what other countries' national interests 'should be', that suspiciously always dovetail with their own", remarks Mark Sleboda, a US military veteran and international affairs and security analyst. "Sino-Russian cooperation in space is natural, logical, and extremely beneficial to Russia's national interests".
The Hill's op-ed came on the heels of Rogozin dubbing the Artemis endeavour "more of a political project for the US".
"With the lunar project, we are seeing our US partners move away from the principles of cooperation and mutual support that have developed with cooperation on the International Space Station", the Roscosmos chief told Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda on 15 July. "They see their program not as international but as similar to NATO. Here is the US, and the rest 'must assist it and pay to it'. We are not very interested in participating in such a project".
The NASA-led Artemis programme was initially kicked off by the Trump administration in 2017 with the goal of landing "the first woman and the next man" on the Moon by 2024 as well as commercial lunar mining. To this end the Trump administration drafted an international agreement providing the participants with the "rights" for exploration of the natural satellite's resources.
"The so-called 'Artemis Accords', which would have served as a fig leaf of 'legal justification" for the Artemis program, present a greater potential danger to the future of humanity in space if they are picked up by future US presidential administrations", Sleboda opines. "Whatever the rhetorical protestations to the contrary, the [accords] clearly lay a blueprint for territorial claims on the Moon under the auspices of 'safety zones' and 'exploration rights'".
The agreement paves the way for de facto "colonization" and "privatization" of the natural resources of the moon which contradicts the spirit of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (of which the US is a signatory), he warns.
Still, according to Sleboda, the Artemis programme itself "is yet another one of those grandiose Trumpian plans, much like his 'Wall', with little to no chance of success, in no small part due to partisan political warfare inside the halls of Washington and financial restraints".
To fund its great moon adventure the White House would have to slash the budgets of numerous existing Democrat-supported programs including STEM education and climate change monitoring.
"Congressional Democrats have responded in kind by freezing NASA spending in the 2021 budget and earmarked just a fraction of the funding, reportedly just $628 million of the requested and needed $3.4 billion spending, for Artemis in its first year", the analyst notes.
Volunteers smile from inside a simulated space cabin in which they temporarily live as a part of the scientistic Lunar Palace 365 Project, at Beihang University in Beijing, China July 9, 2017.
Why Russia and China are Natural Allies in Space
While the US-Russian lunar collaboration is still under deliberation, "there is every potential for Sino-Russian cooperation in space to be both very successful and very beneficial to both countries", according to Sleboda.
"Russia and China currently are at the highest level of relations and cooperation that they have historically enjoyed - politically, geopolitically, economically, and in scientific-technical areas", he observes.
In addition to continuous cooperation with the US, EU and other countries in the sphere of space research, Russia embarked on outer space collaboration with the People's Republic three years ago. In 2017, Moscow and Beijing signed a milestone agreement envisaging lunar and deep space exploration, satellites and their applications, earth remote sensing and space debris research – to name just a few areas – from 2018 to 2022.
"In terms of space research and exploration, Russia and China complement each other very well", Sleboda deems:
· on the one hand, "Russia has a long history of space achievements, experience, space technology, and technical expertise";
· on the other hand, China, which is "a relative new-comer to space with a still-developing space industry and institutions", has "a surfeit of political will and capital to invest in such ventures".
In addition to giving a boost to the countries' technological and economic development, the Russo-Chinese space collaboration could counter the US attempts to isolate the People's Republic and upend its high-tech rise outlined in Xi Jinping's “Made in China 2025” (MIC25) strategy.
"The scientific-technical cooperation of Russia and China in space research and development will undoubtedly have spin-offs, applications, and uses and pay dividends in other spheres - more generally economically and militarily. The two are thus stronger together, technologically as well", Sleboda stresses.
Russian Moon base plans
How Washington Facilitates Sino-Russian Rapprochement
The countries' mutual rapprochement is not surprising: the US decision to tear apart longstanding arms control deals, as well as trade restrictions, sanctions policy and multi-dimensional pressure exerted on both Beijing and Moscow is driving the two closer to each other, according to the analyst.
"The US now believes fully in the perpetuation of the unipolar world of primacy that developed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union", the US military veteran highlights. "It is the US that has unilaterally initiated decoupling with Russia on both arms control and space cooperation, thus sparking a new intertwined arms Race and space Race. Russia needed a new partner for both security and scientific cooperation. China was the obvious choice".
However, what is more troubling is Washington's incentive to "militarise" the cosmos by creating the US Space Force (USSF), the new warfare service branch of the US Armed Forces, as well as the development of anti-satellite weapons, according to the analyst. While announcing the establishment of the new Pentagon unit in June 2018, Donald Trump specifically underlined the need to "have American dominance in space".
"What happens on Earth will increasingly be spread to and continued in space", Sleboda warns. "Military thinkers conceive of space, and the Moon more locally, as the ultimate strategic high ground. The militarisation of space has already been underway for almost two decades".
The security analyst foresees that if current geopolitical trends continue, "then it is almost certain that a 'race' for the Moon, Mars, the asteroid belt, and beyond will develop between US-led Western hegemony and a Sino-Russian alliance in space in the coming decades".
Sitting within a small hilltop village in the Languedoc region of southern France is the quaint village of Rennes-le-Château. It is typical of the charming scenery and quiet villages of the area, and there might normally be nothing to make it stand out from many others like it, but this location has become ground zero for a good amount of conspiracy theories and mystery. In the late 19th century there would begin here a mysterious tale that has gone on to inspire numerous books and movies and to put this little village on the map, encompassing strange figures, secrets, and the allure of lost, forbidden treasure.
The story revolves around a Catholic priest by the name of Father François-Bérenger Saunière, who in the late 19th century was posted at the village as the curé of the tiny church of St. Mary Magdalene. At only 33 years of age, Saunière was young, industrious, and perhaps a bit too charming for his own good, supposedly making the rounds with some of the village women despite his priestly vows, and he had also raised controversy for preaching anti-republican sermons during the French elections of 1885, but this was to be the least of the rumors surrounding this enigmatic man. At the time Saunière first arrived in Rennes-le-Château the place was a backwater town of poor peasants. The church was decrepit and run down, with broken windows, cracked, peeling walls, a leaky roof, and grounds that were feral and weed infested, and Saunier himself was far from wealthy. Indeed, he was living a life of poverty much like others in the village. He received next to no salary from the church, he was known to be fairly deep in debt by the time he arrived here, and he lived with one of his parishioners on a tiny hovel near the church grounds out of necessity. It was enough that Saunière knew something had to be done, and he began a major push to collect donations in order to renovate the dilapidated church.
The church began to take on to take a more respectable visage as the efforts went on little by little, but at some point Saunière suddenly began to splurge great amounts of money on a major push for refurbishment. The entire church was refloored, walls were replaced and new pillars and alters were installed, and a sculptor by the name of Giscard of Toulouse was commissioned to adorn the church with numerous statues and grand paintings at great expense. The amounts he was suddenly spending on construction, redecorating and renovations were far beyond what would have been expected from mere donations and handouts from the poverty-stricken villagers, and he also bought large tracts of land, had a sprawling estate, made for his residence, the Villa Bethania, complete with a pool and private zoo, and had several new structures built on the property, such as the grand tower called the Tour Magdala.
It all seemed to come from absolutely nowhere, and rumors were soon doing the rounds that shortly before this newfound splurging he had been seen digging around in the graveyards and countryside at night by the flickering light of a candle as if looking for something. Before long there were whispered rumors that the priest had found some sort of treasure map within the walls of the church, and that he had stumbled across vast amount of wealth hidden somewhere in the surrounding wilds. After all, how else could he have suddenly gained such vast sums of money in such a short amount of time?
At the time, Saunière’s sudden, prodigious spending and wealth did not go unnoticed by the church. In their mind the only possible explanation was that the priest was engaging in the illegal practice of selling masses. According to church doctrine, a priest was allowed to give three masses a day for which they were granted permission to receive a small fee for requested prayers for the dead, but the church came to the conclusion that for him to have made so much money, Saunière had likely been performing thousands of illicit masses for money, many of which he had probably received money for but never actually carried out. He was sent several warnings by the church to cease this behavior immediately, but Saunière ignored them, as well as a request that he be reappointed in a new area. So strongly did he feel against moving from his beloved Rennes-le-Château that he resigned and became an independent, unpaid free priest.
Indeed, Saunière did very little to cooperate with the Church’s investigation into his alleged illegal activities. He refused to show up for hearings and was very evasive with his bookkeeping and records on his spending, leading to a series of suspensions from the church, and through it all he denied that he had ever trafficked in masses. Indeed, Saunière would never divulge how he had received his wealth, and took the secret to his grave with him in 1917, when he died penniless, oddly enough. The only who is said to have known the truth behind his previous riches was his maidservant, Marie Dénarnaud, who promised she would tell the secret before she died, but she was struck with a sudden cerebral hemorrhage in 1953 that left her paralyzed and unable to speak, ensuring that she too took it to the grave. And so in the void of actual answers the conspiracies, mysteries, and speculation have swirled around the mysterious wealth for decades.
One of the most popular ideas came into the picture in 1946, with a tale spun by restaurant owner Noël Corbu, who purchased the estate from Dénarnaud. Corbu claimed that during church renovations Saunière had come across parchments in the hollow pillar beneath his altar that were connected to the legendary treasure of Blanche of Castile, the 13th century Queen of France by marriage to Louis VIII, and who is said to have amassed a treasure of 28,500,000 gold pieces that she hid away somewhere in Rennes-le-Château. This idea is that the priest found a map to this treasure, and although it was almost certainly completely made up by Corbu, the theory would gain a lot of popularity in the press, and it would bring in treasure hunters from all over the world, as Corbu claimed that most of the treasure was still hidden out there.
His story went on to inspire the 1967 book L’Or de Rennes, by Gérard de Sède. This book would present all of this as historical fact, and even produce actual copies of the alleged parchment, which were found to be forgeries that had been planted in the National Library of France. Nevertheless, the book would go on to in turn serve as the inspiration for the 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which speculated that Saunière had been part of the group the Priory of Sion, and had made his money by blackmailing the Vatican after discovering that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene had been married, and had produced offspring that eventually became the Merovingian Dynasty. Elements of this would go on to influence Dan Brown’s smash bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code in 2003, which the character Jacques Saunière even named after the priest. Other ideas are that Saunière found a treasure left by the Knights Templar or the Cathars, and even that he had found the actual Holy Grail along with the loot.
There have been countless other books, movies, and articles along these lines, but despite how romantic the idea of secret societies and lost treasure is, the most likely probability is that it was just how the Church thought; that Saunière was a swindling mass trafficker. There is no evidence he ever found some vast stash of treasure, and it is widely believed that he was not above cajoling people out of their money and that he did on occasion indeed sell prayers, even allegedly buying a directory of clergymen in 1899, supposedly so that he could contact other priests all over the country for his scam. The only problem is that detractors from this argument point out that a prayer would typically sell for just one franc a piece, and considering the exorbitant amount of money he was blowing, it is seen as impossible that he could have raised all of it just by selling masses. Still, considering Saunière’s purported charm, he could have supplemented this with other scams and tricks, along with perhaps even looting the graves of the dead, so maybe what we are looking at here is just a very good conman. So was he just an ace at fooling and swindling people, or did Saunière manage to find some sort of mysterious lost treasure? The debate rages on, and does not seem to be going away any time soon.
In May of this year Lisa Hagan Books published my book, The Rendlesham Forest UFO Conspiracy. It’s a book that totally discards a UFO angle for the famous December 1980 case. Instead, it looks at matters from the angle of what I call, in concise terms, a “secret experiment.” Part of the story revolves around aclassified program designed to utilize and control ball-lightning in the sky – as a means to make the witnesses to the aerial activity believe they were seeing UFOs. They were actually seeing nothing of the sort. There were no UFOs: the whole thing was a test to see how the human mind could be deceived and manipulated. There’s another part of the story, however – one that I will share with you today. Months before the book was published, there was an incredible development in the overall story. It was a very welcome, but also mysterious, development that suggested not only was I on the right track; but, that I had sympathetic insiders who wanted the full, unexpurgated story out for everyone to see – finally. Before we get to that development, however, we need to see how the high-strangeness began and where things are at now.
There is a distinct probability that none other than the late Brad Steiger knew something of this secret project concerning ball-lightning. Steiger, who passed away in 2018 at the age of eighty-two, wrote more than 160 books. It is, however, just one of those many books that we need to focus our attention on. It is World of the Weird. It was published by Belmont Books. The book – an old paperback that I had never heard of before this 2020 development occurred – contains a chapter titled “The Mystery of Lightning Balls.” As can be deduced from the title of that chapter, it’s a study of ball-lightning. Before we get to my role in this latest development, I’ll give you some background material on Steiger’s book.
In World of the Weird, Steiger cited the words of Professor Harold W. Lewis, a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin, who said: “Any normal, cynical scientist, on hearing of ball-lightning for the first time, almost instinctively places it in the category of folklore, along with flying saucers and ectoplasm. A brief survey of reported events, however, quickly convinces the skeptic that enough reputable observers have seen and possibly even photographed ball-lightning to leave no doubt that the phenomenon is real, although it is rare and as yet unexplained.” It wasn’t so much the mystery surrounding ball-lightning that intrigued Steiger. Rather, it was the potential military application of ball-lightning as a weapon. This gets to the very heart of the operation described in my book. Steiger’s book was published in 1966, having been written one year earlier, 1965. That was the very same time – we now know, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act – in which the ball-lightning program quietly began in earnest.
Steiger wrote: “Recent reports of lightning balls have spurred scientists, who before simply had no use for such rare phenomena, to become very curious as to how they can reproduce such a bundle of electricity in their laboratories. The new investigations have probably not taken place only in this country. Certain information indicates that the Soviet Union is just as curious about the production and control of this phenomenon as the U.S. is.” Steiger got to the heart of the situation: “Such a concentrated ball of energy, if harnessed, could be put to hundreds of military as well as civilian uses. As a weapon, it would be awesome. It could not be shot down by a presently available firepower, and its concentrated heat could penetrate any normal armor.” It scarcely needs stating that Steiger’s words practically mirror the words contained in the secret 1965 report. Did Steiger somehow have access to the report? Did he have an insider source who helped him to expose the story? While the chances of answering those questions are slim, there is another – equally intriguing – development in all of this. It ties in with my very own research into this field. And, it brings a degree of conspiracy and inside-information into the mysterious story.
It wasn’t until September 2019 that I finally decided – with the 40th anniversary of the Rendlesham events coming at the end of 2020 – to go ahead and write my book on Rendlesham. At the time, the only people who knew of the project were me and my literary agent, Lisa Hagan – who has been my agent for more than fifteen years. That’s it: no-one else at all. When I told Lisa of the idea for the book, she was highly enthused. A deal was made, a contract was drawn up, and the wheels began to turn, which included interviewing Ray Boeche. He is a UFO researcher who, in the early 1980s, did a lot of probing into the Rendlesham Forest case. Boeche became the third person to know about the planned book. My editor, Beth Wareham, was next to learn of the project. And, that was it. No-one else knew about the book until the day it was published and placed on Amazon, etc. We were, then, just a “Gang of four,” to shamelessly hijack the name of a post-punk band of the late 1970s.
Eleven days into the writing, something very weird happened: a package was dropped off on my doorstep. I say “dropped off” because it clearly didn’t come through the usual sources, such as FedEx, UPS or the Post Office. It was a manila envelope that was covered in scotch-tape – in fact, there was way more tape than was needed. My name was written on the front of the envelope with a black-marker. As for my name, it didn’t just say “Nick Redfern.”” Rather, it said: “Nick D. Redfern.” Not many know that I have a middle name. It’s David. But, whoever sent the package to me evidently did know. Maybe, it was done to let me know that someone knew more about me than most did. Who knows? The weirdness – and what I deduced to be strange mind-games – didn’t end there, however. I opened the envelope to find inside a first edition copy of Brad Steiger’s World of the Weird. It was when I read the Steiger book then in my hands, I realized that someone wanted me to know more of the military-based ball-lightning issue of my research – and that I was working on at that very same time.
I realized that the book had been sent to me with a specific purpose. But, who was the sender? I had zero chance of figuring out the answer to that question. In fact, there was no sender’s address on the envelope at all. There were no stamps on it, either. I could only conclude that someone, at an undetermined time between around midnight and 1:00 a.m. the night before – which is usually around the time I go to bed – and approximately 8:00 a.m. the next morning, when I got up, had deliberately dropped the envelope outside the door of my second-floor apartment. Did I have my very own “Deep Throat?”” One who, in a very odd way, tried his or her best to tell me exactly what I needed to know? Was someone trying to help me make a solid case for what happened in Rendlesham Forest? I think that’s precisely what happened. Someone had been keeping an eye on me. And they still want the complete story of what happened in Rendesham Forest in December 1980 to be blown wide open.
NOTE:
all related videos, selected and posted by peter2011
Pole Shift: Ancient Suppressed Texts Offer Evidence for a Lost Civilization via Earth Cycle of Destruction
Pole Shift: Ancient Suppressed Texts Offer Evidence for a Lost Civilization via Earth Cycle of Destruction
COAST TO COAST AM – After the great cataclysm, knowledge of past civilizations such as Atlantis was lost (Atlantis was destroyed in stages by a combination of rising sea levels and volcanic activity, he cited). Ancient megalithic sites like Gobekli Tepe have been dated as far back as 11,600 years old, and the pharaonic dynasties inherited the pyramids from a far earlier culture, he said. Some of the ancient structures have vitrification or scarring– damage from extreme heat.
“It seems that our Earth goes through…cycles of destruction” in which dangerous solar outbursts lead to cataclysmic events like earthquakes, tsunamis, and pole shifts, he commented. LaCroix also theorized that we live in a multiverse in which many versions of reality are layered on top of each other, and our consciousness can shift between them.
This glowing UFO shot past a security cam this week in La Pampa, Argentina. The object was moving horizontal to the ground and showing no sign of falling. When alien ships enter our atmosphere, they may be semi visible at times so they try to make themselves appear as a meteor...but meteors fall, they are affected by earths gravity and they fall, but UFOs are not governed by such rules. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Inexplicata states:
The event took place at 23:15 hours. A strange luminous body in the sky was recorded by security cameras in the neighboring locality of Arata. Judging from the images, this would be some sort of unidentified body re-entering the atmosphere, enveloped in flames. The image was seen by a police officer who was on duty at the time, and further corroborated by a camera located at the corner of Alsina and Italia streets in the neighboring locality of Arata.
Above and below screenshots had shadows added, then turned to negative format...revealing not only the alien ship, but the two massive propulsion systems shooting out green waves.
This week a low flying UFO hiding within a cloud was seen over London. The disk shaped cloud kept its form perfectly and was noticed during sunset when the setting sun highlighted its disk like features. Its well known among UFO researchers that UFOs can not only create clouds to hide in...but they can also contain these clouds...to hold it in place...like a glass jar holding smoke. Sounds strange, but that kind of technology is not far away and is much easier to obtain than full out cloaking technology.
It was probably over London to scan how the people are emotionally dealing with the covid-19 rules. Humans do not do well around new rules and often find new rules to be stifling and suffocating. Thus, how humans deal with the stress, uncomfortableness and irritation of Covid interests aliens highly.
Do Aliens use an ancient “control mechanism" to manipulate physical and cognitive environments?
Do Aliens use an ancient “control mechanism" to manipulate physical and cognitive environments?
In June, investigative reporter Tim McMillan told The Basement Office host Steven Greenstreet a source inside the intel/aerospace world claimed UFOs "weren’t flying saucers, they weren’t tic tacs...they were something that possessed the ability to make your mind see what makes sense to you."
Two years earlier, a leaked slide from the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP, suggested the phenomenon can "manipulate both physical and cognitive environments in order to penetrate U.S. facilities, influence decision makers, and compromise national security."
Tom DeLonge, whose To The Stars Academy is working with AATIP veterans, recently suggested they may represent a disturbing and ancient “control mechanism." Something Jacques Vallée has hypothesized in the past.
Could all of this be related? Might UFOs — the flaming castles of the 1700s, 1897 phantom airships, and more modern saucers and tic tacs — present themselves differently depending on the time period? And do the goals of the phenomenon change over time?
Or... might humankind unknowingly be driving these changes in UFO appearances?
Watch the video for a comprehensive look yet at what's arguably the most unsettling explanation for the phenomenon.
Post Malone Reveals He Has Witnessed Aliens and UFOs Multiple Times
Post Malone Reveals He Has Witnessed Aliens and UFOs Multiple Times
Several individuals have experienced unusual and strange instances in their lives; events that can’t be easily explained or proven to be otherworldly.
However, rapper Post Malone seems to be quite sure about having experienced various alien sightings, opening up about his bizarre visitors on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
The 25-year old celebrity first encountered a UFO in upstate New York when he was just 16 years old. Unusual as it was in anyone’s life, for the singer, songwriter, rapper, and record producer, it wasn’t to be the last.
According to Malone, his aunt and uncle were very strict, and they had to go to bed at a stringent deadline at around 10 pm. He was looking out the window with his cousin, and it was just a light that stayed there and then mysterious went off.
Malone admitted that the memory was “medium,” but he was sure there was something there. He then went on to assert that he has seen various events of alien activity in the years since that evening, in Utah and Southern California.
He cited one instance wherein he saw a dome in a circular shape in Tarzana and claimed that around four other people also witnessed it too.
An RAF veteran has claimed photographs show a mysterious UFOafter he used computer analysis to get a closer look.
Former Senior Aircraftman Jason Gleaves believes the images “suggest the object is manoeuvring under intelligent control” when it was snapped in Italy in 1998.
The Gulf War serviceman turned UFO investigator said digitally enhancing the snaps revealed it is either an alien spaceship or a top-secret spy plane.
He said: “In my opinion the object has defined structure and features with no protrusions – tail, fin or wings – or any propulsion system, tailpipes, in any conventional aviation terms.
“I do believe the UFO is at the location in the photographs as reported.
The photos were shared by RAF veteran Jason Gleaves
“It doesn’t resemble any known aircraft in use at the time, military or civilian, but the use of secret covert technology cannot be ruled out.”
The set of 12 photos were taken in Paderno del Grappa by mechanic Edy Guadagnini.
Mr Gleaves, of Chester, who has written books about UFOs, served in the RAF for 10 years until 1996.
He took part in Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, the Bosnian and Afghan wars and is one of the last carpenters trained by the force.
The 50-year-old photo expert, has been fascinated with flying saucers and ghosts since a close encounter when he was seven.
He said: “I do believe that intelligent extraterrestrial life has visited the Earth and had interactions or contact with humans for a very long time.”
New research at NASA developed a new prediction for the shape of the heliosphere, the magnetic bubble encasing our Solar System. But their result is not at all similar to the comet-like shape we’ve envisioned so far — in fact, it’s more of a “deflated croissant”, the agency reports.
An updated model of the heliosphere (seen in yellow). Credits: Opher, et al. / NASA.
Outer space may be void, but it’s not completely empty. Magnetic fields and ionized gases permeate the galactic stretches between stars, and this substance is called the interstellar medium. It’s pushed back by the solar system’s magnetic ‘shield’, the heliosphere, just like Earth is protected from solar radiation by its own magnetic field. Using new data obtained from NASA’s crafts, the agency has developed a new model to describe the shape of this heliosphere.
Pastry-like shield
The shape of the heliosphere has been a point of interest of researchers for quite some time now. Traditionally, it is believed to have a comet-like shape with a long tail and a rounded leading edge (the ‘nose’). We believed it to be shaped in this fashion due to the Solar System zipping around through space.
However, researchers are now proposing an alternate model — the deflated croissant.
The shape of this heliosphere is very difficult to measure from within (where we are). For starters, it’s much too large for our sensors to be able to pick it up: its edge is around ten billion miles from Earth, according to NASA. Our only sources of direct data regarding it come from the two Voyager spacecraft that are well on their way to deep space.
We do, however, study this structure indirectly by capturing charged particles incoming to Earth from distant parts of the galaxy (cosmic rays). Alongside radiation formed by the Sun, these bounce back from the heliosphere, changing their physical properties in the process — and by studying them we can infer data about the heliosphere. In essence, we use this radiation the way a radar uses radio waves. This process is the one used by NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX.
The latest iteration of the heliosphere model produced by NASA draws on data from the Voyager spacecrafts, the Cassini mission (to Jupiter), and the New Horizons mission (to Jupiter and Pluto). Using data from several points of the solar system allowed them to sample different types of particles.
Artist’s recreation of how the heliosphere blocks out cosmic rays (bright streaks in the image). Image credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Conceptual Image Lab.
“There are two fluids mixed together. You have one component that is very cold and one component that is much hotter, the pick-up ions,” said Merav Opher, a professor of astronomy at Boston University, director of the DRIVE Science Center at Boston University focused on the challenge, and lead author of the new research.
“If you have some cold fluid and hot fluid, and you put them in space, they won’t mix — they will evolve mostly separately. What we did was separate these two components of the solar wind and model the resulting 3D shape of the heliosphere.”
Modeling the behavior of these particles separately allowed the team to estimate the shape of the heliosphere. The end result was a “deflated croissant” shape, with a central body and two jets that trail chaotically behind it.
“Because the pick-up ions dominate the thermodynamics, everything is very spherical. But because they leave the system very quickly beyond the termination shock, the whole heliosphere deflates,” said Opher.
The shape of the heliosphere is of great academic interest, but its activity is a boon for us all. It blocks about 75% of incoming cosmic rays, which would otherwise make their way into the solar system. While our planet is protected by a magnetic field and an atmosphere, astronauts and spacecraft are not.
This shield then, despite being shaped like a disappointing pastry, may be the only thing that allowed us to ever get off the planet and into space without being deep-fried by radiation in the process.
By knowing more about the heliosphere, we can also better estimate which alien planets are candidates for life.
The Anunanki are considered by many as the “founding fathers” of civilization and mankind, the cradle of civilization is considered to be in Sumer. Some archaeologists even suggest that the anunnaki have a very important history with south America and the Pre-Inca and Inca civilization. (Remember the Fuente Magna Bowl?) Modern-day archaeology does not agree with these theories even though there is plenty of evidence. Newly found discoveries such as the pyramid that has been located buried underneath Tiahuanaco provides new theories regarding this ancient culture. These new theories, together with the sum of research for over a hundred years provides new insight into the connection between the Anunnaki Gods and South American deities.
Lake Titicaca has a very special place in all of this. In the past, over two thousand archaeological pieces have been rescued from the depths of Lake Titicaca. Most of the pieces were recovered by Belgian underwater archaeologists with the support of the Andean Underwater Archaeology Centre (CASA), yet archaeology today, seems to ignore these findings as if they hold no importance.
The incredible artifacts recovered among their collection include bones, statues, golden pieces, precious stones and ceramics. The extensive history of these artifacts holds a great importance as some of the pieces have been dated to the Inca period, others to the pre-Inca period and a few artifacts have even been dated to the year 500 AD.
According to historians and archaeologists, several of the pieces that have been recovered are actually offerings that the ancient inhabitants of the Tiahuanaco culture threw into Lake Titicaca, which in ancient times was considered a sacred lake. Among these “speculations”, ancient alien theorists believe that there are very important clues that have been overlooked by mainstream archaeologists, clues that point toward a very powerful link between the ancient cultures of the region and the Ancient Anunnaki. The golden artifacts hold a very important clue, and the thirty pieces of gold discovered at the bottom of Lake Titicaca point toward the ancient alien theory and Zecharia Sitchin.
According toSitchin, around 4000 BC, Enki, one of the leaders of the mining operations of theAnunnaki on Earth, decided to invite his father, King Anu to visit the world’s most important metallurgical plant, Tiahuanaco. According to several ancient alien theorists, among themSithcin, the structures at Tiahuanaco were covered with golden plates, this in honor of the arrival of King Anu. Evidence for this theory is based on the findings of Austrian archaeologist Arthur Posnansky who found and photographed several small holes in the polished stone blocks Tiahuanaco, these holes, are believed to have been made by advanced precision tools.
Posnansky doesn’t sound familiar? Well, that’s because mainstream archaeology has placed him as being only an “amateur archaeologists” even though his findings and work at Tiahuanaco and south America have achievements that are incalculable for history. Posnansky founded the Archaeological Society of Bolivia in 1930. Even though Tiahuanaco hasn’t been the place where great amounts of gold have been found, researchers believe that most of the golden items are hidden below the harsh terrain of the region and at the depths of Lake Titicaca where pieces of gold have already been discovered.
According Posnansky, at some point in its history, the incredible city of Tiahuanaco was covered with golden plates which were fastened with small gold studs that fit perfectly into the holes in the stone. Posnansky suggested that these precisely drilled holes were not placed there for decorative purposes but rather had a mechanical meaning. Recent discoveries seem to back the ancient alien they more than ever, and researchers expect that with the new excavations that are planned for mid 2015, new evidence will surface, meaning that mainstream archaeologists will have to change their approach on Tiahuanaco and its ancient history.
The mysteries about Tiahuanaco and Lake Titicaca are great, and with new discoveries being made in recent months, archaeologists hope to uncover all the secrets this mysterious region holds.
Both from afar and up close, Mars looks like a desolate world that glows in bright red due to the iron-rich dust that covers the planet. However, were it to be terraformed, Mars may very well look like blue marble, similar to Earth.
In a fantastic exercise of imagination and design, a Nepal-based civil engineer mapped out Mars as it might have looked like if 71% of its surface was covered in water.
Surface map of Mars covered in water. Credit: Aaditya Raj Bhattarai.
The visualizations generated by Aaditya Raj Bhattarai are part of his bachelor thesis at Tribhuwan University in Nepal, which immediately rose to fame after he shared them on the MapPorn subreddit. They show two distinct landmasses or continents, one dominated by the 20-km-tall Olympus Mons (the largest volcano in the solar system), the other more covered in flatlands, including planes like Terra Sabaea.
“I am [a] big fan of Elon [Musk] and SpaceX and their plan to put man on Mars, and I hope I could help in his cause,” Bhattarai told Inverse. “This is a part of my side project where I calculate the volume of water required to make life on Mars sustainable and the sources required for those water volumes from comets that will come nearby Mars in [the] next 100 years.”
Bhattarai notes that on his maps, the Martian sea level is as low as 963 meters below the geoid level (an approximation of the mean sea level).
Musk had previously alluded to the idea that he would terraform Mars by nuking its poles. Although it may read like satire, he was only half-joking. Later, Musk said a continuous stream of small nuclear explosions above the poles would act like artificial suns, raising the temperature.
The increasing surface temperatures would vaporize some of the carbon dioxide trapped in the south polar cap, which would end up in the atmosphere and further cause more heating. The temperature would be enough to melt the ice and provide liquid water needed to sustain life. The added liquid water would raise the atmospheric pressure to the equivalent of that found in the highest mountaintops on Earth. Although far from being survivable, it would be enough to start growing plants and trees that thrive on CO2 and produce oxygen. In March 2017, scientists grew potatoes in Mars-like soil and conditions akin to Matt Damon in The Martian, so that’s doable already.
But even though these images might look enticing, Mars’ terraforming would be incredibly complex. It might take centuries before Mars looks anything like Earth — if such a thing would even be possible in the first place.
Credit: Aaditya Raj Bhattarai.
Even so, producing an oxygen-rich atmosphere is just the tip of the iceberg. Scientists would still have to find a way to address the myriad other problems like:
no magnetic field to shield from radiation and sputtering of the atmosphere;
no plate tectonics to recycle carbon and water and rebuild eroded land;
no large moon to stabilize the axial tilt and provide tides;
much more elliptical orbit, which means much more erratic climate;
much higher rate of impacts due to the proximity of Jupiter and the asteroid belt;
gravity only .38 that of Earth;
No mountain chains to break up atmospheric currents and release precipitation;
surface covered in toxic perchlorates and asymmetry between hemispheres means all land on one side and all ocean on the other.
Even with this out of the day, there’s still the issues that:
it would take centuries to build enough oxygen to achieve breathable levels;
we might fail miserably since climate is super complex;
because it’s not geophysically active, Mars might actually take thousands of years to become habitable;
some things will never be the same on Mars as on Earth. Take gravity, for instance, which is almost a third that on Earth.Studies carried out in weightless environments such as on the International Space Station note that the conditions cause bone demineralization, but also muscle atrophy, immune system effects, and other complications throughout the body. It’s foreseeable that similar effects may occur in partial gravity. In time, humans living and breeding on Mars would evolve radically different. They’d become much, much taller than Earthlings because of the reduced gravity.
Nevertheless, terraforming Mars might be worth pursuing. Who knows what the 22nd century might look like…
Both from afar and up close, Mars looks like a desolate world that glows in bright red due to the iron-rich dust that covers the planet. However, were it to be terraformed, Mars may very well look like blue marble, similar to Earth.
In a fantastic exercise of imagination and design, a Nepal-based civil engineer mapped out Mars as it might have looked like if 71% of its surface was covered in water.
Surface map of Mars covered in water. Credit: Aaditya Raj Bhattarai.
The visualizations generated by Aaditya Raj Bhattarai are part of his bachelor thesis at Tribhuwan University in Nepal, which immediately rose to fame after he shared them on the MapPorn subreddit. They show two distinct landmasses or continents, one dominated by the 20-km-tall Olympus Mons (the largest volcano in the solar system), the other more covered in flatlands, including planes like Terra Sabaea.
“I am [a] big fan of Elon [Musk] and SpaceX and their plan to put man on Mars, and I hope I could help in his cause,” Bhattarai told Inverse. “This is a part of my side project where I calculate the volume of water required to make life on Mars sustainable and the sources required for those water volumes from comets that will come nearby Mars in [the] next 100 years.”
Bhattarai notes that on his maps, the Martian sea level is as low as 963 meters below the geoid level (an approximation of the mean sea level).
Musk had previously alluded to the idea that he would terraform Mars by nuking its poles. Although it may read like satire, he was only half-joking. Later, Musk said a continuous stream of small nuclear explosions above the poles would act like artificial suns, raising the temperature.
The increasing surface temperatures would vaporize some of the carbon dioxide trapped in the south polar cap, which would end up in the atmosphere and further cause more heating. The temperature would be enough to melt the ice and provide liquid water needed to sustain life. The added liquid water would raise the atmospheric pressure to the equivalent of that found in the highest mountaintops on Earth. Although far from being survivable, it would be enough to start growing plants and trees that thrive on CO2 and produce oxygen. In March 2017, scientists grew potatoes in Mars-like soil and conditions akin to Matt Damon in The Martian, so that’s doable already.
But even though these images might look enticing, Mars’ terraforming would be incredibly complex. It might take centuries before Mars looks anything like Earth — if such a thing would even be possible in the first place.
Credit: Aaditya Raj Bhattarai.
Even so, producing an oxygen-rich atmosphere is just the tip of the iceberg. Scientists would still have to find a way to address the myriad other problems like:
no magnetic field to shield from radiation and sputtering of the atmosphere;
no plate tectonics to recycle carbon and water and rebuild eroded land;
no large moon to stabilize the axial tilt and provide tides;
much more elliptical orbit, which means much more erratic climate;
much higher rate of impacts due to the proximity of Jupiter and the asteroid belt;
gravity only .38 that of Earth;
No mountain chains to break up atmospheric currents and release precipitation;
surface covered in toxic perchlorates and asymmetry between hemispheres means all land on one side and all ocean on the other.
Even with this out of the day, there’s still the issues that:
it would take centuries to build enough oxygen to achieve breathable levels;
we might fail miserably since climate is super complex;
because it’s not geophysically active, Mars might actually take thousands of years to become habitable;
some things will never be the same on Mars as on Earth. Take gravity, for instance, which is almost a third that on Earth.Studies carried out in weightless environments such as on the International Space Station note that the conditions cause bone demineralization, but also muscle atrophy, immune system effects, and other complications throughout the body. It’s foreseeable that similar effects may occur in partial gravity. In time, humans living and breeding on Mars would evolve radically different. They’d become much, much taller than Earthlings because of the reduced gravity.
Nevertheless, terraforming Mars might be worth pursuing. Who knows what the 22nd century might look like…
New research suggests that many of Mars’ ancient channels, thought to have been carved by flowing surface water, were formed instead by meltwater beneath glacial ice sheets.
Earth on the left, Mars on the right. Left, the glacier-cut channels on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic. Right, channels of unknown origin in Mars’ Maumee Valles region. Mars’ channels might have been cut by rivers, or – as in Earth’s Arctic – they might have been formed by meltwater under glaciers.
Thanks to orbiting spacecraft, we’ve now seen thousands of channels on Mars. They look like river channels, and most Mars researchers see them as evidence of a warmer, wetter Mars in the distant past. But, in early August 2020, Mars researchers announced that many of the channels weren’t carved by flowing river water at all. Instead, these scientists claim, the channels are due to the flow of meltwater beneath glacial ice sheets that crawled over Mars’ surface long ago.
The researchers are from the University of British Columbia (UBC), Western University (Western) and Arizona State University (ASU). Their peer-reviewed findings were published in Nature Geoscience on August 3, 2020.
From the paper:
The southern highlands of Mars are dissected by hundreds of valley networks, which are evidence that water once sculpted the surface. Characterizing the mechanisms of valley incision may constrain early Mars climate and the search for ancient life. Previous interpretations of the geological record require precipitation and surface water runoff to form the valley networks, in contradiction with climate simulations that predict a cold, icy ancient Mars. Here we present a global comparative study of valley network morphometry, using a principal-component-based analysis with physical models of fluvial, groundwater sapping and glacial and subglacial erosion. We found that valley formation involved all these processes, but that subglacial and fluvial erosion are the predominant mechanisms. This is supported by predictions from models of steady-state erosion and geomorphological comparisons to terrestrial analogues. The inference of subglacial channels among the valley networks supports the presence of ice sheets that covered the southern highlands during the time of valley network emplacement.
If the researchers are right, their conclusions would seem to pour cold water, literally, on the idea that Mars was warm and wet enough early in its history for flowing rivers, rain and oceans. So how did they determine that not all “river” channels on Mars were really made by rivers?
The Devon Island ice cap in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, which is probably similar to how much of Mars looked when meltwater formed channels beneath ice sheets, according to the researchers.
These scientists developed new techniques to study Mars channel formations. Over 10,000 Mars channels were studied, and they were then compared to the subglacial channels on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The researchers found a number of striking similarities.Anna Grau Galofre, formerly at UBC and now at ASU, and lead author of the study, stated:
For the last 40 years, since Mars’ valleys were first discovered, the assumption was that rivers once flowed on Mars, eroding and originating all of these valleys. But there are hundreds of valleys on Mars, and they look very different from each other. If you look at Earth from a satellite you see a lot of valleys: some of them made by rivers, some made by glaciers, some made by other processes, and each type has a distinctive shape. Mars is similar, in that valleys look very different from each other, suggesting that many processes were at play to carve them.
Many of the Martian channels resembled the ones in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. So what does that tell scientists about Mars’ history? It would imply that those channels formed under cold, not warm conditions. Co-author Gordon Osinski at Western said:
Devon Island is one of the best analogs we have for Mars here on Earth; it is a cold, dry, polar desert, and the glaciation is largely cold-based.
Our study challenges the widely held view that most valley networks on Mars were formed by rivers fed by precipitation. While we found evidence consistent with a small handful of valley networks having formed in this way, our observations suggest that the majority formed beneath ice sheets.
Study co-author Mark Jellinek of UBC looking towards the Devon Island ice cap. The rocks he is standing on are more than a million years old.
These channels were most likely formed beneath glacial ice sheets, by meltwater underneath the ice. The same process happens beneath glaciers on Earth. As co-author Mark Jellinek at UBC explained:
These results are the first evidence for extensive subglacial erosion driven by channelized meltwater drainage beneath an ancient ice sheet on Mars. The findings demonstrate that only a fraction of valley networks match patterns typical of surface water erosion, which is in marked contrast to the conventional view. Using the geomorphology of Mars’ surface to rigorously reconstruct the character and evolution of the planet in a statistically meaningful way is, frankly, revolutionary.
The history of water on Mars and the warm and wet versus cold and wet scenarios have been the subjects of intense debate. We do know there used to be lakes on the surface, thanks to evidence from orbiting spacecraft and rovers such as Opportunity and Curiosity. But were the conditions warm or cold? Was there rain? Were there oceans? It should be noted that these new findings explain many of the channels, but others are still considered to be actual river channels. But then how and when did they form? NASA’s Perseverance rover will be landing at the location of one of these channels in February 2021, where a once-flowing river emptied into Jezero Crater and formed a striking delta that can still be easily seen today.
An ancient river delta in Jezero Crater on Mars (enhanced color). If the researchers are right, most of the river channels on Mars were actually formed by meltwater beneath ice sheets and not flowing water on the surface. But others are known to have been formed by flowing water, such as the channel that cut into the edge of the crater and created the delta. This is where NASA’s Perseverance rover will be landing in February 2021 to search for evidence of ancient life.
The subglacial channels fit with current climate models of Mars, which state that the planet should have been cooler when they formed about 3.8 billion years ago. This is due to the younger sun being less intense than it is now. Grau Galofre said:
Climate modeling predicts that Mars’ ancient climate was much cooler during the time of valley network formation. We tried to put everything together and bring up a hypothesis that hadn’t really been considered: that channels and valley networks can form under ice sheets, as part of the drainage system that forms naturally under an ice sheet when there’s water accumulated at the base.
While the concept of a colder and icier Mars instead of a warmer and wetter Mars may not sound as appealing for those hoping to find life, the new findings may actually bolster the chances of life having existed at the time. The researchers say that these regions of glacial meltwater would have provided better survival conditions. The ice sheets would have helped to protect and stabilize the water and provide shelter from solar radiation from the sun. The planet’s magnetic field, which protected it from the radiation, may have already disappeared by the time the glacial meltwater existed.
The new techniques developed by the researchers can also be used to learn more about the early history of Earth as well. Jellinek said:
Currently we can reconstruct rigorously the history of global glaciation on Earth going back about a million to five million years. Anna’s work will enable us to explore the advance and retreat of ice sheets back to at least 35 million years ago – to the beginnings of Antarctica, or earlier – back in time well before the age of our oldest ice cores. These are very elegant analytical tools.
Anna Grau Galofre of UBC and ASU, lead author of the new study.
If many of Mars’ river channels were actually formed by water from melting ice and not flowing surface water, that will provide more clues as to how much water Mars had in the past and how habitable the planet was a few billion years ago. And, even though this scenario may not seem as exciting as a warmer world covered with rivers, it could still have been quite habitable for tiny Martian microbes. Given other evidence for actual rivers, lakes and possibly even oceans, perhaps there were colder periods alternating with warmer ones? We still don’t know for sure, but the story of water on Mars is a fascinating and complicated one.
Bottom line:Many of Mars’ ancient river channels, thought to have been carved by flowing surface water, might have actually been formed by meltwater beneath glacial ice sheets.
Pluto as seen by New Horizons during a flyby at a distance of 450,000 kilometers. The irridiscent colors are the result of scientists combining four images taken by the spacecraft. Credit: NASA.
In 2006, Pluto was relegated from being the ninth planet in the solar system after the International Astronomical Union (IAU) demoted it to a “dwarf planet”. Officially, Pluto is now known as “minor planet 134340 Pluto.”
Many astronomy buffs were disappointed by the new assignment, seeing the criteria for Pluto’s demotion as rather nitpicky or even arbitrary.
But don’t scratch Pluto off as a planet just yet. There are still many authoritative voices in science who argue that the frozen world on the outer rim of the solar system should truly be classed as a planet in its own right.
Why was Pluto demoted in the first place?
The existence of Pluto was first proposed in the early 20th-century by Percival Lowell, whose calculations showed that wobbles in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune must be caused by the gravitational pull of an unknown ninth planet. Pluto was confirmed a decade later, on March 13, 1930, at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, by astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh.
Since then Pluto’s status as the solar system’s ninth planet remained unchallenged until astronomers discovered 2003 UB313, also known as Eris, which is nearly as large as Pluto, but with a lot more mass.
The discovery of Eris triggered a fiery debate among astronomers. If Pluto is a planet, then so should Eris. Eventually, both were classed as dwarf planets after the IAU issued new criteria for what constitutes a planet. Essentially, IAU says that a planet must:
Orbit around the sun;
Have sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (gets squished into a sphere-like object due to gravity);
clears the neighborhood around its orbit.
In August 2006, the IAU ruled that Pluto would no longer be considered a planet because it doesn’t “clear the neighborhood around its orbit.” Pluto’s oblong orbit overlaps that of Neptune, so it was disqualified.
Instead, the IAU classed Pluto as a dwarf planet, which is a celestial body that meets the first two criteria. Besides Pluto and Eris, there are three other known dwarf planets in the solar system: Ceres in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter; Haumea, which is located beyond Neptune’s orbit, and Makemake, the second-largest Kuiper Belt object.
Why should Pluto be considered a planet again?
Bearing this in mind, it’s clear that had the IAU not stuck to its new rules, we would have had at least 13 planets in the solar system now. But why should that be a problem?
Many have criticized IAU’s definition of a planet, claiming the criteria are arbitrary. Among these critics is NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, who during a keynote at the 2019 International Astronautical Congress said:
“I am here to tell you, as the NASA administrator, I believe Pluto is a planet,” before adding that “Some people have argued that in order to be a planet you have to clear your orbit around the sun. If that’s the definition we’re going to use then you could undercut all the planets—they’re all dwarf planets—because there isn’t a planet that clears its entire orbit around the sun.”
The NASA chief is referring to asteroids, which regularly whizz past all the planets in the solar system.
“I think it’s a sloppy definition,” said Bridenstine. “I think the way you should define a planet is based on its intrinsic value, not values that constantly change like orbital dynamics.”
Naming planets: a bureocratic decision?
Bridenstine’s stance on Pluto is supported by the authors of a study published in a 2019 edition of the journal Icarus by a team of researchers led by Philip Metzger, a planetary physicist with the Planetary Science faculty at the University of Central Florida. Although the paper doesn’t focus on Pluto specifically, the authors explain how even asteroids were recognized as planets until the 1950s.
“In the 1950s, developments in planet formation theory found it no longer useful to maintain taxonomic identification between asteroids and planets, Ceres being the primary exception. At approximately the same time, there was a flood of publications on the geophysical nature of asteroids showing them to be geophysically different than the large planets. This is when the terminology in asteroid publications calling them planets abruptly plunged from a high level of usage where it had hovered during the period 1801–1957 to a low level that held constant thereafter,” the scientists wrote.
In effect, asteroids were reclassified as non-planets based on their geophysical characteristics. By extension, all cosmic bodies should also be classified by their geophysical characteristics and not arbitrarily through voting by a panel.
“I believe the IAU made several deep mistakes and so the definition is not valid and not scientifically useful and should be rejected. First, definitions should never be voted on for taxonomical concepts like “planet” because taxonomy is supposed to evolve and develop as an integral part of the science. By voting on a particular taxonomical choice they shut down that portion of the scientific process. So the entire vote was anti-science to begin with,” Metzger told ZME Science.
Metzger adds that the IAU actually violated their principles, “including their explicit statutes and bylaws, which require the actual language of a proposed vote to be reviewed by all the members for four months before the assembly.”
Since the IAU was in a hurry to force a decision, the organization violated its by-laws by not sharing the proposal text until the 2006 assembly.
“That was the first violation, the first mistake. Then the proposal was rejected at the convention, and since they had already set the precedent of breaking the rules they continued blindly breaking the rules even more. So they made up the definition during the assembly, giving nobody anywhere else in the world any time to digest it, giving nobody the choice to come to the meeting to present a well reasoned and well-researched case to sway the outcome, and they forced a vote. They got a deep split in the votes, proving there really is no consensus, but one side won so they declared that the deed was done. That became highly politicized and caused people to take sides and get emotionally involved, so now most people have an attitude about the whole thing and it has poisoned the ability to readdress the question,” Metzger said.
Perhaps you’ve noticed a pattern: the main objection that Pluto planetary advocates have against the IAU decision is that it didn’t follow a scientific process. Instead, it was based on a subjective, bureocratic process.
“Nobody is creating a theory about how objects that fail to clear their orbits are fundamentally different than those that do clear their orbits or those that are satellites of another planet. Nobody has ever proposed differences in geology, geochemistry, atmospheres, oceans, the emergence of life, mineralogy, etc., that are consistent one way in bodies that clear their orbits versus another way in bodies that do not clear their orbits. On the other hand, the term “planet” actually is being used to compare different planets across different dynamical states. So a paper might discuss Pluto, Triton, and Mars, calling them all “planets”, even though one cleared an orbit, one did not, and one was captured by Neptune to become a satellite,” Metzger said.
“Summary: the IAU definition does not match how scientists actually use the planet concept in doing real, reductionist science. The definition they created was actually designed to keep the number of planets small so school kids could memorize the planets, but having a small number is not the concern of science. The IAU abandoned science in order to create a cultural definition instead,” he added.
Wait, does that mean that the Moon and other satellites are planets too? Exactly.
“The idea that satellites are a distinct category with no overlap in the “planet” category is actually a recent invention. For almost all scientific history, moons were planets. What scientists used to say before the 1920s is that planets orbiting the sun are “primary planets” while planets that orbit another planet are “secondary planets” or just “satellite” or “moon” for short (but they were still known to be planets). Being a satellite was just a dynamic relationship that a planet could have with another planet. When we decided that most asteroids are too small to be planets, in the 1960s, then we should have decided at the same time that the smaller satellites are also too small to be planets for the exact same reason, while the larger, round satellites are still planets. Unfortunately, astronomers had already become confused about satellites by the 1920s and forgot the meaning of the word “planet”, switching over to a cultural “folk taxonomy” that actually has its roots in astrology and geocentrism. The public was abandoning geocentrism in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and astrology was still very influential, and this led them to develop the idea that satellites are not planets. I am currently writing a manuscript that shows this. It was similar to the general public’s idea that green beans are a vegetable rather than a fruit, although biologists say a green bean is a fruit. The public develops a “folk taxonomy” that is human-centric and not scientifically reductionist, in contrast to the scientific taxonomy that is designed to align along the natural divisions of reductionist theory, thus providing deep explanatory power about nature,” Metzger said.
“So although the public is still unaware of this fact, it is true that planetary scientists are referring to moons as “planet”. Many of us do not even realize we are doing this. We say Titan has a planetary core, a planetary crust, a planetary radius, etc. They are “planetary” because they are characteristic of planets. Being a satellite has nothing to do with it. But if having these things are characteristic of planets, and bodies that are in both primary and secondary orbits have them equally, then every time we say “planetary” we are acknowledging that the type of orbit a body has is irrelevant to whether it is a planet or not.”
If Pluto is reinstated as a full-fledged planet, then the other four dwarf planets should join it too, bringing the total number of planets in the solar system to 13. However, by Metzger’s account of what constitutes a planet by scientific taxonomy, there ought to be at least 150 planets in the solar system.
“Most of them are in the Kuiper Belt. Ceres, which is in the asteroid belt, is also a planet. But also, large moons (satellites) are planets,” he said.
Another vocal supporter of Pluto’s planetary status is Alan Stern, principal investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission, which flew by Pluto in 2015, revealing the icy body in unprecedented details, including a stunning heart-shaped nitrogen-ice plain.
Last year, Stern hosted an online debate for the Philosophical Society of Washington, in which he asked people to vote on whether or not Pluto should be reinstated as a planet. Before voting was opened, Stern explained their argument that a planet should be defined by its geophysical properties — if a body is massive enough to assume a nearly round shape but not massive enough to trigger nuclear fusion in its interior like a star, then that’s a planet. The poll closed with 130 votes in favor of making Pluto a planet again and 30 against it.
During his presentation, Stern went on to describe New Horizons’ findings, which show that Pluto has mountains, glaciers, avalanches, a liquid ocean beneath its icy crust, and a complex atmosphere. These are all hallmarks of planetary processes.
What’s more, the third criteria for planetary eligibility — that a planet has to clear its orbit of other bodies like asteroids — is not fair for bodies orbiting so far away from the sun. The more you move away from the sun, the harder it is to clear away small objects because the orbit is much slower than that of objects closer to the sun. This means that a planet needs to be increasingly massive in the outer reaches of the solar system in order to clear objects. In fact, Stern makes the assertion that not even Earth would qualify as a planet if it was on Pluto’s orbit.
“The IAU definition is not aligned with useful reductionism. They voted to maintain the folk taxonomy of the public. Not only did they vote that moons are not planets, but they added an “orbit clearing” requirement to keep the number of planets small, so the set of planets would continue to be similar to the set that was known from geocentrism and astrology. Galileo rejected that set. He called the moons of Jupiter “planets”. He did not think dynamics should have anything to do with the definition of a planet. He did not think the number should be kept low to match the ancient geocentrism and astrology. It is really too bad that astronomers rejected Galileo and restored some of the ideas he fought to reject,” Metzger said.
“The basic problem is that modern astronomers have failed to realize that taxonomy, and evolving concepts like “planet”, are crucial to the program of science. They thought there was no harm in adopting a folk taxonomy from culture. They did not see any reason not to. This is where the most work needs to be done to repair the damage. The astronomers who believe the IAU’s planet definition is good need to get a much broader view of the functional role of taxonomy in science, to understand how important and beneficial taxonomy can be. If they think the IAU is good and beneficial, it is only because they have such a low concept of how much better things could be. Biologists understand this very well, so they demand that scientists retain “taxonomical freedom” and that taxonomy should never be a matter of regulation or restraint. Astronomers need some growth in this area,” he added.
More than 14 years after Pluto’s historic demotion to a dwarf planet, this debate is far from over. Perhaps Pluto might rejoin the ranks of the solar system’s roster of planets, but until then spirits remain high.
Bottom line: Pluto’s classification as a dwarf planet is arbitrary rather than the product of a scientific process.
Without doubt, there are some UFO cases (or those cases that are assumed to be UFO-connected) that never go away – even after not just years but decades. One such event occurred on the night of January 23, 1974. The location was the Berwyn Mountains, North Wales. Without doubt, the expert on this complicated story is Andy Roberts; he’s a long-time researcher of UFOs and numerous other anomalies. As for whathappened in January 1974, Andy says: “Prehistoric man lived and worshipped on the mountains leaving behind him a dramatic, ritual landscape dotted with stone circles…Folklore tells us that these mountains are haunted by many types of aerial phenomena, including the spectral Hounds of Hell: those who saw them recalled how they flew through the night sky baying as though pursued by Satan himself. To the south of the Berwyn’s at, Llanrhaedr-ym-Mochnant, the locals were plagued by a ‘flying dragon’ – intriguingly, a common name for UFOs in times gone by.”
Andy continues: “It is against this backdrop of history and myth that on the evening of January 23, 1974 an event took place on the Berwyn Mountains that was to perplex locals and spawned a veritable cascade of rumors, culminating in a claim that, if true, would irrevocably change our view of history and make us revise our plans for the future of both our planet and our species. The claim was that a UFO piloted by extraterrestrials crashed, or was shot down, on the mountain known as Cadair Berwyn and that the alien crew, some still alive, were whisked off to a secret military installation in the south of England for study.”
Certainly, something happened on the Berwyn Mountains at approximately 8:30 p.m. on that famous night. No-one disputes that: it’s the nature of the events that provoke most of the debate. Anne Williams, of Bro Diham, Landrillo, recalled: “I saw this bright light hanging in the sky. It had a long fiery tale which seemed to be motionless for several minutes, going dim and then very brilliant, like a dormant fire which keeps coming to life. It would have been like an electric bulb in shape, except that it seemed to have rough edges. Then fell somewhere behind the hills at the back of my bungalow and the earth shook.” Police Constable Gwilym – off-duty at the time and knocking back a beer or a few in the local Dudley Arms pub – had something to say, too: “There was a great roar and a bang and the glasses shook. The sky was lit up over the mountains. The color was yellowish but other people in the valley described seeing blue lights.”
Crashes are never a desired outcome
Police Sergeant Gwyn Williams stated: ““The walls shook and the mirror swung away from the wall” he recalled. “My first thought was that a big lorry had hit the cinema – it was that kind of a roar and bang. Everyone ran into the street.” Around an hour-and-a-half later, what was described as a huge “luminous sphere” was seen by Ken Haughton, at a height of around 15,000 feet in the sky. He said that it seemed to fall vertically into the sea near to the town of Rhyl. A UFO wave? That’s what many thought. But, many can easily be deceived. That strange lights had been seen maneuvering in the skies, and the fact that the ground shook to a major degree, inevitably provoked fears that an aircraft – or, possibly, something exotic and unearthly – had crashed somewhere on the vast mountains on that winter’s night. It’s no surprise, then, that on the early morning of the 24th a Royal Air Force emergency rescue team – operating out of the RAF Valley base – carefully scoured the Berwyns from overhead. They came away completely blank: there was no evidence of any kind of crash having occurred. There was no debris, no fires on the mountains, and no mangled bodies, human or otherwise. The entire thing was a mystery.
A very non-mysterious theory was put forward by the authorities: what some believed to have been a crash of something from the skies was actually an earth tremor. That does make some sense: it would have been very easy to mistake the effects of a small earthquake for a large object slamming into the ground. But, what of those lights that were seen in the skies – and at just about the same time? One theory was that they were actually the lamps of men out on the hills hunting for hares. Or, that there had been a meteorite shower – which there actually was. Not everyone was buying into this wholly-down-to-earth picture, however. A letter was fired off to the staff of the Wrexham Leader newspaper by a fairly irate soul, who wrote: “Regarding your front page article ‘Mystery Tremor’ in the issue of January 25, I find the explanation given absolutely ludicrous. The tremors shook houses over a 60-mile radius, and the lights were seen clearly miles away – this was reported by the national press and radio. I know nothing about ‘Hare hunting’ but unless the hunters use aircraft searchlights and kill their prey by lobbing a small atom bomb at them, then I fail to see how anyone can accept such an explanation.”
For many, it was all a huge – and almost unique – coincidence provoked by those lamps, the meteorite shower, and an earth tremor that was powerful enough to shake homes and cause windows to shatter. All in relatively close proximity to each other. And all at around the same time. Perhaps that’s what happened. On the other hand, though, you can easily see why more than a few people might have chosen to use one word to describe the chaos on the mountains: “Hmmmmm.” The coincidence angle is broadly the theory that Andy Roberts goes with. Indeed, Andy wrote an entire book on the subject – and from the perspective of everything being very much UFO-absent. Its title: UFO Down? The Berwyn Mountain UFO Crash. It should be read by one and all.
Neolithic “Woodhenge” Discovered at Perdigões’ Complex Portugal
Neolithic “Woodhenge” Discovered at Perdigões’ Complex Portugal
Remains of a Neolithic “Woodhenge” have recently been unearthed by a team of archaeologists at Perdigões in Portugal. The newly found wooden structure was built at the end of the Stone Ageand is similar in design to the famous Stonehenge circle in England. The Perdigões Neolithic “Woodhenge” discovery is remarkable because nothing like it has ever been found in Portugal before.
Archaeologists discovered the new Neolithic “Woodhenge” within the Perdigões complex in southeast Portugal. The complex is one of the most important late Stone Age sites in the Iberian Peninsula, built around 5000 years ago, in the Middle Neolithic period. The 16-hectare (40-acre) site has many concentric ditched enclosures . It lies in a natural amphitheater and has been excavated since the 1980s by archaeologists from various countries.
The large Stone Age complex in Portugal where the Perdigões’ Neolithic “Woodhenge” was recently discovered.
Perdigões’ Neolithic “Woodhenge”: Ceremonial and Religious
The remains of the Perdigões Neolithic “Woodhenge” were found at the center of a number of extensive circular ditches. The team’s lead archaeologist, António Valera, is quoted by The Portugal News as saying that it was ‘a monumental wooden construction, of which the foundations remain.’ It was a circle of wooden posts, 60 feet (20 m) in diameter. The site was used from the Middle Neolithic to the beginning of the Bronze Age . In 2019, the location was recognized by the Portuguese government as a national monument.
Remains of the Neolithic “Woodhenge” were found at the center of a number of extensive circular ditches.
This structure has been likened to a wooden version of Stonehenge. The Perdigões complex was ‘a ceremonial construction’ Valera told The Portugal News and was used for religious and ritual purposes. A number of pits with sacrificial deposits have been uncovered. Based on these findings, it seems likely that the Perdigões’ “Woodhenge” was used in rituals and ceremonies in the Neolithic area.
Two of the circular ditch dig sites at the Perdigões complex in Portugal
Important Festival Site Aligned With the Sun and the Stars
Important festivals were probably held at “Woodhenge” which were important in the socialization of individuals and for strengthening social bonds . It was also a burial ground for many centuries based on the many human remains found at the site. As has been established at similar sites, people travelled hundreds of miles to attend these festivals and ceremonies. They would often bring animals with them, such as pigs, which were sacrificed or eaten at festival feasts.
An aerial photograph of the Perdigões complex in Portugal where the Neolithic “Woodhenge” was recently found.
The complex’s entrances aligned with the sun rise in the summer months and during the winter solstice . Evidence has also been found that suggests Portugal’s Neolithic “Woodhenge” was orientated with the movements of the stars and the sun. Archaeology quotes Valera saying, “A possible access to the interior of this structure is oriented towards the summer solstice, reinforcing its cosmological character.” The Portugal News reports Valera stating that ‘this situation is also known in other European countries as 'woodhenges' and 'timber circles', where astronomical alignment entrances are frequent, underlining the close relationship between these architectures and the Neolithic views of the world.’
New “Woodhenge” Provides a Bigger View of Stone Age Europe
What is striking about the discovery is that it is not like anything else found in the region. The characteristics of “Woodhenge” are almost identical to structures found in central Europe and the British Isles. One of the best known of these circular timber structures is the one found near Stonehenge.
Valera told Archaeology that, “The circle thus links Perdigões to similar Neolithic henge sites found elsewhere in Europe.” This discovery could indicate that the late Stone Age peoples of Perdigões had connections with other cultures from distant regions. It may also show that Europe was much more interconnected in the Neolithic.
Perdigões’ Neolithic “Woodhenge” Made By Bell Beaker Culture
Another possibility is that the site could be related to the Bell Beaker culture (3500-2500 BC). “Woodhenge” may have been used as a shared social and religious site by members of this culture. Bensozia reports that the Bell Beaker culture ‘seems to have originated in Portugal.’ It is possible that the construction of these timber circles originated in this part of the Iberian Peninsula and spread elsewhere.
Valera told The Portugal News that “this discovery reinforces the already high scientific importance of the Perdigões enclosure complex in the international context of European Neolithic studies.” Future digs at the site may reveal more discoveries about Portugal’s Neolithic “Woodhenge” and the Perdigões complex. Every year students from all over the world gather at the site to learn archaeological techniques and approaches.
Top image: Representation of how Perdigões’ Neolithic “Woodhenge” would have looked (with full worked area highlighted).
Era -Arqueologia recently announced that archaeological excavations that took place in the Perdigões complex in the Évora district of Portugal revealed a “unique structure in the Prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula”. In fact, nothing similar has ever been found in Portugal before now.
The Perdigões structure was a prehistoric ceremonial site that was found in the middle of a complex of 12 ditch enclosures and “articulates with the visibility of the megalithic landscape that extends between the site and the elevation of Monsaraz, located to the east, on the horizon,” as described by António Valera who was the archaeologist in charge of the excavations.
The site was used for religious ceremonies, burials, and for rituals as several pits with sacrificial items had been recovered. People would travel long distances to attend ceremonies and festivals at the location which was a good way for them to socialize and strengthen their bonds with each other.
Woodhenge at North Newnton.
The circular shaped structure has been nicknamed “Woodhenge” in reference to Stonehenge except this one was made from wood. “A possible access to the interior of this structure is oriented towards the summer solstice, reinforcing its cosmological character,” Valera explained, adding, “this situation is also known in other European countries as ‘woodhenges’ and ‘timber circles’, where astronomical alignment entrances are frequent, underlining the close relationship between these architectures and the Neolithic views of the world .”
It has been described as a “monumental wooden construction, of which the foundations remain, with a circular plan and more than 20 metres in diameter,” Valera noted. While this “Woodhenge” is the first of its kind to be found in Portugal, it is incredibly similar to other structures found in the central part of Europe and the British Isles – like Stonehenge. This may indicate that the people of Perdigões were in communication with those living in locations far from them and that those living across Europe were much more connected with each other during the Neolithic period than previously thought.
Woodhenge is the wooden version of Stonehenge.
The complex dates back from around the end of the Middle Neolithic Period (about 3400 BC) to the start of the Bronze Age period (around 2000 BC) – a time frame that lasted approximately 1,400 years. This time period brings up the possibility that the ancient Bell Beaker culture may have constructed “Woodhenge” as they are believed to have originated in Portugal and their culture thrived from around 3500 BC to 2500 BC.
Valera finished off by stating the importance of finding this structure, “discovery reinforces the already high scientific importance of the Perdigões enclosure complex in the international context of European Neolithic studies while increasing its heritage relevance,” which was recognized as a National Monument in 2019. Several pictures of “Woodhenge” can be seen here.
Het officiële verhaal zal waarschijnlijk altijd blijven dat in Beiroet per ongeluk een hoeveelheid amoniumnitraat ontplofte.
In werkelijkheid gebeurder er iets heel anders en beelden lijken dat te bevestigen.
We schreven enkele dagen geleden een artikel met daarin een aantal feiten die wezen op een heel ander scenario dan een partij amoniumnitraat dat na zes jaar opgeslagen te zijn geweest, opeens explodeert.
Militaire analisten bij de website Veterans Today kwamen tot de conclusie dat we hier te maken hebben met een klein tactisch kernwapen en dat de enige die over dit soort wapens kan beschikken de staat Israël is. Daarnaast had Israël de laatste weken openlijk gedreigd Libanon verantwoordelijk te stellen voor alle acties van Hezbollah.
Nu is er beeldmateriaal boven water gekomen waarin duidelijk te zien is dat net voor de grote explosie een raket met hoge snelheid het doelwit raakt. Volgens Veterans Today werden de beelden die op Youtube stonden op last van de staat Israël verwijderd.
Wel hebben ze daar nog een stukje video met infraroodbeelden waar duidelijk een raket op te zien is en we kwamen een wat uitgebreidere versie via een lezer (dank!) op het spoor op de Hal Turner website.
Bij beide websites hebben ze de beelden geanalyseerd en komen tot de conclusie dat ze, wat hen betreft, echt zijn. Dit is natuurlijk geen honderd procent garantie, dus als iemand een andere mening heeft, dan horen we dat graag.
De beelden zijn volgens Veterans Today gemaakt met een infrarood camera, waardoor de raket heel goed zichtbaar wordt. Zij claimen dat voordat de video's werden geschrapt er zes vershillende opnames waren, afkomstig van twee verschillende infrarood bronnen.
De volgende afbeeldingen zijn afkomstig van een infrarood video. Je ziet duidelijk de raket linksboven in beeld verschijnen, waarna deze linea recta op de plek afkoerst waar enkele seconden later de ontploffing plaatvindt.
De volgende twee afbeeldingen lijken afkomstig van een andere video.
De bewegende beelden van bovenstaande zie je in de onderstaande video die eigenlijk uit twee video's bestaat van ieder ongeveer 15 seconden. De raket is ook in de bewegende beelden duidelijk te zien.
Volgens een Italiaanse explosievenexpert is de volgende foto bewijs dat we hier te maken hebben met een projectiel en niet met een ontploffing die is ontstaan vanaf de grond. De zogenaamde "thermal rings" in de foto geven aan dat we hier te maken hebben met een explosie die vanaf boven is ontstaan en niet vanaf de grond.
De lezer die met een tip kwam over bovenstaande beelden, kwam ook nog met iets anders:
U geeft aan dat er wellicht een luchtaanval heeft plaatsgevonden in Beiroet en ik ben bang dat dat misschien ook het geval is. Op de video hierboven is duidelijk een raket te zien.
Op toegevoegde screenshots heb ik een Gele streep gezet, waar de inslag te zien is....bijna 1 op 1 zeg maar.
Vervolgens gaan we terug naar 28-7-2015...bijna exact 5 jaar eerder. Er heeft mogelijk een Israëlische luchtaanval plaatsgevonden in de Haven van Beiroet:
Ik heb van deze video en recente 'aanval' een screenshot gemaakt en het blijkt dat het bijna precies op dezelfde plek is als als afgelopen week. Hoe kan een brand zo'n reactie veroorzaken en een mogelijke luchtaanval niet, terwijl het explosieve spul er sinds 2014 moet hebben gelegen...Ook ten tijde van de luchtaanval in 2015.
This is a moon photo of the southern polar region taken in 1994. The photo is black and white and shows a lot of unique structures in it. I wanted to find exactly how many structures, so I went through it, coloring the structures yellow. I found about 20 structures, but there are more. I only identified the structures that I was 100% confident about. There was even a cross, distinct, detailed, modern, without doubt...a cross. Although I have identified about 5% of the polar region to be structures, I summarize that it may be closer to 20%. One face looks like a cat-like species ..similar to a face I found in high detail on Mars in the mountains. (click here to see old post). Scott C. Waring
Following a lead, the team goes to Italy to probe a case where an UFO allegedly shot down a helicopter. While there, high-ranking military officials drop a bombshell. Former Senator Harry Reid goes on the record in wanting to get the truth about UFOs.
UFO over Porirua? Mysterious hovering lights stun locals
UFO over Porirua? Mysterious hovering lights stun locals
it was in the early hours in Porirua when Theodora Faafia left home and spotted three lights hovering up in the dark skies above the town.
Faafia was with her cousin and they both spotted the lights and wondered what it was. She filmed them on her phone for a few seconds then posted on the local group, to see if anyone knew what they could be.
"Sooooo as I was leaving home this morning, we spotted these three big lights just hovering over Porirua City. Anyone have a clue what it could be?" she wrote.
A Porirua local says she spotted three "creepy" lights hovering over the town.Photo / Theodora Faafia
One person in the comments said they saw it too but no one had a definitive theory on what the lights were.
Faafia says she "has no idea" what the lights could be.
"I just thought it was strange and so did my cousin because it wasn't plane lights or anything it was just still in the sky," she told the Herald.
"We didn't hang around as I had to drop my cousin off to town for work so we just continued to drive and kept watching it as we drove till it was out of our sight. By the time we got back to Porirua it was daylight."
One person in the comments suggests they are searchlights: "Look down on your video and see the three big searchlights," the Facebook user commented.
Another local suggested the lights could be related to army planes she had seen flying over on Thursday.
Another person believes the lights are just "a moon behind the clouds".
In the autumn of the year of 1944, Slovak military commander Antonín Horák was performing military operations somewhere in the Tatra mountains during the Slovak National uprising, which was a concerted guerrilla military movement organized by the Slovak resistance movement insurrectionists in an attempt to resist occupying German troops and drive them away. This was a dangerous time, when the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany were patrolling the wilds, and indeed Horák’s unit was ambushed by one such unit as they were hiding in a trench to escape detection. The skirmish did not end well for the Slovaks, with nearly all of his men being slaughtered, and he himself was shot and left for dead. This would pave the way for a strange discovery made out in the wilds of Slovakia, which has captured the imagination and stirred speculation ever since.
When he awoke, Horák was lying in the trench in a pool of mud and his own blood, surrounded by the corpses of his fallen comrades. He at first thought that he was the only one who had survived, and it was only through the help of two local villagers that he did not join them in death. Two villagers carried him away on a makeshift stretcher, and it would become clear that two of the other Slovak soldiers had also survived, although all of them were wounded and immobile. The villagers told them that they were being brought to a secluded, secret cave out in the wilds where they would be able to hide away and recover. However, once they reached this cave, Horák knew that it wasn’t just a typical cave. He was immediately suspicious when one of the villagers told him not to wander too deep into the recesses of this place, as it was considered to be possibly haunted and there were many steep drops within. It seemed as if the villagers were hiding something, and Horák made a mental note to explore it when he had the chance.
He had his chance when in the morning the chief villager, named Slávek, said some prayers while facing the murk within and then informed the soldiers that he would be back later in the afternoon. When he was gone, Horák peered into the gloom and felt curiosity getting the better of him. He was weak and unable to walk so well, but he was able to get up and hobble about, using a light to pierce through the darkness as he felt his way along. It soon became clear that the walls of the cave were not the typical rough rock that one would expect, but rather polished to a mirror sheen, as if formed of glass, and of a bluish black coloration. He then decided to go even deeper yet, finding a small vent in the floor after penetrating into the cave for around 90 minutes. Taking this vent deposited him within a huge chamber and grotto with white stalactites covered in a strange, enamel-like substance, and sitting within this cavern was a very curious sight, indeed.
There within the grotto was a sort of huge, cylindrical object or shaft set within the rock, described as dark, metallic, and completely smooth like the walls of the cave, only here there could be seen strange symbols like hieroglyphics etched into the surface. He warily approached the anomalous structure, and rapping on its side with his pickaxe produced a slight echo that suggested it was hollow inside. The material it was fashioned of looked almost like a shiny onyx, but when he took a few experimental swings at it with his pickaxe he found that he was unable to leave any chip or scratch upon it. Some reports say that he even tried to fire upon it with his pistol, and even that did not scathe it. He decided to crawl back through the cave and fetch some things he felt he would need to further explore this curiosity. He did not tell his wounded fellow soldiers what he had seen, but rather since the weather was getting worse and it was apparent that the villagers would not be able to return, he told them he needed their belts and some rope to help him capture any animals he could find for food.
Armed with this new equipment he went back to the mysterious object several times over the next few days, and used the belts and rope to climb down within it through a large, diamond-shaped crack at its top. The interior was covered in what appeared to be clay and limestone, and the sounds in there were said to be unnaturally amplified. The whole of it was said to actually be in the shape of a crescent moon, and as he explored, he came across the remains of what seemed to be a cave bear, a long extinct species that he surmised had fallen to its death within the structure eons ago. He then tried again to shoot at the walls, but this only produced “green sparks” and smoke. There were found to be some sort of horizontal grooves in the walls of the cylindrical chamber, which seemed warm to the touch. No other entrance into the strange cave was found, and so Horák decided to make a note of its location and then conceal the vent that led to this place.
The villagers returned and on of his fellow soldiers would pass during the night, making it impossible for him to make any further excursions into that mysterious cave, but he wrote about it and made sketches in his diary. He eventually was rescued and able to make it home, but that bizarre cave and its cylinder occupied his thoughts for years. On many occasions he meant to go back and find it once again, but it was too dangerous and so it was mostly just an oddity that only he knew of. It was not until 1965 that Horák would publish an excerpt from his diary concerning the finding in in the National Speleological Society News, and from there the place he called the “Moonshaft” or also “Mooncave” began to capture the imagination of adventurers, geologists, spelunkers, and mystery seekers from all over the world.
Sketch of the entrance leading to the mysterious chamber
One of the problems with going in to actually check out if any of it was true or not is that the political climate in the former Czechoslovakia was not exactly conducive to exploration expeditions, and the area was considered mostly off-limits. In the meantime, Horák, who had since emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the United States, was interviewed by numerous researchers and even Dr. J. Allen Hynek, of Project Blue Book fame. However, it would not be until by Czech explorers Ivan Mackerle and Michal Brumlík ventured into the region in 1980 that any actual follow up field work would be done on the matter. Other expeditions would trickle in, but none of them were able to locate the mysterious cave. One of the main problems is that Horák’s diary is very vague about the actual location, merely mentioning that it is in the Tatra Mountains and in the vicinity of the villages of ´diar, Lubochňa and Plaveč, but considering the sprawling, isolated wilderness of the region that could be anywhere. To this day there are occasional claims that the cave has been found, but no proof offered, leaving us to speculate about what it could all mean.
What did Antonín Horák found out in that wilderness? Theories have included that it was a geological anomaly, ancient copper mine, an entrance to some underground world, the remnants of a lost civilization, or a crashed alien spaceship embedded within the rock, but no one knows for sure and we probably never will. The only person who knows for sure, Antonín Horák, would in later years just sort of vanish, taking whatever secrets he had with him and leaving behind only some scattered diary entries and sketches of what he claimed to have found. We are left to wonder just what it is that he found out there, and what still might be buried beneath the Slovakian wilderness. Ancient civilization, alien spaceship, or just a very strange cave? We may never know for sure.
According to a new study, some people alive today carry genes from an ancient ancestor that has yet to be identified. In fact, this unknown species may have been around as far back as a million years ago.
According to the study, sometime between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago, ancient humans mated with Neanderthals – quite a long time before Homo sapiens migrated from Africa to Europe approximately 50,000 years ago. Adam Siepel, who is a computational biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and one of the authors of the paper, explained to Live Science, “Our best conjecture is that an early group of anatomically modern humans left Africa then encountered and interbred with Neanderthals, perhaps in the Middle East,” adding, “This lineage [of humans] would then have been lost — either gone extinct, or absorbed by the Neanderthals, or migrated back to Africa.”
Understanding the complex history of our ancient ancestors is no easy task. It’s been known for a long time that humans and Neanderthals mated while they were both living in Europe and prior to Neanderthals going extinct about 40,000 years ago.
And despite being extinct for tens of thousands of years, some humans today still carry Neanderthal genes. In fact, according to a 2010 study, researchers found that between 1% and 4% of the genes found in people currently living in Asia, Europe, and Oceania belonged to their Neanderthal ancestors. In a more recent 2014 study, at least 20% of DNA found in today’s humans could be from Neanderthals.
And we can’t forget about Denisovans who, up until around 15,000 years ago, shared caves and mated with early humans. In fact, about 1% of the Denisovan genomes came from an unknown ancestor which points to interbreeding. Additionally, around 15% of the interbreeding sequences that the researchers located in Denisovan DNA have also been found in today’s humans.
As for this mysterious DNA that some humans carry today, it would have originated when Neanderthals mated with the unknown species, and then carried it along to when they mated with early humans and through the evolutionary line right down to today’s population. Siepel added that this mysterious ancestor could have belonged to Homo erectus, but since they have no DNA from that species to compare it to, it’s just a theory for now.
Based on this new information, interbreeding surely wasn’t a rare event. Siepel finished off by stating, “A picture is emerging of a series of distinct but related populations moving around the globe and frequently interacting with one another, with occasional interbreeding events that produced hybrid offspring.” “These hybrid offspring might in some cases have suffered from reduced fitness — this is an area of controversy — but apparently many of them were healthy enough to survive and reproduce, leaving a patchwork of archaic and modern human DNA in Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans.”
Some people say that Mars gets all of the attention these days because that’s where some book once said men are from there … and that argument probably carries a little weight. However, it wasn’t that long ago that Venus was the center of attention, especially within the space program of the former Soviet Union which had a lander program that sent probes into the swirling hot and dense atmosphere laden with carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid. (It’s no wonder author John Gray gave Mars to men.) That didn’t stop the Japanese space program from sending orbiters to Venus, and it’s data from the Akatsuki spacecraft that has revealed something ominous on the planet’s hidden surface – a giant unidentified wave plowing across the planet every 4.9 days at over 200 miles per hour (328 km per hour). Is this another reason women should wish they wrote their own damn book first?
“If this happened on Earth, this would be a frontal surface at the scale of the planet, and that’s incredible.”
In a press release by the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) announcing the study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, co-author Pedro Machado describes the unexplained cloud wall which is the first disturbance of this magnitude to be discovered in the lower atmosphere of Venus. Machado notes that the images from Akatsuki orbiter were confirmed by astronomers (including himself) using the Galileo National Telescope (TNG) in Canary Islands and NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) in Hawaii. Going back to other past observations, the team now can recognize indicators which show the wave has been speeding around Venus since at least 1983.
“This planet-wide cloud discontinuity can sometimes extend as far as 7500 kilometres, across the equator, from 30º north to 40º south, and happens at the lower cloud level, at altitudes between 47.5 and 56.5 kilometres.”
Based on what they pulled together from observations made by other missions and telescopes, combined with computer simulations, the team concluded that these mysterious planet-sweeping waves are cause by … something they’ve never seen before on any other planets.
Throw in the facts that Venus rotates in the opposite direction of Earth (and almost all of the other planets in our solar system) at a snail’s pace of one rotation every 243 Earth days, while its atmosphere flows at 60 times faster than Earth’s (the normal wind speed relative to the surface is about 360 km/h or 224 mph), its density is 93 times that of Earth’s and pressure is about 92 times Earth’s (don’t forget it’s loaded with sulfuric acid) and you can see why researchers want to know more about these waves. Unfortunately, almost all of the future missions to Venus are still in the proposed or conceptual stages.
What Venus needs is a woman billionaire to champion Venus like Elon Musk has championed Mars.
Thunderstorms on Jupiter are so violent and strong that ammonia-rich hail called “mushballs” could rain down from the sky. Apparently ammonia works similar to anti-freeze when it’s mixed with ice crystals which makes them melt and ultimately creates huge storms.
This new information was collected by NASA’s Juno spacecraft which arrived at Jupiter in July of 2016 and orbits the planet every 53 days. It studies the planet’s atmosphere in order to get a better understanding of Jupiter’s meteorology.
The mission has so far shown rotating white clouds full of ammonia in the upper atmosphere of the planet that measures over 2,000 square miles. These ammonia-rich clouds are located about 10 miles above other clouds and they cause flashes of lighting in addition to casting huge shadows on Jupiter.
Swirling “Pearl” storm on Jupiter.
Thunderstorms on Jupiter are similar to those that occur here on Earth as they both move around water within the atmosphere. One huge difference, however, is that the thunderstorms on the Gas Giant begin to form approximately 31 miles beneath the storm bands. The temperatures where the storms are formed are around the freezing point which means that if a storm is strong enough, it can move the ice into the upper portion of the atmosphere where it will then melt.
Tristan Guillot, who is a planetary scientist at the Côte d’Azur University in Nice, France, and an author of the papers, explained this further, “On Jupiter as on Earth, a mixture of two thirds water and one third ammonia will remain liquid down to a temperature of -100°C [-148°F],” adding, “The ice crystals which have been lifted high into Jupiter’s atmosphere are melted by ammonia — forming a liquid — and become the seeds for exotic hailstones, or “mushballs”.”
He went on to say, “The mushballs, being heavier, then fall deeper into the atmosphere until they reach a point where they evaporate. This mechanism drags ammonia and water down to very deep levels in the planet’s atmosphere.” “This can potentially explain Juno measurements that Jupiter’s ammonia abundance is variable until at least 100 miles below the visible clouds.”
There are even auroras on Jupiter.
Guillot went into further details about the storms, “During Jupiter’s violent storms, hailstones form from this liquid, similar to the process in terrestrial storms where hail forms in the presence of super-cooled liquid water.” “Growth of the hailstones creates a slush-like substance surrounded by a layer of ice, and these “mushballs” fall, evaporate and continue sinking further in the planet’s deep atmosphere.”
According to the data collected by Juno, there is more ammonia found near the equator on Jupiter although the exact amount is currently unclear.
In a second study, a team of international experts created models that indicated that the “mushballs” and storms on Jupiter “dry out” the atmosphere of its ammonia, while a third study detailed the flashes of lightning on the planet. The three papers can be read in full here, here, and here.
Some things about planets are constants. Most of them form around stars and stay in their orbit. Some get cut loose for a variety of reasons and become rogues. A few get too close to black holes and get sucked into the abyss. Then there’s blanets. What are blanets? Get ready to meet the bravest planets in the universe.
“In Wada, Tsukamoto, and Kokubo (2019), we proposed for the first time that a new class of planets, blanets (i.e., black hole planets), can be formed around supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the galactic center. Here, we investigate the dust coagulation processes and physical conditions of the blanet formation outside the snowline in more detail, especially considering the effect of the radial advection of the dust aggregates.”
Keiichi Wada, Yusuke Tsukamoto and Eiichiro Kokubo are Japanese space researchers and university professors who have updated their 2019 paper on stuff that is seen around supermassive black holes with a new study submitted to The Astrophysical Journal detailing what they’re calling a new class of exoplanets – the blanet. In particular, they have been studying the supermassive black holes found at the center of most galaxies which are usually very active, with a disc of accretion dust and gas circling around it and avoiding consumption in a game of supermassive cat and mouse. While they originally thought planets in these accretion discs had been rogue exoplanets or planets orbiting stars captured by the black hole, this new study proposes that they actually form in the disc in somewhat the same way planets form around young stars.
“Our results suggest that blanets could be formed around relatively low-luminosity active galactic nuclei during their lifetime (100 million years). The gaseous envelope of a blanet should be negligibly small compared with the blanet mass. Therefore, the system of blanets are extraordinarily different from the standard Earth-type planets in the exoplanet systems.”
By “extraordinarily different,” the team means they grow much faster into much, much more massive than star-based planets. While the growth of planets in star-orbiting accretion discs are slowed by collisions, the black hole accretion discs have a lower viscosity – i.e., less traffic – that reduces the risk of collision. Because the viscosity is even lower at the outer edges of the disc, planets out there can grow quickly to masses that are 20 to 3,000 Earth masses, reaching what is considered the upper limit of planet size but not quite large enough to become a small star instead.
“The dynamical stability of such a system around a SMBH (supermassive black hole) may be an interesting subject for future studies.”
As you may have expected, these blanets can’t be seen – the study was done using models of supermassive black hole behavior. The team thinks all of this is “interesting” enough for future studies, provided they can find the grant money.
Could life exist on one of these blanets? A better question is: Why would life want to live so close to a supermassive black hole?
WETENSCHAP & PLANEETDe Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA stopt met het gebruik van beledigende namen voor objecten in de ruimte. Zo gaat de Eskimo-nevel, de gloeiende restanten van een ster, voortaan door het leven met de wetenschappelijke naam NGC 2392. “Eskimo wordt gezien als een koloniale term met een racistisch verleden, die is opgelegd aan de oorspronkelijke inwoners van het noordpoolgebied”, verklaart de NASA.
Ook de naam ‘Siamese Tweeling-stelsel’ wordt geschrapt. Dat zijn twee sterrenstelsels die in elkaar opgaan. De NASA gebruikt voortaan de wetenschappelijke namen NGC 4567 en NGC 4568. De ruimtevaartorganisatie kijkt of er meer beledigende en onwenselijke bijnamen in heelal zijn.
De Internationale Astronomische Unie gaat over de officiële namen in het heelal, maar dat zijn vooral complexe wetenschappelijke codes vol cijfers. Organisaties kunnen er zelf voor kiezen om namen te gebruiken die gemakkelijker te onthouden zijn. Zo wordt het object Barnard 33 ook wel de Paardenkopnevel genoemd, omdat hij lijkt op het hoofd van een paard.
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Dark Outpost: UFO Disclosure Coming?
Dark Outpost: UFO Disclosure Coming?
An explosive UFO report in the New York Times mentions “off-world vehicles not made on this Earth” and reveals the Pentagon did not disband in UFO office in 2012, as previously understood.
Now that we know it exists, US Senators expect the Pentagon’s secretive UFO unit to make some of its findings public every six months, according to the New York Times.
The Times also reported that one consultant to the agency briefed US Defense Department officials regarding some incredible discoveries ― including items retrieved from “off-world vehicles not made on this Earth.”
NASA satellite captures weird "UFO-like Anomaly" close to the sun
NASA satellite captures weird "UFO-like Anomaly" close to the sun
The unusual event was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on August 6, 2020 and shows a huge reddish anomaly like a giant fireball which appears close the sun. Then a second anomaly appears changing into a bright light and expands to an enormous volume many times larger than Earth.
Nemesis who discovered the strange event talks about a giant fireball that shoots out of the sun but if you look closely then it looks like both anomalies are not connected to the sun, at least the second bright anomaly is not connected to the sun, I'm thinking it is much further back.
Besides, if it was a fireball then why does it look parallel with the sun wouldn't it be shooting outward not across?
This so-called 'fireball" was clearly not coming from the sun, I could be wrong but it looks like "something" was being destroyed in the velocity of the sun.
The team follows a trail of evidence connecting UFOs to the most destructive weapons in human history. A former U.S Air Force Colonel discloses an encounter on Christmas Eve 1980, while another former Air Force officer describes a UFO-related injury. Was the U.S. military planting UFO misinformation to distract attention from top secret test, or are they hiding an even more ominous threat?
Mars was full of liquid water; Mars never had liquid water. It’s an ever changing theory with no end in sight. Back in May of this year, I wrote an article on how astronomers found the first evidence of a river that once flowed for more than 100,000 years on the Red Planet. That study strongly suggested that around 3.7 billion years ago, the planet would have had an atmosphere that supported large amounts of liquid water and perhaps even life. (The article can be read here.)
Now, scientists have changed their tune again as they’re saying that Mars may not have been the warm, wet, potentially habitable planet that they once thought was possible. Experts analyzed information from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter on NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft that collected data from 1997 to 2001. They studied over 10,000 valleys on the Red Planet in order to find out what it looked like during its first billion years of existence. They compared their Martian data to Devon Island in the Arctic and they found that the valleys on Mars could have been created in a similar way to those found below the island here on Earth.
Devon Island
Anna Grau Galofre, who is a geophysicist at Arizona State University and the lead author of the study, said in a statement, “If you look at Earth from a satellite, you see a lot of valleys: some of them made by rivers, some made by glaciers, some made by other processes, and each type has a distinctive shape,” adding, “Mars is similar, in that valleys look very different from each other, suggesting that many processes were at play to carve them.”
They found that the majority of the valleys on Mars had a better chance of being formed by melt-water that flowed between an ice sheet and the ground instead of by a flowing river on the surface.
They studied six characteristics from each of the 10,000+ valley segments and then compared them to four types of formations. Their results indicated that 22 of 66 valleys were created by melt-water that ran underneath glaciers; 9 others were formed by only glaciers; and 14 were created by rivers. The rest of them didn’t have enough information in order for scientists to make a conclusion on how they were formed. Another interesting fact was that while the valleys that could have been created by melt-water were located in different areas across the planet, the ones that may have been formed by flowing rivers were in one specific area close to Arabia Terra.
“For the last 40 years, since Mars’ valleys were first discovered, the assumption was that rivers once flowed on Mars, eroding and originating all of these valleys,” Grau Galofre stated, adding, “We tried to put everything together and bring up a hypothesis that hadn’t really been considered.”
With this new research, it seems as though Mars may not have been full of liquid water and may have been covered mostly in ice. The mystery and uncertainty about the atmosphere and temperatures on ancient Mars continues…
Reptilians Are Living Underground Says Leading Researcher
Reptilians Are Living Underground Says Leading Researcher
Leading Researcher on the Reptoid Presence Says They Are Living Underground.
Researcher and leading authority on the reptilian presence, John Rhodes, spoke about intelligent reptoid beings and the underground world he believes they inhabit. His research, which is culled from witness testimony, cultural/religious legends, and ancient accounts, suggests that the reptoids are indigenous to the Earth, and likely evolved from dinosaurs. They may have chosen to live underground as a way to escape solar radiation and other hazards, he theorized.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Scientists Warn That 400 Foot Tsunami Could Hit the East Coast if an Asteroid Hit the Atlantic Ocean! - Great Video
Scientists Warn That 400 Foot Tsunami Could Hit the East Coast if an Asteroid Hit the Atlantic Ocean! - Great Video
We live at a time when giant space rocks are whizzing past our planet with alarming regularity. Sometimes we know in advance that they are coming, and sometimes we don’t. In fact, on July 28th an asteroid the size of a car zipped past our planet “at a range that rivals the orbits of some high-flying satellites”, but we had only spotted it for the very first time on July 26th. If we couldn’t see that one until it was nearly upon us, could it be possible that there are much larger potential threats hurtling toward our planet that we currently know nothing about?
In 1998, a big Hollywood movie entitled “Deep Impact” imagined what would happen if a very large asteroid hit the Atlantic Ocean. It is hard to believe that it has been more than 20 years since it first came out, because I can still remember it very vividly. In one of the most memorable scenes in the film, a massive tsunami that is hundreds of feet tall slams into the east coast of the United States causing immense death and destruction. But that is just a movie. Could something similar actually happen in real life?
On Tuesday, a British news source reminded us that scientists have discovered that such a scenario is actually a very real possibility…
Of course an asteroid could potentially hit anywhere on the planet, but in their research Ward and Asphaug specifically focused on the Atlantic Ocean, and what their computer simulation came up with was extremely disconcerting…
Such an impact would send a series of giant waves in all directions, including toward the east coast of the United States. Today, almost 40 percent of the U.S. population lives in a county that directly borders a shoreline, and the population density right along the east coast is particularly dense.
Florida would probably be the first state to get hit by the waves, and it would be particularly vulnerable because most of the state is just barely above sea level…
In other words, there would be absolutely nothing to keep the tsunami waves from racing across the entire state. Much of the rest of the east coast would be extremely vulnerable as well. For example, New York City is less than 50 feet above sea level…
Boston, New Haven, Jersey City, Newark, Atlantic City, Philadelphia, Virginia Beach, Wilmington, Myrtle Beach, Charleston, Savannah and countless other east coast cities are all also less than 50 feet above sea level. So we are talking about the potential for death and destruction on a scale that is unimaginable.
We should hope that such an event can be put off for as long as possible, but we have been warned that our planet is apparently “in the midst of an epic asteroid surge”
And as I noted at the beginning of this video, we are still discovering more asteroids all the time. The one that was discovered on July 26th was not a threat, but it did come alarmingly close to us.
Despite all of our advanced technology, we remain extremely vulnerable, and scientists assure us that it is just a matter of time before our luck runs out and a gigantic space rock hits our planet. The good news is that we do not currently know about any asteroids that appear to be an imminent threat. But of course the bad news is that there are plenty of asteroids that we still haven’t discovered yet, and one or more of them could possibly be traveling directly toward us.
Beirut Dew Weapon Bombshell! Just Before Explosion a Mysterious Spherical Object Was Seen
Beirut Dew Weapon Bombshell! Just Before Explosion a Mysterious Spherical Object Was Seen
This is a review of the massive explosion in Beirut, Libanon, on August 4, 2020, which killed at least 135 people with about 5.000 people wounded,. Reports indicate it was due to the unexplained explosion of 2,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate being stored in an area.
Now, a retired physician who is interested in Physics and origin of humanity and the universe has sent an image to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) for further investigation showing a fighter jet and a mysterious spherical object just before the huge explosion.
The physician states: “This picture was forwarded to me from Lebanon, I did not take the picture. It was published on line by an amateur, and shows what appears to be a jet fighter flying over the site of the massive explosion that destroyed the Port of Beirut and portion of the city. Destruction was seen up tot 15 miles around the site.It was heard in Cyprus 150 miles away and several eye witness interviewed consistently said they heard a jet in the sky shortly before the explosion.”
In the center of the picture below the jet appears a round dark spherical object with a halo just before the massive explosion in Beirut, Lebanon.
Original image provided by physician showing a fighter jet and dark spherical object.
Many questions remain, but maybe the image provided by the physician and the following video provide more clarity about the cause of the explosion of the 2,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate.
Video:Watch for the small black object approaching the grain silos and then explode right after.
UFO Gets Caught On NBC News On Aug 3, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Gets Caught On NBC News On Aug 3, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Aug 3, 2020 Location of sighting: Navajo Tribe, Arizona, USA UFOs are often seen by Indians and have often been called spirits. This video clearly catches a disk shooting out of the clouds and back into the next cloud in the background. I'm not sure why NBC Nightly News missed it, but they were probably focused so much on the girl that they ignored all else. Did the UFO deliberately shoot across the background to get caught on TV? Probably not, but they were more likely on their ways someone when they noticed the TV crew and people gathered. Arizona is a huge bullseye of a hotspot for UFOs. With Area 51 in nearby Nevada desert and Nellis AFB also in Nevada...we kinda know where this UFO was headed toward...Nevada. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan Eyewitness states:
The August 3, 2020 issue of NBC Nightly News caught my attention by describing how the Navajo Indians are fighting a water crisis amid the coronavirus pandemic, but after watching this issue I found something else there - a disc-shaped UFO flying by at that very moment. when the Indian shaman cried out to the gods. Issue Summary: "Cynthia McFadden of NBC News takes a close look at the water crisis affecting the Navajo people in Arizona, where at least 30 percent of the houses on the reservation have no running water." Notice how the UFO "rips open" the cloud as it flies out.
I was looking at a photo of Rigel when I noticed a face...a face of a old person with open mouth looking out. Then I glanced down at the description of the photo...and it blew...my...mind!
NASA states:
By starlight this eerie visage shines in the dark, a crooked profile evoking its popular name, the Witch Head Nebula. In fact, this entrancing telescopic portrait gives the impression the witch has fixed her gaze on Orion's bright supergiant star Rigel. Spanning over 50 light-years, the dusty cosmic cloud strongly reflects nearby Rigel's blue light, giving it the characteristic color of a reflection nebula. Cataloged as IC 2118, the Witch Head Nebula is about 1,000 light-years away.
Needless to say, its clear NASA too saw the head of the person and even went as far as to name it "the Witch Head Nebula." The witch is watching Orions bright star...Rigel. Which is a sign by the species that made it that they came from the location she looks at. Even NASA could not ignore the nebula shaped like a face. So...with facts in hand, or should I say ahead, I can definitively say that this nebula was created on purpose by an alien race so advanced that they could manipulate a whole nebula! They have god-like powers to accomplish something like that. Well, we know the truth, and NASA leaked it out by accident. There are nebulas in the shape of faces as I have said for years and reported over the last decade. This is 100% proof that NASA agrees with me. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Mysterious Spherical Object seen just before massive explosion in Beirut
Mysterious Spherical Object seen just before massive explosion in Beirut
Reviewing the massive explosion in Beirut in Libanon on August 4, 2020 which killed at least 135 people and as about 5.000 people are wounded, due to the unexplained explosion of 2,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate.
Now, a retired physician who is interested in Physics and origin of humanity and the universe has sent an image to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) for further investigation showing a fighter jet and a mysterious spherical object just before the huge explosion.
The physician states: "This picture was forwarded to me from Lebanon, I did not take the picture. It was published on line by an amateur, and shows what appears to be a jet fighter flying over the site of the massive explosion that destroyed the Port of Beirut and portion of the city. Destruction was seen up tot 15 miles around the site.It was heard in Cyprus 150 miles away and several eye witness interviewed consistently said they heard a jet in the sky shortly before the explosion."
In the center of the picture below the jet appears a round dark spherical object with a halo just before the massive explosion in Beirut, Lebanon.
Original image provided by physician showing a fighter jet and dark spherical object.
Many questions remain, but maybe the image provided by the physician and the following video provide more clarity about the cause of the explosion of the 2,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate.
Video: Watch for the small black object approaching the grain silos and then explode right after.
UFO changes shape filmed over Cancun, Mexico "We know what we have seen"
UFO changes shape filmed over Cancun, Mexico "We know what we have seen"
On July 27, 2020 an amazing unidentified flying object was apparently seen in region 518 of the Enrique Rangel neighborhood of Cancun, Mexico.
Witness Johanna Loyo who captured the UFO contacted UFO researcher Carlos Clemente on which Carlos published the video on his channel.
Joanna Loyo who reported the sighting on her social networks said the following: “For the first time, my husband and I witnessed an incredible sighting. Finally after so many years we have managed to capture videos and photographs that we are not the only ones in this world."
“They will say that we are crazy, or if the footage is fake! But we are witnesses of what we have seen and the video and photographic evidence we have taken will speak for themselves."
UFOs in triangular formation over Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 5-Aug-2020
UFOs in triangular formation over Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 5-Aug-2020
Unknown lights were caught on tape in the sky above Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This happened on 5th August 2020.
Witness report:
Three steady lights rotating in night sky in triangular shape then took off and lights seperated. I was standing outside with my roommate who was showing me his new car when I just looked up at the sky and saw three bright lights in the shape of a triangle. As soon as I started to record they began rotating where you could sort of see these lights were connected. The object then took off to my left where it went behind some clouds then only one light was visible but when it appeared from behind the cloud it was no longer glowing and was disc shaped and dark. It moved very fast I couldn’t run fast enough to follow it. It made no sound.
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Evidence continues to mount and patterns emerge, as a group of former U.S. government insiders seek the truth behind UFOs. A shocking new encounter pulls them to another part of the U.S.A. where two more military eyewitnesses risk their career to recount what they saw, describing a mass sighting of UFOs within striking distance of one of the most important cities in the U.S. video, authenticated for the first time, shows bizarre, unidentified craft with incredible abilities, but what the team learns next is chilling: The objects may follow ships and people.
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Dumfries, Arizona – Object flying from right of the screen to left through clouds then exposed then flew into clouds on a broadcast on the NBC evening news. File one is the entire show and File two is just showing the Object about 18:05 minutes into the broadcast.
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All lifeforms on Earth, including humans, are made out of elements forged by extreme reactions deep in the bellies of stars. Phosphorus is among the core group of elements that make life possible, but scientists aren’t sure exactly what stellar processes create this important biological ingredient.
Now, a team of scientists has deepened the mystery of the element’s origins by discovering 15 “chemically peculiar stars” in the Milky Way that show “very high phosphorus abundances” that cannot be explained by any existing theories, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications.
“Phosphorus is particularly interesting because there are only five elements that we know life on Earth depends on: Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur,” said lead author Thomas Masseron, an astronomer at Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Tenerife, Spain, in a call.
“Phosphorus is a less abundant one,” he added, “so there are big uncertainties in general about where it is from.”
Masseron and his colleagues outlined several models to explain these phosphorus-rich (P-rich) stars, which may be similar to the long-dead stars that seeded our own solar system with this life-giving element.
The most likely origin story is that the stars were born from the ashes of a previous generation of massive stars that, for some reason, overproduced phosphorus in their lifetimes. This would require the progenitor stars to go through “a quite specific and peculiar nucleosynthesis,” the team said, referring to the process that goes on in the interior of stars to create new elements.
These massive stars would have spewed their phosphorus reserves across space when they exploded into supernova, thereby giving rise to a new brood of P-rich stars. However, computer models of this scenario suggest that it should also lead to carbon, sodium, and sulfur enrichment in the next generation of stars. The P-rich stars observed by the team, in contrast, do not show this pattern.
It’s also possible that the P-rich stars stole phosphorus from a companion star orbiting close to them, or that they fully merged with another star. Collisions between neutron stars, a class of dead, collapsed stars, provide another potential way to create phosphorus-enriched clouds of gas and debris. However, all of these explanations are contradicted in one way or another by the actual observations.
“The paper is all about exploring all possibilities and ruling out all of them,” said Masseron. “Basically, the answer is we don’t know.”
For this reason, the team is planning to study the stars in different wavelengths of light to learn more about their chemical fingerprints. They also hope to spot more examples of these outlier stars in order to see if they belong to a broader family of stars with equally inexplicable histories.
“Beyond the additional observations we are going to make, there will be another important aspect regarding collaboration with stellar interior and evolution experts, who now need to develop new models and possibly implement new physics to try to reproduce what we have observed, and thus attempt to find the origin of those stars,” Masseron concluded.
And now, we get to watch the event not from a shaky camera set up miles away by onlookers — but in crispy high definition video, courtesy of SpaceX, recorded by drones surveying the incredible event and even inside the giant rocket itself.
Inside Look
The internal view even shows the self-stabilizing Raptor engine pumping out thrust by burning liquid methane and oxygen.
The video also shows side thrusters firing, ensuring that the water tower-like structure stays upright during flight.
Spider Legs
Towards the end of SpaceX’s video, Starship’s six stubby and telescopic legs can be seen swinging out from inside the chassis, ensuring the prototype can securely make its landing.
SpaceX has changed the design of the vehicle’s landing legs during development. Early versions, as shown in renders, resembled those found on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket boosters, extending from the rocket’s sides.
The leg design shown off in today’s video, however, differs greatly from Falcon 9’s, flipping down from attachment points inside Starship’s fuselage. They’re designed to allow landings on uneven ground — including the lunar and Martian surface.
“We’re working on new legs,” Musk wrote in a June tweet. “Wider stance & able to auto-level. Important for leaning into wind or landing on rocky & pitted surfaces.”
Oregon doesn’t mind being one of the top states for spotting Bigfoot or UFOs. It doesn’t even mind being home to combination of eccentric populists and billion-dollar corporations. However, it doesn’t like the fact that it’s also becoming home to mysterious and unexplained cattle mutilations. The latest combines the usual precision surgical removal of organs with the strange placement of the cow’s body and an unusual clue that may (or may not, if history is any indicator) help solve this and potentially other cases. Aliens? Criminals? Satanists? Alien criminal Satanists? Something else?
“She died in a position she couldn’t have gotten into by herself. I don’t have any kind of logical explanation for it.”
That position (see for yourself here) was upright on the ground with front legs folded underneath its body, according to the report ranch owner David Hunt gave to Capital Press – a four-state agricultural media site – after first reporting the July 23rd mutilation to the Wheeler County (Oregon) Sheriff’s Office. Virtually all mutilated cattle – and cattle carcasses in general – are found lying on their sides with legs sticking out. This one sadly looks more like a cattle execution than mutilation.
Did you hear that?
“There was definitely foul play involved in this animal’s death.”
Deputy Jeremiah Holmes of the Wheeler County Sheriff’s Office says he’s no stranger to cattle mutilation cases. He investigated a mysterious mutilation in December 2019 involving a dead bull in the snow with its blood drained and nose, lips, ears, tongue, tail and genitals removed. Coincidentally, that mutilation also occurred on Hunt Ranch. Holmes sys there were differences in the precision of the cuts between the two incidents, and the latest had a big clue rarely found at mutilation sites – a clue that stops the “it’s aliens!” crowd dead (no pun intended) in their tracks.
“Deputy Holmes told the Capital Press that officers found a partial boot print about 100 yards away from the carcass.”
Before you yell, “It could be Hunt’s,” David Hunt says it’s been a long time since he’s been in this area – long enough that weather would have removed any footprints. There’s something else unusual about this mutilation – it has prompted Deputy Holmes to initiate a task force involving neighboring counties and potentially law enforcement across the state to share data about this mysterious crisis that has plagued Oregon. The Beaver State mutilation hit list includes five bulls in Harney County in July 2019 and a cow in Lake County in September 2019 – neither of which has been solved despite rewards being offered … these cows are worth $1,000 or more and their loss is both financially and emotionally destructive to their owners, not to mention local residents who want answers.
“I didn’t say much when my bull died last winter. But this time, the cops wanted permission to publicize so maybe people can keep their eyes open. I say: all right, tell anyone you want. It won’t bring back my dead cow, but maybe we’ll catch the killer.”
David Hunt sounds like he thinks it’s a human killer – either a sicko or a cultist who left the carcass looking like it had been executed. The bootprint may confirm that and help Sheriff Holmes identify the culprit. Many people blame animals. Others who have investigated cattle mutilations across the U.S. and around the world aren’t so sure – there were many who blamed the death of the five bulls in Oregon and a similar incident at the same time in Australia on aliens.
The Oregon state motto is “Alis volat propriis” — “She flies with her own wings.” Oregon cows are wishing they did too.
My previous article – on how and why government agencies have quietly kept a close and careful look at people in Ufology – made it clear that it was (and still is) politics, rather than aliens, that has prompted widespread surveillance of the UFO research community. Also in my previous article, I brought up the matter of the FBI’s file on one of the most famous UFO Contactees of the 1950s. The man under the microscope wasGeorge Van Tassel. The FBI’s Van Tassel file is more than three hundred pages in length and it references the man’s politics, his religious beliefs, and how he funded his annual UFO conferences out at Giant Rock, California. Mrs. Van Tassel was interviewed by the FBI too – as J. Edgar Hoover’s special-agents sought to get a full picture of the Contactee himself. There’s yet another section – albeit a small section – of the file that is worth noting. This one doesn’t revolve around politics, but it isn’t UFO-themed either. Rather, it concerns a strange weapon that – the FBI’s records demonstrate – Van Tassel had apparently designed and perfected.
George Van Tassel in 1964
It’s a fact that Van Tassel had a fascination for electronic devices and alternative technology, the most famous example being his Integratron, which still stands to this very day. For years, Van Tassel worked on the machine, the purpose of which, he claimed, was to enhance our psychic powers and potentials, and to significantly extend the human life span. Van Tassel never had the opportunity to see his project come to fruition; his reputation as someone who had a longstanding fascination with advanced technology, however, was not lost on his followers. Nor was it lost on the FBI. Not at all.
In April of 1965, rumors started to circulate around the FBI office at Miami, Florida that Van Tassel had succeeded in creating nothing less than a dangerous weapon that could cause blindness to people. The production and the utilization of this weapon was, the FBI recorded, related to an acquaintance of Van Tassel, who is described in an FBI memorandum as “an ultra-rightist with tendency toward violence.” Who that may have been, we still don’t know. A two-page Teletype to FBI headquarters, dated April 9, 1965, revealed all of the available facts: “A source, who has furnished reliable information in the past, and in addition has furnished information which could not be verified or corroborated, advised that a secret device, which can be carried on a person and used to blind people, has recently been perfected. This device, also referred to by [censored] as a weapon, formerly developed to keep others from seeing operator of weapon. [Censored] reports no other details regarding description and use of device. However, he said his information was second hand.”
The document continues: “The source states that it has been determined the alleged device, was developed by George W. Van Tassel, Giant Rock, Yucca Valley, California, who reportedly owns or operates an airport some 20 miles from Yucca Valley in the desert area. Source stated Van Tassel claimed he worked over seven years in research and development of this device and the machine to make it. The weapon reportedly is of an electrical type, not further described. Any additional information can be obtained only by individuals who purchase the device and must be present at the time it is made.” Less than a week later, the FBI seemed far less impressed with Van Tassel and his claimed inventions: “Because of Van Tassel’s apparent mental condition, as evidenced by his statements and apparent beliefs concerning interplanetary travel by men from Venus, and in view of his other highly imaginative and incredible statements concerning space travel and population, it is believed that no further inquiries need be conducted by the Miami or Los Angeles Offices concerning Van Tassel.”
Ninety-Sixty-Five also happened to be the year in which the FBI finally closed its George Van Tassel file and relegated it to the archives. The final entry in the lengthy file is a letter from a member of the public, whose name was deleted by the FBI (for privacy purposes) in the files. On August 17, 1965, he or she wrote to the FBI about Van Tassel and his work: “In my opinion, it is quite subversive and in conflict with the interests of the United States the way this gentleman uses the demoralizing of religion and also his accusations against our Government.”
If you lived in the elevated safety of the clouds, why would you worship the god of the underworld? That’s just one of the many questions being asked by archeologists on the top of the Cerro de Peña mountain in central Mexico after finding carvings dedicated to the god of the underworld in an area occupied before the Spaniards arrived by a culture known as the “Cloud People.” (No, not THAT kind of cloud!)
“When we reach the top we can see the ceremonial area, that is, where the temples and palaces of rulers were located.”
José Alfredo Arellanes, a researcher at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), was describing to El Universal what he found after climbing for 2.5 hours to reach the peak of the Cerro de Peña mountain, 1,845 meters (6053 ft) above sea level in what is now the state of Puebla. About 2,500 years ago, this was quite possibly the home of people of the Teotihuacan and Zapotec cultures for 1,000 years. And then, in the sixth century CE, long before the Europeans arrived, they abandoned it and the ceremonial area remained hidden by the jungle until Arellanes found its remains. (Photos here.)
Una de las piedras talladas encontradas en la antigua comunidad Zapoteca en México.
EFE
“You can see what are inscriptions on the north, northeast and top slopes, those inscriptions are from the ñiuñe script Ñiuñe in Mixteco translates as hot or hot land and it is a unique style.”
Arellanes reveals that he found two steles (free-standing stones) with 87 glyphs either engraved or painted on them. He also found evidence that the area once held seven pyramids and a court for ancient ball games. The inscriptions referred to the Mixtecos, the people living in Mixtecapan (Mixtec country) or Mixtlán (place of clouds) which was thought to cover 40,000 square km (15,444 sq miles) in the current states of Guerrero and Puebla.
“There is a stone carved with an image of an iguana, and just like an eagle, and on the other side of the rock there is a Bat God or God of the Night, just as she has the shape of a woman.”
Bat God
Gabriel García, a guide for the Archaeological Center, explains that Arellanes found images of creatures of the clouds – and eagle – on the same stele as an image of the Bat God of the underworld. He believes that other archeologists will find more evidence of the Cloud People, but they must first get approval of local authorities like Aracely Garcia, the councilor of the municipality which contains the ceremonial area, who want to preserve it for everyone while protecting it from exploitation.
“Vestiges or images carved in stone is what makes the place special and therefore (we must) invite people to get to know our Archaeological Center, better known as Cerro de la Peña.”
Good idea. The area surrounding Cerro de Peña is home to 6 million people, of which one million are of indigenous cultures. They’ve already been invaded by money-grubbing, artifact-stealing invaders once – this time they plan to protect their heritage legally.
The recent revelations by The New York Times that the Pentagon has a funded program to investigate UFOs and UAPs resulted the Times, the Pentagon and some of the parties named in the article to point out that these UFOs/UAPs are by no means alien vehicles and that they’re more concerned about national security than extraterrestrials. If that’s the case, then the gook folks in Palo Verde, Arizona, would like to know why this group isn’t investigating mysterious drones that were seen over the Palo Verde Nuclear Generation Station on multiple nights last September. Perhaps they should has the residents of Colorado and Wyoming who are still waiting for an explanation of the drone fleets seen there late last year. Are these secret operations or is the government covering up its ineptitude in protecting its citizens from these mysterious drones?
“A new report indicates there was a “drone-a-palooza” incident over the Palo Verde Generating Station, operated by the Arizona Public Service (APS), west of Phoenix in 2019.
The incident was first obtained with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by Douglas D. Johnson with the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies. The findings were made public in The War Zone.”
Palo Verde nuclear generating station
AZFamily.com, AZCentral.com and other local media sources sounded the alarm last weekend after The War Zone/The Drive did an expose late last week on the mysterious drone incidences at the Palo Verde nuclear facility on September 29th and 30th of 2019. The War Zone got its information from Douglas D. Johnson, a volunteer researcher affiliated with the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU), who obtained dozens of pages of heavily redacted Nuclear Regulatory Commission internal documents on the incidents.
“Officer noticed several drones (5 or 6) flying over the site. The drones are circling the 3 unit site inside and outside the Protected Area. The drones have flashing red and white rights and are estimated to be 200 to 300 hundred feet above the site. It was reported the drones had spotlights on while approaching the site that they turned off when they entered the Security Owner Controlled Area. Drones were first noticed at 2050 MST and are still over the site as of 2147 MST. Security Posture was normal, which was changed to elevated when the drones were noticed. The Licensee notified one of the NRC resident inspectors.
As of 0237 EST, no drones have been observed at the site since 2230 MST. Officers believe drones were over 2 feet in diameter.”
The report on the incidents the following night are similar and went to the NRC’s Intelligence Liaison and Threat Assessment Branch (ILTAB), which admits it can’t do anything about drone reports at nuke plants. Plant management contacted local law enforcement, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Coordinator. They apparently decided to monitor the drones rather than knock them out of the air, even though they were over a designated national security sensitive facility. The NRC documents also showed that these were not isolated incidents at Palo Verde.
Worried yet?
“Arizona’s Family reached out to MCSO (Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office) for more information about these drone sightings over Palo Verde Generating Station. We are awaiting a response.
At this time, it is unclear who was operating the drones in the restricted airspace and what their intent was.”
After finding out about the incident through the War Zone report, Arizona’s Family contacted MCSO late last week and received no response as of this writing. Arizona Public Service (APS), the electric utility and subsidiary of the publicly traded Pinnacle West Capital Corporation which runs the facility, did confirm the incidents when contacted and its officials said “the potential for damage from a drone is small compared with natural hazards that the plants were built to handle.”
Does that make you feel any better?
“Nobody except the drones’ pilots knows whether this was a case of hobbyists touring the plant out of curiosity, or something much more nefarious, intended to disrupt a massive power source for customers from Texas to California. And nobody in any official capacity seems to know who piloted the drones that night or the next.”
It didn’t make AZ Central feel better. All of these official downplays and references in the report to a “drone-a-palooza” mix the big point – local residents are concerned about the lack of identity of these drones nearly a year later.
When will government officials learn that “Move along … nothing to see here” doesn’t work anymore?
(Kudos to The Drive for its coverage of this and AZFamily.com and AZCentral.com for their followups.)
Former CIA Agent Mike Baker Responds to Pentagon UFO Reports and MKUltra on Joe Rogan
Former CIA Agent Mike Baker Responds to Pentagon UFO Reports and MKUltra on Joe Rogan
Former CIA Agent Mike Baker Responds to Pentagon UFO Reports and MKUltra
Michael “Mike” Baker is an American-British former covert operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, president and co-founder of a private intelligence and security firm, a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel, and current producer and script adviser to the entertainment industry.
The Joe Rogan Experience is a free audio and video podcast hosted by American comedian, actor, sports commentator, martial artist, and television host Joe Rogan. It was launched on December 24, 2009, by Rogan and comedian Brian Redban, who also produced and co-hosted. By 2015, it was one of the world’s most popular podcasts, regularly receiving millions of views per episode, and includes a wide array of guests.
Now this discovery I made falls into a crater I have never before looked at...Korolev X. The crater itself is over 25km across. The buildings itself I found is about 150-200 meters across. The structure is not alone, but there is also a smaller structure to its right side just next to it. The structure have intelligent design and have lots of right angles, shiny metallic surfaces and glowing surfaces that I believe to windows. Remarkable structure for sure and one that is small enough and intact enough that it could be mans first moon base...since its probably fully equipped with all the tech we need to survive on the moons surface. Its unlikely that its inhabited...it looks to be hundreds of thousands of years old. But in the vacuum of space...things don't rust or corrode...but sit and gather dust.
Fast UFO flying across the sky above Island park, New York 4-Aug-2020
Fast UFO flying across the sky above Island park, New York 4-Aug-2020
Another footage of a fast UFO was filmed over United States yesterday. This one was filmed over Island park, New York.
Witness report:
saw light in sky. bright, then dimmed. Then zoomed across sky, and followed a plane’s path for a distance. then hovered again. Then it turned red, or redish, hovered over me, turned white again, faded. Then moved off in a north west direction, until out of site. 2nd night in a row I have seen this.
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Fast UFO changing directions over Aurora, Colorado 3-Aug-2020
Fast UFO changing directions over Aurora, Colorado 3-Aug-2020
Here’s one interesting footage of a fast unidentified flying object making maneuvers in the sky above Aurora in Colorado. This was taken on 2 days ago on August 3rd, 2020.
Witness report:
This light stopped, then it reversed it’s flight. Bright light, turning from bright white to a bright red once it changed directions
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The list of military eyewitnesses describing strange and threatening unidentified craft in U.S airspace is growing. And now, a U.S. Navy radar operator has provided something more: Actual coordinates where UFOS appeared and disappeared. Lue Elizondo and a new partner follow the trail, and find that these unidentified craft are still seen. New eyewitnesses provide chilling details, and a correlation to U.S military sightings. As the reports mount, Lue closes in on a location where visitors are not allowed: Ground zero for the sightings.
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Date of sighting: May 27, 2020 Location of sighting: earths atmosphere Watch as a Virgin Galactic rocket is released from a jet, then begins its travel...when suddenly three glowing disks appear above it. Then the lead disk moves slowly down to the nose of the rocket...just as Virgin declares a problem with it. This cannot be a coincidence. Its obvious that aliens do not want this craft to be working at this time in our history...but why? And were they responsible for it malfunctioning? I believe so. Jump to Scott C. Waring
Alien Message On 1701 French Jeton Coin, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Alien Message On 1701 French Jeton Coin, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: July 20, 2020 Location of discover: French Jeton, 1701 First, thank you to those who donate, I do use 100% of it to purchase these unique items to make videos about. Its like Da Vinci hiding symbols with meaning and code into a painting, sculpture or architecture. Its there...but are you ready for it yet...most are not. I was looking over some old french coins online and came a cross a French Jeton...a token which had an alien message on it. The messages was sent to the future on a tiny French coin that would go overlooked for hundreds of years before the message was realized.
Notice that there is a satellite dish on this coins back with a beam coming out of it...aiming at a bright star. Now the star looks like the sun, but its hard to say for sure. Whats easy to notice is the words in English at the top of the coin...ET. Sure this means and in French...but it was strategically placed there to let others know...that this alien was on earth in 1701...trapped and already influencing the French culture. Alien species have influenced the development of humanity throughout our existence. Look outside, take a look around, do you really believe we did all this by ourselves? Scott C. Waring
Green Wheel UFO Seen Over Mountains In North Carolina, Video, Aug 3, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Green Wheel UFO Seen Over Mountains In North Carolina, Video, Aug 3, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Aug 3, 2020 Location of sighting: At Mountains of North Carolina, USA This video was recorded by Shane Smith a Youtuber who was fast enough to catch this glowing UFO for us to see. The UFO is one of many that is wheel like in nature. That means it actually rotates on end...slowly...like a wheel. This wheel UFO reminds me of more famous...more ancient sighting from the Bible. But then, the UFO came down to land before Ezekiel. I wonder...why the aliens stop doing this extreme effort and why they just hover out there...watching? Have they given up on humanity? Only left to watch what happens to us next? Scott C. Waring Ezekiel 1:4 I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north–an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal. Ezekiel 1:5 and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was that of a man.
Power Line being hit by lightning in China or was it a UFO?
Power Line being hit by lightning in China or was it a UFO?
It is said that a lightning suddenly struck the air causing an enormous explosion on the ground in Shenyang in China on August 4, 2020 but was it lightning?
The video uploaded by Aric Chen on his Twitter account shows the moment a high-voltage power line being hit, and then lit the trees, causing a huge fireball.
But the video also shows something else.
At the start of the footage you can see an unknown black square object that is clearly moving along the first tower before it goes downwards just before the explosion.
Could it be that the explosion/fireball was caused by this unknown black object (maybe an experimental craft to control the weather and something went wrong) or was it lightning after all?
Mysterious 15ft long Sea Creature "The Ainsdale Anomaly" washes ashore in England
Mysterious 15ft long Sea Creature "The Ainsdale Anomaly" washes ashore in England
Astinking 15-feet long sea creature that’s been compared to a washed-up mammoth and an alien has left locals mystified after turning up on a British beach.
The creature, which has been dubbed the Ainsdale Anomaly, was spotted on the Merseyside beach on Wednesday and has had people puzzled since
“It’s very bizarre,” said one man. “It’s like a mishmash of different things in one. “It’s 15 feet long, it has flippers, it’s furry and it seems to have another creature attached, possibly via an umbilical cord, so it could have been giving birth. “It was almost like a whale that had eaten a horse that had eaten a dolphin.”
An official from Natural England had been down to inspect the remains, but was unable to move them alone. When photos of the creature were shared online, people guessed that it was once a walrus, a whale, a cow, a horse, and a donkey – among other stranger suggestions.
According to PenNews, experts believe the creature is in fact the decayed remains of a cetacean, a grouping of animals that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises.
Marine biologist Jack Thomson, a lecturer at the University of Liverpool, examined images of the creature and could see why people thought of equine species.
“I have to admit this is a tough one,” he said. “Initially I thought it may have been a horse as there are some parts which seem very hoof-like, however, given its size – I've seen a report saying it’s approximately 15ft long – and some of the features resemblance to a skull, it is probably is a cetacean of some sort.”
in addition to the strange creature on the beach in England, this year, several other weird sea creatures have already washed up on beaches around the world.
Like a bizarre eye-less sea creature that had washed ashore on the Pacific coast beach of Destiladeras, Mexico - the sizeable remains of a mysterious sea creature that washed up on a Scottish beach during Storm Ciara and a creature that had washed ashore in South Carolina.
Black UFO over Saint Petersburg, Russia 2-Aug-2020
Black UFO over Saint Petersburg, Russia 2-Aug-2020
DaytimeUFO sighting filmed in the sky above Saint Petersburg, Russia. This happened on 2nd August 2020.
Witness report:
Black S-shaped UFO flew above my courtyard moving like a boomerang. To add to a short description, the object didn’t move in a wobbly fashion at all (air currents didn’t seem to affect its movement). It maintained a steady speed and moved spinning like a boomerang (black and S-shaped one). It was the size of a single engine Cessna aircraft or slightly bigger. No lights, no trails, no sounds or vibrations, I didn’t feel anything strange. It was flying several hundred meters above the ground. There was something pendulum-like in its movement. Unfortunately, I didn’t capture it at its closest point to me as I was taken aback. Also, I thought it was a weird balloon or a kite when I first saw the object. My phone was in a different room. When I came to film it, the object has already flew several hundred meters to the left.
Location: Saint Petersburg, Russia Google Coordinates (approx.): 59°51’22.0″N 30°21’16.1″E Date and Time: 2 August, 2020 15:24 MSK, UTC +3
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Bill Birnes, host of one of the History Channels most SUCCESSFUL and CREATIVE Alien Research shows had his show RIPPED out from underneath him at ITS PEAK of innovation. But
WHY? DID THEY GET TOO CLOSE TO SOME TRUTH???
Were they pushed off air by some government agency who didn’t like them making phone calls or contracting certain individuals??
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A former U.S. Navy radar operator emerges from the shadows to reveal the terrifying day it rained UFOs. For the first time, U.S. Navy personnel unveil new details of the stunning encounter, including a shocking capability that could explain why UFOs are sighted over oceans. Evidence of a U.S. military coverup emerges, as the team gets a major lead guiding them to an island with a long, clandestine history of UFO activity. Connections between UFOs and secret U.S aircraft must be explored.
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“Establishing a colony on Mars is incredibly technically challenging and expensive,” University of Michigan’s Aaron Ridley told Futurism. He argued that while the red planet is certainly “scientifically interesting,” the enormous costs associated with a permanent station make it unlikely, especially given that establishing a colony wouldn’t be a solution to a problem like overpopulation.
“We are not going to go to the moon or Mars because of population pressure,” he explained. “It is really because we have an innate desire to explore.”
Amanda Hendrix, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, shares a similar opinion on the prospect of a permanent Martian settlement. “I think it makes sense to go to Mars with humans to test technologies and to do scientific experiments — a short term visit or visits,” she told Futurism. “I do not think it makes sense to establish a long-term human settlement on Mars, only because it is not desirable as a long-term destination due to radiation concerns.”
Martian Money
One of the biggest obstacles standing in the path of a human colony on Mars is the price tag. Getting to Mars will be prohibitively expensive, and figuring out a method of paying for the project isn’t so easy.
“I think it would be a natural next step in our human exploration to visit the Moon and/or Mars, but to stay for the long term probably requires an economic justification,” said Hendrix. She added that space tourism is unlikely to serve this purpose.
Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, maintains that the only plausible economic motivation for a Martian colony is for it to serve as a government base, downplaying the possibility of either tourism or mining operations playing that role.
“The analogy here is the Antarctic bases from 1955 to about 1990,” he told Futurism. “During this time virtually all Antarctic bases were [government] science research bases in accordance with the Antarctic Treaty. After ~1990 tourism started to grow. Now there are tourist bases in Antarctica that are not [government] science research bases.”
Settling on Mars isn’t going to make anyone rich, and that’s going to make it more difficult to accrue the money required for such an expensive project. Still, despite the fact that a fully-fledged colony might not be the wisest direction for a prospective space program, there’s still plenty we could learn from the planet.
Mars Over The Moon
It seems that we’re more likely to establish a base on the moon before Mars. While this has its own benefits, most would agree that the red planet is more interesting — even if it’s harder to reach.
“I would agree that Mars is a much more scientifically interesting place,” said Ridley, although he acknowledges that he wouldn’t make a beeline for the planet. “I am a big believer in baby steps, so it makes a lot of sense to try to do something on the moon, and then move on to Mars.”
“In terms of science, Mars is way more interesting than the moon,” wrote McKay. He listed three main advantages: its similarity to Earth in terms of planetary processes and history, the possibility of life, and the potential for terraforming the planet.
If there were no other considerations to be made, most would agree that a Mars colony could be a fascinating project. However, certain endeavors need to be prioritized over others, and right now it doesn’t seem like a permanent Martian settlement is the best use of our resources.
Pentagon admits UFO program still exists. But Navy's alien sightings don't quite add up.
Pentagon admits UFO program still exists. But Navy's alien sightings don't quite add up.
The Navy will supposedly make regular reports on at least some of its findings. But disclosure could rob believers of their best piece of evidence — a dearth of good evidence.
An unidentified aerial phenomenon in a U.S. military video.
DoD via To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science
By Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute
Is it vindication at last? The New York Times has recently reported that a supposedly canceled Pentagon project to investigate strange aerial phenomena is still showing a pulse. The clandestine effort, originally known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, was said to have ended in 2012. But, apparently, it’s still doing its thing under the auspices of the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, and with a new name: the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force.
If the feds are still forking over tax dollars to delve into odd goings-on in the sky, it must be because they’ve got convincing evidence of extraterrestrial visitors.
So, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right? If the feds are still forking over tax dollars to delve into odd goings-on in the sky, it must be because they’ve got convincing evidence of extraterrestrial visitors. That’s the hope of the 100 million or so Americans who seem willing to swear on the Good Book that unidentified flying objects are, at least in some cases, alien objects.
But as with everything UFO-related, it’s worth taking a second, or third, look before rushing to lay out the red carpet for alien houseguests. When, in 2017, the Times first reported on a secret project to study unidentified aerial phenomena, it was in connection with some puzzling videos taken by Navy fighter pilots over the Pacific. The video showed unidentified objects ahead of the jets, objects that seemed to maneuver in bizarre ways. The military has always wanted to know about anything that can fly, so there are plenty of national security reasons for why they would continue such research.
That’s the most straightforward explanation for why the Navy has extended the Pentagon program. It’s also what they’ve said.
But isn’t it possible that what’s really going on here is not an investigation into unknown aircraft or drones, but a distraction to keep us from a more disturbing truth — that UFOs aren’t enemy flying machines, but alien flying machines? Maybe the government doesn’t want to admit this, because they figure the news might throw society into chaos.
Mind you, it’s hardly clear why extraterrestrials would travel many trillions of miles through the dangerous voids of space simply to pirouette above our heads and occasionally play cat-and-mouse with the Navy. But — full disclosure — we really don’t know what the aliens find interesting to do. Maybe they have their reasons.
This is a case where seeing might be believing, but no one has let us see anything. Which is convenient, if less than fully convincing.
In addition to the persistent interest in strange objects in the sky, it appears that there are also strange objects on the ground. The Times speaks of “retrieved materials” that are “not made on this Earth,” possibly including entire spacecraft. This claim seems both surprising and suspect. The pilots didn’t report picking up pieces of alien technology or strange metal alloys (at least not publicly), so it’s unclear where these “materials” were found. This is a case where seeing might be believing, but no one has let us see anything. Which is convenient, if less than fully convincing.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., says he is especially concerned by the fact that the extraterrestrials (if that’s what they are) spend a lot of time hanging out above our military bases.
If you’re a sci-fi fan, you’re well acquainted with the idea that hostile aliens need to pay attention to our armament. Perhaps it’s what’s lured them to Earth in the first place. They’ve come as saviors from on high, keen to separate us from our own weapons of mass destruction. That would, at least, be one explanation for their apparent interest in our combat capabilities.
But truth be told, it’s a totally unreasonable explanation. If the aliens can actually come here — whatever their motivation — then they have technology that’s enormously beyond our own. Comparing their weaponry to ours would be like comparing the U.S. Air Force to an Australopithecus raiding party. Put another way, do you honestly think “Star Trek’s” Captain Jean-Luc Picard would ever spend time checking out piles of slingshots or pikes on some primitive planet when he has phasers back on the USS Enterprise?
If the UFOs are interested in our military, that’s actually an argument against them being visitors from another star system. Instead, it suggests Russian aircraft, Chinese drones, or something else terrestrial — hardware we could understand.
Humans have always been tempted to ascribe strange phenomena to the workings of superhuman beings, much as the Greeks argued that lightning bolts were javelin tosses by Zeus. But science demands that any hypothesis be supported by detailed, repeatable and impartial observations. Those are lacking here.
The Office of Naval Intelligence will supposedly make regular reports on at least some of its findings. That sort of disclosure sounds as if it would be good news for those who, like Fox Mulder, “want to believe.” But in fact, it might actually work the other way. Disclosure could rob the believers of their best piece of evidence — which is to say, a dearth of good evidence.
AlthoughRoswell is the most famous alleged UFO crash, it is not the only one, nor is it the first. Some researchers believe there may have been dozens of UFO crashes. Below is a collection of some of the more well-known cases in the United States.
Aurora, Texas, 1897
An abandoned windmill in Texas, similar to the one described n the UFO crash.
Credit: Steve Schowiak
In 1896 and 1897, news of mysterious airship sightings was sweeping the nation. Many of these reports were similar to modern UFO sightings and consisted of strange lights darting around the sky. Other stories, however, referred to giant dirigibles (lighter-than-air aircraft). Even though there were a few inventors building dirigibles at the time throughout the world, for the most part, this explanation has been dismissed. There were no known successfully built dirigibles in the United States. The descriptions were also often much larger and flew much faster than the experimental blimps of this era.
Some witnesses reported seeing human-looking occupants in the airships. A few newspapers, including TheWashington Times, went so far as to speculate that these were visitors from Mars. One of the last reports of mysterious airships was the curious report of S.E. Haydon in the Dallas Morning News on April 17, 1897. In his article, Haydon claimed that witnesses spotted an airship at 6 a.m. in the town of Aurora, Texas, on April 16. It flew low to the ground, descending until it finally collided with a windmill on the property of Judge J.S. Proctor. The collision resulted in a massive explosion, “scattering debris over several acres of the ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge’s flower garden.”
According to the article, the townspeople were surprised to find the pilot’s body among the debris. It appeared to “not [be] an inhabitant of this world.” The local signal service officer speculated that he was from Mars. They also allegedly found papers containing strange hieroglyphics, which they assumed comprised a journal of the pilot’s travels. They were unable to determine the craft’s method of propulsion, but they did recover metals that appeared to be a mixture of aluminum and silver.
Original newspaper article describing the incident, by S. E. Haydon, “A Windmill Demolishes It,” The Dallas Morning News, April 19, 1897, p. 5.
Nearly seventy-six years later, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), decided to take a closer look at this UFO legend. By then, rumors had circulated that Haydon had fabricated the entire story. When Haydon wrote the story, the town of Aurora was reeling from a string of bad luck. Several residents had died from typhoid that winter, cotton crops had failed, and a railroad planned for the city had gone broke. It was believed that Haydon, a local cotton buyer, created the story to try and breathe some new life into the town. MUFON investigators found surprising evidence; however, that supported the idea that something extraordinary may have taken place.
According to MUFON’s report, Texas state director, Bill Case, found two individuals who testified that their parents had witnessed the events described by Haydon in his article. The first was Mrs. Mary Evans, who says that she was fifteen-years-old when her parents went to the crash site and when they returned home, described to Mary the explosion and the small man who was killed in the crash. She recalled they had informed her the townsfolk buried what was left of the pilot in the local cemetery. The other witness was Charlie Stephens, whose father said he had seen the crash, which caused a massive fire that could be seen for three miles.
Using the witness testimony, MUFON investigators found what they believed to be the site of the crash. Radiation levels were checked and were typical for the area. The investigators found metal fragments with metal detectors that indicated something had crashed and spread debris over a two-or-three-acre area east of where the windmill was located. One-piece, in particular, caught their attention.
The mysterious piece of metal was found beneath four inches of soil and appeared to have been in a molten state when it penetrated the Earth and smashed against a limestone rock where it was found. Under analysis, the metal was determined to be a very pure form of aluminum alloy, oddly devoid of traces of copper, which is typically seen with this sort of manufactured aluminum. It had also gone through a heating-and-cooling stage consistent with that of an explosion.
The next part of MUFON’s investigation was to find the remains of the UFO pilot. They located a headstone with a triangle and some circles carved into it, possibly an etching of the craft. The metal detectors also alerted to metal below the surface at this location. Paperwork was submitted to exhume the body, but townsfolk vehemently denied the request and asked that researchers not enter the cemetery. Soon after MUFON’s investigation, the headstone disappeared altogether, leaving the location of the grave unknown.
In an article published in the Houston Chronicle in 2007, Aurora business owner Karen Tedrow said she understood the townspeople’s reluctance: “My parents are buried there, and I don’t want them digging around. Earthly body or not, they ought to let it rest in peace.”
In the end, MUFON investigators determined that there was more to the story than previously believed and that they had found “sufficient evidence to cast reasonable doubt on the hoax theory.”
Aztec, New Mexico, 1948
Another famous alleged UFO crash case occurred in March 1948 in the remote town of Aztec, New Mexico, in the northwest corner of the state. This story began with the publishing one of the first UFO books, Behind the Flying Saucers, written by Frank Scully in 1950.
Scully was a writer for the entertainment magazine Variety. He says some of his Hollywood friends recommended that he get in touch with Silas Newton, a successful oilman, who had some interesting UFO crash stories. Newton shared his stories with Scully and explained the electromagnetic nature of the propulsion of crashed UFOs. Newton, along with an anonymous scientist referred to as Dr. Gee, became the primary source for Scully’s book.
According to Newton and Dr. Gee, advanced radar stations in New Mexico caused the crash of a disc-shaped UFO near Aztec. The craft was mostly intact with just a puncture near one of the windows. Scientists, including Dr. Gee, who were first to arrive on the scene, saw bodies inside the craft. Without visible doors on the object, the scientists were eventually able to get into the craft by sticking a pole inside and pressing a button on a wall that opened a hidden door.
Inside, the scientists found sixteen charred bodies of beings that were humanoid in form but only three-to-four-feet tall. They appeared to have been killed by a fire inside the craft. The craft was made of a solid material that looked similar to aluminum and was very lightweight. Eventually, the aircraft was disassembled and taken to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, which is often rumored to be the home base for recovered extraterrestrial objects.
Once Scully’s book was published, it quickly became a bestseller. However, doubts about the credibility of the main witnesses began to surface. J.P. Cahn, a freelance reporter, wrote an investigative piece for True magazine, claiming that the whole book was based on lies. Cahn claimed that he could prove that the metals Newton was purporting to be from an alien spacecraft were just a standard grade of aluminum used in pots and pans. He also said that he discovered the true identity of Dr. Gee.
According to Scully, Dr. Gee was a very accomplished scientist, with “more degrees than a thermometer.” However, Cahn discovered that Dr. Gee was a business associate of Newton’s by the name of Leo GeBauer. GeBauer owned a radio-and-television-parts company in Phoenix, Arizona. Although technologically inclined, GeBauer did not have the myriad of degrees claimed in Scully’s book. Scully’s response to this accusation was that GeBrauer was only one of many scientists represented by Dr. Gee in the book.
Cahn also uncovered that, although never formally charged, Newton had been accused of making false claims regarding stocks and oil prospects. Cahn believed that Newton and GeBrauer conned Scully into accepting their story to convince investors that they had access to secret alien technology capable of finding oil fields.
All of this has tarnished Scully’s book; however, there are UFO investigators who believe they have found evidence that supports the Aztec crash happened, including FBI documents. One such report can be found in Timothy Good’s book, Above Top Secret. In the book’s appendix, there is an FBI document from March 1950 that includes the report of an air force investigator on rumors of a crashed “flying saucer” discovered in New Mexico with three small bodies inside. It says the crash was the result of nearby “very high-powered radar.” Skeptics believe that Newton and GeBrauer had been peddling this story everywhere, and it eventually got back to the air force and the FBI.
Researchers Nick Redfern and Scott Ramsey obtained additional FBI documents regarding the Aztec crash. Ramsey says that these documents describe Newton as a very successful businessman and philanthropist. Although Newton told some tall tales to his investors, Ramsey says the investors seemed to be mostly happy with Newton’s results.
Ramsey has also been able to unearth alleged witnesses to the actual crash. Ken Farley claims he was driving from Durango, Colorado, to San Diego, California, on March 25, 1948, when he stopped outside Aztec to visit a friend. Having heard recent talk of emergency vehicles headed into the desert, Farley and his friend decided to check out what was going on. They arrived at a mesa with a large disc sitting next to it. There were several oilfield workers and a couple of police officers at the scene. They described an object much like the one Scully had written about, which appeared to be undamaged. Police eventually asked them to leave.
Another witness was nineteen-year-old Doug Noland, a gas company employee. He says that on that day, he had picked up his boss, Bill Ferguson, and drove to the desert to put out a brush fire. When Noland and Ferguson arrived at the scene, oilfield workers that were already on the scene told them that the fire was under control and showed them a mysterious large disc-shaped object.
Ramsey says he started as a skeptic, but twenty years later is still finding evidence that convinces him there may be something more to the crash at Aztec, New Mexico.
Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, 1965
On December 10, 1965, newspapers across the country reported events that took place the prior evening. Witnesses from Pennsylvania to Illinois, and even as far north as Canada, reported seeing a fireball race across the sky. In Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, debris was reported falling from the fiery object. Outside of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, witnesses reported a flash of light and a fire in the nearby woods.
On the evening of December 9, Robert Gatty, writer for the Tribune-Review out of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, was asked to report on an alleged UFO crash site in a forest outside Kecksburg. When he arrived, Gatty found the area was roped off by police expecting the arrival of “Army engineers and, possibly, civilian scientists.” Gatty claims that police threatened to arrest him if he proceeded into the forest. He reported that the roads were jammed with curious spectators and news reporters.
One of the other newsmen on location was John Murphy, the news director for one of the local radio stations, WHJB. According to his wife, Murphy arrived before the authorities, took pictures, and recorded some witnesses’ audio interviews. He would later put this all together in a radio documentary called Object in the Woods. Murphy later told listeners that he left out some conversations because the witnesses feared reprisal by the police or the army. Murphy’s wife and a coworker both have since said Murphy was visited by men claiming to be with the government. They confiscated some of his recordings and photographs.
To this day, the military maintains that it did not find anything in the forest that night. Nonetheless, Stan Gordon, a local UFO researcher, has gathered several witnesses who attest to the event and the object. Witnesses at the scene reported seeing an acorn-shaped object in the forest that was the size of a “Volkswagen.” Some witnesses later reported seeing the army hauling the tarp-covered object away, revealing only the lower lip of the object. Others reported a band of strange hieroglyphs around the base of the object.
This acorn shaped UFO was created as a prop for a TV show and is now on display in Kecksburg.
Credit: Kecksburg Volunteer Fire Department
Some scientists have speculated that the object was just a meteorite seen in Lake Erie’s vicinity that night. Russia’s Cosmos 96 space probe re-entered the atmosphere over Canada that day, and some have speculated that this is what landed in the woods. Witnesses claimed that the object changed direction several times before slowly falling in a downward trajectory towards the forest. Neither a Russian space probe nor a meteorite would change directions.
In 2002, inspired by Gordon’s work, the Syfy channel decided to investigate the Kecksburg case and, to do so, enlisted the help of journalist Leslie Kean. Together, they formed the Coalition for Freedom of Information (CFI). According to Kean’s report on the CFI website, the team set out to obtain official documents from NASA using the procedures allowed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In doing so, the CFI team was determined to “not accept the usual ‘no records’ responses” that are usually given for such requests.
Their initiative caught the attention and support of President Bill Clinton’s then Chief of Staff, John Podesta. He joined a press conference held by the Syfy channel on October 22, 2002, in which the CFI announced the efforts to obtain NASA files on the Kecksburg incident. Podesta stated before the press,
I think it’s time to open the books on questions that have remained in the dark on the question of government investigations of UFOs… It’s time to find out what the truth really is that’s out there. We ought to do it because it’s right; we ought to do it because the American people quite frankly can handle the truth; and we ought to do it because it’s the law.
John Podesta
Credit: Center for American Progress
The CFI focused on obtaining records from NASA instead of the air force or army because Gordon had previously received files from NASA, indicating that there were more files yet to be uncovered. In particular, CFI pursued the “Fragology Files,” which were described as “reports of space objects’ recovery, [and] analysis of fragments to determine national ownership and vehicle origin.” NASA responded that the files were destroyed, and, in a separate letter, NASA claimed that the records had been missing since 1987.
NASA continued to stall and claim that it had no relevant files, even files that had already been retrieved by Gordon. The CFI appealed the NASA responses and won, but NASA continued to stall. The CFI was then forced to sue and announced its intentions at a press conference on October 21, 2003. NASA finally agreed to send specific files, but only sent unhelpful pieces of information. CFI continued to pursue the lawsuit.
During this time, the chief scientist for orbital debris at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Nicholas Johnson, reviewed whether the Kecksburg incident could have been a human-made object that simply re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. In an interview on October 10, 2003, he told Kean, “I can tell you categorically, that there is no way that any debris from Cosmos 96 could have landed in Pennsylvania anywhere around 4:45 p.m.” Kean’s report demonstrates that “Johnson’s data shows that no man-made object from any country entered our atmosphere and landed in Pennsylvania on the afternoon of December 9.”
Although Johnson made strong statements to the contrary, in 2005, NASA spokesman David Steitz told the Associated Press that “the ‘UFO’ [Kecksburg object] was a Russian satellite, but government records documenting it have been lost.” This response was particularly strange in part because NASA had said that it did not even investigate the Kecksburg case. So, where did Steitz get this information? Kean tried to follow up with Steitz to clear up these discrepancies but could not obtain any particularly useful explanation.
Illustration of the UFO described by witnesses. Credit: Michael Schratt
Finally, after being tied up in court for two years, the final hearing on the CFI’s case against NASA occurred on March 20, 2007. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, clearly dissatisfied with NASA’s conduct in the case, reprimanded NASA’s attorney and, at one point, stated, “heads should roll” at NASA, and “I can sense the plaintiff’s frustration because I’m frustrated. It’s totally frustrating.” Judge Sullivan ruled in favor of the CFI and required NASA to pay for all legal fees for the case, to reexamine the files, and declassify relevant documents if necessary, explaining any redactions.
NASA sent more files to Kean, but none of them pertained to the Kecksburg incident. NASA searched hundreds of boxes. Kean feels that NASA made a genuine effort in the end, but that the filing systems were so weak that it was difficult to find anything. She concluded, “In summary, we’ll never know whether any documents in the missing or destroyed boxes might have shed light on the Kecksburg incident, even if only by providing a small lead that could open doors for researchers. It only takes one page to change everything.”
A version of this article originally appeared in Issue #8 (June/July 2011) of Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.
According to a new study by a group of Canadian researchers published in the journal Nature Geoscience today, a large number of ancient valleys on the Martian surface were formed by water melting below massive sheets of glacial ice — not free-flowing rivers, as previous research suggests.
The new research challenges the “warm and wet ancient Mars” hypothesis, which posits that Mars was once covered in massive river systems, fed by rain and large oceans of liquid water.
The study also follows a recent analysis of high-resolution imagery collected by the HiRISE camera on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which concluded that large rivers likely once flowed on the surface of Mars billions of years ago.
“For the last 40 years, since Mars’s valleys were first discovered, the assumption was that rivers once flowed on Mars, eroding and originating all of these valleys,” Anna Grau Galofre, former PhD student at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and lead author of the new study, said in a statement.
To come to their conclusion, Grau Galofre and her team compared over 10,000 Martian valleys to channels formed underneath glaciers of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. To their surprise, the channels were extremely similar.
“But there are hundreds of valleys on Mars, and they look very different from each other,” she added. “If you look at Earth from a satellite you see a lot of valleys: some of them made by rivers, some made by glaciers, some made by other processes, and each type has a distinctive shape.”
“These results are the first evidence for extensive subglacial erosion driven by channelized meltwater drainage beneath an ancient ice sheet on Mars,” co-author Mark Jellinek, professor in UBC’s department of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences, said in the statement.
They found only a small number of channels were likely formed on the surface — a big departure from previous research.
By examining climate models of ancient Mars, they also found that the Red Planet was also likely much colder than predicted during the time that the valleys were formed.
Interestingly, a thick sheets of ice could also improve the chances of ancient life on Mars surviving. The ice would have blocked solar radiation, especially during a time when Mars had no magnetic field.
The European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter has unexpectedly detected carbon dioxide and ozone in Mars’ atmosphere where the elusive methane should be, researchers in the UK and Russia have announced. The two gases may be hindering the probe’s methane detections.
Artist’s illustration of the joint European-Russian Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), which has been orbiting Mars since 2016.
Is the methane in Mars’ atmosphere geological in origin, arising from processes in the Martian rocks? Or could it be asign of life? Mars methane has been detected by telescopes on Earth, orbiting spacecraft and even the Curiosity rover on Mars. Meanwhile, European Space Agency (ESA) scientists have been frustrated by the lack of detection of methane by their Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) – part of the ExoMarsmission – designed in part specifically to measure methane. The orbiter has been circling Mars since 2016, but, so far, no methane. Now scientists think they have an answer.
The new findings come from scientists in the U.K. and Russia. They might help to explain why TGO hasn’t detected methane on Mars, ESA has reported. The answer has to do with two other gases in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide (CO2) and ozone (O3).
Researchers published two new peer-reviewed papers on July 27, 2020, in Astronomy & Astrophysics. One deals with the carbon dioxide detection and the other with the ozone.
While TGO still hasn’t directly detected methane, it did make another intriguing discovery that might explain why. It detected both carbon dioxide and ozone in the regions where methane had been expected to be seen. Both gases have been known about for a long time, and Mars’ atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, so why is this surprising?
Spectral signatures of carbon dioxide (left) and ozone (right) on Mars, as detected by the ACS instrument on the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO).
Kevin Olsen of the University of Oxford, who led the U.K. study, explained in a statement:
These features are both puzzling and surprising.
They lie over the exact wavelength range where we expected to see the strongest signs of methane. Before this discovery, the CO2 feature was completely unknown, and this is the first time ozone on Mars has been identified in this part of the infrared wavelength range.
TGO made the observations after studying the Martian atmosphere for a full Martian year, using its Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS). ACS is extremely sensitive, and can show scientists how these gases interact with light. The researchers were not expecting to see ozone in the part of the infrared wavelength range where methane was expected to be seen. Previous observations relied upon seeing the ozone signature in the ultraviolet, a technique which only allowed measurement at high altitudes (over 20 km [12 miles] above the surface). ACS, however, can map ozone down at lower altitudes as well. From the ozone paper:
We report the first observation of the spectral features of Martian ozone (O3) in the mid-infrared range using the Atmospheric Chemistry Suite Mid-InfaRed (MIR) channel, a cross-dispersion spectrometeroperating in solar occultation mode with the finest spectral resolution of any remote sensing mission to Mars.
The ability to simultaneously resolve these species has an impact on current and past attempts to measure the abundance of methane in the atmosphere of Mars.
In this region and time period, corresponding to the northern autumn equinox, we were able to observe significant amounts of ozone in the mid-infrared at altitudes below 30 km [19 miles].
Ozone absorption below 30 km in the mid-infrared range has important implications for searches for atmospheric methane. Past observations of methane in the atmosphere of Mars (Formisano et al. 2004; Krasnopolsky et al. 2004; Mumma et al. 2009; Webster et al. 2015) were a driving cause of the development of the ExoMars TGO mission. CH4 should have a relatively short lifetime in the atmosphere of Mars (several hundred years), meaning current observations require an active source (Lefèvre & Forget 2009). A key objective of the TGO mission is to determine with certainty whether or not CH4 is present in the atmosphere of Mars and what its spatial and temporal variability is, and to localize any possible sources. This story continues to be intriguing as the first results from TGO reported an upper limit on the order of 50 pptv (Korablev et al. 2019), and ACS MIR observations continue to reveal no methane after one MY. In its place, we have instead found the rare and previously undetected signatures of O3 and a new CO2 magnetic dipole band (Trokhimovskiy et al. 2020).
Another graph highlighting the unexpected carbon dioxide signature – a magnetic dipole absorption band of the molecule – as detected by the ACS instrument on the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO).
ACS also saw carbon dioxide at the infrared wavelength range where they expected to see methane, which was also unexpected. Alexander Trokhimovsky of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, who led the Russian study, said:
Discovering an unforeseen CO2 signature where we hunt for methane is significant. This signature could not be accounted for before, and may therefore have played a role in detections of small amounts of methane at Mars.
As noted by Meghan Bartels in an article for Space.com, the odd alignment of these two gases where methane had been expected suggests that they are interfering with the detection of methane by TGO. From the ozone paper:
The observed spectral signature of ozone at 3000–3060 cm -1 directly overlaps with the spectral range of the methane (CH4) v3 vibration-rotation band, and it, along with a newly discovered CO2 band in the same region, may interfere with measurements of methane abundance.
These findings do not directly disagree with those of other missions, since the observations were mostly done at different times from those that did find methane, and TGO is designed to sniff out very tiny amounts of methane, not larger plumes as seen before (although even those plumes are very small compared to methane plumes on Earth). Olsen said:
In fact, we’re actively working on coordinating measurements with other missions. Rather than disputing any previous claims, this finding is a motivator for all teams to look closer; the more we know, the more deeply and accurately we can explore Mars’ atmosphere.
The researchers wondered if previous observations from Earth, Mars Express (using the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer, or PFS) or Curiosity (using the Tunable Laser Spectrometer, or TLS), could have mistaken carbon dioxide and/or ozone for some of the methane measurements, but that is considered to be unlikely. From the ozone paper:
CO2 and O3 alone cannot account for the detections made by both teams. In the case of PFS, the previously unknown CO2 features would impact all observations equally, as CO2 is always present and well-mixed. The PFS team has instead identified CH4 in only a small number of observations (Formisano et al. 2004; Giuranna et al. 2019). Furthermore, we computed spectra with O3 at two and three times the quantities in our observations, and the sheer magnitude of CH4 observed by these latter authors (15 ppbv) is far too large to be easily mistaken for O3.
In the case of TLS, which takes measurements of CH4 at the surface and mostly at night where and when the O3 abundance is greatest, again, it is unlikely that the large quantity of CH4 observed (up to 9 ppbv) resulted from O3, yet the latter may interfere in the measurement of the background level of methane in the so-called enriched mode as both ozone and methane should sustain the same enrichment.
For ground-based observations, strong O3 absorption features from Earth’s atmosphere must first be removed before retrieving mixing ratios for Mars (Krasnopolsky 2012; Mumma et al. 2009); O3 must be accounted for, although this step makes the retrieval more difficult (Zahnle et al. 2011). Finally, in the case of all previous observations, the rapid evolution and disappearance of CH4 are still not explained, although ozone chemistry is very rapid, with a lifetime on the order of days.
The possible methods by which scientists think methane can be created and destroyed on Mars.
The results will not only help scientists to better track down methane, but also learn more about the Martian atmosphere overall. Alexander said:
These findings enable us to build a fuller understanding of our planetary neighbor.
Ozone and CO2 are important in Mars’ atmosphere. By not accounting for these gases properly, we run the risk of mischaracterizing the phenomena or properties we see.
Together, these two studies take a significant step toward revealing the true characteristics of Mars: toward a new level of accuracy and understanding.
TGO’s primary mission is to detect trace gases that could originate from either geological or biological processes. The ExoMars mission overall is a joint effort between Europe and Russia. According to TGO Project Scientist Håkan Svedhem:
These findings are the direct result of hugely successful and ongoing collaboration between European and Russian scientists as part of ExoMars.
They set new standards for future spectral observations, and will help us to paint a more complete picture of Mars’ atmospheric properties – including where and when there may be methane to be found, which remains a key question in Mars exploration.
Additionally, these findings will prompt a thorough analysis of all the relevant data we’ve collected to date – and the prospect of new discovery in this way is, as always, very exciting. Each piece of information revealed by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter marks progress towards a more accurate understanding of Mars, and puts us one step closer to unravelling the planet’s lingering mysteries.
Kevin Olsen of the University of Oxford in the UK, who led the Mars ozone study.
We still don’t know the origin of Martian methane, but the new studies from Europe and Russia of other gases in the atmosphere will help to refine and narrow down the possibilities.
Bottom line: ESA’s TGO orbiter has unexpectedly detected carbon dioxide and ozone in Mars’ atmosphere where the elusive methane should be.
A mysteriously long, thin cloud has again appeared over the Arsia Mons volcano on Mars.
View larger. | The Mars Express orbiter, which has been studying Mars for the past 16 years, captured these images of a strange, very elongated cloud on Mars on July 17 and 19, 2020. The cloud can reach up to 1,100 miles (1,800 km) in length.
For the past couple of years, the Mars Express orbiter of the European Space Agency (ESA) has been keeping an eye on a mysteriously long, thin cloud that periodically shows up over Arsia Mons, the 12-mile-high (20-km-high) volcano on Mars.
In a July 29 statement, ESA said the cloud has appeared again, illustrated by the images above, acquired by the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) on Mars Express on July 17 and 19, 2020.
Mars Express first noticed and photographed the cloud in September 2018. A recurrent feature, the cloud is made up of water and ice and can stretch for over 1,100 miles (1,800 km). Despite its location and appearance, scientists say it’s not a plume linked to volcanic activity. Instead, the curious stream forms as airflow, influenced by the volcano’s leeward slope (the side that does not face the wind).
Here’s the cloud, extending west of the Arsia Mons volcano on Mars, seen in a Mars Express image taken October 10, 2018. Click here for an annotated version of this image.
Jorge Hernández-Bernal, at the University of the Basque Country (Spain), is leader of a team studying the cloud. He said in a statement:
We have been investigating this intriguing phenomenon and were expecting to see such a cloud form around now. This elongated cloud forms every Martian year during this season around the southern solstice, and repeats for 80 days or even more, following a rapid daily cycle. However, we don’t know yet if the clouds are always quite this impressive.
A Martian day, or sol, is slightly longer than an Earth day at 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds long. A Martian year consists of 668 sols – approximately 687 days – so the seasons last for twice as long. The southern solstice is the period of the year when the sun is in the southernmost position in the Martian skies, just like the December 21-22 solstice here on Earth. In the early mornings during this period, this fleeting cloud grows for about three hours, quickly disappearing again just a few hours later.
Most spacecraft in orbit around Mars tend to observe in the Martian afternoon. However, Mars Express is in a position to gather and provide crucial information on this unique effect. Mars Express mission team member Eleni Ravanis works specifically for the VMC instrument. She said:
The extent of this huge cloud can’t be seen if your camera only has a narrow field of view, or if you’re only observing in the afternoon. Luckily for Mars Express, the highly elliptical orbit of the spacecraft, coupled with the wide field of view of the VMC instrument, lets us take pictures covering a wide area of the planet in the early morning. That means we can catch it!
The Mars Express science team has named the cloud the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud, AMEC. So, how long has it been disappearing and reappearing? Why does it only form in the early morning? Scientists continue to investigate.
Bottom line: Images from the Mars Express spacecraft show that a mysteriously long, thin cloud has again appeared over the Arsia Mons volcano on Mars.
Galactic cosmic rays are high energy particles from explosive events like supernovae, zinging through our solar system, constantly bombarding both Earth and Mars. A researcher suggests they supply enough energy to make subsurface life on Mars possible.
This beautiful composite consists of 1,000 images acquired during the Viking missions to Mars in the late 1970s.
Galactic cosmic rays that penetrate the Martian surface can potentially trigger the kind of chemical reactions that biological life can harness for metabolism. That’s according to a new studypublished July 28, 2020 in Scientific Reports, an online peer-reviewed journal published by Nature. Researcher Dimitra Atri – of New York University Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates – is lead author of the new study, which peers (theoretically) below the Martian surface to see how likely it is for life to survive.
He said:
It is exciting to contemplate that life could survive in such a harsh environment, as few as 2 meters [6 feet] below the surface of Mars.
Of all the planets in our solar system, Mars is most similar to Earth. Some of the streaks on Mars’ surface may have been caused by running water in the distant past. Volcanoes once exploded there. Even today, the ice caps that sit atop Mars’ poles have some similarities with our own planet’s polar regions. And the seasons change on the red planet in ways reminiscent of earthly seasons. Because it’s so reminiscent of Earth – and because the idea of humans on Mars has long been a dream of both science fiction writers and space engineers – Mars has been the most investigated planet in our solar system. That is particularly true with respect to the search for extraterrestrial life.
But, to date, no one has discovered life on Mars, in any form. The harsh conditions on its surface may prevent life from existing there. But the subsurface of Mars might be a different story. From Dimitra Atri’s new paper:
There is growing evidence suggesting the presence of aqueous environment on ancient Mars, raising the question of the possibility of life in such an environment. Subsequently, with the erosion of the Martian atmosphere resulting in drastic changes in its climate, surface water disappeared, shrinking habitable spaces on the planet, with only a limited amount of water remaining near the surface in form of brines and water-ice deposits. Life, if it ever existed, would have had to adapt to harsh modern conditions, which includes low temperatures and surface pressure, and high radiation dose.
Rovers have been crawling Mars’ surface, and orbiters have been peering down at Mars, for decades. Meanwhile, Mars’ subsurface environment has barely begun to be explored. According to scientists, below its surface, Mars is less harsh and has traces of water in form of water-ice and brines. The new study considers the galactic cosmic rays – high energy particles that emerge from the remnants of violent explosions, such as supernovae – that constantly bombard and penetrate the Martian surface. The study suggests that galactic cosmic rays might serve as energy to trigger the kind of reactions that lead to organic chemicals, the sorts of chemicals upon which all life is based.
Traveling at nearly the speed of light, galactic cosmic rays enter our solar system from outer space. They’re able to penetrate a few meters below the Martian surface. This radiation might make this region hospitable for potential life to evolve, Atri suggests.
Scientists believe that Mars was once warmer and more suitable to life than it is now. Could life (if it ever existed) have survived the planet’s subsequent climate change? From the paper:
… if life did exist on ancient Mars, there is a possibility of survival, which can be estimated based on our knowledge ofextremophiles that are known to survive in comparably harsh environments on Earth. Such microbial life could have either originated on Mars, or been transported from elsewhere, including from the Earth.
This possibility of Martian subsurface life will be explored for the first time in 2022 by the Rosalind Franklin rover, which is part of the European Space Agency’s and Roscosmos’ ExoMars mission. Like so many Mars missions before it, the rover’s goal will be to establish whether life currently exists or has ever existed on the red planet. From the website:
Determining whether life ever existed on the red planet, or still does today, is at the heart of the ExoMars program. While spacecraft exploring Mars in the last decades have shown that the surface is dry and barren, billions of years ago it was much more reminiscent of Earth, with water flowing in rivers and lakes, perhaps seas. If life ever began in this very early period, scientists think that the best chances to find evidence for it is to look underground, in ancient regions of Mars that were once influenced by water.
To do this, the rover is equipped with a drill that can collect samples up to two meters (about six feet) below Mars’ surface.
The Rosalind Franklin rover is scheduled to be launched in 2022.
Bottom line:A new study theorizes that galactic cosmic rays might serve as energy that can be harnessed by subsurface Martian life for metabolism. This possibility will be explored in depth by the Rosalind Franklin rover which will be launched in 2022.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over Antarctica, California, Florida, Connecticut, Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal, Puerto Rico, and England in the United Kingdom.
The Filer Research Institute feels the scientific study of UFOs is for the benefit of humankind and is an important endeavor. The US Air Force investigated UFOs publicly for more than twenty years under Project Blue Book; and I continue this advanced research. I believe the God of the universe has spread life throughout the cosmos and UFO’s are visiting us in ever-increasing numbers.
Forward these files to your friends and neighbors.
Special Projects
UFOs Are From Space
The Pentagon briefed to the U.S. Congress that UFOs are not made on this earth
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence asked the Intelligence Community to write a comprehensive report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs aka UFOs) in six months. They would then present the information to Congress.
This is like the Spaceship I chased Over England
The astrophysicist Eric Davis, who consulted with the Pentagon’s original UFO program, told the Times that after he examined certain materials, he came to the conclusion that “we couldn’t make [them] ourselves.” In fact, Davis briefed a Department of Defense (DOD) agency as recently as March about retrieving materials from “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.”
Eric W. Davis, an astrophysicist who worked as a subcontractor and then a consultant for the Pentagon UFO program since 2007, said that, “in some cases, examination of the materials had so far failed to determine their source.”
Eric Davis
Davis, who now works for Aerospace Corp., a defense contractor, said he gave a classified briefing to a Defense Department agency as recently as March about retrievals from “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.”
We have apparently made retrievals from off-world vehicles not made on this earththat are actual materials of alien origin suggesting vehicles in our possession?
The materials are probably enough like those found on earth that they can’t say definitively they’re of alien origin, but that shouldn’t surprise us. Elements on earth can be found all over the universe. It stands to reason that any machines of alien manufacture would possess metals that are also found here. The actual manufacturing process is likely different and so far unable to duplicate.
They probably already know. What they don’t know is why sightings of UFOs happen with great regularity over military bases, missile silos, and aircraft carriers. We know they’re real. We can see them on radar. We get visual confirmation from experienced pilots whose lives depend on identifying objects as friend or foe.
Honey comb material has been found in at least two crash sites.
Honeycombs nearly identical were found 6000 miles apart and 41 years later, Magdalena, NM Plains UFO crash debris honeycomb on left, Shikoku Island debris found in 1971, on the right. A Mr. Shinto saw the UFO explode and found the debris. Obviously it would be difficult to manufacture honey comb material with 56 different metals that are nano technological smart metals and certainly suggests these crashed UFOs were made off the Earth or at least not by humans.
All of the samples were tested with a volt-ohmmeter, and were found to conduct electricity. Fifty-six (56) elements were detected in at least one sample. The aluminum contained alloys not available in aluminum in 1947. The coatings on all metals were blended with metal and rich in silica, titania, magnesia, sulfate, phosphate, and chloride, were almost certainly not available in 1947. The coatings are similar to those removed from people claiming alien contact. The samples still emit magnetic and electrical energy indicating these samples include nano technological smart metals and of probable alien origin. Analysis of some of the metal indicated it was not from Earth.
In a June Senate Committee Report, the Senate authorized appropriations for fiscal year 2021 for the task force, supporting its efforts to reveal any links that unidentified aerial phenomena “have to adversarial foreign governments, and the threat they pose to U.S. military assets and installations.”
Senate Intelligence Committee.
From the report: The Committee remains concerned that there is no unified, comprehensive process within the Federal Government for collecting and analyzing intelligence on unidentified aerial phenomena, despite the potential threat.
The Committee understands that the relevant intelligence may be sensitive; nevertheless, the Committee finds that the information sharing and coordination across the Intelligence Community has been inconsistent, and this issue has lacked attention from senior leaders.
Therefore, the Committee directs the DNI, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense and the heads of such other agencies as the Director and Secretary jointly consider relevant, to submit a report within 180 days of the date of enactment of the Act, to the congressional intelligence and armed services committees on unidentified aerial phenomena (also known as ‘‘anomalous aerial vehicles’’), including observed airborne objects that have not been identified.
Senator Marco Rubio, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told CBS that he’s most interested to learn from the task force who’s responsible for unidentified aircraft spotted over American military bases. Rubio said he hopes “the Chinese or Russians or some other adversary” hasn’t made “some sort of technological leap” that “allows them to conduct this sort of activity.”“That to me,” Rubio said, “is a national security risk and one we should be looking into.”
UFO over C-5 at Nellis AFB
While such UAVs may very well come from foreign adversaries, the other possibility, of course, is that we can’t pinpoint their origins from anywhere on this planet. And that’s where the New York Times report gets really interesting.
As we have said previously, the Department of Defense and all of the military departments take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously, and examine each report,”
Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough tells Popular Mechanics in a statement. “This includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ (UAP) when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is observing. Thorough examinations of any incursions into our training ranges or designated airspace often involve assessments from across the department, and, as appropriate, consultation with other U.S. government departments and agencies.”
Gough continues:
The safety of our personnel and the security of our operations are of paramount concern. To protect our people and maintain operations security, which includes not providing information that may be useful to our adversaries, DOD does not discuss publicly the details of either the observations or the examination of reported incursions into our training ranges or designated airspace, including those incursions initially designated as UAP.
In regards to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force mentioned in Times, Gough confirms the Department of Defense “is creating a task force to gain knowledge and insight into the nature and origins of UAPs,” as well as their “operations, capabilities, performance, and/or signatures.”
Sighting of Tic Tac upper right
The mission, Gough says, “will be to detect, analyze, catalog, consolidate, and exploit non-traditional aerospace vehicles/UAPs posing an operational threat to U.S. national security and avoid strategic surprise.”
The Times report, and the anticipated public disclosure of findings from Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, are the latest in encouraging recent developments surrounding UFO research.
In 2019, the Navy confirmed the three videos, taken by Navy pilots, indeed show “unexplained aerial phenomena,” but the service also said the footage should have never been released to the public in the first place. Then in April, the service dropped the clips on its Freedom of Information Act page a repository for documents released under the federal law that allows for the full or partial disclosure of U.S. government information to the public. Commander Favor flying in his F-18 reported the UAV dropped from 80,000 feet to the deck in a second and hovered over a submericible unidentified object that had a series of bright lights. It is speculated the airborne UAV was taking instruction from the submersible UFOs.
Carmine Sabia Jr. covered the news that the Pentagon unit responsible for gathering intelligence on unidentified aerial phenomena plans to report some of its findings to the public. What makes this story potentially so important is that background briefings have already been given to a couple of congressional committees that have been more explicit about the possibility that the aircraft encountered by U.S. pilots and seen over our military bases and missile silos are “not of this world.
The Pentagon as a matter of policy sees the craft as a threat. That’s their job. Treating them as friends and welcoming them with open arms would be suicidal. It wouldn’t be surprising if the Pentagon knows more about these encounters than they’re saying. No sense in letting other countries knows what we know. And we certainly don’t want to advertise the apparent vulnerability of our military assets. That attitude became almost an obsession in
1952 when fleets of UFOs suddenly appeared in the skies over Washington, D.C. The military was more concerned with covering up our vulnerabilities than in pursuing what the UFOs were.
So while the Pentagon has been more forthcoming in recent years about confirming that UFOs exist, they are still reluctant to give us much information, despite studying these aircraft for decades. They must have developed some kind of flight profile of the vehicles and know a lot about their flight characteristics — speed, altitude, maneuverability. They can estimate power output, although its power source is probably still a mystery.
.It’s what they don’t know about these aircraft that worries them. And that includes what their intent is in flying over our military assets.
Editor’s Note: I’ve clocked them at over 100,000 per hour. It appears the release of data is on a very slow plan so the public will not panic
A new report in the New York Times confirms several new accounts. The government’s UFO unit currently resides in the Office of Naval Intelligence, where it “deals with classified matters,” per the report, even though the unit itself isn’t classified. The Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force is meant to “standardize collection and reporting” on sightings of UAVs and publicly divulge “at least some of its findings” twice a year, according to the Times.
Underwater UFOs are often seen by Navel personnel that can move at 100 knots per hour.
A fleet of UFOs on Earth was spotted from the ISS.
The UFOs came from the ocean.
Each UFO was about 1.5 kilometers long or nearly a mile long. (.93)
An UFO expert claimed that a photo taken by NASA from space shows a fleet of massive alien vessels on Earth. According to the expert, the UFOs were photographed as they were emerging from the ocean.
The image of the alleged UFOs was spotted by Scott Waring of ET Data Base. The UFO on the far left is the leader of the fleet,” Waring explained. “You can see the UFO on the far left is about 75% out of the water, the center UFO is 45% and the UFO on the far right is only about 20% out of the water.”
He said he came across the strange image while viewing the live footage streamed by NASA from the cameras mounted on the ISS.
As he was viewing the video feed from the ISS, Waring spotted three strange objects on Earth. According to the UFO expert, parts of the objects appeared to be submerged in the ocean. After analyzing the clip, Waring noted that the objects were alien vessels that were initially underwater.
Based on their appearance, Waring said the objects were captured on film as they were preparing to emerge from the ocean. He estimated that each of the objects was around 1.5 kilometers long.
“This is some cool footage of three UFOs rising up out of the ocean,” he wrote in a blog post. “Each UFO is about 1.5 km long and one of them is still half underwater”. UFOs have been reported by pilots that size, so it’s not unusual at all
Waring claims the alleged alien vessels were flying in formation. He believes that as soon as the UFOs have emerged from the water, they would wait for a while before flying away. UFOs with bases underwater usually dry off. Waring claimed that leaving Earth’s atmosphere to venture into space creating ice while still wet could damage the ship. NASA photograph of large craft over the Atlantic Ocean.
Teller Claims Great Menace from Space Exists
Edward Teller, Ph.D., the father of the hydrogen bomb’s memo to President Ronald Reagan claims, “A menace greater than the nuclear arms race exists. It does not originate here on Earth, but comes from space itself. ”
President Reagan had chased a UFO while governor of California and received daily briefings about the UFOs as President.
Teller felt a Star Wars anti UFO defense system could be built and successfully defend Earth. In the 1980s, Teller began a strong campaign for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also called “Star Wars”, the concept of using lasers or satellites to destroy incoming Russian ICBMs or possibly alien incursions.
We have reports that some alien space ships were successfully hit and some actually were shot down and crashed. A consortium of nations participated in the defense of Earth including the Soviet Union, UK, Australia, Peru and the US.
President Ronald Reagan awarded physicist Edward Teller, Ph.D., the National Medal of Science in 1983.
Image courtesy of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.
Teller was Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1958-1960) and then an Associate Director. He also served concurrently as a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a tireless advocate of a strong nuclear program. In 1975, he retired and was named Director Emeritus of the Livermore Laboratory.
In the 1980s, Teller began a strong campaign for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also called “Star Wars”, the concept of using lasers or satellites to destroy incoming Russian ICBMs or possibly alien incursions. Teller lobbied with government agencies—and got the sanction of President Ronald Reagan—for his plan to develop a system using elaborate satellites which used atomic weapons to fire X-ray lasers at incoming missiles.
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also called “Star Wars”, was offered to the Soviet Union by President Reagan.
The project was eventually scaled back but now exists in altered form. Teller was later encouraged, however, by the Bush administration’s revitalization of the missile defense program in the early 21st century (known to its critics as “Son of Star Wars”) that is at least partially effective against some alien incursions. Fortunately, it has curbed North Korea and other nations from launching missile attacks on the US. It is apparently effective against a small number of ICBMs and some alien incursions.
Edward Teller was very skeptical of greenhouse gases causing global warming.
On volcano causes more carbon dioxide in a day than humans create in a year.
Jack Sarfatti Anti-gravity Generator
Yes, this looks good when combined with replacing G/c^4 with GPHI/c^4
With |PHI| >> 1 metamaterial resonance
Cos(argPHI) control switch gravity to antigravity
Guv = 8pi(G/c^4)|PHI||Tuv|cos(argPHI + argTuv)
cos(argPHI + argTuv) < 0 anti-gravity blue shift
cos(argPHI + argTuv) > gravity red shift
For Kip Thorne’s FIDO static LNIFs
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” https://arxiv.org/pdf/2007.01145.pdf carrying a circular electric current in the angular direction. This current creates a magnetic field along the z axis, (in the case w > 0 ) describe traversable wormhole geometries which do not contain a symmetry axis. Thanks to Jack Sarfatti
Unexplained.co/news/crop-circle-discovered-in St George on 25th June 2020. New crop circle has appeared in Smeathe’s Plantation near Ogbourne St George in Wiltshire, UK. This one was found a few days ago on 25th June 2020.
Two new crop circles have appeared in Wiltshire, United Kingdom on 28th and 30 May 2020
www.thetruth of judgmentday.com/2016/09/crop-circles-a
This crop circle, noticed on Milk Hill in Wiltshire (Southern England) on August 13, 2001 is being hailed as the most awesome ever made. It is composed of 409 individual circles in a spiral pattern. Appropriately, it was found in the heart of crop circle country in the United Kingdom. The sheer size and complexity of this formation is amazing.
Pleiades Home of Cylinder Craft
Cylinder over France
Researcher David P. Calabro Philadelphia writes, These cylinder craft are from my Star system called the Pleiades. I have been on this cylinder craft with the tall white Nordics and other beings. I really cannot tell you much more than that except what they briefly showed me because of my earthly body how it works and my soul how it reacts to dimensions in a short time then I have to come back to earth. It is a little hard to understand.
Largest Floods in Chinese History
Largest Floods in Chinese History wipe out the country’s food and grain. Good bye supply chain. Our stores will not have Chinese products soon.
As China is slammed with record breaking flooding, many are wondering if China’s dams can survive the floods? The Three Gorges Dam, the largest hydroelectric dam in the world, has become deformed. But authorities say it’s still safe. But if the dam collapses, it could spell disaster for major cities including Wuhan and Chongqing.
China warned that the worst of the deluges that have led millions to be evacuated may be yet to come, after a third wave of floods formed in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River on Sunday.
Uangsy River Dam Largest in the /world
Photographer: Stringer/Getty Images AsiaPac WUHAN, CHINA – JULY 24: (CHINA OUT)
The flood control and flood fighting situation is severe,” China’s water resources ministry said in a statement. “The new peak may appear later.”
Authorities ordered the Three Gorges Reservoir to save its water-storing capacity in preparation for more flows, and forecast another three days of torrential rain in the southern region.
China’s south has been battered by severe floods after water levels reached records. More than 2 million people have been evacuated this month along the Yangtze River, Asia’s longest, with 142 dead or missing since the flooding began in June. It has also caused over 116 billion Yuan ($17 billion) in damages, and impacted more than 2.4 million hectares (6.1 million acres) of crops in July.
The Three Gorges Reservoir is expecting water inflows to surge to about 60,000 cubic meters per second by about Tuesday. The reservoir level was at 159.46 meters as of Monday, down from 164.18 meters about a week ago. Its maximum capacity is 175 meters. Thanks to ‘bloomberg.com
Radiation Causes Misdiagnoses of Corona Virus
5G radiation can cause in humans a state of disease which results in the increased presence of exosomes. According to Dr. Andrew Kaufman MD, because of the presence of exosomes, positive test results have been misattributed to Coronavirus. Exosomes are very small sacs of fluid that are secreted from cells in times of bodily illness or stress. Exosomes alert the rest of the body to the presence of disease. Exosomes, nano-sized vesicle secreted from cells that contains any of various biomolecules, such as proteins or nucleic acids.
Dr. Kaufman studied biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early 1990s and got his medical degree at the University of South Carolina in 2004. In a series of interviews, Dr. Kaufman is reporting scientific evidence indicating that the presence of exosomes is being routinely misdiagnosed as Covid 19. He says that it has to do with the unreliability of the predominant testing method. 5G radiation can cause a human body to exhibit an increased presence of exosomes.
Misattribution of Coronavirus is consistent with CDC data showing that there has been no increase in the total number of deaths attributable to all causes nationwide. The total number of people dying in America due to all causes so far this year is about the same as last year. There’s actually slightly fewer total deaths so far this year as compared to this date so far last year. The current rate of total deaths so far this year is currently 2% less than the last three years on average. If there was actually some terrible, world-destroying virus out there, then there would be a spike in the number of total deaths and a cloth over your face would not stop it.
5G electromagnetic radiation can induce symptoms in people which are then apparently being misdiagnosed as Covid 19. Specifically, 5G radiation can induce the presence of exosomes. This presence of exosomes is apparently causing doctors to diagnose patients with the dreaded Coronavirus. Being that the human body is bioelectric in nature, it is particularly susceptible to electromagnetic energy from 5G towers and 5g cell phones. Many people who are diagnosed with Corona virus have no systems; these may be people whose exosomes are excited by 5g energy but not by the virus. Their modulation of these processes suggests that they directly contribute to communication between cellular components and impact healing of many disease states.
Part of the fallout of no school is an alarming increase in suicide among high school students probably because little student contact with friends. Suicide is the second largest cause of death behind accidents for students. disclosure-network-ny@googlegroups.com Thanks to Nick c
Frontline doctors claim take Malaria drug Hydroxychloroquine Uses twice a week prevents getting Virus and saves lives all over the world. Fake News is lying again.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:FILER FILES - overzicht met foto's met dank aan Georges Filer en WWW.nationalUFOCenter.com (ENG)
Filer’s Files 32, 2020 Government Releasing UFO Data - PART II
Filer’s Files 32, 2020 Government Releasing UFO Data - PART II
UFO Sightings in the United States
Sightings are from MUFON CMS
Antarctica Objects
A series of white images recorded by Google Earth show strange objects in Antarctica. Pictures were taken on July 29, 2020.
Photo courtesy of MUFON.com
California Object
Corama — Was playing guitar and video captured this cylinder. Captured in video realized it later. Video was taken on July 20, 2020.
Goleta— I was hiking the Bill Wallace Trail in El Capitan State Park taking high resolution photographs with my Canon EOS 40D digital camera with telephoto lens. I took a photograph of the Exxon-Mobil Las Flores Canyon petroleum processing facility about one mile to the west. Upon reviewing my photographs I noticed that I captured a strange, brown colored missile shaped aerial object. I would have dismissed this object as debris on my lens but in the photo six seconds later it was gone.
Connecticut Light
Moosup — On July 18, 2020.
Description: I was outside having a cigarette and I saw this strange looking light in the sky. It was moving really fast.
Thanks to Will Pucket/www.ufosnw.com/newsite/
Florida Bright Light
Saint Petersburg– On July 26, 3030
Photos courtesy of MUFON
Georgia Light
Peach tree City — Back in the June of 1985, I was over at my aunt’s house that night. My cousin and I would sometimes go out on night missions in which, we would be in, full cameo fatigues would go stealth and canvas the area on certain weekends in the summer. It was at that moment that we instantly had a circular light around us based on the light’s oval shape on the grass. To our astonishment, there was an oval, kind of football shaped but, more rounded at the ends. It was a glowing orb like craft that was bright yellow in the center with like a radial gradient of bright orangey / red along the edges. TOTALLY SILENT it was perfectly in place hovering. The distance was around 500-700 feet? That “spotlight” must have been quite powerful because if it actually was that far away, the light it shined around us was rather tight on the edges. Then it shot off to the left with incredible speed.
Minnesota Lights
Owatonna— Too much to type call me and I will give you details. I captured UFO lights and had an experience of a lifetime. Photo
Taken March 27, 2020. Photo courtesy of MUFON.com
Mississippi Object
Gulfport– On July 30, 2020, I spotted silver square object floating across the sky. Passenger airplane flew just above it and size was about the same. Busy lunch traffic were all watching
New Jersey Cylinder
Newark— My intention was showing the world that there is something that surrounds us on July 20, 2020. I save this photo that always amazed me, what it will be. I would like to donate or maybe help in something. It was in the month of July 2018 around 2pm in the afternoon, I picked the camera and took some photos and when reviewing that cylinder appeared. Ii was a flash and was registered in the southeast photos at an. altitude position around 60 degrees,
New York Light Moving in Front of Aircraft
Astoria— I have not noticed the UFO until tonight, as I reviewed my photos. I was taking photographs of an airplane taking off from La Guardia Airport, somehow I did not noticed the UFO, just found out about it tonight. Picture taken on July 16. 2020.
Lake George— This object appeared from the NE over some mountains, very slowly moving across the horizon. At first glance it would appear as a plane in the distance, but what threw me off was how slowly it was moving, and the lack of flashing lights, instead of a few fixated lights flashing it was one singular static center-borne light/glow. After a few minutes of continued fishing, I realized this object began elevating and descending while it was moving unnaturally and seemingly toward me. I was in a pretty populated part of town, it was very late and there weren’t but a few people around, but nobody seemed to take notice that this object ended up over the Lake at least 500 ft from me, ultimately coming to a stop directly above, where I decided to take out my HTC One and take a photo. Shortly after it took off swiftly to the South, and as fast as it left there wasn’t even the faintest sound. I kept the photo for years never thinking much of it after that day, until recently I decided to take a copy of it I found and play with the light settings on it with a photo editor. The only function I used was the exposure level, and upon dropping the exposure, there were some artifacts revealed behind the apparently ever-bright light that was emitted from the silent object
Texas Comet
Crane — I was taking pictures of the comet Neowise on July 20, 2020 in the middle of Crane, I chose this area because I wanted complete darkness to observe the comet with the naked eye and to also take photos. I have multiple photos before and after the 2 in question that clearly shows there was something in the 2. I had to have my phone placed extremely sturdy so the photo would not come out blurry. I did not see the object with my naked eye I went back to see how the photos turned out and then I seen the object.
Virginia Lights
Charlestown– On July 27, 2019, I took my DSLR camera outside to test some night shots of the moon right in front of my home in the suburbs, when I noticed an unusually bright and large orange orb hovering in the sky. As I watched it for about 10 seconds, it shot across the sky faster than I thought was possible. I immediately ran down the road to try to get a picture of whatever this was. I walked down the road for a bit to lie down on a large patch of open grass so I could get a better view of what was in the sky. I lay there for about 5-10 minutes or so when another blue light appeared directly above me. It stayed longer this time. Maybe 1-2 minutes before shooting off in a straight line over my head. The instant I lost sight of the blue orb, I heard a strange noise come from the trees nearby. It was so startling and unnatural I became quite frightened and was unable to breath or move. It sounded almost like static or electronic-like but also resembled something sentient making the noise. After a few seconds I was able to break out of that panic and run up the street a bit. I didn’t feel comfortable going into the trees so I decided to return home.
Wisconsin Lights
Tomah – On July 26, 2020, I am in the parking lot looking up and saw an orange light hovering in the sky. A moment later another spontaneously appeared out of nowhere. These lights are just staying there. This is happening right now. Two large orange lights are up in the sky. No sound and they are pulsating. The second just blinked on. I will update if anything major happens.
Wyoming Objects
Alcova– On July 30, 2020, I was using Google Earth and viewed objects in an area that should not have glowing objects
I saw 4 craft landed in an area that shouldn’t have crafts there. Area is near Independence Rock,
Worldwide UFO Sightings
Australia Light
Newcastle – On July 31, 2020, unable to find launch date when we saw it. My friend Braden noticed it come up over the east horizon, and called us out. Then we headed west until we could no longer see the flaring red light.
Canada Light
Alma – On July 27, 2020, I looked out the window and thought it was the Northern Star at first. But then I was like wait that’s south. So I started trying to figure out what it was. It got brighter and then disappeared. It had blurry edges. It looked to be hovering for a long time.
Toronto — I was walking along the beaches by 42 Hubbard Boulevard with my father and looking out at the water on September 18, 2018. I took some pictures of the water in the late afternoon and the sky and water looked idyllic. My Dad and I did not see the object in the sky. I only noticed the object when I zoomed in on the photos. Oddly enough, this has happened before with another photo I took – I just had a strong feeling/urge to take a photo “out of the blue” and when I zoomed in, I saw the object.
Spain Light
Montserrat — I was with my husband in my garden on July 29, 2020, observing how beautiful the sky was when my husband and I observed a very bright sphere, I took a photo of it and when I wanted to take another shot it suddenly disappeared. Neither of us knows what that strange artifact was. For this reason, we called the MUFON director of Spain and he told us to fill out the questionnaire for this object and send it to MUFON.
UK/England Black Oval
London – On July 29, 2020, this lasted about 30 seconds and made no sound. It moved in a straight line but was not a plane but could have been a shadow of something but nothing else was observed in the sky. No planes flying over at the time. We have no explanation for what it might be. I am not a UFO “person” and do not believe in aliens but this was odd and is a UFO in the sense that we cannot identify what it could have been.
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Filer’s Files salutes our fighting men and women; God Bless Our Troops, and Georgie, Elizabeth, and Victoria Filer, and Eddie Pedrick. May the Angels be your guide and take you to paradise.
Put another way, a young person in the U.S. is nearly 11 times as likely to die in a swimming pool than in a school shooting. Few public officials would say pools are doing a poor job protecting swimmers, but the statistics suggest that we need “more lifeguards at pools, as opposed to guards at schools,” Fox said
The Filer Research Institute feels the scientific study of UFOs is for the benefit of humankind and is an important endeavor. The US Air Force investigated UFOs publicly for more than twenty years under Project Blue Book; and I continue this advanced research. I believe the God of the universe has spread life throughout the cosmos and UFO’s are visiting us in ever-increasing numbers.
CAUTION MOST OF THESE ARE INITIAL REPORTS AND REQUIRE FURTHER INVESTIGATION. If you wish to stop receiving these files, please send a message to Majorstar@verizon.net.
Filer’s Files salutes our fighting men and women Georgie Filer and Eddie Pedrick my grandsons who both drowned. We pray that God will bless those who read these files spiritually.
Everyone’s favorite creepy doll Annabelle has released a video showing how she’s dealing with the coronavirus shutdown. Fortunately, she hasn’t gained 19 pounds and become a creepy mannequin.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and the South Florida Water Management District removed 5,000 invasive Burmese pythons from South Florida’s Everglades ecosystem. “It’s about time,” said the Skunk Apes.
The so-called “zombie cicadas” — regular cicadas turned into zombies by a parasitic fungus — have reemerged in West Virginia. Expect the movie in 2021.
West Virginia University researchers were part of a team that discovered how Massospora, a parasitic fungus, manipulates male cicadas into flicking their wings like females – a mating invitation – which tempts unsuspecting male cicadas and infects them.
III. Cromwell was executed anyway and ‘illustration-shopping’ never caught on.
Title page of the St John’s College Great Bible, which has yielded its secrets after more than four centuries. Thomas Cromwell is seen receiving a copy of the Bible from Henry VIII (top right), and a figure that is likely to be Richard Rich hands out Bibles in the illustration beneath. Jane Seymour’s portrait appears in the bottom right corner.
Credit: Ian McKee; St John's College.
The edges of Cromwell’s portrait are barely noticeable but reveal it was painted separately and glued on to the vellum page.
A colony of one million cannibal ants trapped for years in an abandoned Soviet-era nuclear bunker in Poland have escaped. The year 2020 smiles as it moves up a notch on the list of worst years ever.
The nuclear bunker where the ant 'colony' was found. The bunker was abandoned after the fall of the Soviet Union.
WOJCIECH STEPHAN
Close up showing the ant colony in the bunker. The ants survived by eating their dead nestmates.
WOJCIECH STEPHAN
View of the bunker after being reopened in 2016. In the foreground the ant ‘cemetery’ that sustained the colony can be seen.
WOJCIECH STEPHAN
According to a new study, the photons in the rings of light trapped in the orbit of a black hole may act like a movie that shows the history of the universe. Those who have seen “History of the World: Part 1” are free to fast-forward (or backward).
Meanwhile, Elon Musk has revealed that his Neuralink chip can be used to “extend range of hearing beyond normal frequencies and amplitudes” and allow the wearer to hear things that they weren’t able to hear before. The word “What?” may be forced to file for unemployment.
Former U.S. government insiders brought together by rock star Tom DeLonge team up to reveal what the government knows about UFOs. This groundbreaking effort is led by Luis “Lue” Elizondo, who ran the U.S. government’s $22 million secret UFO program. Elizondo reveals new details about his Pentagon investigation including five extraordinary capabilities the bizarre craft may share and chases fresh leads. U.S. Navy fight pilots tell him new details about the “tic-tac”-shaped UFO that was caught on film in 2004. Is this incident an indication of a larger threat to U.S.
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“Object that moved, changed color & shape” filmed over Chandler, Arizona 25-Jul-2020
“Object that moved, changed color & shape” filmed over Chandler, Arizona 25-Jul-2020
Check out this amazing UFO video that was filmed on 25th July 2020 over Chandler, Arizona.
Witness report:
We witnessed and filmed an object that moved, changed color and shape, and appeared to move away from us in a straight path. Upon our leaving the area, it changed direction and moved back to the original area. This was south of Queen Creek Road outside of Chandler, AZ.
Don’t forget to follow us on Youtube for the latest UFO videos.
Phoenix MUFON Online Speaker Series Steven Spielberg: Ufologist – Livestream presentation by Alejandro Rojas
Close Encounters of the Third Kind was one of Spielberg’s first hit movies. What you may not know is that Spielberg based the film on real UFO research conducted by the government and its famous astronomer consultant, Dr. J. Allen Hynek. Close Encounters is also not the only movie of Spielberg’s inspired by real alleged UFO and alien encounters. In this lecture, I cover the incredible cases that influenced many of Spielberg’s films, the rumor he was given a unique insight into UFOs by President Ronald Reagan, and his connection to a UFO presentation at the United Nations and the recent revelation that the Pentagon has a secret UFO investigation project. Spielberg, the self-proclaimed Ufologist, knows much more about UFOs and aliens than he lets the public to know.
The New York Times claims former government officials and scientists are convinced the government has retrieved crashed UFOs and have studied them. However, The New York Times also says they have been provided no evidence to substantiate these beliefs. One notable former government official claims The New York Times misrepresented his statements on the matter. A scientist willing to go on the record says he held classified briefings on “off-world vehicles not made on this earth,” but in an interview with Open Minds UFO Radio in April 2019, this scientist said his knowledge is not first-hand.
Some have accusedThe New York Times of burying the lead in their recent articleNo Longer in Shadows, Pentagonʼs U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public. The article covers the recent request by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) that the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) standardizes the collection of reports on unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) and provides public reports on those findings.
The U.S. government has long denied having any interest in the topic. But a New York Timesarticle in December 2017, exposed a secretive program at the Pentagon called the Advanced Aerospace Identification Program (AATIP) ran by military intelligence official Luis Elizondo. The UAP report request by the SSCI seems to be a direct result of the revelation of AATIP and the cases they studied.
However, two-thirds of the way into the article, another startling claim is made.
“Mr. Elizondo is among a small group of former government officials and scientists with security clearances who, without presenting physical proof, say they are convinced that objects of undetermined origin have crashed on earth with materials retrieved for study,” claims The New York Times.
The New York Times does not provide a quote, nor do they reference the source for this claim. However, a similar question was asked of Elizondo by Tucker Carlson on Fox News in May 2019.
Carlson asked: “Do you believe, based on your decade of serving in the US government on this question, that the US government has in its possession any material from one of these aircrafts (UAP)?”
Elizondo responded: “I do, yes.”
Carlson clarified: “You think the US government has debris from a UFO in its possession right now?”
Elizondo responded: “Unfortunately, I really have to be careful of my NDA. I really can’t go into a lot of more detail than that, but simply put, yes.”
In an interview with Elizondo on Open Minds UFO Radio in June 2019, I sought further clarification on Elizondo’s answer to Carlson. I said I interpreted his response that the UFO material answer was something he believed, but couldn’t prove. Elizondo replied, “I didn’t say that.” He would not talk about the topic any further.
If The New York Times was using Elizondo’s interview on Fox News to paraphrase his beliefs, there was never mention of UFO crashes. However, I have confirmed with Elizondo that he is comfortable with how the New York Times represented his stance.
Elizondo was not the only one who The New York Times claims believes the U.S. government had retrieved crashed UFOs. The article also claimed that former Senator Harry Reid, who helped create and secure funding for AATIP, said, “crashes had occurred, and that retrieved materials had been studied secretly for decades.”
However, they retracted that statement. The correction states, “Mr. Reid said he believed that crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred and that retrieved materials should be studied.”
Again, there is no reference as to where they got this information. The only quote from Reid used in the story was not changed.
Reid’s quote reads: “‘After looking into this, I came to the conclusion that there were reports — some were substantive, some not so substantive — that there were actual materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession,’ Mr. Reid said in an interview.”
Once The New York Times posted their article, many outlets focused on Reid’s claim. He tweeted a rebuke to The New York Times’ framing of his views.
“I have no knowledge—and I have never suggested—the federal government or any entity has unidentified flying objects or debris from other worlds. I have consistently said we must stick to science, not fairy tales about little green men,” read Reid’s tweet.
In a recent interview with investigative journalist George Knapp for Mystery Wire, Reid further clarified.
“For me, this has never been about proving other worlds exist. Thousands upon thousands of people have reported seeing unidentified aerial phenomena. ‘Unidentified’ doesn’t mean other-worldly. It means of an unknown origin. I want to find out what this is, where it’s from, what it means to our national security,” Reid told Knapp.
Although Reid and Elizondo never mention UAP or UFOs having off-world origins, a scientist who worked with AATIP does.
“Eric W. Davis, an astrophysicist who worked as a subcontractor and then a consultant for the Pentagon U.F.O. program since 2007, said that, in some cases, examination of the materials had so far failed to determine their source and led him to conclude, ‘We couldn’t make it ourselves,’ wrote The New York Times.
“Mr. Davis, who now works for Aerospace Corporation, a defense contractor, said he gave a classified briefing to a Defense Department agency as recently as March about retrievals from ‘off-world vehicles not made on this earth,'” claims The New York Times.
“Mr. Davis said he also gave classified briefings on retrievals of unexplained objects to staff members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Oct. 21, 2019, and to staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee two days later,” The New York Times continued.
Although The New York Times did not list it as a correction, the last paragraph previously said Davis briefed members of the SSCI. John Greenewald of theblackvault.comnoted on twitter this was changed to what you see above, and that the briefings were now allegedly to staff members.
Although these briefings were said to be classified, Davis revealed much of what he knows about UFO crashes on his latest appearance on Open Minds UFO Radio.
Davis says, “even though these things (aliens?) behave like a conscious, spiritual, psychic entities, they do have advanced technology, they have hardware, and there’s a craft, and there’s occupants.”
Davis went on to say the crash retrieval program was minimal with limited staff and resources.
“I do know that the program was terminated 1989,” says Davis, “for lack of progress in reverse engineering.”
According to Davis, scientists could not figure out the technology. He says, “So many years go by, and they’ll try it again.”
And how does he know this information? Well, it is not first-hand. Davis says he’s worked on classified programs for many years, and his colleagues know he has an interest in UFOs. He is occasionally approached by scientists who tell him about working on these projects.
If this information is classified, we were fortunate he shared so much of it with us on Open Minds UFO Radio. However, it is hearsay. The question remains whether Davis has more substantial evidence to prove his claims, or whether or not the staffers Davis briefed took this information to SSCI members.
I recently contacted Davis to get an update, but he says his current employer is not permitting him to speak on the matter as it involves classified information.
However, the authors of The New York Times article, Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, who are the same who penned the December 2017 article on AATIP (with Helene Cooper), doubled down on their claims. In a recent interview, they say the quote by Reid was accurate, although it is not the quote that is in question, it is the paraphrasing.
In a follow-up article titled, Do We Believe in U.F.O.s? Thatʼs the Wrong Question, Blumenthal and Kean writes:
“Numerous associates of the Pentagon program, with high security clearances and decades of involvement with official U.F.O. investigations, told us they were convinced such crashes have occurred, based on their access to classified information. But the retrieved materials themselves, and any data about them, are completely off-limits to anyone without clearances and a need to know.”
The headlines claiming the Pentagon has retrieved crashed alien spacecraft are inaccurate, that is not what The New York Times article says. However, there are those close to the secretive Pentagon UFO program who seem to believe that might be the case. Thus far, these extraordinary claims are lacking extraordinary evidence.
Integrating the Latin American Official Commissions
An Exclusive Interview with Colonel (Ret.) Ariel Sánchez, a veteran of the Uruguayan Air Force’s UFO Commission CRIDOVNI
By J. Antonio Huneeus & Yohanan Díaz Vargas
The Uruguayan Air Force Colonel (Ret.) Ariel Sánchez is one of the most experienced official UFO investigators in the world. He joined the Uruguayan Air Force’s CRIDOVNI (Spanish acronym for Commission for the Reception and Investigation of Reports of Unidentified Flying Objects) in 1989 when he was a captain. Since then he served the Commission in multiple ways as investigator, secretary, president, and now technical director, a position he has held since retiring from active duty in the air force in 2012.
Colonel Sánchez has also been CRIDOVNI’s international face and has appeared many times at national and regional conferences, both officially in uniform and as a private citizen and investigator. We caught up with Colonel Sánchez recently at the IV Global UFO Forum and UFO Summit of the Americas held in Foz de Iguaçu, Brazil, in December 2012.
In 1979, Uruguay was the first South American country to establish an official UFO agency. Other countries in the region eventually followed the Uruguayan model, and various agencies or departments were started in Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina. Colonel Sánchez addressed the issue of cooperation among these agencies, as well as CRIDOVNI’s integration of civilian investigators into an official commission, a model that was recently followed in Argentina.
Colonel Sánchez with a copy of Open Minds magazine.
Image credit: J. Antonio Huneeus
J. Antonio Huneeus (AH): Colonel Sánchez, can you please tell us a little bit about your military background and how you became involved with CRIDOVNI?
Ariel Sánchez (AS): Well, I entered the air force in 1976, and in 1986, I graduated as a second lieutenant of the Uruguayan Air Force. Later, I became specialized in air traffic control with radar and in aviation security. Around 1989, I was asked to join the Commission for the Reception and Investigation of Reports of Unidentified Flying Objects (CRIDOVNI) of the Uruguayan Air Force, as secretary of the Commission and as an investigator. So, beginning in 1989, I joined the Commission to which I still belong. I was the president, and currently am the technical director.
AH: Why don’t you explain a bit about how and why the Commission was created?
AS: During the 1960s and 1970s there were many reports of UFOs in the skies of South America. Uruguay was not isolated from this, and the air force began to learn about the reports. Then, in 1979, the Uruguayan Air Force took charge of the investigation of UFO reports made in Uruguayan territory. In the 1960s and 1970s, many sightings of these objects had occurred, and people were becoming nervous about strange things in the sky with no idea as to what they might be. Since the Uruguayan Air Force is charged by law for the control and oversight of its airspace, it decided to form a group, a Commission, to receive and investigate these reports. The Commission has existed for thirty-three years.During this time, it has experienced uninterrupted work, taking and investigating [UFO] reports with the support of the civilian personnel integrated to this Commission, and with the backing of state institutions like universities, technological labs, faculties, municipal planetariums, and so on—a variety of state agencies supporting the work of the air force and the civilian personnel linked to it.
AH: What is involved in an investigation?
AS: Well, usually what happens is that when something strange is seen in the skies, people go to the media or to the police to report what they saw. The air force is notified about it and makes contact with the press or the police in order to obtain more data, and then begins the tasks of investigating, going to the site, interviewing the witness, and taking soil samples if necessary, like in cases in which the ground was affected. A general survey of the area is made in order to discard terrestrial explanations such as aircraft traffic, astronomical phenomena, satellites, fallen space junk, military maneuvers, or exercises in which flares are used.
After the initial survey, the investigator is usually left with five questions he must pose to himself: What is the possibility of fraud by the witness?What is the possibility of fraud by a third person not linked to the witness?What is the possibility of a psychological phenomenon by the witness?What is the possibility of a conventional phenomenon which was not identified by the witness, for example, an aircraft passing by? And, finally, what is the possibility of an unconventional phenomenon?This last question is the most interesting because when one is left with the unconventional answer, then one must start working specifically with the data collected, and see if there is additional evidence that the witnesses can supply like photos or videos that can back the testimony.
Yohanan Díaz Vargas (YD): What is the most interesting case investigated by the Commission?
AS: The CRIDOVNI data bank has approximately twelve hundred cases that were investigated.That doesn’t mean there weren’t more cases, but sometimes the reports received are so vague that they don’t deserve a full investigation. Anyway, within those cases we have three percent that have not been solved—these are the cases we refer to as unconventional or simply, UFOs.
Among these, I can tell you about military pilot cases in which UFOs were chased in flight attempting, albeit unsuccessfully, to get close to the objects in order to identify them. There are also cases in which the aircraft was affected, i.e. cases in which the control panel of a military transport plane carrying passengers had a burnt smell from unexplained overheated. We also have cases of civil aircraft which were followed by nocturnal lights that couldn’t be identified. These are some of the more weighty cases that we have . . . These cases have an eighty percent probability of an unconventional phenomenon, which is very high.
YD: On CRIDOVNI’s website, there is an old photograph of a football (soccer) stadium in which there is a strange object. Can you tell us the details?
The famous photo taken during a match of the First World Cup at the Centenario Stadium in Montevideo in 1930, showing a possible UFO right on the photo’s left border.
Image credit: CRIDOVNI
AS: That photo was taken in 1930 when Uruguay was playing a game during the first World Cup in Montevideo, in the Centenario Stadium. It wasn’t until 1985, when someone doing research on the history of Uruguayan soccer found the plate (back then glass plates were used for photo negatives), and when he examined the plate, he saw a small object shaped like a flying saucer in a corner of Centenario Stadium. So, this fellow went to one of the biggest newspapers in Uruguay and told them the story. The newspaper published it in 1985 with the headline, “A UFO in the Centenario Stadium in 1930.” Apprised of the fact, the Commission went to work, and we located a relative of the original photographer, who explained that in reality it was an auto-inflated cover with a balloon attached by a cord to one of the tribunes, which belonged to a well known company from that time that publicized sales of car covers in that way. And sure enough, when one enlarges the glass plate, you can even see the name of the company that made this type of publicity—thus this case was resolved as something conventional fifty-five years later.
Enlargement of the object made from the original photographic glass plate.
Image credit: CRIDOVNI
UFO Ground Traces in Durazno Department
AH: The other case that I am interested in is a landing incident in a place called Durazno, which is somewhat similar to the famous 1981 UFO landing case in Trans-en-Provence, which was documented by the French government.
AS: As matter of fact, I was the investigator on this case. At the time, I was an air force captain, and we learned about the case in the department of Durazno, in a place called Saint George. I won’t give the precise name of the farm, but the year was 1993. The farm owners were a married couple who lived with their son.They were about to start dinner one night when they observed through the window some spheres over the field in front of their property. At a distance of about 500 or 600 meters, they saw lights that they first thought were otter hunters pointing at various places with flashlights. As the lights persisted, they went outside and observed orange spheres hovering at low altitude over the neighbor’s field. Still attributing the lights to poachers or hunters, they finished dinner and went to sleep.
The next day, they found the neighbor and told him, “Last night we saw that you let some hunters into your field.” “No, no,” the neighbor responded, “I didn’t let anybody in, come see what I found.” They all then went to the field where the lights had been seen, and they found eight holes displayed in symmetrical order like a rhombus, with an approximate depth of 30 cm and 22 cm in diameter. These holes were apparently made by the orange spheres that were seen interacting over that terrain.
When CRIDOVNI visited the site, we found that the holes were really shaped like a rhombus. But what was weird was that the soil taken from the holes was spread out giving the impression that the soil was not extracted but just dug and left around the hole. We questioned all the witnesses and took ground samples from the both the center and the border of the hole, and also took background control samples from the terrain. These samples showed a decrease of the soil’s chemical composition, which was manganese, zinc, and phosphorous. All this made us speculate that perhaps the reason the spheres were glowing orange was due to their interaction with the terrain, extracting some type of chemical compounds which produced the lights seen by the witnesses.
We also interviewed other witnesses from a nearby farm who were herding animals at that time, and they too confirmed seeing two spheres coming from the area where the event took place. They described these spheres as flying at low altitude, passing over their heads, and ascending until they disappeared from view. So, we have some six witnesses who observed the behavior displayed by these luminous objects—I am not sure whether to call them objects or lights since we don’t know what they were, but the weird thing is not just the interaction with the terrain observed, but the decrease of the chemical compounds in the soil samples we collected.
One of the eight holes made by a UFO at the San Jorge farm in Durazno, Uruguay, in 1993.
Image credit: CRIDOVNI/El País
AH: Tell me more about the holes.
AS: The holes had a diameter of approximately 20 to 22 cm and 30 cm deep. There were eight holes, all equal, and the soil taken from each hole was spread around each one. This gave the investigator the impression that the spheres entered the ground rotating over the terrain, and as they rotated they started to throw the soil around.That was the sensation we got when we saw all the soil spread around the holes.
CRIDOVNI’s Procedures and Documents
YD: When CRIDOVNI receives a report, what is the procedure? Does the witness have to fill a questionnaire? What is the method you follow?
AS: Well, when we receive a report, we go to the place and interview the witness, collect all the basic data, and provide the witness with a questionnaire. If the case deserves it, we do a full field investigation as in the case I just discussed. We try to find out a little bit about the witness, his cultural and educational levels, his reputation in the area in which he lives.In other words, we try to get a witness profile, and then we look at the level of strangeness of the event itself. We use for that an evaluation manual based on percentages, which tells us if an event is more or less conventional when compared to what we know today about aerospace developments and such.
YD: How long does it take to investigate a report?
AS: That depends on the event. For example, we can resolve a case in two or three days if you don’t have to wait for the analysis of samples or animals (i.e., cattle mutiliations). But, in a simple case it usually takes two to three days if the case falls into the conventional category. Now, if it’s unconventional, then the case remains open waiting for new data. We have open files for many years.
AH: Are the documents generated by the Commission in the last thirty years available to the public? Can they be viewed?
AS: We always give the information and the results of all our investigations to the public. The files are confidential for the reason that they provide the identity and the address of the places where the events took place, and there is a law in our country that protects privacy, so we are not allowed to release the files themselves. But, what we do instead is provide answers to specific questions. For instance, in 1986, there was a report of airplanes chasing a UFO, and people wanted to know what happened with that case. So we give them that information. We have no problem in providing the final report, but what we cannot give to the public are the folders in our archives because, as I said, they contain confidential information, and sometimes people don’t understand that the witnesses doesn’t want to be bothered.
AH: Other countries censor or redact the name or address of the person, but the rest of the document is released, such as the United States with the Freedom of Information Act.
AS: Yes, I know that.I’ve seen what is done in the United States, but in Uruguay the privacy law is such that you cannot provide information that can lead to finding a particular person in his home or any place where he can be bothered by the press. But, otherwise, we have no problem in sharing the data. In fact, one of our presidents published a book in Uruguay in which he discussed twenty of the most interesting cases from our files. The book was published ten years ago and is entitled, Uruguay’s Official Open Archives.That is one example of the openness our Commission always strived to provide.
Air Force Fighters Chase UFO in 1986
AH: Can you please describe in more detail the case of the 1986 airplane UFO chase?
AS: Yes, the case of the Pucará air force fighters in 1986. While flying during training maneuvers near a hydroelectric dam, the pilots observed a luminous round object hovering right on top of the dam, which is in a restricted flight zone. Well, that caught the pilots’ attention, who asked the control tower if they had any report of a lost aircraft or any type of civil airplane conducting an authorized night survey flight in that area. There was nothing in that zone, and so they requested permission to approach the object in order to identify it.
An Uruguayan Air Force Pucará fighter training aircraft like the ones engaged in the famous UFO chase in 1986 over the Palmar dam.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
When the pilots started the approach maneuver, the object made an evasive turn and escaped at amazing speed. The fighters were unable to match the object’s speed, so they went back to the training zone, but a few minutes later they realized he object was flying again over the hydroelectric dam. So, they tried to approach the object again, but this time at higher speed. The object then made a final evasive maneuver and headed west, changing rapidly from a yellowish-white color to a reddish-orange, disappearing from view at an incredibly fast speed.
The pilots were totally baffled by this event and decided to return to the base.When they landed, they were told that a large power blackout had occurred in Montevideo, caused by overheating of one of the lines from the dam which powered Montevideo, actually overheating of a transformer. The investigators and the pilots determined that the blackout could have been caused by the object’s action over the dam, which overheated the line.
The hydroelectric dam of Palmar over which a UFO hovered in 1986, triggering perhaps a power blackout.
Image credit: TuPatrocinio.com
YD: But they were not linked?
AS: We were never able to know if the [blackout] was or was not caused by the actions of an unidentified flying object over the dam; but, the overheating occurred and the transformer failed at that time the object was flying just above. Now, we are not able to prove that the object actually affected the transformer, but the timing did coincide. Still, the most impressive part is the testimony of the pilots trying to intercept this object.
Conclusions and a Call to Integrate Other South American Agencies
AH: Can you give us your conclusions about the mysterious part of this phenomenon, not those cases that were explained by conventional objects or phenomena?
AS: Sure, I can give you my personal thoughts. I can’t speak officially for the Commission because one of the key tenets of our Commission is that each member has his own personal opinion about the subject, particularly for those who have worked there a number of years. The UFO phenomenon is recognized by the Uruguayan Air Force as a real phenomenon.Its point of origin is unknown, and we don’t know if it’s a lower atmosphere phenomenon that we haven’t catalogued yet, a physical phenomenon, or if there is a possibility of someone sending a probe to our system, to our planet, just as we are sending probes to Mars and other parts of our planetary system.
Now, as far as my own tentative personal conclusion, I do believe there could be superior beings to us, and I am not sure if they are living here on Earth or are coming from somewhere else. What is clear is that these objects seen in the skies are not new, they were seen in Uruguay fifty years ago, but the technology (reported in the sightings) didn’t exist fifty years ago—today some of this technology does exist, so who had this technology fifty years ago?
My own hypothesis, after so many years of investigation, is that there is a superior intelligence to ours behind this phenomenon, perhaps an undiscovered race—I don’t know if it’s human—which is hidden somewhere, in the oceans or mountains or jungles, I don’t know, which perhaps suffered a catastrophe five hundred thousand years ago and is in orbit somewhere with the remains of their civilization. This is what I can deduce because I haven’t had the good fortune of having a UFO on the table for analysis, which is what we all want. The air force doesn’t rule out the extraterrestrial hypothesis, but personally I am inclined to believe in a closer hypothesis, that of a superior intelligence interacting with us in these unidentified flying objects. From where they come or how they get here, I don’t know.But we are seeing them, we are photographing them, we have chased and tried to grab them in order to identify them, but without success.
YD: Recently, CRIDOVNI signed an agreement with the CEFAA in Chile?
AS: Yes, in April 2012, we signed an agreement with the Chilean Air Force to share information and data about sightings reported in both countries. Chile has a very large number of sightings; Uruguay a little less.We are investigating about thirty to forty cases per year, but we signed an agreement to share data and even to conduct joint projects, as we did already once on a case at Easter Island. The idea is to get the different Latin American air forces with official commissions—Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina—to integrate with the agreement that we signed with the Chileans.
General Ricardo Bermúdez (left) and Colonel Ariel Sánchez signing in Santiago the official agreement between Chile’s CEFAA and Uruguay’s CRIDOVNI.
Image credit: CEFAA
YD: So, the first country was Chile?
AS: Chile and Uruguay were the first countries to reach this agreement, but the idea, our goal, is to invite the other countries to come here because our air force is celebrating its first centenary in 2013. I have already made a proposal to our commander-in-chief to invite other air forces with official investigations to join this agreement and meet in Montevideo in 2013 to sign—so that we can obtain and share a bigger official data bank.
YD: And, with this association of official groups, what would be the role of the civilian investigators and groups?
AS: At least, in Uruguay, the [civil] investigators are already integrated into our Commission since the inception of CRIDOVNI when they were invited to participate.Many of them are already fully integrated to our group, which is both a military and civil commission. I am not sure about the level of integration with civil investigators in the other countries, but most of them followed the Uruguayan model.
A group of speakers at Brazil’s World UFO Forum in December 2012. (Right to left) Colonel Ariel Sánchez, coauthor Yohanan Díaz from Mexico, Rodrigo Fuenzalida from Chile, J. Antonio Huneeus, and Roberto Pinotti from Italy.
Image credit: J. Antonio Huneeus
YD: When you speak at conferences, do you represent the institution officially or semi-officially?
AS: I have done it both ways. I retired from the air force five months ago, but I continue my work in the Commission as its technical director. When I go abroad, I can do it either officially or privately.It just depends on the type of invitation.
This article originally appeared in Issue #19 (April/May 2013) of Open Minds Magazine. Back issues can be found here.
Bad news, Big Bang believers … scientists may have discovered something that existed before our universe was born and want to change the name of that singularity from the violent Big Bang to the more playful yet controversial Big Bounce. Did we really bounce out of a past universe?
“The standard inflationary paradigm based on general relativity treats space-time as a smooth continuum. Consider a shirt that appears like a two-dimensional surface, but on closer inspection, you can see that it is woven by densely packed one-dimensional threads. In this way, the fabric of space-time is really woven by quantum threads. In accounting for these threads, loop quantum cosmology allows us to go beyond the continuum described by general relativity where Einstein’s physics breaks down—for example beyond the Big Bang.”
“Loop Quantum Cosmology” sounds like a great name for a prog-rock album, but anything that causes Einstein’s physics to break down is disconcerting in this age where people are not sure what to believe anymore. Abhay Ashtekar — an Evan Pugh Professor of Physics, holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Physics, and director of the Penn State Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos (this is why he has an accordion-folded business card) – co-authored the paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters about this Big Bounce theory that future satellite missions may actually be able to test.
That’s the idea — only bigger
“The primordial fluctuations we are talking about occur at the incredibly small Planck scale. A Planck length is about 20 orders of magnitude smaller than the radius of a proton. But corrections to inflation at this unimaginably small scale simultaneously explain two of the anomalies at the largest scales in the universe, in a cosmic tango of the very small and the very large.”
The “cosmic tango” co-author Brajesh Gupt refers to in the press release relates to anomalies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (the electromagnetic radiation left after the birth of the universe) which are minuscule primordial fluctuations that were stretched under gravity’s influence and are now visible in the CMB. Instead of a bang, the Big Bounce theory views the creation of the current universe as a double funnel with a previous universe shrinking into the tiny connecting middle, passing through the “bounce” and then expanding again into a new universe. (Apologies to physicists that this simple explanation may offend.)
Apology accepted
“The researchers also produced new predictions about a fundamental cosmological parameter and primordial gravitational waves that could be tested during future satellite missions, including LiteBird and Cosmic Origins Explorer, which will continue to improve our understanding of the early universe.”
LiteBIRD will be a small space observatory whose mission is to detect the footprint of the primordial gravitational wave on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and is hoped to launch in the 2020s. COrE (Cosmic Origins Explorer) would be a full-sky, microwave-band satellite proposed to launch by 2025. Neither are approved, so the Big Bounce theory might help in that process.
Big Bang or Big Bounce? While you’re trying to decide, LiteBird and Cosmic Origins Explorer would both be great names for bands.
Extraterrestrials are said to do some strange things: steal plants and soil, probe the noses of alien abductees, take people for trips in their Flying Saucers, and much more. But, perhaps, the strangest thing that ETs and bizarre creatures reportedly do is to materialize and dematerialize in front of shocked people. Within the history of Ufology – and in the realm of the paranormal, too – there are more than a few cases that fall into that particular, weird category. With that said, let’s take a look at some examples of this strange phenomenon. We’ll begin with the guy who just about began the Men in Black mystery: Albert Bender. In the early 1950s, Bender – of Bridgeport, Connecticut – got a little too close for comfort to the truth of the UFO phenomenon. The result? The MIB came calling and warned Bender to quit Ufology. Or else. And how did that trio of black-dressed characters descend on Bender? They quite literally materialized through the walls of his attic-based home.
The following story – of a dematerializing alien at an important U.K.-based facility with government ties – comes from Hillary Gough, of Hampshire, England. The date was early 1974, and the setting, the Marconi Space and Defense Systems, Ltd., at Frimley, England. At the time, Gough was employed as a draughtswoman in the Central Services branch – having previously served an apprenticeship in a division of the British Royal Navy – something that ensured she had access to much of the establishment. On one occasion, Gough told me, while walking along a corridor in the facility late at night, a security guard was startled by a dazzling blue light that emanated from one particular room. But this was no ordinary room: it was a storage facility for top secret documentation generated by Marconi as part of its work on behalf of the British Government and the Ministry of Defense, much of which was related to classified, radar-based programs. Realizing that no-one – at all – should have been in the area at that time of night, the guard burst into the room, only to be confronted by a shocking sight. There, literally sifting through pages and pages of top secret files was a gray-skinned humanoid – but decidedly non-human – creature that quickly dematerialized before the shocked guard’s eyes.
Interestingly, UFO author researcher-writer Jenny Randles learned of two similar cases of the here one minute and gone the next minute kind at sensitive facilities. One occurred at the Dhekelia Station in Cyprus which is “situated within the Eastern Sovereign Base Area, one of two British Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus, enshrined in the Treaty of Establishment between the U.K. and the Republic of Cyprus in 1960.” The other was a Spanish military installation: Talvera La Real Air Base. In the former case, said Jenny, a “glowing form” was seen. In the other, a “monstrous alien” was encountered. Now, moving away from UFOs…
A perfect example of this strange phenomenon has been recorded by Jack Lapseritis, author of The Psychic Sasquatch. He tells the story of a group of people that had an amazing encounter with a Bigfoot. The story came from a Mrs. Jeffery, and whose story Lapseritis summarizes as follows: “After returning from a long hike, the group was stunned when a nine-to-ten foot Sasquatch stepped out in front of them a short distance away. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the Bigfoot completely disappeared in front of the witnesses! The witnesses insisted that it literally dematerialized [Italics mine]! Mrs. Jeffrey reported that she was so awed at what she saw, that when they returned home, she did not leave the house for two weeks. The woman was in such a total state of shock that she did not return to the area for some time.”
Mac Tonnies addressed this issue, too: “While I can’t automatically exclude the UFO phenomenon’s ‘paranormal’ aspects, I can attempt to explain them in technological terms. For example, I see no damning theoretical reason why ‘telepathy’ and ‘dematerialization’ can’t ultimately be explained by appealing to cybernetics, nano-technology and other fields generally excluded from ufological discourse.” The Incubus can take on numerous forms, including those of a handsome man, a reptilian-type creature, and a beast resembling a werewolf – among many others. The Succubus typically appears as a beautiful girl or as a wizened old crone. But, there are important factors that must not go amiss: yes, these things can alter their form. But, they are also able to materialize, dematerialize, and – according to some witnesses – walk through walls and doors. In some cases, they vanish in a flash of light.
Cemeteries are atmosphere-filled places at the best of times. In the 1960s, however, that atmosphere became distinctly chilled – maybe even freezing. Skulls, and even partial human skeletons, were found strewn around Highgate Cemetery, which at the time was very much overgrown. That was largely because, at the time, the entire place had been left to fall into rack and ruin, something which only amplified the air of mystery and fear that dominated the area. It wasn’t long before people were talking about a deadly vampire in the cemetery. The publicity surrounding the alarming 1960s-era incidents prompted others to come forward who had also seen the vampire of Highgate Cemetery. One witness, who, while walking her dog through the thick and unkempt trees late one night, encountered a shrieking, banshee-like thing that sailed through the air, after which…it suddenly dematerialized.
Stories of alien encounters really run the range. Some are mysterious, others fleetingly vague, still others yet profoundly weird. Then there are others that propel past merely weird to lodge into the realm of the utterly bonkers. These are the cases that are so bizarre and absurd that they boggle the mind, hovering out on the fringes of the fringe. One of these deeply strange cases must surely be the time a hunter out in the wilderness came across a being that defies understanding, and which has remained one of the odder abduction cases on record.
In October of 1974, a 41-year-old oil worker Carl Higdon made his way out into the wilds of Wyoming, in order to some elk hunting. On October 25, he was stalking towards a place called McCarthy Canyon, in Carbon County, but decided to go into a more remote area of Medicine Bow National Forest on the advice of some other hunters that he met by chance. The region they suggested was an area he had never really hunted in before, unfamiliar and isolated, but it would not be long before it would pay off. After just a few minutes of hiking along, he came over a hill and became aware of a herd of five elk up ahead in a clearing, one of them being a large, formidable male. It was almost too good to be true, and so he prepared to take a shot at the buck, which is where things would quickly derail into the world of the weird. Higdon would later say:
I walked maybe five minutes until I came to a rise in the ground. Down below in a clearing were five elk, huddled closely together. From my vantage point, several hundred yards away, I could see that one of them was a really outstanding animal. I lined him up in my telescopic sight and fired my gun, a Magnum rifle. It can give your shoulder a mean whack if you’re not careful. I raised my rifle and fired, but the bullet only went about 50 feet and dropped.
Higdon would say that the blast from the rifle had also made no noise, produced no kickback as expected, and that he had watched in utter astonishment as the bullet sort of travelled in slow motion before its trajectory was abruptly stopped by the unseen barrier. He would also later recall that the air all around him had at the time felt charged, as if suffused with static electricity. He walked over to where his bullet had mysteriously just sort of dropped, and could see that it was squashed, as if it had hit a solid wall, but nothing was there. The elk had by now scattered, but he was not alone there in that clearing, and he would explain, “I heard a noise like a twig snapping, and looked over to my right and there, in the shadow of the trees, was this sort of man standing there.” The hunter tucked the bullet away into his canteen pouch and looked to this stranger to quickly find that it seemed to be no “man” at all.
According to Higdon, the strange figure stood a little over 6 feet high, bow-legged and wearing a skintight, black, one-piece outfit that he would liken to a scuba diving wetsuit. The suit has a pair of harnesses that crossed in front and a metallic belt emblazoned with what appeared to be a yellow star, but even stranger than this outfit was the physical features of the entity. Its head was without discernible ears, with small, deep set eyes, a slit-like mouth holding three oversized teeth, two appendages like antennae jutting from the forehead, and very course hair like straw that stood straight up on top. The creature seemed to have no neck, with that creepy head just sitting directly on its shoulders, blending right into the body. At the end of its unusually long arms in place of a right hand, it, or “he,” as Higdon would insist, was what looked like a drill bit, although it was not spinning, and the other arm had no hand at all. This bizarre entity appraised the terrified Higdon for a moment and then took a few steps forwards before casually asking him in perfect English, “How you doin’?”
Higdon was stunned for a moment, unable to find his voice, before weakly stammering out, “Pretty good.” The entity nodded slightly, and came even closer, apparently not threatening but still very unsettling, and asked Higdon if he was hungry, before producing a plastic packet of some sort and having it levitate through the air to the hunter. Higdon plucked the pack out of the air and clumsily opened it to find four pills enveloped within, which he was told by the entity would each give him enough sustenance for one day. Higdon swallowed one of them and pocketed the rest. The creature then finally introduced himself, almost seemingly embarrassed that he had not done sooner, calling himself “Ausso One” and gesturing behind him, where Higdon could now see something glimmering in the light, of which he would say:
There, not far from us, was a transparent, cube-shaped object resting on the ground. To me it looked like a huge Christmas package. You know — flat on all sides, like a box. I couldn’t see any landing gear or entrance… It was much smaller than any of our commercial or military planes. In fact, you’re going to think I’m crazy, but this thing couldn’t have been more than five feet high, seven feet long, and four and a half feet wide. Tiny is the only word I can think of to accurately describe its size!
Ausso One
Ausso One then asked Higdon if he wanted to go for a ride, and before he even had time to respond, he claims that he was instantaneously aboard, as if he had been teleported. He was disoriented and could not process how exactly it was possible for him to have appeared there or how he had managed to even fit within the tiny craft, but there he was, and he was now beginning to feel a sense of dread and panic overcoming him, made even worse when he realized that his hands and feet were actually strapped down with bands. As he looked around wildly, Higdon peered through what he took to be some sort of shimmering force field, behind which were five elk that seemed to be in a sort of trance, frozen as if insects in amber, and which he had the overwhelming certainty were the exact same five elk he had originally tried to shoot at. He also then became aware that there was another otherworldly being of Ausso One’s same race aboard with them, who came forward to strap some sort of helmet to the hunter’s head. The craft then took off and positioned itself over Higdon’s truck, which seemed to vanish into thin air as Ausso pointed at it with his conical drill-bit arm as the hunter looked on with a mixture of awe and horror. The ship then rapidly seemed to ascend above the earth and into space, the planet visibly fading into the distance through the transparent floor of the craft, and soon this was replaced by another, alien world approaching, which Ausso One rather oddly described as “163,000 light miles” away from Earth. What exactly is a light “mile” anyway? Who knows? On this new planet they approached an enormous tower with a brilliant rotating lights and which emanated a buzzing sound “like an electric razor,” and Higdon would say of it:
All around this tower were revolving patterns of multi-colored lights, not unlike powerful spotlights. They were so intense that it was actually painful to keep my eyes open. These lights were so brilliant that I held my hands to my face as a protective shield. I vaguely remember shouting, ‘Shut them off… they’re burning me!’ I just couldn’t tolerate them.
Higdon also claimed to have witnessed a group of what looked like other human beings outside, although he had no idea of who they were or why they were there. Throughout all of this, Ausso One casually explained that his people often hunted and fished on Earth, then set the craft down and took Higdon into the tower, where they made their way to a room in which he was asked to stand on a platform and was scanned by some sort of shiny panel device, which appeared out of the wall and disappeared back into it when the examination was complete. Ausso One then told Higdon that he was not a suitable candidate for their purposes, and that they were going to bring him back home.
They arrived back on Earth just as quickly as they had left it, and before setting Higdon loose, Ausso One wistfully studied the hunter’s rifle, saying that he wanted to keep it but was not allowed to before handing it back. After that, Higdon instantaneously found himself in the forest, disoriented and confused as to where he was. He wandered about until he found an abandoned truck and crawled into it to get out of the cold, so completely zonked out that he did not even realize that the truck was in fact his own. He used the CB radio to send out a distress calls and then sat in the darkness, shivering and waiting. A search part would then find him, and oddly the truck was discovered to be buried in the muck of a thickly forested ravine, 5-miles from where he had last been, and far from the nearest road and with no tire tracks leading in or out. One of the search party members was Higdon’s own wife, who he at first did not even recognize through the haze of confusion pervading his mind. Oddly, it would turn out later that many of those in the search party, as well as several residents of the area, had seen strange lights in the sky prior to finding Hidgon.
When he was first found, Higdon could remember nothing past the point when his bullet had been stopped in midair, and most of this was dug up from his mind through hypnosis. There were also several odd details found in the aftermath of the hunter’s apparent abduction. It was found that several health issues he had been suffering from, such as lung scarring from a bout with tuberculosis and some kidney stones, were completely gone, and that he was once again in perfect health. The mysterious bullet that he had kept was also found and analyzed, showing damage that was consistent with hitting a surface even harder than a rock or tree, and furthermore it has been turned completely inside out and was missing its lead slug, but what this actually means is anyone’s guess.
We are left to wonder just what happened to Carl Higdon. Was any of this real at all? There have been plenty of ideas thrown around on the matter, and of course even the assertion that this must surely have been a hoax, but what of the details of the car found in that ravine and the mysterious health effects? Is there perhaps something more to this than the ramblings of a hoaxer and perhaps someone slightly unhinged? For his part, Higdon always maintained that it was all true, and never deviated from his story through countless retellings and hypnosis sessions, as well as myriad passed lie detector tests. It seems that he at least really believed what had happened was real, but what that all entails might forever remain a mystery, and it has gone on to be one of the more outlandish reports out there.
Biblical archeology – the recovery and scientific investigation of artifacts dating to or referenced in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), New Testament or other writings of early Judaism and Christianity – must by definition deal with the clash of facts and beliefs. That shouldn’t stop it, which is why it’s good to see many scientific media sources covering the announcement by Hebrew University archeology professor Yosef Garfinkel that he has identified three small male figurines associated with horse statues dating to the 10th and 9th centuries BCE as the first known depictions of the biblical Israelite God, Yahweh.
“The concept of a male god represented as a rider first appeared in Late Bronze Age Ugarit, an ancient port city on the Mediterranean Sea in northern Syria. The Canaanite god Baal is described as rkb ‘rpt, “rider of the clouds,” 16 times in various Ugaritic texts.
The exact term also appears in Psalm 68:4. In the biblical tradition there are several descriptions, or metaphors, of the male god Yahweh as a rider, such as Deuteronomy 33:26; 2 Kings 2:11-12; 2 Kings 23:11; Psalm 45:4; and Isaiah 19:1. For example, Psalm 68:4 reads, “Sing to God, sing praises to his name; lift up a song to him who rides upon the clouds.””
Too bad there were no pictures in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Anticipating skepticism, Garfinkel explains in a press release on the Biblical Archeology Society website announcing his detailed study in the Biblical Archeology Review how these huge out-of-proportion heads, found at two different sites near Jerusalem, differ from the more commonly depicted Canaanite god Baal (not on a horse) and notes that, although the Old Testament and the Ten Commandments ban idols, that didn’t stop people from making them anyway, and these may predate such bans. These faces (see the photos here) are described as large males with beards having square flat-topped heads, protruding noses, earring holes and bulging eyes – not exactly the white-haired, flowing bearded God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Archaeologists have found male figurine heads at the sites of Khirbet Qeiyafa and Moẓa, both in the Kingdom of Judah.
Map: Biblical Archaeology Society.
What does God look like? In the Bible, the Israelites are commanded to not create images of God—but did they follow this command? This male figurine head comes from the site of Khirbet Qeiyafa in ancient Judah and has been dated to the tenth century B.C.E. With prominent eyes, ears, and a nose, it measures about 2 inches tall. The head may represent a male deity, possibly even the God of the Bible.
Photo: Clara Amit, Israel Antiquities Authority.
With prominent eyes, ears, and noses, these male figurine heads come from the site of Moẓa near Jerusalem. Dated to the late tenth or early ninth century B.C.E., they measure about 1.2 and 1.4 inches tall.
Photo: Clara Amit, Israel Antiquities Auth
ority.
This horse figurine also comes from the site of Moẓa and dates to the late tenth or early ninth century B.C.E.
Photo: Clara Amit, Israel Antiquities Authority.
“The heads of the figurines from Moẓa and Khirbet Qeiyafa are outstanding in their large size in relation to almost all known anthropomorphic figurines uncovered—from the prehistoric era to the Iron Age. The facial elements (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and beard) are emphasized and well modeled.”
Garfinkel says the bulging eyes were added later, earrings were obviously hung from the ears and some holes in the heads may have been for other adornments. He speculates that these heads belonged to common people or peasants rather than royals or the rich, which explains their plainness despite depicting a god.
“Although we cannot rule out the possibility that the human heads from Motza and Qeiyafa depicted gods, they have no markings, symbols or attributes (such as horns, crescents, bulls), found on figures and visual representations throughout the ancient Near East, that would identify them as divine figures. Furthermore, when gods were depicted on animals, they did not sit on them (they do not need the transport) – they stood on them!”
In the Times of Israel, Tel Motza (where the heads were found) excavation co-directors Shua Kisilevitz (Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University) and Oded Lipschits (Tel Aviv University) strongly disagree with Garfinkel’s proposal, starting with the fact that they predate any other know depictions of Yahweh – which is why Garfinkel says they’re the earliest.
“There was a ban on the cult images of Yahweh. It was introduced during the eighth century B.C.E., and it reflects a local development. This is because these figurines, resembling the literature of ancient Canaan and Israel, have been discovered in contexts dating to the tenth and ninth centuries B.C.E., but not in the eighth century and afterward.”
Obviously, these heads are subject to interpretation and Garfinkel would be wise to find more supporting archeological materials to go with his biblical links. Still, the hunt for artifacts from what is indisputably a turning point in human history should go on, whether they contradict or conflict with religious beliefs or not.
Anonymous UFO Disclosure! "Very Few Know About These" - You Need To Hear It
Anonymous UFO Disclosure! "Very Few Know About These" - You Need To Hear It
Extraterrestrial life is hypothetical life which may occur outside of Earth and which did not originate on Earth. Such life might range from simple prokaryotes to beings with civilizations far more advanced than humanity. The Drake equation speculates about the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
Unidentified flying object is the popular term for any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft.
Just 100 years ago, the nature of the Milky Way — and the universe itself — was still a matter of debate. On April 26, 1920, astronomer Harlow Shapley claimed our galaxy was the entire universe. Astronomer Heber Curtis countered that the blurry star clusters seen with a telescope were “island universes,” separate from, but analogous to, the Milky Way.
The Archon Influence Revealed... The Governors of Our Universe
The Archon Influence Revealed... The Governors of Our Universe
The Archon Influence Revealed…The Governors Of Our Universe
They are said to be intelligent beings that come from another world that are attracted to negativity and feed from it, altering our perceptions and behaviour so to keep us firmly grounded in such emotions.
These ancient beings known as the Archons were first written about by the Gnostics, discovered in a series of books hidden deep within an ancient cave. These beings said to be as old as our planet if not older maybe the governors of our universe.
On Friday, Elon Musk got on Twitter and states bluntly..."Aliens built the pyramids, obv." That tweet got over 533K likes and 93K retweets. I have to say, he is of course...correct. Located in Giza, Egypt are three huge pyramids, almost untouched by time and estimate to have been built over 5,000 years ago. Its an easy answer to come to because its the logical one. Even today, with our advanced technology and inventions...Giza is too poor to be able to afford such equipment necessary to create the great pyramid, let alone get the money to pay the workers for years of labor thats obviously needed.
Let me explain seven facts that prove aliens built the pyramids. 1. The stones were 2 tons to 50 tons, and Egyptians had not learned of the wheel and the boats they used could not possible carry such weight across the Nile river. But aliens could. 2. The three pyramids were all built directly facing true magnetic north. The compass was not yet created, so this should be impossible. But aliens could do it. 3. The three pyramids of the Giza pyramid complex are aligned exactly with the position of three stars of the Belt of Orion. As the science of astronomy would not have been that developed thousands of years back, but aliens could do this. 4. The perimeter of the Great Pyramid when divided by two times the height of the monument gives a number which exactly equal to pi, and it is matching till the 15th decimal place. But aliens could do it. 5. There are hieroglyphs present in the wall carvings in the Temple of Seti I at Abydos that resembles the helicopter exactly. There are cravings of other modern day vehicles on the same wall carving as well. The hieroglyphic carving includes a submarine, and a spaceship. Aliens could predict the future, since they have seen such evolution on other worlds. 6. To build a structure which has blocks weighing up to 50 tons on top of the sand, and not have it sink in 5,000 years...is impossible for humans, even the humans of today. But aliens could do it. 7. The Great Pyramid at Giza's latitude, 29.9792458°N, perfectly matches up to the speed of light, which is 299,792,458 meters per second.
For any scientist to say that Egyptians have the ability to make a great pyramid today...I say prove it. They neither have the focus, the unity, they finances, equipment nor to engineering skills to successfully achieve such a remarkable structure today. The Egyptians can talk the talk, anyone can, but they cannot walk the walk, no human can. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
I found this black structure today. I often report such black structures, but this one can is a ship and flat on its bottom so it can land in different locations...this one has landed inside of a crater on the moon. Because of its location...surrounded by white...the black object stands out even more powerfully.
The URL I give you is NASA working with ASU link and it will take you to the exact location I found this at on the moon map.
The measurement at the bottom right of the map says 50 miles. Therefore the UFO I am reporting today also is 25 miles across according to the NASA measurement made in the map photo system. Screenshot of the landed UFO near the 50M ruler is seen below. Aliens hide the structures and NASA often overlooks them since they have little training to find them. Undeniable proof of aliens on our moon!
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
White UFO Orbs Witnessed Over Melipilla, Chile, May 15, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
White UFO Orbs Witnessed Over Melipilla, Chile, May 15, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 15, 2020 Location of sighting: Melipilla, Chile A fleet of cloud orbs were seen in the sky over Melipilla, Chile last month. The objects are orbs produced by a larger disk or sometimes a slightly larger orb. It looks like they were produced recently because they are waiting in the area for instructions before leaving to scan areas of Chile. I will put a video of an mother orb making smaller orbs...such videos are rare but have been recorded several times worldwide.
100% real and absolute mesmerizing to watch them. Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states:
On the morning of Thursday, May 14, I was able to witness the sighting of around 15 sphere-like objects over the sky in Melipilla, Chile. The event lasted approximately 5 minutes, the objects moved independently of each other, remained suspended, or changed directions, indicating the possibility that they are not terrestrial objects.
Bright UFO In Minas Gerais, Brazil. May 25, 2020, Surprises Eyewitness, UFO Sighting News.
Bright UFO In Minas Gerais, Brazil. May 25, 2020, Surprises Eyewitness, UFO Sighting News.
Below is at 38 second mark of the video it becomes focus when the camera alternated filters to try to focus. Then I added more contracts and the focused UFO appeared (below).
Date of sighting: May 25, 2020
Location of sighting: Minas Gerais, Brazil
Imagine a guy waiting in his car for some friends to arrive and a glowing whitish object floats past in the distance. Well, thats exactly what happened to this guy and he wan none too pleased that his friends were late to see it. Lucky for us he caught the whole thing on his cell phone. If you noticed that at 38 seconds into the video, the camera loses focus, adds shadows to try to bring the object into focus and the UFO comes into great focus (above screenshot-dark) to reveal a four section craft. The focusing of the video...that is 100% proof that this video is authentic. Its a small glitch, but its nevertheless proof of it being real raw footage.
UFO Shoots Across New Mexico, Changes Shape, Pulses...And Speeds Up! July 28, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Shoots Across New Mexico, Changes Shape, Pulses...And Speeds Up! July 28, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: July 28, 2020 Location of sighting: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA A night security camera caught a glowing object in New Mexico two days ago. The glowing object was immediately labeled a meteor, but all of its characteristics in this video scream out UFO. For instance, the object is 5X slower than a meteor. The object is changing shape from round, to disk, to oval, meteors have a constant shape. This object even speeds up as it goes behind the hill...which meteors cannot do. But above all, this object flew over a building on the hill, and its shape changed, flashing brightly right above it...I mean EXACTLY ABOVE IT! Then the object triples its speed and shoots off. That has UFO written all over. Just the facts guys, thats all I'm reporting...and this without a doubt...an alien craft. Scott C. Waring
The Condon Report, funded by the U.S. Air Force, was published in 1968 and suggested continued study of UFOs would yield no scientific discoveries. Buried in the report, though, are three "unidentified objects" determined to be UFOs seen by astronauts in Earth's orbit in 1965.
The astronauts on Gemini 4 and 7 saw the objects, and after thorough examination, even the Condon analyst deemed them a puzzle and ruled them unknown.
This is curious for two reasons.
One: the chapter of astronaut sightings has mysteriously gone missing from many mainstream versions of the report, such as the primary copy on file at the Defense Technical Information Center. It is also missing from the Internet Archive. Only in an obscure Dept. of Commerce database can we find this missing chapter.
Two: NASA's own form letter they sent to UFO inquiries for decades cited the Condon Report as evidence that it didn't need to look at UFOs, and even claimed the astronaut sightings were nothing, at odds with Condon. This comes despite internal memos stating NASA was informally collecting UFO debris under a nicknamed operation "UFOHEAP."
Defunct UFO-Hunting Program of Pentagon May Still Exist
Defunct UFO-Hunting Program of Pentagon May Still Exist
Is the Pentagon secretly investigating UFOs or not?
According to the recent Senate committee reports, the American government’s search for UFOs is ongoing and is part of a program named the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force (UAPTF) that runs under the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence.
The agency seems to have assumed the responsibilities of another UFO-seeking Pentagon group that was supposedly disbanded in 2012. According to the July 23 report of The New York Times, the findings of UAPTF could be made public within the next 6 months.
The results of investigations done by the UAPTF are classified for now. However, a former consultant for the UFO program
mentioned retrievals from “off-world vehicles not made on this earth,” during a briefing to Defense Department representatives in March. Despite this claim, any proof of alleged out of this world technology has yet to be produced.
The U.S. government officially referred UFOs as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), which means objects that can’t be easily explained. The government claimed that the primary goal of military agencies is to determine whether nor not these objects pose a threat to national security and not to find intelligent aliens.
The U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) have concentrated on UFO appearances in the country from the 1950s to the 1980s. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was formed in 2007 and reportedly ceased operation in 2012 when its financial support was withdrawn.
However, the Pentagon’s search for UFOs appears to continue after all. Representatives with the Department of Defense (DoD) recently confirmed that UFO-searching was still running in 2017 and goes on to this day under UAPTF, according to Times.
The Time says the shadowy UFO-investigating agency was revealed into the public view when the U.S. Senate intelligence committee addressed the UAPTF’s activities in June, in their Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. The bill of the committee looks to regulate the UFO-related information’s tracking, organization, and accessibility. It would include the release of a public report (submitted in an unclassified form) within 180 days of the enactment of the bill.
The committee members wrote in the bill that the committee understands the possible sensitivity of the relevant intelligence; nevertheless, it finds that the information sharing and coordination across the intelligence community has been inconsistent.
The Earth’s magnetic field, generated 1,800 miles (3,000 km) below our feet in the liquid iron core, is crucially important to life on our planet. It extends out into space, wrapping us in an electromagnetic blanket that shields the atmosphere and satellites from solar radiation.
Yet the magnetic field is constantly changing in both its strength and direction and has undergone some dramatic shifts in the past. This includes enigmatic reversals of the magnetic poles, with the south pole becoming the north pole and vice versa.
A long-standing question has been how fast the field can change. Our new study, published in Nature Communications, has uncovered some answers.
Rapid changes of the magnetic field are of great interest because they represent the most extreme behavior of the ocean of molten iron in the liquid core. By tying the observed changes to core processes, we can learn important information about an otherwise inaccessible region of our planet.
Historically, the fastest changes in Earth’s magnetic field have been associated with reversals, which occur at irregular intervals a few times every million years. But we discovered field changes that are much faster and more recent than any of the data associated with actual reversals.
Magnetic reversal.
Image via NASA.
Nowadays satellites help monitor changes in the field in both space and time, complemented by navigational records and ground-based observatories. This information reveals that changes in the modern field are rather ponderous, around a tenth of a degree per year. But, while we know that the field has existed for at least 3.5 billion years, we don’t know much about its behavior prior to 400 years ago.
To track the ancient field, scientists analyse the magnetism recorded by sediments, lava flows and human-made artifacts. That’s because these materials contain microscopic magnetic grains that record the signature of Earth’s field at the time they cooled (for lavas) or were added to the landmass (for sediments). Sediment records from central Italy around the time of the last polarity reversal almost 800,000 years ago suggest relatively rapid field changes reaching one degree per year.
Such measurements, however, are extremely challenging, with results still being debated. For example, there are uncertainties in the process by which sediments acquire their magnetism.
Improved measurements
Our research takes a different approach by using computer models based on the physics of the field generation process. This is combined with a recently published reconstruction of global variations in Earth’s magnetic field spanning the last 100,000 years, based on a compilation of measurements from sediments, lavas and artifacts.
This shows that changes in the direction of Earth’s magnetic field reached rates that are up to 10 degrees per year – 10 times larger than the fastest currently reported variations.
The fastest observed changes in the geomagnetic field direction occurred around 39,000 years ago. This shift was associated with a locally weak field in a confined region just off the west coast of central America. The event followed the global “Laschamp excursion” – a “failed reversal” of the Earth’s magnetic field around 41,000 years ago in which the magnetic poles briefly moved far from the geographic poles before returning.
The fastest changes appear to be associated with local weakening of the magnetic field. Our model suggests this is caused by movement of patches of intense magnetic field across the surface of the liquid core. These patches are more prevalent at lower latitudes, suggesting that future searches for rapid changes in direction should focus on these areas.
The impact on society
Changes in the magnetic field, such as reversals, probably don’t pose a threat to life. Humans did manage to live through the dramatic Laschamp excursion. Today, the threat is mainly down to our reliance on electronic infrastructure. Space weather events such as geomagnetic storms, arising from the interaction between the magnetic field and incoming solar radiation, could disrupt satellite communications, GPS and power grids.
This is troubling – the economic cost of a collapse of the U.S. power grid due to a space-weather event has been estimated at around one trillion dollars. The threat is serious enough for space weather to appear as a high priority on the U.K. national risk register.
Space weather events tend to be more prevalent in regions where the magnetic field is weak – something we know can happen when the field is changing rapidly. Unfortunately, computer simulations suggest that directional changes arise after the field strength begins to weaken, meaning we cannot predict dips in field strength by just monitoring the field direction. Future work using more advanced simulations can shed more light on this issue.
Is another rapid change in the magnetic field on its way? This is very hard to answer. The fastest changes are also the rarest events: for example, the changes identified around the Laschamp excursion are over two times faster than any other changes occurring over the last 100,000 years.
This makes it difficult for scientists to predict rapid changes – they are “black swan events” that come as a surprise and have a big impact. One possible route forward is to use physics-based models of how the field behaves as part of the forecast.
We still have a lot to learn about the “speed limit” of Earth’s magnetic field. Rapid changes have not yet been directly observed during a polarity reversal, but they should be expected since the field is thought to become globally weak at these times.
Bottom line: The authors of a new study say they’ve uncovered some answers to the long-standing question about how fast Earth’s magnetic field can change.
On July 23, the New York Times released an article describing classified UFO briefings delivered to the US Congress and the Pentagon by Dr. Eric Davis, a prominent astrophysicist, researching “out of the box” scientific phenomena since 1996. The authors of the New York Times story, Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, provided few details of the briefings other than Davis’ sensational claim that UFOs (aka UAPs) involved “off-world vehicles not made on this earth”.
The New York Times article was quickly picked up by other major media such as the Huffington Post, Popular Mechanics, and popular news sites that included Yahoo News. More recently, Scientific American called for a resumption of scientific studies on UFOs in a very telling sign that mainstream scientists are finally paying attention.
Senator Marco Rubio was informed about the classified briefing given by Dr. Davis to staffers from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which Rubio currently heads. He subsequently arranged for his Committee to give a bipartisan vote of approval (14-1) for the Intelligence Community to write up a comprehensive report on UFOs/UAPs in 180 days after the Bill’s passage into law.
Significantly, the Director of National Intelligence was instructed that the “report shall be submitted in unclassified form, but may include a classified annex”. This means that the report is intended to be released to the general public.
What is missing in the New York Times article and subsequent news stories are the precise details of what Davis briefed members of Congress and Pentagon officials. It can be assumed that the briefings involved information derived from a 15-page leaked transcript/summary of an October 16, 2002 conversation between Dr. Davis and Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson, who retired as the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, only a few months before the meeting.
I covered the Davis and Wilson leaked document in a three-part series (available here, here and here). Put simply, the document revealed Wilson’s failed efforts in 1997 to gain access to an Unacknowledged Special Access Program, which he had learned involved a corporation studying a retrieved UFO/extraterrestrial craft. Wilson had hoped Davis could shed light on what was happening in the corporate reverse engineering program.
While it is highly likely that parts of the 15-page document were included in Davis’ classified briefings to Congressional staffers and Pentagon officials, we don’t know what conclusions Davis had reached about what Wilson had confidentially shared with him. The leaked document focused on Wilson’s experiences, rather than what Davis knew about the topic.
Consequently, an interview given by Davis on May 10, 2019, five months before his briefing to Congressional staffers, where he gave his evaluation of UFOs and extraterrestrial life becomes highly significant. The interview gives us a very good idea of what Davis told Congress and the Pentagon, which has now been made an issue of national importance due to the New York Times story, and the looming Intelligence Community report destined to emerge in early 2021.
In fact, a strong case can be made that Davis’ briefings will be used as the fulcrum of a UFO/UAP disclosure narrative that will emerge in early 2021 with the release of the unclassified intelligence UAP report to Congress. This is where there is much in what Davis told Congressional staffers and Pentagon officials that raises alarming red flags that a “limited hangout” is being prepared over classified programs involving the retrieval and reverse engineering of crashed UFOs.
While the truth will be told of the non-Earthly origin of some retrieved UFOs, the successful reverse engineering of such craft by major aerospace corporations will be hidden from the public, along with the existence of visiting extraterrestrial life.
What follows is my analysis of Davis’s comments in the interview he conducted with Alejandro Rojas from Open Minds TV, which is available both in audio form on YouTube and as a rough transcript from an automated translation. I have corrected Rojas’ rough transcript using the original interview in my extracts below, which include the YouTube timestamps [YT].
In discussing the origins of the three videos showing UFO craft videotaped by Navy pilots in 2004 and 2015, and officially acknowledged as genuine by the Department of the Navy, Davis declares such advanced technology has not been developed by any government or nation:
[29:28 YT] In a matter of three to five seconds, you’re not basically talking about human technology. There is no Russian or Chinese or North Korean or Iranian or anybody else. No, NATO or any other Alliance, or non-Alliance country, non-Allied countries have any sort of technology that can perform the way these Tic Tacs were found to be performing….
The things we’re seeing are not shaped in the usual typical way that we humans would shape them. So you, you got to come up with another hypothesis and the only hypothesis is something unknown. And then its got a good chance that it’s not human technology….
Davis goes on to assert that the UFOs are operating on a new physics and humanity currently doesn’t have the means to replicate this:
[37:44 YT] In other words, they don’t, the objects don’t follow the aerodynamic rules of engineering. Okay, they just don’t. Okay, and that’s driven by physics. And they are not saying that they’re breaking the laws of physics. So don’t quote me on anything having to do with why they’re operating on a new physics, we have an event, or no, they’re breaking the laws of physics, it is possible to operating on the physics we haven’t invented or haven’t discovered yet. That’s possible, we don’t know. So anyway, the point is, is that these things are operating there you go way outside the envelope of our engineering and physics technologies. And, and I can guarantee you that no laws of physics are broken whatsoever.
Davis declares that the UFOs and their advanced flight capacities are not something that can be manufactured given the present level of technological development on Earth:
[38:58 YT] And these things don’t look like anything that we can manufacture on Earth. So we don’t have the manufacturing or industrial technology for it. We don’t have engineering for it. In other words, the blueprints and designs to get something … shaped like air fighter-sized piece of candy mouth mint and get that to fly through the air stably. And do the wonderful things that they do in the years reported by the F-18 pilots associated with the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group.
Davis is then asked about the truth of reports of UFO crashes and whether the craft have been retrieved for classified studies. He answers:
[1:14:32 YT] Yeah, there have been crashes. The super powers on the Earth have had their share of crashes. And they have recovered the vehicles from their crashes.
Davis goes on to explain how the truth about classified studies of recovered alien spacecraft is kept from most public officials:
[1:15:30 YT] So yeah, they have that technology. We do too. And it’s a very super sensitive topic. Because it’s something that your listeners, you’re probably going to be shocked at… probably a minute fraction, it’s like less than 1/1000th or 1/100,000th of the people with the “need to know” access, “need to know” authorization, and security clearances to be involved with that type of work, are the only ones that know. The vast majority of the rest of the government really doesn’t know. And that’s why one hand, like the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing…
Davis was likely referring to the process whereby even senior military officials like Admiral Wilson, with high level security clearances and “need to know” authorization, was still denied access to classified studies of retrieved non-Earthly spacecraft.
Davis elaborates on the complexity of the security clearances system in finding the truth about what’s happening in unacknowledged special access programs:
[1:16:16 YT] Because of the stovepipe thing that goes on in compartmentalized programs … you just can’t knock on doors and say, Hey, here’s who I am … I got clearances, but not the right ones. I don’t have a need to know. But I want to know, so can you tell me…. You’re going to be lied to, because that’s, that’s the rule. You don’t want to tell the enemy anything, when this guy is knocking on your door asking you about UFO crashes, could be an asset for the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation, or the Chinese PLA, or the nincompoops over in Iran and North Korea and so forth.
So, you know, even if it’s an American, you still don’t want to answer that question because you don’t know who they are. And you’re not supposed to be revealing that information. So it takes a lot of hard tracking and digging after working. And it can take years and years and years. And then you develop the security clearances and the authorization for you to know that appropriately … allow you access to that information, then you find out hey, yeah, it’s there, it’s true.
On the other hand, sometimes the information does come out on its own. But it doesn’t come out in the way that UFOlogy likes to fantasize about it. It comes out only to specific people, who have specific talents or skills, who have security clearances, they may not have the need to know. But they could have the need to know if they were presented with that requirement.
At this stage in his interview, Davis comments on the Disclosure Project witnesses that Dr Steven Greer arranged to come forward in 2001 in a ground-breaking Press Conference. According to Davis, most of Greer’s witnesses were crackpots and just “noise” when it came to identifying the genuine signal in the available public information on retrieved UFOs:
[1:21:05 YT] A good majority of them were crackpots, they were phonies. But there was a small number of them that were the real deal. And so he successfully picked up a very small number of them, and got some information. And now, as to the veracity and quality of that information. That’s another story.
But he did get some interesting information.… the information was not … verifiable. In other words, once people looked into it, they said, yeah, this is realistic. Whereas a good chunk, a good chunk of his disclosure witnesses. You know, they had middle of the road guys, they had some information, but it was too purple. It was just anecdotal.
And then you had the guys that were real liars. He’s got a chunk of liars out there … I don’t know how much effort he spent on vetting any of those people. And I’m not going to name names of who they are. It’s not important, because … the fact that they have no real information means it’s noise. We’re dealing with signal, we’re interested in signal and science folks, not the noise. Check the noise.
Next, Davis went on to elaborate on Greer’s witnesses who claimed to have first-hand knowledge of crash retrieval operations:
[1:22:25 YT] So, he did have a small signal of people that had verifiable information…. They came forward, they gave him information that was freely given to him. But it was after the fact, it was never expected that it could be acted upon. The people that gave him information … weren’t directly involved with the crash retrieval at all. They actually were either peripheral, or they heard it from somebody reliable. So the vertical information was high quality, but they were not first-hand people.
Davis is here suggesting, for example, that Clifford Stone, a 22 year US Army veteran, who was interviewed by Greer and claimed to have had first-hand knowledge of multiple crashed UFOs retrieved by the US military, was a crackpot and liar. There are many reasons to dispute Davis’ information when it comes to Stone’s testimony who has been successfully interviewed many times over several decades, and has maintained the same story with consistency and sincerity.
Davis provides no evidence that Stone or other Disclosure Projects witnesses are lying or crackpots, consequently his assertions need to be considered as unverified or misinformed. This is a major red flag that Davis testimony may be part of a “limited hangout” that is being unveiled to the American and World publics through the New York Times, arguably the most important media organ of the CIA and the Deep State.
The most significant aspect of Davis’s interview is his assertion that UFO crash retrievals were part of a small unsuccessful program that was terminated in 1989, around the time the famed whistleblower, Bob Lazar, emerged with his experiences claiming something very similar had occurred during his time at the S-4 facility at Area 51.
Eisenhower Signs Treaty With the Greys in 1954 - True or False?
Eisenhower Signs Treaty With the Greys in 1954 -True or False?
Eisenhower Signs Treaty With the Greys In 1954 – True or False?
I have interviewed a lot of guests about this on my show who seemed pretty sure about it all. But what is the evidence? I’d like to see some real evidence or paperwork or something that shows it to be true. Can’t just believe something because someone is rooster sure about it.
Posted it to see what our audience thinks here about it. Is it true or is it false? What do you think about this story? Possibility? Or not possible at all? Provide any source links and information that you have for discussion. Thanks for visiting BIN. Have a good weekend.
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Edgar Cayce: There Were Humans in America 10 Million Years Ago
Edgar Cayce: There Were Humans in America 10 Million Years Ago
COAST TO COAST AM – According to Edgar Cayce, there were humans in the Americas as long as 10 million years ago, mainly in the Southwest, but the population picked up around 50,000 BC with Atlanteans, and people from the South Pacific (migrating from the destroyed Lemuria). Further, Cayce pinpointed certain Native American tribes such as the Iroquois as being the purest descendants of Atlanteans.
In his search for the location of Atlantis, Little visited the Bahamas and discovered many crashed planes underwater, some connected with Bermuda Triangle disappearances.
Little and his team experienced electrical & magnetic anomalies, and strange weather phenomena, including five waterspouts that encircled his ship. At Andros island, green, red, and white lights briefly formed in the sky and then disappeared over a several-hour period, he recalled.
Totally New: “Drawn-on-Skin Electronics" with an Ink Pen Can Monitor Physiological Information
A team of researchers led by Cunjiang Yu, Bill D. Cook Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston, has developed a new form of electronics known as “drawn-on-skin electronics,” allowing multifunctional sensors and circuits to be drawn on the skin with an ink pen.
The advance, the researchers report in Nature Communications, allows for the collection of more precise, motion artifact-free health data, solving the long-standing problem of collecting precise biological data through a wearable device when the subject is in motion.
Credit: University of Houston.
The imprecision may not be important when your FitBit registers 4,000 steps instead of 4,200, but sensors designed to check heart function, temperature and other physical signals must be accurate if they are to be used for diagnostics and treatment.
The drawn-on-skin electronics are able to seamlessly collect data, regardless of the wearer’s movements.
They also offer other advantages, including simple fabrication techniques that don’t require dedicated equipment.
“It is applied like you would use a pen to write on a piece of paper,” said Yu. “We prepare several electronic materials and then use pens to dispense them. Coming out, it is liquid. But like ink on paper, it dries very quickly.”
Cunjiang Yu, Bill D. Cook Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, led a team reporting a new form of electronics known as “drawn-on-skin electronics,” which allows multifunctional sensors and circuits to be drawn on the skin with an ink pen.
Credit: University of Houston
Wearable bioelectronics – in the form of soft, flexible patches attached to the skin – have become an important way to monitor, prevent and treat illness and injury by tracking physiological information from the wearer. But even the most flexible wearables are limited by motion artifacts, or the difficulty that arises in collecting data when the sensor doesn’t move precisely with the skin.
The drawn-on-skin electronics can be customized to collect different types of information, and Yu said it is expected to be especially useful in situations where it’s not possible to access sophisticated equipment, including on a battleground.
The electronics are able to track muscle signals, heart rate, temperature and skin hydration, among other physical data, he said. The researchers also reported that the drawn-on-skin electronics have demonstrated the ability to accelerate healing of wounds.
Faheem Ershad, a doctoral student in the Cullen College of Engineering, served as first author for the paper.
Credit: University of Houston
In addition to Yu, researchers involved in the project include Faheem Ershad, Anish Thukral, Phillip Comeaux, Yuntao Lu, Hyunseok Shim, Kyoseung Sim, Nam-In Kim, Zhoulyu Rao, Ross Guevara, Luis Contreras, Fengjiao Pan, Yongcao Zhang, Ying-Shi Guan, Pinyi Yang, Xu Wang and Peng Wang, all from the University of Houston, and Jiping Yue and Xiaoyang Wu from the University of Chicago.
The drawn-on-skin electronics are actually comprised of three inks, serving as a conductor, semiconductor and dielectric.
“Electronic inks, including conductors, semiconductors, and dielectrics, are drawn on-demand in a freeform manner to develop devices, such as transistors, strain sensors, temperature sensors, heaters, skin hydration sensors, and electrophysiological sensors,” the researchers wrote.
This research is supported by the Office of Naval Research and National Institutes of Health.
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The "Sleeping Man" of the Kaikoura UFO
The "Sleeping Man" of the Kaikoura UFO Mystery resembles a Humanoid
On the 31st of December 1978 a film team went on board of an Argossy airplane for an interview with the crew. On the 20th and 21st of December another aircraft had reported UFOs and this was the reason for the interview by Mr. Fogarty and his crew.
Image: Sleeping Man / Humanoid Kaikoura.
The pilot and co-pilot were not the ones that had reported the event. Only ten minutes into the flight their was a first UFO encounter.
The cameraman quickly changed the lens of his camera to a 100 mm / 240 mm zoom lens and after midnight on the 1st of January 1979 he filmed the UFOs that during the entire flight followed and approached the plane.
He recorded the UFOs from the windows of the cockpit and the presence of these unidentified flying objects were also confirmed by Wellington Radar and Air traffic Control.
This event is commonly known as the Kaikoura UFO Mystery.
The original 16 mm film was hidden from the public for 37 years. People forgot that it existed and the Kaikoura UFO encounter became a UFO cold case.
But while the Argossy airplane flew back from Christchurch (NZ) to Blenheim (NZ), David Crocket pointed his 16 mm camera towards a small township too.
No one ever paid attention to this section of the film but Deuem, inventor of DEUEM processing analyzed the frames and he found another one small UFO hovering overhead or near the township.
The 16 mm had been digitized by a top notch film laboratory and ‘The Image Analysis Team’ which is a group of experienced researchers and forensic video/image specialists, received 4 High Definition videos of Blue-Ray quality.
Now, convention software fails to reveal the "secret" that is hidden within the white glowing areas of the small UFO that flew overhead or near the township. A combination of software is required, some are available to the public and some like proprietary DEUEM and SMD are not.
To analyze the UFO over the township the team used at first SMD1 which is a complex proprietary technology (DEUEM upgrade) used to visualize the effects of gravity (not gravity itself) and to reveal the glowing of excited gasmolecules (plasma) in a gaseous environment / atmosphere. (DEUEM = Detection of electromagnetic plasma dynamics)
After SMD1 they apply SMD2: This software identifies the tiniest differences in color and intensity in an image and it transforms all colors to different colors which are randomly selected from the color wheel. (full color spectrum).
After the final processed image which no longer shows any of the original colors but it presents us with a hundred times more details which previously could not be seen, the team believes that the small glowing UFO which they have called the "Sleeping Man, overhead or near the township, resembles a humanoid.
Some people claim that what the group of forensic video/image specialists see is not real and a case of pareidolia but after you watched the video if that really is the case here!
The Untold Stories of Native American and Alien Connection
The Untold Stories of Native American and Alien Connection
Before the Europeans found the Americas, a variety of cultures inhabited the land. Unfortunately, the near-annihilation of Native Americans led to the disappearance of ancient knowledge that we might never recover.
On the positive note, survivors managed to pass down stories about the “Star People,” a term that refers to groups of various beings from the sky who shared a connection with humans who were worthy of their teachings.
According to the collection of stories, the ancient world had interactions with a multitude of advanced aliens. Several cultures separated by thousands of years had made mentions of flying objects and advanced technology. These stories are prevalent within the mythos of the Native American tribes.
Richard Wagamese of the Wabaseemoong First People writes about Star People who came to Earth many generations ago, brought spiritual teachings, stories, and maps of the cosmos for free. Richard describes them as kind and loving, and when they left, people say there was a loneliness like no other.
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The peaceful Hopi people believe their ancestors originated from the Pleiades, and the Pleiadian aliens’ general demeanor is reflected in their lifestyle.
Dakota legends refer to similar star cluster but called it Tiyami as being the primal home of their ancestors.
Meanwhile, the Cree believed their ancestors arrived from the stars in the form of spirit, only to become humans on Earth.
Lakota people’s native legends talk about mysterious celestial beings that manifested as spheres of light and would usually choose certain children to follow them through space and time.
Hopi petroglyphs showing Star People and their “flying shields” // Petroglyph at Legend Rock near Thermopolis, Wyoming
All Native American tribes see themselves as the original caretakers of Mother Earth and lament the path of destruction we’re on. Several tribal figures think that this is the primary reason behind the weakening of the bond between the Star People and humanity.
In 2000, Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet premier, said: “In the 1980s, you warned about the unprecedented dangers of nuclear weapons and took very daring steps to reverse the arms race. Models made by Russian and American scientists showed that a nuclear war would result in a nuclear winter that would be extremely destructive to all life on Earth; the knowledge of that was a great stimulus to us, to people of honor and morality, to act in that situation.” So, what, exactly, is a nuclear winter Let’s see. We’ll begin with the aforementioned decade of the 1980s, which was when the concept – and the doom-filled implications – of a nuclear winter really began to take shape on a large scale. Today’s nuclear weapons have the ability to obliterate entire cities and millions of people in seconds. Compared to nuclear weapons of the 21st century, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were mere toys. Bringing worldwide civilization to an end is something that is all too easily within our grasp, should we be so foolish to one day go down that nightmarish path. But, it’s not just the immediate effects of a nuclear war that we have to be concerned about. There are the long-term effects, too. Yes, trying to protect oneself from both the initial blast and the soon-to-be-everywhere deadly radiation would be absolutely paramount to one’s survival. There is, however, something else to be aware of.
Such would be the massive scale of destruction in a nuclear war, millions upon millions of tons of dust, dirt, soot, and the ash-like remains of probably five or six billion people, buildings and more would be sucked into the huge firestorms erupting all across the quickly-shattering globe. In no time at all, the dense, cloudy, worldwide masses would quickly reach the stratosphere, which is situated around six to eight miles above the planet’s surface. And that’s when the poor, irradiated and burned survivors of the war would have something else to deal with. As if billions dead and killer-radiation weren’t enough to have on one’s plate. Such would be the almost unfathomable amount of sooty materials quickly overwhelming the planet’s entire stratosphere, we would see a sudden and devastating change in temperatures. We’re not talking about the temperature merely dropping. We’re talking about it plummeting. As in almost off the scale, as the rays and heat of the sun become systematically blocked out, all as a result of our stupidity and recklessness.
In 1985, the National Research Council published a groundbreaking report titledThe Effects on the Atmosphere of a Major Nuclear Exchange. Its conclusions – which were prepared by the Committee on the Atmospheric Effects of Nuclear Explosions – were chilling and included the following words: “The realization that a nuclear exchange would be accompanied by the deposition into the atmosphere of particulate matter is not new. However, the suggestion that the associated attenuation of sunlight might be so extensive as to cause severe drops in surface air temperatures and other major climatic effects in areas that are far removed from target zones is of rather recent origin.” The committee also noted that, “the massive species extinctions of 65 million years ago were part of the aftermath of the lofting of massive quantities of particulates resulting from the collision of a large meteor with the earth.” A clear warning that by engaging in nuclear warfare on a planetary scale, we risk going the same way as the dinosaurs – all as a result of significant changes to the planet’s temperature.
We also have this from the committee: “The consequences of any such changes in atmospheric state would have to be added to the already sobering list of relatively well-understood consequences of nuclear war…Long-term atmospheric consequences imply additional problems that are not easily mitigated by prior preparedness and that are not in harmony with any notion of rapid postwar restoration of social structure. They also create an entirely new threat to populations far removed from target areas, and suggest the possibility of additional major risks for any nation that itself initiates use of nuclear weapons, even if nuclear retaliation should somehow be limited.”
In light of all the above, to what extent would the Earth’s temperature be lowered? A chilling – no pun intended – statement comes from Dr. Alan Robock, a professor of climatology in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University. An expert in this field, Dr. Robock says: “A minor nuclear war (such as between India and Pakistan or in the Middle East), with each country using 50 Hiroshima-sized atom bombs as airbursts on urban areas, could produce climate change unprecedented in recorded human history. This is only 0.03% of the explosive power of the current global arsenal.” Consider carefully, Dr. Robock’s words. He makes it very clear the survivors of a nuclear war would experience, “…climate change unprecedented in recorded human history.” And all this with only 0.03% of the world’s nuclear weapons being used. Imagine, then, the effects if all of the remaining, massive percentage was used – and not just in the India-Pakistan area, or in the Middle East, but just about everywhere. It’s not at all inconceivable that we would see our world plunged into nothing less than a full Ice Age, never mind just a nuclear winter.
Experts, who were led by the University of Brighton, performed a chemical analysis on a piece of a stone from Stonehenge in order to determine where exactly they originated from. They tested a sample from a sarsen stone that was recently returned to the United States after being taken during repair work to the site in the 1950s and what they found was quite interesting. The large sandstone boulders (which are 30 feet in height and weigh around 20 tonnes) came from Wiltshire’s West Woods which is located about 15 miles north of Salisbury Plain.
But first, let’s talk about why a sample was taken in the 1950s. There were, in fact, three samples that were removed from Stonehenge in 1958 by Van Moppes (Diamond Tools) Ltd of Basingstoke so that metal ties could be put inside of stone 58 for reinforcement as it contained several fractures. In fact, stones 57, 58, and 158 (the lintel stone) had all fallen over in the year 1797. Robert Phillips, who was an employee with the company, took one of the three cores, but in 2018, he returned the core sample to England. The second core sample is at the Salisbury Museum while the third one has never been found.
West Woods
Now getting back to the testing of the samples, experts revealed that based on a non-destructive X-ray technique, they were able to analyze the sarsen stones that are still standing at Stonehenge and found that 50 of the 52 contained the same chemistry meaning that they came from the same location around 2500 BC. Then they extracted samples from the piece that was taken in 1958 and compared its composition to other samples of sarsen boulders from twenty different areas around England. After the comparisons were complete, they were able to determine that the stones came from West Woods.
This is pretty exciting news, as Susan Greaney, who is an English Heritage senior properties historian as well as an author of the paper, described the findings as a “real thrill”. She went on to say, “Now we can start to understand the route they might have traveled and add another piece to the puzzle,” adding that those who built Stonehenge “wanted the biggest, most substantial stones they could find and it made sense to get them from as nearby as possible”.
David Nash, who is from the University of Brighton and another author of the study, weighed in by stating, “It has been really exciting to harness 21st century science to understand the Neolithic past and finally answer a question that archaeologists have been debating for centuries.”
In other Stonehenge news, a new study has revealed that Stonehenge’s smaller “bluestones” actually came from the northern part of Preseli Hills and were transported to Salisbury Plain by land instead of by water. It’s been known for quite a while that Stonehenge was made up of local stones as well as some from Preseli Hills in Wales.
It’s rarely a good thing when experts admit they know what something isn’t, but have no idea what it is. If we’re looking at Mars, there are plenty of candidates for that description, but today’s is one we’ve seen but not heard an answer for before – a mysterious elongated plume over the thought-to-be-long-dead Arsia Mons volcano. This mysterious plume was spotted by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter in October 2018 and was hotly debated back then by astronomers, seismologists, Mars experts and even conspiracy theorists who think it’s a real volcanic eruption that’s being covered up by the powers that be because that’s what the powers that be do. On the other hand, the rest were still arguing long after the plume disappeared. Now … it’s back again. Let the debates begin!
Two images of the Martian volcano plume.
Image credit: ESA/GCP/UPV/EHU Bilbao
“This elongated cloud forms every martian year during this season around the southern solstice, and repeats for 80 days or even more, following a rapid daily cycle. However, we don’t know yet if the clouds are always quite this impressive”.
Jorge Hernandez-Bernal, a PhD candidate at the University of the Basque Country in Spain and lead author of an ongoing ESA study on the plume (nice work if you can get it), says anybody with a good telescope on Earth can see the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC – yes, Mars doesn’t have hurricanes so the mysterious clouds get names) because it’s approaching 1,800 km (1,110 miles) in length – yes, that’s ‘length’, not height. This Martian plume stretches along the ground in a kind of visible air stream beginning from the 20 km (12.4 mile) high volcano’s leeward (downwind) side.
“A martian day, or sol, is slightly longer than an Earth day at 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds long. A year at the Red Planet consists of 668 sols, approximately 687 days, so the seasons last for twice as long.”
The ESA doesn’t just monitor the Mars Express – it can read your mind too. A Martian year is 687 Earth days, so the mysterious AMEC plume appeared right on time, just like it has in 2015, 2012, and 2009. And before that? The Mars Express wasn’t in orbit before that, but it’s estimated that Arsia Mons last erupted about 50 million years ago and hasn’t had a lava flow anywhere in at least 2 million years – which doesn’t answer the question but is an interesting factoid for your next trivia contest. All the ESA researchers know is that the plume appears around the Martian southern solstice (equivalent to our winter solstice) in the early morning, flows for about three hours and disappears until the following day – a process that’s repeated for 80 days and then abruptly ends.
The plume above the Arsia Mons volcano on Mars. Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
So, it’s not a volcanic cloud but it’s definitely the biggest and seemingly most predictable of similar cloud appearances on Mars. There’s no government cover-up — NASA knows about it too. It‘s made of water ice, so that’s a good thing to keep in mind if and hopefully when humans reach the Red Planet. And it appears like clockwork at Arsia Mons in case the batteries die all at once on everyone’s Martian calendar watches.
Welcome back, AMEC. Yes, we know it’s a boring name but no one knows much Latin anymore.
Anthony Harrison, of North Hall, says he will never forget the day he saw a UFO.
He remembers staring up at the sky in his front yard at age 8 and spotting something he couldn’t explain. Harrison said he yelled for his mother, who came out of the house to gaze in awe with him.
“It was in the early ‘70s,” he said. “Me and my mother were in the front yard. It was a gray overcast day with low-lying clouds, and in the sky, there was a triangular rotation of round colored lights, alternating back and forth.”
Harrison said the peculiar sight was near North Browning Bridge Road around Don Carter State Park. He recounts watching it with his mother for around 10 minutes before it disappeared.
“I’ve got a very vivid memory of it,” he said. “Thinking back on it now, there was no sound whatsoever. It was bright and coming through the clouds and very large.”
Having sifted through his mind for explanations, Harrison said he came to one conclusion — UFO.
“I was raised Christian and believe in the Bible,” he said. “It gives me the belief that it is possible that God created other life. I wouldn’t live in fear until proven wrong.”
Harrison isn’t the only person in Hall County to have spotted an odd object in the sky. Ronald Peewee Simmons, who used to live in South Hall, said he remembers seeing one from his front yard around 1977. He was 14 years old at the time, and said the occurrence took place after dark.
“I was in my front yard with some of my family,” Simmons said. “I looked up and saw a row of lights. All were different colors, then they would change colors. This went on for about an hour then it went out.”
He said the object never made a sound.
A pattern of reports
Despite an absence of extraterrestrial data in Northeast Georgia, The Times’ archives, contains a trove of UFO-related articles and letters to the editor spanning over decades.
An article published on June 24, 1988 in The Times headlined, “UFOs Attack Northeast Georgia,” outlines reports from the area where people have spotted the unexplained.
The story, written by James Kendley, begins with accounts from July 26, 1948. Around 10 p.m. that day, several Hall residents noticed a light traveling north.
Carl E. Hopwood, his niece and J.M Lunsford told The Times (formerly The Daily Times) of a “skyrocket with varicolored fire from beneath it … about 2 feet in diameter ... had a 6-foot fiery tail and was traveling at an altitude of about 5,000 feet at a speed of 650 miles per hour ...”
The article states that Emeline Shirley of Alto reported seeing a “reincarnated saucer” on the same day around the size of a grapefruit, which shed “weird blue light.”
From June to August in 1964, The Times reported that 30 people from Northeast Georgia over the course of around 15 days described at least 11 UFO group sightings.
The first collection of descriptions involved a “top-shaped (object), glowing orange, moving then hovering. Displaying various colored lights, mainly a green light pointed downward. A smell described from brake fluid to embalming fluid.”
Other sightings published in The Times include those from Oct. 21, 1952; July 5, 1953; June 20, 1996; Oct. 5-7, 1966; March 22, 1967; Nov. 23, 1968; Sep. 12, 1973 and Sept. 12, 1980.
Both Lisa MacKinney, Hall County Library director, and Glen Kyle, executive director of the Northeast Georgia History Center, said their respective databases don’t include any information regarding Hall UFO sightings.
“We’ve got nothing here about it,” Kyle said. “I haven’t come across anything UFO Northeast Georgia related, which is too bad because I think it would be kind of cool.”
Melanie Baez, the founder of the Paranormal Society of Northeast Georgia, also expressed that she had no information about local UFO sightings but will keep an eye open.
The National UFO Reporting Center keeps a catalogue of thousands of UFO sightings through history, most of which are in the U.S. People can file a report by visiting its website at nuforc.org or by calling its hotline at 206-722-3000, which is only recommended if the observation occurred within the last week.
According to its database, local UFO sightings reported to the center include 28 in Gainesville from 1968-2019; 11 in Flowery Branch from 2006-2015; 10 in Oakwood from 2007-2020; one in Braselton in 2019; 1 in Gillsville in 2011; four in Lula from 2007-2015 and 25 in Buford from 2002-2020.
Hall County UFO data from the National UFO Reporting Center
Gainesville: 1968-2019, 28 sightings
Flowery Branch: 2006-2015, 11 sightings
Oakwood: 2007-2020, 10 sightings
Braselton: 2019, one sighting
Gillsville: 2011, one sighting
Lula 2007-2015, four sightings
Buford 2002-2020, 25 sightings
What could they be?
Lt. Kiley Sargent of the Hall County Sheriff’s Office said over his 30 years in law enforcement, he has come across several UFO reports; however, not of extraterrestrial nature.
“When you’re thinking about unidentified flying objects, that’s anything that can't be identified, not necessarily an alien lifeform,” Sargent said. “That could be any type of aircraft that’s unidentified.”
While working in the Criminal Investigations Division from 2009-2015, Sargent said he touched base with the Federal Aviation Administration or the nearby airport, if a report came in about an unexplainable object in the sky.
“We generally start with the local airport,” he said. “Sometimes the military may be having some type of operations that are not very public that may be classified.”
Nowadays if people spot peculiar lights flying through the sky at night, Sargent said drones may be the culprit.
Maurice Snook of Athens, a retired chemist known by many in Northeast Georgia as Mr. Science, has been keeping a close eye on the sky for around 70 years. He received his first telescope in the ‘50s as a child, and since then hasn’t stopped studying planets, stars and other celestial objects.
Before the COVID-19 outbreak hit the Peach State in March, Snook would travel to schools throughout the region to engage children in chemistry shows and teach them about astronomy with his massive telescopes.
Snook knows the night sky just as well as the back of his hand and has seen his fair share of odd sightings. Snook said on every occasion, he has been able to connect his own observations to a logical explanation.
Snook said he remembers when he first started spotting Echo satellites. The first one was launched in 1960, which appeared as a large silver balloon. He said Echo satellites bounce radio signals off their reflective material, allowing communication from one end of the continent to the other.
From that point on, he said more satellites have taken up residency in space. Recently, he said the pieces of equipment have arrived in larger numbers.
“Every couple of months, they’re (communication companies) sending up hundreds of satellites in one launch,” he said. “When they’re placed into orbit, they’re together near one another, and eventually will be dispersed.”
When people spot different colored lights moving in sync, on most occasions, Snook said they’re looking at recently dispatched satellites.
“Satellites are one thing, especially if they are rotating and the sun reflects off solar panels or a bright side of them, they can make a pretty bright star-like object that looks like it was moving,” he said. “And then disappears as it rotates away.”
Snook said airplanes can also produce a similar effect, appearing like large approaching objects with colorful lights. And there are natural explanations, too, he said.
If someone observes a bright sphere leaving a path of light in its wake, he said they’re most likely viewing a fireball, also known as a brighter-than-usual meteor. Snook said Georgians may even be able to spot one of these brilliant blasts of light on Aug. 11 during the Perseids meteor shower, one of the brightest meteor showers of the year.
Snook says he can’t speak with total certainty about what others saw, but for all those alien hunters out there, it’s likely bad news.
“Unless I was there seeing what they were seeing, I'm not going to say, ‘Oh you’re just crazy,’” he said. “I’m sure there is no doubt a logical explanation of a natural phenomenon, and you don’t have to invoke alien spaceships.”
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.