Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
30-09-2022
Watch NASA's DART spacecraft smashes into asteroid Dimorphos
Watch NASA's DART spacecraft smashes into asteroid Dimorphos
On Sept. 26, 2022, at 7:14 pm EDT, DART intentionally crashed into Dimorphos, the asteroid moonlet in the double-asteroid system of Didymos. It was the world’s first test of the kinetic impact mitigation technique, using a spacecraft to deflect an asteroid that poses no threat to Earth, and modifying the object’s orbit. DART is a test for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards.
See the final moments of the spacecraft's existence. NASA's DART spacecraft slams into 'moonlet' in asteroid system.
NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft beamed back its final moments before colliding with the asteroid Dimorphos in an attempt to change its orbit.
The dramatic impact expelled a cloud of dust and turned the asteroid into a type of comet. First Images from Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube Satellite mage captured by the Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube a few minutes after the intentional collision of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission with its target asteroid, Dimorphos.
NASA's Hubble and James Webb space telescopes captured imagery of the aftermath from impact.
Amazing that NASA is able to crash a small spacecraft into a "space rock" which is just only 170 meters (560 ft) in diameter and 10.6 million km (6.6 million miles) from Earth as a test for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards or... a test for defending Earth against potential alien spaceships that may approach Earth in the near future?
UFO sighting filmed from a plane over Los Angeles, CA 19-Sep-2022
UFO sighting filmed from a plane over Los Angeles, CA 19-Sep-2022
Check out this interesting UFO footage that was filmed from a plane over Los Angeles in California on 19th September 2022.
Witness report:
Flying fro Houston to Los Angeles, California. While approaching LA (before cabin lights were turned on), I noticed two stacked red cubes, one on top the other, as I sat on the left side of plane in the window seat row 8. Nose of the plane pointing Towards the ocean. Thinking they were helicopters I did not pay much more attention to them. I did however think they were helicopters heading south/ southwest. Like I said, I did not think to much of it. The announcement came over the intercom saying we’re we’re preparing to land and the cabin lights came on. Looking out the window again I notice the lights again. Still bright red and still stacked. But this time I noticed they were still in the same spot! Very curious now, I begin to rub on the window to make sure it was not an optical allusion. I also looked at it through upper , lower, left and right sides of the window to be sure that the double window pane was not causing an optical allusion. At this point we’re about 20 minutes from landing so I decided to begin Video with my I phone. In the video I try to zoom in and out, trying to get the best picture but the cabin light causes problems as you will see in the first couple of minutes but last few seconds I captured the stacked two bright red cubes morphed into one bright red circular ball(I thought I saw yellow in there as well). At this point I was amazed to se it fade into nothing. IT JUST DISAPPEARED!
Creatures of the Land, Sea and Heavens: Ancient Beliefs in Animal Counterparts
Creatures of the Land, Sea and Heavens: Ancient Beliefs in Animal Counterparts
Until the Age of Enlightenment, it was widely believed that every land creature had its counterpart in the sea (and perhaps even in the heavens). The classic example of this belief is the horse, which in the sea is a seahorse and in the heavens is Pegasus. This debate was waged by some of history’s intellectual heavy weights including Pliny the Elder, Saint Augustine of Hippo, and Sir Thomas Brown. There are even said to be allusions to the issue in the Biblical Book of Job. The belief in marine counterparts on land transcended the religious divisions and was shared by pagans, Christians, and Muslims alike. Unfortunately, such unity of thought was proven to be quite wrong upon a careful examination of the world’s animal and marine life.
The belief that land animals had counterparts in the sea has long been common among the laity. The first person to really articulate the logic of this notion was Pliny the Elder (23 AD – 79 AD) in his encyclopedic Natural History, written in 77 AD. In Book IX (out of 37) Pliny discusses the Natural History of Fishes. In the opening chapter he writes:
“These seeds and first principles of being are so utterly conglomerated and so involved, the one with the other, from being whirled to and fro, now by the action of the winds and now by the waves. Hence it is that the vulgar notion may very possibly be true, that whatever is produced in any other department of Nature, is to be found in the sea as well; while, at the same time, many other productions are there to be found which nowhere else exist. That there are to be found in the sea the forms, not only of terrestrial animals, but of inanimate objects even, is easily to be understood by all who will take the trouble to examine the grape-fish, the sword-fish, the sawfish, and the cucumber-fish, which last so strongly resembles the real cucumber both in color and in smell. We shall find the less reason than to be surprised to find that in so small an object as a shell-fish the head of the horse is to be seen protruding from the shell.”
Pliny the Elder, as imagined by a 19th-century artist.
Pliny’s writings doubtless inspired the unknown author of Physiologus, a didactic Christian text written in 2nd century AD Alexandria. This beautifully illustrated book was one of the most copied manuscripts in Medieval Europe. In it, the author describes various animals, birds, and fish and also gives the moral function of each. Some, such as the Phoenix and Pelican, are good and represent Jesus.
Others, such as the Fox and the Whale, are evil and represent the devil. The allegories for the Fox and the Whale are as follows:
“The fox represents the devil, who pretends to be dead to those who retain their worldly ways, and only reveals himself when he has them in his jaws. To those with perfect faith, the devil is truly dead.” (The Medieval Bestiary, 2011)
These descriptions contributed to the popular science of bestiary in the Middle Ages. The trend supported the superstition that animals on land and sea were paired. If anyone needed further proof, they would be directed to this passage from the Book of Job, which was believed to reveal God’s divine will in designing symmetry among his creations: But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.”(Job
Sir Thomas Browne, a British naturalist writing in the 17th century, put an end to the matter in the short but scathing Chapter 24 of his Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Enquiries into very many received tenets and commonly presumed truths, also known simply as Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Vulgar Errors. Browne writes:
“That all Animals of the Land, are in their kind in the Sea, although received as a principle, is a tenet very questionable, and will admit of restraint. For some in the Sea are not to be matched by any enquiry at Land, and hold those shapes which terrestrial forms approach not; as may be observed in the Moon fish, or Orthragoriscus, the several sorts of Rays, Torpedos, Oysters, and many more, and some there are in the Land which were never maintained to be in the Sea, as Panthers, Hyenas, Camels, Sheep, Molls, and others … And therefore, although it be not denied that some in the water do carry a justifiable resemblance to some at Land, yet are the major part which bear their names unlike; nor do they otherwise resemble the creatures on earth, then they on earth the constellations which pass under animal names in heaven: nor the Dog-fish at Sea much more make out the Dog of the Land, then that his cognominal or name-sake in the heavens.”(Browne, 1672)
Title-page of 1658 4th edition of Pseudodoxia Epidemica. ( CC BY-SA 3.0 )
Today, there is little doubt that land and sea animals are distinct. This reflects the progress the natural sciences have made over the last 2000 years.
Top image: Secrets de l'histoire naturelle ( Public Domain )
Browne, Thomas. "Browne's Vulgar Errors III.xxiv: Animals, Land and Sea." Browne's Vulgar Errors. James Eason at the University of Chicago, 1672. Web. 13 Dec. 2016. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/pseudodoxia/pseudo324.html
Astronomers have been poring over early data from the James Webb Space Telescope.
Credit: Nolan Zunk/University of Texas at Austin
Astronomers have been so keen to use the new James Webb Space Telescope that some have got a little ahead of themselves. Many started analysing Webb data right after the first batch was released, on 14 July, and quickly posted their results on preprint servers — but are now having to revise them. The telescope’s detectors had not been calibrated thoroughly when the first data were made available, and that fact slipped past some astronomers in their excitement.
The revisions don’t so far appear to substantially change many of the exciting early results, such as the discovery of a number of candidates for the most distant galaxy ever spotted. But the ongoing calibration process is forcing astronomers to reckon with the limitations of early data from Webb.
Figuring out how to redo the work is “thorny and annoying”, says Marco Castellano, an astronomer at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome. “There’s been a lot of frustration,” says Garth Illingworth, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “I don’t think anybody really expected this to be as big of an issue as it’s becoming,” adds Guido Roberts-Borsani, an astronomer at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Calibration is particularly challenging for projects that require precise measurements of the brightness of astronomical objects, such as faint, faraway galaxies. For several weeks, some astronomers have been cobbling together workarounds so that they can continue their analyses1. The next official round of updates to Webb’s calibrations are expected in the coming weeks from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, which operates the telescope. Those updates should shrink the error bars on the telescope’s calibrations from the tens of percentage points that have been bedevilling astronomers in some areas, down to just a few percentage points. And data accuracy will continue to improve as calibration efforts proceed over the coming months.
This is the first scientific image released from the Webb telescope publicly, on 11 July, showing a deep-field look at the sky that includes a number of distant galaxies.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
The STScI made it clear that the initial calibrations to the telescope were rough, says Jane Rigby, operations project scientist for Webb at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Much of the issue stems from the fact that Webb, which launched in December 2021, is a new telescope whose details are still being worked out. “It’s been a long time since the community has had a brand-new telescope in space — a big one with these amazingly transformative powers,” Rigby says.
“We knew it wasn’t going to be perfect right out of the box,” says Martha Boyer, an astronomer at the STScI who is helping to lead the calibration efforts2.
Calibration controversy
All telescopes need to be calibrated. This is usually done by observing a well-understood star such as Vega, a prominent star in the night sky. Astronomers look at the data being collected by the telescope’s various instruments — such as the brightness of the star in different wavelengths of light — and compare them with measurements of the same star from other telescopes and of laboratory standards.
Working with Webb data involves several types of calibration, but the current controversy is around one of the telescope’s main instruments, its Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam). In the six months after Webb launched, STScI researchers worked to calibrate NIRCam. But given the demands on Webb, they had only enough time to point it at one or two calibration stars, and to take data using just one of NIRCam’s ten detectors. They then estimated the calibrations for the other nine detectors. “That’s where there was a problem,” Boyer says. “Each detector will be a little bit different.”
Within days of the first Webb data release, non-peer-reviewed papers began appearing on the arXiv preprint server, reporting multiple candidates for the most distant galaxy ever recorded. These studies relied on the brightness of distant objects, measured with Webb at various wavelengths. Then, on 29 July, the STScI released an updated set of calibrations that were substantially different from what astronomers had been working with.
“This caused a little bit of panic,” says Nathan Adams, an astronomer at the University of Manchester, UK, who, along with his colleagues, pointed out the problem in a 9 August update to a preprint they had posted in late July3. “For those including myself who had written a paper within the first two weeks, it was a bit of — ‘Oh no, is everything that we’ve done wrong, does it all need to go in the bin?’”
A young observatory
To try to standardize all the measurements, the STScI is working through a detailed plan to point Webb at several types of well-understood star, and observe them with every detector in every mode for every instrument on the telescope4. “It just takes a while,” says Karl Gordon, an astronomer at the STScI who helps lead the effort.
In the meantime, astronomers have been reworking manuscripts that describe distant galaxies on the basis of Webb data. “Everyone’s gone back over and had a second look, and it’s not as bad as we thought,” Adams says. Many of the most exciting distant-galaxy candidates still seem to be at or near the distance originally estimated. But other preliminary studies, such as those that draw conclusions about the early Universe by comparing large numbers of faint galaxies, might not stand the test of time. Other fields of research, such as planetary studies, are not affected as much because they depend less on these preliminary brightness measurements.
“We’ve come to realize how much this data processing is an ongoing and developing situation, just because the observatory is so new and so young,” says Gabriel Brammer, an astronomer at the University of Copenhagen who has been developing Webb calibrations independent of the STScI.
In the long run, astronomers are sure to sort out the calibration and become more confident in their conclusions. But for now, Boyer says, “I would tell people to proceed with caution — whatever results they might be getting today might not be quite right in six months, when we have more information. It’s just sort of, ‘Proceed at your own risk.’”
Hubble- en James Webb-telescopen leggen voor het eerst gelijktijdig beelden vast van DART-missie
De twee nieuwste ruimtetelescopen, de James Webb en de Hubble, hebben beelden vastgelegd van de DART-missie van de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA. Daarmee is het de eerste keer dat de twee telescopen gelijktijdig zijn ingezet om hetzelfde ruimtespektakel te observeren. Dat heeft het Europese Ruimtevaartbureau ESA bekendgemaakt.
In de nacht van 26 op 27 september slaagde NASA erin om de DART-satelliet zoals gepland in te laten slaan op de ruimterots Dimorphos, die zich op dat moment op een afstand van 11 miljoen kilometer van onze aarde bevond. De DART sloeg met een snelheid van ongeveer 6,6 km per seconde in op Dimorphos, een “maantje” van de grotere asteroïde Didymos. De bedoeling was om na te gaan of een gelijkaardige impact de baan van een asteroïde kan veranderen. Of het lukte, is nog niet bekend.
Herbekijk:
NASA Crew Celebrates After DART Mission Successfully Collides With Asteroid
NASA's DART spacecraft successfully hits asteroid
Zowel de Hubble Ruimtetelescoop als de James Webb Space Telescope keken naar de inslag. Volgens de NASA was het de eerste keer dat beide telescopen tegelijk naar eenzelfde object in de ruimte loerden. De Hubble-afbeelding toont een stervormige blauwe lichtflits tegen een zwarte achtergrond. De James Webb-foto toont een rode lichtflits tegen een donkere achtergrond, die ook stervormig is, maar groter lijkt. Het feit dat dezelfde gebeurtenis in verschillende kleuren kan worden gezien, is te wijten aan de onderscheiden technologie die in de twee telescopen wordt gebruikt.
De waarnemingen van de James Webb- en Hubble-telescopen geven wetenschappers ook meer informatie over onder meer de aard van het oppervlak van Dimorphos.
De James Webb-telescoop nam in totaal tien beelden en legde de plaats van inslag zowel voor als na de botsing vast. De telescoop observeerde het spektakel zo’n vijf uur lang.
De foto’s kunnen ook wetenschappelijke data opleveren, zegt de NASA.
De Koninklijke Sterrenwacht van België is nauw bij de missie betrokken.
De Hubble nam 45 beelden. De telescoop legde de maanrots eveneens voor de inslag vast en nam vijftien minuten later nog meer beelden nadat de DART-satelliet was ingeslagen.
Het feit dat de telescopen dezelfde gebeurtenis in verschillende kleuren zien, is te wijten aan de specifieke technologie die in de twee ruimte-apparaten wordt gebruikt.
“We keken al meer dan zeventien jaar uit naar de DART-inslag en het is zo spannend om die te zien door de ogen van de grootste ruimtetelescopen Webb en Hubble. De beelden geven ons aanwijzingen over wat er in de eerste uren na de inslag is gebeurd, en er gebeurt duidelijk veel meer dan we hadden voorzien!”, reageert missiemanager Ian Carnelli enthousiast.
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Flying Car Market Emerging Growth, Recent Trends, Industry Analysis, Insights, Share and Forecasts Report 2030
Flying Car Market Emerging Growth, Recent Trends, Industry Analysis, Insights, Share and Forecasts Report 2030
Rising traffic congestion in developed economies, changing urban mobility outlook, and increasing investment by market players are driving market revenue growth
According to the most recent analysis by Emergen Research, the size of the global flying car market is anticipated to reach USD 1,390.1 Million in 2030, with a consistent revenue CAGR of 58.6%. Factors driving market revenue growth include rapid urbanisation, a growing population, an increase in people’s disposable income, and an improvement in their level of living.
To build a more reliable and sustainable transportation infrastructure, urban mobility has transitioned toward digital, high-end technologies and green mobility initiatives. Additionally, the need for alternative solutions to current urban transportation problems including traffic congestion and rising air pollution is driven by rising urbanisation. As a result, automakers are focusing their efforts on developing hybrid or electric vehicles that can be utilised for both land and air travel. Additionally, as more cars are on the road, the problem of traffic congestion around the world has gotten worse. Because it increases carbon emissions, congestion is bad for the environment. Around the world, there is personal and business development of flying automobiles that can function in urban areas.
A flying automobile is a vehicle that has the ability to fly and serve as a private transportation. Another benefit, in addition to vertical takeoff and landing, is controllability. It combines the advantages of rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft. The most crucial characteristic of a rotary wing is its capacity for vertical takeoff and landing, while the most crucial characteristics of a constant wing are speed, efficiency, payload, range, and control.
Traffic congestion in industrialised nations is getting worse, the outlook for urban mobility is shifting, and market participants are investing more money.
The market for flying cars is changing as a result of the quick uptake of novel technologies. The desire for flying cars is being driven by the significant demand for quick, long-distance flights around the world. The adoption of new technology is a key emphasis for market players, such as the quickly developing distributed electric propulsion technology, which improves efficiency and allows for quieter takeoffs and hovers.
The high cost of production for such cars is one barrier to their wider commercialisation. These cutting-edge, contemporary, high-tech composites and alloys used to make the flying motors are more expensive since they are more difficult to obtain. Lack of a competent environmental impact research and an organised financial structure for purchasing and maintaining commodities may hurt market participants.
The market for flying cars is growing due to numerous important aspects. Because of the expanding infrastructure, the market is anticipated to expand. The other market revenue-affecting variables are people’s disposable income, changing lifestyles, and growing urbanisation. Concern is raised by the rising competition among international service and solution suppliers for flying cars. The issue of driver and vehicle safety is raised. Over the course of the projection period, the market will expand due to the rising demand for environmentally friendly automobiles.
Some of the Report’s Important Highlights
A Dutch business named PAL-V revealed plans to establish a manufacturing facility in Gujarat in March 2020. They also stated that the vehicles made there would be exported to the United States and other European nations. Carlo Maasbommel, Vice President of PAL-International V’s Business Development, and MK Das, Principal Secretary of State Industries, jointly signed a memorandum of understanding.
In 2021, the software segment accounted for a sizeable portion of sales. Major market players have found the impact of software on flying vehicles to be advantageous in terms of accessing the vehicle’s live condition and enabling digital inspection. Customers may conveniently schedule appointments for their vehicles, thus lowering their maintenance expenditures.
Due to rising demand from the urban population and improved comfort, the four-seat class contributed for a greater revenue share in 2021. This segment’s boot has enough of room for carrying bags and has excellent handling.
The autonomous segment had rapid growth during the anticipated period as consumers’ preference for these vehicles grows in response to their reduced travel time, lower emissions, and overall viability.
Major companies in the market report include AeroMobil, Boeing, Cartivator, EHang, Airbus, Terrafugia, Joby Aviation, Lilium GmbH, Volocopter GmbH, and PAL-V International B.V.
Emergen Research has segmented global flying car market on the basis of component, seating capacity, mode of operation, and region:
Component Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2019–2030)
Guys, I found this today and its a giant cube UFO near our sun. The object has a surface like that of a circuit board. Its very complex and 3 dimensional. Also there was another close UFO that shot past the sun at near light speed. Its image is smeared across the screen as it shoots so fast that the camera almost missed it. This is 100% proof that aliens are harvesting important scientific elements from our sun. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Unidentified flying objects or UAPs are captured by the US Navy and are often referred to as UFOs. However, since releasing the footage could threaten national security, the Navy refuses to publicize it.
The Navy’s response came after a government transparency site, The Black Vault, filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents related to the alleged sightings.
The Black Vault filed the request in April 2020. It came a day after the Navy released three videos that showed the strange and seemingly impossible actions.
After two years, the government responded to the site and confirmed that there are still more UAP videos out there. However, it refused to provide the documents due to national security concerns.
In response to the request, the Navy stated that releasing the videos could expose the secrets of the Department of Defense and its operations. According to Gregory Cason, the Navy’s FOIA office, no portions of the videos could be segregated for release.
He stated that since the videos had already been discussed in the media, they were able to declassify them in April 2020.
In his report, Cason stated that the Navy was still able to release the videos without further damaging national security.
In its response, the Navy also stated that it did not hide the existence of other videos of UAPs.
There are still more videos of unexplained encounters involving UAPs in the Navy’s archives. However, the exact number of videos that show what happened remains unclear.
It’s also clear that the government takes the threat of UAP seriously. In May 2022, the Department of Defense held its first public hearing regarding the alleged sightings of UFOs. The hearing mainly focused on a report released by the Pentagon in June 2021.
The following month, the Department of Defense announced that it would be receiving federal funding to establish a new office focused on handling reports of UAP sightings.
According to a government assessment, “cosmic” and “phantom” UFOs are frequent in the sky over Ukraine
According to a government assessment, “cosmic” and “phantom” UFOs are frequent in the sky over Ukraine
The skies around Kiev are reportedly filled with unexplained flying objects, according to a recent assessment by the Main Astronomical Observatory of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (UFOs).
According to a U.S. intelligence organization, many of these purported UFO sightings may be military equipment that appears too briefly to be recognized given that Russia and Ukraine have been involved in a fight that predominantly uses planes and drones for months.
The report, which has not yet been subjected to peer review, was published on the preprint website arXiv and describes recent efforts made by Ukrainian astronomers to monitor quickly moving, dimly lit objects in the daytime sky over Kyiv and the adjacent villages. At two meteorological stations in Kyiv and Vinarivka, a city some 75 miles to the south, astronomers used highly calibrated cameras to find hundreds of objects “that cannot scientifically be categorized as known natural occurrences.”
The categories “cosmics” and “phantoms” were employed by the researchers to group their UAP findings. According to the study, cosmics are luminary objects that stand out more than the background sky.
Phantoms, on the other hand, are shadowy objects that generally appear to be “completely black,” as though absorbing all light that reaches them, according to the study. According to observations from the two cooperating observatories, the researchers estimated that phantoms may travel at speeds of up to 33,000 mph (53,000 km/h) and that their sizes range from 10 to 40 feet (3 to 12 meters). In contrast, an intercontinental ballistic missile may go up to 15,000 mph (24,000 km/h), according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
The researchers made no assumptions about the potential makeup of these UFOs. Instead, the primary focus of their research is on the methods and calculations used to identify the things. However, according to a report from 2021 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) of the United States, it is likely that at least some UAPs are “technology utilized by China, Russia, another nation, or a non-governmental entity.”
Given the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022, it is conceivable that some of the UAP described in the most recent study may be related to foreign monitoring or military technologies.
The ODNI report suggests that “airborne clutter,” such as birds and balloons, climatic phenomena like ice crystals, or covert government activities are additional potential drivers of UAP. Extraterrestrial visitation is not suggested by either the U.S. or the Ukraine stories.
The U.S. government has openly expressed a renewed interest in UAP investigations since 2017, when various films filmed by American Navy planes (opens in new tab) were made available to the general public. The now-famous video displayed an unknown aircraft performing irrational maneuvers without any explanation.
The Department of Defense (DOD) won’t be making these military recordings of UAP encounters public due to “national security issues,” as the government just revealed following the declassification of the film. The DOD received funding from Congress earlier this year to create a new department that would be in charge of handling all military UFO sighting claims (opens in new tab). The authors of the most recent UAP report from Ukraine claim that the National Academy of Science is eager to contribute to this ongoing investigation.
Asteroid collision spotted from EARTH: Incredible videos from observatories in South Africa and Hawaii capture the moment NASA's DART spacecraft smashes into Dimorphos from 6.8 million miles away
Asteroid collision spotted from EARTH: Incredible videos from observatories in South Africa and Hawaii capture the moment NASA's DART spacecraft smashes into Dimorphos from 6.8 million miles away
NASA's DART spacecraft has completed its mission to crash into an asteroid, in the first planetary defense test
The ambitious mission aimed to nudge the asteroid from its orbit, but NASA won't know the results for weeks
But videos on social media depict the historic event as captured by telescopes in Hawaii and South Africa
Earth-based telescopes have captured the historic moment NASA's DART spacecraft crashed into an asteroid last night.
DART was launched from California last November – and finally completed its 10-month journey when it hit the asteroid Dimorphos at 7:14pm ET on Monday (00:14 BST Tuesday).
Dimorphos, around 560 feet in diameter, orbits a larger asteroid called Didymos, both of which are around 6.8 million miles away from our planet.
DART hit the space rock at more than 14,000 miles per hour and was destroyed upon impact, while Dimorphos received a 'small nudge' intended to alter its trajectory by a fraction.
The mission aimed to alter the asteroid's orbit, but NASA will not know the results right way, as data is being collected by Earth-based telescopes.
However, videos posted to social media already show the impact event captured by telescopes in Hawaii and South Africa.
The ATLAS telescope, based in Honolulu, Hawaii, shows the asteroid as a ball of light in motion and a plume of ejecta that's emitted as the spacecraft hits.
Similarly, a sped up animation was captured by one of Las Cumbres Observatory's telescopes in South Africa.
Neither Dimorphos nor Didymos pose any danger to Earth. The $325 million (£298 million) mission is merely a rehearsal of what may be required if a space rock does one day threaten our planet.
The ATLAS telescope, based in Honolulu, Hawaii, shows the asteroid as a ball of light in motion and a plume of ejecta that's emitted as the spacecraft hits
Similarly, a sped up animation posted to social media by @astrosnapper was captured by one of Las Cumbres Observatory's telescopes in South Africa
If a large asteroid was to hit Earth, it could wipe out the human race – much like the demise of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
Confirmation of impact came seconds after the 19:14 ET (00:14 BST) collision, sparking an applause among the ground team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.
'Humanity - 1, Asteroid - 0,' a commentator on the livestream said, noting how incredible it is that humans carried out such an epic mission.
This is one of the first close-up pictures of the asteroid ever taken. The space probe used what is called kinetic impact, which involves sending one or more large, high-speed spacecraft into the path of an approaching near-earth object
The last complete image of asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, taken by the DRACO imager on NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission from 7 miles (12 kilometers) from the asteroid and 2 seconds before impact
Confirmation came seconds after the 7:14pm ET collision, sparking an applause among the ground team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
WHAT IS THE NASA DART MISSION?
DART is the world’s first planetary defence test mission.
It comprises a satellite that's crashed into the small moonlet asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits a larger companion asteroid called Didymos.
The satellite was intentionally crashed into the asteroid to slightly change the latter's orbit.
Dimorphos is about 525 feet in diameter, and although it doesn't pose a danger to Earth, NASA wants to measure the asteroid's altered orbit caused by the collision.
Post-impact observations from Earth-based optical telescopes and planetary radars will measure the change in Dimorphos' orbit around Didymos, according to NASA.
This demonstration of planetary defence will inform future missions that could one day save Earth from a deadly asteroid impact.
'Impact success!' NASA tweeted after the DART spacecraft collided with the 170-metre wide (560ft) asteroid, around 6.7 million miles away from Earth.
Scientists believe the impact carved out a crater, hurled streams of rocks and dirt into space and, most importantly, altered the asteroid's orbit.
Earth-bound telescopes will now analyse data on Dimorphos to assess whether the mission was successful in altering its orbit around its 'twin' asteroid Didymos.
However, scientists said the mission produced an 'ideal outcome'.
By striking Dimorphos head on, NASA hopes it pushed it into a smaller orbit, shaving 10 minutes off the time it takes to circle Didymos, which is currently 11 hours and 55 minutes.
The space probe used what is called kinetic impact, which involves sending one or more large, high-speed spacecraft into the path of an approaching near-earth object.
Such a mission may evoke memories of a Hollywood disaster movie such as Armageddon, but this is very much real and could save Earth from colliding with a deadly space rock.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated the DART team shortly after the mission was completed, highlighting how the successful test could one day save humanity.
'We are showing that planetary defense is a global endeavor, and it is very possible to save our planet,' Nelson said.
Elon Musk's SpaceX also applauded NASA on the successful mission.
'Congratulations on successfully crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid,' the billionaire entrepreneur's company said in its tweet.
The last image to contain a complete view of asteroid Didymos (top left) and its moonlet, Dimorphos, about 2.5 minutes before the impact of NASA's DART spacecraft, taken by the on board DRACO imager from a distance of 571 miles (920 kilometeres)
The US space agency's staff cheered and clapped in a video shared online as the vending machine-sized spacecraft successfully smashed into Dimorphos, which is the size of a football stadium.
'And we have impact. A triumph for humanity in the name of planetary defence,' a member of NASA's team said in a video recorded in the control room as the collision took place.
The asteroid's bread bun shape and rocky surface finally came into clear view in the last few minutes as DART raced toward it.
'Woo hoo,' exclaimed Johns Hopkins mission systems engineer Elena Adams. 'We're seeing Dimorphos, so wonderful, wonderful.'
With an image beaming back to Earth every second, Adams and other ground controllers in Laurel, Maryland, watched with growing excitement as Dimorphos loomed larger and larger in the field of view alongside its bigger companion.
As the craft propelled itself autonomously for the mission's final four hours like a self-guided missile, its imager started to beam down the very first pictures of Dimorphos, before slamming into its surface.
'Impact success!' NASA tweeted after the DART spacecraft collided with the 170-metre wide (560ft) asteroid, around 6.8 million miles away from Earth. SpaceX replied: 'Congratulations on successfully crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid!'
This astonishing image from NASA shows asteroid Dimorphos as seen by the DART spacecraft 11 seconds before impact. DART’s on board DRACO imager captured this image from a distance of 42 miles (68 kilometers). This image was the last to contain all of Dimorphos in the field of view
The closer DART got, the more detailed the asteroid appeared and the last shot was an up-close image of the asteroid's rocky surface - before the screen went black.
In a live question-and-answer session after the crash, senior leaders from NASA and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory said the mission was 'straight down the middle' and nothing went wrong.
Engineers said DART is completely destroyed, but there might be pieces of it in the crater it left during impact - and some of the team said they shed a tear knowing the craft is now gone.
Adams said the craft landed 55 feet from the targeted landing site, but still enough to assume it was a success.
'It was basically a bullseye. I think, as far as we can tell, the first planetary defense test was a success, and we can clap to that,' she said in a post-mission press conference.
'Earthlings should sleep better, and I definitely will.'
Didymos (left corner) and Dimorphos (back, right) are currently making their closest approach to Earth in years, passing at a distance of about 6.7 million miles from our planet. The livestream showed the twin asteroids getting larger as the craft got closer
NASA 's DART spacecraft capture its first look of the asteroid Dimorphos that appeared like a bright dot in the blackness of space
DIMORPHOS AND DIDYMOS
Dimorphos completes an orbit around Didymos every 11 hours and 55 minutes. It was discovered in 1996 by the Spacewatch survey at Kitt Peak.
The asteroid is classified as both a potentially hazardous asteroid and a near-Earth object.
Orbiting Didymos is a 'moonlet' called Dimorphos, which was found in 2003.
A toaster-sized satellite called LICIACube, which already separated from DART a few weeks ago, made a close pass of the site to capture images of the collision and the ejecta - the pulverized rock thrown off by impact.
DART launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket last November, which was called NASA's 'Armageddon moment'.
DART 'is something of a replay of Bruce Willis's movie, "Armageddon", although that was totally fictional,' Nelson said in a November interview referring the 1998 film that saw teams travel to an asteroid heading to Earth with the hopes of destroying it before impact.
Didymos and Dimorphos are currently making their closest approach to Earth in years, passing at a distance of about 6.7 million miles from our planet.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is launching a mission in 2024 that will send a probe to Dimorphos and Didymos to study the pair in greater detail.
An asteroid the size of Dimorphos could cause a continent-wide destruction on Earth, while the impact of one the size of the larger Didymos would be felt worldwide.
NASA emphasized that the asteroids in question pose no threat to our home planet, but were chosen because they can be observed from ground-based telescopes here on Earth.
Andy Rivkin, of JPL's 's applied physics laboratory, and Dart investigation team lead, said Monday that the two asteroids are perfect to test this planetary defense test.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test was launched last November ahead of a year-long journey to crash into the small asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits a larger one called Didymos
'We needed something with a moon that was small enough that we could move it with a strike from a from a spacecraft, but not so small that we wrecked the moon,' Rivkin continued.
'So when you kind of tick off all the possibilities, Didymos ended up as the best choice, and really the only choice, that would provide a mission in this time period.'
Telescopes were also watching and studying from afar, including NASA's new $10 billion James Webb observatory, while DART will also return images to Earth at the rate of one per second as it heads towards its 'deep impact'.
The theory is that if an asteroid was on a collision course with Earth, you would only need to change its velocity by a small amount to alter its path so that it misses us, provided this was done far enough in advance.
Rome-based Virtual Telescope Project has also teamed up with several observatories in South Africa, and will be showing the target asteroid in real-time at the moment of the scheduled impact.
Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a box-shaped space probe, crashed into its target at 7:14pm. This is human's first planetary defense test
Brace for impact: NASA's first ever 'planetary defense' spacecraft – sent to deflect an asteroid 6.8 million miles from Earth – hit Monday, September 26. The graphic above shows how the mission worked
The change in the orbital period will be measured by telescopes on Earth. The minimum change for the mission to be considered a success is 73 seconds.
The DART technique could prove useful for altering the course of an asteroid years or decades before it bears down on Earth with the potential for catastrophe.
NASA considers any near-Earth object 'potentially hazardous' if it comes within 0.05 astronomical units (4.6 million miles) and measures more than 460ft in diameter.
More than 27,000 near-Earth asteroids have been cataloged but none currently pose a danger to our planet.
POTENTIAL METHODS FOR ELIMINATING THE THREAT OF AN ASTEROID
DART is one of many concepts of how to negate the threat of an asteroid that have been suggested over the years.
Multiple bumps
Scientists in California have been firing projectiles at meteorites to simulate the best methods of altering the course of an asteroid so that it wouldn't hit Earth.
According to the results so far, an asteroid like Bennu that is rich in carbon could need several small bumps to charge its course.
'These results indicate multiple successive impacts may be required to deflect rather than disrupt asteroids, particularly carbonaceous asteroids,' researchers said.
Nuke
Another idea, known simply as 'nuke', involves blowing up a nuclear explosive close to the asteroid.
However, this could create smaller but still potentially dangerous fragments of rock that could spin off in all directions, potentially towards Earth.
Ion Beam Deflection
With Ion Beam Deflection, plumes from a space probe's thrusters would be directed towards the asteroid to gently push on its surface over a wide area.
A thruster firing in the opposite direction would be needed to keep the spacecraft at a constant distance from the asteroid.
Gravity tractor
And yet another concept, gravity tractor, would deflect the asteroid without physically contacting it, but instead by using only its gravitational field to transmit a required impulse.
Professor Colin Snodgrass, an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh said: 'There have been a few concepts suggested, such as a ‘gravity tractor’ to slowly tow an asteroid away instead of pushing it with a kinetic impactor.
'But the kinetic impactor is definitely the simplest technology to use on the sort of timescale that is most likely to be of concern for this size of asteroid, i.e. years to decades warning time.'
Astronomers watched in awe as binary asteroid Didymos brightened up immediately after the impact of NASA's DART spacecraft on Monday (Sept. 26).
Italian astronomer Gianluca Masi couldn't contain his excitement at the sight as he shared the observations in a livestream via the Virtual Telescope project. A small, dim dot that marked the Didymos-Dimorphos binary asteroid, at that time some 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth, began rapidly brightening and within minutes outshined even the brightest of stars in that tiny section of the sky.
"This is exceeding my expectations a lot," Masi said in the stream(opens in new tab). "The object is now nearly 3 magnitudes brighter than earlier, this is tens of times more!"
Binary asteroid Didymos brightens up shortly after the impact of NASA's DART spacecraft. (Image credit: Virtual Telescope Project/Klein Karoo Observatory)
Since Italy was outside of the region with a direct view of Didymos at the time of the collision, Masi viewed the asteroid via a 12-inch (30 centimeters) telescope at South Africa's Klein Karoo Observatory in a feed shared by amateur astronomer Berto Monard.
The two astronomers watched in awe as Didymos not only brightened up, but also grew in size and changed shape as the cloud of debris stirred by DART's impact quickly spread in the surrounding space.
"Soon after the impact, an amount of dust was released like a plume and now this cloud of dust is expanding, sending back light from the sun," Monard explained in the stream. "This is much more than what I could expect. Even the shape is a bit different. It's like a comet. There are particles that are moving away from the asteroid and that's why you have a bigger halo of light."
Masi added that the only other time astronomers could observe such a human-made brightening of a celestial object was in 2005 when NASA's Deep Impact probe intentionally collided with Comet Tempel 1. The goal of that mission, however, wasn't to change the comet's trajectory but to extract some material from its surface to enable scientists to learn more about the composition of these ice balls.
"At that time, I could record a brightness increase, but I have to say that this is by far much more dramatic," Masi commented on his observations of Deep Impact's encounter with the comet.
Telescopes all over the world are currently aiming at the Didymos binary asteroid hoping to learn all they can about the cloud of debris stirred by DART's impact and about the effects the collision had on the orbit of the 560-foot-wide (170 meters) moonlet Dimorphos around the 2,560-foot-wide (780 m) main asteroid Didymos. Altering Dimorphos' orbit around Didymos by at least 73 seconds was the primary purpose of the DART mission.
If last night's impact was successful, the DART experiment could lead to technology that humankind might need one day to protect itself from a space rock on a collision course with Earth.
NASA’s DART mission successfully knocks asteroid off course, Earth can now defend itself
NASA’s DART mission successfully knocks asteroid off course, Earth can now defend itself
Gaurvi Narang-
New Delhi: For the first time, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test or DART has successfully knocked an asteroid off its course, demonstrating its ability to defend the planet from potentially disastrous asteroid impact in the future.
Mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, announced the successful impact Tuesday — which is humanity’s first test to resist an asteroid’s impact.
IMPACT SUCCESS! Watch from #DARTMIssion’s DRACO Camera, as the vending machine-sized spacecraft successfully collides with asteroid Dimorphos, which is the size of a football stadium and poses no threat to Earth. pic.twitter.com/7bXipPkjWD
“We’re embarking on a new era of humankind, an era in which we potentially have the capability to protect ourselves from something like a dangerous, hazardous asteroid impact,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division. “What an amazing thing. We’ve never had that capability before.”
While Dimorphos did not pose any actual threat to Earth, the mission aimed to test the “kinetic impactor” method which will verify to what extent it is possible to redirect asteroids that might possibly threaten the planet. Using the force of kinetic energy, this crash, that took place today, might save future generations from any real threats.
As expected, the collision has slightly changed the asteroid’s motion and path in space, and has successfully given the world a viable mitigation strategy.
While further speculation from telescopic observations are underway to clearly determine the complete success of the mission, NASA has confirmed that they expect the impact to shorten Dimorphos’ orbit by about one percent or roughly 10 minutes. Over the next few weeks, Dimorphos’ orbital change will be studied along with the debris ejected from the crash.
DART slammed itself into the asteroid which was 9.6 million kilometres away at 22,500 kilometres per hour.
Roughly four years from now, the European Space Agency’s Hera project will conduct detailed surveys of both Dimorphos and asteroid Didymos, with a particular focus on the crater left by DART’s collision and a precise measurement of Dimorphos’ mass, NASA says.
“We are not aware of a single object right now threatening the Earth in the next 100 years. But there eventually will be one. We can deduce that from the geological records of our planet and even data from the Moon. We want to test this technology now so that it is ready in case we ever need it,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for the
Science Mission Directorate at NASA, during a press conference on 12 September.
The most destructive celestial impact happened 65 million years ago when an asteroid with a 5 kilometer radius crashed into Earth and gave us what we know today as the Yucatán Peninsula. The impact wiped out numerous plant and animal species including dinosaurs.
In 2019, an asteroid the size of a football field, also passed by Earth closely, and another which was the size of a 747 jet came extremely close in 2021. But all these asteroids were not expected guests, they were cosmic surprises, scientists said.
This first event which could indeed go a long way in preventing something disastrous, was launched in November 2021 and has now attained fruition. The historic was live streamed on NASA TV, which is NASA’s own and also, the space agency’s YouTube channel.
“No, this is not a movie plot,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson tweeted earlier in the day. “We’ve all seen it on movies like ‘Armageddon’, but the real-life stakes are high,” he said in a prerecorded video.
Tonight @NASA will crash an uncrewed spacecraft into an asteroid. On purpose.
Yes, you read that correctly. And no, this is not a movie plot.
The #DARTmission is the world’s first mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards! pic.twitter.com/XCBtdsgVV0
While further scientific studies are currently underway, the impact will also be studied with the help of data gathered from these devices.
The spacecraft has been carrying its own mini photography device, the LICIACube (Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging Asteroids) to capture the event up close, which had been deployed from the spacecraft on 11 September. The device is programmed to record and capture DART’s impact, getting images of the debris ejected from the collision and a view of the newly-formed crater.
The Italy-built cubesat was to observe the crash from about 1,000 kms away and then zoom into the fresh site of debris and collision.
The spacecraft had also been transmitting other images of the asteroid which shall be captured by its Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation (DRACO) camera.
During the event, the images streamed back to Earth were at a rate of one per second. The boulder-covered surface of the egg-shaped asteroid reminded scientists of Ryugu and Bennu, two other asteroids that have recently been visited by spacecraft. Dimorphos is thought by scientists to be an asteroid rubble pile comprised of weakly-connected rocks.
Dimorphos is relatively unknown
Dimorphos is the size of a football field and does not pose any immediate threat to Earth. Scientists are aware of Dimorphos’ size and history, but still do not understand its chemical composition.
The DART mission not only tests the viability of a device that can offset the impact of a potential threat, but also bridges the gap to create a better understanding of the asteroid itself.
Dimorphos is 520 feet or 160 metre wide and is orbiting the much larger 2,560 feet or 780 metre wide asteroid called Didymos. While Didymos is still better understood in the scientific community, Dimorphos requires further speculation. “We know that it’s a separate body, but we know very little about the shape of the asteroid. We don’t know if Dimorphos is elongated or spherical; we don’t know whether it’s a single rock or a pile of boulders,” said Terik Daly, a deputy instrument scientist on DART’s Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO), and a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which manages the DART mission for NASA to Space.com.
It is usually recommended that a 5-10 years buffer or notice period is essential for Earth to prepare itself against a killer asteroid attack. And now that all has gone well with the mission so far, we may just be one step closer to a remarkable feat that shall aid humanity from any possible celestial threats.
SCIENTISTS HAVE CREATED A MECHANICAL WOMB THAT CAN GROW LIFE IN THE LAB
SCIENTISTS HAVE CREATED A MECHANICAL WOMB THAT CAN GROW LIFE IN THE LAB
We can’t make humans from scratch — yet.
THE DYSTOPIAN UNIVERSE of Blade Runner features replicants, or genetically bioengineered people with sci-fi powers, like super-strength and advanced intelligence, that far outstrip any ordinary individual (albeit with a limited lifespan). Their invention is considered a colossal feat of scientific achievement (and the basis for a pretty messed-up society).
But off of the silver screen, we’ve yet to come close to making any organism — let alone a human — entirely from scratch. Until now.
In a study published last month in the journal Nature, scientists in the U.S., U.K., and Israel successfully created a synthetic mouse embryo without using any eggs or sperm. Instead, they used an assortment of stem cells.
Compared to natural embryos maturing alongside them, these lab-grown counterparts developed similar features seen nearly nine days after fertilization, such as a beating heart, a very early-stage brain, and a gut tube — before they abruptly halted growth.
“Essentially, the big question that we are addressing in the lab is how do we start our lives?” said Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, the study’s lead researcher and a stem cell biologist at the University of Cambridge and California Institute of Technology, during a press briefing.
PEEKING INTO THE “BLACK BOX”
Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel managed to grow synthetic (left) and natural (right) embryos side-by-side in the lab.Amadei and Handford
When a sperm fertilizes an egg, the fusion sets off a cascade of changes that cause the single cell to multiply, specialize, and organize into distinct cell types, tissues, organs, and other structures that constitute a complete organism.
For the last several decades, scientists have tried recreating models of embryonic development in the lab to learn how the primordial phenomenon proceeds in real time. But this feat has proven extremely challenging. After all, we can’t just peer into a live uterus in the lab to directly observe the microscopic goings-on.
Specifically, researchers don’t know what exactly happens in the womb between around 14 days and a month into development, says Max Wilson, a molecular biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the study.
During this mystery period, the brain gets built and the heart is laid down. “It’s called the ‘black box’ of human development,” he explains.
THIS DEVICE TOOK SEVEN GRUELING YEARS OF ENGINEERING.
Recent efforts to untangle these mysteries have involved coaxing human embryonic stem cells into blastocysts, a thin-walled, hollow ball of dividing cells that gives rise to the embryo during natural development.
This “blastoid” method didn’t exactly bring scientists closer to seeing how cells self-organize and specialize into organs. But in 2021, researchers at the Weizmann Institute
This device took sevof Science in Israel — who also worked on the newNaturestudy —developed a sort of mechanical womb(picturean axolotl tankà laFrank Herbert’s Dune).en grueling years of engineering. It included an incubator, which floated and spun the embryos in vials filled with special nutrient-rich liquid. Meanwhile, a ventilator provided oxygen and carbon dioxide, meticulously controlling the gasses’ flow and pressure.
With this setup, the Weizmann researchers managed to make stem cell-derived synthetic mouse embryos thrive in their artificial mommy for about six days — until they managed to extend it further, according to a study published earlier this month in the journal Cell.
The embryos underwent gastrulation (when an early embryo transforms into a multilayered structure) over the course of eight and a half days, but then stalled for unknown reasons. (A mouse pregnancy lasts for about 20 days.)
But the experiment wasn’t entirely a dud. It set the mammoth task for the latest study: to show it was entirely possible to grow mammalian embryos outside the uterus.
HOW TO GROW A BABY
Zernicka-Goetz and her colleagues used embryonic stem cells, along with those that give rise to the placenta and yolk sac, to grow synthetic embryos.Jose A. Bernat Bacete/Moment/Getty Images
Zernicka-Goetz, one of the authors behind the new Nature study, has spent the last decade investigating ways to develop synthetic embryos. She said her lab only initially used embryonic stem cells to mimic early development.
But in 2018, she and her colleagues discovered that if they tossed in two other stem cells that give rise to the placenta (the organ that provides nutrients and removes wastes) and the yolk sac (a structure that provides nourishment during early development), the embryos were better prepared for self-assembly.
Here’s the thing about science: there’s always competition. After their 2018 Nature paper, Zernicka-Goetz’s team was surprised when the Weizmann group came out with an incubator-ventilator system, along with later experiments that forged embryos without sperm or eggs — just as they were attempting.
But science is also about collaboration. The two groups eventually teamed up to see whether combining their techniques could culminate in the life-creating golden ticket.
The results were impressive: Zernicka-Goetz and her colleagues watched the artificially wombed cells grow into synthetic “embryoids” without any sort of external modifications or guidance.
THE EMBRYO MODEL DEVELOPED A HEAD AND HEART — PARTS OF THE BODY RESEARCHERS COULD NEVER STUDY IN VITRO.
Compared to the natural mouse embryos that were grown separately, these embryonic mice went through the same stages of development up to eight and half days after fertilization (just like the Weizmann team’s earlier work) which is equivalent to day 14 of human embryonic development.
The embryo model developed a head and heart — parts of the body researchers were never able to study in vitro, said Zernicka-Goetz.
“This is really the first demonstration of the forebrain in any models of embryonic development, and that’s been a Holy Grail for the field,” co-author David Glover, a research professor of biology and biological engineering at Caltech, said during the press briefing.
Zernicka-Goetz’s team also tinkered with a gene called Pax6, which appears to be a key player in brain development and function. After removing Pax6 from the mouse stem cell DNA with the help of CRISPR, Zernicka-Goetz and her colleagues observed that the heads of these synthetic embryos didn’t develop correctly, mimicking what’s seen when natural embryos lack this gene.
In humans, rare mutations or deletions of Pax6 can lead to abnormal development of the fetus and death. They can also spur conditions like aniridia (absence of the eye’s colored part, the iris) or Peters anomaly, which hinders the development of eye structures like the cornea.
A CHANCE FOR SYNTHETIC LIFE?
Concocting synthetic embyros from human stem cells could prove a technical (and ethical) challenge.Westend61/Westend61/Getty Images
The detailed glimpse into early embryonic development could be a boon to human health. For instance, it could help scientists grasp why many pregnancies, whether naturally conceived or via assisted reproductive means, fail in the early trimester.
Zernicka-Goetz said the research might also advance regenerative medicine. It could help scientists learn how to make viable, full-functioning replacement organs for a transplant patient using their own stem cells (potentially eliminating the need for lifelong use of immunosuppressants).
Currently, we have a broad sense of organogenesis — or the development of an organ from embryo to birth — but we don’t know all the microscopic steps and cellular interactions that culminate in a fully-fledged, functional organ.
The model system could aid the development of new drugs: It may reveal which medications are safe to take during pregnancy without harming the fetus. Now, researchers can potentially test them out on synthetic embryos, Zernicka-Goetz said.
“This is an advance but at a very early stage of development, a rare event which while superficially looking like an embryo, bears defects which should not be overlooked,” Alfonso Martinez Arias, a developmental biologist at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain who wasn’t involved in the study, said in a press release.
One glaring challenge: While the synthetic mouse embryos appear identical to their natural counterparts, their stalled development at eight and a half days makes it tough to say whether they’d continue to grow right on course.
“THIS IS VERY STRONG EVIDENCE THAT WE WILL ONE DAY HAVE THIS POWER, AND IT WILL BE POSSIBLE [TO CREATE SYNTHETIC LIFE].”
So despite its enormous potential, fashioning synthetic embryos from stem cells just isn’t possible right now.
“This blockade is not understood and needs to be overcome if one desires to grow mouse synthetic embryos past day eight,” Christophe Galichet, a stem cell biologist at Francis Crick Institute in London who also wasn’t involved in the new work, said in the same press release.
Since humans and mice don’t exactly share all the same characteristics when it comes to embryonic development, the next step is to eventually concoct synthetic embryos from human stem cells.
That likely will prove complicated, more so ethically than technique-wise. But Wilson thinks this research marks a major scientific milestone and tool to add to humanity’s technological toolbox.
“This is very strong evidence that we will one day have this power, and it will be possible [to create synthetic life],” Wilson says. “Whether we decide to do that or not because of ethics or even the potential upsides — that’s a question for society at large.”
Ruimterots meteen na inslag NASA-satelliet helderder dan alle sterren errond
De DART-missie van de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA was een succes. Zoals gepland sloeg gisterochtend rond 1.15 uur onze tijd de DART-satelliet in op maanrots Dimorphos, die zich op dat moment op 11 miljoen kilometer van de aarde bevond. Meteen daarna lichtte de grotere rots Didymos, waarrond Dimorphos roteert, helderder op dan alle sterren errond.
“Dit overtreft al mijn verwachtingen”, zei de Italiaanse astronoom Gianluca Masi in zijn livestream van de impact. “Het object is nu bijna drie magnituden helderder dan eerder, dat is tien keer meer!” Masi volgde de DART-missie via een telescoop van het Klein Karoo Obervatory in Zuid-Afrika. Samen met amateur-astronoom Berto Monard zag hij hoe de grootste ruimterots van het Didymos-systeem, Didymos, niet alleen veel helderder werd na de impact van de NASA-satelliet op de kleinste, Dimorphos, maar ook groter.
“Kort na de inslag kwam een hoeveelheid stof vrij als een pluim en nu breidt die stofwolk zich uit en zendt licht van de zon terug”, legde Monard uit tijdens de livestream. “Dit is veel meer dan wat ik had verwacht. Zelfs de vorm is een beetje anders. Het lijkt op een komeet. Er zijn deeltjes die van de asteroïde loskomen en daardoor krijg je een grotere halo.”
Het enige waarmee Masi dit kon vergelijken, was de opzettelijke botsing van NASA’s Deep Impact-sonde op komeet Temple 1 in 2005. Ook toen werd door menselijk toedoen een hemellichaam opgelicht. “Maar ik moet zeggen dat dit veel straffer is”, voegde Masi eraan toe.
Bedoeling van de DART-missie is dat Dimorphos door de klap van de satelliet naar een iets kortere baan rond de rots Didymos is geslagen. Het is nog afwachten of dat ook echt gelukt is.
NASA’s DART mission successfully knocks asteroid off course, Earth can now defend itself
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Jupiter’s Atmosphere is Surprisingly Hot
Jupiter’s Atmosphere is Surprisingly Hot
Jupiter is a big planet, but it’s still a planet. That means it doesn’t heat itself through fancy mechanisms like nuclear fusion. Its interior is heated through its own weight, squeezing the interior through hydrostatic equilibrium, and its surface is heated mostly by the Sun. Since Jupiter only gets about 4% of the light per square meter that Earth gets, you’d expect its upper atmosphere to be pretty cold. Traditional models estimate it should be about -70 degrees Celsius. But recent measurements show the upper atmosphere is over 400 degrees Celsius, and in the polar regions as much as 700 degrees Celsius. In the words of Ruby Rhod from the movie The Fifth Element, “It’s Hot Hot Hot!”
Auroras on Jupiter causing scorching ‘heat wave’ ten times the size of Earth.
With such little sunlight reaching Jupiter, how can its atmosphere be so warm? The team found it has to do with Jupiter’s aurora. On Earth, we have aurora all the time. More popularly known as the northern lights, this glow of the upper atmosphere occurs when ions from the solar wind get caught in Earth’s magnetic field and strike our atmosphere at high speed. Jupiter’s magnetic field is much stronger than Earth’s, and so Jupiter’s aurora can be much more intense. So intense that it can heat Jupiter’s upper atmosphere.
Jovian aurora as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Nichols (University of Leicester)
The team showed that it is the polar region of Jupiter where the atmosphere is most heated, and the heat waves correlate with the cycle of Jupiter’s aurora activity. They also studied how this heat is transferred, so that much of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere is hyper-warm. Interestingly, this kind of strong electromagnetic heating is similar to what happens to the Sun’s upper atmosphere.
The Sun is obviously much larger and hotter than Jupiter, with a surface temperature of nearly 5,500 degrees Celsius, but you would still expect the uppermost region of its atmosphere to be cooler than its surface. After all, it’s very cold in space. But observations of the Sun show that its most diffuse upper layer, known as the corona, has a temperature of millions of degrees. This was a long-standing mystery until we finally figured out that solar flares and realignments of the Sun’s magnetic field were heating the corona. It turns out electromagnetism can hold a lot of energy.
Since Jupiter has such a warm upper atmosphere, this could help explain long-lasting weather patterns in its cloud region. After all, storms are powered by a varied temperatures in different regions, such as how the warm tropical ocean on Earth powers hurricanes as the northern hemisphere grows cooler in autumn. Similar temperature variations in Jupiter’s atmosphere could drive the great storms we observe.
Watch a Nicely Stabilized Video of DART Flying Past Didymos and Slamming Into Dimorphos
Watch a Nicely Stabilized Video of DART Flying Past Didymos and Slamming Into Dimorphos
Here’s one of the best videos we’ve seen of the last minutes of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission as it headed towards and slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos. This stabilized version of the last five-and-a-half minutes of images leading up to DART’s intentional collision with the asteroid was produced from NASA’s DART images. It was produced by the YouTube channel Spei’s Space News from Germany.
DART streamed these images from its DRACO camera back to Earth in real time as it approached the asteroid. This replay movie is 10 times faster than reality, except for the last six images, which are shown at the same rate that the spacecraft returned them. DRACO stands for Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation.
Below you can see the real-time views coming in to DART’s mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. The team can be seen cheering, clapping and giving each other high fives as the spacecraft performed its heroic duty, which was to intentionally collide with an asteroid in attempt to deflect it, a technique known as kinetic impact.
Dimorphos is a small asteroid moonlet, just 530 feet (160 meters) in diameter. It orbits a larger, 2,560-foot (780-meter) asteroid called Didymos. Neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth, and the impact should change the way Dimorphos orbits Didymos, making the duo the perfect target for this test. NASA says that DART’s impact demonstrates a viable mitigation technique for protecting the planet from an Earth-bound asteroid or comet, if one were discovered.
DART launched on November 24, 2021, and after 10 months of flying about 7 million miles (11 million kilometers through space, caught up with Dimorphos. DART weighed 1,260-pounds (570-kilograms) and crashed into the asteroid at roughly 14,000 miles (22,530 kilometers) per hour, which is expected to have slightly slowed the asteroid’s orbital speed.
The DART team has said they expect the impact to shorten Dimorphos’ orbit by about 1 per cent, or roughly 10 minutes; precisely measuring how much the asteroid was deflected is one of the primary purposes of the full-scale test. Some of the early indications from images taken by both ground-based and space telescopes are that the impact appeared to be larger than expected. More details from the telescopes will be coming out in the coming weeks and months, so it may be some time before we know precisely how much DART’s impact altered Dimorphos’ the asteroid’s orbit around Didymos.
For a number of years, the Admiral Wilson UFO document, which previously used to be considered a hoax, has been in the public domain. But as the UFO disclosure pace fastened, the hoax is seemingly turning into an authentic document that author & researcher Richard Dolan called the “UFO leak of the century.” Moreover, to confirm the authenticity of Wilson’s UFO leak, there are two credible personalities: Standford professor Gary Nolan and former manager of Special Projects for Los Alamos Labs, USN Vet, Oke Shannon (his name is mentioned in the document).
Brief Overview of Wilson-Davis Memo
In 2002, after a meeting with former Admiral Thomas R. Wilson, who had been the head of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs back in the 1990s, Dr. Eric Davis, a former Pentagon physicist supposedly took a transcript of the conversation.
Somehow, these documents found their way into the public domain after they were discovered in the files of the now deceased Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell. These 15 pages of notes describe Admiral Wilson’s discovery of a deeply classified program to study extraterrestrial technology.
During this alleged conversation, Admiral Wilson tells Eric Davis about a series of programs that he discovered hidden deep within the black project’s records of the Pentagon that were actively involved in attempts to reverse engineer a recovered craft that they believed could operate in air, sea, space or perhaps even in other dimensions. The program manager concluded that the craft was not man-made.
Astrophysicist Eric Davis during an interview with New York Post.
The claims have been hotly debated among ufologists but never corroborated. The DIA director at the time, Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson has reportedly denied it all. Numerous national security experts and researchers have also dismissed it as a hoax. (Source)
But one of the other primary individuals cited in the document, astrophysicist Eric Davis has not directly addressed it in public, only fueling suspicions that there might be something to it. And Davis alluded to the possibility of some of the claims contained in the alleged memo as recently as last year in an interview in The New York Times.
Key Witness
Jay Anderson, a founder of Project Unity has recently interviewed Oke Shannon, whose name is mentioned in the documents multiple times. Shannon confirmed that “what was said about him in these notes is accurate, further proving that the conversation between Admiral Wilson and Eric Davis did indeed take place, and they really did discuss the reality that a recovered, non-human vehicle, is being studied in extreme secrecy by a shadowy, quasi-governmental working group that is evading standardized oversight, operating outside of the reservation of government control,” wrote Anderson.
Jay Anderson with Oke Shannon and his wife Linda. Credit: Facebook
Oke Shannon is a US Navy Veteran and a physicist. He was the manager of all Special Projects at Los Alamos National Labs, one of the highest funded and most secretive US Government Research Facilities in the United States.
Below is a transcript of the conversation held between Oke Shannon (OS) and Jay Anderson (JA) discussing the Wilson-Davis Memo: (Source)
JA: I think it’s important that we just get your side of this on the record so I would just like to be able to ask you first of all whether or not you personally know Dr. Eric W Davis.
OS: Yeah! I didn’t work with him day in and day out but I did work with him. I know him fairly well. (Shannon said he got to know Davis through mutual projects and mutual acquaintances.)
JA: Do you personally know Admiral Thomas R Wilson?
OS: Yes I do. Of course, I know of him but I read somewhere that his response was Oke who? and I thought that was kind of funny. I’m sure that my memory of him is stronger than his memory of me because he became a flag officer, and I went off.
JA: Did Admiral Wilson get in contact with you in 2001 or 2002 inquiring into the background and overall trustworthiness of Dr Eric Davis?
OS: Earlier than that. This was in 1999. I got this phone call and it was from Admiral Wilson. He wanted to know was could he trust Eric Davis. I mentioned that YES I believe that Eric Davis was an honorable and conscientious scientist and that he would honor any restrictions the Admiral might put on.
JA: One last question on these notes. I just wanted to kind of get it in a confirmatory statement. So, in these notes that were recovered from Dr. Edgar Mitchell’s estate that are a transcription of an alleged meeting that took place between Admiral Wilson and Dr. Eric Davis. It’s mentioned within the trust a transcript of their conversation that you were difficult to get in touch with at the time you were in poor health due to heart conditions and were not easy to get hold. So this is true in of itself you were struggling with that?
OS: Yeah so it was difficult to get in touch with and I might add to that I’m still difficult to get in touch with.
Credit: Congress.gov
During 2022 US Congress hearings on UFOs, Rep. Mike Gallagher asked Ronald Moultrie, the top Pentagon intelligence official, and Scott Bray, the deputy director of naval intelligence, whether they were aware of an unverified 2002 document known as the “Wilson-Davis memo.” (Source)
“There’s nothing we can offer or help out with on your request,” a spokesperson for the federal think tank said. As for Moultrie and Bray, they told Gallagher that they were unfamiliar with the Wilson-Davis document. The fact the document was even broached — and then entered into the official hearing record — was shocking to those who have followed the saga.
However, not many would be satisfied with the Pentagon’s response to Rep. Gallagher on the Wilson-Davis leak. There is another expert named Dr. Gary Nolan, a Stanford Professor who claimed that the documents are “genuine.” He told investigative journalist Ross Coulthart that he knows Eric Davis and that he would not lie. “You know Eric is the kind of character that it’s just impossible for him to lie,” Nolan added.
Nolan asserted that the document was ultimately leaked. “Why would Eric Davis lie about writing something that he never intended to go public in the first place? He was just doing what an intelligence agent does on a regular basis which is write reports of what it is that they’ve been doing,” he said.
Davis, who is now a senior project engineer at the government-funded The Aerospace Corporation, worked on the Pentagon’s secret UFO program AATIP. He also said that some of the materials taken from the found UFOs have so far been unidentifiable. “We couldn’t make [the materials] ourselves,” Davis told the Times. (Source)
The Davis Wilson Notes: Secret reverse-engineering program pertaining to extraterrestrial technology
The Davis Wilson Notes: Secret reverse-engineering program pertaining to extraterrestrial technology
There has been renewed discussion lately regarding the Davis-Wilson notes, which detail a meeting held in 2002 that discussed a deeply secret reverse-engineering program pertaining to extraterrestrial technology.
Richard Dolan discusses the latest developments while also reviewing the notes themselves, his own personal connection to them, the arguments supporting their authenticity, and most importantly the implications.
Sgt. Russell Yokum recorded the sound of a UFO hovering over the Columbia River, St Helens, OR, 1981
Sgt. Russell Yokum recorded the sound of a UFO hovering over the Columbia River, St Helens, OR, 1981
Askins was watching. It was low and looked like it was standing out against the river. There were only a few faint lights in this area at that time.
Askins heard tOn March 17, 1981, Sergeant Russell Yokum of the police department of Saint Helens, Oregon, was on patrol along Highway 30 near the Columbia River. The small town is about 20 miles from Portland. It was very cold that morning.
At around 4:03 a.m., Yokum noticed a bright light moving upriver. It was heading toward Portland International Airport.
Airplanes frequently passed through this area as they made their way to the airport. Yokum immediately thought that the object was an aircraft after seeing it, so he radioed his department. He then drove to Saint Helens to look at it. The light from the courthouse on the other side of the Columbia River was very clear.
Other law enforcement officials, such as Tom McCartney and Ricky Cade of the Oregon State Police, met with Yokum at the courthouse. By this time, Yokum had already been in contact with Donald Askins, who was in Ridgefield, Washington state, near Saint Helens. Askins told Yokum that he had spotted the light and was seeing it now. The light had been stationary over the river, which turned the area into a full-daylight.
Initially, the officers in Saint Helens thought that the light was floating. Askins, however, insisted that it was stationary. It was later revealed that the object was a manmade light that was being used by Sauvie Island.
The fog that night had created the appearance of a bobbing object. After realizing their mistake, the officers decided to look south. They saw the light Askins was watching. It was low and looked like it was standing out against the river. Only faint lights could be seen from this area.
The fog that evening had created the appearance of a bobbing object. After realizing their mistake, the officers decided to look south. They saw the light he sound of the light, which was very loud. The officers then set up a portable tape recorder that was 18 inches from their radio. They also asked Askins to use his CB microphone to transmit the sound to them. He decided to do so by hanging his microphone from the window of his rented home.
The police then went to a nearby bluff, which provided them with an excellent view of the object. The footage recorded by the police, which was presented to the UFO studies center J. Allen Hynek, showed a fascinating and unsettling moment in the lives of people who were trying to understand the unknown.
French kids saw beings move very fast, kids saw UFO as well
French kids saw beings move very fast, kids saw UFO as well
July 1967 – A group of children had been walking in the pasture near the wood at around 3 p.m. When the youngest girl of the group exclaimed that she saw three Chinese men, the other kids ran away. According to the girl, they were small and spoke according to a type of music.
A teenager then went to the area, but she did not see anything. At around 4 p.m., she went back with a group of young people. They were sitting on a rock, which is about ten meters from a dirt road.
Suddenly, they saw a small black creature running across the flat part of the rock. Although it had a normal head, it shone and looked like it was covered in something. It moved at a speed of about 1.13 meters per second and passed 25 meters from the witnesses at 4 p.m., during the middle of summer.
The creature ran away into the hedge. The witnesses tried to catch it, but they were not able to catch it. The next day, they saw a circle of 4 meters with burnt grass, and the smell of burnt grass lingered in the area. The circle was more prominent in the center, and there were traces of small feet in the northeast.
The kid initially thought that the creature was burning bush. However, he later realized that it wasn’t. This is a remarkable example of how the brain tries to associate certain things with certain things.
Perseverance used its robotic arm to collect rock cores from an outcrop called Skinner Ridge, which is part of an ancient river delta on Mars.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
Since July, NASA’s Perseverance rover has drilled and collected four slim cores of sedimentary rock, formed in what was once a lake on Mars. They are the first of this type of rock to be gathered on another world — and scientists are excited because at least two of the cores probably contain organic compounds.
On Earth, organics, which are carbon-containing molecules, are often associated with living things, although they can be formed without the involvement of organisms.
Adding to the buzz over the rock samples, Perseverance collected them from an ancient delta in Mars’s Jezero Crater, where a river once deposited layers of sediment — and possibly other matter. River deltas on Earth often teem with living organisms. If life ever existed in Jezero, these cores are probably NASA’s best chance of finding it.
Having the cores is “fantastic”, if scientists ever hope to answer that question, says Tanja Bosak, a geobiologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
In the coming years, NASA and the European Space Agency plan to send other spacecraft to Jezero to pick up the cores that Perseverance has collected and bring them back to Earth, where scientists will analyse them with advanced laboratory techniques. The samples, which are expected to arrive no earlier than 2033, will be the first ever returned from Mars.
“To undertake the challenge and the expense of a Mars sample-return mission, we need a great suite of rocks to bring back,” Laurie Leshin, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said at a press briefing on 15 September. “We are off to a great start.”
Sedimentary search
Perseverance landed in the 45-kilometre-wide Jezero Crater in February 2021. Its main goal is to look for signs of past life, and its prime destination is the 3.5-billion-year-old river delta, where sediments long ago turned into rock.
Perseverance travelled to the edge of Jezero Crater’s ancient river delta (from right) early this year. Once there, it collected rock cores from sites near Hogwallow Flats. Then it rolled back to an area called Enchanted Lake, where it currently sits.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/USGS
Perseverance spent more than a year making its way to the delta to do its main studies. After landing farther away from the delta than scientists had hoped, it drove around Jezero’s floor, where it surprisingly found ‘igneous’ rocks formed directly from molten magma, or from volcanic activity. Scientists expected the crater floor, once the bottom of a lake, to contain sedimentary rock.
It wasn’t until April 2022, when Perseverance finally arrived at the delta, that scientists found what they had been looking for. In the past few months, the rover has collected two pairs of cores from different types of sedimentary rock that make up the edge of the delta.
One pair comes from a rock outcrop known as Skinner Ridge, which is made of fine-grained sandstone similar to a type of rock seen in many places on Earth. Viewed up close in Perseverance’s sampling tubes, the Skinner Ridge cores appear light-coloured and studded with round grains of dark material. These darker grains were probably carried by the ancient river that once flowed into Jezero from regions that lie perhaps hundreds of kilometres away. So, studying the grains might tell scientists about the history of far-flung areas of Mars.
The other recently collected pair of cores comes from a spot called Wildcat Ridge, which lies just 20 metres from Skinner Ridge. These samples are lighter in colour, and are more homogeneous. They seem to be a mudstone — even more fine-grained than the Skinner Ridge cores. The finer the grains in a rock, the more likely it is to contain evidence of past life. On Earth, small grains tend to settle out in low-energy environments such as the bottom of a pond, where they can preserve decaying organisms or other signs of life that settle there.
The rover examined sedimentary rock at Skinner Ridge (left) and Wildcat Ridge (right) by grinding circular patches. The Skinner Ridge rock contained dark grains, while the Wildcat Ridge patch was lighter in colour and had finer grains.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Wildcat Ridge is also where scientists spotted the organic molecules. Next to the sites from which Perseverance drilled its two cores, the rover ground a 5-centimetre-wide circle into the rock to expose its interior texture. The rover then stretched out its robotic arm and inspected the mineralogy of the rock.
It turned out to be richer in organics than any spot studied by Perseverance so far, said Sunanda Sharma, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And the organics seem to be most concentrated in spots that are also rich in sulfate minerals, which can harbour signs of life. This suggests that organics and sulfate minerals were concentrated as the lake that once filled Jezero was evaporating, Sharma said.
Rolling on
Perseverance has already moved on to another area, known as Enchanted Lake, that it had previously explored. There it will work to collect another pair of samples of fine-grained rock, as well as some of the material lying around on the Martian surface.
Sometime before the end of the year, it will probably place six or more core samples on the ground, where they will serve as a first collection of rocks that could be picked up in the future. Perseverance will keep the rest of its tubes on board — some filled and some empty — and continue exploring Jezero. Ultimately, it will roll up on top of the delta and then continue out of the crater, onto the ancient terrain beyond.
Perseverance’s sidekick, the miniature helicopter Ingenuity, has lasted much longer than its designers ever thought it would. It recently made its 31st flight, having been designed for only five. Ingenuity has been flying along with the rover, helping it to scout paths forwards.
Driekwart van alle uitgestorven landdieren woonde op een eiland. De overgrote meerderheid viel ten prooi aan een ‘invasive alien species’. Via een spelletje geurcluedo met een kleine Kroatische hagedis ontdekte ik waarom eilanddieren zo gevoelig zijn voor aliens.
Daar zat ik dan. In een half afgewerkte hotelkamer op het Kroatische eiland Vis, de vensters afgeschermd met lakens, starend naar een karsthagedis (Latijnse naam: Podarcis melisellensis) die door het spiegelglas geen weet van mij had. Elke beweging noteerde ik. Elke keer ik zijn gevorkte tong zag piepen, turfde ik. Ik zat middenin een gedragsobservatie van een hagedis die ik een dag eerder ving op de rotsen van Mali Barjak, het naburige eiland met een diameter van nog geen 100 m. Die karsthagedis was er één van de meer dan tweehonderd die mijn collega’s en ik te pakken kregen op verschillende Kroatische locaties. In totaal deed ik zo’n vijfhonderdvijftig observaties op die hagedissen. “Waarom zou een mens zich daar in vredesnaam mee bezighouden?” hoor ik je denken. Wel, omdat die kleine eilandhagedis mij kon vertellen waarom zijn achterneef op het Kroatische vasteland wel kon vluchten van de bloeddorstige kleine Indische mangoeste en hij niet.
Een prooidier zonder reukzin heeft een aanzienlijke handicap
De kleine Indische mangoeste is een “invasive alien species” of – in het Nederlands – invasieve exoot. Exoten zijn organismen die afgereisd zijn naar een plaats waar ze oorspronkelijk niet thuis horen. In sommige gevallen brengt die exoot schade toe aan zijn nieuwe omgeving. Dan noemen we de exoot invasief. Onze kleine Indische mangoeste werd met opzet vanuit Azië geëxporteerd naar onder andere Hawaï, Fiji, Japan, Mauritius, en Kroatië. Dit om giftige slangen en rattenplagen te bestrijden. Waar niemand rekening mee had gehouden was dat de mangoeste een alleseter is. Hij lust dus ook wel eens een hagedis, en een vogeltje, ook wel een muisje of een kikker. Eenmaal aangekomen in een nieuwe regio verricht het dier vaak een bloedbad. En omdat de mangoeste nu ook op eigen houtje verder reist, is het niet meer dan logisch dat de kleine Indische mangoeste benoemd is tot één van de gevaarlijkste invasieve exoten op onze planeet.
De kleine Indische mangoeste werd met opzet geïntroduceerd op enkele eilanden en het vasteland van Kroatië.
Credit: J.N. Stuart.
Specifiek op eilanden zaaien invasieve exoten zoals de mangoeste dood en verderf. We zien dit veel minder op het vasteland. Moesten we weten waarin eilanddieren verschillen van hun continentale verwanten zouden we beter begrijpen waarom net zij zo kwetsbaar zijn. Die kennis zou ons toelaten eilanddieren beter te beschermen. Dus ging ik op zoek naar waar het fout loopt bij eilanddieren. Ik focuste op de eerste, meest belangrijke stap in het ontwijken van gevaar: gevaarherkenning. En dat, via één van de oudste zintuigen in het dierenrijk: de reukzin. Een roofdier ruiken geeft drie voordelen t.o.v. eentje zien, horen, en al zeker voelen:
Veel prooidieren ruiken roofdieren al voordat deze te dichtbij komen en ontsnappen onmogelijk is.
Een roofdier is vaak meester in camouflage. Dan is geur het enige wat zijn aanwezigheid verraadt.
Geur blijft gewoonlijk ook een tijdje hangen. Zo kunnen prooien risicovolle plaatsen waar veel passage is door roofdieren identificeren en ontwijken.
Een prooidier zonder reukzin heeft dus een aanzienlijke handicap. Dit is de reden waarom heel diverse dieren hun reukzin gebruiken om roofdieren te ontwijken. Dit gaat van vogels over zoogdieren tot vissen, insecten, en … hagedissen. Maar specifiek hagedissen hebben enkele handige eigenschappen die het gemakkelijk maken om reukzin bij eilanddieren te onderzoeken. Zij kunnen namelijk ruiken via hun tong. Deze merkwaardigheid maakt het voor mij mogelijk om de aandacht die een hagedis voor een bepaalde geur heeft op een gestandaardiseerde manier te achterhalen. Ik tel simpelweg het aantal keren dat de hagedis zijn tong uitsteekt. Als ik daarbovenop ook nog tekenen van angst noteer, weet ik exact wat mijn hagedis van de mangoestegeur vindt. Het is het ideale biologische model voor mijn onderzoek.
Eilandhagedissen zien zich mogelijk genoodzaakt om te besparen op hersenweefsel ten koste van hun reukvermogen
Dus zat ik daar op een Kroatisch eiland, ettelijke uren geurcluedo te spelen met karsthagedissen. Het doel van het spel: vind de moordenaar enkel op basis van zijn geur. Naast mangoestegeur bood ik hagedissen ook gember, een geurloos doekje, en geuren van lokale roofdieren (slangen) waarmee ze wel vertrouwd waren aan. Wat bleek: Eilandhagedissen staken hun tong niet eens uit naar de doekjes en stenen gemarkeerd met mangoeste- en zelfs slangengeur, laat staan dat ze er schrik van hadden. De vastelandshagedissen hadden er nochtans alle moordenaars uit gehaald! Het lijkt er dus op dat eilandhagedissen hun vermogen om roofdieren te ruiken verloren zijn; en daarmee ook één van hun belangrijkste verdedigingsmechanismen.
Een karsthagedis in een observatie-arena achterhaalt welke geur er aan een steen hangt.
Maar waarom gebeurt dit specifiek op eilanden? Via hersenscans achterhaalde ik wat er schort aan het reukvermogen van de eilandhagedissen. En wat blijkt? De hersendelen die instaan voor het verwerken van geurmoleculen zijn veel kleiner in eilandhagedissen vergeleken met vastelandshagedissen. Het is momenteel moeilijk te zeggen hoe dat komt, maar er is wel een hypothese die dit zou kunnen verklaren. De hersenen verbruiken veel energie en eilanden staan bekend voor hun barre omstandigheden. Eilandhagedissen zien zich mogelijk genoodzaakt om te besparen op hersenweefsel ten koste van hun reukvermogen. Hierbij staan ze sterk achter op hagedissen van het vasteland die met hun superieure geurzin beter gewapend zijn tegen invasieve exoten.
Ook al vallen veel karsthagedissen ten prooi aan mangoestes, toch zien we vandaag nog geen grote gevolgen voor het voortbestaan van die soort op Kroatische eilanden. Ik heb dan ook goede hoop voor mijn geschubde vrienden die ik weer uitzette op hun vangstlocatie. Hun grote aantal is waarschijnlijk hetgeen in hun voordeel speelt. Minder courante dieren ondervinden echter ook die barre eilandomstandigheden. Het is dan ook hoogstwaarschijnlijk dat die eilandcondities ook hen beïnvloeden en beperken in hun vermogen om invasieve exoten te ontwijken. Voor die zeldzamere dieren kan de introductie van een invasieve soort dat extra duwtje richting uitroeiing zijn.
We kunnen dus besluiten dat in een geglobaliseerde wereld waar dagelijks miljoenen dieren worden verhuisd via het wegverkeer, de scheep- of luchtvaart, we specifiek moeten inzetten op het voorkomen van de introductie van invasieve exoten op eilanden. Zo kan mijn Mali barjakaanse hagedis met een gerust hartje verder zonnen op zijn rots te midden van de Adriatische zee.
Ahead of the release of a much-anticipated U.S. intelligence report on aerial phenomena, former Canadian defence minister Harjit Sajjan received a briefing on UFOs.
“I expect I am not alone in noting the recent increase in comment regarding Unidentified Flying Objects in the media internationally, particularly in the U.S.,” Sajjan’s then-chief of staff wrote in a May 19, 2021 email to senior defence officials. “I believe it is prudent to request a full briefing for Minister Sajjan from the Canadian perspective on this issue.”
A lieutenant-colonel co-ordinated the effort. An accompanying five-page slide presentation included an overview of cases and procedures, which currently link the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) with air traffic controllers, federal aviation authorities and a civilian researcher in Manitoba. CTVNews.ca acquired the slides and related emails through an access to information request.
It took six weeks of emails before a Department of National Defence spokesperson confirmed the briefing occurred in mid-2021, although they would not provide an exact date. A subsequent access to information request revealed the briefing took place on May 27, 2021.
Sajjan, a former CAF lieutenant-colonel himself, was replaced as defence minister by Anita Anand in an Oct. 2021 cabinet shuffle and now serves as Minister of International Development.
“No, we have no records of subsequent briefs based on currently-available information,” the National Defence spokesperson said. “Minister Anand has not received a brief at this juncture.”
'VITAL INTELLIGENCE SIGHTINGS'
The briefing slides say approximately 1,000 UFO sightings are reported in Canada each year.
Emails and five-page slide deck below show how Sajjan received a briefing on “unidentified aerial phenomena” in May 2021. CTVNews.ca has redacted email addresses and phone numbers for privacy. Click here to see the document full screen.
The most recent case referenced was from May 9, 2021, when the pilot of a Delta Air Lines flight over Saskatchewan asked air traffic controllers “about traffic well above them and moving right to left.” According to a publicly-available report from Transport Canada, the “controller advised that there was no known traffic in the area. The pilot replied that they couldn't figure out what it was either.”
Transport Canada, the federal department that maintains the database, warns such “reports contain preliminary, unconfirmed data which can be subject to change.”
That data is mostly supplied by Nav Canada, a private company that owns and operates Canadian civil air navigation infrastructure such as airport control towers. When Nav Canada personnel receive UFO reports, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are also usually alerted.
“NAV Canada is the responsible agency for managing UAP-related reporting,” the slides prepared for the then-defence minister read. “CAF does not typically investigate sightings of unexplained phenomena outside the context of investigating potential threats or distress.”
A Nav Canada spokesperson said the company doesn’t investigate UFO reports, adding that their role is to forward information to federal authorities. They point to a Nav Canada guide to Canadian aviation procedures, which puts “unidentified flying objects” at the front of a list of “vital intelligence sightings” requiring reports. Other examples include “surface warships identified as being non-Canadian or non-American.”
A spokesperson from Transport Canada told CTVNews.ca that UFO reports “have no potential for regulatory enforcement and often fall outside the department’s mandate.”
“Reports of unidentified objects can rarely be followed up on as they are as the title implies, unidentified,” the spokesperson said in an email.
The U.S. government has funded UFO research programs almost continuously since 2007. The public got a rare peek at those efforts on June 25, 2021, when the U.S. intelligence community released an unclassified report on recent military sightings, which included UAP that “appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion.”
From drones to weather phenomena to top-secret technology, many potential explanations are floated for odd observations like these, and officials say they should not be interpreted as proof extraterrestrials are visiting earth. But finding answers requires investigation, and compared to government-funded programs in the U.S., little appears to be happening in Canada.
“As our closest ally and NORAD partner continues to investigate the national security implications of UAP, it would be prudent for Canada to take a similar approach,” the former Conservative cabinet member said in a statement to CTVNews.ca. “Rather than ridicule and silence, it would be wise to take this issue seriously, with the objective of identifying the origins and intent of these UAP.”
'CANADA'S PRE-EMINENT UFOLOGIST'
Declassified records held by Library and Archives Canada reveal military UFO procedures and sightings dating back to the early 1950s. By the 1960s, responsibility was transferred to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and scientists at the National Research Council of Canada, which ended their involvement in 1995.
According to the briefing slides obtained by CTVNews.ca, it wasn’t long before a civilian researcher described as “Canada’s pre-eminent ufologist” started receiving UFO reports directly from the military and Transport Canada.
Chris Rutkowski is a Winnipeg-based science writer and University of Manitoba communications professional who has led efforts to document more than 23,000 sightings since 1989 through the annual Canadian UFO Survey. Rutkowski told CTVNews.ca he was asked to provide material for the minister’s briefing as a “civilian advisor,” and that he last received official UFO data in early 2021.
“I have been called both a sceptic and a believer, which probably demonstrates that my position is appropriate,” Rutkowski said in an email. “We are long past the era of UFOs being a subject of ridicule. Well-trained observers have reported sightings of UFOs and UAP and there seems to be a renewed interest by both scientists and the military establishment in taking a closer look at this persistent phenomenon.”
Rutkowski, whose 10th UFO book is scheduled to be released this spring, would like to see a panel or committee formed to gather and examine Canadian cases. Findlay also thinks it’s time for Canada to be more active and open about UFOs.
“We believe the government should adopt a streamlined, whole-of-government approach to standardize the collection of reports across numerous departments and contractors, such as NAV Canada,” Findlay told CTVNews.ca in a rare statement on the subject from a Canadian politician. “Efforts should be undertaken to investigate and make those findings public in a responsible manner.”
UFO procedures remain unchanged in Canada, the Department of National Defence spokesperson told CTVNews.ca. When asked if information on the subject has been provided to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or his office, their response was, “not directly, no.”
CTV News was first made aware of Sajjan’s UFO briefing by an anonymous source, who shared documents acquired through Canadian freedom of information laws. CTV News verified those documents by filing a new access to information request with the Department of National Defence.
Edited by CTVNews.ca's Rachel Aiello and Brooklyn Neustaeter
RELATED IMAGES
A donut-shaped UFO was spotted in Rimouski, Que. on Oct. 23, 2017 and photographed by witnesses.
(Source: 2017 Canadian UFO Survey)
Correction
A Department of National Defence spokesperson previously told CTVNews.ca that the briefing occurred in "early June 2021." A subsequent access to information request revealed that the briefing actually took place earlier, on May 27, 2021. This story has been updated accordingly.
BEWIJS VOOR BUITENAARDS LEVEN KAN ZOMAAR AL EENS IN DE BUIK VAN DIT MARSWAGENTJE ZITTEN
BEWIJS VOOR BUITENAARDS LEVEN KAN ZOMAAR AL EENS IN DE BUIK VAN DIT MARSWAGENTJE ZITTEN
Vivian Lammerse
Marsrover Perseverance heeft onlangs een monster verzameld dat organisch materiaal bevat, wat erop kan wijzen dat Mars in een ver verleden bewoonbaar was.
Ondertussen speurt NASA’s Perseverance-rover al enige tijd op Mars naar tekenen van oud, microbieel leven. In zijn zoektocht verzamelt het Marswagentje verschillende monsters. En die blijken beter dan het missieteam had durven hopen, zo laten ze weten. In de buik van Perseverance zit momenteel namelijk een monster opgeborgen dat organisch materiaal bevat. En dit monster zou zomaar eens het antwoord kunnen geven op de vraag of Mars ooit leven herbergde.
Wildcat Ridge Perseverance trof het organisch materiaal aan in een Mars-steen die de naam Wildcat Ridge heeft gekregen. De rots is waarschijnlijk miljarden jaren geleden gevormd toen modder en fijn zand zich vestigden in een verdampend zoutwatermeer. Eind juli schraapte de rover een gedeelte van het oppervlak van Wildcat Ridge weg en analyseerde het met behulp van zijn SHERLOC-instrument. SHERLOC – een afkorting voor Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals – gebruikt een ultraviolette laser om mineralen in gesteente te identificeren. Uit de analyse blijkt dat het monster een klasse organische moleculen bevat die verbonden zijn met sulfaten. En dat is interessant. Sulfaatmineralen kunnen namelijk belangrijke informatie opleveren over de waterige omgevingen waarin ze zijn gevormd.
Meer over organische moleculen Organische moleculen bestaan voornamelijk uit koolstof en bevatten gewoonlijk waterstof- en zuurstofatomen. Ze kunnen ook andere elementen bevatten, zoals stikstof, fosfor en zwavel. De vondst van dergelijke organische moleculen zijn van belang, omdat sommige van deze verbindingen de bouwstenen van leven zijn. De aanwezigheid van deze specifieke moleculen wordt beschouwd als een potentiële biosignatuur – een stof of structuur die een bewijs zou kunnen zijn van voormalig leven. Toch houden wetenschappers een slag om de arm. Sommige organische moleculen kunnen namelijk ook door middel van chemische processen, zonder de aanwezigheid van leven, ontstaan.
Het is niet de eerste keer dat er op Mars organisch materiaal wordt gevonden. Zowel Perseverance als de Curiosity-rover hebben dit al eerder aangetroffen. Toch is de huidige ontdekking een stuk spannender.
Spannender “In een ver verleden werd het zand, de modder en de zouten die nu het Wildcat Ridge-monster vormen, afgezet onder omstandigheden waarin leven mogelijk had kunnen gedijen,” legt onderzoeker Ken Farley uit. “Het feit dat er dus organische stof is gevonden in zo’n sedimentair gesteente, is heel interessant.” Toch moeten we nog even geduld hebben voordat we weten of het monster inderdaad bewijs van buitenaards leven herbergt. “Hoe geavanceerd de instrumenten aan boord van Perseverance ook zijn, verdere conclusies over wat er in het Wildcat Ridge-monster zit, kunnen we pas trekken als het monster op aarde aan een grondige inspectie is onderworpen,” aldus Farley.
Bodem en delta Marsrover Perseverance landde op 18 februari 2021 in de Jezero-krater waar de rover op sporen van (voormalig) leven jaagt. Dat Perseverance hier zoekt, is niet voor niets. Wetenschappers vermoeden namelijk dat het miljarden jaren geleden een met water gevuld kratermeer was. Tijdens Perseverance’ eerste wetenschappelijke campagne onderzocht de rover de bodem van de krater, waar hij zelfs stollingsgesteente aantrof, dat zich diep onder de grond vormt uit magma of tijdens vulkanische activiteit aan het oppervlak. Momenteel bestudeert Perseverance de delta; een oude, waaiervormige structuur die zo’n 3,5 miljoen jaar geleden werd gevormd bij de samenvloeiing van een Mars-rivier en een meer. Hier analyseert hij nu sedimentaire gesteenten. “De delta, met zijn diverse sedimentaire gesteenten, contrasteert prachtig met de stollingsgesteenten die al eerder op de kraterbodem zijn gevonden,” zegt Farley. “Het levert ons een gevarieerde reeks monsters op, die samen meer inzicht zullen verschaffen in de geologische geschiedenis nadat de krater werd gevormd.”
Twaalf monsters Wetenschappers keken erg uit naar het moment waarop Perseverance de delta aan een nadere inspectie zou onderwerpen. Zo vermoedden ze dat de kans reëel is dat hier bewijs van oud microbieel leven te vinden zou zijn. Het Wildcat Ridge-monster laat nu zien dat die kans inderdaad bestaat. Het monster is dan ook een belangrijke aanvulling op de toch al indrukwekkende collectie van Perseverance. Ondertussen heeft de rover al vier monsters in de oude rivierdelta verzameld. Ook heeft de rover al eerder rotsmonsters en één atmosferisch monster verzameld. Dit brengt het totaal aantal wetenschappelijk veelbelovende monsters op twaalf.
Uiteindelijk hopen de onderzoekers alle meegebrachte monsterbuisjes – maar liefst 42 in totaal – te vullen met interessante monsters van Mars. Door deze vervolgens naar de aarde terug te sturen, hopen wetenschappers een aantal prangende wetenschappelijke vragen te beantwoorden – waaronder natuurlijk die ene hoofdvraag: heeft er ooit leven op Mars bestaan? “Over slechts enkele jaren zullen de monsters op aarde arriveren, zodat wetenschappers ze tot in de kleinste details kunnen bestuderen,” zegt onderzoeker Laurie Leshin. “Dit is werkelijk fantastisch. We zullen zoveel leren.”
Meer weten… …over de toekomstige Mars Sample Return-missie, waarin de door Perseverance verzamelde Marsmonsters op aarde zullen worden afgeleverd? Lees dan ook dit eerder verschenen artikel op Scientias.nl!
Researchers have mounted 3D printers onto drones with the aim of creating swarms of robots that could 3D print entire buildings.
The aerial vehicles were specially designed to be able to deposit a cement-like material with enough precision to build tall structures. Groups of them together could do the job even faster.
The idea is that 3D printed shelters could be greener than standard construction methods, and drones could be useful in reaching difficult to access areas.
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Hubble Unveils an Astronomical Explosion
Hubble Unveils an Astronomical Explosion
A shroud of thick gas and dust surrounds a bright young star in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 inspected a young stellar object, over 9,000 light-years away in the constellation Taurus, to help astronomers understand the earliest stages in the lives of massive stars. This object – which is known to astronomers as IRAS 05506+2414 – may be an example of an explosive event caused by the disruption of a massive young star system.
The swirling discs of material surrounding a young star are usually funneled into twin outflows of gas and dust from the star. In the case of IRAS 05506+2414, however, a fan-like spray of material traveling at velocities of up to 217 miles per second (350 km per second) is spreading outwards from the center of this image.
Astronomers turned to Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to measure the distance to IRAS 05506+2414. While it is possible to measure the velocity of material speeding outward from the star, astronomers cannot tell how far from Earth the star actually is from a single observation. To determine the star’s distance, they measured how far the outflow travels between successive images. From there they could infer the distance to IRAS 05506+2414. Knowing its distance allows astronomers to determine how bright the star is and how much energy it is emitting, and therefore estimate its mass – all vital information in determining the origin of this bright young star’s unusual outflow.
This Wireless Camera Taps Into Sound Waves to Reveal Deep-Sea Secrets
This Wireless Camera Taps Into Sound Waves to Reveal Deep-Sea Secrets
MIT scientists want to map the entire ocean so we can understand how climate change is forcing it to evolve.
Monisha Ravisetti
This battery-free, underwater device can harness sound waves to capture images of our ocean's deepest, darkest secrets.
Adam Glanzman
MIT scientists presented their prototype of a fascinating underwater camera on Monday. Rather than rely on battery power, this device gets juice from sound waves traveling through the ocean for its deep-sea image escapades. It even works in the darkest of environments.
Then it has the ability to wirelessly transmit all that photo data goodness back through the water to be reconstructed on a computer.
This means that if the model can be scaled up, it could spring humanity a few steps forward on the journey to achieving a massive goal: mapping every corner of Earth's oceans.
Though our beautiful planet's surface consists of a whopping 70% water (reminder, this doesn't account for depth) the research team estimates we've only ever observed less than 5% of the sea. And one reason, they say, for such lack of knowledge is viable underwater cameras are really hard to build due to battery restrictions.
Simply, a workable imager within the sea can't travel too far out from a ship without running out of power. It's also expensive to make a super long-lasting battery, and not time efficient to have to restart an expedition every time the camera at hand must be retrieved and recharged. Thus, the newly proposed sound wave-energized camera holds potential to be a game changer for deep-sea explorers.
According to an outline of the invention, published in the journal Nature Communications, the device can run for weeks on end before someone has to pick it up, allowing it to venture far out into the sea in just one go. It's also about 100,000 times more energy-efficient than other undersea cameras, the team said.
"One of the most exciting applications of this camera, for me personally, is in the context of climate monitoring," Fadel Adib, associate professor in MIT's department of electrical engineering and computer science, said in a statement. "We are building climate models, but we are missing data from over 95 percent of the ocean. This technology could help us build more accurate climate models and better understand how climate change impacts the underwater world."
As proof of principle, the research crew tested their mechanism to create color images of plastic bottles floating in a New Hampshire pond. They also captured images of an African starfish in such high resolution that you can see the tiny tubercles along its arms. Overall, it appears to be a solid pathway toward solving the underwater battery conundrum.
But perhaps even more exciting than the long-term implications of the team's camera is the absolutely remarkable way it works.
Turning sound waves into views
Basically, the team explained, this sound wave-powered camera takes advantage of noise that's already present under the sea. Passing ships, marine life, tides and other such things create sound. But what is sound, exactly?
Sound isn't an intangible force of some sort. Rather, it's the product of waves traveling through a medium and vibrating that medium on a super (super) minute scale. The medium could be air, water -- anything with atoms, really. When air vibrations hit our eardrums, for example, our brain translates the signal into what we consider sound. That's also why stuff sounds warped to us when we're underwater. Nothing is truly "warped," per se. Soundwaves just vibrate water molecules differently.
OK, so the important bit about this mechanism, for the team's new camera, are those vibrations.
The small device is encased in a special material that produces an electric signal every time it's hit by sound waves vibrating through the water. Those vibrations, in essence, vibrate it as well. Then, the vibrations are converted from mechanical energy into electrical energy, and there you have it -- a steadily powered underwater camera.
Further, to keep hardware light -- so the camera doesn't eat away at its power – the team used off-the-shelf imaging sensors and cheap flash instruments that can only capture images in grayscale. From there, they used sort of an old-fashioned way of obtaining a full-color image.
"When we were kids in art class, we were taught that we could make all colors using three basic colors. The same rules follow for color images we see on our computers. We just need red, green and blue -- these three channels -- to construct color images," Waleed Akbar, MIT researcher and co-author of the study, said in a statement.
First, the camera captures the image with a specifically tailored red LED light filter, then again with a blue filter and again with a green one. Put together, you get the full pic. Finally, all the image data is encoded in computer language, aka ones and zeros, and here's the kicker.
It's sent to a receiver back as soundwaves.
The camera receiver basically transmits its own sound waves to the camera, then the camera can either reflect the waves back or absorb them fully. Altogether, this creates a sort of binary code to tell the receiver what the image data really is.
"This whole process, since it just requires a single switch to convert the device from a nonreflective state to a reflective state, consumes five orders of magnitude less power than typical underwater communications systems," MIT researcher Sayed Saad Afzal said in a statement.
As of now, however, the camera only possesses a maximum transmission range of 40 meters from the receiver. But the team said it wants to increase both that range and the device's memory capacity going forward.
Eventually, they said, it could potentially capture real-time photos and perhaps even stream underwater secrets right to a computer.
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Mysterious Cases of Living Fossils, Suspended Animation, and Hibernation
Mysterious Cases of Living Fossils, Suspended Animation, and Hibernation
We all know that fossils, by their very nature, are dead. Of course, nothing can survive the conditions of pressure, depth and time required to petrify wood, see saplings mature into massive trees, transmogrify vegetation into coal or metamorphose mud into solid rock. Still, living creatures seemingly from remotest antiquity keep turning up encased in stone from far beneath Earth's surface, embedded inside solid tree trunks and in other situations defying both reason and the gospel of the Great God Science.
Living Fossils Story #1: Ancient Wormhole Mine
One such case occurred April 22, 1881, when miner Joe Molino was working deep in the Wide West Mine outside Ruby Hill, Nevada. When he wedged loose a protruding hunk of stone from the tunnel wall it landed on his foot. Enraged, he grabbed a sledgehammer and smashed it to bits. Molino was stunned to see his hammer blow had exposed a baseball-sized cavity in the rock. It was half full of motionless white worms.
As a crowd of quizzical miners gathered to view the unusual artifacts the worms began to move. Within an hour they were crawling around on the floor of the tunnel.
Mine operators sent the worms (whose species apparently was never determined) and their solid stone sarcophagus to the U.S. Bureau of Mines. Several weeks later the bureau sent the mine operators a letter declaring they must have been mistaken. Since it clearly is impossible for creatures to have survived under the circumstances described, as far as the bureau was concerned there was no way the incident could have happened.
In 1892 an ore nugget found in an Arizona mine was found to contain a dead beetle from which emerged a live beetle: is that a living fossil or what?
Yet more scientific mystery was brewing in the American West when, sometime in 1892, a large beetle was found encased in a chunk of iron ore in the Longfellow Mine outside Clifton, Arizona. The ore nugget and its dead inhabitant were turned over to El Paso geologist Z. T. White, who placed the insect in a specimen case. Several days later he was shocked to see the creature move. Watching through a magnifying glass White saw a small beetle emerge from the body of the larger, dead one. He placed the small beetle in a jar where it lived for several months. When it died, he presented it, the larger beetle and the lump of ore to the Smithsonian Institution , where they may remain to this day.
Living Fossils Story #3: A Load of Bullfrog
Since the vast majority of fossils are buried, it is predictable that mines are the main source of mysterious zoological artifacts. In 1873, miners at the Black Diamond Coal Mine outside San Francisco found a large frog encased in limestone.
This common (but venerable) bullfrog was apparently blind, and able to slowly move just one leg. After several hours on the surface, it died. The frog and its entombing stone were given to the San Francisco Academy of Sciences, where its survival of what would seem an impossible stretch of time continues to defy understanding.
Yet not all living fossils are found in stone or ore.
Once in 1893 in Ontario, Canada a live toad emerged from deep inside a tree trunk!
In October 1893 workmen at the Brown and Hall Sawmill in Ontario, Canada were using a circular saw to cut a large tree trunk into planks when the blade sliced through a cavity containing (and almost cut in two) a live toad imprisoned squarely in the middle of the tree trunk. The tree was about 200 years old, and the spherical, perfectly smooth hole in which the amphibian was entombed was about 60 feet (18 meters) above the ground. The toad tumbled from its wooden prison and hopped away, seemingly none the worse for its long confinement.
Another report of a live toad in a hole comes from England. In 1829 huge granite blocks that had formed a submerged footing under the docks of Liverpool's George's Basin were being cut into small chunks to be made into steps. During one of the cuts, the stone saw revealed a little hole in the middle of a block, and a toad within it.
Workers gently enlarged the hole to free its occupant, and the amphibian made several futile attempts to get to its feet. Several hours later, after trying one last time to assume its normal crouching position, the toad sank to the pavement and died. Several scientists who later examined the small corpse confessed they were at a loss to explain how the animal could have been found alive under such airless, foodless and waterless conditions. One of these learned men took the dead animal home with him, and it was never seen again. It was not the first or last impossible fossil yielded by Britain.
Living Fossils Story #5: Newt News
In 1818 professional geologist Dr. E.D. Clark, who taught at Caius College in Cambridge, Scotland, was present at the digging of a pit on a friend's property when the workmen hit a layer of animated fossils. As one of the workers was breaking up a large chunk of chalk stone into smaller pieces so they could be removed from the hole he found three newts embedded in the rock. Clarke placed them in the bright sunlight and was stupefied when they began to move. Two of them died later in the day, and for years he exhibited them to his students during his lectures on prehistory. He placed the third newt in a nearby brook, and it "skipped and twisted about as though it had never been torpid," and escaped, he later said. Clarke was never able to identify the species to which the newts belonged.
Upon Clarke's retirement he donated the preserved newts to the university's biology department, where, for decades, other professors displayed them during lectures. During the chaos of the 1940 Nazi bombing blitz these pickled specimens turned up missing. Unless they were blown to atoms by a Luftwaffe bomb, they may remain somewhere within Cambridge University, forgotten and still unexplained.
This is a fossil of a flying dinosaur, a Pterodactylus antiquus, and a close cousin of this species was apparently still alive in France in the 1850s according to newspaper reports at the time.
The most incredible find of a living fossil is that reported by the Illustrated London Times of February 9, 1856. The incident occurred in France during the construction of a railway tunnel between the towns of Nancy and St. Dizier. According to the article, workers were breaking up a huge boulder when a goose-sized monster staggered from a freshly exposed cavity and screeched hoarsely before falling dead. It had a long beak, sharp teeth, four legs joined by membranes, and feet with long hooked talons. Its flesh was oily and glossy black.
The mysterious carcass was taken to a paleontologist who instantly recognized the animal as a Pterodactylus anas, a denizen of the Jurassic Period , which ended 135 million years ago. There is no record of whether the body was preserved and still exists.
Possibilities
Certain animals' ability to live long stretches without sustenance is possible via hibernation to escape the lean, hostile conditions of winter. Because their metabolisms are conditioned to arouse them upon the advent of the warmth and renewed food supplies of springtime, they are seldom in suspended animation for more than four or five months. What might happen if spring never arrived? What if their hibernation dens were to be buried by glaciers and/or metamorphose into rock?
Southern Methodist University professor of biology Dr. John Ubelaker, Ph.D. points out that many organisms possess the ability to lower their metabolisms, and that this function is often triggered by environmental conditions. This permits survival through difficult times.
"This is a common phenomenon among many free-living nematodes that have the ability to form a resting stage--dauer larvae--in order to survive a stressful situation," he says. "In these nematodes the ability to control water and water loss is critical, and several metabolic-biochemical processes operate."
Nematodes that have come to life are perhaps the most incredible living fossils. A colorized electron micrograph of a soybean cyst nematode and egg.
In his 1863 book History of the Supernatural noted British author and scientist William Hewitt recounted a midsummer incident he had personally witnessed several years earlier in which workmen in Nottinghamshire, England were digging a ditch and unearthed what he called "a regular stratum of frogs." The creatures were not only alive, but so animated they all hopped away.
He described the layer of mud that had held the frogs as "stiff as butter," and based on the time of year and his examination of the ground where they were buried, he estimated they had been there at least six months. As he asked his readers, "If these frogs could live six months in this nearly solid casing of viscous mud, why not six or any number of years?"
Ubelaker expands upon this premise:
"An interesting fact of life is that an organism's structure and composition can remain virtually the same even though it continuously takes in nutrients and produces wastes. Often defined as a dynamic equilibrium, life allows concentrations of the mixture of the materials in an organism to remain constant even though individual molecules are constantly shifting back and forth, increasing or decreasing in a short time scale," he says."Remember that an organism at equilibrium is dead. A common classroom comparison is often made with a river and the steady state condition of organisms--the river maintains the same level and shape even though water is constantly flowing through it. Rivers rise and change course, drop to low levels depending on the available water, but at any one point it (and its concentration of materials) remains quite constant. In organisms the structure, proteins, nucleic acid, lipids stay relatively constant even though no one molecule remains in any pool for long."
The erratic and odd sides of the natural world remind us of how much we still have to learn about Mother Earth and the processes that govern her and her multitude of children. There are doubtless many more living relics of the primordial past awaiting exhumation. When they do come to light, they should be studied meticulously in order to ascertain how they survived such extremes of time, temperature and deprivation. The possibility of harmlessly subjecting human beings to suspended animation could solve problems of surviving extended space travel, awaiting the return of loved ones from the stars, outlasting terminal illnesses until cures are discovered, or simply staying alive long enough to meet one's great-great-great-grandchildren. Before we can even start on such grand aspirations, however, we must admit this potentially priceless process exists.
Top image: Frog brooch of amber and bronze on a rock, representative of living fossils.
A radar on Zhurong can penetrate the surface to a depth of 100 metres.
Credit: Xinhua/Shutterstock
China’s Zhurong rover has peered deep under the surface of Mars, finding evidence of two major floods that probably shaped the region the robot has been exploring since it landed in May 2021.
An analysis published in Nature today1 is the first result from Zhurong’s radar imager, which can probe up to 100 metres below the surface. “It is a very interesting paper, and I was particularly impressed by how deep they can see with this radar,” says Svein-Erik Hamran, a planetary scientist at the University of Oslo, who analysed the only previous data from ground-penetrating radar used on the planet, collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover.
The history of Zhurong’s landing site — on Utopia Planitia, vast plains in Mars’s northern hemisphere — has puzzled scientists. Some have theorized that water or ice was once a feature of the landscape. Observations from space have identified sedimentary deposits that suggest the region was once an ancient ocean or submerged by huge floods, and geological features, such as pitted cones, resemble structures formed by water or ice. In May, researchers analysed infrared images of the landing site taken by China’s Mars orbiter, Tianwen-1, and found hydrated minerals that could have formed when groundwater rose through the rock or ice melted.
But the region could have also been covered in lava, concealing some of these hydrological processes in the subsurface. Eruptions from the volcano Elysium Mons to the east of the landing site, or other volcanic activity, could have covered the region in magma, as has been observed in other parts of the Utopia basin. By studying the radar data, researchers hope to understand what happened, and whether water or ice could still be lurking below the rocks. “We want to know what is going on beneath the surface,” says study co-author Liu Yang, a planetary scientist at the National Space Science Center in Beijing.
Below the surface
Zhurong is China’s first rover on the red planet, and it has been exploring the southern part of Utopia Planitia. The rover’s ground-penetrating radar transmits high-frequency radio waves that can penetrate the surface to a depth of between 3 and 10 metres, and low-frequency waves that can reach up to 100 metres underground but offer poorer resolution. The study authors analysed low-frequency data taken between 25 May and 6 September over more than 1,100 metres of terrain as Zhurong travelled south of its landing site. Radar signals reflect off materials under the surface, revealing the size of their grains and their ability to hold an electric charge. Stronger signals typically indicate larger objects.
The radar did not find any evidence of liquid water down to 80 metres, but it did detect two horizontal layers with interesting patterns. In a layer between 10 and 30 metres deep, the team reports, the reflection signals strengthened with increasing depth. The researchers say this is probably due to larger boulders resting at the base of the layer, and smaller rocks settling on top. An older, thicker layer between 30 and 80 metres down showed a similar pattern.
The older layer is probably the result of rapid flooding that carried sediments to the region more than three billion years ago, when there was a lot of water activity on Mars, says co-author Chen Ling, a seismologist at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing.
The upper layer could have been created by another flood some 1.6 billion years ago, when there was lots of glacial activity. Chen says it is unlikely that the upper layer contains intact lava flows, because it has a smaller ability to hold an electric charge than would be expected for intact volcanic rocks. Furthermore, the researchers didn’t see any sudden changes in layering, which would be expected when lava flows meet sedimentary material.
The Jezero crater is a paleolake on Mars. Its outlet canyon, carved by overflow flooding, can be seen in the upper right side of the crater.
(Credit: NASA/Tim Goudge)
Volcanic or sedimentary?
But, Chen says, it is possible that a thin coat of lava once covered the upper layer and it has gradually been broken down into smaller pieces. Radar data alone cannot definitively reveal whether material is sedimentary or volcanic, says Xu Yi, a planetary scientist at Macau University of Science and Technology.
Radar data are good at indicating the layering and geometry of subsurface material, but not so good at pinpointing its composition, including whether the material is ice or rock, says Hamran. Often, researchers rely on other clues, such as rocks peering out from the surface, to build a picture of past events, he says. The authors say they can’t rule out the possibility that the region contains buried saline ice.
More radar results are expected from the mission, including data taken during Zhurong’s continued traverse of Mars, results from the high-frequency radar measurements already made, and Tianwen-1’s orbital radar observations, which penetrate deep into the planet. They could help to clarify details of the terrain. “This is only the first step,” say Ling.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03056-1
References
Li, C. et al.Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05147-5 (2022).
Many ancient texts and Internet stories claim that humanity is the result of genetic mutation done to prehistoric humans by intelligent beings from outer space. Sitchin, who posed a great impact on the ancient astronaut theories, believed that an advanced race of intelligent beings arrived on Earth 450,000 years ago during the Age of Neanderthals, and through genetic engineering, they created modern-day human beings. Moreover, another theory that might support Sitchin’s claims is the mystery of Rh-negative blood which links humans to otherworldly origins.
“If mankind evolved from the same African ancestor then everyone’s blood would be compatible, but it is not. Where did the Rh- negatives come from? Why does the body of an Rh-negative mother carrying an Rh-positive child try to reject her own offspring? Humanity isn’t one race, but a hybrid species,” –Species with Amnesia: Our Forgottenby Robert Sepehr.
Species with Amnesia: Our Forgotten History
The population with the highest concentration of Rh-negative blood type is located between the border of Spain and France in the Pyrenees mountain range. The people that occupy this isolated region are known as the Basque, and they have long confounded anthropologists and historians. The language spoken by the portion of the territory is not related to any other in that part of the world. Up to 35% of Basque people have an Rh-negative blood type that is least likely to mutate or interact with other blood types.
There are 8 most common blood types (A+, A-, B+, B-, O+, O-, AB+, AB-); a classification derived from proteins found on the surface of cells which are basically designed to wage war against bacteria and viruses in the human body. Around 85% of humans in the world are Rh-positive and have no issues receiving blood from positive or negative donors.
Whether Rh-negative blood is just a mutation or not is something that has caused debate among researchers. If it was a mutation, then why are the people who possess Rh-negative blood known for having extra vertebrae? This, just as the blood type, is explained scientifically as being a mutation. However, according to modern DNA sequencing, it is demonstrated that humanity is not just one single race that descended from the same ancestor in Africa, but a hybridized species, with a far more enigmatic truth behind it all.
The fact is if the mother is Rh-negative, her immune system treats Rh-positive fetal cells as if they were a foreign substance. The mother’s body makes antibodies against the fetal blood cells. These antibodies may cross back through the placenta into the developing baby. They destroy the baby’s circulating red blood cells. It suggests somewhere in our lineage that the Rh negatives and the Rh positives are perceived as being profoundly different.
Rh-negative is very rare. It was not spread across the world until colonization started in the 15th century. Rh-negative didn’t exist in the Americas, Southern Africa and Asia. It was only in Europe. According to scientists, modern humans arose in Africa at least 250,000 to 300,000 years ago. They are all Rh-positive. They do not have any Rh-negative, so from where did it evolve?
Robert Sepehr tells in his book “Species with Amnesia: Our Forbidden History” more about the enigmatic blood type Rh-negative. The author suggests that highly advanced civilizations had been on Earth before us, just to be destroyed by some great global catastrophe as mysteriously, history tells us.
Could the Rh-negative blood type offer evidence of a vastly different pre-human evolution than what we are led to believe in our history books? Might it offer indisputable proof of extraterrestrial intervention in the remote past? But if so, is the experimentation with intelligent hominid over, or is it still taking place?
Ancient Origins writes:“Indeed, it is amidst the Basque of France and Spain that we find an odd prevalence of one human blood type known as Rh-negative. The use of Rh here denotes “Rhesus,” as the origins of the blood type were labeled after a common factor shared between humans and the Rhesus monkey; today, the Rh blood group system is one of thirty of the existing current blood group systems recognized by science, of which close to eighty-five percent of humans have. 8 The most common manifestation of the Rhesus blood factor in humans is known as Rh-positive blood. By studying the common factors present between blood types of, for instance, humans and the Rhesus monkey, it becomes clear in terms of the genetic information present here that at some point in our ancient past, humans must have shared a common ancestor with this species of Old World monkeys.”
Sepehr argues that “highly advanced civilizations have been here before us, just to be destroyed by some great global catastrophe. But for each race that has died out, another has taken its place, with a selected few holding on to the memories and sacred knowledge of the past race. In our vanity, we think we have discovered some of the great truths of science and technology, but we are in fact only just beginning to rediscover the profound wisdom of past civilizations. In many ways, we are like an awakening Species with Amnesia, yearning to reclaim our forgotten past.”
Many believe that Rh-negative blood would be the legacy that the Anunnaki left on Earth among other things.
LAUREL, Md. — For the first time in history, a spacecraft from Earth has crashed into an asteroid to test a way to save our planet from extinction.
The spacecraft, NASA's Double Asteroid Rendezvous Test (DART) probe, slammed into a small asteroid 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth tonight (Sept. 26) in what the U.S. space agency has billed as the world's first planetary defense test. The goal: to change the orbit of the space rock — called Dimorphos — around its larger asteroid parent Didymos enough to prove humanity could deflect a dangerous asteroid if one was headed for Earth.
"As far as we can tell, our first planetary defense test was a success," said Elena Adams, DART's mission systems engineer here at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), after the successful crash. "I think Earthlings should sleep better. Definitely, I will."
That's something the dinosaurs couldn't do 65 million years ago, when the massive Chicxulub asteroid slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula and led to their extinction.
"The dinosaurs didn't have a space program to help them, but we do," Katherine Calvin, NASA's chief scientist and senior climate advisor, said before the crash. "So DART represents important progress in understanding potential hazards in the future and how to protect our planet from potential impacts."
The golf cart-sized DART spacecraft slammed into Dimorphos at 7:14 p.m. EDT (2314 GMT) while flying at a whopping 14,000 mph (22,500 kph). The spacecraft wasn't large as probes go, but NASA hoped that its 1,320 pounds (600 kilograms) would be enough to move the 534-foot-wide (163 meters) Dimorphos a bit faster in its orbit around its parent.
"The spacecraft is very small," said planetary scientist Nancy Chabot, DART coordination lead at JHUAPL, which oversees the mission for NASA, before the impact. "Sometimes, we describe it as running a golf cart into the Great Pyramid."
Despite the on-target crash, there was a mix of calm and anticipation at DART's mission control center at JHUAPL as the spacecraft sped towards its destruction. Nothing went wrong during the crash, so engineers didn't have to try one of the 21 different contingency plans they had in their hip pocket.
Much of DART's last four hours were automated, with the spacecraft's navigation system locking on to Dimorphos in the final hour of its approach. DART's main camera beamed a photo to Earth every second until the feed went black as the spacecraft crashed into the asteroid.
"It's nerve-wracking," Andy Cheng, chief scientist for planetary defense at JHUAPL, said of the final days before the crash. He came up with the DART mission's concept in 2011. The $313 million DART mission launched on Nov. 23, 2021.
As DART closed in on Dimorphos, the asteroid transformed from a mysterious bright dot into a detailed landscape of boulders, crags and shadowed terrain. Then, right on time, the live feed from DART went black and flight controllers inside DART's mission operations center jumped for joy and traded hugs and high fives in a triumphant celebration. DART hit its asteroid bull's-eye.
Did humanity's first planetary defense test succeed?
Other spacecraft also watched the crash.
NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Lucy spacecraft on its own asteroid mission all tracked the crash from their respective vantage points across the solar system. On Earth, a vast network of ground-based telescopes were trained on the event and will be following the binary Didymos-Dimorphos system over time to see how much faster Dimorphos is now moving in its orbit.
"Our requirements are for 73 seconds but we actually think we're going to change by about 10 minutes," Statler said.
It will take time to know if the DART impact was successful as a planetary defense test.
More than three dozen telescopes around the world, including at least one on every continent, will be tracking the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system over the next six months to understand exactly how effective the test was. The first radar observations of the impact could come as early as Tuesday (Sept. 27), said Cristina Thomas, a planetary scientist with Northern Arizona University who leads the DART observations working group.
"We're going to be observing Didymos until it's no longer observable," Thomas said. DART mission scientists added that they should know definitively how much DART moved Dimorphos in the next two months.
The observation campaign has brought in volunteer student and university groups around the world, each hoping to add their observations to the DART effort.
I was looking over a recent Gigapan photo taken by the mars rover when I noticed a sculpture in a hillside, then below it, I noticed a human-like figure gripping a shield or staff. The figure clearly looks like it a real living and breathing person, but they died there in that place, in that position and were fossilized somehow. Maybe its a shield from the side and they were holding it up to shield them from something coming. Now understand that we humans have two strands of DNA the intertwine...if aliens had say...6 or more strands of DNA intertwined, the skin, bones would have 600% resistance from breaking down in the environment after death compared to our own. Hey please check out the HD video I made below and hear my explanation more deeply.
In this recent email report, a glowing sphere is seen in the sky which changes its color and its shape from sphere to diamond in a blink of an eye. The object is huge, much to big to be a star or planet and the flashes seem to be its only form of communication to those watching. If you can decipher the color pattern, you will also decipher a message they were sending to those watching. I would guess such a message would be short and to the point, like...we come in peace, or...greetings universal friends.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
At 0600 I went outside in my backyard to bring the dogs out to go to the bathroom. While walking them around the yard I noticed an odd looking light to the east. I was at [gps location redacted] and it wasn’t exactly 266 degrees West. It took awhile for my eyes to focus on the source to make it out, but it appeared triangular with flashing lights. It was hovering. I took a quick video in case it disappeared while I went inside to get my wife and kids to witness the event. All 3 said the object was abnormal. I have worked for the airlines as a mechanic for over 20 years and was also in the Air Force for 4 years so can say this was unconventional to anything I have witnessed. After about 15 minutes we all went inside as it was getting close to dawn. I decided to go down and quick get my telescope to see if I could get a closer look at it. By the time I got back outside the object was gone. The video I took from my camera seemed distorted, like it was interfered with and blurry. You could see it much better in person.
The DART Mission, Will This Save All Life On Earth?
The DART Mission, Will This Save All Life On Earth?
This could be history in the making and joining me tonight will be my space science guy Dan from smAshomAsh so come and be apart of this event with us. Hope to see you here, stay blessed and safe...
Eridu: The Sumerian Garden of Eden and the Oldest City in the World?
Eridu: The Sumerian Garden of Eden and the Oldest City in the World?
Today, Eridu is often considered to be one of the oldest permanent settlements in Mesopotamia, and perhaps even in the world. The ancient Sumerians also believed that Eridu was the first city in the world and they documented that belief in the Sumerian King List and the Eridu Genesis . At least 18 layers of settlement are found at the site, could the ancient Sumerian belief be possible?
Archaeological evidence shows that the earliest structures date to the 6th millennium BC. The city reached its zenith during the 4th millennium BC and continued to be inhabited until around the 7th century BC. By then, however, the city had lost its importance.
Some of the baked bricks used in the construction of the Sumerian ziggurat at Eridu, southwest of Nasiriyah, Iraq, are stamped with the name of King Ur-Nammu (2123-2106 BC).
Eridu (known today as Tell Abu Shahrain) is located about 20 km (12.5 miles) to the southwest of the famous city of Ur. As its modern name indicates, the archaeological site is a tell, which is a huge mound formed over the millennia as a result of new settlements being built over the ruins of the previous ones. The tell rises to a height to 7 meters (23 feet), and is formed by 18 levels of occupation, according to the archaeological excavations. The bulk of this has been dated to the Ubaid and Uruk periods, which lasted from the 6th to 4th millennia BC.
The ancient Sumerians themselves made mention of Eridu’s antiquity. In the Sumerian King List , for example, it is written that “After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridug.” In addition, in the creation myth known as the Eridu Genesis , it is said to have been one of the five cities that existed before the Deluge, the others being Bad-Tibira, Larak, Sippar, and Suruppak.
The God of Eridu Temple
The patron god of Eridu was Enki (known also in Akkadian as Ea), the god of water. According to Sumerian mythology, the settlement was founded by Enki, and it was from this city that civilization was spread to other parts of the land. Although Enki was initially a local god, he rose in importance as the city grew in influence, resulting in him being incorporated into the pantheon of other cities as well. In Eridu, Enki’s temple is known as E-Abzu (Abzu may be translated as ‘Deep Ocean’, and refers to the underground spring from which all life is believed to have begun).
Rough map of the Eridu mound showing the main ziggurat, temple, and a few buildings.
Archaeological excavations of the E-Abzu have revealed that the temple began as a small room containing what has been referred to by scholars as a ‘cult niche’ and an ‘offering table’. Over the millennia, however, the inhabitants built new temples over the ruins of the old ones, each bigger than the last. The E-Abzu eventually became a large ziggurat, an apt reflection of Enki’s status as a major deity. It has been proposed that the E-Abzu may have been the largest of the ancient Mesopotamian ziggurats.
Economic Activities
Although the E-Abzu is the focal point of the site’s archaeology, there are either elements of interest. More recent excavations, for instance, have revealed that during the Ubaid period, the city was a pottery production center. This is evident in the pottery works, which had large scatterings of pottery fragments and kiln waste. Additionally, remains of fishing nets, weights, and even models of reed boats have been found at the site, suggesting that fishing was a major economic activity carried out by the inhabitants.
There are nine lines of cuneiform inscriptions on this fired clay brick; stamp of the king Amar-Sin (Amar-Suen, previously misread as Bur-Sin), king of Ur. 2100-2000 BC. From Eridu (modern-day Tell Abu Shahrain), southern Mesopotamia, Iraq. It is currently housed in the British Museum in London.
(Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg)/ CC BY SA 4.0 )
Eridu was the dominant city in southern Mesopotamia during the Ubaid period, but it was eventually superseded by Uruk. Nevertheless, it continued to be revered as the first city, and it retained its religious significance thanks to the E-Abzu.
It has been suggested that ecological changes, i.e. the recession of the gulf coast and the increasingly unreliable water table, were responsible for the decline of Eridu around the end of the 3rd millennium BC. The city continued to be inhabited up until around the 7th century BC, although by then it had become a mere shadow of its former glory.
In 2016, Eridu was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as part of the ‘Ahwar of Southern Iraq: Refuge of Biodiversity and the Relict Landscape of the Mesopotamian Cities’.
Top image: Re-creation of the port at Eridu. Source: Public Domain
For a long time, UFOs have been known to be Aerial phenomena that moves only in one medium, but then the report of objects diving into the water and coming out hit the media. Now, many experts including the Pentagon consider UFOs as “transmedium objects.” For example, an object could be considered “transmedium” if it could fly through Earth’s atmosphere in addition to another environment, such as space or underwater. There are more than dozens of incidents reported by the Navy personnel that justify the UFO maneuvers underwater with enormous speed. Those who have served years in the Naval force experienced something whose origins are still not understood.
1966, USS Tiru (SS-416) Encounters UFO
In 1966, a mysterious series of events occurred with the US Navy submarine USS Tiru SS-416. The submarine left Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and was bound for Seattle, Washington, where it was scheduled to stay in the repair dock for several days, after which it was supposed to take part in torpedo exercises. On the way to Seattle, one of the crew members reported something strange in the sky at a distance of about 2 miles, and he asked other sailors to check it, but at that moment, the boat’s radar station also recorded anomalous contact. One of the eyewitnesses, a crew member named Jim Speiser recounted what had happened: (Source)
“The lookout refused to tell the OOD (officer of the deck) what it was that he had seen and instead insisted that the starboard lookout and the OOD both look at that area. The three men looked through their binoculars toward the area reported and were astounded to see a metal craft larger than a football field tumble from the clouds into the ocean. It actually tumbled end over end and when it hit the water and sank beneath the ocean huge geysers of water rose into the air.
When the port lookout was sure that the others had seen it he then told the OOD that he had seen it tumble from the ocean up into the clouds. The OOD and the starboard lookout were speechless. Within a few minutes, however, they all became excited when it again rose from the water and tumbled up into the cloud layer. At about the same time a crew member below queried the bridge about a radar contact at the same range and bearing. Sonar also reported strange echos.
The OOD called for the Captain to come to the bridge at that time. At about the same time the object emerged from the clouds and fell down into the ocean. All five men witnessed this. The QMC (Quartermaster Clerk) took pictures as it rose up into the clouds and then back down into the ocean once again.
The five men watched for quite a while longer but nothing else happened. Soon the sub had moved out of visual range and the Captain told all witnesses that they were never to discuss what they had seen with anyone under any circumstances. He stated that the incident was classified information.
The Captain then went below and sent a radio msg. There was no doubt as to what we had seen. It was a metal craft with machinery on and around the outside of it. It appeared to have windows or lenses placed around its perimeter. It made no noise that we could hear. It did not disturb the sub’s electrical systems nor did it affect the gyro compass. It looked very much like a round flying “ship” as in sea going ship. It had the shape and form of a saucer with a bowl inverted in the saucer and it was huge. I will never forget it as long as I live.”
1991, USS Kirk FF108 UFO Encounter
Another similar incident took place in 1991 off the west coast of South America. The witness stated that at that time, he was a Chief of Operations and Intelligence serving aboard the Knox-class escort destroyer USS Kirk FF1087 and that they were part of a drug interdiction force consisting of the USS Kirk and three other Navy ships. Their main task was to patrol using a network of radars to track and then intercept drug planes flying out of Colombia, Panama and Guatemala, as well as to seize any smuggling ships that they could find. (Source)
USS Kirk (FF-1087). Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
The witness said that his primary position was at the CIC Combat Information Center, which he and 22 other specialists maintained 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, rotating in two shifts of 11 people.
At 2 a.m. on December 16, he was on duty at CIC. The night was calm and nothing unusual happened. He said he used the break to go up to the bridge. At this time, the entire ship was in a status called “darkened ship,” when all external lights were turned off, as well as on the bridge, that is, everything around was dimly lit only by instrument panels. His friend was on deck duty that night, and they chatted when they had some free time. And suddenly, everything around was lit up in red color:
“All of a sudden and out of nowhere, like a huge flash from a camera, emanating from the starboard bow sea level upward was a huge flash of red glowing light, which lit up our entire ship. It only lit up our ship, not the surrounding ocean, just our ship. It happened so fast, that the OOD, the navigator and I were speechless for about 5 seconds, at which time I looked at the OOD and asked him if he just saw that light. He stated yes in a sullen voice.
I then asked the navigator and he replied yes. I then took the navigator’s sound powered headset, and asked the forward and aft look outs, if they had just seen the same red flash, to which the forward look out stated, “YES! WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?”
After lookout said yes as well. I then immediately contacted CIC, and asked the CIC officer if we had any aircraft or surface ships in our vicinity, to which he replied clear as a whistle. I asked if we had any submarine activity in the area, to which he replied, no. At this point I looked at the OOD and asked him if we should wake up the captain or as we would call him, The Old Man. The OOD sat there stunned for a minute, as did I and everyone else.
What had just happened did not make any sense. The flash emanated from the sea, directly off of our starboard bow (like it was touching our bow), and ascended upwardly so rapidly, creating the effect of the bright red flash. The other weird aspect of this event was that only our ship was lit up within the red flash, not the surrounding sea, but our vessel only. The OOD elected not to wake the captain, and the entire incident was logged in our ship’s log as an unexplained phenomenon.
Up until this event, I did not believe in UFOss or USOss. I have no doubt that our ship, steaming along at 12 knots, came right up on a submerged unidentifiable aircraft. I don’t think the aircraft or USO had any idea we were sailing up to them. I think whatever it was, took off in a very unplanned and fast manner, and wanted to quickly identify us, thus the flash.”
In the end, after much deliberation, they decided not to wake the captain up, but simply to register it in the ship’s log as an “unexplained phenomenon.”
Another Navy submarine encountered something strange happened in October 1989. On October 24, USS Memphis was on a mission to secure a shuttle launch site in Florida, patrolling about 150 miles from the coast, when something very large was detected by sonar and began approaching them quickly. At that point, almost all the instruments on the submarine failed: (Source)
“The ship was malfunctioning, our tanks were blowing out of control, we were losing navigation ability and the communications area was totally lost. We went to all stop and tried to access what was happening. The controls in the reactor area started to malfunction. This presented a serious danger to our safety, so the captain ordered us to shut down the reactor, surface and go to diesel motors. When the ship surfaced I went to my watch station. The ship was still experiencing electronic difficulties but the mechanical devices such as diesel engines, cook stoves, and turbines were fine.
This huge vessel was over a half mile across. The UFO made a half circle around our ship then passed across the stern causing our electronics systems to go crazy. We had permanent damage in communications and the sonar room. As the craft flew over the stern, I could see the rain stop under its red glow. The water seemed to rise almost a foot as the UFO passed over silently. When the UFO finished its swing across the stern it paused – the sky got brighter red and it simply moved off at tremendous speed inside 15 seconds. When the UFO left, our boat returned to normal with the exception of the radio and sonar. We did a quick system check and the captain ordered us to return to reactor power and get underway. The captain took two petty officers, the executive officer, and myself into the wardroom. He told us to not spread any rumors until we had a chance to talk to Commander Submarine Fleet – Atlantic.
We reached port in about 7 hours where I was taken into “protective custody.” Two enlisted men and myself agreed we had witnessed a real UFO. I was the one who shot it with a laser range finder, so I was the only one that had its exact sizes. I shot that vessel as it hovered and I got solid readings, not spotty like I would on debris. We were in holding for about three hours when an officer from the Air Force arrived and gave us a line of bull about an exploding weather satellite. The Navy then transferred virtually everyone on the crew to new assignments. This included the captain, the executive officer and the entire crew. They were split up which almost never happens unless one of them gets a promotion or a new command, neither of which happened.”
Nimitz-class aircraft carrier UFO Encounter
More recently, there has been a report from E-4 Petty Officer John Baughman, who in 2010 served aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. At the time, the ship was off the coast of Haiti, delivering humanitarian aid to a region that had just experienced a catastrophic earthquake. He had a break that day, and he sat on the deck of the SAM launcher and was just looking at the water as usual. He liked to watch the underwater world. (Source)
He said: “I was staring into the water from above when a large, flat, white ’Tic Tac’ object, approximately twenty feet in length, suddenly appeared in my view below me, moving right and darted into the depths as fast as it appeared. I couldn’t really comprehend what I saw. It was definitely a solid object, but when it descended, its forward end rapidly collapsed in on itself and disappeared.”
Baughman could not believe what he saw. He told his supervisor about the strange object he had seen underwater. But others were indifferent and ended the talk by saying “everyone sees weird shit in the ocean.”
He doubted about his sighting as he believed that it could be anything from an albino whale, shark, or some ship wreckage to an optical illusion. He said: “But it cast its own shadow and that’s how I was able to perceive it as a solid object.”
Capt. Kent D. Whalen and John Baughman, 2011
However, Baughman remained silent for all those years until the 2004 Nimitz event got public in 2017. This encouraged him to reveal his encounter with an underwater UFO. “It’s hard to come to grips with something like this, and I still feel somewhat insecure about it because it doesn’t make sense. But at the same time, more data points, even as basic as my story, could help solve the mystery of whether they’re foreign adversaries playing mind games, non-human entities, or the myriad of other possibilities,” he explained.
Being afraid of the response he could have received on his story, he had been keeping silence for many years. Likewise, there are other military personnel who do not reveal their incidents due to many reasons.
USS Omaha (LCS 12)
Some interesting UFO sightings have been reported by many in the US Navy, and footage has even been released showing UFOs entering water. Among the proposed evidence for this is a video filmed off the coast of San Diego in July 2019 by the crew of the USS Omaha. In a video posted by UFO researcher and investigative director Jeremy Corbell, a spherical object is seen flying over the ship and then descending into the water as one of the crew exclaims, “Wow, it splashed!”
The video caused a lot of buzz on the Internet, but it became even more interesting when Corbell said that a Navy submarine was sent to search for the object, however, it did not find anything. Interestingly, there was information that at about the same time, American submarines spotted other mysterious anomalous objects underwater in that area, which seemed to defy the laws of physics. The Navy has confirmed that the footage was genuine, but they cannot explain it.
More specifically, Luis Elizondo, a former director of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, said:
“Imagine a technology that can do 6-700 g-forces, which can fly at 13,000 miles per hour, which can evade radar and which can fly through air and water and eventually. in the space. And oh, by the way, has no obvious signs of propulsion, no wings, no control surfaces and yet can still defy the natural effects of Earth’s gravity. This is precisely what we are seeing.” (Source)
One of the undated accounts was a Soviet nuclear submarine’s encounter with the formation of six alien spacecraft in the south of the Pacific ocean. At the depth of 260 meters, the six disc-like objects were moving towards the submarine at the speed of 426 km per hour. The crew could not escape their pursuit, and the commander ordered the crew to rise to the surface. The crew saw through the periscope that the objects came out of the water and took off at absurdly fast speed.
According to former nuclear submarine commander Yury Beketov, many mysterious events also took place in the Bermuda Triangle region. The devices failed for no apparent reason. He believed that the UFOs were behind it.
“[In Translation]We have repeatedly observed that devices record the movement of material objects at an unimaginable speed. We measured some speeds – it is about 230 knots (400 km per hour). Such speed is difficult to create on the surface, only in the air. But there is gigantic resistance in the water. As if the laws of physics do not apply to these objects. There is only one conclusion: the creatures who created such material objects significantly surpass us in development” Beketov said.
Another Navy intelligence Captain Igor Barclay said that the Unidentified submerged objects were seen in the places where the Russian Navy and NATO fleet are concentrated. He said: “These are the Bahamas and Bermuda, Puerto Rico. Especially often UFOs are seen in the deepest region of the Atlantic – in the south of the Bermuda Triangle and in the Caribbean.” (Source)
NASA Announces The Discovery of a Potentially Habitable ‘Sister Solar System’
NASA Announces The Discovery of a Potentially Habitable ‘Sister Solar System’
NASA recently announced the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets around the habitable or ‘temperate zone’ of a star 39 light-years away, in one of the most significant exoplanet discoveries to date.
According to research, at least the inner six planets appear to have Earth-like masses, are made of rock, and have surface temperatures ranging from 0 to 100°C (32 to 212°F). NASA refers to it as a “sister solar system” to our own, and claims that some of the planets might potentially support liquid water and even extraterrestrial life.
NASA made the announcement in a live press conference after triggering much speculation over their big “discovery beyond our Solar System”.
The new exoplanets were discovered circling TRAPPIST-1, an ultracool dwarf star 39 light-years distant from our Sun in the Aquarius constellation.
Using Earth-based telescopes, astronomers led by Michal Gillon of the University of Liège in Belgium discovered three exoplanets around the star. However, it wasn’t until the researchers examined it more extensively using NASA’s Spitzer satellite telescope that they identified four extra planets in the system.
Based on these findings, initial estimations imply that at least five of the planets have masses similar to Earth, and further Hubble Space Telescope metrics indicate that they are most likely rocky in composition.
At least three appear to be in their star’s temperate zone, which implies their surface temperatures are most likely to be between 0 and 100°C (32 and 212°F), making liquid water and possibly even extraterrestrial life a possibility.
Before we get too enthusiastic, the researchers emphasize that much more research and analysis have to be done, particularly on the seventh, outermost planet, which has only been detected orbiting the star once.
As a result, we still don’t know how long it takes the seventh planet to orbit TRAPPIST-1 or how it interacts with the inner planets. And because the entire system is so far away, we can’t be certain whether it contains water or is a good environment for life.
According to the researchers, not only are at least three of the planets potentially home to liquid seas, but the entire system appears to have a lot in common with our own. The authors write in Nature, “The TRAPPIST-1 system is a tiny analogue of the inner Solar System.”
Below is a comparison of the inner Solar System to the TRAPPIST-1 system:
oA/Amanda Smith
Despite the similarities, there are also significant differences between our systems. TRAPPIST-1 is only slightly larger than Jupiter, and its planets orbit only slightly farther apart than Jupiter’s moons.
The entire system is also quite compact, with the closest planet requiring only 1.5 days to round its star. The sixth planet takes 13 days. That is, if you were standing on the surface of one of these planets, the neighboring planets in the sky would appear larger than our Moon does to us at times.
Imagine something like this:
NASA/JPL-Caltech
As a result, it’s suggested that the planets may all affect each other, and that they may even be tidally locked, with one face always directed towards their star, similar to how Jupiter’s moons always have one side locked towards the giant planet.
That tidal locking could also do some strange things to the temperature gradients on the planet, which NASA says makes it possible that liquid water could exist on any of them under the right conditions.
Perhaps more interesting than this discovery is what it suggests for the potential of other Earth-like planets in our galaxy.
“In the past few years, evidence has been mounting that Earth-sized planets are abundant in the Galaxy, but Gillon and collaborators’ findings indicate that these planets are even more common than previously thought,” Ignas A. G. Snellen, an astronomer from the Leiden University in the Netherlands who wasn’t involved in the research, writes in an accompanying opinion piece in Nature.
“From geometric arguments, we expect that for every transiting planet found, there should be a multitude of similar planets (20 to 100 times more) that, seen from Earth, never pass in front of their host star.
Of course, the authors could have been lucky, but finding seven transiting Earth-sized planets in such a small sample suggests that the Solar System with its four (sub-)Earth-sized planets might be nothing out of the ordinary.”
For the time being, we can only speculate about what these seven fantastic Earth-like worlds would be like. But the best part about all of this is that in the not-so-distant future, we might actually be able to know more.
With the NASA James Webb Space Telescope launched last year, researchers will have a better understanding of the composition and atmosphere of this sister solar system.
When the European Space Agency’s Extremely Large Telescope gets functional in 2024, it should be able to detect water on distant worlds from right here on Earth.
If you want the wonder of this discovery put into perspective, here’s Sean Carey, the manager of NASA’s Spitzer Science Centre, to fill you with awe about the galaxy we live in:
Former NASA Employee Saw UFOs during Apollo 15 Mission
Former NASA Employee Saw UFOs during Apollo 15 Mission
Apollo 15 UFO
Note: I was able to contact the gentleman who made this report. I asked him several questions about his account that I needed cleared up for my own curiosity, and the veracity of the report itself. One question concerned his employment dates, which he very quickly cleared up. Secondly, I asked him about what mission was being broadcast as he watched the UFOs on the TV screen. I had thought it must be Apollo 15, and he verified this for me also.
I would also like to thank Eileen Nesbitt for her invaluable assistance in gathering information on this very important report.) (B J)
When I first started working for NASA, its initials, not the name, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was how it was referred to. NASA is with whom I began employment in 1958 as a security guard on Wayside in Houston, Texas. They hadn't even started building Manned Spacecraft Center at Webster yet, which would later be called MSC at Clear Lake.
In 1961, I transferred to the Fire Department at the fledgling MSC and started training as a Fire and Safety Technician. The contractor responsible for Fire and Safety was Houston Fire and Safety. They held the contract for five years, losing out to Wackenhut Corporation out of Coral Gables Florida in 1966 because Wackenhut incorporated all phases of fire, safety and security under one blanket contract. Some say that George Wackenhut had first, Kennedy's, then Johnson's ear, but I haven't seen proof of it.
Everybody who hired in as a Fire Fighter was cross-trained in almost every aspect of maintenance operations. I attended numerous schools on fire alarm systems, pump repair, electrical and mechanical maintenance, physical plant operations, and last and certainly not the least, fire, safety and security. We were told that we had to pass a very rigid security clearance investigation, and that our job would be forfeit if we did no pass. I passed with flying colors and kept my job. There were several who did not pass, and we were never told why they had been laid off.
When I started, there were approximately three hundred eighty men who were attached to the fire department there at MSC. I saw a lot of men come and go during my twenty-six years of employment, but I never saw anyone who was willing to speak out about the rigid security. Even in later years, I kept in touch with several of my closest friends, when conversations turned to anything we were told not to talk about, there was always someone there to remind us that we had been told not to discuss it, even after we were no longer there.
I saw things, and heard statements from Astronauts that I didn't discuss, even with my wife or family. It was like a gigantic trust handed us and we honored it. To this day, I don't talk about everything I heard when I was around the Astronauts, at least not in detail.
There were several incidents that occurred during my tenure as an employee and to several of the Fire Fighters that got all of us thinking about how our government wasn't telling all they knew. For instance, in Building #1 on Johnson Space center, which was Building #2 when I first started work there, most of the north center of the second floor was the "crypto" room. We didn't know what went on in the room, but we did know that we weren't allowed in the room under normal circumstances. However, when an alarm came in at the Fire Station, we responded to the floor of the building that showed up on the enunciator panel at the station, One time, around 1964, we responded to Bldg.#2 to find that the alarm originated from the "crypto" room.
However, the doors were open and we just walked in to check the minor panel located there.
The whole east wall was covered with photos of UFOs. As we finished up, the officer of that room came back in and found us there. He actually pulled his sidearm and pointed it at us before demanding to know why we had entered that room.
He eventually accepted our explanation, but it took Everette D. Shafer*, head of NASA Security to vouch for us before the man would shut off his threats towards us. Everette Shafer reminded him, that had the armed officer been there in the room with the door locked, the incident could have been avoided. No, that was one very unhappy officer. I think he was Air Force, but I could be wrong; he was a Captain, I do remember that. When I came back from the Cape in 1968, we had another incident in the very same room, and the same officer was there also.
Apollo 15 Landing Site
Hadley Rille/Apennine Mountains-26.13222° N latitude, 3.63386° E. longitude
The Apollo 15 landing site was located at 26° 4´ 54¨ north latitude by 3° 39´ 30¨ east longitude at the foot of the Apennine mountain range. The Apennines rise up to more than 15,000 feet (4572 m) along the southeastern edge of Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains).
The Apennine escarpment--highest on the Moon--had been selected to allow the astronauts to drive from the LM to the Apennine front during two of the EVAs.
This time, he had Mr. Shafer to give the okay for us to enter the room, with him as our armed escort. But this time the walls on all four sides were photo-to-photo of UFOs and other very strange looking aircraft. We did our job, got out of there, but Mr. Shafer and the officer both told us to not speak to anyone of what we saw or observed in that room, ever! During Man Rated Tests, the fire department was trained to be rescuers should anything happen. Or job was to stand-by in readiness during many long hours of boring, repetitious, and meaningless exercises. Most times it was not the Astronauts themselves who performed the exercises, rather it was trained test subjects who did. We all became acquainted with them.
Buildings #7, #32, and #33 on Manned Spacecraft Center, were the test sites for Vacuum Chamber related tests. In Building #32, was housed the largest vacuum chamber in the free world. In Building #33, was the ultra-high vacuum test chamber, and Building #7 housed three test chambers. Building #7 is also where the Astronauts Space suits were manufactured.
Throughout the sixties, we performed numerous duties, some at MSC, while others were at Area 2000 at Ellington AFB in Genoa, Texas. Area 2000 was where the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle was tested and flown by test pilots and Astronauts. I was Crew Chief of the Contract Fire Department personnel at Area 2000 for close to a year, working all three shifts due to loss of personnel or whatever, but eventually being promoted up the ladder to Training Officer.
Not anything really special happened while I was Training Officer, but I did get to go places that was off limits to other personnel. It was one of my jobs to draw the pre-fire attack plans for every building on Site, to accomplish that job, I had the need to enter all buildings and accurately record everything of interest towards fire, safety, and security onto drawings. That is why I remember so much detail concerning the buildings, their locations, the interior layouts, and where all exits and equipment relating to Fire, Safety and Security were located.
Another part of everyone's job was the Safety patrols during any mission. From the first day on the job, before we were trained to become good little NASA Fire Fighters, we were told that we would perform various duties during our employment, that we would be constantly training, ensuring that we all would have the latest knowledge to do our job with the highest of proficiency.
Part of the training regimen was to know, and I do mean know, every building so intimately that we could draw a set of plans for them in our sleep. We ate, slept, and dreamed of building plans; construction materials inside and out, how many panels and manufacturer name of all alarm systems; how to repair or reset those systems; what was in the buildings that could be dangerous to us during emergencies.etc. but mostly the interior layout, hallways, exits, room locations.
With that small introduction, I will now attempt to give you the details of the safety patrols for Integrated Mission Control Center, commonly known as Building #30 on Johnson Space Center.
Building #30 is not just one building, rather it is two separate buildings, each having distinct functions. There is the Administrative side that houses support personnel, and the Mission Operations Control Rooms, otherwise known as the MOCR. By the way, at the time I was there, the Admin side of Building #30 was the building that housed the office of James Oberg.
There are two MOCR's located in IMCC, one on the second floor and one on the third floor. The building is like a big square, windowless structure sitting right next to the Southwestern Bell building. You can't miss it, because it is the only building that looks like it. Three stories inside, it looks more like a five- storied structure from the outside. As you have most likely ascertained by now, there are some very high ceilings inside the MOCR's.
Although we were never told we couldn't go into the MOCR's during missions, all of the safety inspectors assumed that we weren't welcome, that maybe we would be a distraction. However, we were allowed in every section surrounding the MOCR's.
On the second and third floors, there was the outside section, and the center section with a hallway completely around the inside of the building that separated the outside section from the inside. The outside section of the building housed the air handlers, workshops, soft and hardware support offices, and tool rooms, while the inside portion was dedicated to the MOCR and it's support.
In the MOCR itself, was a huge screen that stretched across the entire wall. It was the mission map, which kept the technicians apprised where the vehicle was at any given moment during its orbits above the earth. On one end was the big television screen, which received its picture from a large bank of cameras directly behind the screen.
Those cameras generated a lot of heat, and part of our duty during inspections was to make sure that there weren't any ignitable materials in that area. It was kept dark for some reason, but the cameras gave off enough light so a person didn't stumble around in there. It was also very cold most of the time, especially during missions.
At the back of the MOCR is a series of glass windows. These windows are set into the wall that makes up the barrier that separates the viewing room from the MOCR. The viewing room has two doors for entry. Entry is accomplished by getting off the elevator, taking a right down the hall, and the first door is the first entryway. About twenty-five feet further down the hall is the second door. Situated between them is a small door about three to four feet high. This door lets a maintenance technician into the area under the viewing room.
On each side of the room, to the front are located phone booths, one on each side of the window. There are about eight rows of seats with a set of slight stairs that separate them into two sections. The seats are similar to any seat you may see in a movie house, but way more comfortable.
Mounted on the wall above the big windows are two large screen colored TV's with several high mounted speakers so the viewer can listen in to the conversations between the Astronauts and the ground crews.
At the back of the room, right at the top of the center stairs, is a minor alarm panel. It was this minor alarm panel that safety had to monitor during all missions. The room was relatively quiet, cool and very comfortable. It was here I always chose to take a pipe break. My partner was also a pipe smoker, so we shared stories, listened to the quiet banter between the ground crew and the vehicle, and actually didn't pay much attention to what was going on in the MOCR.
Nothing out of the way ever occurred in the Missions, but during one particular Mission, something so unique happened that I would always remember it. Jim Baker and I had been doing the regular routine safety inspection during a Manned Mission to the Moon.
We entered the viewing room at the end of our patrol, and as was our wont, sat at the back of the room to enjoy a pipe. We both smoked a pipe, and the viewing room allowed smokers. We had been there for no longer than fifteen minutes, it may have been longer, but I doubt it, when the stage left door opened and in walked several, at least five of the upper echelon administrators of Johnson Space Center.
Uh, it actually wasn't called Johnson Space Center at that time; rather the name was Manned Spacecraft Center. Anyway, I do know that one of the people was definitely Chrome Dome, as we were irreverently known to call Dr. Gilruth. At that time I had hair and found it funny to refer to one of the finest minds our country had by the moniker, "Chrome Dome."
Just prior to their entering the viewing room, Jim and I noticed that the Technicians in the MOCR had gotten up and left the room. Now, that isn't unusual during a normal EVA, but the Astronauts were in Hadley's Rille. They couldn't be seen because they were over the edge, down in the Rille itself. The Lunar Rover was about thirty, maybe forty or more yards from the edge, and had the left front camera on the spot where the Astronauts had disappeared. You could hear the Astronauts voices talking, but as in most of the dialogs, we weren't paying close attention to what they were saying. We did notice the technicians getting up and leaving the MOCR. Jim is the one who actually said something about it.
"Looks as if everyone got a bee in their bonnet at the same time, don't it?" "Most probably their piss and lunch break," I offered. It was right after I made that statement, that Dr. Gilruth entered, and several others came in with him. They didn't look back, just went to the center of the viewing room and were talking excitedly among themselves and pointing towards the big screen to the right of the main screen in the MOCR.
Jim and I then paid close attention to what was on the screen. There was an object above the spot where the Astronauts were supposed to be in Hadley's Rille, just hovering. I am totally positive as to it being an object; it was round, it had a shiny side with a shadow side, with the shadow side matching the shadows on the moon, and though all the video shots coming from the moon looked black and white, they could actually have been in color. The harsh lighting was probably responsible for the illusion of black and white.
Anyway, The object started a slow move from screen left to screen right. The camera on the left front of the Rover followed the object as it moved screen right. Soon it was apparent that it actually wasn't moving screen right, but was circling the Rover.
The Rover has two mounted cameras on it. One camera was mounted on the left front and one on the right rear. As the object came into view of the right rear, that camera picked up the object and continued tracking it as it circled, very slowly around the Rover. It finally came to the point where the right rear camera could no longer follow it, so the left front camera picked up the image again and followed it to where it was once more above where the Astronauts were in Hadley's Rille.
I uttered something that brought us to the attention of Dr. Gilruth and the others. "What the crap is that? What caused me to utter that phrase was, the object took off straight up and went out of sight in less than a second. It may have been longer, but seemed like it was gone in the blink of an eye, but I was still aware that it had actually gone straight up.
One of the men there, I still think it was Everette Shafer, turned and asked us what we were doing in the room, and we told them that we were there to inspect the fire alarm panel at the rear of the room and to take our smoke break. And to ask a question of our own. "What in hell was that about?"
Can you believe they actually told us it was a drop of oil on the lens of the camera on the moon? Truth! Now, I am not stupid, though I have done a few stupid things in my life, like getting married the first time, but I know a pile of schlock when I hear it! It wasn't a drop of oil, no way!
I opened my mouth and said, "There's no way it was on the lens on the camera on the moon."
"The temperature would freeze the drop solid."
To Which the man holding my clearance in his hand, reading my name replied, "I mean it was a drop of oil on the camera lens at the back of that screen." To which he pointed. Okay, it was a good place to shut up and get out of the viewing room, but.. Once more I said something because as I have previously stated, I'm not stupid!
"There's no way that drop of oil is on any one of those lenses at the back of the screen, because of the temperature."
"The heat is high enough back there to set the drop of oil on fire."
Who ever it was holding my badge in his hand, says, "If you want to keep your job, you'll get out of here and keep your mouth shut about what occurred here."
Not about what I saw, not about why I was in there, just get out and keep my mouth shut about what had occured. I pulled away from him, turned to Jim and said lets go.
When we exited the room, to our surprise, there was Dick Nieber and Loring E. Williams of security on the doors. They were as surprised at seeing us come out of the room as we were at seeing them standing guard there. Further, they told us that Andrado and two others were on the rear doors to keep unauthorized people out of there.
Then they told us their story: They were pulled away from vehicular patrol and told to go immediately to IMCC and the second floor MOCR viewing room and stand guard until further notice. They were told that absolutely nobody other than Dr. Gilruth and the people who were with him were to be allowed into the room. It's no wonder our being there disturbed Dr. Gilruth and the others; we weren't supposed to be there.
When Nieber asked us what had happened in there, we told them we couldn't discuss it. They thought that the Astronauts had been killed. That was what had been circulating between them while they were guarding the doors to the viewing room. Wrong! That same evening, I sat at the typewriter and wrote out everything, time, date, place, and mission, plus all the names I could remember of who were there with all the facts concerning the incident, and asked Jim Baker to read it and sign it. He read it and signed it on condition that I would give him a copy of the report. I went to the copier, and made six complete copies of the report and gave Jim one of them.
Incidentally, when we arrived back at the fire station, Sgt. Thomas Walsh asked us to come to the dispatcher's office to speak to him. He closed the door and told us that he'd received a call from Shafer, that no matter what we had seen or heard in the viewing room, we were not supposed to discuss it with anyone at all, ever, because it had to do with National Security. "National Security over a drop of oil on a camera lens?" I think not!
Jim Baker died in 1983 of a sudden heart attack. He was forty- six and one of my best friends and we got together regularly at his home, in his gun shop to discuss different people and things. The last time I saw him alive, I asked him if he still had his report hidden away and he told me he had actually burned his copy, but had given a copy to another friend from West Virginia who wanted it.
I retired in 1979, and moved to Austin Texas. I was security dispatcher for the LBJ Presidential Library there in Austin when I got a call from Jim's daughter, Amey, telling me that her father had passed away early that morning.
Jim's last words to me, there in his little gun shop was, "You sure raised hell over that drop of oil, but you were right, they were full of shit and you knew it."
Addendum: 03-13-05
I looked it up recently and it was Apollo 15. For some reason, I have lost my original notes written up on NASA Fire Department's old IBM Selectric. However, I must reiterate that it wasn't a film, it was real-time and we observed the incident as it happened on the big screen in the MOCR on the second floor at Building 30, aka, Mission Operations Control Center.
We had stopped in the viewing room to check the minor fire panel at the rear of the room and then sat down to smoke our pipes. We had been in there about fifteen minutes when in walked Dr. Gilruth and about five other men. They didn't even know we were in the room until the object took off straight up, this being after it had circled the Lunar Rover.
As I stated, it was the Flight where the Astronauts had landed close to Hadley's Rille, and when the incident happened, they were out of sight over the edge, in the Rille. To the best of my knowledge, that is what was being told by the news media. However, when we returned to the Fire Station, nobody had seen the object, and Sgt. Thomas Walsh had taken us into the Dispatchers office and told us that he had received a call from Everette Shafer, NASA Security, telling him to apprise us of the oaths we had signed concerning National Security and the penalties attached to breaking the law.
*:Spelling may be Sheaffer, or Sheafer
In addition to this very recent information about the astronauts sighting one or more UFOs while in Hadley's Rille, the following is a conversation discovered from NASA's Apollo 15 flight journal with the crew in respect to an interview with news media. 270:22:31 Henize: Hey, 15, we're getting a beautiful picture coming through.
270:22:37 Scott: Roger. Go ahead with your questions.
270:22:46 Henize: Roger. We'll - we'll admire the beautiful picture for - for a few minutes here.
270:22:56 Henize: Deke just passed out from the shock, incidentally.
[The crew appear in a row, facing the camera. Dave is camera-left, Al in the centre and Jim to camera-right. Dave has a noticeable beard after 12 days in space.]
270:23:15 Henize: Okay, fellas. I have a preliminary statement to make here. The questions you will be asked in this news conference have been submitted by newsmen here at the Manned Spacecraft Center who've been covering the flight. Some of the questions they raised have been answered in your communications with - with Mission Control, but the public-at-large has not necessarily heard them. The questions are being read to you exactly as submitted by the newsmen, and in an order of priority specified by them.
270:23:46 Henize: Question number 1. This last week, we have shared scores of exciting moments with you. Which single moment would you most like to live again, and is there any moment which you would never like to repeat?
270:24:03 Scott: Well, I guess we all probably have a different idea of which would be the single most exciting moment of the flight, and maybe we'll just run through it one at a time. I guess the most impressive moment I can remember is standing up on Hadley mountain - Hadley Delta, and looking back at the plain and seeing the LM and the rille and Mount Hadley, and the whole big picture in one - one swoop. And I think we've got some pictures for you from up there, and I believe the TV was running at the same time, and I think that was probably the most impressive sight that I've ever seen. Al?
This information puts a whole new light on the following photos acquired over the years.
David Scott made his third space flight as spacecraft commander of Apollo 15, July 26 - August 7, 1971. His companions on the flight were Alfred M. Worden (command module pilot) and James B. Irwin (lunar module pilot). Apollo 15 was the fourth manned lunar landing mission and the first to visit and explore the moon's "Hadley Rille" and Apennine Mountains which are located on the southeast edge of the Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains).
NASA will on Monday attempt a feat humanity has never before accomplished: deliberately smacking a spacecraft into an asteroid to slightly deflect its orbit, in a key test of our ability to stop cosmic objects from devastating life on Earth.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spaceship launched from California last November and is fast approaching its target, which it will strike at roughly 14,000 miles (22,500 kilometers) per hour.
"It's the final cosmic collision countdown," tweeted mission control at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.
To be sure, neither the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, nor the big brother it orbits, called Didymos, pose any threat as the pair loop the Sun, passing about seven million miles from Earth at nearest approach.
But NASA has deemed the experiment important to carry out before an actual need is discovered.
If all goes to plan, impact between the car-sized spacecraft, and the 530-foot (160 meters, or two Statues of Liberty) asteroid should take place at 7:14 pm Eastern Time (2314 GMT), viewable on a NASA livestream.
By striking Dimorphos head on, NASA hopes to push it into a smaller orbit, shaving ten minutes off the time it takes to encircle Didymos, which is currently 11 hours and 55 minutes—a change that will be detected by ground telescopes in the days or weeks to come.
The proof-of-concept experiment will make a reality of what has before only been attempted in science fiction—notably in films such as "Armageddon" and "Don't Look Up."
Technically challenging
As the craft propels itself through space, flying autonomously for the mission's final phase, its camera system will start to beam down the very first pictures of Dimorphos.
Minutes later, a toaster-sized satellite called LICIACube, which already separated from DART a few weeks ago, will make a close pass of the site to capture images of the collision and the ejecta—the pulverized rock thrown off by impact.
LICIACube's pictures will be sent back in the next weeks and months.
Also watching the event: an array of telescopes, both on Earth and in space—including the recently operational James Webb—which might be able to see a brightening cloud of dust.
Finally, a full picture of what the system looks like will be revealed when a European Space Agency mission four years down the line called Hera arrives to survey Dimorphos' surface and measure its mass, which scientists can currently only guess at.
Being prepared
Very few of the billions of asteroids and comets in our solar system are considered potentially hazardous to our planet, and none are expected in the next hundred years or so.
But "I guarantee to you that if you wait long enough, there will be an object," said NASA's Thomas Zurbuchen.
We know that from the geological record—for example, the six-mile wide Chicxulub asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago, plunging the world into a long winter that led to the mass extinction of the dinosaurs along with 75 percent of all species.
An asteroid the size of Dimorphos, by contrast, would only cause a regional impact, such as devastating a city, albeit with greater force than any nuclear bomb in history.
How much momentum DART imparts on Dimorphos will depend on whether the asteroid is solid rock, or more like a "rubbish pile" of boulders bound by mutual gravity—a situation that's not yet known.
The shape of the asteroid is also not known, but NASA engineers are confident DART's SmartNav guidance system will hit its target.
If it misses, NASA will have another shot in two years' time, with the spaceship containing just enough fuel for another pass.
But if it succeeds, the mission will mark the first step towards a world capable of defending itself from a future existential threat.
Graphic on NASA's DART mission to crash a small spacecraft into a mini-asteroid to change its trajectory as a test for any potentially dangerous asteroids in the future.
The DART spacecraft will smash into the asteroid Dimorphos, and the LICIACube probe (bottom right) will snap photos of the aftermath, as shown in this artist’s rendering.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben
On 26 September, at 7:14 p.m. US eastern time, NASA will strike a pre-emptive blow against the dangers of the Solar System. That’s when, 11 million kilometres from Earth, the agency is set to smash a spacecraft into an asteroid. The goal is to knock the harmless space rock into a slightly different orbit to test whether humanity could do such a thing if a dangerous asteroid were ever detected heading for Earth1.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft will meet its end when it crashes into the asteroid Dimorphos, which is about 160 metres across. “We describe it as running a golf cart into the Great Pyramid,” says Nancy Chabot, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
The endeavour is reminiscent of Bruce Willis saving Earth by blasting a wayward asteroid in the 1998 film Armageddon. And the whole event will unfold like a film when it’s broadcast on NASA’s website. DART’s camera will focus on Dimorphos and the larger asteroid that it orbits, Didymos, as the spacecraft approaches.
At first, DART will not be able to distinguish between the two asteroids, but when it gets close enough, its view will resolve into two points of light. The spacecraft will continue to hurtle towards Dimorphos, snapping images once per second and sending them to Earth until the asteroid’s rubbly surface fills the field of view. “We are super excited to see what it’s going to look like,” says Michelle Chen, a software engineer at the Johns Hopkins lab. Then the footage will end abruptly, as DART smashes into the surface.
Aftermath of a smash
But the US$330-million mission aims to accomplish some science before the credits roll. DART will study the effects of injecting kinetic energy — from an impact at 6.6 kilometres per second — into an asteroid. Dimorphos might absorb much of that energy or it might partially break apart, depending on whether it is made of solid rock or is a loose agglomeration of space pebbles2. Small asteroids are “little geophysical and geological worlds”, says Patrick Michel, a planetary scientist at the Côte d’Azur Observatory in Nice, France. “What DART will see, we don’t know.”
This simulation, created by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, predicts what will happen as DART hits the surface of Dimorphos, if the asteroid is made of strong rocky material.
Researchers will get their best view of the collision’s aftermath from another spacecraft that will fly by. An Italian probe named LICIACube is travelling a little behind DART and will zip past Dimorphos just three minutes after the impact. Its cameras will snap images before and after the crash. LICIACube will see whatever is left of the DART spacecraft — unless the impact kicks up a cloud of dust big enough to obscure the view3,4. The most exciting images from LICIACube should be available within 24 hours of the crash, says Simone Pirrotta, the probe’s project manager at the Italian space agency ASI in Rome.
The impact might not leave behind a crater if Dimorphos absorbs much of DART’s kinetic energy, says Adriano Campo Bagatin, a planetary scientist at the University of Alicante in Spain. Visits to other asteroids have shown just how complicated and surprising space rocks can be. Beginning in 2018, for example, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft spent two years orbiting and studying the asteroid Bennu, but when it moved in to collect a sample, Bennu turned out to be a loose collection of pebbles that responded in unexpected ways to the sampling arm.
Confirming success
With Dimorphos, it will take days to weeks before mission scientists can confirm whether the test worked. The goal is to speed up Dimorphos’s orbit, cutting the time it takes to travel around Didymos by 10–15 minutes (see ‘Destructive manoeuvre’). Scientists will learn whether this has happened by using telescopes on Earth to observe how Dimorphos blocks the light from Didymos, and vice versa, as the smaller asteroid circles the larger.
Source: This graphic was repurposed from this story, by Alexandra Witze
Observatories on every continent will measure the aftermath of the crash, as will the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. “I’m going to be rooting for every single observer,” says Cristina Thomas, a planetary scientist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff who leads the observation teams. Changes to Dimorphos’s orbit will probably become apparent around 1–2 October, or even earlier, depending on how quickly the cloud of dust clears after the impact. Researchers will have to wait until 2027 for another close-up look, when a European Space Agency mission called Hera visits the asteroid to study the crash site5.
Dimorphos and Didymos are not a threat to Earth — and they won’t be after the test. NASA just wants to understand whether it has the ability to deflect a space rock of Dimorphos’s size, which could devastate a region of Earth if it were to hit the planet.
The agency is surveying the cosmos for threatening asteroids, but the project is behind schedule. With the telescopes currently available on Earth, it would take another three decades to finish. And this year, NASA delayed the launch of a long-awaited space telescope that would help hunt these asteroids, from 2026 to no earlier than 2028.
“The most important thing to keep in mind about any of these deflection techniques is they rely on having enough time to work,” says Amy Mainzer, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson and principal investigator of the planned telescope. “The key is finding objects well ahead of any potential impact.”
NASA laat vannacht opzettelijk satelliet neerstorten op meteoriet
De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA laat komende nacht (13.15 uur Belgische tijd) een satelliet inslaan op een ruimterots. Op die manier wil NASA onderzoeken of ze de aarde kan redden als een meteoriet op onze planeet zou afstormen.
Vorig jaar in november werd het ruimtevaartuig DART, Double Asteroid Redirection, gelanceerd vanaf Vandenberg in Californië. De ruimtesonde met een grootte van een golfkarretje is aangekomen bij het einddoel: de planetoïde Didymos A.
De satelliet - ongeveer 310 miljoen euro waard - moet met een snelheid van 22.000 kilometer per uur op Dimorphos, een maantje dat rond Didymos A draait, botsen. Het doel is om het maantje uit zijn baan te duwen.
Door de klap zal de omlooptijd van de maan, die normaal 11 uur en 45 minuten is, waarschijnlijk met tien minuten veranderen. Kosmisch gezien is dit maar een klein duwtje. Maar een kleine koerswijziging kan er al voor zorgen dat een toekomstige op ramkoers liggende planetoïde langs de aarde scheert.
Geen dreiging
Het is de eerste keer dat NASA zo’n missie start. “Het stelsel is een perfecte plek om te testen of het mogelijk is de koers van een planetoïde te veranderen door er moedwillig een ruimtevaartuig op in te laten slaan”, klinkt het bij de ruimtevaartorganisatie.
NASA benadrukt dat er voorlopig geen enkele dreiging voor de aarde is. Volgens ‘The Guardian’ volgen astronomen continu zo’n 30.000 grote asteroïden op in de nabijheid van de aarde. Geen enkele daarvan zou de komende honderd jaar in contact met de aarde komen. Maar DART zou wel een antwoord kunnen vormen op kleinere, minder voorspelbare meteoren die richting onze planeet vliegen.
The Amarnaperiod (1347 – 1336 BC) was undoubtedly one of the most unique stages in the history of ancient Egypt. The establishment of the Egyptian capital in a totally virgin territory so far, the artistic revolution in the representations of the pharaoh and his family or the changes introduced in the religious world are some of its most important aspects, but not the only ones.
At the end of the 19th century, a peasant woman discovered by chance the so-called Amarna letters, an archive of contemporary documentation to Amenhotep III (1390 – 1352 BC) and Amenhotep IV / Akhenaten (1352-1336 BC) which has become a great treasure of Egyptology.
In this article we are going to try to summarize what the Amarna letters are, what are the themes that their contents deal with or who are the protagonists who speak to us through them.
What are the Amarna Letters?
Around 1347 BC, in his fifth year as sovereign, Amenhotep IV took a radical turn in his reign by changing his name: he was renamed Akhenaten, which literally means ” one who effectively acts for the good of Aten.”
As part of his revolutionary program, the pharaoh moved the capital of the country to a newly created city in a territory never before inhabited: Tell el-Amarna, originally known as Akhetaten, that is, “horizon of Aten”.
At the same time that thousands of people of different conditions moved to live in Amarna, so did the main officials of the kingdom.
With them traveled the documents that would make up the great Tell el-Amarna archive, located in the so-called House of Correspondence of the Pharaoh.
The missives in the Amarna archive are engraved in cuneiform script and in Akkadian, one of the lingua francas for international relations.
The language used in these clay tablets flees from formalities and goes into directly analyzing issues such as the political situation of the kingdoms, marital alliances, disputes and diplomatic cordialities, war reports…
To reach their destination, they were transported by officials who sometimes had to walk hundreds of kilometers to fulfill their mission.
The discovery of the first letters occurred fortuitously during the illegal excavations that Farag Ismain was carrying out in the area in mid-1887.
Shortly after, the excavations of the Egyptologist William Flinders Petrie began to bring to light new custom letters that the remains of the Pharaoh’s House of Correspondence were identified.
We do not know the approximate number of tablets that it must have housed at the peak of the Amarnian period, but at present we conserve about four hundred which are distributed between the British Museum in London, the Old Museum in Berlin and the Museum in Cairo.
Contents of the Amarna letters
The fundamental factor that makes the Amarna archive so valuable is its uniqueness, since it is the only set of diplomatic texts that the Nile civilization has bequeathed to us.
The letters are an exceptional testimony of Egypt’s international relations with the great powers of the Middle East from the end of the reign of Amenhotep III, the entire reign of Akhenaten and the beginning of that of Tutankhamun (1336 – 1327 BC).
The scribes who were in charge of writing the Amarna letters that the ambassadors would later carry also played a fundamental role, often working as translators.
After all, the accuracy of the translation depended on whether the message arrived exactly as it should. An incorrect intonation or a badly translated word could generate a misunderstanding that could lead to an international conflict.
Example of five Amarna letters exhibited in the British Museum in London
What are the Amarna letters about?
Within the Amarna letters, one of the requests that is repeated the most, on the part of the pharaoh, is that of princesses and servants of foreign courts.
This marriage circuit was not reciprocal, since the Egyptian sovereign showed his desire to marry Asian princesses while making it clear that he was not willing to send any of his daughters out of the kingdom
However, that does not mean that they did not achieve anything. In the case of Babylon, for example, we know that they sent princesses to Egypt in exchange for large amounts of gold .
Let’s see to finalize some specific cases. One of the Amarna letters indicates that Amenhotep III requested the hand of Princess Kiluhepa of Mittani. The princess then moved to Egypt accompanied by more than three hundred servants.
Another letter specifies the long list of goods that the Mittanian king Tushratta (approx. 1375-1350 BC) contributed as a dowry to his daughter Taduhepa , who eventually traveled with 300 men and women for her personal service.
In another, King Burna-Buriash II of Babylon(approx. 1359 – 1333 BC) complained about the little pomp with which he had transferred his daughter to the country of the Nile, as if she were anybody.
Also angry, Kadashman-Enlil I of Babylon (1374 – 1360 BC) showed his indignation to Amenhotep III for not wanting to give one of his daughters as a wife.
In conclusion, the Amarna letters allow us to peek through a knowledge gap into a world of kings, princesses, courts and entanglements that we could not have accessed through archeology or the texts that were represented in stelae, temples, tombs or palaces.
For all these reasons, this archive is one of the most relevant sources of knowledge that we have when it comes to reconstructing the relationship of political forces existing in Egypt and the Middle East in the 14th century BC in particular and in the Egyptian New Kingdom in general.
Source:
GOLVIN, JC (2017): Cities of the ancient world. Madrid: Wake up Ferro.
LIVERANI, M. (2012): The ancient East. History, society and economy. Barcelona: Criticism.
LULL, J .: “The Amarna archive: the Pharaoh’s letters”, in National Geographic History, nº 193, pp. 38-49.
PADRÓ PARCERISA, J. (2019): History of Pharaonic Egypt. Madrid: Editorial Alliance.
SHAW, I. (2014): History of Ancient Egypt. Madrid.
Fragment of one of the letters between King Tushratta of Mittani and the Egyptian pharaoh
Tablet containing a letter between King Burna-Buriash II of Babylon and the Egyptian pharaoh
Ancient collisions with asteroids actually moved the moon's north and south pokes by about 186 miles, scientists revealed in a new study.
A team atNASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland used computer simulations to 'erase' thousands of craters from the lunar surface - as if they were going back in time to 4.25 billion years ago when the craters didn't exist.
Their work led them to discover that asteroid impacts caused the location of the poles to 'wander' by 10 degrees in latitude or about 186 miles. To put that in perspective, the moon's total diameter is 2,159 miles.
These wandering poles can teach scientists more about the poles, which are considered more prized regions because of the frozen water that's been discovered there.
Ancient collisions with asteroids actually moved the moon's north and south pokes by about 186 miles, scientists revealed in a new study
A team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland used computer simulations to 'erase' thousands of craters from the lunar surface. GRAIL gravity model GRGM1200B (left), and GRGM1200B with 5197 crater gravity anomalies removed (right)
Their work led them to discover that asteroid impacts caused the location of the poles to 'wander' by 10 degrees in latitude or about 186 miles. To put that in perspective, the moon's total diameter is 2,159 miles
Vishnu Viswanathan, a NASA Godard scientist who led the study, said in a statement: 'Based on the Moon’s cratering history, polar wander appears to have been moderate enough for water near the poles to have remained in the shadows and enjoyed stable conditions over billions of years.'
Asteroid impacts excavate mass and leave depressions in the surface, or pockets of lower mass, but the moon would reorient itself to bring those pockets toward the poles - while bringing areas of higher mass out toward the equator via centrifugal force.
As NASA notes in a blog post, this is the same force that causes pizza dough to stretch out when a chef tosses it and spins it in the air.
'If you look at the Moon with all these craters on it, you can see those in the gravity field data,' said David Smith, principal investigator for the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter. 'I thought, "Why can’t I just take one of those craters and suck it out, remove the signature completely?"'
Above, left: Hammer projection map centered on 270° E showing the nonuniform distribution of craters with diameter 20-150 km. Above, right: Map of lunar gravity anomalies expanded to degree and order 650
The study comes at a time when NASA's beleaguered Artemis 1 mega-rocket (above) is facing a cryogenic test this week and a possible launch attempt - pending multiple conditions - during a 70-minute window on Sept. 27 with a backup on Oct. 2
Artemis 3 and China's Chang’e-7 both identify sites near Shackleton, Haworth and Nobile craters as potential landing zones (areas circled in red, above). These areas of overlap are home to shadowed craters that can trap water-ice
For their study that was published in the Planetary Science Journal, Viswanathan, Smith and colleagues worked with about 5,200 craters ranging in size from 12 miles to 746 miles in width.
They designed computer models to take the craters' coordinates and width to locate their gravitational signatures.
Then they ran simulations that removed the gravitational signatures - essentially rolling back the clock to 4.25 billion years ago.
The study comes at a time when NASA's beleaguered Artemis 1 mega-rocket is facing a cryogenic test this week and a possible launch attempt - pending multiple conditions - during a 70-minute window on Sept. 27 with a backup on Oct. 2. If those dates do not pan out, NASA wont' be able to try again until Oct. 17 at the earliest.
In addition, the space agency recently called on China to be 'open and transparent' with its lunar missions following a revelation of overlap between the two countries in potential landing sites near the lunar surface's south pole region.
'We’ll continue to share our plans with the world as we are able, and hope that other nations will share their plans with us. We encourage transparency and peaceful exploration of space, per the tenets of the Artemis Accords and the Outer Space Treaty,' the American space agency previously told DailyMail.com.
Artemis 3 and China's Chang’e-7 both identify sites near Shackleton, Haworth and Nobile craters as potential landing zones. These areas of overlap are home to shadowed craters that can trap water-ice.
'In exploring the Moon, we will follow what we have spelled out in the Artemis Accords—that we will be transparent about all activities, operate in a safe and responsible manner, and avoid harmful interference,' NASA added.
'There are a few things that we haven’t taken into account yet, but one thing we wanted to point out is those small craters that people have been neglecting, they actually do matter, so that is the main point here,' said Sander Goossens, a Goddard planetary scientist who participated in the study.
Although researchers studying polar wander have removed craters from the record, they’ve removed only a couple dozen of the biggest impacts.
'People assumed that small craters are negligible,” said Viswanathan. 'They’re negligible individually, but collectively they have a large effect.'
'In exploring the Moon, we will follow what we have spelled out in the Artemis Accords—that we will be transparent about all activities, operate in a safe and responsible manner, and avoid harmful interference,' NASA added
The Moon’s Poles Have “Wandered” Over Billions of Years
The Moon’s Poles Have “Wandered” Over Billions of Years
Until 1959, humans had only seen one side of the Moon. The Moon is tidally locked with Earth, and so we can only see one side from the Earth’s surface. It took the soviet Luna 3 spacecraft to capture a blurry image for humans to get their first glimpse of the lunar far side. Because of this, many people imagine that the Moon has always been this way. But as a recent study shows, that isn’t quite true.
Although the Moon is tidally locked with Earth, it isn’t physically locked to Earth. It is still a freely moving body that rotates on its axis. The Moon always shows the same side to Earth because its period of axial rotation and its orbital period is the same. But even this isn’t an exact match. The Moon’s rotation is essentially constant, but its orbit isn’t exactly circular. So the Moon moves along at a bit faster or slower rate depending on where it is in its orbit. This makes the moon appear to wobble back and forth slightly. There’s also the fact that the Moon’s rotational axis is tilted slightly relative to its orbital plane around the Earth, and the orbit itself is tilted slightly relative to the Earth’s equator. All of this together gives the Moon a small but complex wobbly dance as seen from Earth, known as libration. So over the course of a few years, we actually see slightly more than half the lunar surface, though this effect is too small to notice in our daily lives.
The appearance of the Moon through one synodic period. Note that in addition to rocking back and forth (libration) and side-to-side (nutation), the Moon appears to swell and shrink in size. Wikimedia Commons graphic in the public Domain.
But because the Moon is a freely moving body, its rotational axis can shift from other things as well. For example, geological activity such as the drift of continents, and the freezing or melting of polar caps cause shifts in our rotational axis. It even shifts the length of our days slightly. But the Moon isn’t really geologically active, and it doesn’t have weather patterns to freeze or melt polar caps. But it has been bombarded by asteroids over the years, and that brings us to this latest study.
The team looked at high-resolution gravity maps of the Moon taken by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL). These maps give us a good idea of the distribution of mass within the Moon, since the more mass you have in a given area, the higher the gravity. They also used a detailed map of lunar craters captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and its Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA). They then used computer models to “remove” the craters’ age layer by age layer.
The wander of the Moon’s rotational axis, seen in black. Credit: Smith, et al.
Since a crater shifts the mass distribution slightly, it also shifts the Moon’s axis of rotation slightly. The team basically rewound the clock for about 5,200 crater impacts spanning more than 4 billion years of history. They found that the Moon’s orbital axis has shifted by about 10 degrees in that time. That might seem like much, but it’s pretty impressive to track the Moon’s rotation over billions of years. In the future, the team would like to include more data, including effects such as early volcanic eruptions.
Chinese Companies are Planning to Offer Space Tourism Flights by 2025
Chinese Companies are Planning to Offer Space Tourism Flights by 2025
One of the more famous features of Space Age 2.0 is the rise of the commercial space industry, also known as “NewSpace.” While the space agencies of the world plan to send astronauts back to the Moon (this time, to stay), crewed missions to Mars, and robotic missions to every corner of the Solar System, NewSpace companies are offering cost-effective launch services, sending commercial astronauts to space, and commercializing Low Earth Orbit (LEO). There’s also the prospect of space tourism, with companies like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and SpaceX offering suborbital flights, trips to LEO, and beyond!
China, one of the fastest-growing nations in space, is looking to offer commercial flights to suborbital space. According to senior rocket scientists Yang Yiqiang, who spoke to the state-run China Global Television Network (CGTN), China will send its first group of commercial passengers on a spaceflight, with ticket prices ranging between $287,200 to $430,800 (2 to 3 million yuan). While China is a relative newcomer to the commercial space scene, this announcement signals its intent to catch up to companies based in the U.S. and other space competitors.
Illustration of the first two types of commercial space travel: flights to the ISS (right) and twin-fuselage configuration designs (left). Credit: CFP
Yang Yiqiang was the general director of the Long March 11 rocket project and the founder of Beijing-based rocket company CAS Space (founded in 2018). As Yang explained, there are currently three modes of spacelight:
The International Space Station (ISS): This consists of launch vehicles sending spacecraft to rendezvous with the ISS. This sets strict requirements on the physical and psychological conditions of the tourists.
Lift and Release: This consists of a cargo aircraft lifting another spacecraft to release altitude and the spacecraft flying to suborbital altitude. Virgin Galactic offers this mode with its White Knight Two aircraft (and other “motherships”) and VSS Unity and Imagine spacecraft.
Rocket Flights: This consists of launch vehicles sending capsules to suborbital altitudes. This is the mode Blue Origin is dedicated to using its New Shephard reusable launch vehicle.
According to Yang, this third mode will be most suitable for commercial passengers and the one that China will focus on. Based on the illustrations featured by CGTN, this will probably involve using the Long March 3C (CZ-3C) to launch a Shenzou spacecraft (and/or a converted Tianzhou automated cargo spacecraft) with a crew of three. China’s next-generation crewed spacecraft (a reusable vehicle intended to replace the Shenzou) can accommodate up to seven passengers and is likely to be used for tourism ventures.
The Chinese commercial space sector is still a few decades behind the curve established by its U.S. counterpart, which emerged in the 1980s but has only matured since the turn of the century. However, China has experienced significant growth in the past seven years due to increased investment, competition, and technological innovation. According to an industry report, China had more than 370 enterprises focused on satellite manufacturing, rocket launches, and related services.
Until now, said Yang, China’s commercial sector was in the “1.0 era” characterized by basic manufacturing, research, and development. But with these new steps underway, China has entered the “2.0 era,” driven by applications and market forces. At their current rate of progress, Yang claims they will reach parity with the U.S. within ten years. “The key for the development of China’s commercial space sector is application rather than rockets or satellites,” he said. “We need to ensure that common people have access to the sector.”
An illustration of suborbital space travel (the third type of commercial spaceflight). Credit: CFP
The Chinese government has also signaled its interest in becoming part of the growing satellite market and commercialization of LEO with the passage of landmark legislation. This includes the passage of the No. 60 State Council Document in 2014 that opened China’s “civil aviation infrastructure” to capital investment. The 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), officially endorsed in March 2021, also established numerous priorities for achieving development goals they hope to reach by 2035. Among them, the plan called for China to:
“Accelerate the disposition of satellite telecommunications networks and other such novel networks aimed at global coverage, implement the major Beidou industrialization projects, and build application demonstrations and open laboratories. Accelerate the commercial application and integrated innovation of the Beidou system, satellite telecommunications networks, surface and low-altitude sensing, and other such space network infrastructure.”
The price point cited by CGTN is clearly meant to be competitive with U.S.-based launch services. On February 16th, Virgin Galactic began taking reservations for the first 1,000 customers, with tickets going for $450,000 apiece (and customers must put down a $150,000 deposit to hold their spot). Based on the Space Foundation’s Space Report 2022 Q2, the commercial space sector grew to $469 billion in 2021. This represented an 11% increase from 2020 ($424 billion) and a 70% increase since 2010.
On top of that, a recent Citibank report indicates that the industry will reach $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2040, with launch costs dropping 95% to unlock more services from orbit. This growth not only accounts for the burgeoning satellite megaconstellation market but also for passenger flights to space and commercial activities in orbit (private space stations, space hotels, etc.) Clearly, China wants a piece of the action, befitting its emergence as a major power in space!
This is the 3rd photo that I found structures in on Mercury. This photo is not a black and white photo, but an infrared photo. The Mariner 10 had an "8-postition filter wheel." Each filter allows the camera to take a different kind of photo. Infrared allows you to see things the human eye cannot. These structures were not built yesterday, but most likely have been there thousands or more years. Time is of little importance to ancient aliens because they do not age like we do. Their anatomy is totally under their control allowing them to decide what age to be, alter their appearance and more. So building a structure so massive...although it may take a hundreds of years...its of little consequence too them. I took the original photo and enlarged it +200% allowing this incredible view of the surface of Mercury. I wonder if any of the doubters or skeptics have tried this? Or are they too busy being paid by the NSA to leave negative feedback, comments and such across the internet when actual evidence arrises? I know you skeptics are paid NSA employees!
The top and bottom photos are the same, I just added color so you can see it better.
Please look carefully at these structures that I found. They are not there to fool, confuse, infuriate you or anything else...I just want to raise humanities level of awareness of the amazing things around us. These are real structures on a real planet...not far from our own.
To and bottom photo are the same, I added color so you can see it better.
To the inhabitants on Mercury, I humbly ask that forgive humanity for its shortcomings. The good far outweighs the bad I assure you. I am sure you have rules of non interference when it comes to visiting earth...but to reject an invitation would be rude non the less and that would be a terrible way to start out a relationship. So...lets dance you and I. Much to talk about and much to learn from you. 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 )
Ancient Aliens: The biggest cover-up in history
Ancient Aliens: The biggest cover-up in history
UFO's are real and the government and military forces on Earth know it. Explore suppressed and hidden information about the strangest UFO incidents in history.
You will be amazed by countless UFO sightings by highly credible witnesses that defy explanation.
UFO's are here whether we like it or not, and their technology far exceeds ours. If they decided to take over the human race, there would be little our government and military factions could do about it.
Learn about the deception and cover-up of the UFO Phenomenon. Everything you've been told about Aliens and UFOs is a lie.
If you look at the history of the earth, there are earth changes every 12,000 years that are also called ELE (Extinction Level Events). Events in which countless life forms on Earth disappear and we are also now in such a period according to Niburu.
Something is already going on at the moment. And that something has everything to do with the Earth's magnetic field and the magnetic poles. That could be one of the reasons, for example, that so many fish and other marine life are stranded, because their orientation point has changed position.
The North Magnetic Pole has been in a restricted area in northern Canada for centuries, but that has changed. And no small change either, because the magnetic north pole is now moving towards Siberia at unprecedented speed
In the Atlantic Ocean between South America and Africa, there is a vast region of Earth’s magnetic field, called the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA), that is about three times weaker than the field strength at the poles and has decreased in strength by a further 6%, as well as moving closer to the west.
According to ec.europa.eu the geomagnetic field has been decaying for the last 3,000 years,’ said Dr Nicolas Thouveny from the European Centre for Research and Teaching of Environmental Geosciences (CEREGE) in Aix-en-Provence, France. Historically, there was a 5 percent decline per century, which is now 5 percent per decade. If it continues to fall down at this rate, in less than one millennium we will be in a critical (period).
If Earth’s magnetic field were to decay significantly, it could collapse altogether and flip polarity – changing magnetic north to south and vice versa. The consequences of this process could be dire for our planet, first starting with our communications satellites in the highest orbits which go down and the most worryingly, we may be headed right for this scenario.
Whether this will eventually culminate in a magnetic pole reversal is perhaps less important than the fact that every time in our history when the magnetic north pole moves, violent things happen.
It happened about 12,000 years ago when things happened that caused the climate to change rapidly and various life forms disappeared from the earth.
If you go further back in history, you will see that this pattern repeats itself.
A channel on Youtube that has been dealing with the above issues for years is called Suspicious Observers. As you can see in the video below, we are currently in a period that occurs once every 12,000 years.
Two UFOs chase an airplane in Argentina : "We are seeing an incredible show here !"
Two UFOs chase an Aerolíneas Argentinas plane going to Bariloche: "We are seeing an incredible show here !". Video shared on Reddit by RealRock in September 2022. You can hear the pilots corroborating with the control tower...
US Navy Battle with UFOs / UAPs, Summer 2019
Video shared on Instagram. This is a strange case that The Drive reported at the end of March 2021.In the summer of 2019, US Navy destroyers off the coast of California were harassed by two UFOs of unknown model and origin. Three years later, despite investigations involving the FBI as well as top US Navy officials, no one knows what the flying objects were, what they wanted or where they came from - and it looks like the Navy Not only the United States. It was the documentary maker (and UFO enthusiast) Dave Beatty who first reported the collision between the Navy and these mysterious unidentified flying objects in June 2020. Using the American Right to Information mechanism, the Freedom of Information Act, The Drive was then able to investigate the case ... This is a video shot by one of the warships, you can see that they fired well at it and you can see the result in the pictures. The objects are still flying...
EDIT : Apparently this video is a hoax, we discovered after posting that it was extracted from the game Arma 3 and manipulated in order to look real. Only fans of Arma 3 could know it. Sorry for the deception but we were fooled too by the pictures. After all, we're here to discuss about these videos, trying to explain them...
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Same UFO filmed over 4 different locations over United States (Pennsylvania, New York, Texas) YESTERDAY
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Check out this UFO video of 5 sightings of the same UAP over different locations in USA. What do you think this object was? Filmed yesterday (on 24th September 2022).
Witnesses reports:
Wilkes-Barre, PA
Witnessed a slow flying orb like object which appeared to be followed, then passed by a helicopter. While walking my wife and I observed a orb like object flying slow in the sky which seemed to have an aurora around it and seemed to leave a trial. We also observed a helicopter following behind it which youll see in the video eventually passed under the object. Shortly after, the object seemed to vanish as if it passed threw a portal or something. We filmed the object for approximately 1 minute. There was absolutely no clouds in the sky. It was a cool clear 54 degrees at the time.
Staten Island, NY
Slow moving object high altitude blue comet like cloud tail. Looked like entering atmosphere. Was on my nightly walk, I always look up at the sky on a clear night. I walk to Gateway park in Staten Island NY. I have seen many shooting satellites and other identifiable aerial events. This area is secluded and dark for the suburbs. On my way there on 9-24-22 at approximately 7:45 pm (dusk) I saw an object at a high altitude roughly at a 40-45 degree angle slowly appearing to enter the atmosphere. It was a small blue glowing pill sized object omitting a large cloud comet like tail. I quickly accessed my phone to film the last 35-40 seconds. I observed it for roughly over 1 min total what looked like entry time. A week earlier I observed a glowing orange ball object around the same area. This video may be explainable, however many years star gazing I have never seen anything like it.
Forestport, NY
Ariel light moving in night sky. Northerly direction, uniform speed. Spot light that seemed to e moving and shingles it’s beam Iin various directions. There was virtually no engine or other sound.
Hanover, PA
Me, my son, and a parking lot of people seen a ufo. “I include the ufo video and a video of a plane we saw right after for reference” the plane blinks. Me and my son went to lowes for holloween supplies we pulled in right as it got dark outside. We see a family with kids shouting and recording something in the sky. That’s wen we saw it and I ran to my truck and grabbed my phone to record. I was in shock with excitement and didn’t wanna frighten my 5 year old son, but I was convinced this was a real ufo “I have thousands of hours of scientific lectures under my belt lol”. It was a hazy night so we hung out and waited for a plane so we could get a reference and they do not compare at all. And if you zoom in on the object and go frame by frame you can see it shoot off to the right at a incredible speed at the exact same time it looked like it simply dissapeard. It did not vanish but it actually flew off what looked to be faster than the speed of light. My only regret is not running out from under the parking lot lights that severely messed the video up, but I couldn’t due to having my son in a busy parking lot.
Rutherford, NJ
Bright light with triangular bright light behind. The object’s tip appears like a diamond. Flying north east. It had a bright tail behind that open up into a wide < shape like. There were airplanes going to land at Newark airport but they were flying lower and had distinguishable lights and sound. The object was very visible. Steady flight path. Clear sky and after 30 seconds disappeared. Other stars were visible in the sky. Very unusual. Others are posting seeing it.
A UFO hunter at Sheffield Hallam makes a startling discovery
A UFO hunter at Sheffield Hallam makes a startling discovery
The truth is out there…and David Clarke is going to find it
By Harry Shukman
The photograph had eluded Dr David Clarke for 26 years, and here, finally, it was in his hands. The buzz he felt was so powerful that even now, as he recounts the moment, words briefly fail him.
“It was,” explains Clarke, “almost like finding the Holy Grail of this subject.”
The Calvine incident, 4 August 1990.
The photo is perhaps the clearest image ever captured of a UFO, or unidentified flying object. It was taken in 1990 and shows a grey sky in the Scottish Highlands — foliage at the top, fencing at the bottom — and two objects in the air. One looks like a Harrier jet plane, the kind used by the RAF. The other is…something very different. It's the shape of a flat diamond, grey but with daubs of white and black. It looks much, much bigger than the jet.
Clarke is not an eccentric UFO nut who believes senior politicians have been abducted by aliens and injected with microchips. He is an academic at Sheffield Hallam, specialising in journalism and media law. And he never expected to see this photo. For years, as part of his research into contemporary legends, he had been sending information requests to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), tracking down former military intelligence officers, and spending countless hours hunched over government archives to uncover evidence of unidentified flying objects. This snap, taken in Calvine on the edge of the Cairngorms, had eluded him for a quarter-century. And now he had it.
He first read about Calvine in a UFO book in 1996 — a couple of sentences mentioning an incident in the Highlands — but it wasn’t until 2009 when Clarke was working at the National Archives curating declassified MoD files that he came across an odd drawing. It was a bad sketch by any measure — like a biro doodle from the back of a school textbook — but it showed a jet flying next to a UFO. This appeared to be a depiction of the Calvine incident. In the same archive was a defence briefing dated from Margaret Thatcher's government, advising how to dismiss unwanted press questions about Calvine.
Clarke’s interest was piqued, but his enquiries about the incident were rebuffed by government departments. The identities of the camera operator and the intelligence officers handling the incident were meant to be kept secret until 2076 due to privacy concerns. Without any more evidence Clarke had come to think, by 2021, that the Calvine incident may have been a hoax.
Craig Lindsay holding the Calvine incident print. Photo: David Clarke.
Until this summer, when he happened upon a “lucky break”. A professional investigator, Clarke protects his sources, but says he was put in touch with a retired RAF officer called Craig Lindsay who investigated Calvine. Clarke went to Lindsay’s home in Scotland. There, the former RAF man took a copy of Great Aircraft Of The World out of his desk, plucked an envelope hidden within its pages, and showed him this incredible photograph and told Clarke the story he had been waiting most of his adult life to hear.
Back in 1990, Lindsay had been tasked with interviewing two young chefs, who had been “utterly changed” by a weird experience in the Highlands. On the night of August 4th, these two men had finished a shift in the kitchens of a Pitlochry hotel and went for a hike in nearby Calvine. It was around 9pm — still light — when they saw something that made them dive into the bushes. Hovering silently in the sky above them was a craft roughly 100 feet long and shaped like a diamond. A jet plane zoomed by, circling the diamond craft, before shooting off on its way. The duo, who had a camera with them, took six photographs of this eerie scene. After ten minutes of hovering, the diamond ascended quickly into the sky.
Clarke credits Steven Spielberg for his interest in UFOs. It was the 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with Richard Dreyfuss doggedly investigating extraterrestrial life, that hooked him. He began his career as a journalist at the Sheffield Star before finding his way into UFOlogy, writing a dozen books on the subject, including How UFOs Conquered the World: The History of a Modern Myth and The UFO Files: The Inside Story of Real-Life Sightings. His books are well-reviewed, but not always popular with UFO enthusiasts, since they tend to chart his own journey from believer to sceptic (alongside documenting changing cultural attitudes to UFOs). He is now the co-founder of the Contemporary Legend research group at Sheffield Hallam.
“I haven’t been able to get away from it,” Clarke says, describing his career investigating UFO sightings. “I’ve thought that’s it, I’ve done everything I possibly can, and then something else comes along. [Calvine] is the perfect example. It’s just good to have found that photograph. To me, it’s a really important artefact.”
David Clarke with Craig Lindsay. Photo: David Clarke.
In his book The UFO Files, Clarke delves into public reactions over the last century to strange sightings in the sky. Interestingly, these sightings seem to surge during times of social uncertainty (such as the two world wars, the Cold War) and after the release of alien shows like The X-Files. The British public go through phases of obsession with UFOs.
But how did the public get hooked in the first place? UFOlogy got off to a flying start in 1947. According to a BBC article on the subject, commercial pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed in June of that year that he had seen nine “flying discs” in Washington state moving at 1,200mph — something which was reported to the Associated Press news service, and was broadcast further by Hearst International shortly afterwards. “The story spread around the globe considerably faster than 1,200 mph. Soon there were hundreds of other reported sightings.” Clarke quotes a Sheffield woman, during the flying saucer craze of 1947, writing in her diary about her husband’s new mania. Her exasperation is palpable:
“Husband much keyed up about the flying saucers over American skies. One of his pet subjects. Papers can’t report enough about them to satisfy him. Just like a small boy about it.”
1962 photos of UFOs over Sheffield. Photo: Alex Birch.
Sheffield has a rich history of UFO sightings, which will feature in a new Contemporary Legend archive at Sheffield Hallam. Two incidents stand out in particular. In 1962, a 14-year-old boy named Alex Birch took a picture that appeared to show a fleet of flying saucers over the city. It was published in the News of the World but dismissed by the Air Ministry as sunlight reflecting ice crystals in the smoky air. “This conclusion satisfied no one,” Clarke writes in The UFO Files.
Another occurred in 1968, when an off-duty constable called Martyn Johnson and his girlfriend spotted two multicoloured lights approaching them in High Hazels Park — “they were very, very soft and didn’t throw beams like a torch”, PC Johnson recalled — before splitting into four lights and zipping off along the railway towards Rotherham. Soon after this experience, Johnson was summoned to Sheffield Police Headquarters and quizzed by two men from “a government investigation department in London”, conspicuously dressed in trench coats and trilby hats. According to PC Johnson’s ever-so slightly hammy account (“if the people of the world knew how many genuine sightings there were like yours, there would be total panic,” he reports the men telling him), they swore him to secrecy.
Unlike Johnson, the two chefs in Scotland did not want to remain quiet. They decided to send their pictures into the Daily Record newspaper. Curiously, it never printed them. Clarke suggests that the paper’s editors alerted the government, which in turn pressured the Record not to print the photos due to national security concerns. Lindsay collected the photos from the newspaper, faxed a copy to the MoD’s offices in London, but kept the print. It stayed there, in the same envelope in Lindsay’s desk at home for more than three decades. Until Clarke showed up. “I have been waiting for someone to contact me about this for more than 30 years,” Lindsay told him.
According to another source of Clarke’s, the two chefs were out poaching in the Highlands and were posing with a deer they killed when they spotted the Calvine craft. This might explain why, after so long, neither of them has spoken about their experience. “I think they were up to no good,” Clarke explains, suggesting that the MoD struck a deal with the youngsters: the officials would not alert the police about their poaching in exchange for the chefs’ silence.
A News of the World clipping from the time.
Silence about what, though? To dispel the most tantalising theory — it’s almost certainly not aliens. Clarke says that 95%, or even 99% of UFO encounters can be explained without needing to get little green men involved. In his book, The UFO Files, he describes case after case in which conventional aircraft, weather balloons, satellites, or rare types of lightning (like the kind captured in this video) were mistaken for alien spaceships.
The remaining 1% of cases, it would seem, are simply yet to be understood. While it is thrilling to imagine that tiny percentage is proof of extraterrestrial technology, Clarke does not believe that aliens have ever come to Earth. He is, however, open to the idea that they may be out there…
So back to Calvine. Clarke puts forward a convincing argument for what happened there. The UFO sighting’s date is significant: still in the Cold War, just two days after the Gulf War broke out. A time of military paranoia and secrecy. Could the US military, which had airbases in rural areas of Scotland, have been testing one of its so-called “black projects”, a highly-classified type of aircraft?
It has never been confirmed, but in the late 1980s, the US was rumoured to be developing the Aurora plane, a speedy, silent aircraft that could spy on its enemies. If the Aurora was being tested in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands, what were the odds that two chefs out poaching venison late one night would have stumbled onto this top-secret machine?
The truth is out there, somewhere in the bowels of the MoD. And if anyone’s going to find it, it’ll be David Clarke.
GOOGLE SAYS IT'S CLOSING IN ON HUMAN-LEVEL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
GOOGLE SAYS IT'S CLOSING IN ON HUMAN-LEVEL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
"THE GAME IS OVER!"
Too Smart
Artificial intelligence researchers are doubling down on the concept that we will see artificial general intelligence (AGI) — that's AI that can accomplish anything humans can, and probably many we can't — within our lifetimes.
Greene's original column made the relatively mainstream case that, in spite of impressive advances in machine learning over the past few decades, there's no way we're gonna see human-level artificial intelligence within our lifetimes.
"Solving these scaling challenges is what will deliver AGI," the DeepMind researcher tweeted, later adding that Sutskever "is right" to claim, quite controversially, that some neural networks may already by "slightly conscious."
DeepMind itself hasn't gone so far as to declare its new Gato multi-modal AI system capable of AGI, but given what one of its lead researchers is saying, it seems only a matter of time before Google declares that it's going to be the first to achieve it.
How many intelligent civilizations should there be in our galaxy right now? In 1961, the US astrophysicist Frank Drake, who passed away on Sept. 2 at the age of 92, came up with an equation to estimate this.
The spiral galaxy M74 imaged by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. (Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team., CC BY-NC-ND)
How many intelligent civilizations should there be in our galaxy right now? In 1961, the US astrophysicist Frank Drake, who passed away on Sept. 2 at the age of 92, came up with an equation to estimate this(opens in new tab). The Drake equation, dating from a stage in his career when he was "too naive to be nervous" (as he later put it), has become famous and bears his name.
This places Drake in the company of towering physicists with equations named after them including James Clerk Maxwell and Erwin Schrödinger. Unlike those, Drake's equation does not encapsulate a law of nature. Instead it combines some poorly known probabilities into an informed estimate.
Whatever reasonable values you feed into the equation (see image below), it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we shouldn't be alone in the galaxy. Drake remained a proponent and a supporter of the search for extraterrestrial life throughout his days, but has his equation really taught us anything?
The expanded Drake equation. (Image credit: Author Provided)
Drake's equation may look complicated, but its principles are really rather simple. It states that, in a galaxy as old as ours, the number of civilizations that are detectable by virtue of them broadcasting their presence must equate to the rate at which they arise, multiplied by their average lifetime.
Putting a value on the rate at which civilizations occur might seem to be guesswork, but Drake realized that it can be broken down into more tractable components.
He stated that the total rate is equal to the rate at which suitable stars are formed, multiplied by the fraction of those stars that have planets. This is then multiplied by the number of planets that are capable of bearing life per system, times the fraction of those planets where life gets started, multiplied by the fraction of those where life becomes intelligent, times the fraction of those that broadcast their presence.
Tricky values
Frank Drake. (Image credit: wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
When Drake first formulated his equation, the only term that was known with any confidence was the rate of star formation — about 30 per year.
As for the next term, back in the 1960s, we had no evidence that any other stars have planets, and one in 10 may have seemed like an optimistic guess. However, observational discoveries of exoplanets (planets orbiting other stars) that began in the 1990s and have blossomed this century(opens in new tab) now make us confident that most stars have planets.
Common sense suggests that most systems of multiple planets would include one at the right distance from its star to be capable of supporting life. Earth is that planet in our solar system. In addition, Mars may have been suitable for abundant life in the past — and it could still be clinging on(opens in new tab).
Today we also realize that planets don't need to be warm enough for liquid water to exist at the surface to support life. It can occur in the internal ocean of an ice-covered body(opens in new tab), supported by heat generated either by radioactivity or tides rather than sunlight.
There are several likely candidates among the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, for example. In fact, when we add moons as being capable of hosting life, the average number of habitable bodies per planetary system could easily exceed one.
The values of the terms towards the right hand side of the equation, however, remain more open to challenge. Some would hold that, given a few million years to play with, life will get started anywhere that is suitable.
That would be mean that the fraction of suitable bodies where life actually gets going is pretty much equal to one. Others say that we have as yet no proof of life starting anywhere other than Earth, and that the origin of life(opens in new tab) could actually be an exceedingly rare event.
Will life, once started, eventually evolve intelligence? It probably has to get past the microbial stage and become multicellular first.
There is evidence that multicellular life started more than once(opens in new tab) on Earth, so becoming multicellular may not be a barrier. Others, however, point out that on Earth the "right kind" of multicellular life, which continued to evolve, appeared only once and could be rare on the galactic scale.
Intelligence may confer a competitive advantage over other species, meaning its evolution could be rather likely. But we don't know for sure.
And will intelligent life develop technology to the stage where it (accidentally or deliberately) broadcasts its existence across space? Perhaps for surface-dwellers such as ourselves, but it might be rare for inhabitants of internal oceans of frozen worlds with no atmosphere.
What about the average lifetime of a detectable civilization, L? Our TV transmissions began to make Earth detectable from afar in the 1950s, giving a minimum value for L of about 70 years in our own case.
In general though, L may be limited by the collapse of civilization (what are the odds of our own lasting a further 100 years?) or by the near total demise of radio broadcasting in favor of the internet, or by a deliberate choice to "go quiet" for fear of hostile galactic inhabitants.
Play with the numbers yourself — it's fun! You’ll find that if L is more than 1,000 years, N (the number of detectable civilizations) is likely to be greater than a hundred. In an interview recorded in 2010(opens in new tab), Drake said his best guess at N was about 10,000.
We are learning more about exoplanets every year, and are entering an era when measuring their atmospheric composition(opens in new tab) to reveal evidence of life is becoming increasingly feasible. Within the next decade or two, we can hope for a much more soundly based estimate of the fraction of Earth-like planets where life gets started.
This won’t tell us about life in the internal oceans, but we can hope for insights into that from missions to the icy moons of Jupiter(opens in new tab), Saturn(opens in new tab) and Uranus(opens in new tab). And we could, of course, detect actual signals from extraterrestrial intelligence.
Either way, Frank Drake's equation, which has stimulated so many lines of research, will continue to give us a thought-provoking sense of perspective. For that we should be grateful.
This article is republished from The Conversation(opens in new tab) under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article(opens in new tab).
Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook and Twitter. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.
Cyclones circling Jupiter's poles still baffling space scientists
Cyclones circling Jupiter's poles still baffling space scientists
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org
Infrared image of the northern hemisphere of Jupiter as seen by JIRAM. Credit: Nature Astronomy (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01774-0
A team of space scientists affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.S., working with a colleague from Italy and another from France has used modeling to partially explain the resilience of cyclones circling Jupiter's poles. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the group describes how they analyzed images captured by the Juno space probe and used what they learned to create shallow water models that might at least partly explain how the cyclones last so long.
In 2016, NASA's Juno space probe entered an orbit around Jupiter. Unlike other such probes it has been circling the planet from pole to pole, rather than around its equator. As the probe began sending back pictures of the planet from this new perspective, researchers looking at them found a surprise. Not only was there a single cyclone sitting atop each of the poles, but both were surrounded by more cyclones. As time has passed, more pictures of the poles have arrived and the researchers studying them continue to be surprised by the stability of the cyclones—the original ones are still there today and have not even changed shape. Such behavior is of course unheard of here on Earth—cyclones take shape, travel around for awhile and then dissipate. Such behavior has left researchers scrambling to come up with a reasonable explanation for what they have observed.
Photos of the planet's north pole show that there are eight cyclones surrounding the central cyclone directly over the pole. All eight are in close proximity and all are nearly equidistant from the central cyclone—and are arranged in an octagonal pattern. At this time, it is not clear if the cyclones rotate around the center. There is a similar arrangement at the southern pole, only there are just five cyclones, shaped as a pentagon. In this new effort, the researchers have tried a new approach to explaining how it is that the cyclones hold in place for so long, and how they do it without changing their position or shape.
Vorticity and divergence derived from two independent determinations of the wind. Credit: Nature Astronomy (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01774-0
The work by the team involved analyzing pictures and other data from the Juno probe, looking specifically at wind speeds and direction. They then took what they learned and used it to create shallow water models and that led them to suggest that there is an "anticyclonic ring" of winds that move in the opposite direction of the cyclones, which is what keeps them in place. And while that may hold true, the team was unable to find signatures of convection, which would have helped to explain how heat was being used to fuel the cyclones. They acknowledge that much more work will need to be done to fully explain the behavior of Jupiter's cyclones.
The luminous band of the Milky Way, from Cassiopeia to Scorpius, stretches across the sky over Panamint Valley in Death Valley National Park.
To understand the nature of our galaxy, astronomers had to look to distant island universes.
Turn your eyes toward the night sky and you will see a bright, hazy band of light cutting across the sky.
For millennia, observers speculated about the Milky Way’s true nature. The Greeks said the streak of haze in the sky was milk spurting from the breast of the goddess, Hera, Egyptians thought it was cows’ milk, and some Aboriginal Australians thought it was a river flowing through the sky.
Today, we know that we are looking along the plane of our spiral galaxy, consisting of at least 100 billion stars. But understanding the shape of the Milky Way proved elusive up until the 20th century. The problem is we can’t get a bird’s eye view of our galaxy because our solar system is buried within the galaxy. But with the invention of the telescope, photography, spectroscopy, and radio astronomy, we have uncovered the shape and size of our home galaxy — and our place among the billions of stars that make up our island universe.
The telescope revolution
Before the telescope, there was no clear understanding of the extent of our galaxy. Nearly 25 centuries ago, the Greek philosopher Democritus proposed that the Milky Way was filled with stars that appeared to blend together because of their great distance. However, 100 years later, Aristotle suggested that the hazy river of light was an atmospheric phenomenon. Aristotle’s authority was accepted for nearly 2,000 years, until two small pieces of glass finally unseated him.
When Galileo turned his telescope to the sky in 1609, he made astounding discoveries. He published his observations in a little book, Sidereus Nuncius, in March 1610. The Moon was rugged and imperfect, he declared, and Jupiter had four companions. Galileo also scanned the Milky Way and reported, “This spyglass has allowed me to discover a multitude of fixed stars never before seen, of which there are more than ten times as many as are naturally visible.”
Observing targets like the Orion Nebula (M42) and the Beehive Cluster (M44) in the constellation Cancer, Galileo found myriad stars unobservable to the naked eye. He thought all the fuzzy objects in the sky would be resolved into stars; the astronomer could not know that each would play a role in giving us a picture of our galaxy.
This artist’s conception of the Milky Way is based on data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Infrared images revealed that the Milky Way’s spiral structure is dominated by two of its four primary arms: the Perseus Arm and the Scutum-Centaurus Arm. The Norma and Sagittarius arms are located between them. The newly discovered Cattail structure, reported August 2021 by astronomers at Nanjing University in China, may also be a spiral arm or a very long filament of hydrogen gas.
Astronomy: Roen Kelly, after NASA/JPL-Caltech
Spiral nebulae
After achieving overnight fame in 1781 when he discovered Uranus, William Herschel was swiftly appointed as King George III’s court astronomer. The king gave him money to build telescopes, including his 40-foot-long (12 meters) telescope with a 48-inch mirror.
With it, Herschel produced perhaps the first systematic map of the Milky Way. He started by observing a dense area of the Milky Way and counting the number of stars in his field of view. As he moved away from the plane of the Milky Way, the number of stars dropped.
Herschel assumed that the number of stars in each area was a direct indication of the stellar population in that direction. Unaware of any relationship between faintness and distance, or that millions of faint stars were obscured from his view, he produced a diagram of the Milky Way that looks like a gigantic amoeba!
By the 1840s, Herschel’s equipment was dwarfed by the Leviathan of Parsonstown in Ireland. Built for William Parsons, Earl of Rosse, this monstrous telescope’s 72-inch mirror allowed Rosse to produce amazingly detailed drawings of what he saw. In particular, his observations of the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), the Triangulum Galaxy (M33), and M99 (NGC 4254) showed distinct spiral structures. Without a proper way to measure distances, astronomers could only question whether these nebulae, like stars and clusters, were within the Milky Way. After all, if they were distant structures beyond the Milky Way, what did that mean for our place in the universe?
William Herschel constructed his map of the Milky Way with measurements he called “star-gages,” which he took by pointing his telescope at patches of sky and counting the number of stars he saw. The result is a cross section of the Milky Way from Earth’s vantage point.
Caroline Herschel
Cosmic yardsticks
The debate about the physical nature of the Milky Way continued into the early 20th century. Two new technologies helped charge the discussion: spectroscopy and photography. The ability to analyze starlight gave astronomers a powerful new way of understanding the chemistry of stars, while photography augmented the limited light-gathering ability of the human eye.
Armed with these tools, astronomers Henrietta Leavitt, Edward C. Pickering, and Ejnar Hertzsprung discovered and defined a relationship between the period of dimming and brightening of a class of stars called Cepheid variables. In 1908, Leavitt was studying variable stars in photographs of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds sent to the Harvard College Observatory, where she worked, from Harvard’s observatory in Peru. She noticed a rhythmic and predictable variation in brightness of these stars in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which might last from a single day to more than a month before repeating.
Furthermore, she discovered, the longer the period of variation, the brighter the star appeared to be. Since all the stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud are at roughly the same distance, she reasoned that the period of a Cepheid variable was related to its true, intrinsic brightness.
Pickering, the observatory director, suggested this period-luminosity relation could be useful to determine the distribution of star clusters and nebulae. And Hertzsprung was able to calibrate this technique by making independent distance measurements to Cepheids using the parallax method, seeing how much they shifted against background stars as Earth orbited the Sun.
Thus, by measuring the period of a Cepheid, astronomers could know its true brightness — and by comparing that to its apparent brightness, calculate how far away it was. Astronomers finally had a reliable cosmic yardstick.
Around the same time, the young astronomer Harlow Shapley began measuring the distribution of globular clusters — compact and dense spheres of stars. By 1918, he had found that the clusters centered around the constellation Sagittarius, forming a halo around the Milky Way. He also made improved parallax measurements of Cepheid variables, which in turn improved the calibration of Leavitt’s relation.
Using this data, Shapley not only located the center of our galaxy — in Sagittarius — but also showed that the Milky Way was 10 times the size of previous estimates. His observations also placed our solar system far from the center of the galaxy. Given the size of our galaxy, Shapley was convinced that spiral nebulae, like globular clusters, were all part of the Milky Way.
Cepheid variable stars remain important to understanding the shape of the Milky Way. Each dot in this image is a Cepheid whose distance was measured by a team using the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment telescope (OGLE), at center, at Las Campagnas Observatory in Chile.
K. Ulaczyk/J. Skowron/OGLE
The Great Debate
By the early 20th century, speculation about spiral nebulae and the nature of the Milky Way had reached a fever pitch. Photography clearly showed these nebulae had well-defined spiral structure composed of countless stars, but there were no good measurements of their distance to verify whether they were within the Milky Way or not.
In April 1920, Harlow Shapley faced off with Heber Curtis at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., in a discussion called the Great Debate. Shapley maintained that spiral and all other nebulae were part of the Milky Way, just like globular clusters. But Curtis provided convincing evidence that they were independent star systems — “island universes,” as he called them, a term coined by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant.
Cepheid variables ultimately settled the debate. A few years later, while using the 100-inch Hooker telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory in California, Edwin Hubble found Cepheid variables in the Andromeda spiral nebula. Using Shapley’s calibration of Leavitt’s period-luminosity relation, Hubble showed this object was 900,000 light-years away, far beyond the outskirts of Milky Way. (This figure has since been refined to 2.5 million light-years.) In a single measurement, he proved that the Milky Way was not the entire universe, but part of a vast sea of island universes.
In 2019, the OGLE team released a three-dimensional map of the Milky Way, as traced by over 2,400 Cepheids. The map shows how the outer portion of the galaxy’s disk is warped. This warping had been previously detected, but this was the first time it had been mapped with direct distance measurements to stars.
Jan Skowron/OGLE/Astronomical Observatory, University of Warsaw
Radio astronomy rises
In the 19th century, astronomers were puzzled by large areas along the Milky Way almost devoid of stars. These so-called coal sacks appeared as dark holes against a starry background. At least one astronomer speculated they might be openings into heaven!
Because at that time the exploration of the Milky Way was still restricted to visible light, astronomers were unaware that the coal sacks were huge clouds of gas and dust blocking the light of distant stars. New technology would need to be developed before astronomers could explore and understand these cold, dark clouds running throughout the plane of the Milky Way.
The birth of radio astronomy provided this new tool and led to the discovery that the galaxy is filled not only with dust, but also with tremendous amounts of cold, neutral hydrogen gas. Most of the time, a hydrogen atom’s proton and electron spin in the same direction. But sometimes, electrons flip and spin in the other direction. For any given hydrogen atom, this only happens about once every 100 million years. When it does, energy is emitted with a wavelength of 21 centimeters. These waves pass right through the clouds of dust that hide visible light, which has a much shorter wavelength.
When astronomers first detected 21 cm radiation in 1951, they began using it to finally peer through these clouds to build a fuller picture of our Milky Way. By noting the distribution of neutral hydrogen, astronomers could map unseen portions of the galaxy, tracing its spiral arms, where hydrogen is concentrated.
The shape of our galaxy
Over the past 70 years, a picture has emerged of a massive galaxy with four primary spiral arms. The Sun is located 27,000 light-years from the galactic center along the Orion Spur, a smaller arm located between the Perseus and Sagittarius arms. In recent years, astronomers have discovered our galaxy’s central bulge has a bar structure. And its disk of gas and stars is slightly warped and twisted, perhaps by gravitational interaction with nearby dwarf galaxies.
There are deeper mysteries yet to be resolved. For instance, Newton’s law of gravity holds that stars and gas at a galaxy’s outer fringes should orbit slower than objects closer to its center — but instead, we observe that outer objects move faster. This is true in our galaxy, as well as others. The only explanation — without modifying the law of gravity — is the unseen existence of a great deal more mass, probably in the form of dark matter. But this dark matter has never been directly observed.
To stand out under a dome of shining stars and understand their true nature is an amazing feat of human ingenuity. To fathom the immensity of our galaxy and our place in it is a striking act of human imagination. Democritus envisioned vast numbers of stars beyond his power to see. And thanks to countless astronomers who came after him, we have found our true place in the galaxy we call home.
Foo Fighter Over National Park Forest Fire On Wake UP America Show! Video, UFO Sighting News.
Foo Fighter Over National Park Forest Fire On Wake UP America Show! Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting:July 28, 2022 but reported today.
Location of sighting: Yosemite National Park, California, USA
Source: Email Report scwaring@yahoo.com
Hey I appreciate the UFO reports coming in today. Keep it up.
This UFO was caught on TV during the California forest fire and I can clearly see that its a foo fighter. A glowing white sphere often seen during WWI and WWII seen by pilots as the UFO flew along side them for sometimes hours. This UFO is seen shooting above and then through the fire chemical red stream being dropped by the plane. Why? Aliens clearly want to know the chemical make up of it in order to access how much damage it does to our environment and how dangerous it is and will be in the future. Data...its more important than money or gold to aliens.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
On July 28th, 2022 I was watching WAKE UP AMERICA on Newsmax channel at 6:40 AM watching a plane dropping flame retardant on an Oak fire in California and noticed a ball UFO following the plane, tracking the retardant drop. It got very close to the rear of the plane. It entered the retardant then disappeared as the sun panned up from the bottom in the camera video as the camera man followed the plane's flight path. I don't believe it was a lens flare of the sun because in one frame it is half visible and half behind the retardant. It then disappeared into the retardant. I sent Newsmax a message about the video but got no response. So sent it into you Scott hoping you can take a look and tell me your thoughts.
UFO At High School Football Game, Wentzville, Missouri 9-23-2022, UFO Sighting News.
UFO At High School Football Game, Wentzville, Missouri 9-23-2022, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting:9-23-2022 Location of sighting: Wetzville, Missouri, USA Source: Email report
Guys this just in, someone was at a high school football game when they noticed a strange light in the sky. The light appeared to be a glowing rainbow disk seen from its side. The eyewitness recorded it briefly just seconds before the object speed up and shot away. Great catch, 100% proof that UFOs visit highly populated events. Probably trying little by little to allow themselves to be seen in order to desensitize people making them less and less scared of the idea of alien life, until the final big reveal takes place.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
UFO At High School Football Game, Wentzville, Missouri 9-23-2022, UFO Sighting News
Bob Lazar and the truth about a secret UFO base at Papoose Lake
Bob Lazar and the truth about a secret UFO base at Papoose Lake
Is our government working on crashed UFOs? Bob Lazar said he worked on reverse engineering alien spacecraft at a military facility in 1989 called SITE 4 (within the Area 51 designation). He described a unique and highly camouflaged building, built into the mountains and located at Papoose Lake... which is about 17 miles south of Groom Lake.
People have argued for 33 years if Lazar was telling the truth about a secret operational UFO facility at Papoose Lake.
The thing is... there was a civilian who snuck onto the Area 51 base - and took a look at Papoose Lake for himself. Did you know that?
In the spring 1997, an archeologist named Jerry Freeman snuck into the forbidden zone of Area 51 (and Papoose Lake). He is the only civilian known to have gained access to where Bob Lazar said was a hidden military installation. Lazar reported a unique and highly camouflaged building the military used to storehouse and reverse-engineer extraterrestrial flying saucers.
However, many people like to claim that Jerry Freeman never reported seeing anything unusual at Papoose Lake... that his excursion was uneventful, and that somehow his account throws shade on what Bob Lazar told us but that is nonsense.
Now, hear the REAL story from George Knapp… and also hear directly from Jerry.
This clip contains an audio interview Jerry did with radio host Art Bell. He gives a first-hand description of what he saw at Papoose Lake. Even the Los Angeles Times reported on Jerry’s forbidden excursion, and that he “discovered what seemed to be a lighted doorway that appeared and disappeared in the darkness of distant Papoose Lake”.
I think people have just forgotten their history, so it’s time to resurrect the truth... it’s time to listen up. You can now judge for yourself, and there’s more to come.
Is this just another confirmation that what Bob Lazar told us is true?
This really fast unidentified flying object was filmed over Groningen, a city in the northern Netherlands on 25th June 2022.
What do you think about it?
Witness report:
I hope somebody with a pro video edit can watch it and then say what it is.. because i don’t know yet what it is, in my video. maybe somebody from Mufon ? can anybody help me ? very strange, if it was space debri it would hit the ground i think and in the news, its going to fast for a drone, its 40 times 24 fps. my video is a slomo from samsung 20fe i was trying to make slomo videos from lightning but got this on video. 960fps in 1 sec video, it’s going way to fast for a drone, and to big for a bird or bug in the storm going true the clouds in almost straight line, in thunder weather. very fast. maybe it bends off a tiny bit. its just going too fast, and a bug is not going true a cloud in stormy weather. i have no idea what it is but looks the same as in U.K video very strange! my video is made on 25-06-2022. 14:08 and did not edit the video.
Ook dat nog: gasplaneet Jupiter gaat gebukt onder hittegolf
Op de planeet Jupiter is een extreem grote hittegolf ontdekt. Het getroffen gebied is ongeveer 10 keer zo groot als de aarde, heeft een internationale groep wetenschappers vrijdag naar buiten gebracht.
Jupiter, de grootste planeet in ons zonnestelsel, bestaat vrijwel helemaal uit dichte wolken van gas. De planeet weegt ongeveer 2,5 keer zo veel als de zeven andere planeten bij elkaar, en de aarde zou er ongeveer 1300 keer in passen. Vanaf Jupiter gezien is de zon niet meer dan een heldere ster in de verte, de planeet ontvangt ongeveer 4 procent van het licht dat de aarde krijgt.
Door de grote afstand en het weinige licht zou de temperatuur op Jupiter in theorie 70 graden onder nul moeten zijn, maar in de gaswolken stijgt het kwik makkelijk tot boven de 400 graden. De onderzoekers denken dat het komt door het permanente poollicht op Jupiter. Geladen deeltjes van de zon botsen tegen het sterke magnetische veld van Jupiter, en dat zorgt niet alleen voor het spectaculaire verschijnsel in de lucht, maar ook voor heel veel hitte.
300 graden warmer dan normaal
Net onder de noordpool van Jupiter zagen de onderzoekers een gebied waar de temperatuur is opgelopen tot boven de 700 graden, dus 300 graden warmer dan normaal. De wind blaast de hitte richting de evenaar van Jupiter. Dat zorgt voor een sliert hete lucht van 130.000 kilometer lang, ongeveer tien keer de doorsnee van de aarde.
De extreme temperatuur komt waarschijnlijk door een zonnevlam, denken de wetenschappers. Daardoor zouden extra veel deeltjes tegen het magnetische veld van Jupiter zijn gebotst, en daarbij zou de hitte zijn vrijgekomen.
Tests met kankerdodend virus lijken veelbelovend: “Ik kreeg al palliatieve zorg, maar nu ben ik genezen”
Er is een nieuwe vorm van kankertherapie gestart in Groot-Brittannië waarbij men gebruik maakt van een virus om schadelijke kankercellen te infecteren en te vernietigen. Volgens de Britse wetenschappers zijn de eerste proeven op mensen veelbelovend.
Bij één patiënt verdween de kanker, terwijl anderen hun tumoren zagen krimpen. Het geneesmiddel is een verzwakte vorm van het koortslipvirus dat is aangepast om tumoren te doden. Grotere en langere studies zijn eerst nog nodig, maar deskundigen zeggen dat de injectie uiteindelijk een reddingslijn kan bieden aan mensen met vergevorderde kanker.
Krzysztof Wojkowski, een 39-jarige bouwvakker uit het westen van Londen, is een van de patiënten die deelnam aan de lopende veiligheidsstudie van fase één. Bij hem werd in 2017 kanker van de speekselklieren, nabij de mond, vastgesteld. Ondanks een operatie en andere behandelingen bleef zijn kanker groeien.
“Ik kreeg te horen dat er voor mij geen opties meer waren en ik kreeg al palliatieve zorg. Het was verschrikkelijk, dus het was ongelooflijk dat ik de kans kreeg om aan de proef deel te nemen”, zegt Wojkowski. Een korte behandeling met het virus lijkt zijn kanker nu te hebben genezen. “Ik kreeg vijf weken lang om de twee weken injecties die mijn kanker volledig uitroeiden. Ik ben nu al twee jaar kankervrij.”
De injecties, die rechtstreeks in de tumor worden gegeven, vallen de kanker op twee manieren aan: door de kankercellen binnen te dringen en ze te laten barsten, en door het immuunsysteem te activeren. Ongeveer 40 patiënten hebben de behandeling in het kader van het onderzoek uitgeprobeerd. Sommigen kregen enkel de virusinjectie, RP2 genaamd. Anderen kregen ook een ander kankergeneesmiddel met de naam nivolumab.
“Indrukwekkend”
Hoofdonderzoeker professor Kevin Harrington vertelde de BBC dat de behandelingsresultaten “werkelijk indrukwekkend” waren voor een reeks gevorderde kankers, waaronder slokdarmkanker en een zeldzame vorm van oogkanker. “Het is zeldzaam om zulke goede responspercentages te zien in klinische proeven in een vroeg stadium, aangezien deze in de eerste plaats bedoeld zijn om de veiligheid van de behandeling te testen, en het gaat om patiënten met zeer gevorderde kankers waarvoor de huidige behandelingen niet meer werken”, zei hij. “Ik ben benieuwd of we voordelen blijven zien naarmate we meer patiënten behandelen.”
Het is niet de eerste keer dat wetenschappers een virus gebruiken om kanker te bestrijden. De Britse Nationale Gezondheidsdienst keurde enkele jaren geleden een soortgelijke therapie goed, maar dan met een verkoudheidsvirus. Deze therapie heet T-Vec en wordt nu gebruikt voor gevorderde huidkanker. Professor Harrington noemt RP2 een opgevoerde versie van T-Vec. “Het heeft andere modificaties aan het virus, zodat het meteen de kankercellen vernietigd van zodra ze in contact komen met elkaar.”
Doctor Marianne Baker, van Cancer Research UK, zei dat de bemoedigende bevindingen het verloop van de kankerbehandeling zouden kunnen veranderen. “Wetenschappers hebben 100 jaar geleden ontdekt dat virussen kunnen helpen bij de behandeling van kanker, maar het is een uitdaging geweest om ze veilig en effectief in te zetten. Deze nieuwe virale therapie is veelbelovend in een kleinschalige eerste proef. Nu hebben we meer studies nodig om na te gaan hoe goed het werkt”, besluit Baker.
Water gevonden op asteroïde verklaart mogelijk oorsprong van leven op aarde
De stofdeeltjes die een Japanse ruimtesonde heeft gevonden op een asteroïde op ongeveer 300 miljoen kilometer van de aarde, bevatten een verrassend bestanddeel: een waterdruppel. Die ontdekking biedt nieuwe steun voor de theorie dat het leven op aarde mogelijk uit de ruimte is gezaaid.
De bevindingen staan in het laatste onderzoek dat is gepubliceerd naar aanleiding van de analyse van 5,4 gram stenen en stof die de Hayabusa-2 sonde heeft verzameld bij de asteroïde Ryugu. “Deze waterdruppel heeft een grote betekenis,” vertelde de hoofdwetenschapper, Tomoki Nakamura van de Tohoku Universiteit. “Veel onderzoekers geloofden al dat er water is meegebracht uit de ruimte, maar wij hebben voor het eerst effectief water ontdekt in een asteroïde in de buurt van de aarde.”
Hayabusa-2 werd in 2014 gelanceerd op zijn missie naar Ryugu, en keerde twee jaar geleden terug in een baan om de aarde om een capsule met het monster af te zetten. De kostbare lading heeft al verschillende inzichten opgeleverd, waaronder organisch materiaal waaruit bleek dat sommige bouwstenen van het leven op aarde, aminozuren, mogelijk in de ruimte zijn gevormd.
De laatste ontdekking van het team was een druppel vloeistof in het Ryugu-monster. “De drupel is koolzuurhoudend water met zout en organisch materiaal”, aldus Nakamura. “Dat versterkt de theorie dat asteroïden zoals Ryugu, of grotere asteroïde, water met organische stoffen hebben geleverd op aarde”, zei hij. “We hebben dus bewijs ontdekt dat dit rechtstreeks verband kan hebben met bijvoorbeeld het ontstaan van de oceanen of organische materie op Aarde”
Nakamura’s team, dat bestaat uit ongeveer 150 onderzoekers, waaronder 30 uit de VS, Groot-Brittannië, Frankrijk, Italië en China, is het grootste team dat het monster van Ryugu analyseert. Het monster is verdeeld over verschillende wetenschappelijke teams om de kans op nieuwe ontdekkingen zo groot mogelijk te maken.
Kensei Kobayashi, een astrobiologie-expert aan de Yokohama National University die geen deel uitmaakt van de onderzoeksgroep, juichte de ontdekking toe. “Het feit dat er water is ontdekt in het monster zelf is verrassend”, gezien de kwetsbaarheid ervan en de kans dat het in de ruimte wordt vernietigd, zei hij. “Het suggereert dat asteroïdes water kunnen bevatten, in de vorm van vloeistof en niet alleen in de vorm van ijs. Hierdoor kan organisch materiaal dus verplaatst worden door de ruimte”.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:HLN.be - Het Laatste Nieuws ( NL)
Creating Crashed UFOs and Dead Aliens That Never Existed: Secret Psychological Warfare
Creating Crashed UFOs and Dead Aliens That Never Existed: Secret Psychological Warfare
Nick Redfern
Nineteen-sixty-nine was the year in which an undeniably elaborate UFO-themed Soviet ruse was put into place over in Russia. This strange affair was highly sophisticated and it revolved around a crashed UFO and the top secret study of an alleged dead alien creature. It was certainly shades of Roswell and the notorious 1995 "Alien Autopsy" film. The story itself is undeniably fascinating – which, I am sure, is what the Russians were surely counting on – as the “evidence” is an old piece of film-footage that reportedly chronicled the whole weird thing. While the crash of the UFO is said to have occurred in March 1969, the story – and the attendant film – did not surface until 1998, almost three decades later. That was the year in which a television production, The Secret KGB UFO Files, was broadcast in the United States and elsewhere, too. There's no doubt that a great deal of money was put into the over-sensationalized production and it was hosted by the late Roger Moore, the star of seven of the phenomenally successful James Bond movies. The documentary covered a wide body of UFO-based data (some of it blatantly hoaxed); however, there’s no doubt that it was specifically the film of the supposed crashed UFO and its deceased crew-member which caught the attention of most of those who bothered to watch it.
(Nick Redfern) Dead aliens or sophisticated dummies?
Certainly, a great deal of effort went into the production of the film: I have to stress to you that this was most definitely not the work of an amateur, half-hearted operation. The footage is grainy, it appears old, and was filmed by someone with a hand-held camera. It shows around fifteen-to-twenty men wearing Russian uniforms, thick coats and hats; they are all armed and are guarding a small, circular-shaped craft which appears to have slammed into the ground in a wooded, frosty area. The location was said to have been Sverdlovsk, Russia. The trees are largely bereft of leaves and everything points to the incident having occurred in very cold, bleak weather. Only around a half of the saucer-shaped vehicle protrudes out of the soil, in an angled fashion. The inference is that the military unit found the craft shortly after it hit the ground and, at the time of the filming, were in the process of guarding the site from any and all onlookers that might have come along. To this very day, we don’t know where the film came from, and how it reached the producers of The Secret KGB UFO Files. We’re told that the production company had to pay $10,000 U.S. dollars to secure it, after it was smuggled out of KGB archives. Supposedly. That part of the story is very foggy.
It's worth noting the following from the National UFO Center: “The footage at the crash site does seem to be authentic at least on several points. The truck in the film is a circa 1950 model ZIS151, which has not been used by the military for quite some time, and the truck would have been difficult to find to stage a hoax with. Other elements of the film do not exhibit any obvious signs of a hoax.” It should be noted there are two other, old military vehicles in the film, too. As for the remaining portion of the film, it very much mirrors the notorious “Alien Autopsy” film, which, in 1995, was foisted on the world by a man named Ray Santilli, and to wildly varying degrees of fanfare. Three men appear to be working on the autopsy of a small, humanoid creature, while a woman take notes. Numerous websites claim that the woman has been identified as a “KGB stenographer” named “O.A. Pshonikina.”
(Nick Redfern) Another controversial UFO crash case
This statement has been repeated time and again; yet, there is no evidence to prove the claim. Such is the reliability – or not - of the Internet. Was the footage created to have the U.S. Government and the intelligence community think that the Russians had recovered, and were extensively studying, alien creatures and their technology? These are mind-boggling, yet utterly plausible, questions to ponder on. There is another - and similar - affair to this. The next one, though, was put into place by a man who wrote fiction, but who may have known something of bogus crashed UFOs in the late 1940s and for pyschological warfare purposes by the U.S. government.
Nineteen-forty-eight was not just notable, in UFO terms, for the twisted tale of the supposed UFO crash in Aztec, New Mexico. It was also the year in which a very intriguing novel was published. Its title was The Flying Saucer and its author was Bernard Newman. In some respects, the story that Newman weaved in 1948 closely mirrored the claims of Alfred O’Donnell in 2011, as they related to the Roswell controversy of July 1947. In the 250-pages of The Flying Saucer, we are treated to a tale of cover-ups, conspiracies, and fabricated tales of Martians and UFOs. The story revolves around a group of scientists who decide that the people of Earth need to be united under one banner. A one world society. But, how could such a thing be achieved? By creating a faked, alien threat, that’s how.
In The Flying Saucer, those aforementioned scientists decide to fake a trio of UFO crashes, as a means to convince the world that aliens have reached the Earth, and that those same scientists have the priceless evidence in their hands. One of those three incidents occurs in the heart of New Mexico, no less. Another UFO crashes in the Soviet Union, and a third slams into the ground in the U.K. Of course, the crashes are actually nothing of the sort. Rather, they are ingeniously staged events designed to make the world believe that the Martian are among us. The scientists create the futuristic aircraft, making them appear to have unearthly origins. The team even stages a bogus alien autopsy, as a means to even further convince people that we are not alone in the universe. The plan is to unite the human race under a friendly, benevolent government. I’ll let you learn for yourselves how the story develops and reaches its climax. It’s not just the story that is intriguing – given that we now know such machinations were already afoot in the real world – but the author, Bernard Newman, himself, too.
(Nick Redfern) More UFOs that aren't what they seem to be?
Philip Taylor, a researcher who has dug deeply into the life and career of Bernard Newman, says: “In his unrevealing autobiography Speaking From Memory [Newman] describes how from 1919 onwards he was apparently employed in an undemanding Civil Service job in the Ministry of Works. Somehow he seemed able to take extremely long and, for those days, exceedingly adventurous holidays, including lengthy stays in Eastern Europe and Russia. His destinations invariably seemed to include areas of particular political interest: for example several extended holidays to Germany in the 1930’s.” Taylor also reveals that in 1938 Newman put together a paper for British Intelligence on the then-current state of German rocketry at the Peenemünde Army Research Center. It was overseen by the German Army Weapons Office. In other words, yet another curious thread is carefully weaved into the strange story. But, things don’t end there. There's more to come. Much of it.
In 1945, the New York Times ran an article on Newman who, by that time, was a well-respected, prestigious author on matters relative to the world of espionage. Indeed, his books that were published before the New York Times article appeared included The Secrets of German Espionage; Ride to Russia; Woman Spy; and Spy Catchers. As for that same article, it addresses, in part, claims that Newman worked as a “double-agent” during the First World War, infiltrating the German military and securing some of the Germans’ most prized secrets. This is not impossible, since Newman was fluent in German. He was, however, only eighteen at the time, which admittedly stretches credulity to a degree. On this matter, in February 1968, when Newman died, the U.K.’s Times newspaper suggested that this part of Newman’s life should be relegated to “the realm of fiction.” We may never know for sure all that Bernard Newman learned during his life as a prestigious writer on the world of spying, espionage and counterintelligence. But, we do know that in 1948, only one year after the events outside of Roswell, New Mexico occurred, Newman wrote a novel - The Flying Saucer – that contained just about all of the key ingredients that comprise the primary themes of the article you are now reading: faked UFO crashes, a bogus alien invasion, and the manipulation of the mindset of the populace. We have to wonder if Newman - who cultivated numerous colleagues and friends in the intelligence community. And, finally, there is this...
Kenneth Goff was an interesting character, and someone who had made controversial comments in the 1950s about communist-based plans to covertly introduce fluoride into the United States' water supply, to create what he termed a “spirit of lethargy” in the nation. And: guess what? Goff had a deep interest in Flying Saucers. Indeed, one of Goff’s regular lectures was titled: Traitors in the Pulpit, or What’s Behind the Flying Saucers – Are they from Russia, Another Planet, or God? But, it was not so much from the perspective of UFOs being alien or even Russian, however, that interested Goff. His concern was the very subject matter of the article you are now reading: how the UFO subject could be utilized as a tool of manipulation and control by more than just one government. In his 1959 publication, Red Shadows, Goff loudly offered the following to his readers – which, of course, secretly included the FBI: “During the past few years, the flying saucer scare has rapidly become one of the main issues, used by organizations working for a one-world government, to frighten people into the belief that we will need a super world government to cope with an invasion from another planet. Many means are being used to create a vast amount of imagination in the minds of the general public, concerning the possibilities of an invasion by strange creatures from Mars or Venus.”
There is one more story that ties in with the above cases. It comes from a well-known collector of crashed UFO tales. And. it's a thought-provoking one. That man was the late Leonard Stringfield. Over the decades, he was the recipient of a number of such controversial claims – although, sadly and perhaps inevitably, no films. And no surprise. One such intriguing tale told to Stringfield came from the unsurprisingly anonymous ‘Mr. T.E.’, who, said Stringfield in 1980, “holds a technical position in today’s life.” T.E. told Stringfield that in 1953, at the age of just twenty, and while stationed at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, he was summoned to watch a startling piece of film-footage at the base theatre. Reported Stringfield: “Without any briefing, the 16mm movie projector was flicked on and the film began to roll on the screen…the film showed a desert scene dominated by a silver disc-shaped object embedded in the sand…”
Stringfield continued with this information: “Then…there was a change of scenes. Now in view were two tables, probably taken inside a tent, on which, to his surprise, were dead bodies. T.E. said the bodies appeared little by human standards and most notable were the heads, all looking alike, and all being large compared to their body sizes…They looked Mongoloid.” Interestingly, T.E. and his colleagues were told immediately after the screening to ‘think about the movie’; but were later advised that: “It was a hoax.” And, eerily paralleling the Santilli film, T.E. told Stringfield that: “The 5-minute long movie certainly was not a Walt Disney production. It was probably shot by an inexperienced cameraman because it was full of scratches, and had poor colouring and texture.” What all of this tells us is that when it comes to UFOs, we really don't know what is real and what isn't. Remember that.
Hear meteoroid striking Mars, Caught by NASA’s InSight Lander
Hear meteoroid striking Mars, Caught by NASA’s InSight Lander
NASA’s InSight lander detected seismic waves from a meteoroid and was able to capture the sound of the space rock striking the surface of Mars for the first time. The meteoroid – the term used for incoming space rocks before they hit the ground – entered Mars’ atmosphere on Sept. 5, 2021, exploding into at least three shards that each left craters behind. Mars’ atmosphere is just 1% as dense as Earth’s, allowing far more meteoroids to pass through and impact the Red Planet’s surface.
This event marks the first time seismic and acoustic waves from an impact were detected on the Red Planet. Why does this meteoroid impact sound like a “bloop” in the video? It has to do with a peculiar atmospheric effect that’s also observed in deserts on Earth.
After sunset, the atmosphere retains some heat accumulated during the day. Sound waves travel through this heated atmosphere at different speeds, depending on their frequency. As a result, lower-pitched sounds arrive before high-pitched sounds. An observer close to the impact would hear a “bang,” while someone many miles away would hear the bass sounds first, creating a “bloop.”
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flew over the estimated impact site to confirm the location. The orbiter used its black-and-white Context Camera to reveal three darkened spots on the surface.
After locating these spots, the orbiter’s team used the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, or HiRISE, to get a color close-up of the craters. Because HiRISE sees wavelengths the human eye can’t detect, scientists change the camera’s filters to enhance the color of the image. The areas that appear blue around the craters are where dust has been removed or disturbed by the blast of the impact. Martian dust is bright and red, so removing it makes the surface appear relatively dark and blue.
Orange UFO Orbs in San Clemente, California 19-Sep-2022
Orange UFO Orbs in San Clemente, California 19-Sep-2022
This UFO video was seen and recorded in the night sky above San Clemente, a city in Orange County, California on 19th September 2022.
Witness report:
My family observed 2-9 Orbs over a course of about 30 minutes on Sept 19th. The orbs did not move north/south/east/west or up/down. Over the course of 30 minutes the lights went away and came back a couple times – but always in the same spot. We do live by Camp Pendleton here in San Clemente. Our house is on a bluff overlooking the ocean approximately 1 mile away from the shore. Please pardon the colorful language at times. We feel lucky to have experienced this and hope to find out what they were.
UFOs Didn’t Start in 2004 – The Richard Dolan Show
UFOs Didn’t Start in 2004 – The Richard Dolan Show
The Tic Tac UFO encounter of 2004 is rightly considered to be a very important event. Unfortunately, too much of our public discourse relating to UFOs or UAP now only focuses on encounters from that point onward, and very little of the incredible rich story of 20th century UFOs is ever discussed in mainstream/establishment venues. Removing the history of UFOs is important for the military, as it enables them to continue to pretend that there’s no cover-up, no conspiracy. In fact, there is overwhelming evidence that the US military has been deeply engaged in the matter of UFOs for 80 years.
Canadian defence minister was briefed on UFOs ahead of U.S. intel report
Canadian defence minister was briefed on UFOs ahead of U.S. intel report
Ahead of the release of a much-anticipated U.S. intelligence report on aerial phenomena, former Canadian defence minister Harjit Sajjan received a briefing on UFOs.
“I expect I am not alone in noting the recent increase in comment regarding Unidentified Flying Objects in the media internationally, particularly in the U.S.,” Sajjan’s then-chief of staff wrote in a May 19, 2021 email to senior defence officials. “I believe it is prudent to request a full briefing for Minister Sajjan from the Canadian perspective on this issue.”
A lieutenant-colonel co-ordinated the effort. An accompanying five-page slide presentation included an overview of cases and procedures, which currently link the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) with air traffic controllers, federal aviation authorities and a civilian researcher in Manitoba. CTVNews.ca acquired the slides and related emails through an access to information request.
It took six weeks of emails before a Department of National Defence spokesperson confirmed the briefing occurred in mid-2021, although they would not provide an exact date. A subsequent access to information request revealed the briefing took place on May 27, 2021.
Sajjan, a former CAF lieutenant-colonel himself, was replaced as defence minister by Anita Anand in an Oct. 2021 cabinet shuffle and now serves as Minister of International Development.
“No, we have no records of subsequent briefs based on currently-available information,” the National Defence spokesperson said. “Minister Anand has not received a brief at this juncture.”
'VITAL INTELLIGENCE SIGHTINGS'
The briefing slides say approximately 1,000 UFO sightings are reported in Canada each year.
Emails and five-page slide deck below show how Sajjan received a briefing on “unidentified aerial phenomena” in May 2021. CTVNews.ca has redacted email addresses and phone numbers for privacy. Click here to see the document full screen.
The most recent case referenced was from May 9, 2021, when the pilot of a Delta Air Lines flight over Saskatchewan asked air traffic controllers “about traffic well above them and moving right to left.” According to a publicly-available report from Transport Canada, the “controller advised that there was no known traffic in the area. The pilot replied that they couldn't figure out what it was either.”
Transport Canada, the federal department that maintains the database, warns such “reports contain preliminary, unconfirmed data which can be subject to change.”
That data is mostly supplied by Nav Canada, a private company that owns and operates Canadian civil air navigation infrastructure such as airport control towers. When Nav Canada personnel receive UFO reports, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are also usually alerted.
“NAV Canada is the responsible agency for managing UAP-related reporting,” the slides prepared for the then-defence minister read. “CAF does not typically investigate sightings of unexplained phenomena outside the context of investigating potential threats or distress.”
A Nav Canada spokesperson said the company doesn’t investigate UFO reports, adding that their role is to forward information to federal authorities. They point to a Nav Canada guide to Canadian aviation procedures, which puts “unidentified flying objects” at the front of a list of “vital intelligence sightings” requiring reports. Other examples include “surface warships identified as being non-Canadian or non-American.”
A spokesperson from Transport Canada told CTVNews.ca that UFO reports “have no potential for regulatory enforcement and often fall outside the department’s mandate.”
“Reports of unidentified objects can rarely be followed up on as they are as the title implies, unidentified,” the spokesperson said in an email.
The U.S. government has funded UFO research programs almost continuously since 2007. The public got a rare peek at those efforts on June 25, 2021, when the U.S. intelligence community released an unclassified report on recent military sightings, which included UAP that “appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion.”
From drones to weather phenomena to top-secret technology, many potential explanations are floated for odd observations like these, and officials say they should not be interpreted as proof extraterrestrials are visiting earth. But finding answers requires investigation, and compared to government-funded programs in the U.S., little appears to be happening in Canada.
“As our closest ally and NORAD partner continues to investigate the national security implications of UAP, it would be prudent for Canada to take a similar approach,” the former Conservative cabinet member said in a statement to CTVNews.ca. “Rather than ridicule and silence, it would be wise to take this issue seriously, with the objective of identifying the origins and intent of these UAP.”
'CANADA'S PRE-EMINENT UFOLOGIST'
Declassified records held by Library and Archives Canada reveal military UFO procedures and sightings dating back to the early 1950s. By the 1960s, responsibility was transferred to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and scientists at the National Research Council of Canada, which ended their involvement in 1995.
According to the briefing slides obtained by CTVNews.ca, it wasn’t long before a civilian researcher described as “Canada’s pre-eminent ufologist” started receiving UFO reports directly from the military and Transport Canada.
Chris Rutkowski is a Winnipeg-based science writer and University of Manitoba communications professional who has led efforts to document more than 23,000 sightings since 1989 through the annual Canadian UFO Survey. Rutkowski told CTVNews.ca he was asked to provide material for the minister’s briefing as a “civilian advisor,” and that he last received official UFO data in early 2021.
“I have been called both a sceptic and a believer, which probably demonstrates that my position is appropriate,” Rutkowski said in an email. “We are long past the era of UFOs being a subject of ridicule. Well-trained observers have reported sightings of UFOs and UAP and there seems to be a renewed interest by both scientists and the military establishment in taking a closer look at this persistent phenomenon.”
Rutkowski, whose 10th UFO book is scheduled to be released this spring, would like to see a panel or committee formed to gather and examine Canadian cases. Findlay also thinks it’s time for Canada to be more active and open about UFOs.
“We believe the government should adopt a streamlined, whole-of-government approach to standardize the collection of reports across numerous departments and contractors, such as NAV Canada,” Findlay told CTVNews.ca in a rare statement on the subject from a Canadian politician. “Efforts should be undertaken to investigate and make those findings public in a responsible manner.”
UFO procedures remain unchanged in Canada, the Department of National Defence spokesperson told CTVNews.ca. When asked if information on the subject has been provided to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or his office, their response was, “not directly, no.”
CTV News was first made aware of Sajjan’s UFO briefing by an anonymous source, who shared documents acquired through Canadian freedom of information laws. CTV News verified those documents by filing a new access to information request with the Department of National Defence.
Edited by CTVNews.ca's Rachel Aiello and Brooklyn Neustaeter
RELATED IMAGES
A donut-shaped UFO was spotted in Rimouski, Que. on Oct. 23, 2017 and photographed by witnesses.
(Source: 2017 Canadian UFO Survey)
Correction
A Department of National Defence spokesperson previously told CTVNews.ca that the briefing occurred in "early June 2021." A subsequent access to information request revealed that the briefing actually took place earlier, on May 27, 2021. This story has been updated accordingly.
The idea that extraterrestrials could be interdimensional beings is advanced by many UFO researchers. This hypothesis seems to take a serious turn after the Skinwalker Ranch incidents, as well as astronomer and UFO researcher Jacques Vallée’s suggestion that aliens are real but exist in another dimension that coexists with ours.
The extraterrestrial hypothesis has remained the primary explanation for UFOs by many experts. However, there are many ufologists that have abandoned it in favor of the interdimensional hypothesis. Paranormal researcher Brad Steiger wrote: “We are dealing with a multidimensional paraphysical phenomenon that is largely indigenous to planet Earth.”
The interdimensional hypothesis is viewed as an alternative to the popular extraterrestrial hypothesis, which is advanced by such experts as Meade Layne, John Keel, J. Allen Hynek, and Jacques Vallée. According to it, UFOs are a modern manifestation of a phenomenon that has occurred throughout recorded human history, which in prior ages were ascribed to mythological or supernatural creatures.
Dr. Jacques Vallée with Dr. Allen. J Hynek during the Projecct Blue Book
Jacques Vallée states that UFOs and related events of a paranormal nature involve visitations from other “realities” or “dimensions.” The idea proposes that these alternate realities exist separately yet parallel to our own. In 1975’s The Edge of Reality, Vallée and Hynek considered the possibility of what they call “interlocking universes.”
According to Hynek, “There could be other universe with different quantum rules or vibration rates if you want. Our own space-time continuum could be a cross-section through a universe with many more dimensions… Think what a hard time you would have convincing an aborigine that right now, through this room, TV pictures are passing! Yet they’re here. You have to have a transducer to see them – namely a TV set. Well, in the same sense there may be interlocking universes right here! We have this idea of space, we always think of another universe being someplace else. It may not. Maybe it’s right here.”
In his 1969 book “Passport to Magonia: On UFOS, Folkore and Parallel Worlds,” Vallée argues for a “parallel universe co-existing with our own.” The idea was reiterated in Vallée’s subsequent writings. He summarized his objection in his 1990 paper “Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects”:
Unexplained close encounters are far more numerous than required for any physical survey of the earth;
The humanoid body structure of the alleged “aliens” is not likely to have originated on another planet and is not biologically adapted to space travel;
The reported behavior in thousands of abduction reports contradicts the hypothesis of genetic or scientific experimentation on humans by an advanced race;
The extension of the phenomenon throughout recorded human history demonstrates that UFOs are not a contemporary phenomenon;
The apparent ability of UFOs to manipulate space and time suggests radically different and richer alternatives.
A study published in ResearchGate proposes that there must be an interdimensional membrane that protects one dimension from the other, and the interdimensional tunnels that exist in between (connecting) those dimensions must have an unstable entrance, wandering unpredictably from one hyper-surface to another. There, if anyone gets caught in any of those tunnels’ entrance, devoid of any singularities and horizons, then they ought to travel to the other dimensions that will always be >4 as permitted by the laws of physics standing on the 4D universe.
American journalist John Keel (1930-2009) was a believer in extraterrestrials and speculated that the stories from folklore and religious texts were proof that humanity had indeed made contact with another form of intelligent life, but that they were not from outer space. Instead, they were beings from other dimensions: ultraterrestrials. Keel theorized that those beings could shapeshift to look like anything, and attributed them to stories of demons, monsters, angels, ogres and changelings. He thought those ultraterrestrials likely had a sense of right and wrong, and that they were capable of manipulating the mankind.
On the other hand, Evans argues that if the other dimension is slightly more advanced than ours, or is perhaps our own future, this would explain the tendency of UFOs to represent technologies close to the future.
One of the most fascinating documents about aliens as interdimensional beings was found in the FBI archives. Memorandum 6751(dated July 8, 1947) is most important to the UFOlogy, according to former FBI Special Agent John DeSouza. According to the report, among other species, we are visited by creatures not only from other planets but from other dimensions as well. In particular, they are from the etheric plane coexisting with our physical Universe, materialized entities that appeared as translucent giants.
Memo 6751: Credit FBI Vault
Memo 6751 remained classified for 63 years until Executive Order 13526, which allowed for its declassification and release. The memo may not be a “smoking gun,” but it is significant that it remained untouched from the disinformation campaigns of the Project Grudge, Blue Book.
Could the phenomena at the Utah ranch, a.k.a. Skinwalker Ranch have been the result of interdimensional beings or time travelers accessing our space-time continuum, or physical beings jumping across vast interstellar distances via wormholes or stargates?
Dr. Travis Taylor joined businessman Brandon Fugals’s team at Fugals’s infamous Skinwalker ranch three years ago and firmly believed he would be able to resolve the ranch’s assorted mysteries in short order. But the longer he stayed, the stranger things became.
In his recent interview with investigative journalist George Knapp, he said: “You know, I had never seen a UFO until I got out there. Now, I have seen more UFOs now than you can count.
In the surprisingly candid and wide-ranging interview, Dr. Taylor shared his opinion about the role of science in the pursuit of the unknown, his personal experience with strange phenomena on Skinwalker Ranch, the physical effects of close encounter cases, and the mysterious “hitchhiker effect” that multiple UFO/paranormal eyewitnesses had reported.
In his opinion, this unexplained phenomenon can be different for people in regards to their brain activity. Hypothetically speaking, he said that the phenomenon can be connected to different planes in the universe. He added that he could go along with the idea of a portal but was not sure. He believes it is bizarre but there is some truth to it.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
The Pillars of Creation
The Pillars of Creation
Image credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA.
These towering tendrils of cosmic dust and gas sit at the heart of M16, or the Eagle Nebula. The aptly named Pillars of Creation, featured in this stunning Hubble image, are part of an active star-forming region within the nebula and hide newborn stars in their wispy columns.
Although this is not Hubble’s first image of this iconic feature of the Eagle Nebula, it is the most detailed. The blue colors in the image represent oxygen, red is sulfur, and green represents both nitrogen and hydrogen. The pillars are bathed in the scorching ultraviolet light from a cluster of young stars located just outside the frame. The winds from these stars are slowly eroding the towers of gas and dust.
Stretching roughly 4 to 5 light-years, the Pillars of Creation are a fascinating but relatively small feature of the entire Eagle Nebula, which spans 70 by 55 light-years. The nebula, discovered in 1745 by the Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Chéseaux, is located 7,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens. With an apparent magnitude of 6, the Eagle Nebula can be spotted through a small telescope and is best viewed during July. A large telescope and optimal viewing conditions are necessary to resolve the Pillars of Creation.
Credits: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
For the first time in the history of humanity, we stand a good chance of walking on the surface of Mars! And this is thanks to the dogged ambition of Elon Musk.
The billionaire is building a mighty spacecraft, the Starship, that will take volunteers across the vast distance between Earth and Mars! However, since the trip will take months in deep space, Musk’s company, SpaceX, has to find a way to protect the travelers from the effect of microgravity during the duration of the journey!
This is why SpaceX has come up with an artificial gravity Starship! What is this spacecraft, and how does it work?
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Over the last couple of days I've written on two intriguing characters: one was the Indiana Jones-type, Tom Slick. And, the other one was Albert Bender, the guy who began the Men in Black mystery in the early 1950s. So, I thought I would turn this into a trilogy and finalize it with a man named Sheridan Cavitt. You may not know about him, but, if you're into the UFO phenomenon, you really should. Let's see what we know about the man (who is now deceased). He proved to be one of the trickiest players in the entire Roswell story. He revealed very little of substance. On occasion, he even denied having ever been at Roswell or at the crash site. Cavitt may even have withheld what he knew of the incident when, in 1994, the Air Force came knocking on his front-door, wanting answers. But, let's go back a bit. The story of Roswell was quickly picked up not just across the United States, but across the planet, too. In barely no time at all, however, the flying disc angle was blown out of the sky: the whole thing was nothing but a huge, embarrassing mistake. The materials found on the massive ranch – by rancher William Ware “Mack” Brazel – were not the remains of a disc, after all. What had really been found, and subsequently collected and brought to the Roswell Army Air Field, was weather-balloon debris. Or, so the military was careful to try and assure everyone. The truth was much more. And much more disturbing.
(Nick Redfern)
At the site of what really came down at Roswell
With Brazel at the time of the discovery – which had actually occurred days earlier – was a young boy named Dee Proctor. He would go on to be one of the most important people in the Roswell story. We also know for sure that three, key military men, all of whom were destined to become part and parcel of the Roswell affair, were also present at the ranch – and specifically before a veritable battalion was on-site and ordered to recover the massive amount of whatever-it-was. They were Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence-office of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell; Captain Sheridan Cavitt, of the Counter-Intelligence Corps; and CIC Master Sergeant Lewis S. “Bill” Rickett. All three were at ground-zero. They all saw the wreckage. Years later Marcel would open up wide on the matter of the debris he saw and collected. Cavitt and Rickett may have seen more than debris. Way more. Possibly bodies, strange bodies. Brazel and little Dee may have seen one or more of those bodies, too. One of the primary reasons why the Air Force felt that the Mogul balloon scenario worked so well was because of the sheer scale of the arrays. They were gigantic clusters of balloons. In that sense, the Project Mogul balloons could, theoretically, have explained the presence of the huge debris field on the Foster Ranch – a field of debris that clearly could not have been caused by anything as insignificant as a small, solitary weather-balloon.
It’s ironic, however, that one of the primary Roswell players – and who the U.S. Air Force spoke with, hoping he would add weight to their Project Mogul argument – completely failed to take the bait. On the matter of the nature of the debris, he would have nothing at all to do with the Mogul program. That man was one of the very few people that just about everyone who has studied the Roswell controversy agrees was definitely on-site when the materials were found and recovered: Sheridan Cavitt, formerly of the Counter-Intelligence Corps. On May 24, 1994, Colonel Richard L. Weaver, USAF – who, at the time, was the Air Force’s Director of Security and Special Program Oversight – interviewed Cavitt at his, Cavitt’s, home. Mary, Cavitt’s wife, was also present throughout the interview. In its published report, the Air Force had some intriguing things to say about Cavitt and his comments on the Roswell event. There is an important reason why I have reproduced, below, a specific section of the Cavitt interview. That reason will become apparent imminently. The USAF said, in its 1994 report and prefacing the interview:
“Cavitt is credited in all claims of having accompanied Major Marcel to the ranch to recover the debris, sometimes along with his Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) subordinate, William Rickett, who, like Marcel, is deceased. Although there does not appear to be much dispute that Cavitt was involved in the material recovery, other claims about him prevail in the popular literature. He is sometimes portrayed as a closed-mouth (or sometimes even sinister) conspirator who was one of the early individuals who kept the ‘secret of Roswell’ from getting out. Other things about him have been alleged, including the claim that he wrote a report of the incident at the time that has never surfaced.” In view of the above, it’s not at all surprising that the Air Force wanted to speak with Cavitt. The USAF report continues: “Since Lt. Col. Cavitt, who had first-hand knowledge, was still alive, a decision was made to interview him and get a signed sworn statement from him about his version of the events. Prior to the interview, the Secretary of the Air Force provided him with a written authorization and waiver to discuss classified information with the interviewer and release him from any security oath he may have taken. Subsequently, Cavitt was interviewed on May 24, 1994, at his home. Cavitt provided a signed, sworn statement of his recollections in this matter. He also consented to having the interview tape-recorded.
(Nick Redfern) New Mexico: Where so much classified military experimentation was undertaken in 1947
“In this interview, Cavitt related that he had been contacted on numerous occasions by UFO researchers and had willingly talked with many of them; however, he felt that he had oftentimes been misrepresented or had his comments taken out of context so that their true meaning was changed. He stated unequivocally, however, that the material he recovered consisted of a reflective sort of material like aluminum foil, and some thin, bamboo-like sticks. He thought at the time, and continued to do so today, that what he found was a weather balloon and has told other private researchers that. “He also remembered finding a small ‘black box’ type of instrument, which he thought at the time was probably a radiosonde. Lt. Col. Cavitt also reviewed the famous Ramey/Marcel photographs of the wreckage taken to Ft. Worth and he identified the materials depicted in those photos as consistent with the materials that he recovered from the ranch. Lt. Col. Cavitt also stated that he had never taken any oath or signed any agreement not to talk about this incident and had never been threatened by anyone in the government because of it. He did not even know the incident was claimed to be anything unusual until he was interviewed in the early 1980’s.”
Cavitt told Colonel Weaver: “…I couldn’t swear to the dates, but in that time, which must have been July, we heard that someone had found some debris out not to far from Roswell and it looked suspicious; it was unidentified. So, I went out and I do not recall whether Marcel went with Rickett and me; I had Rickett with me. We went out to his site. There were no, as I understand, checkpoints or anything like that (going through guards and that sort of garbage) we went out there and we found it. It was a small amount of, as I recall, bamboo sticks, reflective sort of material that would, well at first glance, you would probably think it was aluminum foil, something of that type. And we gathered up some of it.” Cavitt had more to say: “I don’t know where we even tried to get all of it. It wasn’t scattered, well, what I would call, you know, extensively. Like it didn’t go along the ground and splatter off some here and some there. We gathered up some of it and took it back to the base and I remember I had turned it over to Marcel. As I say, I do not remember whether Marcel was there or not on the site. He could have been. We took it back to the intelligence room in the CIC office.”
The Air Force’s statement is notable for not just what it says, but also for what it specifically does not say. The USAF report makes it clear that in Cavitt’s opinion, what he saw and picked up was weather-balloon debris. From one, single balloon. Not more than one balloon. And definitely not an array of balloons. Given that the materials used in both weather-balloons and Mogul balloons were essentially one and the same, that meant the ball was still just about in the Air Force’s court: the Mogul theory still held water, and one of the last-surviving people who were at the crash-site was endorsing it. Well, no, he wasn’t. The exact opposite, actually. The most important document in this aspect of the Roswell puzzle is not the Air Force’s 1994 report, but its massive 1995 publication / behemoth, The Roswell Report: Fact Vs Fiction in the New Mexico Desert, a copy of which was mailed to me by Colonel Weaver when it was published, and which runs to more than 1,000 pages. Unlike the far slimmer 1994 report, the huge 1995 USAF document contains a full transcript of the interview between Colonel Weaver and Cavitt.
The report shows that Colonel Weaver asked Cavitt: “…when you went out and saw this material, there was no doubt in your mind that it was some sort of man-made material? And, you thought at the time was a weather balloon, some sort of balloon?” Cavitt replied: “When I first saw it,” implying to the colonel that he knew immediately it was balloon debris. Now we get to the important part. Colonel Weaver continued with his questioning and asked Cavitt how big the debris field was. Cavitt’s response: “Maybe as long as this room is wide.” The colonel asked for clarification on Cavitt’s words : “So, twenty feet maybe?” Cavitt said, as he pointed around the room: “Some here, some here, some here. No concentration of it.” That all brings us to the biggest problem in this aspect of the overall Roswell debate: almost no-one of significance in the Roswell story disputes that the debris field on the ranch was expansive. Even the Air Force believed that. It still does, if asked. And, the fact that the field was so huge, and packed with debris, allowed the USAF to make a somewhat plausible case that it came from one of the military’s goliath-sized Mogul arrays. But, when talking to Colonel Weaver in 1994, Cavitt outright disputed the size of the field. It was, he said, just about “as long as this room is wide.”
(Nick Redfern) Roswell was a secret test of a new military device, not a UFO. Period
Cavitt’s testimony was potentially extremely important to the Air Force, as it could have helped bolster the idea that the materials came from Project Mogul. But, Cavitt’s words on the size of the area in which the material was found, were wholly inconsistent with what one would expect to see if Mogul was the culprit. Instead, what Cavitt described was consistent with just a small weather-balloon: not much wreckage and a very small area in which the materials were strewn about. On top of that, when Colonel Weaver brought up the matter of Project Mogul, Cavitt shot back: “Never heard of it.” Perplexing is the fact that the USAF never addressed that one, notable inconsistency: how could Project Mogul have been the culprit when, according to Cavitt – who even the Air Force accepts was at the ranch in July 1947 with Bill Rickett - the amount of material found would have fitted comfortably in his and Mary’s living-room? Does that sound, to you, like something which could have comfortably fitted inside one room of the Cavitt home? Remember, the Cavitt’s living-room was not large. When asked about the size of the debris field, Cavitt told Colonel Weaver it was no longer than the width of the room in which the interview was then taking place. To which Weaver asked: “So, twenty feet maybe?” Cavitt made not a single attempt to dispute Colonel Weaver’s math.Good luck trying to shovel 600-feet of Mogul-based balloon materials into a twenty-foot-wide room.
There is something else, too: if Cavitt knew all along that what he, Marcel and Rickett saw and collected came from a weather-balloon, why then did Cavitt – or all three of them – not nip things in the bud and lay matters to rest before the “flying disc” statement was released to the media? The Air Force’s only theory on this issue goes as follows: “…it seems that that there was overreaction by Colonel Blanchard and Major Marcel in originally reporting that a ‘flying disc’ had been recovered when, at that time, nobody knew for sure what that term meant, since it had only been in use for a couple of weeks.” That statement does make some sense – after all, flying saucer hysteria was definitely growing, as it was only two weeks earlier that pilot Kenneth Arnold launched the era of UFOs. But, that Cavitt was so adamant that he immediately knew the material was from a weather-balloon still means he could have quashed everything before it erupted. Also, Colonel Weaver’s report makes it clear he was familiar with the testimony of the RAAF’s Provost Marshal, Major Edwin Easley, who had told Kevin Randle that, with respect to Roswell, he was sworn to secrecy. Easley died in 1992, but no attempt was ever made by the USAF to address his revelations.
Recall that the Air Force stated: “Prior to the interview [with Cavitt], the Secretary of the Air Force provided him with a written authorization and waiver to discuss classified information with the interviewer and release him from any security oath he may have taken.” Cavitt was not too bothered by this, as he made it clear to Colonel Weaver that he “was not sworn into secrecy ever about any of this stuff.” That, unlike Cavitt, Easley was adamant he had signed a secrecy oath is surely something that should have caught the attention of the USAF. And, more importantly, the Air Force knew Easley had made such a statement. That this important matter was not chased down can only be described as troubling. My view on all this? I believe that, just like John Keel, the Air Force was absolutely right to go looking for a balloon-driven program. As I see it, that is where all of the evidence points. But, also like Keel, the USAF got the wrong kind of balloon. It wasn’t a weather-balloon. It wasn’t a Fugo balloon. It wasn’t even one of the gargantuan Mogul affairs. As one of my original sources told me years ago: there is no better way to hide a classified balloon-based operation than by hiding it behind another classified balloon-based operation. Mogul, then, may have been the convenient fall-guy for a project that was far more controversial in nature; a project of sinister proportions and which was also inextricably linked to new and novel balloons flown in the skies of New Mexico in 1947.
Was the Air Force of 1994 hiding the history of a series of post-war human experiments behind something else, such as Mogul? Or, incredibly, was the truth hidden from the Air Force, too? Do I think the Air Force engaged in chicanery, lying and obfuscation? Did the Air Force make a legitimate search, only to find little at all? These are all important questions. Personally, I think the USAF legitimately went looking, but in doing so found nothing of a smoking-gun nature in the slightest. So, its investigators continued to search, finally focusing on Mogul, and coming to accept that without definitive documentation to make a cast-iron case, the whole thing was destined to remain a ufological equivalent of Jack the Ripper. Namely, an old mystery, one that was filled with intrigue, but which was lacking in a definitive answer. Perceiving quite correctly and astutely that coming up with no answer, at all, was unacceptable, the Air Force went with the only candidate that it thought made at least some degree of sense: Project Mogul. Based on the words of my sources, I am as certain as I can be that either (a) the relevant files were destroyed decades ago (which would explain why the Air Force of 1994 came up with nothing solid), or (b) the documentation was locked away – also decades ago – to prevent a dirty secret from ever leaking out and embarrassing not just the Air Force, but the entire U.S. Government, and even the President.
(Nick Redfern) Will we ever get the truth?
If the former is the correct scenario, we may forever be reliant on nothing more than the old memories of equally old people who are now nearly all gone. If the latter proves to be accurate, however, there is still a chance we might one day get our hands on the elusive proof: documents, photos, autopsy reports, and so on. If that happens, I predict the Air Force of 1994 will be shown to have been out of the loop, but not sinister conspirators. As for Cavitt, was he carrying out some kind of secret duty right up until the very end? Was he – even as late as the 1990s – still answerable to someone else? Was it the same person, or agency, Bill Rickett was still so concerned about crossing? Someone above the Air Force and the GAO? Someone concerned that, if the USAF kept pushing for answers, the hidden truth might still surface? Was Cavitt, by maintaining the weather-balloon scenario, even determined to keep the hidden facts out of the hands of Colonel Weaver? Quite possibly. In other words, Cavitt was the guy who knew the full story, but chose not to reveal it. Now? The whole thing is long gone. Unless, that is, there are still some old, faded files that might blow the whole thing wide open. I'm not giving up on it. Ever.
A Mysterious Round Structure Older Than Stonehenge Found in Prague
A Mysterious Round Structure Older Than Stonehenge Found in Prague
Paul Seaburn
The beautiful city of Prague in the Czech Republic is known for its rich history, Gothic cathedrals, medieval squares, art scene, nightlife and restaurants. On the other hand, its name rarely comes up when the discussion turns to ancient monuments and monoliths like the Great Pyramid of Giza or Britain’s Stonehenge. That may change soon as the world learns of the discovery of mysterious round monumental building on the outskirts of the city that dates back to about 4900 BCE – making it older than the Great Pyramid and Stonehenge. And, despite being well-preserved, its purpose to the people living there in the Neolithic period is a mystery.
A reconstruction of circular ditches similar to the roundels in this story (piblic domain)
“Roundels were built during the Stone Age when people had not yet discovered iron. The only tools they could use were made of stone and animal bones.”
Despite being erected by people of the New Stone Age using stone and bone tools, Jaroslav Rídký from the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague marvels that the “roundel” – a circular enclosure (‘rondely’ in Czech) – discovered recently in the Vinoř district on the outskirts of Prague is in such ‘monumental’ condition for its age of 7,000 years. Roundels are actually common structures in Central Europe – about 200 have been uncovered in total, with 35 in the Czech Republic. Despite their size, most tourists and even many Europeans have never heard of them.
“The so-called roundels are the oldest evidence of architecture in the whole of Europe. They are a series of circular ditches and they are always arranged in a circle with two, three, four or more entrances to the center, four being the most common.
The whole structure reaches an average of between 30 to 240 meters, but you most commonly find them in the range of 60 – 80 meters.”
Jaroslav Rídký has seen roundels reaching 787 feet (240 meters) in diameter, but the newest discovery in is 180 feet (55 meters) across. (Photos of it here.)
An aerial view of the Vinoř roundel near Prague, showing three separate entrances.
(Image credit: Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
Archaeologists working on the excavation of the Stone Age roundel.
(Image credit: Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
Open trenches undergoing excavation by a team from the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
(Image credit: Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
A trench wall revealing stratigraphy (different layers) of the excavation.
(Image credit: Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
The “ditches” – all that is left of the mysterious structures – average about one and a half meters (5 feet) in width but some of the largest span fourteen meters (46 feet) and are six meters (20 feet) deep. Only a few of the roundels discovered are well-defined – most are mere outlines of where the ditches once were. That explains why the first ones weren’t discovered until the 19th century and most were unknown until the 1980s with the advent of aerial photography, using drones and planes, and satellite imagery. As they were uncovered, the first mystery of the roundels emerged – virtually all of them across Central Europe were built during a brief 300 year period between 4900 and 4600 BCE. Here is how Jaroslav Rídký describes it:
“There was simply some kind of societal change, where the roundels could no longer fulfill the function they had before and they just stopped being used.
The structure of settlements changes in some areas, the ornamentation changes.”
What happened to cause Neolithic cultures across Central Europe to abandon such huge round structures they spent so much time building and maintaining? The largest (787 feet) is in the Czech Republic and is a series of three concentric ditches with a fourth apparently under construction when it was abandoned. The massive structure had four gates leading to the center. In addition, a second single-ditch roundel was located a mere 165 feet (50 meters) away. Another Czech Republic roundel recently located in Třebovětice in the Jičín district was hidden in a thick forest and, back in its time, was protected by ramparts (fortifying barriers) which are still visible today. It is details like these, along with the discoveries of more roundels like the one in the Vinoř district, which give Miroslav Kraus, the principal investigator of that roundel for the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IAP), some hints to their mysterious purpose.
“One of such theory is that it could have been used as an economic centre, a centre of trade. It could also have been a centre of some religious cult, where rites of passage or rituals connected to the time of year were performed.”
Kraus and others believe that some of the Czech roundels – and possibly more elsewhere -- were built by the so-called Stroked Pottery culture noted for making zig-zag bands on its pottery vessels. The Stroked Pottery culture existed in Poland, eastern Germany and the northern Czech Republic between 4900 and 4400 BCE, but were more known for building longhouses -- large, rectangular buildings that held 20 to 30 people. If the roundels were built the same way, the inner ditches would have been lined with wooden poles with mud between the gaps. These tightly-erected poles may have been protective fortress walls, but they could also have been load-bearing walls to hold roofs also made with wood like the longhouses. The research team is continuing to comb the area for clues.
A sketch of the layout of the Goseck circle, a similar roundel
Organic material found at the site are being carbon-dated to determine exactly when the Czeck roundel was built and if the builders were indeed part of the Stroked Potter culture. If the roundel was for social gatherings or ritual functions, the organic materials should show where the people gathering there came from, since they appear to have been too large to serve just the local population. It would be impressive to find that these Late Stone Age people living 7000 years ago – before Stonehenge or the Great Pyramid – built such impressive structures for socio-ritual purposes rather than just religious – commemorating events such as rites of passage, astronomical occurrences or economic activities. All of this was done by people working with stone and bone tools.
Who were the people of these Czech roundels? What were their purposes? How did they build them? Why did the suddenly and mysteriously abandon them? If we can answer any or all of these questions, perhaps we can apply that knowledge to other mysterious civilizations which have flourished, then vanished. Perhaps we can find some solutions to our own problems before we vanish as well.
It will be just our luck that the research into the roundels of the Czech Republic will show their builders left because of climate change.
The 1990s can be considered to be a period of renaissance of interest in all things paranormal with the debut and popularity of the television series “X-Files” and the rise and nationwide expansion of Art Bell’s “Coast to Coast AM” late night radio show. As many have found since then, those two shows were – and continue to be – hard acts to follow. One TV series that gave it a try was “Dark Skies,” which aired NBC from 1996 to 1997 and was later rerun by the Sci-Fi Channel. With the slogan, “History as we know it is a lie,” “Dark Skies” focused primarily on fictional UFO conspiracy theories about aliens living among humans, the government cover-ups hiding the fact from the public, and the attempts by the aliens to expand their influence. The alleged secret government group Majestic 12 played a prominent role in the short-lived series. While some real people were depicted on the show (Robert F. Kennedy, Jim Morrison, and J. Edgar Hoover to name a few), the plots were fictional.
Or were they?
Could outside forces influence a paranormal TV show to their advantage?
“He said he was from the Office of Naval Intelligence and he wanted to help us.”
President Ronald Reagan once warned the American public that “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.” Bryce Zabel -- a television producer, director, writer, and occasional actor – had undoubtedly heard this quote, but he probably never thought he would hear it in real life as the showrunner (developer/producer/writer) for “Dark Skies.” A new article in The Daily Star seems to confirm a story that has been hinted at before – the tale of what Zabel claims happened in 1996 at the show’s launch party.
“I didn’t know this guy.”
Zabel claims a person he had never seen before came up to him at the party and introduced himself as “JC.” Trailers and information about the show were already being spread by the network – the premier would introduce Congressional Aide John Loengard, who is investigating Project Blue Book, the real but secret Air Force study of UFOs, when he is contacted and finds himself being contacted by members of the Majestic 12. Is Zabel about to experience a case of his own life imitating his own art?
“They were looking at a disclosure scenario, so ‘How ultimately does this secret become known to the public?’.”
Yes, 25 years ago at a TV show premier party, showrunner Bryce Zabel claims he was confronted by a mysterious man named JC who told him that the government was planning to disclose to the public information about UFOs and extraterrestrials, and JC wanted “Dark Skies” to help by being a realistic precursor that could ‘condition’ the public to be ready to accept these revelations when the government decided to release them. Zabel already knows that upcoming episodes will depict such revelations – one of them has John Loengard testifying to the Warren Commission (The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy) about Majestic 12’s involvement in the JFK assassination. Apparently, JC wanted fictional accounts such as these to play out as closely as possible to how the real government wants them to happen when the time comes for similar real revelations – again, to condition the public to be less shocked and more receptive to the ideas.
“The President just can’t come out and say, ‘Here’s everything’ all at once’. So they wanted to see more of the truth through fiction.”
For example, JC wanted Zabel to write situations that would – for lack of a better overused word – leak some truths about UFOs and aliens via the fictional scenes in “Dark Skies.” Yes, this premier party encounter was itself starting to sound like an episode of the show – something that was not lost on Brent V. Friedman, Zabel’s co-creator and co-producer.
“I can’t tell you how surreal this was. They wanted to help us come up with some story ideas.”
Friedman, also at the premier party, said JC and his ‘associates’ in the government knew they had not yet filmed the rest of the season or even written the rest of the episodes, so there was the perfect opportunity to intervene and direct the directors in their preferred direction. Friedman sensed that they were looking for nothing too big or too obvious in the script changes.
“JC said to me, ‘It’s a drip system… get the truth out there in small ways.”
JC was obviously aware of how hot the paranormal/UFO interest was among television viewers in the 1990s after the surprise and long-lasting success of “The X-Files,” whose initial run went from September 1993 to May 2002, and spawned a couple of later seasons, movies, books, video games and graphic novels. He gave Friedman and Zabel some advice:
“You have a television show that millions of people are watching right now… if we start lacing it with bits of the truth we’re preparing everybody’.”
Was someone or something really behind the scenes trying to leak information to the public?
Everybody? That is is quite possibly the point where the mysterious JC and his equally mysterious cohorts “from the Office of Naval Intelligence” may have given away that they were not as sharp as they hoped Zabel and Friedman would think them to be. This was obviously the kickoff to the first season of “Dark Skies” but JC did not do his research -- the series was cancelled before the end of that initial season of 18 episodes due to low ratings. According to Zabel and Freidman’s five-year plan, the first season would cover the period from 1961 to 1969, the second from 1970 to 1976, the third from 1977 to 1986, the fourth from 1987 to 1999, and the fifth and final season would cover the final conflict between humans and aliens taking place from 2000 to 2001. Did JC miscalculate the potential popularity of “Dark Skies”? It’s possible – we’ve seen that the government isn’t too good at collecting accurate polling data in other fields. Or did they decide the American public wasn’t ready for trickle-down UFO disclosure or conditioning to accept real truths about extraterrestrials?
In any event, Zabel and Friedman said they never heard from “JC” again.
If he was a real Man in Black, they’d better keep watching their backs.
Donald Pettit, an active American astronaut who has traveled to the ISS three separate times, was able to use his free time during missions to snap images of space from inside the station's glass dome - known as the cupola - that provides epic views of the cosmos.
He set up his Nikon D3s camera and left it to take a 15-minute exposure shot.
At the top of the image, white lines show the trails of distant stars, which are curved due to the rotation of the space station as it orbits Earth.
A NASA astronaut captured star trails from space (at the top of the image above) from onboard the International Space Station
Earth itself is seen in the bottom half of the image, with orange streaks of city lights and countless blue dots—each representing a lightning strike from a storm below.
The image contains a green glow, known as airglow, that separates Earth from space. It's similar in color to auroras in the night sky, which most people know as the Northern and Southern Lights.
'Auroras are excited by electrons, and other solar particles coming down Earth's magnetic fields, which is why you see them in the polar regions,' Pettit told Newsweek. 'Air glow is everywhere around on Earth and, and the molecules in the upper atmosphere get excited from solar activity.'
The image was posted to Reddit on September 11 and received over 68,000 likes and hundreds of comments from users.
Donald Pettit (above), who has traveled to the ISS three separate times, was able to use his free time during missions to snap images of space from inside the station's glass dome - known as the cupola - that provides epic views of the cosmos
Pettit also explained how astronauts are able to find time to capture images of the cosmos.
'We work 12- to 14-hour days six days a week on station, and outside of that you are off duty,' he told Newsweek.
'Outside of your normal working hours, you can do whatever you want to, which includes sleeping and eating and staying in touch with your family. And then you can spend that time doing photography. If I could do a couple hours' of photography a day, that would be a real treat.'
Pettit posted the image to Reddit on September 11 and it received over 68,000 likes and hundreds of comments from users
Unieke foto van NASA-astronaut legt sterrensporen en aarde vast vanop internationaal ruimtestation
NASA-astronaut Donald Pettit (67) heeft een fabelachtige foto van zogenaamde sterrensporen gemaakt tijdens een van zijn missies aan boord van het internationale ruimtestation ISS. Het beeld, waarop ook onze planeet aarde uniek te zien is, gaat viraal.
Donald Pettit is een Amerikaanse astronaut die drie keer naar het ISS is gereisd en vandaag de oudste nog actieve astronaut van NASA is. In zijn vrije tijd kon hij vanuit het ISS bijzondere beelden van de ruimte maken. Hij plaatste zijn camera in de glazen koepel van het station - bekend als de Cupola - die een ongeëvenaard uitzicht op de kosmos biedt.
Op 11 september kwam hij zelf op sociaalnetwerksite Reddit naar buiten met zijn werk. “Ik heb iets vastgelegd waar de meeste astrofotografen alleen maar van kunnen dromen: ik heb sterrensporen vanuit de ruimte vastgelegd”, schreef hij bij bovenstaande foto uit 2012. Die verzamelde inmiddels meer dan 69.000 likes en bijna duizend mensen reageerden erop.
Pettit schoot het beeld met een Nikon D3s-camera met een sluitertijd van 15 minuten. Daardoor, in combinatie met de rotatie van het ruimtestation in zijn baan om de aarde, zijn de verre sterren niet als stipjes, maar als gebogen sporen te zien. Die sterrensporen zijn te zien als witte lijnen bovenaan het beeld.
De aarde zelf bevindt zich in de onderste helft van het beeld. De oranje strepen komen van stadslichten en de ontelbare blauwe stippen stellen elk een blikseminslag van een onweer beneden voor.
We zien ook de groene gloed, die de aarde scheidt van de ruimte. Die groene gloed is vergelijkbaar met het poollicht aan de nachtelijke hemel, dat de meeste mensen kennen als het noorder- en zuiderlicht.
Op Reddit legde Pettit nog uit dat hij als astronaut tien tot twaalf uur per dag in het internationaal ruimtestation werkte. Daarbuiten greep hij wel zo veel mogelijk momenten uit zijn vrije uren aan om foto’s te maken, al moest hij natuurlijk ook slapen, eten en tijd besteden aan contact met zijn familie op aarde.
James Webb Space Telescope maakt unieke beelden van Neptunus en zijn ringen
De James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) heeft unieke beelden gemaakt van de planeet Neptunus en zijn ringen. De beelden geven waardevolle inzichten in zijn atmosfeer, zegt het Amerikaanse ruimtevaartagentschap NASA woensdag.
Yorick Dupon
Astronomen hebben de meest afgelegen planeet van het zonnestelsel niet meer zo duidelijk kunnen zien sinds de sonde Voyager 2 in 1989 in de buurt van Neptunus passeerde.
Het infraroodzicht van de telescoop biedt een nieuwe manier om de atmosfeer te analyseren, verklaart Mark McCaughrean, adviseur wetenschap en exploratie bij het Europees Ruimteagentschap (ESA), aan het Franse persagentschap AFP.
De telescoop elimineert alle schitteringen van de reflectie van de zon op het oppervlak van Neptunus en de lichtvervuiling uit zijn omgeving, zodat wetenschappers de atmosferische samenstelling van de planeet kunnen onderzoeken, zegt McCaughrean, die meer dan twintig jaar aan het James Webb-project heeft gewerkt.
De James Webb kon ook zeven van de veertien manen van Neptunus die we kennen vastleggen, aldus de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA. Triton reflecteert zo veel licht dat het lijkt een ster te zijn op de foto. Deze grote maan fascineert astronomen want Triton draait op een ongewone manier rond Neptunus.
Men vermoedt dat het oorspronkelijk een object was in de Kuipergordel. De zwaartekracht van Neptunus zou Triton hebben weg getrokken van de andere miljarden komeetachtige objecten aan de uithoek van ons zonnestelsel.
De JWST, die sinds juli operationeel is, is de krachtigste ruimtetelescoop ooit. Hij is de opvolger van de beroemde ruimtetelescoop Hubble en is ontwikkeld door de Verenigde Staten, Europa en Canada.
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Habitable Planets Will Most Likely be Cold, Dry “Pale Yellow Dots”
Habitable Planets Will Most Likely be Cold, Dry “Pale Yellow Dots”
Remember all the habitable planets we’ve seen in science fiction movies? There’s wintry Hoth, for example, and overwhelmingly hot Dune. The folks in Interstellar visited an ocean world and a desolate rocky world. For all their differences, these places were still what they call on Star Trek M-class habitable worlds. Sure they weren’t all like Earth, but that made them excitingly alien for the lifeforms they did support. In the real universe, it seems that alien worlds not quite like ours could be the norm. Earth could be the real alien world.
According to a pair of researchers in Europe, pale blue dots like our planet probably aren’t all that common. Instead, many habitable planets could be colder and dryer than ours. Moreover, because they might not have as much water, these places could look more like pale yellow dots.
Planetary scientists Tilman Spohn and Dennis Höning modeled possible exoplanets to see how the evolution of continents and planetary water cycles could shape the development of habitable worlds. They concluded that planets have approximately an 80 percent probability of being mostly covered by land. That is, they’d have mostly continental landscapes. Another 20 percent of possibly habitable worlds would likely be mainly oceanic. A tiny percentage (less than one percent) would be similar to Earth’s land-water distribution.
Terrestrial-type habitable planets can evolve in three scenarios of land/ocean distribution: covered by lands, oceans, or an equal mix of both. The land-covered planet is the most probable scenario ( around 80%), while our “equal mix” Earth (<1% chance) is even more unique than previously thought. Modelling shows that the probabilities of three very-different looking types of terrestrial planets vary widely, and impact their climate and habitability. Credit: Europlanet 2024 RI/T. Roger.
“We Earthlings enjoy the balance between land areas and oceans on our home planet, said Spohn, who is executive director of the International Space Science Institute in Bern, Switzerland. “It is tempting to assume that a second Earth would be just like ours, but our modeling results suggest that this is not likely to be the case.”
Differences in Habitable Planets
So, why would habitable planets be so different from Carl Sagan’s “pale blue dot”? The “look and feel” of each exoplanet depends on various characteristics. These range from their structure to the star they orbit. On Earth, the growth of continents by volcanic activity and their erosion by weathering is fairly well balanced. Life thrives here. Many plants, for example, do well on land. That’s where they get access to the friendly Sun to do photosynthesis. That process allows them to transmit energy and nutrients up the food chain. Life also thrives in the oceans and they provide a huge amount of water that enhances rainfall. The oceanic water resources prevent Earth’s present climate from becoming too dry.
Geology also plays an important role, according to the researchers. The main driver of Earth’s plate tectonics is internal heat. “That drives geologic activity, such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain building, and results in the growth of continents,” Spohn said. “The land’s erosion is part of a series of cycles that exchange water between the atmosphere and the interior. Our numerical models of how these cycles interact show that present-day Earth may be an exceptional planet and that the equilibrium of landmass may be unstable over billions of years. While all the planets modeled could be considered habitable, their fauna and flora may be quite different.”
Not all Life-bearing Planets are Alike
The good news here is that the landmass-to-ocean ratios allow for a pretty wide definition of “habitable”. An ocean world, with less than 10 percent land, for example, could turn out to be a moist, warm planet. It might be similar to Earth after it recovered from the impact that helped kill off the dinosaurs. This makes sense since the models Spohn and Höning worked on show that average surface temperatures on these worlds would be more like Earth’s. Such a world could be teeming with life forms.
The planets with less than 30 percent oceans would have colder temps and dryer climates. They might have cool deserts and possibly some ice sheets. We know from similar regions here on Earth that life can thrive in such environments.
Here’s another intriguing thought. The Earth we know today is different from how it was at various other stages in its history. For example, there could be worlds with conditions similar to those our planet endured during the Ice Ages. Life did flourish here during those times, and such a world would be quite habitable. Interestingly, people who lived on our planet during that time 10,000 years ago would find these places comfortable and familiar.
The count of known confirmed exoplanets is now over 5,000. Some are habitable. Others are not. Some are super-Earths, others are gas supergiants. But, it’s only a matter of time before planetary scientists find a pale dot of a world. It’s interesting to think that, whether it’s blue or yellow, it could be welcoming to life.
40,000-year-old star maps with sophisticated knowledge of modern astronomy
40,000-year-old star maps with sophisticated knowledge of modern astronomy
In 2008, a scientific study revealed an astonishing fact about the palaeolithic humans ― a number cave paintings, some of which were as old as 40,000 years, were actually products of complex astronomy that our primitive ancestors had acquired in the distant past.
Some of the world’s oldest cave paintings have revealed how ancient people had relatively advanced knowledge of astronomy. Animal symbols represent star constellations in the night sky, and are used to mark dates and events such as comet strikes, analysis from the University of Edinburgh suggested. Credit: Alistair Coombs
The ancient paintings that were thought to be symbols of prehistoric animals are actually ancient star maps, according to what experts revealed in their fascinating discovery.
Early cave art shows that people had an advanced knowledge of the night sky in the last ice age. Intellectually, they were hardly different from us today. But these particular cave paintings revealed that humans had a sophisticated knowledge of stars and constellations more than 40,000 years ago.
It was during the Paleolithic Age, or also called the Old Stone Age ― a period in prehistory distinguished by the original development of stone tools that covers almost 99% of the period of human technological prehistory.
Ancient star maps
According to the breakthrough scientific study published by the University of Edinburgh, ancient humans controlled the passage of time by watching how stars change positions in the sky. The ancient works of art, found in various places in Europe, are not simply representations of wild animals, as previously thought.
Instead, animal symbols represent constellations of stars in the night sky. They are used to represent dates, marking events like asteroid collisions, eclipses, meteor showers, sunrise and sunset, solstices and equinoxes, lunar phases and etc.
The Lascaux cave painting: 17,000 years ago, the Lascaux painters offered the world a peerless work of art. However, according to a new theory, some of the paintings could also be the representations of the constellations as seen in the sky by our ancestors from the Magdalenian era. Such a hypothesis, confirmed in many others Paleolithic Caves radically transforms our conception concerning prehistoric Rock Arts.
Scientists suggest that ancient peoples perfectly understood the effect caused by the gradual change in the Earth’s axis of rotation. The discovery of this phenomenon, called the precession of the equinoxes, was previously credited to the ancient Greeks.
One of the lead researchers, Dr Martin Sweatman, from the University of Edinburgh explained, “Early cave art shows that people had an advanced knowledge of the night sky in the last ice age. Intellectually, they were no different from us today. Tese findings support a theory of multiple impacts of comets throughout human development and are likely to revolutionize the way prehistoric populations are viewed.”
Sophisticated knowledge of constellations
Experts from Edinburgh and Kent universities studied a number of renowned arts in ancient caves located in Turkey, Spain, France and Germany. In their in-depth study, they had achieved the era of those rock arts by chemically dating the paints used by ancient humans.
Then, using computer software, the researchers predicted the position of the stars exactly when the paintings were made. This revealed that what may have appeared before, as abstract representations of animals, can be interpreted as constellations as they arose in the distant past.
Scientists concluded that these incredible cave paintings are a clear evidence that ancient humans practiced a sophisticated method of timing based on astronomical calculations. All of this, although the cave paintings were separated in time by tens of thousands of years.
“The oldest sculpture in the world, the Lion-Man from the Hohlenstein-Stadel cave, from 38,000 BC, was also considered compatible with this ancient timing system,” revealed experts in a statement from the University of Edinburgh
The Löwenmensch figurine or Lion-man of the Hohlenstein-Stadel is a prehistoric ivory sculpture discovered in the Hohlenstein-Stadel, a German cave in 1939. It’s nearly 40,000 years old.
The mysterious statuette is believed to commemorate the catastrophic impact of an asteroid that occurred around 11,000 years ago, initiating the so-called Younger Dryas Event, a period of sudden cooling of the climate worldwide.
At around 12,000 years old, Göbekli Tepe in south-east Turkey has been billed as the world’s oldest temple. Various animal arts can also be seen in this prehistoric site, and the ‘Vulture Stone’ (down-right) is significantly one of them.
“The date carved in the ‘Vulture Stone’ of Göbekli Tepe is interpreted as being 10,950 BC, within 250 years,” explained the scientists in the study. “This date is written using the precession of the equinoxes, with animal symbols representing stellar constellations corresponding to this year’s four solstices and equinoxes.”
Conclusion
So, this great discovery reveals the truth that humans had a complex understanding of time and space thousands of years before the ancient Greeks, who are credited with the first studies of modern astronomy. Not only these, there are several other instances, such as the Sumerian Planisphere, the Nebra Sky Disk, Babylonian Clay Tablet etc., which imply more sophisticated knowledge of modern astronomy that our ancient ancestors once acquired.
A Giant Galaxy Orbiting Our Own Just Appeared Out of Nowhere
A Giant Galaxy Orbiting Our Own Just Appeared Out of Nowhere
Astronomers monitoring the sky recently received a major surprise. They discovered a massive galaxy around our own in an area previously unexplored. It popped up, apparently, out of nowhere.
So how could the galaxy, dubbed as Crater 2, accomplish this feat, much like a deer bursting from intergalactic bushes to look us down through our collective headlights? While the emergence may look abrupt, Crater 2 has been around the whole time. We just overlooked it.
However, given that we know it exists, there are a few additional embarrassing aspects found by astronomers. To begin, we cannot blame the galaxy’s relative obscurity on its vastness. Crater 2 is so massive that it has already been classified as the fourth biggest galaxy circling our own. We cannot also blame its remoteness. Crater 2’s orbit around the Milky Way places it directly above.
With that stated, how did we manage to miss it? Researchers at the University of Cambridge have an answer for us in a recent publication published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Despite its size and proximity, Crater 2 is likewise a rather dark galaxy. Indeed, it is one of the faintest galaxies ever discovered. This, together with several considerably brighter neighbors, allowed the galaxy dubbed “the feeble giant” to remain undetected until today.
However, now that we have seen Crater 2, the finding raises concerns about what more may exist. Researchers are already discussing the possibility of conducting a search for such huge, dark galaxies in our neighborhood. It serves as an excellent reminder that there is still a great deal about space that we do not understand.
WOW! WEBB JUST GAVE US THE BEST LOOK AT NEPTUNE IN 33 YEARS
WOW! WEBB JUST GAVE US THE BEST LOOK AT NEPTUNE IN 33 YEARS
Inverse endorses Neptune as The Best Planet.
WE’RE USED TO seeing Neptune in shades of deep blue, but in the newest images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the ice giant glows with silvery light, surrounded by pale gossamer rings and faint bands of dust.
No spacecraft has visited Neptune since Voyager 2 swooped past in 1989 on its way out of the Solar System, but from a vantage point 4.4 billion kilometers away, Webb is showing us Neptune in a whole new light — near-infrared, specifically. And that’s why Neptune looks so different from its usual azure self in the latest Webb images.
In the wavelengths of light our eyes can see, the methane gas in Neptune’s atmosphere looks blue. But in the infrared wavelengths, methane gas absorbs so much light that it looks dark gray (or the infrared equivalent of dark gray; Webb’s image processing team translated infrared wavelengths into visible colors to produces these images). But the particles of frozen methane ice in Neptune’s highest clouds, however, reflect most of the sunlight that hits them, so they show up dazzlingly bright to Webb’s instruments.
The bright streaks and splotches in this image of Neptune are high-altitude clouds laden with grains of methane ice.
NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
Those high-altitude clouds could help planetary scientists figure out more details about Neptune’s stormy, windy weather. A faint, thin line of brightness around the ice giant’s equator, for example, could be a telltale sign of the global circulation pattern that drives the planet’s weather. As gases in Neptune’s atmosphere flow toward the equator, they get warmer — which makes them show up brighter in infrared images.
7 of Neptune’s 14 moons are visible and labelled in this image.
NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
Neptune has rings, although they’re so faint that astronomers often don’t see them. Their particles of dust-covered ice may be all that’s left of an ancient moon, which orbited so close to Neptune that the tidal pull of the planet’s gravity ripped it apart. Webb’s first image of Neptune reveals a few rings that astronomers have never seen before — and an updated look at others that haven’t been photographed since Voyager 2’s flyby.
Webb also captured seven of Neptune’s 14 moons in its images, including the largest and strangest: Triton. It orbits Neptune backward, possibly because it was once a dwarf planet like Pluto and Sedna that got caught up in Neptune’s gravity and pulled into what astronomers call a retrograde orbit. Triton blazes bright in Webb’s images, with huge diffraction spikes as if it were a nearby star rather than a moon; that’s because its surface veneer of nitrogen ice reflects most of the sunlight that hits it, making Triton look even brighter than the planet that holds it hostage.
Neptune and Triton sit at the center of this wide-field image, with a scattering of galaxies in the background.
NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
Over the next several months, Webb will observe Neptune and its moons in more detail, which may shed even more light on the system’s eventful history.
Voyager 2 took these two images of the rings of Neptune on Aug. 26, 1989, just after the probe's closest approach to the planet. Neptune's two main rings are clearly visible; two fainter rings are visible with the help of long exposure times and backlighting from the Sun.
(Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Left image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows Neptune with its signature blue appearance caused by small amounts of gaseous methane. However, the Webb Telescope's Near-Infrared Camera captures objects in the near-infrared range from 0.6 to 5 microns, so Neptune does not appear blue in its image, seen on the right.
(Photo credits: NASA, ESA, and M.H. Wong and J. Tollefson/UC Berkeley, left, and NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, right)
LOOK! NASA PUBLISHES NEW IMAGE OF A FAST-FLYING STAR EJECTED BY A SUPERNOVA
LOOK! NASA PUBLISHES NEW IMAGE OF A FAST-FLYING STAR EJECTED BY A SUPERNOVA
The gas around the speedy star is heated to tens of millions of degrees.
LIKE THE SEA that ripples in front of a traveling ship, so does a magnificent shockwave of gas precede a fast-flying star.
On July 25, NASA published a new view of the moving star Zeta Ophiuchi that merges an existing infrared image of this bright object with X-ray data. Most of the details in this composite image — the shock wave in red, the filaments of former star material in green, and the background stars — are visible thanks to infrared data that the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope collected ten years ago.
Unlike the infrared data that gives heat information to astronomers, the X-ray observations marked here as a glowing blue orb around the star tell researchers that a cosmic crash is really raising the heat.
This new image helps our eyes understand Zeta Ophiuchi’s wild story.
Zeta Ophiuchi is located 440 light-years from Earth.
According to Spitzer representatives, Zeta Ophiuchi shared its former corner of the Universe with another star. But one day, this companion blew up as a supernova. Its demise was potent enough to launch Zeta Ophiuchi on a journey through space.
WHAT’S NEW — This gorgeous view from Spitzer now contains X-ray information from another major NASA spacecraft, the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Zeta Ophiuchi is bombarded here by its own shock wave, heating it up to incredible temperatures. Astronomers think that the shock wave causes the gas around the star to reach tens of millions of degrees.
An illustration of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.
NASA/Bryan Allen/The Image Bank Unreleased/Getty Images
WHY IT MATTERS — Zeta Ophiuchi’s story gets more complicated.
The bow-shaped shockwave puzzles a research team led by Ph.D. candidate Samuel Green from the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in Ireland, according to NASA’s image description. After the team ran computational models, they found that their renderings suggest a fainter glow than what they see in the X-ray data. The findings don’t match.
To make the computer’s data and the image’s details match, new models that contain information on other forces of physics may be the answer. If they add phenomena like the disordered behavior of gas called turbulence and the acceleration of particles into their analysis of Zeta Ophiuchi, then maybe these discrepancies will resolve and data will be in “agreement” with the X-ray data.
For now, scientists and citizens can enjoy the sight of Zeta Ophiuchi’s frenzy from 440 light-years away.
Meet The F-111 Aardvark: The US Plane Built To Kill Everything (Pictures)
Meet The F-111 Aardvark: The US Plane Built To Kill Everything (Pictures)
The General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark Was a True Multirole Combat Aircraft – Developed to meet a bold United States Department of Defense (DoD) edict that called for a multi-role aircraft that could meet all future tactical needs of all U.S. military services, the General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark proved to be a major success, albeit with a rocky start. Production variants of the F-111 had it serve in roles that included ground attack/interdiction; strategic bombing, with nuclear weapons; reconnaissance; and electronic warfare. It was a long-range, all-weather strike aircraft that was capable of navigating at low levels to destroy targets deep in enemy territory.
Multi-role Aircraft
It was truly a cutting-edge multi-role aircraft, including being the first production variable-geometry wing aircraft as well as to feature terrain-following radar for low-level, high-speed flight.
It also pioneered the use of after-burning turbofan engines.
The F-111 Aardvark had been originally conceived in early 1960 to combine the United States requirement for a fighter-bomber with United States Navy’s need for an air-superiority fighter. While the Navy subsequently canceled its program, the Air Force forged ahead.
The F-111 was a major step forward, but it required a new engine, wings and radar to enable it to complete its mission of dropping 8,000 pounds of bombs on a target 1,500 miles away – without refueling.
It was the first aircraft to utilize an afterburning turbofan engine, which provided it the power to fly supersonically to Europe without tankers. The F-111 set a record for the longest low-level supersonic flight (172 miles at less than 1,000 feet altitude) on November 9, 1966.
The F-111 as A Bomber
The F-111 entered service with the U.S. Air Force in 1967, and it was primarily employed as a bomber.
Yet, it could fly like no other bomber of the era – low to the ground to avoid detection until the bombs were delivered, but then up to altitude at supersonic speed to make its return flight home.
It featured a swept wing – one that could be changed in flight – and could vary between sixteen and 72.5 degrees, with side-by-side seating for a pilot and weapons systems officer.
The F-111’s wings were straight for take-offs, landings, or slow-speed flight; but by sweeping its wings rearward, it could exceed twice the speed of sound (Mach 2).
The advanced avionics allowed for night/all-weather flight close to the ground. The aircraft’s radar system could enable the F-111 to fly at just 200 feet off the ground in changing terrain without pilot intervention. The system allowed the pilot to shift the aircraft while radar-controlled the altitude.
The avionics also helped locate and bomb targets at night and in bad weather, while the F-111 was also able to take off and land on runways as short as 3,000 feet.
During the Vietnam War, the Aardvark offered twice the range of the F-4 Phantom yet could carry two and a half times the weapons load.
Improved Version
The F-111F variant was also equipped with an all-weather AN/AVQ-26 Pave Tack infrared targeting designator/reader carried in a pod-mounted turret under the fuselage.
The aircraft could track and designate ground targets for laser, infrared and electro-optical bombs.
Eighteen aircraft were employed, along with four EF-111A Raven electronic warfare variants, during the April 14, 1986, “ Operation El Dorado Canyon” airstrikes on Libya. Taking off from Royal Air Force Lakenheath and Royal Air Force Upper Heyford in the United Kingdom and flying round-trip to Libya – a distance of 6,400 miles and spanning 13 hours – it was the longest fighter combat mission in history.
The F-111s faced a 3,500-mile flight with four aerial refuelings each way due to flight restrictions. As the aircraft approached Libya, two U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, the USS Coral Sea (CV-43) and the USS America (CV-66), launched fourteen A-6E strike aircraft and twelve F/A-18 and A-7 strike support aircraft. Although the mission was deemed a success, it was not without controversy. The U.S. Navy later claimed that the entire operation could have been accomplished using Navy assets. In addition, one F-111 was lost over Libya and crashed into the Mediterranean Sea.
Just five years later, the F-111F proved to be one of the most effective Allied aircraft in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, where it flew more than 2,400 sorties against Iraqi strategic sites, vehicle formations and hardened bunkers.
In total, 566 F-111s of all series were built; 106 of them were production F-111Fs. The United States Air Force retired the last F-111F in 1996 when it was replaced by the F-15E Strike Eagle for medium-range precision strike missions, while the supersonic bomber role was assumed by the B-1B Lancer.
Now a Senior Editor for 1945, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He regularly writes about military hardware, and is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes.
Filer’s Files Sept. 15 2022 - Reagan and Gorbachev Promoted an Alien Invasion - PART I
Lobelville, Tennessee on August 29 , 2022
Filer’s Files Sept. 15 2022 - Reagan and Gorbachev Promoted an Alien Invasion - PART I
Major George A. Filer III ret. USAF
New Jersey State Director
MUFON Eastern Region Director
Special reports are: Both Supreme Allied Commanders Claim Aliens Are Here, Gorbachev Dies, Ronald Reagan and Russian Leader Gorbachev Promoted an Alien Invasion, A 3 GHz Signal Coming from UFOs? The Search for Human’s Original Home, Humans are not from Earth, Carbon 60, and Strange Craft.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, France, New Zealand, 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 and DOD investigated UFOs for more than forty years; and I continue this advanced research. I believe the God of the universe has spread life throughout the cosmos and UFOs are visiting us in ever-increasing numbers.
Forward these files to your friends and neighbors.
Special Projects
Both Supreme Allied Commanders Claim Aliens Are Here
Supreme Allied Commanders MacArthur Mountbatten and Mountbatten
General Douglas MacArthur stated, “The nations of the world will have to unite for the next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of Earth must someday make a common front against attack by people from other planets” New York Times General Douglas Mac Arthur, 1955. Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command, in the Second World War In March 1947, Mountbatten was appointed Viceroy of India and oversaw the Partition of British India into India and Pakistan. He then served as the first Governor-General of India until June 1948. In 1952, Mountbatten was appointed commander-in-chief of the British Mediterranean Fleet and NATO Commander Allied Forces Mediterranean
Editor’s Note: It is interesting that two of the Supreme Allied Commanders of World War II went to their newspaper contacts to warn the public about the reality of UFOs and they may provide a threat to the nations of Earth. Strong rumors indicate they both saw crashed saucers and their occupants in India. One allegedly landed on the Admiral of the Fleet Earl Mountbatten’s estate in England. Prince Phillip assured me he and his uncle had strong interest in UFOs.
In 1985 the Politburo elected Gorbachev as General Secretary, the de facto leader
The Soviet Union in 1991, mysteriously gave up its position as one of the world’s greatest powers and splintered into some 16 multiple nations. Ukraine is one of the nations that departed and Russia ‘attempts to bring back into s its severe fold. Mikhail Gorbachev made several public statements about the reality of a covert extraterrestrial presence visiting Earth.
Premier Mikhail Gorbachev
Whether inspired through his conversations with President Reagan, or through information provided by his own intelligence, Gorbachev had his own strong interest in UFOs. On February 16, 1987, in an important speech, at a conference at Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow on the “Survival of Humanity,” Gorbachev stated, “At our meeting in Geneva, the U.S. President said that if the earth faced an invasion by extraterrestrials, the United States and the Soviet Union would join forces to repel such an invasion. I shall not dispute the hypothesis, although it is early yet to worry about such an intrusion. It is much more important to think about the problems that have entered in our common home.”
Hundreds of reports of abductions were reported in the Soviet Union, astronauts were reporting UFOs, fighters were being launched to chase them, and while rumors persist Gorbachev himself was visited by an alien and given a stern warning. President Reagan ordered a massive buildup of the United States Armed Forces in 1981, directing funding to the B-1 Lance bomber, the B-2 Spirit bomber, cruise missiles, the MX missiles, and the 60 ship Navy.
Not generally known is that in 1988, the Soviet Union under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev prepared and nearly conducted a nuclear massive submarine missile attack on the United States according to U.S Naval personnel. “At the age of 54, Gorbachev was elected to the General Secretariat by the Politburo on 11 March 1985. This was the beginning of a series of fundamental Soviet reforms.”
Russia and the US continue modernizing their anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system that is designed to counter ballistic missiles and is sometimes called the Star Wars System. Two ABM systems have been operational against ICBMs, the U.S. Safeguard system, which utilized the LIM-49 Spartan and Sprint missiles, and the Russian A-35 anti-Ballistic missile system which used the Galosh interceptor. The Russian system has been improved and is still active and is now called A-135 and uses the Gorgon and Gazelle missiles.
The U.S. Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system is shown in the photo .
It does not use an explosive charge but launches a kinetic projectile that may be effective against UFOs. Both nations are spending billions to improve their Star Wars Systems and are jointly working together in space “The Secret KGB UFO Files” TV shows crashed UFO narrated by Roger Moore.
The testimony of Marine Corps Lance Corporal John Weygandt, who was part of the Disclosure Project, was sent to Peru in March 1997. He states, “So these craft were tracked from this particular radar and were logged. I’m confident that when I saw the craft in Peru, it had been hit by something. Something had taken it out.” UFOs often enter our atmosphere above the Arctic Circle and the U.S. Ground-Based Midcourse Interceptor site at Fort Greely, Alaska is ideally located to destroy incoming UFOs.
“A CNN reporter in Washington, D.C., the second time that Gorbachev came to America, was able to interview Gorbachev and his wife. When they got out on the street, they drove the security detail up the wall. And a CNN reporter asked Gorbachev ‘Do you think we should get rid of all our nuclear weapons?’ And his wife stepped in, and she said, no, I don’t think we should get rid of all our nuclear weapons because of alien spacecraft. Ronald Reagan and Russian Leader Gorbachev Promoted an Alien Invasion
Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev
Ronald Reagan’s historic speech warned of an extraterrestrial invasion during the 42nd Session of the United-Nations General Assembly in New York on September 21, 1987. The text of Ronald Reagan’s speech contains an explicit announcement of a future UFO alien invasion:
“In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us?” You can watch a video of this speech at: http://ufoweek.com
-That the Soviet Union was being attacked by triangle shaped FOs according to two KGB Colonels had disintegrating had been subtly apparent for some time, but the final act began at 4:50 pm on Sunday, August 18, 1991. Soviet Pres. Mikhail Gorbachev was at his dacha in the Crimean resort of Faros when he was contacted by four men requesting an audience. They were his chief of staff, Valery Boldin; Oleg Baklanov, first deputy chairman of the U.S.S.R. defense council; Oleg Shenin, secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU); and Gen. Valentin Varennikov, chief of the Soviet Army’s ground forces. They were accompanied by KGB Gen. Yury Plekhanov, chief of security for party and state personnel. Their unexpected arrival aroused Gorbachev’s suspicions, and, when he tried to use the phone, it was dead. They had come to demand, in the name of the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the U.S.S.R., that Gorbachev sign a document declaring a state of emergency and transferring power to his vice president, Gennady Yanayev. They were taken aback when Gorbachev refused and rebuked them as treasonous blackmailers.
Gorbachev and his family were placed under arrest by Gen. Igor Maltsev, commander-in-chief of the Soviet Air Defense Troop while on vacation in Crimea… on August 19, 1991. The attempted coup was a failure when the people protesters began gathering around the Russian parliament building, and started erecting barricades Russian officials were not to obey the orders of the Emergency Committee
Tanks appeared on the streets of Moscow, and the city’s population immediately began attempting to dissuade troops from obeying orders… At 12:50 pm Russian Pres. Boris Yeltsin climbed atop a tank condemned the coup and issued a presidential edict declaring the coup illegal and “traitors.” At 5:00 pm.
Yeltsin appealed to the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Aleksey II, to condemn the coup. In Moscow, some elite tank regiments defected and assumed defensive positions . On August 21, the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet reinstated Gorbachev and annulled all the decrees of the Emergency Committee and all enterprises were under his government’s control. On August 24 Gorbachev resigned as CPSU general secretary.
Mikhail Gorbachev who has made several public statements about the reality of a covert extraterrestrial presence visiting Earth. He stated, ‘The phenomenon of UFO’s does exist, and it must be treated seriously.’ Perhaps Mikhail Gorbachev’s Kremlin speech in 1987 is the key to understanding why billions are being spent, when he said, At our Geneva meeting, the US President (Reagan) said that if the earth faced an invasion by extraterrestrials, the United States and the Soviet Union would join forces to repel such an invasion, I shall not dispute the hypothesis?”
According to the “Secret KGB UFO files” TV program craft were discovered after crashing possibly after a Soviet intercepts.
Besides numerous abduction scenarios, UFOs were destroying key Soviet installations, and intercepts of Soviet communications indicated fighters were being launched to ward off further UFO attacks. General Igor Malsev, Chief of the General Staff for Air Defense Forces (PVO), admitted that over a hundred observations of UFOs had been reported to him, mostly by pilots, on March 21, 1990. The Soviets were overly concerned about the attacks and the new threats provided by UFOs.
It is possible the 41st President George Bush sworn in on January 20, 1989, ordered the attack by UFOs that was set up by President Reagan as a method to defeat the Soviet Union without a nuclear war. President Vladimir Putin who was in the KGB at the time would know abbot the attacks.
Trail angle UFO attack to attack
In May 1990, shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union Gorbachev made a second more direct statement about UFOs. “The phenomenon of UFOs does exist,” he stated, “and it must be treated seriously.”
According to filmmaker and Russian ufologist Dr. Vladimir Avinsky, on September 13, 1990, just after midnight a Soviet radar station near Samara was attacked by a black triangular shaped UFO. It was about 50 feet in length on each leg of the triangle. A fire stated and the radar antennae seemed to melt. These extraordinary events were reported in the Red Star Military Newspaper. Dr. Avinsky provided these drawings of the attack.
Triangular craft attacking targets in Soviet Union on September 13, 1990
According to two Soviet KGB Colonels I met New York; the Extraterrestrials were well aware of the Soviet attempt[ to attack the U.S. with a massive ballistic missiles launched from dozens of submarines .The planned attack was narrowly averted by the U.S Navy. The aliens have a strong dislike for nuclear war in that it may make living on the planet intolerable. Shortly after the failed attack the Soviet Union was attacked almost nightly by triangle shaped UFOs and key installations were destroyed. According to the KGB Colonels, Gorbachev was visited by Exterrestrials who told him the world cannot have two Superpowers ready to destroy the Earth and the Soviets had been chosen to surrender and dissolve the Soviet Union. The attacks were the momentum for the Soviet Bloc countries to start to withdraw from Soviet rule and suddenly the Soviets seemed weak, and the Soviet troops were being removed from these nations. . By the summer of 1989 Gorbachev’s domestic reforms had run into serious trouble. The centrifugal forces in the “outer empire” stimulated and accelerated those in the “inner empire,” as the Soviet republics sought independence. As the center disintegrated and Gorbachev opened the political process with glasnost (openness), the old communist “barons” in the republics became nationalist.
It is possible the 41st President George Bush sworn in on January 20, 1989, ordered the attack by American UFOs that was set up by President Reagan as a method to defeat the Soviet Union without a nuclear war. President Vladimir Putin who was in the KGB at the time would know abbot the attacks.
On September 28, 1990, cosmonauts on board the Mir Space station saw a UFO over Newfoundland. Astronaut Genady Manakov states, “It was a great, silvery sphere and it was iridescent. It was much larger than a huge ship and had a regular shape, but, perhaps an enormous, experimental sphere, or something else”.
Officially it is stated the Soviet Union collapsed because of economic problems, but from its beginning it always had serious financial problems and its huge oil production was coming online. I suggest UFOs participated in the collapse of the Soviet Union to protect their interests.
Boris Yeltsin came to power on June 12, 1991, and was elected president of Russia becoming the first popularly elected president, and completing the fall of the Communist USSR and essentially ending the Cold War.
Margaret Thatcher reminded us, ” President Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot.” I feel he had help from our visitors in UFOs. In his last public announcement Reagan revealed, “When the Lord calls me home, whenever that may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country. ,
Shortly after Poland’s electorate voted the Communists out of government in June 1989, Gorbachev announced that the Soviet Union would not interfere with the internal affairs of the Eastern European countries. By October, Hungary and Czechoslovakia followed Poland’s example. The second act of the drama began in the fall of 1989 with peaceful revolutions in Eastern and Central Europe and the fall of the Soviet “outer empire.”
As one historian noted, in Poland communism took ten years, in Hungary ten months, in East Germany ten weeks, and in Czechoslovakia ten days to disappear. In Romania — the bloody exception to the rule of peaceful transition — the end came with the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife on Christmas Day. The Eastern Bloc. Charter 77 (Czechoslovakia) Solidarity (Poland) Kazakh rebellion (Romania) January Events (Lithuania) The Barricades (Latvia) April 9 tragedy (Georgia) Black January (Azerbaijan). The collapse of the Warsaw Pact a year later plus the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe [that substantially reduced Soviet superiority in conventional forces in Europe resulted in a stronger Western alliance — so strong that the US could redeploy forces from Europe to the Persian Gulf for use against Iraq.
President George H. W. Bush and Secretary Gorbachev
At the of Malta Summit on December 2 and 3, 1989, both the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union declared the Cold War over. just a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was their second meeting following a meeting that included Ronald Reagan, in New York in December 1988.
My history of the world is quite different from that of the news media. Perhaps the real history will be revealed some day.
A 3 GHz Signal Coming from UFOs?
The reconnaissance RB-47 aircraft obtained electronic transmissions from UFOs on July 17, 1957: It should be noted that the ECM equipment was not radar. It did not emit a signal and then pick up reflected echoes off of an object. Rather, it detected electromagnetic signals that were actually emitted by an UFO. And see Robert Hastings’ book “UFOs and Nukes” The book, “Exempt from Disclosure” the Los Alamos Tech Report (Ebben Craft # 2, from the Los Alamos source says the following:
“During recent tests, it was determined that Ebben 1 (Craft) sent out an electronic signature of super-high radio-frequency electromagnetic pulses. The pulses are in the 3 GHz region of the electromagnetic spectrum.” Page 158: “Microwaves though are a very useful range of frequencies; at one particular frequency (3 GHz for atmospheric air) they can create spin-resonance in the electrons of atoms of the gases in the surrounding air. Electron spin resonance-ESR raises the normal mode “lower energy” state of the electron up to the higher energy state, the visual effect of which is an emission of light photons of various colors . The craft could power a small city.().”
The Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite (TESS) was launched April 18, 2018 and will discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky. In a two-year survey of the solar neighborhood, TESS will monitor more than 200,000 stars for temporary drops in brightness caused by planetary transits. This first-ever space borne all-sky transit survey will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants, around a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances. No ground-based survey can achieve this feat. It is expected to discover thousands of exo-planets one may be Heaven or the original home of humans. TESS has identified over 5,200 candidate exoplanets of which 180 have been confirmed so far, along with numerous Earth like planets Thanks to NASA
Sumerian Anunnaki Came to Earth
These ancient tablets hold the secrets of our true history because they contain evidence of the oldest recorded events in history. By looking at the original tablets, some dated thousands of years before the Bible, which were utilized to make up our borrowed stories. The Sumerian was one of the first cultures of humankind. It was developed between 5300 BC and 2000 BC; it is still one of the most advanced civilizations known to have existed on Earth. Researcher Zecharia Sitchin claims the cuneiform text describe an alien race named the “Anunnaki” who came to the earth from an undiscovered planet in our Solar System, beyond Neptune called Niburu.
Expert says You’re Aliens— We Were Brought to Earth of Thousands of Years Ago in Rockets
Humans Are Aliens
The Bible states, “Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Genesis 2: 21=24
What if humans are the aliens we’ve been looking for all along?” According to experts, humans were most likely crossbred with another species, perhaps from the star system Alpha Centauri, which is one of the closest solar systems to Earth, in the distant past, giving birth to modern humans.
Genesis 6:4 reads as follows: “The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.”
In the ancient Sumerian city of Kish used to be, archaeologists found one of the oldest ancient documents on the planet, the tablet of Kish written in 3500 BC. The Sumerian king list states that Kish was the first city to have kings following the flood.
Many scientists agree that compared to other species on earth, humans are rather strange. For example, a baby horse when born is able to walk and function almost independently, but a human baby cannot do, which makes us quite helpless. In other words, we are born before being neurologically ready for life.
O Positive 38 % and A Positive 34% A Negative 6%
Our species has paid an expensive price with back and Lumbar pain a sign that according to many experts that we may be from another planet. Curiously, other animals on Earth do NOT have this problem. It’s as if only humans are affected. Furthermore, as noted by Robert Sepher, our modern DNA sequencing, demonstrates that humanity , isn’t just ONE single ‘race’ that descended from Africa, but a hybridized species, with a far more enigmatic truth behind it all. Genesis 6:4 reads as follows:The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.
Many questions have been raised in the discussion about Rh negative blood. If mankind did, in fact, evolve from an ancient African animal ancestor, theories state that everyone’s blood would be compatible, but , this is not the case.. There are 612 primate (monkeys, apes) species and subspecies recognized by the International Union for Conversation of Nature (IUCN), and not one has Rh-negative blood indicating these human did not develop from animals”. Where did Rh-negative blood come from? And why is it that a Rh-negative mother carrying Rh positive children tries rejecting her own offspring? One possible theory suggests that humanity is not one race, but a hybridized species.
The book was written by Robert Sepehr, “Species with Amnesia: Our Forbidden History” tells us that highly advanced civilizations have been on Earth before us, just to be destroyed by some great global catastrophes. Sepehr argues that for each race that has died out, another has taken its place, with a selected few holding on to the memories and sacred knowledge of the past race. We are in fact only just beginning to rediscover the profound wisdom of past civilizations yearning to reclaim our forgotten past. –
The Highest Percentage of RH Negative Blood is 20% in Red
The Basque people of Spain and France have the highest percentage of Rh-negative blood. About 30% have Rh negative blood and about 60% carry one (r) negative gene.
Professor Milton Wainwright from the University of Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology and his team inspected and analyzed parallels between manganese oxide rock varnish biological contents on Earth and on Mars. They theorized that it not only pointed to the existence of extraterrestrial life, “but to complex and civilized beings watching our planet.”Thealiens have been seeding Earth since the beginning of time and are now watching us? “Russian scientists say alien life may exist on the surface of the ISS”
A Missing Planet May Be a Clue
In the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, scientists have noted there appears to be a missing planet. It is thought the Asteroid Belt was formed by an exploding planet that severely damaged Mars whose Martians escaped to earth? Could we be descendants from an alien race that previously occupied another planet? Those aliens could still be living among us, either unrecognized or in hiding? An advanced civilization flying UFOs is being reported daily in our skies. Perhaps the UFO crews escaped danger on their own planet and are now hide on Earth. Venus or Mars and some moons may have life.
The Labelled Release experiments which Professor Dr. Gilbert Levin designed for the on Mar’s Twin Viking Landers in 1976 detected living microbes and his recent proposal for high-resolution images of rocks cracked open by the Curiosity rover, and growing acceptance that Mars is not a sterile planet.
Humans are not from Earth
According to one expert, it means that we are the aliens we’ve we been looking for all along. A new theory proposed by Dr. Ellis Silver states that there are several tell-tale signs present in the human race that suggest human beings did not evolve alongside other life forms on Earth. The book called ‘Humans are not from Earth: a scientific evaluation of the evidence’ is basically a resume of theories for and mostly against man’s evolution on Earth. In the book, leading environmentalist and ecologist Dr. Ellis Silver goes through an evaluation of thirteen leading hypothesis and seventeen factors which suggest HUMANS ARE NOT FROM EARTH. Mankind is the most highly developed species, yet is surprisingly unsuited and ill-equipped for Earth’s environment: harmed by sunlight, a strong dislike for naturally occurring foods, ridiculously high rates of chronic disease, and more said Dr. Ellis in an interview. ‘Humans might suffer from back pain because our species initially evolved on another planet with a lower gravity such as Mars.. ., Newborns have large heads and make it difficult for mothers to give birth, which can result in fatalities for both mother and child.
According to Dr. Ellis, Neanderthals were most likely crossbred with another species, perhaps from the star system Alpha Centauri –which is one of the closest solar systems to Earth— in the distant past, giving birth to modern humans. According to Dr. Ellis, there are millions of people around the globe who ‘feel’ that they do not belong on Earth. “This suggests that mankind may have evolved on a different planet, and we may have been brought here as a highly developed species. One reason for this is that the 53 factors that prove we could not have evolved on Earth.
This is a page from the book Humans are not from Earth
In China there are a hundred pyramids thousands of years old with the remains of blue eyed blonds buried nearby. White skin humans were first developed at this time. ‘Dr. Ellis concludes that mankind evolved elsewhere and was transported to Earth (as fully evolved Homo sapiens) between 60,000 and 200,000 years ago.
Texas Object in Cemetery
San Antonio, Texas on August 7, 2022, an object that appeared on my photograph that I did not see when I took the photo. It clearly shows a ship like that is rounded and visible with wings. I took the photo in a cemetery and flash moves up to craft suggesting soul or other parts are taken from body. There is a bright flash between the craft and a grave. It is possible the craft is picking up the soul or other parts of dead people. Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.
Strange Craft
The True Story of an Air Force Intelligence Officer’s Life with UFOs
U.S. Air Force Major George Filer belongs to the generation of pilots and aviators who first became aware of the strange aircraft showing up in the Earth’s atmosphere after World War II. These men – military professionals who flew planes, served as radar operators and air traffic controllers at airfields around the world – began to whisper amongst themselves about encounters with suspected extraterrestrial aircraft.
During secret debriefings at U.S. bases, pilots and air crew told their commanders of seeing UFOs off their plane’s wings. Award-winning investigative author John Guerra spent four years interviewing Filer, a decorated intelligence officer.
From objects in the skies over Cold War Europe to a UFOs over during the Cuban Missile Crisis to lights over the DMZ in Vietnam Filer leaves nothing out about his Air Force UFO encounters,
Filer’s most memorable case – the shooting of an alien at Fort Dix Army Base in 1978 – is fully recounted for the first time in this book. As a member of the Disclosure Project, military experts, astronauts, and scientists urge the U.S. government to release all it knows about UFOs to the public.
Filer describes his UFO encounters in this incredible book, by John L. Guerra.
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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 Sept. 15 2022 - Reagan and Gorbachev Promoted an Alien Invasion - PART II
Lobelville, Tennessee on August 29 , 2022
Filer’s Files Sept. 15 2022 - Reagan and Gorbachev Promoted an Alien Invasion - PART II
Major George A. Filer III ret. USAF
New Jersey State Director
MUFON Eastern Region Director
Special reports are: Both Supreme Allied Commanders Claim Aliens Are Here, Gorbachev Dies, Ronald Reagan and Russian Leader Gorbachev Promoted an Alien Invasion, A 3 GHz Signal Coming from UFOs? The Search for Human’s Original Home, Humans are not from Earth, Carbon 60, and Strange Craft.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, France, New Zealand, 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 and DOD investigated UFOs for more than forty years; and I continue this advanced research. I believe the God of the universe has spread life throughout the cosmos and UFOs are visiting us in ever-increasing numbers.
Forward these files to your friends and neighbors.
UFO Sightings in the United States
Sightings are from MUFON CMS
California Lights
California Object on August 27, 2022, I found a series of videos, all of the same suspicious yellow lights in the sky. I’m almost certain myself this must be a UFO.I called up ABC News who was adamant it was a drone. Colorado Lights
Longmont on September 5 , 2022. I was outside looking at early morning stars and see this light anomaly appear that looked like a fireworks. The trailing sparks were not burning away. My wife and I saw a string of silvery-gold lights, A 3 second slow exposure and made the lights appear as a single line.
Florida Lights
Miami on September 11, 2022. I took this picture at the airport as I am a Crew Chief for 13 years. The picture show 2 glares and the “animalities” are far away, different shapes.
Idaho Light
Boise on September 5 , 2022. seemed like the trail of a comet as it shimmered the same way. But then I realized it was a solid, consistent shaped object traveling slowly but steadily across the sky..
New Jersey Lights
On September 14, 2022, on Monday location of sighting was in New Jersey, thousands of eyewitnesses saw a craft.
Westfieldon August 10 , 2022, I first heard a pulsating sound and just over the trees the point started to appear then more of the triangle craft came into view. I stood in this incredibly bright light watching it slowly glide over me with lights on each point. Side panels were lit as it glided off 70 feet over me.
Nevada Object
Devil’s Lakeon August 21, 2022, a solid glowing long light which didn’t change shape and didn’t pulse. It wasn’t a heat/flame trail from a missile or falling star. It traveled across the sky for 12 seconds then gone.
North Dakota Lights
Devil’s Lakeon August 21, 2022, a solid glowing long light which didn’t change shape and didn’t pulse. It wasn’t a heat/flame trail from a missile or falling star. It traveled across the sky for 12 seconds then gone.
Tennessee Disk
Lobelvilleon August 29, 2022, set up a trail camera after 2 helicopters flew a hundred feet over my house and later caught a disk with a dome. (UFO). A month or two later my camera caught a few UFOs avoiding being hit with several rockets being shot at them from the ground .
Utah Object
Cedar City on September 3 , 2022, I took pics of my garden and saw an object but it looked farther away. We live right up to the edge of Three Peaks Park in Iron County.
West Virginia Light
Glen Forkon August 12, 2021, took four photos of this bright object from 11:50 PM to 12:20 AM.
Note: The witness did not say anything about the object. The object could be Jupiter that was visible and quite bright at the time that the photos were taken. Thanks to Will Pucket/www.ufosnw.com/newsite/
Worldwide UFO Sightings
Australia Object
Peterhead on September 5 , 2022. I was outside looking up and saw two objects stationary in the sky. A helicopter flew near, so I called my wife,. They slowly moved west and disappeared but the other went in front of a cloud where I was able to see it.
Belgium Object
Tournai on August 20, 2022, after a PAN, it lit up and looked like a big cigar and turned off and continued in its west direction.
Canada Lights
on August 29, 2022, I got out of my semi truck, I looked up and saw lights going across the sky. It was a clear morning, just before sun rise at 5:37 AM, I thought it was a meteorite breaking up, they were moving at the exact speed east. I captured some footage.
China Light
Shenyangon March 15, 2022, I see a bright object in the western sky just after sunset. I notice it’s been stationary for at least
France Object
Solomon Bridgeon May 15, 2021, this photo was taken between Pont Salomon and St Ferréol d’Aurore, my attention was drawn to this cloud that looks like a UFO. It began to move slowly before dissipating.
New Zealand Lights
Hamptonon March 8, 2022, while my partner and I were watching a UFO documentary, my partner looks out the window to see glowing lights tracing a path across the sky. Initially we only saw 3, but then 2 more started catching up.
UK/England Object
London on September 3, 2022, we are at the 8th– floor window from Princes Gate, and we witnessed a Tic Tac shape UAP moving in a way that is not possible. It was white, glowed, and hovered over Horse Guard Parade area near Buckingham Palace and then flew east before shooting into the sky.
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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.
Creepy Voice Heard On ITV News Coverage Of Queen's Coffin Driven To Windsor Castle
On September 19, 2022 this eerie voice of a female can be heard whispering in a hushed tone. "The death is irreversible and the fact that she's ???."
Ghost Of Child Filmed At The Crescent Hotel & Spirit Face Seen Through The Static At Super 8 Hotel
Clip One:This was captured at the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. This hotel & spa Is notorious for it's supernatural activity earning it's title as one of "America’s Most Haunted Hotel"
In the clip we can see the two guest filming their room when the ghost of this child runs pass the camera in what looks like a long nightdress and given the the hotel use to be both a girls’ college and a cancer hospital could this be a past resident??
Thanks to CharlieVector1-9r for posting this great clip and to view the original:
Clip Two: This was captured at a Super 8 Hotel, which one is unknown but while the witness was scanning the channels of the hotel's tv this ghostly face was seen.. The witness stated the following: "This video is from an super8 hotel with channels 1-68, yet there is an unnamed channel 73. the top right corner of the video says "plusTV" which appears to be a now defunct finnish broadcasting service. There's no sound and the TV manufacturer is samsung. they've found other channels with static and no sound, but no others have the face or plusTV logo."
Thanks to FearmyBeard21 for posting this and to view the original:
Top 9 Insane Sightings by Astronauts in Space: UFOs, Aliens and More!
Today, we will look at some of the most bizarre incidents that astronauts have experienced while on space. And you don’t have to believe all of them, but keep an open mind, because like I said, Space is strange and there is so much that we don’t know about it.
Are Aliens Sending Us Signals Every Now and Then in this Way?
Many searches for intelligent life have been carried out thus far, such as probing for radio signals or megastructures around stars. It's both terrifying and intriguing to consider, but how will aliens communicate with humanity? What would be the most effective manner for a technologically advanced alien civilization to announce its arrival throughout the galaxy?
NASA Says We Can Now Hear Aliens and UFOs
So far, no one has reached out to us. But aliens, far superior than us, may be even a Type 3 civilization, is hiding in plain sight and watching our every move. It only makes sense for advanced alien civilizations to not contact us, on purpose. They might be waiting for us. Waiting for us to become able, or at par with them. We cannot however, be sure. So, the quest to find life outside of our planet must continue. And we just might have found the means to finally do that.
When NASA was Caught Off-Guard - Top 3 Insane UFO/UAP Encounters In Outer Space Proving Aliens Exist
When NASA was Caught Off-Guard - Top 3 Insane UFO/UAP Encounters In Outer Space Proving Aliens Exist
NASA is preparing for UFO research with “full vigor”
NASA is preparing for UFO research with “full vigor”
Talking about their next UFO probe, NASA is very serious.
The organization said in June that they are ready to begin a precise investigation of unidentified flying objects, also recognized as UAPs, or “unidentified aerial phenomena”.
The main objectives, according to NASA representatives at the time, will be to categorize the data on UFO sightings that are currently available, outline the most effective methods for gathering observations in the future, and decide how the organization can utilize this data to improve the understanding of such perplexing phenomena from the sky.
The study’s lead researcher will be astronomer David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation in New York City. It’s scheduled to begin this fall, cost about $100,000, and last for around nine months. Representatives from NASA stated the organization is working hard to stick to that schedule during a “town hall meeting” on Wednesday (August 17) to discuss numerous programs of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD).
We’re going full throttle on the UAP study preparations, said Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at SMD, during the town hall on Wednesday. The fact that it is crucial to us is why we are giving it top importance, he added.
The study panel would consist of 15–17 people, according to Evans. He said, “Many of the top scientists, data specialists, AI experts, and aerospace safety experts in the world will be among these individuals, all with a specific charge, which will be to tell us how to apply the complete emphasis of science and data to UAP.
Evans and his group planned to have NASA Administrator Bill Nelson interview their top panel candidates after the town hall on Wednesday. If Nelson gave his assent, the procedure for officially choosing the panelists now has started.
Regarding the appointments, Evans expressed his hope that they would be completed by October. However, he hopes that they might be able to finish it sooner.
Not just ardent UFO enthusiasts will avidly read the next NASA inquiry, which is greatly anticipated by the general public. In fact, agency representatives have said that they think the study would contribute to integrating UAP research into the rigorous, unbiased scientific mainstream.
Because we are skilled at using science and data to ascertain what could be occurring in the sky, NASA is in a unique position to solve UAP, according to Evans. And Evans also mentions that no other agency has the same level of public confidence as they do.
Investigations related to aliens and UFOs have fostered different theories. However, there is one that, even the scientific community, has seen as possible… Could they be humans from the future?
Future humans would have traveled to our time in search of genetic material.
According to different testimonies of people who had encounters with extraterrestrials , in addition to the studies and research carried out, there is the possibility that these beings are humans from the future.
This controversial theory has even been present in scientific debates in recent years, which would open up a whole universe of possibilities to explain the existence of UFOs.
Aliens could be humans from the future
Why do aliens communicate in our languages ? How can they access our atmosphere without any problem ? Why do they insist on studying us genetically ?
They are supposed to be more advanced civilizations , technologically and biologically . So what is your interest in the Earth and humanity?
Perhaps it is because their origin is not as far away as we think and they come from Earth . Obviously, not “ours”, but thousands of years older .
This theory suggests that aliens and UFOs that have been seen for years are actually humans from the future . The reason for visiting us, as there could be several, however, the most likely that your future is in ruins and on the verge of extinction .
These beings would travel to our present and participate in clandestine programs to harvest DNA , cells, sperm and eggs to try to save what is left of their world.
Knowing that the people of the 20th and 21st century had a strong belief in extraterrestrial life , they decided to adopt these “forms” and camouflage themselves, so that we cannot discover their real identity.
Revealing testimony?
Jim Penniston revealed that the future would be in danger of extinction.
Jim Penniston , one of the military witnesses to the most important UFO incident in England, the famous Redenlesham Forest encounter in Suffolk, made a statement on this subject.
This event happened in 1980 , however, Penniston underwent hypnotic regression in 1994, as part of an attempt to recall those memories that his head had suppressed.
During hypnosis, he declared that what he thought were aliens, were humans from the far future.
“It’s very dark, in infinitely deep trouble, tainted, and where the Human Race is overwhelmingly afflicted with reproductive issues.”
Penniston learned about this problem thanks to one of these humans from the future that he met in the forest.
But how did they manage to travel in time? It is something that not even the military himself knows, because they were never told.
There are several hypotheses that could explain this, one of them being wormholes, a term coined in 1957 by theoretical physicist John Wheeler .
A wormhole is basically a shortcut through space and time. Although they have not yet been able to be 100% proven by science, they have not been ruled out.
Obviously, this is one more theory that, like many others, also has some holes. To date there is no proof of space travel or that humans from the future have traveled to our days.
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 2006when 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.
A SURPRISINGLY STRONG SIGNAL
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)
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IS THE SPACE ROAR COMING FROM INSIDE 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.
ALL ABOUT SPACE
(Image credit: Future)
This article is brought to you by All About Space(opens in new tab).
All About Space(opens in new tab) magazine takes you on an awe-inspiring journey through our solar system and beyond, from the amazing technology and spacecraft that enables humanity to venture into orbit, to the complexities of space science.
"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(opens in new tab), 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."
EXTRAGALACTIC ORIGIN?
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(opens in new tab). 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, supernovas 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)
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HOW THE 13-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY COULD 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."
This article was adapted from a previous version published in All About Space magazine, a Future Ltd. publication.
Becker, K. (2017, August 28). Galaxy clusters offer clues to dark matter and Dark Energy. Phys.org. Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://phys.org/news/2017-08-galaxy-clusters-clues-dark-energy.html
Brown, D. Is Milgrom's modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) fundamental for philosophy, science, and the physical interpretation of string theory? Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2985
NASA. Arcade - absolute radiometer for cosmology, astrophysics, diffuse emission. NASA. Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/archive/arcade/
The mystery of Saturn's rings and the terrible truth behind
The mystery of Saturn's rings and the terrible truth behind
Unlike the thin rings of dust and rock that hover around Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, the ring system around Saturn is extremely impressive, and is considered a symbol when about this planet.
Saturn has a very distinct and distinctive ring.
However, the truth behind this belt is something that not everyone expected. It even scares some people, because it could happen to the Earth.
According to new research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, this beautiful appearance may be the result of an extremely powerful collision between Saturn and Chrysalis - its hypothetical Moon.
This conclusion comes after the team conducted hundreds of simulations, with each simulation having different starting conditions.
According to the proposed scenario, about 160 million years ago, Chrysalis's orbit became unstable, causing its rotation to shift closer to the host planet.
Here, Saturn's gravity pulled its natural satellite back, and eventually led to a massive collision.
However, everything from Chrysalis is not lost. Scientists think that most of its matter is still hanging around the orbit, and has long formed the rings of the planet.
Everything from Chrysalis is not lost, but its matter has long formed the rings of the planet.
This violent encounter may also have pushed Saturn out of resonance, reducing the tilt of the axis, leading to existing resonances with Neptune.
According to Jack Wisdom, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who led the study, this scenario is suggested because it explains in detail all of Saturn's unusual properties, such as: axial tilt, orbital rotation, and even the rings of "giant planets".
"We suggest that Saturn once had a satellite, temporarily called Chrysalis. This system used to be stable for a long time. But over time, its moon escaped from the stellar resonance. Earth, and there was a strong impact, causing it to shatter, creating the belts like today," Wisdom summed up.
"It's a hypothesis we believe in," Wisdom said, "but like any other outcome, it will need to be considered for feasibility."
This proposed assumption can make many people feel "shaky", when thinking about the Earth and the Moon. However, in reality, the Moon is moving away from the Earth at an average rate of 4 cm per year.
The study by Jack Wisdom and colleagues is published in the journal Science.
Waar komen ringen van Saturnus vandaan? Misschien wel het resultaat van een vermiste maan
Saturnus, de zesde planeet in ons zonnestelsel, staat vooral bekend om zijn opvallende ringen. Waar deze ringen precies vandaan komen, is echter lange tijd een mysterie geweest. Nu denken wetenschappers het mysterie opgelost te hebben. In het vaktijdschrift Science schrijven ze over een ijsmaan waarvan de overblijfselen tot ringen zijn herleid.
Saturnus heeft een uitgebreid assortiment aan manen, maar liefst 83. Er is Enceladus, een maan met een ijzige oppervlakte. Lapetus, een maantje dat aan de ene kant helder en blinkend is, aan de andere kant stoffig en donker. Dan zijn er nog Hyperion, Pan en Titan - de grootste maan van Saturnus. Tot slot is er één maan vermist: Chrysalis.
Onderzoekers denken (een deel van) het maantje nu teruggevonden te hebben. In de vorm van de (twee) ringen van Saturnus. Deze ringen bestaan, net zoals Chrysalis, voornamelijk uit ijs en meteorietstofdeeltjes. Ze zijn zo’n 20 meter dik en daarmee een pak indrukwekkender dan de ringen van Uranus en Neptunus.
Crash
Ongeveer 160 miljoen jaar geleden zou Chrysalis zich iets te dicht bij Saturnus hebben begeven en gecrasht zijn. Na de crash bleef er volgens de onderzoekers niet veel meer over dan enkele ijsresten. Naar schatting is zo'n 99 procent van de maan verdwenen in de atmosfeer van Saturnus. De overige 1 procent zou getransformeerd zijn tot de ringen.
“Het verlies van Chrysalis zou niet alleen de ringen van Saturnus verklaren, maar ook waarom de planeet lichtjes gekanteld is (27 graden om precies te zijn, red.)” Een combinatie van verschillende factoren, waaronder het plotseling wegvallen van een maan, zou de kanteling veroorzaakt kunnen hebben.
“Het is een interessant scenario dat verklaart waarom twee niet gerelateerde zaken zijn ontstaan”, aldus Jack Wisdom, professor en onderzoeker aan het Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) en hoofdauteur van de studie. “Het geeft veel voldoening een geloofwaardige verklaring te hebben gevonden voor het ontstaan van de ringen van Saturnus.”
Hypothese
De onderzoekers, alsook andere wetenschappers die niet hebben meegewerkt aan het onderzoek, benadrukken evenwel dat het slechts om een hypothese gaat. Of Chrysalis - genoemd naar de pop van een insect - heeft bestaan is helemaal niet zeker.
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What happened to the Astronaut who was lost in space for 311 days?
What happened to the Astronaut who was lost in space for 311 days?
Sergei Krikalyov; born 27 August 1958) is a Russian mechanical engineer and former cosmonaut. As a prominent rocket scientist, he is a veteran of six space flights and ranks third to Gennady Padalka and Yuri Malenchenko for the most time spent in space: a total of 803 days, 9 hours, and 39 minutes.
Krikalev was stranded on board the Mir station during the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991. As the country that had sent him into space no longer existed and his return was delayed.
As a result he stayed in space for 311 consecutive days, twice as long as the mission had originally called for, before he could return to Earth again.
Because Krikalev spent so much time in space away from Earth’s center of gravity, time dilation (or the slowing down of clocks) caused him to be 0.02 seconds older than other people born at the same time as him.
For over half a century, there have been rumours of secretive facilities and bases, hidden deep below the surface of the sprawling North American landscape. This week, we examine the most infamous of these alleged sites. An underground base believed to be situated near the town of Dulce, in New Mexico. A modern-day mystery, which lies deep beneath the mesa.
For over half a century, there have been rumours of secretive facilities and bases, hidden deep below the surface of the sprawling North American landscape. This week, we examine the most infamous of these alleged sites. An underground base believed to be situated near the town of Dulce, in New Mexico. A modern-day mystery, which lies deep beneath the mesa.
In our previous episode, we examined reports from various individuals who stated that there is a secret facility buried deep beneath the New Mexico town of Dulce. But we deliberately avoided the testimony of one man, who is arguably the most controversial figure in the allegations surrounding the possible existence of Dulce Base. A man who claimed he was the survivor of a war beneath the mesa.
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19-09-2022
The Great White Pyramid of Xian: Why China keeps its pyramids a secret?
The Great White Pyramid of Xian: Why China keeps its pyramids a secret?
The White Pyramid myth began during World War II, when eyewitness accounts, especially from pilot James Gaussman, mentioned the appearance of a massive “White Pyramid” near the Chinese city of Xi’an, during a flight between China and India in 1945, he is believed to have seen a white jewel-topped pyramid.
Not only was this amazing structure supposed to be the biggest pyramid in the world, but it was also said to be surrounded by dozens of smaller pyramids, some rising to almost the same height.
Walter Hain, an author, and scientific writer describe Gaussman’s initial view of the pyramid in his homepages. James Gaussman was returning to Assam, India, after flying the ‘Burma Hump,’ which transported supplies from India to Chungking, China, when engine difficulties caused him to momentarily descend to a low altitude above China.
“I banked in order to avoid a mountain, and we emerged into a flat valley. A gigantic white pyramid stood directly below. It appeared to be something from a fairy tale. It was enclosed in a gleaming white shell. This might have been made of metal or a type of stone. On both sides, it was pure white.
The capstone was amazing; it was a massive chunk of jewel-like material that may have been crystal. We could not have landed, no matter how badly we wanted to. We were taken aback by the enormity of the thing.”
The New York Times picked up the story and published an article on the pyramid on March 28, 1947. Colonel Maurice Sheahan, director of Trans World Airlines’ Far Eastern division, stated in an interview that he had seen a massive pyramid 40 miles southwest of Xian. The same newspaper published a photo two days following the report, which was eventually credited to Gaussman.
Photographs of the massive pyramid he had shot would not be released for another 45 years. Even his report would remain buried in the Secret Service archives of the United States military until then. Numerous researchers and explorers have attempted to locate the White Pyramid of Xi’an, but none have been successful.
Some claim that the White Pyramid may be hidden amidst the high mountains and deep gorges of the Qin Ling Mountains.
Chinese government designated about 400 pyramids north of Xi’an in 2000, however, the White Pyramid was not included. Many of the other sites were excavated, revealing mausoleums shaped more like Mesoamerican pyramids, which vary from Egyptian pyramids in that they are flat-topped and covered with flora.
Ancient members of China’s royal class were buried in these burial mounds, where they planned to lie in peace for eternity. The majority of the pyramids are exceedingly difficult to spot, as they are hidden by lush hillsides and hills, as well as long grass and trees. Only a few of the structures have been made available to tourists.
Photograph published in New York Times, May 30 1947, supposedly taken by James Gaussman
The Chinese government has provided easy justifications for why no one is permitted to enter, notably that enthusiastic archaeologists and visitors may do damage to the relics.
Officials believe they are waiting for technology to improve sufficiently to fully dig the pyramids and their valuable contents. After all, some of the pyramids are thought to be as old as 8,000 years.
Westerners have speculated endlessly about the pyramids’ purpose and energy, as well as their astrological significance. According Noopept stock to scholars, “the cardinal points of North, South, East, and West were all significant to certain kings.” Lining up your tomb with the axis of the world was proof that you were still number one.”
One of the rarest pictures of pyramids in the Xi’an Valley
The most common conspiracy theory includes extraterrestrials, who are said to be the original architects. Is it feasible that Erich von Däniken’s and others’ ancient astronaut theories might also apply to the Chinese pyramids? Wherever there is concealment, conspiracy theories automatically emerge.
Time is “elastic”: Why time passes faster atop a mountain than at sea level
Time is “elastic”: Why time passes faster atop a mountain than at sea level
Since Einstein presented his general theory of relativity, we’ve known that gravity has the ability to warp space and time. Even at low levels, this “time dilation” effect occurs. We experience distortions in how we see time outside of physics, sometimes to startling extents.
Place one clock on top of a mountain. Put another one on the seashore. You’ll notice that each clock displays a different time. Why? Time slows down as you come closer to Earth because, as Einstein proposed in his general theory of relativity, the gravity of a big mass, such as the Earth, warps space and time around it.
This “time dilation” effect was first observed on a cosmic scale, such as when a star passes close to a black hole. The same effect was discovered on a much smaller scale in 2010, when researchers used two incredibly precise atomic clocks, one 33 cm higher than the other. Time went slower as the clock got closer to Earth.
The differences were minor, but the implications were meaningful: absolute time does not exist. Time moves slightly differently for each clock in the world and for everyone of us. But, even if time moves at varying speeds around the cosmos, time still moves in some objective sense, right? Maybe not.
Carlo Rovelli, an Italian theoretical physicist, suggests in his book “The Order of Time” that our perception of time — our sensation that time is always moving ahead — could be a highly subjective illusion. After all, when you examine reality on the smallest scale (at least using quantum gravity equations), time vanishes.
“If I observe the microscopic state of things,” writes Rovelli, “then the difference between the past and future vanishes … in the elementary grammar of things, there is no distinction between ’cause’ and ‘effect.’”
So, what causes us to perceive time as moving forward? Rovelli observes that, whereas time disappears on extremely small scale, we clearly see events occurring sequentially in reality. To put it another way, we see entropy: as order changing into disorder; an egg cracking and getting scrambled.
According to Rovelli, the second law of thermodynamics, which stipulates that heat always moves from hot to cold, describes important features of time. This is only one method. For example, an ice cube never melts into a hot cup of tea. A comparable process, according to Rovelli, could explain why we can only perceive the past and not the future.
“Any time the future is definitely distinguishable from the past, there is something like heat involved,” Rovelli wrote for the Financial Times. “Thermodynamics traces the direction of time to something called the ‘low entropy of the past’, a still mysterious phenomenon on which discussions rage.”
He continues: “Entropy growth orients time and permits the existence of traces of the past, and these permit the possibility of memories, which hold together our sense of identity. I suspect that what we call the “flowing” of time has to be understood by studying the structure of our brain rather than by studying physics: evolution has shaped our brain into a machine that feeds off memory in order to anticipate the future. This is what we are listening to when we listen to the passing of time. Understanding the “flowing” of time is therefore something that may pertain to neuroscience more than to fundamental physics. Searching for the explanation of the feeling of flow in physics might be a mistake.”
Scientists are still learning a lot about how we perceive time and why it behaves differently depending on the scale. However, outside of the realm of physics, our individual perspective of time is surprisingly elastic.
On a mountain, time moves differently than on a beach. However, you do not need to travel far to encounter strange distortions in your perspective of time. For example, at moments of life-or-death fear, your brain would release massive amounts of adrenaline, which would speed up your internal clock, causing you to view the outer world as moving slowly.
Another common distortion occurs when we direct our attention in specific directions.
“If you’re thinking about how time is currently passing by, the biggest factor influencing your time perception is attention,” Aaron Sackett, associate professor of marketing at the University of St. Thomas, told Gizmodo. “The more attention you give to the passage of time, the slower it tends to go. As you become distracted from time’s passing—perhaps by something interesting happening nearby, or a good daydreaming session—you’re more likely to lose track of time, giving you the feeling that it’s slipping by more quickly than before. “Time flies when you’re having fun,” they say, but really, it’s more like “time flies when you’re thinking about other things.” That’s why time will also often fly by when you’re definitely not having fun—like when you’re having a heated argument or are terrified about an upcoming presentation.”
Psychedelic drugs are one of the most mysterious ways for humans to experience time-perception distortions. Rovelli detailed an LSD experiment in an interview with The Guardian.
“It was an extraordinarily strong experience that touched me also intellectually,” he said. “Among the strange phenomena was the sense of time stopping. Things were happening in my mind but the clock was not going ahead; the flow of time was not passing any more. It was a total subversion of the structure of reality.”
Few scientists or philosophers appear to believe that time is a complete illusion.
“What we call time is a rich, stratified concept; it has many layers,” Rovelli told Physics Today. “Some of time’s layers apply only at limited scales within limited domains. This does not make them illusions.”
The belief that time moves at an absolute rate is an illusion. The river of time may run forever, yet it moves at various rates between people and even within your own mind.
Searching for extraterrestrial life is an important goal not only for NASA, but for many of us in the scientific community to address the ancient question of whether we are alone in the Universe. But what if we actually discover alien life? We can just as easily imagine a friendly encounter (E.T., The Day the Earth Stood Still) as a fight to the death (War of the Worlds, Independence Day). Either way, we expect the extraterrestrials to be very different from us. It is implicit in the word we use to describe them: aliens.
Examining these conflicting views is one of the goals of a new initiative called Exploring Otherness on Earth and Beyond, funded by the Einstein Foundation in Germany, which held its first workshop earlier this month at the German Aerospace Center in Berlin. By including perspectives from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, the initiative hopes to build on ideas discussed during a symposium on Astrobiology and Society held in 2015 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The fact that this can even be a topic of serious discussion suggests that contact with extraterrestrials is no longer considered an unlikely pipe dream.
While most scientists would welcome the discovery of alien life and the chance to learn more about it, such a discovery is often perceived as strange or frightening by the public at large. Some would welcome aliens with open arms and expect them to solve our problems, from climate change to cancer. Some might even treat them as gods. Others would be afraid the aliens would take over Earth and have us at their mercy. Which attitude prevails likely will depend on what type of behavior we recognize in the extraterrestrials as being like our own.
“Otherness”
Historians, philosophers, and social scientists have long grappled with the idea of “otherness.” Human history is a long parade of cultures colonizing and subjugating each other, and racial and tribal politics are still very much with us today. Although many in our society are becoming more tolerant of otherness in areas like sexuality and neurodiversity, the separation of “us” and “them” is alive and well.
And that’s just among humans. If we consider our fellow creatures on Earth, “otherness” is even more of a problem. Why do some animals repel us, while others we want to cuddle? A bear is far more dangerous to humans than a tarantula — a child’s teddy bear conveniently leaves out the teeth and claws — yet we feel more at ease around our fellow mammal. Since bears are more closely related to humans than tarantulas, it is easier for us to read a bear’s emotions. And most of us are creeped out by a tarantula’s otherworldly appearance and behavior — the multiple eyes and the scuttling movements. In fact, spiders in general tend to rank highly among the most feared/disgusting animals, with bunnies residing at the other end of the scale. This may explain the preponderance of movie aliens that resemble arthropods. (The movie District 9 — a powerful indictment of societal “otherness” — comes to mind.)
Science is only beginning to understand the staggering variety of “alien” behaviors on our own planet, from sea turtles that sense magnetic fields to plants that communicate with each other via airborne chemicals. If we venture into an inhabited universe, we are likely to run into beings that evolved under entirely different physical circumstances. Will we meet them as curious, friendly, fellow explorers? Predators and prey? Will we be delighted or disgusted by their strangeness?
This dynamic may depend on whether “they” are more technologically advanced than us. If they are, they are likely to call the shots, not us. But let’s assume for a moment that we are the more advanced species. Would we afford more protection to an extraterrestrial microbe than to our own microbes, which we kill by the billions in our lab experiments without giving it a second thought? What if the alien is a more complex life form — say, similar to one of our fellow terrestrial animals? Shouldn’t we treat it ethically? What would that even mean to a society like our own that still eats fellow animals, even those we are closely related to?
The psychology of alien contact
How we deal with alien life, if it should ever come to that, will be one of the major challenges for humanity. We certainly want to avoid miscommunications and misunderstandings that could have dire, and possibly fatal, consequences. And we need to consider the possibility of encountering intelligent life forms that we simply cannot understand, as in the Stanisław Lem novel Solaris. We might be so confused by their otherness that we don’t even recognize them as living beings.
There might be a way around this dilemma: Artificial robots may be more successful emissaries between interplanetary civilizations, since they could take on a more neutral form. Another solution would be mimicry. Many science fiction aliens, from The Man Who Fell to Earth to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, take human form when they come visiting.
Religious questions also come into play when discussing the otherness of aliens. How would the major religions on our planet deal with the discovery of intelligent aliens? At the 2015 Library of Congress meeting, Brother Guy Consolmagno from the Vatican Observatory said he was once asked whether he would baptize an alien. I thought his answer was very smart. He said yes, but only if the alien wants to.
Of course, some Eastern traditions like Buddhism would do away with notions of “self” and “other” altogether. Perhaps that is the key insight that will allow us, and perhaps other civilizations hoping to travel among the stars, to meet each other with open arms, rather than with weapons drawn — even if some of us (or them) might still have a deep nagging feeling inside of being repelled by alien otherness.
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Sky-watcher caught UFO leaving the Moon
Sky-watcher caught UFO leaving the Moon
Real images 0f Moon Bases and Ufo's. BruceSeesAll shows us two images that are from a space association and the rest of the video is all his personal research in ufology and astronomy on the moon.
One of the most remarkable recordings of Bruce is a UFO leaving the moon and while NASA still insists that there is no extraterrestrial activity on the moon, it is only a matter of time before they can no longer deny it.
279-year-old file discovered on “first of its type” sight over Westminster in the London UFO mystery
279-year-old file discovered on “first of its type” sight over Westminster in the London UFO mystery
Doctor Cromwell Mortimer saw an unexplained flying object soaring above downtown London on December 16, 1742, and he reported it to authorities. Mr. Mortimer, who was the secretary of the Royal Society at the time, observed the enigmatic object as it moved “slowly” above St. James’s Park around 8:40 p.m. while on his way home to Westminster. He noted that the object was moving quite slowly, which gave him about 30 seconds to acquire a good view of it.
Despite being short, 30 seconds is a lot longer than most sightings of meteors and other such phenomena.
He was even able to draw a schematic of the item, which he described in his 1746 report, which was recently discovered in the journal Philosophical Transactions, vol. XLIII.
In the south by west point, he claimed, “I saw a light appear hidden behind the woods and homes.”
After reaching a height of around 20 degrees, it moved in a direction that was almost aligned to the horizon and passed above the residences.
As he continued to observe the object, he thought that its route had taken it precisely over Bloomsbury, over Queen’s Square, and toward the nearby canal.
He also wrote that he had lost sight of it over the Haymarket.
Its action was so slow, he said, that I was able to see it for more than a minute and spend enough time studying it.
His illustration showed a thing with a blazing head that was “contained as it were in an open box” and bound by “bands of iron.”
Like contemporary airplanes, the extraterrestrial had a lengthy tail of light that was progressively becoming fainter.
The British UFO investigator Steve Mera was quoted by The Sun as saying, “It is the very first of its sort.”
People watching it from a balcony, he continued. They had good financial standing, which promoted thorough investigation.
The military has reported 400 sightings of UFOs and had 11 near experiences with them over the years, according to a top Pentagon officer who testified before the US Congress.
Due to a considerable increase in statements from military personnel concerning prior encounters, the stigma associated with reporting UFO sightings has decreased over the last several years, and this number has more than doubled.
These days, an “unidentified flying object” (UFO) may not always indicate alien sightings; it might even be highly developed drones.
NASA, SpaceX, and CNSA are working toward sending Astronauts to the red planet before 2040. If humans must explore Mars before the mid of the 21st century, we need to bring along other technologies to sustain humanity on the red planet. However, funding the transportation cost of every item that will be delivered on Mars will actually come with a price. But Space Agencies are looking at taking advantage of 3D printing Technology to ensure that astronauts meet their mission demands on the hostile environment of Mars. Arecent study suggests that Mars soil will be used for 3D printing on the red planet.
How Astronauts Will Use Mars Soil For 3D Printing On The Red Planet
Amit Bandyopadhyay, a professor at the Washington State University School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, and his research team recently conducted several tests using simulated crushed Martian regolith to prove that it had the potential of serving as 3D printing material on Mars. This recent discovery significantly made the future of crewed exploration on Mars to become more interesting than ever.
“In space, 3D printing is something that has to happen if we want to think of a manned mission because we really cannot carry everything from here,” Bandyopadhyaystated. “And if we forgot something, we cannot come back to get it.”
Based on the success of this experience, Martian Astronauts will significantly take advantage of the 3D printing technology to build more tools and exploration materials on Mars. With the possibility of using abundant Mars regolith as 3D printing material, space agencies will reduce their logistics costs for crewed missions to the red planet.
Keep in mind that the average distance between our home planet and Mars is around 140 million miles (225 million km). At this great distance, it will cost every space agency a great amount to transport cargo to the red planet. However, 3D printing technology will reduce this cost drastically.
What Can We Recreate On Mars Using 3D Printing Technology?
Several Scientific studies have proven that 3D printing Technology can make building colonies on Mars possible in the near future. On Mars, astronauts can use 3D printers to create the following technologies.
Mars Domes.Mars is a hostile environment. If we must play safe, we must figure out to build highly protective domes to secure our Astronauts. Space agencies are looking at reaching Mars with inflatable domes. However, with this latest discovery, space agencies may consider building Martian habitats using 3D printers and Mars regolith, as the printing material.
Working tools.Astronauts will see the need to replace their working tools from time to time. Instead of requesting a new set of tools from Earth, they can use 3d printers to recreate tools to continue exploring the Mars surface.
Other items. Mars Astronauts will need to print several items to meet their day-to-day operations on Mars. These items can include worn-out machine parts and other technologies.
Conclusion
If we must use 3D printers on Mars, we must master how to use them effectively on Earth first. Currently, many space agencies are experimenting with 3D printing technology to see how they can use it in new space worlds like Mars. Once we master the processes involved in using 3D printers, our astronauts can build the impossible in the future. What do you think about building stuff on Mars using 3D printers?
Navy admits it has more UFO videos but says releasing the footage publicly would 'HARM national security' because it would reveal 'valuable' information regarding the Pentagon's operations and capabilities to America's enemies
Navy admits it has more UFO videos but says releasing the footage publicly would 'HARM national security' because it would reveal 'valuable' information regarding the Pentagon's operations and capabilities to America's enemies
The U.S. Navy can't release more UFO videos that it has because doing so would 'harm national security,' a spokesperson said
The statement was made in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by government transparency site The Black Vault
'The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information...'
During public hearings in May, the Navy revealed 400 'unidentified aerial phenomenon' reports in recent years
The U.S. Navy won't release additional footage of unidentified flying objects because doing so would 'harm national security.'
A spokesperson for the military branch made the statement in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the government transparency site The Black Vault - which has previously shared thousands of pages of UFO-related documents received from the CIA and other agencies.
The FOIA request dates to April 2020, just after the Navy released the now infamous videos shot by its pilots that depicted some type of unidentified high-tech aircraft moving in ways that seemed impossible.
The Black Vault had requested any and all other videos related to what the Navy prefers to call unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP).
The U.S. Navy won't release additional footage of unidentified flying objects because doing so would 'harm national security' it stated in response to a FOIA request from The Black Vault. Above: a clip taken from a Navy cockpit in a training area and shows a spherical object floating by the aircraft
The FOIA request dates to April 2020, just after the Navy released the now infamous videos shot by its pilots that depicted some type of unidentified high-tech aircraft moving in ways that seemed impossible. Robert J. Salvo, a 13 year old boy walking his dog, purports to have taken a photo of a flying saucer, but no comment was made from the military
'The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities,' Gregory Cason, deputy director of the Navy's FOIA office, wrote in a response letter shared by The Black Vault. 'No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.'
Carson explained that the Navy only released those previous three videos because they'd already been leaked to the media and were therefore 'discussed extensively in the public domain.'
'Given the amount of information in the public domain regarding these encounters, it was possible to release the files without further damage to national security,' he said.
The Black Vault has filed an appeal to seek the release of the videos that have been denied.
Regardless of what they choose to release, the Pentagon is certainly taking the threat of UFOs seriously. During public hearings in May, the agency revealed 400 'unidentified aerial phenomenon' reports in recent years - which is significantly higher than the 144 incidents since 2004 that were reported the previous year.
Eleven of the incidents have been 'near misses,' where military aircraft just barely brushed past the UAPs without colliding.
The Black Vault has filed an appeal to seek the release of the videos that have been denied. Above: A UFO variety was photographed when it hovered for fifteen minutes near Holloman Air Development Center in New Mexico. The object was photographed by a government employee and was released by the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization after careful study. There is no conventional explanation for the object
'The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities,' Gregory Cason, deputy director of the Navy's FOIA office, wrote in a response letter shared by The Black Vault . 'No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.' Above: Another shot of the unidentified spherical object
Ronald Moultrie, the Pentagon's top intelligence official, said the government has not ruled out the possibility that these incidents could be connected to extraterrestrial life.
'There are elements of our government engaged in ... looking for extraterrestrial life,' Moultrie said at the hearing. 'Our goal is not to potentially cover up something, it's to understand what's maybe out there.'
'We are all curious and we seek to understand the unknown. And as a lifelong intelligence professional, I'm impatient. I want immediate explanations for this as much as anyone else. However, understanding can take significant time and effort. It's why we've endeavored to concentrate on this data driven process to derive fact based results,' Scott Bray, the deputy director of Naval intelligence, told lawmakers.
In July, the Pentagon announced that it has received federal funding to open a new office focused exclusively on managing reports of UFO sightings by the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force.
Astronomers observed dozens of objects that "cannot be scientifically identified."
Night sky over Kyiv, Ukraine, 2020.
(Image credit: Getty)
The skies over Kyiv are swarming with unidentified flying objects (UFOs), according to a new report from the Main Astronomical Observatory of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Of course, given that Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a months-long war that relies heavily on aircraft and drones, it's likely that many of these so-called UFOs are military tools that appear too fleetingly to identify, a U.S. intelligence agency has speculated.
Published to the preprint database arXiv, the report — which has not yet been peer-reviewed — describes recent steps that Ukrainian astronomers have taken to monitor fast-moving, low-visibility objects in the daytime sky over Kyiv and the surrounding villages. Using specially calibrated cameras at two weather stations in Kyiv and Vinarivka, a village about 75 miles (120 kilometers) to the south, astronomers observed dozens of objects "that cannot scientifically be identified as known natural phenomena," the report said.
Government agencies tend to refer to such objects as UAP, short for "unidentified aerial phenomena."
"We observe a significant number of objects whose nature is not clear," the team wrote. "We see them everywhere."
The researchers divided their UAP observations into two categories: "cosmics" and "phantoms." According to the report, cosmics are luminous objects that are brighter than the background sky. These objects are designated with birds' names — such as "swift," "falcon" and "eagle" — and have been observed flying solo as well as in "squadrons," the team wrote.
Phantoms, by contrast, are dark objects, usually appearing "completely black," as if absorbing all light falling onto them, the team added. By comparing observations from the two participating observatories, the researchers estimated that phantoms range from 10 to 40 feet (3 to 12 meters) wide and can travel at speeds of up to 33,000 mph (53,000 km/h). For comparison, an intercontinental ballistic missile can reach speeds of up to 15,000 mph (24,000 km/h), according to The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
The researchers did not speculate as to what these UFOs may be. Rather, their paper focuses on the methods and calculations used to detect the objects. However, according to a 2021 report from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), it's likely that at least some UAP are "technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or a non-governmental entity."
Given the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022, it's reasonable to suspect that some UAP described in the new report may be linked to foreign surveillance or military technologies.
According to the ODNI report, other possible explanations for UAP include "airborne clutter," such as birds and balloons; atmospheric phenomena, such as ice crystals; or classified government projects. Neither the U.S. nor Ukraine reports raise the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors.
The U.S. government has openly renewed its interest in UAP investigations since 2017, when several videos taken by U.S. Navy aircraft leaked to the media. The now-infamous videos showed unidentified aircraft moving in seemingly impossible ways, with no explanation.
The government subsequently declassified the footage and recently revealed that more military footage of UAP encounters does exist, though the Department of Defense (DOD) will not be releasing them due to "national security concerns." Earlier this year, Congress approved funding for the DOD to open a new office focused exclusively on managing reports of UFO sightings by the U.S. military. The authors of the new UAP report out of Ukraine added that the country's National Academy of Science is interested in contributing to this ongoing research.
Hubble Just Confirmed The Largest Ocean World In Our Solar System And Its Not On Earth
Hubble Just Confirmed The Largest Ocean World In Our Solar System And Its Not On Earth
The Ganymede Ocean is believed to contain more water than Europa's,” says Olivier Witasse, a project scientist working on ESA’s future Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE). “Six times more water in Ganymede’s ocean than in Earth's ocean, and three times more than Europa.”In March of 2020, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope revealed the best evidence yet for an underground saltwater ocean on Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon --larger than Mercury and not much smaller than Mars.
Identifying liquid water is crucial in the search for habitable worlds beyond Earth and for the search for life, as we know it“This discovery marks a significant milestone, highlighting what only Hubble can accomplish,” said John Grunsfeld, now retired assistant administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “In its 25 years in orbit, Hubble has made many scientific discoveries in our own solar system. A deep ocean under the icy crust of Ganymede opens up further exciting possibilities for life beyond Earth.”
Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system and the only moon with its own magnetic field. The magnetic field causes aurorae, which are ribbons of glowing, hot electrified gas, in regions circling the north and south poles of the moon. Because Ganymede is close to Jupiter, it is also embedded in Jupiter's magnetic field. When Jupiter's magnetic field changes, the aurorae on Ganymede also change, "rocking" back and forth.Just as Saturn's moon, Dione is perennially overshadowed by Enceladus and Titan, Ganymede's fame is eclipsed by its sister ocean world, Europa, slated for flybys by NASA’s Europa Clipper mission in the 2020s.
Ganymede's cycles of auroral activity on the surface, detected by the Hubble Space Telescope, reveal oscillations in the moon’s magnetic field best explained by the internal heat-generating tidal sloshing of a huge ocean hundreds of kilometers below the surface. JUICE will fly by the moons at distances between 1000 and 200 kilometers, orbiting Ganymede for nine months, with the latter four months at an altitude of about 500 km. While the oceans of Jupiter's moons are likely buried at significant depth below their icy crusts, radar will be able to help piece together clues as to their complex evolution.
For example, it will explore Europa's potentially active regions and be able to distinguish where the composition changes, such as if there are local, shallow reservoirs of water sandwiched between icy layers. It will be able to find 'deflected' subsurface layers, which will help to determine the tectonic history of Ganymede in particular.
NASA Shares Largest-Ever Image Of Andromeda Galaxy, Internet Calls It
NASA Shares Largest-Ever Image Of Andromeda Galaxy, Internet Calls It "Extraordinarily Beautiful"
American space agency NASA on Sunday shared the "largest-ever" image assembled of the Andromeda galaxy by the Hubble Space Telescope. The picture was captured seven years ago and it is the sharpest large composite image ever taken of our galactic neighbor.
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the image depicts a 48,000-light-year-long region of the Andromeda galaxy with over 100 million stars visible. The Instagram picture divides the panoramic image into three parts, with the last revealing a belt of blue stars with countless stars sprinkled around the image.
The photograph has captivated internet users since it was shared. It has received almost one million likes. "It is really gorgeous," one user said. "It's wonderful," commented another. "Absolutely wonderful,"said the third person.
The space agency noted that because the Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million light-years away, dozens of star clusters can be identified. According to NASA, our Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy are comparable in size and form.
Notably, the photograph was previously posted in 2015 and was just re-shared. According to the agency, it depicts a 48,000-light-year region of the galaxy in its "natural visible-light colour." "Because the galaxy is only 2.5 million light-years from Earth, it is a far larger target in the sky than the numerous galaxies photographed by Hubble that are billions of light-years away," NASA noted.
A new way to Discover Planets? Astronomers Detect an Exoplanet by Seeing its Trojan Belts
A new way to Discover Planets? Astronomers Detect an Exoplanet by Seeing its Trojan Belts
Although we have found thousands of exoplanets in recent years, we really only have three methods of finding them. The first is to observe a star dimming slightly as a planet passes in front of it (transit method). The second is to measure the wobble of a star as an orbiting planet gives it a gravitational tug (Doppler method). The third is to observe the exoplanet directly. Now a new study in the Astrophysical Journal Letters has a fourth method.
Each of the methods we currently use has its drawbacks. The transit method only works when an exoplanet’s orbit is lined up with our view of the star, the Doppler method tends to favor larger planets orbiting close to a small star, and the direct observation is best for large planets orbiting far from their star. But all of these methods only work for planets orbiting middle-aged stars. That is stars that have long since cleared the dust and debris around them. So while we have learned a great deal about the types of planetary systems that are out there, we’ve learned less about how young star systems form.
Image of the HL Tau planet-forming disk taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array. Conditions inside the disk contribute to a planet’s eventual habitability. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
Thanks to radio observatories such as ALMA, we have gotten a good view of early debris disks around very young stars. These disks emit a faint radio glow that ALMA is particularly effective at seeing. One of the things we’ve noticed in many of these disks is that they have gaps or bands within them. We think they are caused by young planets that have cleared a path in the debris disk as they grow and evolve. The problem is that we can’t be certain that’s what’s happening. There are other possible explanations, such as turbulence or gravitational resonances within the disk that causes gaps to form. The problem is that while we can study the structure of the gaps, telescopes like ALMA can’t resolve an actual planet orbiting within a gap. Even a planet as large as Jupiter is too small to clearly detect directly.
The orbit of Jupiter and its Trojans. Credit: Astronomical Institute of CAS/Petr Scheirich
So this new study took a different approach. Instead of trying to detect an exoplanet in the disk directly, why not look for signs within the debris disk that the planet is there? And they’ve found a pattern that works. You might even call it their trojan horse.
Jupiter is by far the most massive planet in our solar system, and over time it has influenced the orbits of smaller bodies such as asteroids. One of the clear influences is on the asteroid belt, where it has induced resonant gaps known as Kirkwood gaps. The other is in the collection of asteroids it has gathered to its orbit, known as the Trojans.
Trojan asteroids are small bodies that have happened to get trapped in Jupiter’s Lagrange points. These are regions in Jupiter’s orbit about sixty degrees ahead and behind Jupiter itself. Through the gravitational dance of Jupiter and Sun, the Lagrange points are rather deep gravitational wells, so anything that finds itself there tends to stay there. So as Jupiter parades around the Sun, it has a cluster of Trojans marching along ahead and behind it.
Debris disk around the star LkCa 15. Credit: Adam Kraus and Michael Ireland
In this new study, the team focused on a young star known as LkCA 15 and looked for similar gravitational dynamics. By analyzing high-resolution images of the star and its debris disk, they found two very faint clusters of dust. The clumps were in the same orbit within the debris disk, and they were separated by an angle of 120 degrees. In other words, the clumps have all the signs of being within the Lagrange points of a young planet. Based on the data, the team estimates the planet is roughly the size of Neptune or Saturn. Given that the planet is likely only a couple of million years old, it seems to have formed pretty quickly.
All of this paints an interesting picture of planetary evolution. Large planets seem to form early within a star system, and they almost immediately start influencing its gravitational dance. The next question is whether astronomers can find similar planets in other young star systems using the same method.
Alien Royalty and VIPs In UFO Over England To Attend Queens Funeral, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Alien Royalty and VIPs In UFO Over England To Attend Queens Funeral, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Sept 16, 2022
Location of sighting:Across England
Over 800 eyewitnesses reported seeing a glowing object for over 25 seconds passing over the UK last night. Reports poured in about it possibly being a meteor, comet or space debris. The object itself didn't always have a tail, as seen in the screenshot above I took which shows one large sphere craft and one much smaller sphere craft behind it. The UFO was flying horizontal to the ground...like a plane, like a craft carrying people would be when getting ready to land. Also this UFO was flying very slowly, much too slow to be a meteor and defiantly not a comet as some has said in my video comments...a comet would change the tides of our ocean causing tidal waves if it were inside our atmosphere like that. Most comets are .5km and bigger.
I was actually waiting for this to happen, because I knew that alien dignitaries, royalty and VIPs would want to attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Why? Because she was queen for nearly a century, maybe the longest ruling queen ever to date. Also, he royal perspective, respecting her royal duties, he royal roles that she was required to do, but...often humans refuse to partake in.
So...here is the ship, from outside our solar system which contains alien royalty and dignitaries from across the universe...all which came to attend the funeral in person. To show respect to the fallen queen and to be in the same place, same location, same building with so many world leaders who are doing the same. A rare, painful and great moment not just for UK or England, but for the world and beyond.
As I have said before, I mean what I say. I mean no disrespect to the Queen nor to the people of England or UK. I am only stating the obvious truth. And the truth is...she was respected across the Universe.
It has been searching for clues about possible ancient alien life on Mars.
And now NASA's Perseverance rover has discovered organic matter 'treasure' that could help determine if extraterrestrials did in fact ever exist on the Red Planet.
The collection of organic matter from the Jezero Crater, which likely once held a lake and the delta that emptied into it, suggests it had potentially habitable environments 3.5 billion years ago.
These organic molecules contain carbon that are widely considered to be the building blocks of life.
The US space agency said Perseverance had collected four samples from the ancient river delta since July 7, bringing the total count of scientifically compelling rock samples to 12.
Discovery: NASA's Perseverance rover (pictured) has discovered organic matter 'treasure' that could help determine if extraterrestrials did in fact ever exist on the Red Planet
WHAT IS ORGANIC MATTER?
Organic molecules consist of a wide variety of compounds made primarily of carbon and usually include hydrogen and oxygen atoms.
They can also contain other elements, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur.
While there are chemical processes that produce these molecules that don't require life, some of these compounds are the chemical building blocks of life.
The presence of these specific molecules is considered to be a potential biosignature — a substance or structure that could be evidence of past life but may also have been produced without the presence of life.
'The rocks that we have been investigating on the delta have the highest concentration of organic matter that we have yet found on the mission,' said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
The rover has taken measurements and samples in an area called Skinner Ridge.
This is made of layered sedimentary rocks, some of which contain materials that were most likely transported from miles away by running water billions of years ago.
'With the samples we're taking now in this more sedimentary area, we're of course right at the heart of what we wanted to do to start with,' said NASA science lead Thomas Zurbuchen during a press conference.
The sedimentary rocks contain complex organic molecules called aromatics, along with clays and sulphate minerals. The latter can be produced when water interacts with rocks.
There are no definite signs of life, or biosignatures, in these materials but scientists are encouraged that they are looking in the right place.
'While the detection of this class of organics alone does not mean that life was definitively there, this set of observations does start to look like some things that we've seen here on Earth,' said Sunanda Sharma at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California during the press conference.
'To put it simply, if this is a treasure hunt for potential signs of life on another planet, organic matter is a clue.
'And we're getting stronger and stronger clues as we're moving through our delta campaign.'
David Shuster, of the University of California, Berkeley, added: 'This is really important that this has sulphate in it and also clays, because that means that this rock has high potential for biosignature preservation, meaning that if there were biosignatures in this vicinity when that rock formed, this is precisely the type of material that will preserve that for us to study when [the samples] come back to Earth.'
It is not the first time Perseverance has found organic matter on Mars, but this time the detection was in an area where life may have once existed.
'In the distant past, the sand, mud, and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived,' Farley said.
'The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock – known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth – is important.
The US space agency said Perseverance had collected four samples from the ancient river delta since July 7, bringing the total count of scientifically compelling rock samples to 12. This image shows the holes from the first successful sample taken by the rover
'However, as capable as our instruments aboard Perseverance are, further conclusions regarding what is contained in the Wildcat Ridge sample will have to wait until it's returned to Earth for in-depth study as part of the agency's Mars Sample Return campaign.'
During its first science campaign, Perseverance explored the crater's floor, finding igneous rock, which forms deep underground from magma or during volcanic activity at the surface.
'The delta, with its diverse sedimentary rocks, contrasts beautifully with the igneous rocks – formed from crystallisation of magma – discovered on the crater floor,' said Farley.
'This juxtaposition provides us with a rich understanding of the geologic history after the crater formed and a diverse sample suite.
'For example, we found a sandstone that carries grains and rock fragments created far from Jezero Crater — and a mudstone that includes intriguing organic compounds.'
NASA and the European Space Agency are planning to return the rock samples to Earth around 2033.
NASA MARS 2020: PERSEVERANCE ROVER AND INGENUITY HELICOPTER ARE SEARCHING FOR LIFE ON THE RED PLANET
NASA's Mars 2020 mission was launched to search for signs of ancient life on the Red Planet in a bid to help scientists better understand how life evolved on Earth in the earliest years of the evolution of the solar system.
Named Perseverance, the main car-sized rover is exploring an ancient river delta within the Jezero Crater, which was once filled with a 1,600ft deep lake.
It is believed that the region hosted microbial life some 3.5 to 3.9 billion years ago and the rover will examine soil samples to hunt for evidence of the life.
Nasa's Mars 2020 rover (artist's impression) is searching for signs of ancient life on Mars in a bid to help scientists better understand how life evolved on our own planet
The $2.5 billion (£1.95 billion) Mars 2020 spaceship launched on July 30 with the rover and helicopter inside - and landed successfully on February 18, 2021.
Perseverance landed inside the crater and will slowly collect samples that will eventually be returned to Earth for further analysis.
A second mission will fly to the planet and return the samples, perhaps by the later 2020s in partnership with the European Space Agency.
This concept art shows the Mars 2020 rover landing on the red planet via NASA's 'sky-crane' system
NASA chose Jezero Crater which is 28 miles (45 kilometers) wide as the landing site for the Perseverance rover. Scientists believe the area was once flooded with water and was home to an ancient river delta and a key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life.
On July 21 and 22, 2022 the Rover captured an image of a very strange unnatural looking rock which according to NASA is an abraded rock at "Wildcat Ridge" in Mars' Jezero Crater.
It seems almost impossible that such a perfectly round shaped rock was created by natural forces, also considering that no other comparable rocks are observable in the immediate vicinity of this rock with perfect curves, straight walls and flat plateau.
And although it seems that NASA is talking about an ordinary rock that has been formed naturally over the years, it is questionable whether it was a natural process or whether this perfectly round and smooth shaped rock was artificially created by an unknown extraterrestrial race.
As NASA said "an abraded rock"!
Below an animated flyover of the 28-mile-wide Jezero Crater.
After 30 years, the world’s most clear UFO image of a diamond-shaped object has been discovered
After 30 years, the world’s most clear UFO image of a diamond-shaped object has been discovered
The Calvine photo
It has been discovered that a cool UFO photograph taken by two hikers in the Scottish Highlands over 30 years ago and believed to be gone still exists.
A gigantic object in the sky (diamond-shaped) and what seems to be a Harrier jet far up there, may both be seen in the allegedly authentic “Calvine Photograph.”
It was discovered after years of investigation by journalist and researcher Dr. David Clarke and has been dubbed the “greatest” UFO photograph in the world by some.
The image was taken on August 4, 1990, on a hillside by two hikers close to Calvine, which is located approximately 35 miles northwest of Perth in Scotland.
The Scottish Daily Record newspaper received them and sent them on to the Ministry of Defense (MoD).
The narrative was never issued for an unknown reason, and the MoD stayed silent thereafter.
Due to the photographs never being made public until today, this gave rise to the current myth of the “Calvine Photograph.”
Then, it is said that the object abruptly rocketed into the sky before disappearing.
Dr. Clarke was able to locate the photograph after getting in touch with retired RAF press officer Craig Lindsay, according to The Sun. Dr. Clarke is an associate professor from Sheffield Hallam University and has served as a curator for the MoD UFO files project at The National Archives.
When the initial story was investigated in 1990, Mr. Lindsay was the one coordinating between the media and the MoD, hence he maintained a copy of the original image.
He still kept the Daily Record’s original envelope, which contained one of the Calvine images.
Dr. Clarke and Vinnie Adams from the advocacy organization UAP Media UK requested it, and Mr. Lindsay complied. It is currently housed in the Sheffield Hallam University archives.
It has been an honor to work on this case with such a committed team of academics, Mr. Adams told The Sun Online.
He also said that it felt nice to be able to share this rare photo with the public after 32 years and a thorough inquiry.
He pleaded for anybody with knowledge of the hikers’ identities or the case to come forward.
The photograph was originally displayed on the walls of the MoD’s “UFO office,” according to Nick Pope, who studied UFOs for the MoD in the 1990s. Nick Pope writes about the photograph in his 1996 book Open Skies, Closed Minds.
He said the US was questioned by the UK about whether the image was of an experimental aircraft.
The picture was afterward taken down from the wall and was never seen again.
A colour mock-up of what it might look like
The MoD is keeping the case of the sighting under wraps until 2072 for unknown reasons.
Despite the image’s obscurity, some think it was an experimental US aircraft, probably The Aurora, as the MoD had allegedly believed.
Although The Aurora’s existence has never been verified, some people think it was a hypersonic espionage plane with extremely high-top speeds.
In the late 80s and early 90s, some witnesses in the UK reported seeing angular flying objects.
Although they may not be any closer to determining what the object observed above Calvine in August 1990 was or whose it belonged, according to Graeme Rendall of UAP Media UK, an essential piece of the jigsaw has fallen into place as a result of careful investigation.
ALL RELATED VIDEOS AND INFO, selected and posted by peter2011
A 'game-changing' new battery for electric vehicles (EVs) that charges in three minutes and lasts for 20 years could soon be coming to new cars.
Adden Energy, a start-up based in Waltham, Massachusetts, has been granted a licence and $5.15 million in funding to build the battery design at scale to fit in EVs.
The battery, developed by Harvard scientists, is lithium metal, rather than lithium ion found in EVs that are already on the market.
Its intricate design, inspired by a BLT sandwich, prevents the growth of troublesome 'dendrites' that grow in lithium-metal batteries and shorten their lifespan.
Harvard has granted an exclusive license to Adden Energy to develop the solid-state, lithium-metal battery. The startup aims to scale the battery up to a palm-sized 'pouch cell' - which has components enclosed in an aluminum-coated film (pictured)
Long-lasting, quick-charging batteries are essential to the expansion of the EV market, but today's lithium-ion batteries fall short, because they're too heavy and expensive and take too long to charge (file photo)
Currently, EVs contain lithium-ion batteries that degrade over time and last up to seven or eight years, depending on how much they're used – much like a smartphone battery.
LITHIUM-ION VS LITHIUM METAL
Lithium metal batteries contain metallic lithium, while lithium ion batteries contain lithium that's only present in an ionic form in the electrolyte.
Most lithium metal batteries are not rechargeable while lithium ion batteries are. However, there are rechargeable lithium-metal batteries in development.
Lithium-ion are currently powering EVs already on the market from Tesla and other companies, as well as laptops and smartphones.
Long-lasting, quick-charging batteries are essential to the expansion of the EV market, but today's lithium-ion batteries fall short, because they're too heavy and expensive and take too long to charge.
Source: IATA/Green Batteries
These lithium-ion batteries can be replaced, but they can cost thousands of pounds, meaning drivers are often better off buying a whole new EV.
But this new solid-state, lithium-metal battery can increase the lifetime of EVs to a comparable length to petrol and diesel cars – up to 20 years – without the need to ever replace the battery during this time.
In the lab, the team's battery prototype has achieved battery charge rates as fast as three minutes with over 10,000 cycles in a lifetime.
The new technology has been created by Xin Li and colleagues at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS).
Adden Energy was co-founded in 2021 by Li, along with William Fitzhugh and Luhan Ye, both of whom contributed to the development of the technology as graduate students in Li’s Harvard lab.
The startup aims to scale the battery up to a palm-sized 'pouch cell' – which has components enclosed in an aluminium-coated film – and then toward a full-scale vehicle battery in the next three to five years.
'We have achieved in the lab 5,000 to 10,000 charge cycles in a battery's lifetime, compared with 2,000 to 3,000 charging cycles for even the best in class now, and we don’t see any fundamental limit to scaling up our battery technology,' said Li. 'That could be a game changer.'
Lithium-metal batteries hold substantially more energy in the same volume and charge in a fraction of the time compared to traditional lithium-ion batteries.
But they're prone to the formation of 'dendrites' – tiny, rigid tree-like structures that speed up battery failure.
Researchers have therefore tried to harness the potential of solid-state, lithium-metal batteries, using a unique BLT-inspired design.
Think of the battery like a BLT sandwich. First comes the bread (the lithium metal anode) followed by lettuce (a coating of graphite). Next, a layer of tomatoes (the first electrolyte) and a layer of bacon (the second electrolyte). Finish it off with another layer of tomatoes and the last piece of bread (the cathode)
WHAT ARE DENDRITES?
Dendrites are tiny, rigid tree-like structures that can grow inside a lithium battery.
Their needle-like projections are called whiskers.
They increase unwanted reactions between the electrolyte and the lithium, speeding up battery failure.
Dendrites and whiskers are holding back the widespread use of lithium metal batteries, which have higher energy density than their commonly used lithium-ion counterparts.
Source: DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
A lithium-metal battery uses lithium in its pure metallic form, rather than lithium compounds used in lithium-ion batteries.
Meanwhile, 'solid-state' just refers to the use of solid electrodes and a solid electrolyte, instead of the liquid or polymer gel electrolytes found in lithium-ion.
'If you want to electrify vehicles, a solid-state battery is the way to go,' said Li, who is a scientific adviser to Adden Energy.
'We set out to commercialise this technology because we do see our technology as unique compared to other solid-state batteries.'
Batteries have three main components – the anode, cathode and electrolyte.
The electrolyte (typically a chemical) separates the anode and cathode and moves the flow of electrical charge between the two.
Lithium-ion batteries move lithium ions from the cathode to the anode during charging.
But when the anode is made of lithium metal, needle-like structures called dendrites form on the surface.
These structures grow like roots into the electrolyte and pierce the barrier separating the anode and cathode, causing the battery potentially catch fire.
Lithium ion batteries contain two electrodes - one made from lithium (cathode) and one from carbon (anode) - submerged in a liquid or paste called an electrolyte. When the battery is charged, electrons that were attached to the ions flow through a circuit, powering a device
To overcome this challenge, Li and his team designed a multi-layer battery that sandwiches different materials of varying stabilities between the anode and cathode.
As previously described in Nature, the design prevents the penetration of lithium dendrites by controlling and containing them.
The battery is layered like so – first comes the bread (the lithium metal anode) followed by lettuce (a coating of graphite).
Next, a layer of tomatoes (the first electrolyte) and a layer of bacon (the second electrolyte) and finally another layer of tomatoes and the last piece of bread (the cathode).
The first electrolyte is more stable with lithium but prone to dendrite penetration, while the second electrolyte is less stable with lithium but appears immune to dendrites.
In this design, dendrites are allowed to grow through the graphite and first electrolyte but are stopped when they reach the second.
In other words, the dendrites grow through the lettuce and tomato but stop at the bacon. The bacon barrier stops the dendrites from pushing through and short-circuiting the battery.
The battery is also self-healing – meaning its chemistry allows it to backfill holes created by dendrites.
'Typically, lithium-metal anodes in other solid-state designs develop dendrites, twig-like growths that can gradually penetrate through the electrolyte to the cathode,' said Ye, who is now CTO of Adden Energy.
'We defeat the growth of dendrites before they can cause damage, by novel structural and material designs.
'As a result, the device can sustain its high performance over a long lifetime. Our recent study shows that this nice feature can also be maintained at scale-up.'
Researchers also stress the importance of being able to help speed up the adoption of eco-friendly EVs in light of the climate crisis.
EVs are generally seen as more eco-friendly than gasoline-powered vehicles, known for their planet-warming emissions.
'Complete electrification of the vehicle fleet is one of the most meaningful steps we can take to fight climate change,' said Fitzhugh, CEO of Adden Energy.
HOW DOES CHARGING A BATTERY WORK?
In their simplest form, batteries are made of three components: a positive electrode, a negative electrode and an electrolyte.
When a battery is charging, lithium ions are extracted from the positive electrode and move through the crystal structure and electrolyte to the negative electrode, where they are stored.
The faster this process occurs, the faster the battery can be charged.
The material a battery is made of can severely restrict this rate.
Graphite is a commonly used material for the negative electrode as it accepts positive ions well and has a high energy density.
In the search for new electrode materials, researchers normally try to make the particles smaller.
However, it’s difficult to make a practical battery with nanoparticles as it creates a lot of unwanted chemical reactions with the electrolyte, so the battery doesn’t last as long, plus it’s expensive to make.
Nieuwe batterij voor elektrische wagens laadt op in 3 minuten en heeft levensduur van 20 jaar: “Dit kan gamechanger zijn”
Een batterij die in amper drie minuten is opgeladen en die ook nog eens twintig jaar meegaat. Welke eigenaar van een elektrische wagen zou daar niet voor staan springen? Het zou over een paar jaar zomaar kunnen. Onderzoekers van de universiteit van Harvard ontwikkelden de technologie daarvoor en de start-up uit Massachusetts heeft nu de licentie beet om ze ook te produceren. Een van hen spreekt van een “mogelijke gamechanger”.
De technologie is ontwikkeld door Xin Li en zijn collega’s van de Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS). Li richtte in 2021 samen met William Fitzhugh en Luhan Ye - twee studenten die de batterij mee hielpen ontwikkelen - Adden Energy op, een start-up gevestigd in Waltham in Massachusetts. Hun bedrijf kreeg de licentie én ook nog eens 5,15 miljoen dollar om de batterij op schaal te bouwen voor elektrische wagens. Binnen drie tot vijf jaar willen ze dat voor mekaar krijgen.
De batterij die de onderzoekers van Harvard ontwikkelden is een lithium-metaalbatterij en geen lithium-ion-batterij die je vandaag in de bestaande elektrische wagens terugvindt. Lithium-metaalbatterijen kunnen aanzienlijk meer energie opslaan in hetzelfde volume en laden in een fractie van de tijd op in vergelijking met traditionele lithium-ionbatterijen. Het prototype van de nieuwe batterij presteerde erg goed in het laboratorium. Het haalde oplaadsnelheden van amper drie minuten met meer dan 10.000 cycli voor het op was. “We hebben in het laboratorium 5.000 tot 10.000 laadcycli in de levensduur van een batterij bereikt, vergeleken met 2.000 tot 3.000 laadcycli voor zelfs de beste in zijn klasse nu”, aldus Li. “En we zien geen fundamentele limiet voor het opschalen van onze batterijtechnologie. Dit zou een gamechanger kunnen zijn.”
Het ontwerp van de batterij is geïnspireerd door wat de Amerikanen een “BLT sandwich” noemen. Dat zijn twee sneden brood met daartussen als beleg: spek (bacon), sla (lettuce) en tomaat (tomato). Vertaald naar de batterij: de onderste boterham is de lithium-metaal-anode, de sla is grafiet, de laag tomaten is de eerste elektrolyt, de laag spek is de tweede elektrolyt en de bovenste boterham is de kathode. Die ingewikkelde structuur moet voorkomen dat de levensduur van de batterij verkort wordt door zogenaamde ‘dendrieten’. Dat zijn kleine, harde boomvormige structuren, waarvoor lithium-metaalbatterijen gevoelig zijn en die de werking ervan verstoren.
De huidige lithium-ion-batterijen in elektrische wagens worden minder performant na verloop van tijd en gaan maximaal zeven tot acht jaar mee. De batterij dan vervangen door een nieuwe kost zo veel, dat bestuurders vaak al beter een nieuw elektrisch voertuig zouden kopen. De nieuwe lithium-metaalbatterij kan de levensduur van elektrische wagens verlengen tot zo’n 20 jaar - vergelijkbaar met de levensduur van benzine- en dieselauto’s. De batterij moet al die tijd niet worden vervangen. Dit zou een wereld van verschil kunnen maken.
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A Galaxy With Ten Times the Mass of the Milky Way is Preparing to Become a Quasar
A Galaxy With Ten Times the Mass of the Milky Way is Preparing to Become a Quasar
One of the fundamental questions in astronomy is how galaxies formed over 13 billion years ago and have evolved ever since. A common feature that astronomers have noted is that most galaxies appear to have supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at their center – like Sagittarius A*, the ~4 million solar mass SMBH at the center of the Milky Way. These monster black holes occasionally swallow up nearby gas, dust, and stars and emit excess energy as powerful relativistic jets. This phenomenon, where the center of a galaxy outshines the stars in the disk, is known as an Active Galactic Nucleus(AGN) or quasar.
In a recent study, an international team of astronomers led by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) discovered a galaxy in the early Universe that could reveal more about this evolution. Using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, they observed a swarm of galaxies orbiting a very bright and vigorously star-forming galaxy in the early Universe. These observations provide fresh insight into how exceptionally bright galaxies grow and evolve into quasars and emit powerful jets of light across the observable Universe.
Originally observed in 1963, quasars (short for quasi-stellar objects) were so-named because they resembled stars but shined brightly in the radio spectrum. Today, the term is used to describe all supermassive black holes that are particularly luminous because of how they consume surrounding gas, dust, and stars. Today, many details about how galaxies transition from being “normal” to quasars are still unknown. To learn more about this process, Ginolfi and his colleagues examined W0410-0913, one of the brightest, most massive, and gas-rich galaxies observed in the early Universe.
Located roughly 12 billion light-years from Earth, this galaxy appears to astronomers as it was about 1 billion years after the Big Bang. What makes W0410-0913 so bright is how dust is heated by its central black hole and the stars surrounding it. This makes this type of galaxy appear particularly bright in the infrared spectrum, leading to the designation “hot dust-obscured galaxies” (aka. “hot DOGs”). As Ginolfi explained in a recent press release from the Niels Bohr Institute:
“Before evolving into a full-blown quasar, some galaxies are thought to go through a phase of being very dusty, and very ‘active’ in terms of star formation and accretion of gas onto their central, supermassive black holes. We set out to design an experiment to learn more about this transition phase.”
Since the evolution of galaxies is connected to its surroundings, Ginolfi relied on data obtained by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, which allowed them to study a region 40 times wider than the galaxy itself. They then consulted archival data obtained by the ALMA array, enabling them to measure the internal motion of the gas inside W0410-0913. As Peter Laursen, a researcher with the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen and a co-author on the study, explained:
“The observations revealed that W0410-0913 is surrounded by a swarm of no fewer than 24 smaller galaxies. The cool thing about the MUSE instrument is that we can measure not only their position on the sky, but also their distance along our line of sight. In other words, we can measure their 3D positions.”
Artist’s impression of a distant quasar powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
This implies that W0410-0913 resides in a region at least ten times denser than the average Universe. This was not entirely unexpected since hot DOGs are theorized to reside in dense environments. What’s more, W0410-0913 was already ten times as massive as our galaxy when the Universe was about 1/8th the current age of the Universe. Achieving this level of growth in such a short space of time, and feeding a supermassive black hole to achieve this level of brightness, would require a substantial amount of feed material.
This is consistent with established theories about how massive galaxies grow by accreting gas and merging with satellite galaxies through gravitational attraction. In the dense environment that W0410-0913 occupied, the research team expected that it would be subject to interactions and mergers with other galaxies at a very high rate. They further anticipated that the galaxy’s interior would be a chaotic mess of whirling clouds of gas and stars. In this respect, they were surprised when the ALMA observations revealed that W0410-0913 did not appear to have been disturbed at all by interactions with its neighbors.
In fact, the ALMA observations showed that gas and stars rotated in an orderly fashion around the central black hole, though it moved at an incredible velocity – at 500 kilometers per second (1.8 million km/h; 1.12 million mph)! Said Ginolfi:
“Coupling the results from the two very different telescopes, we see a picture of how the most massive and dusty galaxies may evolve. This type of galaxies, a vital stage in the transition from a dusty and star-forming galaxy to a quasar, tends to grow in very dense environments. Nevertheless, despite the expected frequent merging with other galaxies, these gravitational interactions are not necessarily destructive — they feed the central galaxy and whirl up the gas a bit, but leave it practically intact. A bit like throwing small pebbles against a pane of solid glass: you may scratch it, but won’t break it…“
A three-dimensional stereographic view of W0410-0913 (blue sphere) and its galactic neighbors (red spheres). Credit: Peter Laursen/NBI
These observations provide insight into how galaxies in the early Universe evolved into what we see with the Milky Way’s neighbors today. It also provides the first clues regarding the processes that drive the evolution of hot DOGs, an extreme and rare population of galaxies in our Universe. From what Ginolfi and his colleagues gathered using the VLT and ALMA, these galaxies grow in special, dense habitats but can still interact with their companions gently. In the coming years, there will be many opportunities for follow-up observations of this and other early galaxies using next-generation telescopes.
This includes the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the successor to the venerable Hubble – the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST) – that is scheduled to launch in 2027. There are also the next-generation ground-based telescopes that will be joining the VLT and ALMA, including the ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) and other 30-meter (foot) aperture instruments, like the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) and Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). Knowing the intricacies of how galaxies evolved is also expected to provide fresh insight into Dark Matter, Dark Energy and lead to more comprehensive models of cosmic evolution.
Huge Black Triangle Shaped UFO Sighted Over England & Brightly Lit UFO Sighted Over New Mexico.
Clip One:This was sighted over Werneth Low which is a hill in Greater Manchester, England. This is a part of the Pennines, It is located on the borders of Stockport and Tameside. This object was sighted on August 31, 2022. The witness stated the following: "My first thought was that it was a balloon or kite, albeit an unusually large one. I couldn't see any lines holding it, nor strong winds affecting it, but we were at a significant distance. Shortly after this video, it disappeared without us seeing where it went."
Thanks to RyeZuul for allowing me the use of this footage and to view the original:
Clip Two: This was sighted on September 7, 2022 over Albuquerque, New Mexico. In this footage we see this brightly lit UFO hovering over the city's skyline and although it is a short clip we can see it long enough to see that there is no nav lights on this craft or no sound coming from it.
Thanks to Zenificial and his coworker's son for allowing me the use of this footage and to view the original:
Huge Cloud Formation Looking Like Mothership in China
Two UFOs in East Kilbride, Scotland Sept 2022
Video shared on Reddit by Kiamh2230 on September 10, 2022. Filmed in East Kilbride, Scotland.
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Top 7 Insane UFO Encounters Proving Aliens Exist
Sightings of strange objects in the sky, became the raw materials for Hollywood, to present visions of potential threats. Scientists and astronomers express varying degrees of enthusiasm, for the possibility of intelligent life in the universe. In fact, NASA has officially joined the search party, to hunt aliens and UFOs.
And today, we bring to you the 7 most mysterious, yet true sightings of UFOs, from around the world! #aliens#space#ufo
Top 3 Insane UFO Encounters Caught on Camera Proving Aliens Exist
Top 3 Insane UFO Encounters Caught on Camera Proving Aliens Exist
What lies beneath the Bermuda Triangle seabed?
There’s one place in the oceans that has particularly sinister fame. In the distant 15th century, Christopher Columbus’s expedition faced something that made the whole team panic. The great discoverer's ship journal contains accounts of the compass needle going haywire, huge spurts of flame appearing out of nowhere, and the sea giving off a strange glow. Many years later, this dead place proved once again how sinister it is. Ships disappear without a trace here. Sometimes they are found - drifting, empty, and completely desolated... But more often than not we don’t even find wrecks. But it’s not only the ships that go missing! Planes disappear too. Even entire squadrons of military aircraft! Facts and rumors about these incredible phenomena have quickly spread around the globe, and soon this region of the Atlantic became known as something sinister, and it continues to uphold its eerie reputation even today. You’ve already guessed it. This is the Bermuda Triangle. What kind of supernatural power is hidden under its waters? And what does science say about all this? The Bermuda Triangle.
Russian MIG Fighter Jets Chasing a Massive UFO in The Devil’s Grave
Russian MIG Fighter Jets Chasing a Massive UFO in The Devil’s Grave
While Great Britain and the US have produced the majority of contemporary UFO sightings, there is no denying that other eastern nations have a rich history of inexplicable encounters. In the instance where Russia, the KGB, the military, and the government have all taken care to maintain a stringent and careful watch on the UFO data.
But in current years, UFO researchers and scientists have made material on the phenomena available online, exposing a wealth of mysterious incidents that took place on Russian soil and in the region.
A foreign presence was detected by ground radars on August 28, 1991, at 4:42 pm at the military base in the Caspian Sea more specifically at the Mangishlak Peninsula present-day Turkmenistan. At a height of 6,600 meters and a speed of 960 km/h, the UFO was traveling east.
The military station’s staff made many unsuccessful attempts to identify the craft. The operators tried a different strategy after a few fruitless “friend or foe” queries; they got in touch with the nearby airport of Kaputsin Yar to get further information. Kaputsin’s commanding officer verified that their radar had also picked up the strange object and that it was not a test flight conducted by them.
Two Mig-29 aircraft were swiftly constructed for a scouting mission, and the other two jets took off from the base on the peninsula after that since they couldn’t risk an evasive incursion. When the jet fighters caught up with the UFO, it was above the Aral Sea. They first kept an 800-meter safe distance between themselves and the UFO. The entire thing was easily visible from this vantage point.
The pilots initially perceived a massive object that was highly reminiscent of a zeppelin but much larger. The UFO was estimated to be a stunning 600 meters in length and around 110 meters in diameter using information from ground radars and the pilot’s intuition.
The flight commander asked the unidentified object to identify itself once more, but he never got a response. The Mig-29 fighters attempted to issue a second warning, this time demanding that the UFO follow them and be escorted to the closest airfield, but the UFO continued to ignore them, appearing unconcerned by their menacing presence.
The MIGs moved in closer to the craft in the following phase. The pilots observed two port holes towards the front of the UFO with green symbols encircling them as they got closer. It was inscribed in a tongue that the Russian pilots didn’t understand.
The pilots approached the UFO from both sides after getting the instruction to fire warning shots. They were about 500 meters away from the ship and prepared to fire, but to their amazement, nothing occurred when they depressed the trigger. They were compelled to return to base because the electrical systems on the four planes were broken and the armaments appeared to be jammed. The thing disappeared towards the horizon.
The UFO was being followed by ground radars as it approached an extraterrestrial speed of over 6,800 hm/h. After traveling in a zigzag manner over the Aral Sea for roughly 30 minutes, it vanished from radar. As the UFO passed over Lake Issyk-Kul, which is close to the boundary between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, the tracking signal was lost.
After the incident, there was internal discussion since there were still many unresolved concerns about the precise origins of the device and the technologies used.
Speculation about a UFO that collided with the Tien Shan Mountains located in Central Asia started to spread by the end of September. Unexpectedly, the region is called Shaitan Mazar, which translates to “The Devil’s Grave.” Some people view this as an odd coincidence, while others see it as unmistakable evidence that the entire statement was fake.
Residents from the Karakol (Kyrgyzstan) region told stories of a massive object that forcefully collided with the eastern mountain range. A well-known UFO organization by the name of SAKKUFON was alerted by the reports, and soon after they launched an expedition to find the impact spot.
The team, led by Anton Bogatov, was made up of experienced mountaineers and SAKKUFON researchers from Russia. Fueled by claims that the crash location had already been found by the locals, the team spent two weeks trekking into the highlands. The UFO seekers found this account more convincing because of odd reports of persons experiencing small burns on their bodies, excessive amounts of static electricity, and watches that broke.
Sadly, the expedition was forced to turn around after weeks of dealing with challenging circumstances, opening the door for the government of Russia to become involved. The military had previously discovered the crash site, according to SAKKUFON, and deployed a helicopter to gather any UFO evidence. However, the chopper lost control and crashed into a near cliff, killing everyone on board.
The Phoenicians: Mysterious Merchant Mariners Whose Inventions Impacted the World Forever
The Phoenicians: Mysterious Merchant Mariners Whose Inventions Impacted the World Forever
The Phoenicians were an ancient people who once ruled the Mediterranean. Despite little being known about them as very few of their inscriptions have survived, their legacy has had an enormous impact on the world, which is still felt today.
The Phoenicians were renowned as excellent mariners and used their expertise to trade all across the Mediterranean. One of the most notable signs of their trade activity is the establishment of Carthage, in present day Tunisia. They were also the inventors of the alphabet.
The History of the Phoenicians
According to tradition, the city was founded as a colony in 814 BC by Phoenicians under the leadership of the legendary Queen Dido . The Carthaginians themselves became a dominant maritime power in the western Mediterranean, until its final destruction by Rome in 146 BC, following their defeat in the Punic Wars . Apart from Carthage, the Phoenicians founded colonies on Cyprus and in Anatolia as well.
The greater part of the territory they once occupied corresponds to modern day Lebanon, but the Phoenicians also held parts of southern Syria and northern Israel.
The Phoenician Alphabet
The Phoenicians made numerous contributions to human civilization, the most notable of which being the Phoenician alphabet , which is the ancestor of many other alphabets that are used today. Scholars have speculated that the Phoenicians referred to themselves as ‘Kena’ani’ (‘Kinahna’ in Akkadian, or ‘Canaanite’ in English). Interestingly, in Hebrew, this word also meant ‘merchant’, which is an apt description of the Phoenicians. The term ‘Phoenicians’, however, is commonly used today, as it was the Greeks who called these people by this name.
The ancient Greeks referred to the land of the Phoenicians as ‘Phoiniki’, which is derived from the Egyptian ‘Fnkhw’, meaning ‘Syrian’. The Greek ‘Phoiniki’ is phonetically similar to their word for the color purple or crimson (‘phoînix’). This is due to the fact that one of the most valuable objects produced and exported by the Phoenicians was a dye known as Tyrian purple. Thus, the Phoenicians were known also as the ‘Purple People’.
According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Phoenicians were originally from the Red Sea area, but later emigrated to and settled along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. Archaeologists today, however, regard Herodotus’ account of the Phoenicians’ origins as a myth. In addition, there is a lack of evidence to support the claims that the Phoenicians emigrated to the eastern Mediterranean from other areas of the ancient world. Instead, it is accepted that the Phoenicians were originally from the eastern Mediterranean and may have developed from the Ghassulian culture, which is an archaeological stage in southern Palestine dating to the Middle Chalcolithic period, i.e. the 4 th millennium BC.
The Phoenicians Flourish as Traders
The Phoenicians flourished during the 1 st millennium BC. During that time, there were other Canaanite cultures inhabiting the region as well, and archaeologists are unable to differentiate between the Phoenicians and these other cultures in terms of material culture, language, and religious beliefs. This is due to the fact that the Phoenicians were themselves Canaanites. Nevertheless, the Phoenicians distinguished themselves from their Canaanite brethren by their achievements as seafarers and traders.
The Phoenicians flourished as marine merchants. (Baddu676 / Public Domain )
As mentioned before, the Greek ‘Phoiniki’ is associated with the dye known as Tyrian purple, which was traded by the Phoenicians. Indeed, this was one of the best-known products of Phoenicia. Tyrian purple was a highly-prized dye that was made using several species of sea snails belonging to the Muricidae family (commonly known as murex snails). One legend states that it was the Greek hero Hercules who discovered this dye. According to this tale, Hercules was strolling along the beach with a nymph, Tyrus, and his dog. Hercules’ dog came across a murex shell and devoured it. When the dog returned to its master its mouth was stained a brilliant purple.
Tyrus found the color so attractive that she requested from Hercules a robe of the of the same color as the price for her hand in marriage. Hercules obliged and gathered enough murex snails to produce the dye necessary to color Tyrus’ robe. In reality, however, Tyrian purple was discovered by the Phoenician. Although nobody is certain today as to how the dye’s discovery was made, it is entirely possible that it was accidental, similar to the Hercules story.
Tyrian purple was not the only trade object that the Phoenicians were famous for. Glass was another valuable product that the Phoenicians exported to the rest of the Mediterranean. Glass was already being produced by other civilizations including the Mesopotamians and Egyptians. The glass produced by these civilizations was colored and it is speculated that the Phoenicians were the first ones to produce transparent glass.
Yet another produce of Phoenicia was cedar wood, which the region is famous for, as far back as the Mesopotamian period. One of the main consumers of cedar wood during the 1 st millennium BC was Egypt, as the demand for wood by the Egyptians was greater than the local supply. Therefore, cedar wood was imported into Egypt from Phoenicia. During the 14 th century BC, for instance, the Phoenicians paid tribute to Egypt by offering cedar wood, as attested in the Amarna Letters .
The fame of the cedar wood from Phoenicia is also seen in the Story of Wenamun . In this Egyptian tale, Wenamun, a priest from the Amun Temple in Karnak sets off in a Phoenician ship to Byblos to purchase timber for the construction of a solar boat.
As superb seafarers, the Phoenician merchants need not rely solely on the goods locally produced in Phoenicia. They were more than capable of traveling to the far corners of the Mediterranean to obtain resources that they did not have back home. The most important of these were precious metals – tin and silver from Spain (and perhaps as far as Cornwall in England) and copper from Cyprus.
Colonies were set up along the trade routes in order to facilitate the journey of the Phoenician merchants. Moreover, Phoenicia is situated in a geographically strategic position that allowed it to further increase its wealth from trade.
The land of the Phoenicians is located between Mesopotamia in the east and Egypt and Arabia in the south / southwest. Trade routes between these two areas of the ancient world had to pass through Phoenicia thereby enriching the Phoenicians even further.
Map of Phoenicia and its Mediterranean trade routes.
We do not know to whether the Phoenicians had a shared identity and if they considered themselves as a single nation. Nevertheless, we do know that they established city states which were politically independent.
The rise of these Phoenician city states occurred around 12th / 11th centuries BC. Around this time, the old powers that dominated the region, i.e. the Egyptians and the Hittites , had either been weakened or were destroyed. For instance, the arrival of the Sea Peoples led to the decline of the New Kingdom in Egypt, while the Hittite Empire was breaking up around the same time.
The Phoenicians seized the opportunity to fill the power vacuum left behind by these empires by establishing their own city states. It seems that each city state was ruled by a monarch, whose power was limited by a powerful oligarchy.
In addition, there is no evidence that the cities banded together into a federation. Instead, they operated independently. Among the most notable Phoenician city states were Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos.
Byblos (known today in Arabic as Jbail) is located about 30 kilometers (20 miles) to the north of modern day Beirut. Its history stretches way back before its rise as a powerful Phoenician city state during the 12th century BC.
Byblos is considered to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and according to the archaeological evidence was settled by human beings as early as the Neolithic period. By the 4th millennium BC Byblos had grown into an extensive settlement. Byblos became the main harbor from which cedar wood was exported to Egypt. As a result of this, the city developed into an important trade center.
Byblos became an Egyptian dependency during the first half of the 2nd millennium BC and maintained close ties with Egypt in the following centuries. With the decline and subsequent collapse of the Egyptian New Kingdom during the 11th century BC, Byblos became the leading city state in Phoenicia.
By around 1000 BC, however, Byblos was eclipsed by two other independent Phoenician city states, Sidon and Tyre. Like Byblos, Sidon (known today in Arabic as Saida) was already an ancient city by the time it became an independent city state.
Sidon was established during the 3rd millennium BC and prospered in the following millennium as a result of trade. On the other hand, Tyre (known today in Arabic as Sur) was probably originally founded as a colony of Sidon. Like Byblos and Sidon, Tyre too became an independent city state when the Egyptians lost their grip over that region.
In time, Tyre surpassed Sidon as the most important Phoenician city state as it traded and established its own colonies in other parts of the Mediterranean. According to tradition, the famous city of Carthage was established as a colony of Tyre in 814 BC.
Archaeological site of Carthage, city established by the Phoenicians.
(Eric00000007 / CC BY-SA 3.0 )
Both Sidon and Tyre are also mentioned frequently in the Old Testament. For instance, the king of Tyre, Hiram, is recorded as providing Solomon the materials required for building the temple in Jerusalem.
The Phoenicians Lose Their Independence
The Phoenician city states were not able to hold on to their independence for long. The wealth of these city states must have attracted the attention of foreign powers. During the 8 th and 7 th centuries BC, the Phoenician city states came under the rule of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In 538 BC, Phoenicia was conquered by Cyrus the Great and came under Persian rule. Although the Phoenicians had lost their independence their cities continued to flourish.
Due to their expertise in seafaring, the Phoenicians supplied ships for the Persian kings. Persian rule over Phoenicia ended during the 4th century BC, when the region fell to Alexander the Great . One of the major battles of Alexander’s campaign against the Persian Empire was the Siege of Tyre, which occurred in 332 BC. As the naval base of the Persians, Alexander knew that it would be unwise to leave it in the hands of the enemy as he continued his campaign southwards. He was also aware that Tyre would not fall so easily, as it was situated on an island off the mainland and was heavily fortified.
Therefore, he requested permission to offer sacrifices at the Temple of Melqart, the Phoenician god identified with the Greek hero Heracles, in the hopes that he would be allowed to enter the city. Alexander’s request was rejected, so he sent heralds to issue an ultimatum to the Tyrians – surrender or be conquered. In response, the Tyrians killed the heralds and threw them off the city walls.
Alexander the Great at the Siege of Tyre attacking the Phoenicians.
Enraged by the Tyrian’s defiance, Alexander proceeded to besiege the city. Due to the lack of a naval force the Macedonians were unable to assault the city directly. Instead, Alexander’s engineers began building a causeway to connect the island to the mainland. The Tyrians in turn sought to hamper the construction of the causeway, which was successful, until the arrival of a fleet of ships from Cyprus, as well as those that defected to Alexander from the Persians.
Eventually, the causeway was completed, and the Macedonians stormed and captured the city. The entire siege lasted seven months. Still furious with the Tyrians, Alexander executed about 10,000 of the city’s inhabitants, while another 30,000 were sold into slavery.
In the years following the death of Alexander the Great, Phoenicia was one of the regions fought over by the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, two of Alexander’s successors. During this period, the Phoenicians were gradually Hellenized, and their original identity was slowly being replaced. Finally, Phoenicia was incorporated by Pompey as part of the Roman province of Syria in 65 BC.
Although the Phoenicians disappeared from the pages of history, they are still remembered today as expert seafarers and merchants. This reputation, however, pales in comparison to the greatest contribution made by the Phoenicians to the modern world – the alphabet.
Like much of the Middle East during that time, the Phoenicians used a script known as cuneiform which originated in Mesopotamia. By around 1200 BC the Phoenicians had developed their own script. The earliest known example of the Phoenician script is found on the Sarcophagus of Ahiram, which was discovered in Byblos.
The Phoenician alphabet was later adopted by the Greeks who kept some characters while removing others. The Greek alphabet was in turn adopted by the Romans resulting in its spread all across Europe. Additionally, the Phoenician alphabet is considered to be the basis of other Middle Eastern, as well as Indian alphabets, either directly or indirectly.
Our Universe May Exist Inside A 4th-Dimensional Black Hole
Our Universe May Exist Inside A 4th-Dimensional Black Hole
Because of the size of our universe, it seems unlikely that anything else could exist. It's becoming more and more likely, according to experts, that our universe is housed inside a fourth-dimensional black hole.
A singularity, an interminably hot and dense point in space, is where our universe first formed. Black holes in our universe may exhibit the same properties as those defined by science, according to CERN physicists like James Beecham.
How A Black Hole Develops
Black holes are created when enormous stars die and collapse into an impossibly dense mass from which even light cannot escape. Scientists refers to the space limit where light cannot leave and no object can return as the event horizon.
Obviously, this sounds familiar, since the cosmos can be seen as its own event horizon. In the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, the universe started to expand at a rate faster than the speed of light. Prior to this time, space did not exist, hence the universal speed restriction did not exist either. The expansion of the cosmos slows over time.
Einstein's theory of relativity states that enormous objects "warp" space-time, hence the space-time around a black hole is curved. Seeing black holes would be almost impossible if not for the light and heat that are pulled into them.
The more matter a black hole swallows, the larger it and its event horizon will get. As the black hole expands, the rate at which matter falls decreases. To an onlooker, extreme gravity makes it seem as though nothing is moving. According to the theory of relativity, from the viewpoint of someone sucked into a black hole, time seems normal.
Do We Exist Inside A Black Hole Right Now?
Our cosmos contains three-dimensional black holes with two-dimensional event horizons. According to this reasoning, if our universe is an event horizon, it must have originated from a fourth-dimensional black hole.
Calculating what occurs at the singularity of a black hole is impossible, which is why we get infinities, while the event horizon can be calculated using current knowledge and equations. The matter falls into the black hole, and the event horizon encodes it. As the black hole grows, so does the event horizon, so the surface area is just the right size to hold all the information for all the stuff that has fallen since the big bang.
This information is the universe's information. Surprisingly, the math adds up and provides solutions to crucial puzzles about our universe and black holes, according to researchers at the Perimeter Institute and the University of Waterloo.
"Is that the big bang hypothesis has our relatively comprehensible, uniform, and predictable universe arising from the physics-destroying insanity of a singularity. It seems improbable."
It is difficult to conceive our universe being inside another cosmic black hole. The black hole idea appears to make sense and fill in the missing parts that scientists and experts have been pursuing for a lifetime, leading us to assume that the universe is far larger and weirder than we had previously believed.
Marsrover vindt mogelijk bewijs van oeroud microbieel leven
De Perseverance-verkenner van NASA heeft een belangrijke stap gezet in de zoektocht naar sporen van leven op Mars. De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie kondigt donderdag aan dat de rover "de kostbaarste" stalen tot nu heeft verzameld, die mogelijke biosignaturen bevatten. De aanwezigheid van zulke biosignaturen moet wel nog bevestigd worden op aarde.
Biosignaturen zijn fysische of chemische verschijnselen die alleen door het voorkomen van leven veroorzaakt kunnen worden.
De vondst die donderdag werd aangekondigd vormt nog geen bewijs voor het feit dat er ooit leven was op de rode planeet, maar het is wel de beste kans tot nu toe om mogelijk oeroud microbieel leven met zekerheid te kunnen opsporen. NASA verwacht dat de stalen bij een volgende missie teruggebracht kunnen worden.
Herbekijk:
Historic: NASA Rover Produces Oxygen On Surface Of Mars
Grote vuurbal gespot boven Verenigd Koninkrijk: "Vermoedelijk geen meteoor maar ruimteafval”
Er zijn gisteravond in het Verenigd Koninkrijk honderden getuigenissen binnengelopen van mensen die een grote vuurbal door de lucht zagen klieven. Wetenschappers proberen te achterhalen wat het fenomeen geweest kan zijn. De eerste resultaten wijzen in de richting van ruimteafval dat terugkeerde naar de Aarde en niet naar een meteoriet.
De vuurbal werd woensdagavond rond 22 uur gespot boven Noord-Ierland, Schotland en het noorden van Engeland. Heel wat getuigen deelden op sociale media spectaculaire beelden van de wit-groenachtige bol die een lange streep achter zich trok aan de nachtelijke hemel.
Er liepen intussen al meer dan 1.000 getuigenissen binnen bij de ‘American Meteor Society’ en haar partners en tien video’s waarop het fenomeen te zien is. Sommige getuigen in Schotland zeggen zelfs dat ze een rommelend geluid hoorden.
Fenomeen
Het is niet duidelijk wat het fenomeen precies was. Wetenschappers onderzoeken of het om een meteoriet ging - gesteente uit de ruimte - of om puin van menselijke activiteit rond de Aarde. De eerste resultaten lijken in de richting te wijzen van het tweede. “Er is een vrij hoge kans dat het op ruimteafval gaat, jammer genoeg”, aldus Luke Daly, een planetoloog aan de University of Glasgow, in het wetenschappelijk tijdschrift ‘New Scientist’.
“De vuurbal had een erg lage ingangshoek, een aanzienlijke hoeveelheid fragmentatie die typerend is voor ruimteafval en hij vloog traag. Ruimterotsen verplaatsen zich meestal iets sneller”, vult hij nog aan. Verder onderzoek zal uitwijzen wat het definitieve verdict is.
Starlink
Het ‘UK Meteor Network’ meldt dat het intussen de baan van de Starlink-satellieten van Elon Musk gecontroleerd heeft, maar dat die gisteravond niet in de buurt kwam van het Verenigd Koninkrijk. “Op dit moment zien we geen bekend ruimteafval of geen baan van een satelliet die de vuurbal veroorzaakt kan hebben. We gaan de data herbekijken”, klinkt het op Twitter.
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The 2 billion year old natural nuclear reactor in Gabon, Africa
The 2 billion year old natural nuclear reactor in Gabon, Africa
In Gabon, Africa is a strange geologic phenomena. Approximately 1.7 billion years ago, a natural nuclear reactor formed without any human intervention at what is now the Oklo Mine.
It formed due in part to an unusually dense uranium deposit alongside a consistent supply of groundwater. Thus, for several hundred thousand years, a natural fission reaction took place.
This video, made by a geologist who is based in Arizona, will discuss this fascinating geologic oddity.
Despite all the wild claims, there's a very real deep state. Listen to long-time expert USAF (Ret) Kevin Randle unpack the true story.
WHEN WILL THEY OPEN THE FILES!?
Mothman: International Moth of Mystery (short documentary) - The Only News That Matters
A lot of folks know about the Mothman & the Silver Bridge collapse associated with his appearance.. but do they know the intriguing cast of characters that Mothman's appearance brought together? Furthermore, what does a smiling man named Indrid Cold & Adam West's "Batman" have to do with the whole situation? What kinda name is Apol? And who is Chief Cornstalk?! Santanon is here with some answers & another episode of The Only News That Matters. He dives into all the high-strangeness that happened in & around Point Pleasant, WV (both before and after the Mothman's first appeared). Tune in to hear all about it & the amazing tales of Mary Hyre & John Keel as well as testimony from the townsfolk of Point Pleasant. God Bless & Hail Santa!
Subtitles/Closed Captions are available on all of our videos!
UFOs: The Situation in Germany | Robert Fleischer Presentation for UFORQ
UFOs: The Situation in Germany UFOs don't exist in Germany - officially, at least. While the German government denies any interest in flying saucers, its military seriously claims that they never had anything unusual on their radar screens which they could not eventually identify. Thus, you hardly ever hear anything from Germany about UFOs. The German journalist and researcher Robert Fleischer is trying to change that. For more than 13 years, he has been working to find out what the German government really knows about UFOs, digging into government archives and asking questions to politicians and the military. In his presentation, he discusses what the German Bundestag knows about Flying Saucers, how the German intelligence agency BND investigated UFO reports during the Cold War, what politicians say about the subject and how it all relates to the situation in Germany after World War II.
About Robert Fleischer:
Robert is a TV journalist, presenter and filmmaker. He has worked for a number of German public broadcast TV networks and writes articles for magazines in Germany and abroad. In 2007, he founded Exopolitics Germany (www.exopolitik.org) and in 2013, he launched ExoMagazin.tv, a subscription-based online TV magazine for open-minded people. He not only reports on UFOs and the paranormal but also on a wide array of subjects, including politics, future sciences and consciousness research. His work has been featured in major TV and radio shows as well as newspaper articles. He holds a university degree in conference interpreting for French and Spanish and has given talks in many European countries, including Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic and the UK.
*Information and opinions presented at these meetings do not necessarily reflect the views of UFO Research Queensland Inc and are presented by speakers for research purposes only.
The UFO Lie: Shocking truth of Pentagon AAWSAP program | The Basement Office
Everything you were told is wrong. In 2017, the New York Times released a bombshell story revealing AATIP, the Pentagon's "UFO program" and Lue Elizondo, the director of that program. It proclaimed a shocking truth: UFOs are real. Since then, that story has been reprinted hundreds and thousands of times across the world and Mr. Elizondo has reached the status of cultural icon. But we've since learned that the whole story... was wrong. In this episode, we reveal the real story of the Pentagon's AAWSAP program - led by scientist James Lacatski - and it's even crazier than you could possibly imagine: $22 million in taxpayer money spent on werewolves, ghosts, goblins, and "dinobeavers" at the infamous Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. But UFO advocates, who are currently lobbying Congress to spend money on UFO investigations, hope you never find out about that. | Season 3, Episode 1
PODCAST - John Greenewald Jr gets into an interesting conversation about UFO/UAP disclosure within the US DOD and Senate, and also discuss the counter intelligence "Game" being played out. Will a significant public disclosure on UAP ever happen ?.
IS DIT DE ECHTE REDEN DAT TWEE GROTE OUDE BESCHAVINGEN ZIJN VERDWENEN?
IS DIT DE ECHTE REDEN DAT TWEE GROTE OUDE BESCHAVINGEN ZIJN VERDWENEN?
Jeannette Kras
Het is vaak gissen hoe het oude beschavingen is vergaan. Verdwenen ze door klimaatverandering, rampen, oorlogen of ziektes? Een nieuw onderzoek werpt licht op de ondergang van het Oude Rijk in Egypte en het Akkadische Rijk.
Een onderzoeksteam van het Max Planck Institute en de British School in Athene heeft bewijs gevonden dat beide beschavingen vermoedelijk niet ten onder zijn gegaan door klimaatverandering, maar door ziekten. Ze vonden daarvan sporen in de tanden van menselijke resten uit de bronstijd. Deze tanden zijn gevonden in de grot Hagios Charalambos op het eiland Kreta.
Droogte Eerder onderzoek toonde aan dat de bevolking van het Oude Rijk in Egypte (2639-2216 voor Christus) en van het Akkadische Rijk (2350–2170 voor Christus) plotseling sterk slonk. Klimaatverandering in de vorm van extreme droogte werd aangewezen als een van de oorzaken. Dit zou ook hebben geleid tot schade aan infrastructuur, een ingestorte handel en grote culturele veranderingen. Maar in deze nieuwe studie hebben onderzoekers ontdekt dat ziektes mogelijk ten grondslag lagen aan de ondergang van beide beschavingen.
De onderzoekers bestudeerden tanden van menselijke resten die teruggaan tot 2290 en 1909 voor Christus. Daarin vonden ze bewijs van de typische mondbacteriën die ook nu nog in onze mond zitten en die kunnen leiden tot tandbederf. Maar belangrijker: ze vonden tekenen van de Yersinia pestis, de pestbacterie en van salmonella, de bacterie die verantwoordelijk is voor buiktyfus. De bevindingen doen dus vermoeden dat een epidemie kan hebben geleid tot de ondergang van een of beide beschavingen uit de bronstijd.
Andere bacteriën Er is wel een kleine kanttekening: de pestbacterie die is gevonden in de tanden van de oude Egyptenaren was niet dezelfde als die Europa eeuwen later zou teisteren. De bacterie is uitgestorven, net als de gevonden salmonellavariant. Daardoor is onduidelijk hoe besmettelijk de bacteriën waren of hoe dodelijk. Toch betekent het bewijs van de bacteriën dat geschiedkundigen de mogelijkheid mee moeten nemen dat ziektes de oorzaak waren van de val van twee grote beschavingen. Verder genetisch onderzoek van oude menselijke overblijfselen moet uitwijzen hoe wijdverspreid de ziektes waren.
Het Oude Rijk Met het Oude Rijk wordt een periode in de tijd van het grote Egyptische rijk aangeduid tussen grofweg 2700 en 2200 voor Christus. Het omvat de derde tot de zesde dynastie en staat ook bekend als de ‘Eeuw van de Piramides’, omdat in die tijd de grote piramidebouwers uit de vierde dynastie heersten, zoals koning Sneferu en de koningen Khufu, Khafre en Menkaure, die de piramides van Gizeh bouwden. Het oude Egypte bereikte zijn eerste beschavingspiek in deze periode. Het rijk liep van de Nijldelta naar het zuiden tot Abu en tot de Sinaï-woestijn in het oosten. De ondergang van het rijk werd ingeluid door een tanende macht van de farao en toenemende controle van regionale heersers. In de decennia na de dood van farao Pepi II werd het rijk geteisterd door burgeroorlogen. De extreme droogte in de 22ste eeuw voor Christus deed er nog een schepje bovenop en leidde tot hongersnood. Maar mogelijk waren het dus ziektes, die het definitieve einde betekenden van het Oude Rijk.
Het Akkadische Rijk Het Akkadische rijk omvatte tussen 2350 en 2170 voor Christus grote delen van Mesopotamië, in de regio, waar nu Irak, Iran en Syrië liggen. Sargon de Grote heeft de stad Akkad, waarnaar het rijk vernoemd is, waarschijnlijk machtig gemaakt. Van daaruit breidde hij zijn rijk uit. Daaropvolgende heersers gingen zich koning van Sumer en Akkad noemen, omdat het zuidelijke deel van Mesopotamië, Sumer (een van de oudste beschavingen ter wereld), ook bij het rijk ging horen. De Goeteeërs, een bergvolk, zouden het Akkadische rijk hebben vernietigd en de stad Akkad zo erg hebben verwoest dat er nooit meer iets van is teruggevonden. Dezelfde droogte die het Oude Rijk in Egypte in ellende stortte zou ook het Akkadische rijk in de problemen hebben gebracht. Maar mogelijk waren het dus ook hier ziektes die de oude beschaving echt de das omdeden.
PISSEBED ONTDEKT DIE 25 KEER GROTER IS DAN DE EXEMPLAREN IN JOUW ACHTERTUIN
PISSEBED ONTDEKT DIE 25 KEER GROTER IS DAN DE EXEMPLAREN IN JOUW ACHTERTUIN
Vivian Lammerse
En hij ziet eruit als een echte Pokémon!
Onderzoekers hebben in de Golf van Mexico een gigantische en vrij griezelige zee-pissebed ontdekt. Het gaat om een nieuwe soort uit het geslacht Bathynomus – een mysterieuze en primitieve groep die leeft in de diepste uithoeken van de oceaan; plekken die nog nauwelijks door mensen zijn verkend. Het nieuw ontdekte, reusachtige, roomgele familielid is ongeveer 26 centimeter lang en doet volgens de onderzoekers vooral erg denken aan een Pokémon.
B. yucatanensis De reuzenpissebed werd gevonden voor de kust van het schiereiland Yucatán, op een diepte van ongeveer 600 tot 800 meter. Het dier heeft de naam B. yucatanensis gekregen, vernoemd naar zijn vindplaats. Hoewel de pissebed er misschien een beetje eng uitziet – ze zijn maar liefst 25 keer groter dan de exemplaren in jouw achtertuin – is hij volkomen ongevaarlijk, zo benadrukken de onderzoekers.
Foto van B. yucatanensis.
Afbeelding: Dr Ming-Chih Huang, Journal of Natural History
Dat het hier overigens om een nog onbekende soort ging, was niet meteen duidelijk. Aanvankelijk zagen onderzoekers de pissebed namelijk aan voor B. giganteus; de grootste bekende pissebed die wel bijna 50 centimeter lang kan worden.
Nieuwe soort De verwarring is niet onbegrijpelijk. In 2017 werd er bijvoorbeeld nog een B. giganteus op precies dezelfde plek en op dezelfde diepte gevangen. Bovendien lijken B. giganteus en B. yucatanensis op elkaar. Zo hebben ze bijvoorbeeld hetzelfde aantal stekels op hun achterlijf. “Oppervlakkig onderzoek, waarbij er alleen gekeken wordt naar deze stekels, heeft er gemakkelijk toe kunnen leiden dat de nieuwe soort ten onrechte werd herkend als B. giganteus,” schrijven de onderzoekers in hun studie.
Unieke kenmerken Toen onderzoekers echter een betere blik wierpen, ontdekten ze enkele onderscheidende kenmerken. Zo is B. yucatanensis bijvoorbeeld een stuk slanker en net iets korter dan zijn tegenhanger. Daarnaast heeft B. yucatanensis langere antennes op zijn kop. De vlekkerige, roomgele kleur van de schaal onderscheidt hem verder van zijn grijze verwanten. Om er toch honderd procent zeker van te zijn dat het hier om een nog onbekende soort ging, voerden de onderzoekers een genetische analyse uit waarbij ze B. giganteus en B. yucatanensis vergeleken. “Vanwege verschillende sequenties van twee genen, in combinatie met verschillen in morfologie, identificeerden we B. yucatanensis als een nieuwe soort,” zo luidt de conclusie van de onderzoekers.
Verwant Ondanks dat, zijn B. yucatanensis en B. giganteus wel het nauwst verwant aan elkaar. “Dit geeft aan dat de twee soorten waarschijnlijk een gemeenschappelijke voorouder hadden,” aldus de onderzoekers. Bovendien sluiten ze niet uit dat er mogelijk nog meer onbekende familieleden op ontdekking wachten.
Internethit Op dit moment zijn er zo’n 20 levende soorten reuzenpissebedden die tot het geslacht Bathynomus behoren, bekend. Door hun vreemde en ongebruikelijke afmetingen zijn de pissebedden een ware internethit geworden. Er zijn zelfs een reeks producten op de markt gebracht die hun vertederende en bizarre uiterlijk vieren; denk aan pluchen speelgoed tot aan telefoonhoesjes.
Ondanks dat er er nog niet grootschalig op de reuzenpissebedden gevist wordt, worden ze weleens aangetroffen op het menu van Aziatische visrestaurants. “Sommige soorten Bathynomus zijn het doelwit geworden van diepzee-visserij,” zo waarschuwen de onderzoekers. En daarom is het volgens hen nóg belangrijker dat de verschillende soorten goed uit elkaar worden gehouden. “Hoewel de gigantische pissebedden slechts sporadisch worden geëxploiteerd, is het voor het beheer van de Bathynomus-visserij en het behoud van de dieren belangrijk om precies te weten welke soorten er worden gevangen,” besluiten ze.
Hubble Sees Red Supergiant Star Betelgeuse Slowly Recovering After Blowing Its Top
Hubble Sees Red Supergiant Star Betelgeuse Slowly Recovering After Blowing Its Top
Analyzing data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and several other observatories, astronomers have concluded that the bright red supergiant star Betelgeuse quite literally blew its top in 2019, losing a substantial part of its visible surface and producing a gigantic Surface Mass Ejection (SME). This is something never before seen in a normal star's behavior.
Our Sun routinely blows off parts of its tenuous outer atmosphere, the corona, in an event known as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). But the Betelgeuse SME blasted off 400 billion times as much mass as a typical CME!
The monster star is still slowly recovering from this catastrophic upheaval. "Betelgeuse continues doing some very unusual things right now; the interior is sort of bouncing," said Andrea Dupree of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
These new observations yield clues as to how red stars lose mass late in their lives as their nuclear fusion furnaces burn out, before exploding as supernovae. The amount of mass loss significantly affects their fate. However, Betelgeuse's surprisingly petulant behavior is not evidence the star is about to blow up anytime soon. So the mass loss event is not necessarily the signal of an imminent explosion.
Dupree is now pulling together all the puzzle pieces of the star's petulant behavior before, after, and during the eruption into a coherent story of a never-before-seen titanic convulsion in an aging star.
This illustration plots changes in the brightness of the red supergiant star Betelgeuse, following the titanic mass ejection of a large piece of its visible surface. The escaping material cooled to form a cloud of dust that temporarily made the star look dimmer, as seen from Earth. This unprecedented stellar convulsion disrupted the monster star’s 400-day-long oscillation period that astronomers had measured for more than 200 years. The interior may now be jiggling like a plate of gelatin dessert.
"We've never before seen a huge mass ejection of the surface of a star. We are left with something going on that we don't completely understand. It's a totally new phenomenon that we can observe directly and resolve surface details with Hubble. We're watching stellar evolution in real time."
The titanic outburst in 2019 was possibly caused by a convective plume, more than a million miles across, bubbling up from deep inside the star. It produced shocks and pulsations that blasted off the chunk of the photosphere leaving the star with a large cool surface area under the dust cloud that was produced by the cooling piece of photosphere. Betelgeuse is now struggling to recover from this injury.
Weighing roughly several times as much as our Moon, the fractured piece of photosphere sped off into space and cooled to form a dust cloud that blocked light from the star as seen by Earth observers. The dimming, which began in late 2019 and lasted for a few months, was easily noticeable even by backyard observers watching the star change brightness. One of the brightest stars in the sky, Betelgeuse is easily found in the right shoulder of the constellation Orion.
Even more fantastic, the supergiant's 400-day pulsation rate is now gone, perhaps at least temporarily. For almost 200 years astronomers have measured this rhythm as evident in changes in Betelgeuse's brightness variations and surface motions. Its disruption attests to the ferocity of the blowout.
The star's interior convection cells, which drive the regular pulsation may be sloshing around like an imbalanced washing machine tub, Dupree suggests. TRES and Hubble spectra imply that the outer layers may be back to normal, but the surface is still bouncing like a plate of gelatin dessert as the photosphere rebuilds itself.
Though our Sun has coronal mass ejections that blow off small pieces of the outer atmosphere, astronomers have never witnessed such a large amount of a star's visible surface get blasted into space. Therefore, surface mass ejections and coronal mass ejections may be different events.
Betelgeuse is now so huge now that if it replaced the Sun at the center of our solar system, its outer surface would extend past the orbit of Jupiter. Dupree used Hubble to resolve hot spots on the star's surface in 1996. This was the first direct image of a star other than the Sun.
NASA's Webb Space Telescope may be able to detect the ejected material in infrared light as it continues moving away from the star.
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, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.
Once again, advances in technology have forced archaeologists to change their interpretations of history. A new study published in Antiquity has concluded that the world-renowned Machu Picchu site in Peru was in use more than 20 years earlier than previously thought.
So, What’s the Real Age of Machu Picchu?
One of the top tourist destinations in the world, Machu Picchu in Peru is known not only for its ancient Inca ruins, but for its stunning natural setting. Hiking the Inca Trail has become a pilgrimage for backpackers from all over, so much so that the authorities have had to put strict limits on the number of tourists who can hike the trail per day (500). The ruins itself are visited by about 6,500 people per day, according to BD Destinations .
Although it has become known as the “lost city” discovered by American explorer Hiram Bingham in 1911, in reality it was never “lost” as locals knew it was there all along. What is surprising is that with such a huge influx of visitors, and income, there is still more to be learned about this stunning World Heritage Site, including its age and ancient origins.
The construction of an Indiana Jones-style narrative, in which American explorer Hiram Bingham found the “lost” Inca city of Machu Picchu, has added to its allure.
The legendary story of the Inca ruler Pachacuti has been told and retold for generations, and repeated as part of the tours of Machu Picchu . It is believed that he rose to power thanks to a vision involving Inti, the Sun god, who inspired him to defend the city of Cusco from the Chanca. The first Inca ruler with imperialistic aspirations for an Inca Empire he has been recognized as the creator of “the most powerful empire in pre-Colombian America,” explains an Antiquity press release.
Pachacuti has also been credited with building Machu Picchu , located to the north of Cusco. In fact, the ancient ruins are often described as having been his private estate. The Inca citadel was chosen as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World in a contest organized by the New7Wonders Foundation back in 2007, alongside Petra and the Great Wall of China. It was famously built using differently-shaped polished stones which fit together like a jigsaw puzzle to create walls without the use of mortar.
Researchers at Machu Picchu in 1911, shortly before the remains dated in the new study were recovered.
Applying New Technology to Discover the Age of Machu Picchu
“Determining a site’s archaeological age isn’t always easy,” explained Erin Blakemore in a National Geographic article which gave a simple run-through of the ways in which archaeologists calculate the date of ancient sites. Assessing the age of Machu Picchu is no different.
Richard Burger, a professor from Yale University and the lead author of the paper published in Antiquity explained why the famed Peruvian ruins have been labeled with the incorrect age in the past. “Until now estimates of its antiquity and the length of its occupation were based on contradictory historical accounts written by Spaniards in the period following the Spanish conquest,” he stressed. Remember, the Inca themselves had no written language, apart from a system of knotted cords known as khipu.
A team made up of professionals from several institutions in the United States decided to apply the technique of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) in order to more precisely date the human remains which have been exhumed at Machu Picchu. This technology has been successful in dating human remains when minimal organic matter has been left behind.
Most history books state that Machu Picchu was built by Pachacuti in the mid-1400s. Nevertheless, the team used AMS dating technology to date bone and teeth from 26 skeletons found in cave burials which had been excavated back in 1912. Although past attempts had failed to provide consistent results, this new research concluded that Machu Picchu was actually in use from 1420 to 1530 AD.
The construction date of Machu Picchu has now been pushed back thanks to dating technology.
Changing the History of the Inca Empire and the Age of Machu Picchu
If this is true, it would mean that the scripted guided tours of Peru’s top tourist destination have been mistaken for decades. If Machu Picchu was in use from 1420, then this would push back the date of Pachacuti’s rise to prominence, as well as the age of the ancient citadel, by at least two decades.
The Antiquity study also puts into sharp relief the importance of continued application of groundbreaking technology to archaeology and ancient history. “The results suggest that the discussion of the development of the Inca empire based primarily on colonial records requires revision,” emphasized Burger.
“Modern radiocarbon methods provide a better foundation for understanding Inca chronology than the contradictory historical records,” explained the lead author of the study. The idea that our understanding of history is versatile and apt to change as technology evolves assures that the study of famous sites like Machu Picchu will continue to be an adventure as we unravel the “lost” reality of the past.
Top image: Experts are reassessing the age of the Peruvian ruins at Machu Picchu.
NASA's Perseverance rover has collected some intriguing samples of Martian rock. Just wait till we get them into a lab on Earth.
Amanda Kooser
Perseverance inspects a sedimentary sample site called Skinner Ridge.
NASA, JPL-Caltech, ASU, MSSS
This story is part of Welcome to Mars, our series exploring the red planet.
In just a year and a half on Mars, NASA's Perseverance rover has rocked its science mission. The space agency hosted a briefing Thursday to discuss highlights from the mission so far, and it was a celebration of rock samples and the discovery of organic matter.
Organic molecules in Wildcat Ridge
A rock named Wildcat Ridge, located in an ancient river delta region of Jezero Crater, was one of the stars of the show. Percy successfully collected two samples from the mudstone rock. Wildcat Ridge is particularly exciting because the organic molecules (called aromatics) found in it are considered a potential biosignature, which NASA describes as a substance or structure that could be evidence of past life but may also have been produced without the presence of life.
The rover team emphasized that finding organic matter doesn't mean it's found evidence of ancient life. Organic molecules have been spotted on Mars before, by the Curiosity rover in Gale Crater and also by Perseverance, which found carbon-containing molecules earlier in the mission.
Enlarge ImagPerseverance collected two core samples from Wildcat Ridge and also abraded a round patch to inspect the rock with its Sherloc instrument.
NASA, JPL-Caltech, ASU, MSSS
The rover's Sherloc instrument investigated the rock. (Sherloc stands for Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals.) "In its analysis of Wildcat Ridge, the Sherloc instrument registered the most abundant organic detections on the mission to date," NASA said.
Scientists are seeing familiar signs in the analysis of Wildcat Ridge. "In the distant past, the sand, mud and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived," said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley in a statement. "The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock -- known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth -- is important."
Perseverance isn't equipped to find definitive evidence of ancient microbial life on the red planet. "The reality is the burden of proof for establishing life on another planet is very, very high," said Farley during the press conference. For that, we need to examine Mars rocks up close and in person in Earth labs.
Sample drop
Percy currently has 12 rock samples on board, including the Wildcat Ridge pieces and samples from another sedimentary delta rock called Skinner Ridge. It also collected igneous rock samples earlier in the mission that point to the impact of long-ago volcanic action in the crater.
NASA is so happy with the diversity of samples collected that it's looking into dropping some of the filled tubes off on the surface soon in preparation for the future Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign. MSR is an ambitious plan to send a lander to Mars, pick up Percy's samples, rocket them off the surface and bring them back to Earth for close study. The mission is under development. If all goes as planned, those rocks could be here by 2033.
The complexity and importance of MSR means NASA and its partners are working out ways to ensure the samples can be collected. There's hope Perseverance will still be operating in good condition by the time the MSR lander arrives, and will be able to meet it and personally deliver samples. Leaving some samples on the ground this early in the mission at a cache site in the crater will give MSR another opportunity to get the precious rocks on board.
Percy has been collecting paired samples. For example, it could keep one Wildcat Ridge tube on board and drop the other on the ground. "That we are weeks from deploying Perseverance's fascinating samples and mere years from bringing them to Earth so scientists can study them in exquisite detail is truly phenomenal," said NASA JPL Director Laurie Leshin. "We will learn so much."
What's next for Percy
As thrilling as the delta has been, the rover team is looking ahead at future adventures beyond it. Perseverance could wander up the crater rim, with the team eyeing several possible paths for the climb. Its companion Ingenuity helicopter is in good health and expected to take to the air again.
NASA chose Jezero Crater for exploration because of its fascinating history of water and how the rocks there might preserve evidence of ancient life, if it existed during more habitable times on Mars. Sherloc scientist Sunanda Sharma likened the mission to a treasure hunt for organic life on another planet, saying the samples with aromatics are a clue. The Martian mystery is only just beginning to unfold.
The Mystery of Egyptian Tomb KV55 in the Valley of the Kings
The Mystery of Egyptian Tomb KV55 in the Valley of the Kings
Tomb KV55 in the Valley of the Kings was discovered by Edward R. Ayrton on January 6, 1907. Ayrton’s sponsor, Theodore M. Davis, published a summary of the excavation (The Tomb of Queen Tiye) in 1910.
KV55 is from the 18th dynasty, being a problematic archaeological site as it seems to have been used for several burials: the first is attributed to Queen Tiye, based on the broken wooden shrine dedicated to her (Tiye was brought here after the abandonment of Amarna, and finally brought to KV35).
The mummy found here may be that of her son, the pharaoh Akhenaten, although that of his successor, Smenkhkare (if this was a man) was also considered.
In 1923, Harry Burton used it as a darkroom to develop his photographs during the excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter.
Egyptian Tomb KV55: Description
KV55 is a relatively small royal tomb, its total length is only 27.61 meters. It is located next to KV6, the tomb of Ramses IX , above KV7 (of Ramses II) and near KV62, the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Its entrance is open in the rock, heading east. It leads to a system of stairs that lead to a slightly sloping corridor and the burial chamber.
On the south side of this chamber there is passage to a small antechamber, and red masonry markings on the east wall indicate the planning of another room, which had it been built would have matched the layout of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Although the walls of the tomb are laid out in plaster, which is unusual for a royal tomb, they are not decorated. A drawing on an ostracon found by Lyla Pinch Brock in 1993, has been interpreted as the plan of the tomb, suggesting that its original entrance had been enlarged, corroborated by the marks found on the walls of the tomb.
The place was altered in antiquity, and therefore it is difficult to interpret. Evidence from the tomb complicates its attribution.
The door seals bore Tutankhamun’s name, evidently from the time its tenant was buried a second time; the canopic jars found in the tomb are similar to those of Akhenaten’s secondary wife, Kiya; the broken shrine, whose panels are distributed throughout the chamber, bear the name and representations of Akhenaten‘s mother, Queen Tiye.
Akhenaten’s name appears in a series of “magical bricks” found in the tomb, as well as that of his father, Amenhotep III, and his daughter and wife.
All these data are reminiscent of the main figures of the Amarna period, hence the popular name of the tomb: the Amarna cache.
It is thought that the tomb was initially designed for the burial of some nobleman or official, using it later for a royal burial, as later happened with the tomb of Tutankhamun.
One of the four Egyptian alabaster canopic jars found in KV55, depicting what is thought to be the likeness of Queen Kiya
Identification of the mummy
When the tomb was opened in 1907 the only mummy found inside was that of a male. This mummy was thought to be Akhenaten, due to the presence of some funerary items (mainly magical bricks) as well as the vandalism of the sarcophagus (Akhenaten was later vilified as a heretic).
The cartouches with the mummy’s name are erased and the uraeus removed. In addition, the mummy has several similarities to that of Tutankhamun.
Profile view of the skull recovered from KV55
This identification was not fully accepted because although KV55 does not contain any mention of Smenkhkare, some insisted on identifying the mummy with him. DNA analysis in 2010 confirmed that it was the remains of the famous Akhenaten.
Nicholas Reeves suggests a theory: Akhenaten and his mother, Queen Tiy, were originally interred in the new capital, Amarna, but their bodies were transferred to KV55 during the reign of Akhenaten’s son Tutankhamun and his secondary wife, Kiya.
The door was sealed with the name of Tutankhamun. There the mummies remained for about 200 years, until the tomb was discovered by workers excavating the nearby tomb of Ramses IX..
At that time Akhenaten was despised as the heretic king, so the sarcophagus of Queen Tiye was hastily removed from his desecrating presence, except for the gilded wooden shrine that covered it, which had to be dismantled to remove the sarcophagus. .
The portraits of Akhenaten were erased with a chisel, in his sarcophagus the golden mask was torn and the cartouche with his name removed, to condemn him to eternal oblivion. As a final insult, a large rock was thrown at the coffin, smashing the supports of the lion-shaped sarcophagus.
Two Supermassive Black Holes Are Expected To Collide Within Next 3 Years And We Will Watch It In Real-Time
Two Supermassive Black Holes Are Expected To Collide Within Next 3 Years And We Will Watch It In Real-Time
According to astronomers, one of the most anticipated occurrences in modern astronomy may be upon us soon.
Fluctuations in light measurements from the galaxy SDSS J1430+center 2303 lead to the likelihood of a large collision between two supermassive black holes with a combined mass of around 200 million Suns, according to research.
If the scientists' interpretation of the data is correct, the collision, along with the first black hole image captured by the Event Horizon Telescope, may rank among the biggest modern astronomical events. According to the scientists' data, the black holes in this condition will merge within the next three years, which is a very short period of time in the context of scientific investigations.
The findings of the study can be found on the pre-print portal ArXiv and have been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
The event was detected in 2015 as a result of gravitational waves created by the first black hole merger, which rippled through space-time. However, the gravitational force from that collision, as well as subsequent observations, had an impact for years after it occurred. As a result, the collision at the core of SDSS J1430+2303 could be the first time astronomers have witnessed such an occurrence.
There is one crucial caveat in the run-up to this cosmic calamity. The gravitational wave range produced by supermassive black holes is too narrow for our current gravitational wave detectors to detect. Virgo and LIGO, which are both capable of detecting ripples in the frequency created by binary black holes, have identified nearly all black hole mergers to date.
Astronomers expect to be able to observe the event's massive outpouring of light using other observatories, which will continue to produce light over the full spectrum. If and when it happens, it could significantly increase our understanding of the formation of supermassive black holes.
Although there is some evidence that binary black hole mergers may be the source of the genesis of supermassive black holes, we still don't fully understand how they grow to be that large.
Astronomers will direct their telescopes to the region of space where the galaxy J1429+2303 is expected to witness a catastrophic supermassive black hole collision in order to examine the data before and after the event and better understand its implications as well as the processes that led up to it.
For a country with a population of just over 10 million people, it’s impressive that Sweden can maintain one of the best fighter aircraft programs.
An aircraft’s effectiveness is no longer determined mainly by how fast it can fly. Now it’s about how instant AI can interpret information and present the data for pilots to act upon in battle.
Unlike US or Russiαn fighters, Swedish Gripen can’t carry the most weapons, has no real stealth. To be clear, it isn’t the longest-range, the fastest, or even the cheapest jet.
Sweden has chosen another niche to compete. The country’s focus is to develop a fighter jet with the most advanced electronics to become a nightmare for its closest adversary – Russiα.
Scientists Find One of the Most Massive Black Holes With 34 Billion Times The Mass of Our Sun
Scientists Find One of the Most Massive Black Holes With 34 Billion Times The Mass of Our Sun
Scientists just revealed the finding of the most massive black hole ever detected in the early Universe. It weighs 34 billion times as much as our Sun and eats one per day.
The research, headed by the National University of Australia (ANU), disclosed how large the Universe's fastest-growing black hole is, as well as how much stuff it can absorb. The same study team detected the black hole, known as 'J2157,' in 2018.
The report revealing the huge black hole's features was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
According to Dr. Christopher Onken and his colleagues, this object has a mass 34 billion times that of the Sun and consumes the equivalent of one Sun per day. That's billion with a capital B. The gigantic black hole has a mass nearly 8,000 times that of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy.
“If the Milky Way’s black hole wanted to get fat, it would have to swallow two-thirds of all the stars in our galaxy,” explains Onken.
The object was analyzed by scientists when the Universe was just 1.2 billion years old, or less than 10% of its present age, making it the largest known black hole in terms of mass in the early Universe.
“It is the largest black hole ever measured in this early period of the Universe,” says Onken.
The team is now on the search for more black holes in the hopes of discovering some answers as to how black holes grow to be so huge so early in the Universe's infancy.
“We knew we were with a very massive black hole when we realized its rapid growth rate,” says team member Dr. Fuyan Bian, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO). “How much black holes can devour depends on how much mass they already have. For this object to be devouring matter at such a high rate, we thought it could become a new record holder. "And we now know," he says.
The team, which included researchers from the University of Arizona, utilized the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile to accurately determine the mass of the black hole.
“With such an enormous black hole, we’re also excited to see what we can learn about the galaxy in which it’s growing,” Onken said. “Is this galaxy one of the behemoths of the early Universe, or did the black hole swallow up an extraordinary amount of its surroundings? We’ll have to keep digging to figure that out.”
J2157 is the name given to a huge black hole in the heart of a quasar galaxy. Observations with the similarly huge 10-meter Keck telescope in Hawaii and the 8-meter Very Large Telescope in Chile let astronomers understand more about the cosmic monster.
Astronomers were able to calculate the quasar's distance as well as its total brightness. This allowed them to determine the black hole's size and how much stuff from the disc it might swallow.
The black hole is enormous, measuring nearly 200 billion kilometers in diameter. It is so massive that if it were replaced by our Sun, it would engulf the whole solar system.
At the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty,Sneferu wanted to go one step further in achieving a perfect pyramid to be his abode of eternity. In this search, the pharaoh built at least three of these great monuments.
Contrary to what might be thought, the greatest pyramid builder in the history of Egypt was not Khufu, the pharaoh to whom the Great Pyramid of Giza is owed.
That title actually corresponds to his father Sneferu, who, according to scholars have calculated, used for the construction of the three pyramids that are attributed forty percent more cubic meters of stone than his son Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Furthermore, Sneferu was the first Egyptian pharaoh to build a perfect pyramid with smooth faces and to develop the classical structure of Egyptian funerary complexes, which would last for several centuries.
The three great funerary monuments created by Sneferu crowned the sensational development of Egyptian funerary architecture from Dynasty III onwards.
King Djoser, thanks to his well-known architect Imhotep, was the first to build his tomb entirely in stone, thus offering a sense of eternity to buildings that were previously made of adobe and therefore soon faded away.
In addition, in this great work that he carried out in Saqqara (a necropolis near Memphis, the capital of Egypt), Imhotep dispensed with the typical mastaba, a rectangular funerary building with sloping walls.
He replaced it with a stepped pyramid, made up of a total of six levels that reached 62 meters in height. It should be noted that this was the tallest building in the world until Sneferu’s reign.
Engineering feat and embodiment of the power of the pharaonic state, the stepped pyramid had a characteristic structure, in which scholars have seen the reflection of a stellar symbolism typical of Egyptian culture at that time.
Thus, the main axis of the complex, 544 meters long, is oriented from north to south and the entrance to the pyramid is located on the north side, as is the funerary temple of the pharaoh, attached to the pyramid on a base of two meters high.
Furthermore, the so-called serdab – a room on the north side of the pyramid in which the statue of the pharaoh’s ka (his spirit or life force) was placed – had two openings through which a statue of Djoser could observe Dubhe and Kochab, two important circumpolar stars.
Sneferu, The pharaoh who built three pyramids
During Dynasty III, the kings Sekhemkhet and Khaba erected buildings in Saqqara and Zawiyet el-Aryan similar to the step pyramid of Djoser.
The same did Sneferu at his pyramid at Meidum, a necropolis located 55 kilometers south of the stepped pyramid at Saqqara. There the pharaoh erected a great funerary monument in the form of an eight-step pyramid, with a central masonry tower and sloping walls, to which superimposed layers were added, also sloping with a 75º inclination.
However, at the end of his reign Sneferu launched a third constructive phase that would radically change the appearance of the Pyramid of Meidum.
At the base, the workers raised a leveled platform of limestone blocks, and on this they were placing successive horizontal courses of stone.
Finally, the entire construction received an exterior cladding of fine limestone from Tura. In this way, a perfect pyramid was obtained, with four smooth faces of 51º inclination, 144 meters in base and 92 in height.
The pyramids of Dahshur. The image shows the Bent pyramid in the foreground, rising out of the Dahshur plain; in the background the Red pyramid can be seen. Both were built by Sneferu.
The pyramid of Meidum
The architectural innovation promoted by Sneferu in Meidum is related to the rise of the solar cult during Dynasty IV, which promoted the identification of the pharaoh with the sun god Ra.
It is no coincidence that Huni, Sneferu’s predecessor, was the first monarch to inscribe his name and titles on a cartouche, the oval that symbolizes Ra’s journey; nor that Djedefre, Sneferu’s grandson, was the first pharaoh to be called Son of Ra.
According to this vision, the pyramid would symbolize the benben, the primordial hill, that first piece of land that, after the creation of the solar god Atum, emerged from the waters of the nun, the inert, dark and silent primordial ocean.
The pyramid, like the primeval hill, represents creation and rebirth and becomes the vehicle for the revitalization of the deceased pharaoh.
If the pyramids of Dynasty III symbolized stairs to the starry sky, now the pyramid, as a solar element, could also express the idea of the rays of the Sun that allowed the king to rise to the solar divinity.
With their smooth faces that glowed thanks to their coating with white limestone from Tura.
According to this new conception, the main construction axis of the funerary complex became the east-west, instead of the previous north-south.
This is how it was intended to promote the union of the king with the solar god in his daily journey, from when he appeared in the east in the form of the Khepri beetle, passing through its culmination at noon as Ra, in the form of a solar disk, and its sunset by the west in the form of a ram, Atum.
The pyramid of Meidum marked the definitive triumph of this new model of funeral ensemble. Sneferu’s work includes for the first time all the characteristic elements of pharaonic funerary complexes from then on:
A satellite pyramid next to the main one, a funerary temple, another temple located on the river bank and a ramp that linked these two buildings. .
According to the solar model, the funerary temple was attached to the eastern face of the pyramid, instead of the northern one, although access to the interior was still from the north side, as in the pyramid of Djoser.
From this entrance, about 18 meters high, a descending corridor of almost 60 meters in length and an inclination of 28º starts.
The Bent Pyramid
Sneferu built a second pyramid at the Dashur necropolis, 45 kilometers north of Meidum. The final form this monument took is unique. Started as a pyramid with a 60º inclination, later an envelope made of blocks inclined 6º inwards and a reduction of the slope by five degrees was added.
From 47 meters in height, the slope of the faces of the pyramid was reduced to 43º, thus giving it the peculiar appearance of a “rhomboid pyramid”or the Bent Pyramid, as it is known.
It is not known whether this change in slope was due to structural problems that had to be solved on the fly or if it had a symbolic meaning:
The double slope would represent, for example, the unity of Upper and Lower Egypt. Once completed, the pyramid reached 105 meters in height, with a base of 188 meters on each side.
The Red pyramid of Dahshur
The internal structure of the Bent pyramid is unusual because of its two entrances. One is, as was customary, on the north side, 12 meters high, and leads to a corridor 80 meters long that leads to a horizontal corridor; this, in turn, leads to a chamber with a false vault 17 meters high.
The second entrance, originally camouflaged behind a cladding block, is on the west side, 33 meters high. It opens onto a descending corridor that continues as a horizontal corridor after 65 meters, where two chambers with closing blocks were arranged and, finally, a burial chamber with a false vault 16 meters high.
The third pyramid of Sneferu, popularly known as the “Red pyramid“, was built two kilometers north of the previous one, in Dahshur.
It is the second pyramid with the highest base (220 meters), only ten meters less than that of the Great Pyramid. However, it is also the one with the lowest slope of its faces (43º), so it only reached 105 meters in height.
Its access is 28 meters high on the north side, and from there starts a descending corridor of 63 meters that ends in a horizontal corridor.
This passes through two chambers with a false vault and then gives access to a burial chamber, located at a higher level, also with a false vault and almost 15 meters high. Perhaps the pharaoh was buried there.
Flying to (Hypothetical) Planet 9: Why visit it, how could we get there, and would it surprise us like Pluto?
Flying to (Hypothetical) Planet 9: Why visit it, how could we get there, and would it surprise us like Pluto?
In a recent study submitted to Earth and Planetary Astrophysics, an international team of researchers discuss the various mission design options for reaching a hypothetical Planet 9, also known as “Planet X”, which state-of-the-art models currently estimate to possess a semi-major axis of approximately 400 astronomical units (AU). The researchers postulate that sending a spacecraft to Planet 9 could pose scientific benefits much like when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft visited Pluto in 2015. But does Planet 9 actually exist?
Artist’s rendition of the hypothetical Planet 9, with Neptune’s orbit displayed as a bright ring orbiting the sun.
Credit: European Southern Observatory/Tom Ruen/nagualdesign
“It is hard to put a specific number on the confidence level because so many uncertainties remain,” said Dr. Manavsi Lingam, who is an Assistant Professor at the Florida Institute of Technology, and a co-author on the study. “For now, I would say that it seems likely that there is an unusual clustering of extreme trans-Neptunian objects. We do not know what is causing this clustering, but Planet 9 appears to be a promising candidate.”
Before NASA’s New Horizons arrived at Pluto in 2015, the only images scientists had of Pluto were fuzzy pictures from Earth-based telescopes, and even the Hubble Space Telescope couldn’t get anything better. The science about Pluto was equally scant, as we had an estimate for its mass, but since we couldn’t make out surface features, we knew very little about its atmosphere, geologic diversity, and interior. As the researchers point out, the “wealth of new data” from New Horizons surpassed the old, but could we be just as surprised with Planet 9 data if a spacecraft were to visit there?
“It is very likely,” said Dr. Andrew Hein, who is an Associate Professor/Chief Scientist at the University of Luxembourg, and a co-author on the study. “Even the best telescopes are vastly inferior to close-up observations from a probe flying by a celestial body. This is even more true for bodies which are far away and faint, which is the case for Planet 9. The reason is physics. The fainter an object, the larger your telescope needs to be to collect more light from that object and the longer you need to observe. The farther away the object, the more light you need to collect and the larger the telescope needs to be.”
For how to get to Planet 9, the researchers propose several mission designs. These include, Jupiter gravity assist, using either Jupiter’s or the Sun’s gravity well to accelerate the spacecraft, chemical rockets, nuclear propulsion, and laser sails. With the exception of laser sails, the amount of time each method would need to reach Planet 9 ranged from just under 40 years to 100 years. With laser sails, the researchers estimated that a spacecraft could reach Planet 9 within 6.5-7 years. But what steps are being taken to make this technology a reality?
“Laser sail technology is currently being pursued by Breakthrough Starshot, a project I am part of, and which has significantly advanced the technology over the last 6 years, including laboratory prototypes,” said Hein. “While flight technology is conceptual for now, some of the technology building blocks already exist in the lab. The project’s aim is to launch a laser sail to another star, but a small-scale version should be feasible to develop within the next 10-15 years or so with a budget of less than the one for a traditional space probe (few hundreds of millions of dollars). This small-scale version could be used to reach Planet 9 within a few years, once developed. But once the laser beamer is developed, such probes could be launched on a weekly basis at costs hundreds of times cheaper than current probes.”
For now, Planet 9 remains purely a hypothesized member of our vast and illustrious solar system, but would the vast time it takes to get there using conventional methods prevent us from potentially visiting this mysterious object so far from the Sun?
“Although we find that minimum mission times of 40-50 years are required (except for light sails), this long flight time ought not deter us,” said Lingam. “The Voyager spacecraft have been functional for roughly the same duration and continue to provide a wealth of data. A putative mission to Planet 9 (should it exist) would not only revolutionize our understanding of the outer Solar system, but it can also enable us to study other targets along the way – for instance, some of the maneuvers take us close to Jupiter and the Sun, indicating that these worlds could also be surveyed.”
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Featured Image:Artist’s rendition of the hypothetical Planet 9, with Neptune’s orbit displayed as a bright ring orbiting the Sun. (Credit: European Southern Observatory/Tom Ruen/nagualdesign)
Barb Bergfeld on witnessing & filming a triangular-shaped UFO & lights in the sky, Owensville, 1994
Barb Bergfeld on witnessing & filming a triangular-shaped UFO & lights in the sky, Owensville, 1994
Nov. 10, 1994; Owensville, OH 2:00 AM. Multiple witnesses reported a silent triangular configuration of lights that were captured on a home video camera. A dangerous rollover maneuver, putting the “aircraft” upside down at the conclusion of the roll, would seem to preclude this object being a stealth flight over populated areas.
The Navy admitted it has a lot more footage of UFOs — but won't share them anytime soon.
The U.S. Navy confirmed in a letter that the agency has unreleased footage of UFOs, which have been deemed national security secrets.
(Image credit: Getty/ Bettmann)
The U.S. Navy holds unseen videos of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) — or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), as the Department of Defense (DOD) prefers to call them — but will not release the footage publicly because it would "harm national security," a Navy spokesperson wroteWednesday (Sept. 7).
The admission came in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the government transparency site The Black Vault, which has previously shared thousands of pages of UFO-related documents received via FOIA requests to the CIA and other government agencies. The Black Vault filed the FOIA request to the U.S. Navy in April 2020 — just one day after the Navy declassified three now-infamous videos shot by Navy pilots showing high-tech aircraft moving in seemingly impossible ways. The Black Vault requested that the Navy now turn over any and all other videos related to UAP.
More than two years later, the government responded with a letter that both confirmed that more UAP videos exist and denied the request to turn them over due to national security concerns.
"The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities," Gregory Cason, deputy director of the Navy's FOIA office, wrote in a response letter. "No portions of the videos can be segregated for release."
Cason added that the Navy was able to declassify the three UAP videos released in April 2020 only because the videos had been previously leaked to the media and had already been "discussed extensively in the public domain." The Navy deemed it possible to officially release the footage "without further damage to national security," Cason wrote.
Interestingly, in its response to The Black Vault's request, the Navy did not make any attempts to conceal the existence of additional UAP videos. There are clearly more videos of inexplicable UFO encounters in the Navy's archives, but how many and what they depict will have to remain a mystery for now.
It's clear, however, that the U.S. military takes the potential threat of UAP very seriously. In May 2022, the DOD held its first public hearing on UFOs since the 1960s. The hearing primarily discussed a June 2021 Pentagon report that revealed U.S. Navy pilots had reported 144 UAP sightings since 2004. More recently, the DOD announced that it will receive federal funding to open a new office focused exclusively on managing reports of UFO sightings by the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force.
Originally published on Live Science.
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Big Difference Between Neanderthal and Modern Human Brains Discovered
Big Difference Between Neanderthal and Modern Human Brains Discovered
Neanderthals, a subspecies of archaic humans who split from modern humans sometime between 300,000 and 80,000 years ago, have been the subject of a new study. This study has revealed the presence of a single amino acid difference possessed by modern humans that dramatically increased the number of brain cells created, leading to a split in development and providing a cognitive edge for Homo sapiens over their Neanderthal cousins. This is being claimed as the first physical proof modern humans were smarter than Neanderthals.
How Did Modern Human Brains Outcompete Their Older Cousins?
For a long time, scientists and historians have been perplexed about the question – what makes modern humans unique? What sets them apart from other cousins on the evolutionary spectrum ? The study, published in Science, shows an increase in brain size and subsequent neuron production during brain development, even though Neanderthals and modern humans had brains of a roughly similar size.
“One concrete fact is that wherever Homo sapiens went, they would basically out-compete other species there. It’s a bit weird,” said Professor Laurent Nguyen, of the University of Liège, who was not involved in the latest research. “These guys [Neanderthals] were in Europe a long time before us and would have been adapted to their environment, including pathogens. The big question is why we would be able to out-compete them,” he said, quoted in a Guardian report.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) focused on a variation that was identified in Homo sapiens brains. This variation, occurring in our neocortex, boosts the brain progenitor cell counts, which implies that as a species, we made more neurons during the development process, compared to the Neanderthals during theirs, around 130,000 to 40,000 years ago.
“Making more neurons sets the basis for higher cognitive function ,” said Wieland Huttner, who led the work at the Max-Planck-Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. “We think this is the first compelling evidence that modern humans were cognitively better than Neanderthals.”
Detailed wax figure of Neanderthal prehistoric caveman. Faster development of modern human brains eventually helped Homo sapiens out-compete Neanderthals
Comparing Modern Human Brains vs. Neanderthal Brains
For the study, the scientists inserted a Neanderthal brain gene into mice, ferrets, and blobs of lab-grown tissue called organoids. Organoids are tiny, self-organized three-dimensional tissue cultures derived from stem cells, sometimes called ‘mini brain structures’, reports Nature.
They focused on the gene TKTL1 (protein transketolase-like 1), which is heavily involved in the neuronal production in a developing brain. The Neanderthal version of this same gene differs by one letter from the modern human version. In modern humans, TKTL1 contains an arginine at the sequence position, whereas in the Neanderthals, it is the related amino acid lysine.
"We found that with the Neanderthal-type of amino acid in TKTL1, fewer basal radial glial cells were produced than with the modern human-type and, as a consequence, also fewer neurons. This shows us that even though we do not know how many neurons the Neanderthal brain had, we can assume that modern humans have more neurons in the frontal lobe of the brain, where TKTL1 activity is highest, than Neanderthals,” concluded Anneline Pison, first author of the study.
From these experiments, it was determined that the Neanderthal version of the gene created neurons slowly during the brain’s cortex development. This slower pace could be a huge factor that explains the superior cognitive abilities of modern humans. It wouldn’t be farfetched to say that it was all in the mind!
Therefore, if the production of neurons in the neocortex is greater during fetal development, it can be speculated that modern humans cognitive abilities associated with the frontal lobe were promoted, leading to better tools, weaponry, language, art, symbolism, and ultimately, smarter brains. Moving forward, Pinson hopes to understand the mechanisms through which TKTKL1 drives the birth of brain cells.
Earth’s crust grew faster when our planet passed through the Milky Way’s spiral arms, study suggests
Earth’s crust grew faster when our planet passed through the Milky Way’s spiral arms, study suggests
Galactic voyage Artist’s impression of the Milky Way showing its spiral arms. (Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESO/R Hurt)
The rate at which Earth’s continental crust builds up goes through cycles, peaking around every 200 million years when the solar system travels through one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms. That is the conclusion of an international team of researchers, who argue that crustal production is boosted when more high-energy comets crash into the Earth. They say that these comets are dislodged from the Oort cloud by the influence of regions of space with dense interstellar clouds.
“As geologists, we normally think about processes internal to the Earth being really important for how our planet has evolved,” says team member and isotope geologist Chris Kirkland of Australia’s Curtin University. “But we can also think about the much larger scale and look at extraterrestrial processes and where we fit in the galactic environment.”
So far, Earth is the only planet that we know has continents and active plate tectonics. These features have helped make Earth hospitable to life because they influence the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere.
Ancient crust
In their study, Kirkland and colleagues analysed zircon crystals deposited in the North American craton in Greenland and the Pilbara craton in western Australia — two regions that preserve some of Earth’s oldest continental crust, which dates to the Archean Eon.
By measuring the decay of uranium within the crystals, the team established a timeline for the formation of the cratons, spanning from around 2.8–3.8 billion years ago. They also looked at hafnium isotopes, which allowed them to identify times of juvenile magma influx associated with crust production. Analysis revealed a longer period, 200-million-year-long oscillation in the data, which correlates with Earth’s motion through the Milky Way. This finding is also mirrored in oxygen isotope data.
More specifically, they found that the observed rate of crustal production tracks the solar system repeatedly passing into the Milky Way’s spiral arms. “Our solar system and the four spiral arms of the Milky Way are both spinning around the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s centre, yet they are moving at different speeds. The spiral arms orbit at 210 km/s, while the Sun is speeding along at 240 km/s, meaning our solar system is surfing into and out of the galaxy’s arms,” the researchers.
Stellar traffic jam
“You can think of the spiral arms as dense regions that slow the passage of stars, much like a traffic jam, which only clears further down the road,” they said, adding: “This model results in approximately 200 million years between each entry our solar system makes into a spiral arm of the galaxy.”
Every time the solar system makes one of these entries, Kirkland and his team propose that interactions occur between the galaxy’s relatively dense spiral arms and the Oort cloud of icy planetesimals that surrounds the solar system. This increases the rate at which comets are ejected from the Oort cloud, with some of these icy bodies ending up hurtling towards Earth. These comets strike the Earth with considerably more energy than the more frequent meteorites that come from the asteroid belt.
Kirkland points out that this higher energy is important because it results in greater melting of the crust upon impact. “When it hits, it causes larger amounts of decompression melting, creating a larger uplift of material, creating a larger crustal seat.”
Spherule beds
Further evidence linking periods of increased crustal generation with higher rates of comet impacts come in the form of spherule beds. These are deposits containing small spheres formed either directly from molten impact ejecta or rained out from rock and vapour plumes in the wake of an impact event. The researchers note that the known ages of spherule beds around the globe also correspond with the solar system’s movement into the Milky Way’s spiral arms around 3.25–3.45 billion years ago. The dating of additional spherule deposits in the future could provide more evidence to support the hypothesis.
The team hopes that its findings will motivate further investigation of how forces from outside the solar system have shaped the planet on which we live. “It’s very hard to prove these things,” says team member and astrophysicist Phil Sutton of the UK’s University of Lincoln. He adds, “We want to make that link and start the conversation to look at geological processes beyond the Earth, beyond the solar system, and what might drive those. We didn’t just form in isolation.”
James Webbtelescoop maakt “uitzonderlijk gedetailleerde" foto die toont waar sterren geboren worden
De James Webbtelescoop pakt alweer uit met een indrukwekkende foto. Dit keer wordt de Orionnevel - een enorme gas- en stofwolk in het sterrenbeeld Orion - in de schijnwerpers gezet. De uitzonderlijk gedetailleerde foto gunt ons zelfs een blik achter de schermen van de kraamkliniek voor piepjonge sterren (en planeten).
Het is amper een week geleden dat NASA nog een nieuw beeld van de James Webbtelescoop deelde. Toen ging het om de Tarantulanevel met duizenden “nooit eerder waargenomen sterren”, dit keer gaat het om de Orionnevel, een plaats waar sterren geboren worden. “Dankzij deze adembenemende beelden kunnen we weer iets beter begrijpen hoe massieve sterren de gas- en stofwolken transformeren waarin ze ontstaan”, aldus astrofysicus Eva Peeters van Western University (Canada).
“We zijn reeds in 2017 met dit project gestart en wachten dus al meer dan vijf jaar op deze gegevens”, zegt Peeters nog. Het geduld van de astronomen werd misschien op de proef gesteld, maar evenzeer beloond met de nieuwe beelden: “Deze tonen ons hoe grote sterren precies ontstaan. Het is verbazingwekkend hoe scherp en gedetailleerd de beelden zijn.”
Wat we dan precies moeten zien op de foto? De astronomen duidden enkele jonge sterren aan met daarrond enkele gas- en stofwolken. “We zien als het ware een kraamkamer voor jonge sterren. Daarnaast is er ook sprake van enkele protosterren (sterren die nog niet geboren zijn, red.).”
Over James Webb
De James Webb ruimtetelescoop is de opvolger van de Hubble. Het is onze grootste en geavanceerde ruimtetelescoop ooit. Zeker 10.000 mensen hebben aan dit project dat 20 jaar duurde meegewerkt. Met de James Webb telescoop kunnen we elke fase van ons universum bestuderen, ook de geboorte van de eerste sterren zo’n 13,5 miljard jaar geleden.
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Massive Stars don’t Always Grow Their own Planets. Sometimes They Steal Them
Massive Stars don’t Always Grow Their own Planets. Sometimes They Steal Them
Recently astronomers have discovered Jupiter-sized planets orbiting at extremely large distances from giant stars. How can these stars end up with such big planets at such extreme orbits? A team of researchers has proposed that the answer is that the stars steal those planets from their neighbors.
Giant stars have a lot of trouble forming very massive planets. Even though there’s a lot of material in their protoplanetary disks that is more than happy to agglomerate to form heavy planets, the stars themselves are not very good at nurturing those newborn planets. The stars give off such intense amounts of UV radiation that they can boil away all the hydrogen and helium throughout their systems, preventing planets from getting to the size of Jupiter or larger.
And yet despite that very clear line of thinking, astronomers with the BEAST (B-star Exoplanet Abundance STudy) collaboration at the University of Sheffield have identified exactly that scenario: Jupiter-size planets orbiting giant stars. More intriguingly, these planets orbit hundreds of times further away from their stars than the Earth does from the Sun.
As Dr. Richard Parker, a Lecturer in Astrophysics in the University of Sheffield’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, explained, “The BEAST collaboration has discovered at least two super-Jovian planets orbiting massive stars. Whilst planets can form around massive stars, it is hard to envisage gas giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn being able to form in such hostile environments, where radiation from the stars can evaporate the planets before they fully form.”
One way to explain this discrepancy is if those planets didn’t form with the stars that they currently orbit, as researchers at the University of Sheffield recently found.
Dr Emma Daffern-Powell, co-author of the study from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, explained,“Our previous research has shown that in stellar nurseries stars can steal planets from other stars, or capture what we call ‘free-floating’ planets. We know that massive stars have more influence in these nurseries than Sun-like stars, and we found that these massive stars can capture or steal planets – which we call ‘BEASTies’.”
Stars tend to form in clusters, all sharing the same parent gas cloud which fragments into dozens or even hundreds of stars at once. With their larger gravity, the massive stars are perfectly capable of ripping planets away from their neighboring systems and capturing them into orbits of their own.
“Essentially, this is a planetary heist. We used computer simulations to show that the theft or capture of these BEASTies occurs on average once in the first 10 million years of the evolution of a star-forming region,” said Daffern-Powell.
The researchers studied extensive simulations and found that this was indeed a plausible scenario. We still don’t know how common planetary theft is throughout the galaxy, or if it’s just confined to this very special case. Further detective work is definitely needed.
Navy admits it has more UFO videos but they don't want to share them
Navy admits it has more UFO videos but they don't want to share them
On 17 January 2020 we already wrote about the fact that the US Navy has warned that the release of certain "TOP SECRET" UFO files requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) could “gravely damage” US national security with as a consequence that DoD won't release certain "top secret" UFO files.
Now more than 2 and a half years later, the UFO cover-up still goes on as the U.S. Navy still holds unseen videos of UFOs also called UAPs, but Department of Defense (DOD) will not release the footage publicly because it would "harm national security," a Navy spokesperson wrote on September 7, 2022 reports Livescience.
The admission came in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the government transparency site The Black Vault.
Gregory Cason, deputy director of the Navy's FOIA office, wrote in a response letter. "No portions of the videos can be segregated for release."
Cason added that the Navy was able to declassify the three UAP videos released in April 2020 only because the videos had been previously leaked to the media and had already been "discussed extensively in the public domain."
Since it is clear that there are more videos of UFO encounters in the Navy's archives, the Black Vault has filed an appeal seeking the release of the classified UFO videos.
This man has just reported that something massive just opened up above Missouri. Today, we take a look at what opened up above Missouri.
Someone just reported that they noticed something strange in the sky, saying this happened above Ohio, and that a huge hole opened up.
Mrs Wright posted the photograph to social media, and said that it was her husband that first spotted it. She said the following: “My husband called me out to see this.
LA UFO Sighting “I saw a bright light that remained stationary for at least 5 minutes before slowly”
LA UFO Sighting “I saw a bright light that remained stationary for at least 5 minutes before slowly”
This bright UFO was seen and recorded in the sky above Las Vegas, Nevada.
Witness report:
It was about 4:45am when I left my apartment to walk to the gym. I noticed an unusually bright light in the north sky. It was either directly above Nellis AFB or very close to it. The light would remain stationary for about 5 minutes while getting brighter at times. There was no sound that I could hear. I took my phone out and recorded 30 seconds of the object remaining stationary. When I stopped recording the object flashed small lights 2-3 times and slowly began moving west. When I viewed the video I could notice the object pulsating.
Jacques Vallee on UFO materials, UFO crashes, and a lifetime of Investigation
Jacques Vallee on UFO materials, UFO crashes, and a lifetime of Investigation
Vallée is an Internet pioneer, computer scientist, venture capitalist, author, UFO researcher, and astronomer. He is regarded as one the most respected and senior scientific investigators on UFOs, having written over two dozen books on the topic. He has investigated reports of UFOs all over the world and has worked on related U.S. and French government projects. As a computer scientist, he co-developed the first computer-based detailed map of Mars for NASA. He also served as a close associate of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the top scientific consultant on UFOs under Project Blue Book.
He also worked as a member of the scientific advisory board of Bigelow Aerospace and conducted private research for their partners, which included the Pentagon’s highly controversial AATIP program. Today, Vallée will discuss the new edition of his book, Trinity: The Best Kept Secret, which explores a UFO crash at the Trinity Atomic Testing site, prior to the Roswell UFO crash of 1947. He will also discuss his latest work analyzing UFO materials and publishing scientifically reviewed papers on these materials. Vallée will share some of his most vivid memories throughout the years of investigating different cases and how they impacted his personal life. It is a powerful and emotional interview that explores the historical perspective of the world during certain UFO events, and why we must look back in order to move forward.
A theoretical basis for the existence of wormholes, which are tubes that link two distinct locations in space-time, has been created by physicists at the University of Cambridge. In the case that a piece of data or a tangible item could traverse the wormhole, time travel and immediate communication over vast distances may become feasible.
"But there's a problem: Einstein's wormholes are extremely unsteady, and they don't stay open long enough for something to pass over."
Scientists came to the conclusion that Casimir energy, a sort of negative energy, may keep wormholes open in 1988.
The theoretical answer developed at Cambridge has to do with quantum energy's characteristics, which show that even vacuums are teeming with energy waves.
“Does this mean we have the technology for building a wormhole?” asks Matt Visser at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. “The answer is still no.” Still, he is intrigued by Butcher’s work. “From a physics perspective, it may revitalise interest in wormholes.”
If you picture two metal plates in a vacuum, certain waves of energy would be disproportionately large and be able to fit between the plates, creating a negative energy field in the space-time between the plates.
"Under the right circumstances, could the tube-like shape of the wormhole itself generate Casimir energy? Calculations show that if the wormhole's throat is orders of magnitude longer then the width of its mouth, it does indeed create Casimir energy at its center."
A theoretical basis for the existence of wormholes, which are tubes that connect two distinct sites in space-time, has been identified by physicists at the University of Cambridge. Time travel and quick communication across great distances might be possible if data or a physical object could pass through the wormhole.
However, there is a drawback: Einstein's wormholes are famously erratic and don't remain open for long enough for anything to pass through. Casimir energy, a kind of negative energy, was found to have the ability to maintain wormholes open by physicists in 1988.
What’s the Big Idea?
Built on the effects of quantum energy, which informs us that even vacuums are seething with energy waves, Cambridge's theoretical answer is based on this idea. A wave of energy that is too large to fit between two metal plates in a vacuum will produce negative energy in the space-time between the plates. To see this, picture two metal plates in a vacuum.
Could Casimir energy be produced by the wormhole's tube-like shape under the correct conditions? According to calculations, wormholes do actually produce Casimir energy at their centers if their throats are orders of magnitude wider than their mouths.
There are approx. 200 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way. Now look at this galaxy. It has 200 to 300 billion stars. Now….there are billions of galaxies! With billions of stars and that is just what we can observe with the current technology. A billion billion is a Quintillion and there is about 400 billion x a quintillion stars in the known universe. Something to the power of 10 to the 24th. It blows my mind .....What gets me isn't just the number of stars, and the enormous scale and size and distance. It's the amount of time. That each galaxy is 31 million light years away. The amount of time it took for the light from that picture to reach us, entire species could evolve on planets and develop into a space faring galactic civilization; empires could rise and fall, then fade into dust, and be lost in the sands of time, without us ever knowing. And that's just the 31 million years it took for that light, which is a drop in the bucket of time that this galaxy has had to create life over many many billions of years.
This stunning Hubble image of M104, also known as the Sombrero galaxy, is one of the largest mosaics ever assembled from Hubble observations. The hallmark of the nearly edge-on galaxy is a brilliant, white, bulbous core encircled by thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. This dust lane is the site of star formation in the galaxy. The center of M104 is thought to be home to a massive black hole.
Hubble easily resolves the Sombrero galaxy’s rich system of globular clusters, estimated to be nearly 2,000 in number — 10 times more than the number of globular clusters in our Milky Way galaxy. The ages of the clusters are similar to those in the Milky Way, ranging from 10-13 billion years old. Embedded in the bright core of M104 is a smaller disk (not visible in the image), which is tilted relative to the large disk. X-ray emission suggests that there is material falling into the compact core, where a one-billion-solar-mass black hole resides.
With an apparent magnitude of 8, the Sombrero galaxy is beyond the limit of naked-eye visibility but can be spotted through small telescopes most easily during May. M104 is located 28 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, and with a mass equal to 800 billion suns, it is one of the most massive objects in the Virgo galaxy cluster.
M104 was discovered in 1781 by the French astronomer and comet hunter Pierre Méchain, one of Charles Messier’s colleagues.
For more information about Hubble’s observation of M104, see:
Scientists Successfully Sent A Particle Back in Time Using A Quantum Computer
Scientists Successfully Sent A Particle Back in Time Using A Quantum Computer
Time travel was fiction before Einstein, but his calculations took us into the quantum world and we were introduced to a more complex picture of time. Einstein’s equations permitted time travel into the past, as Kurt Gödel discovered. The issue? None of the hypothesized time travel systems were ever physically feasible.
So, before sending a particle back through time, Argonne National Laboratory, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and ETH Zurich scientists wondered, “Why stick to physical grounds?
Many physics laws treat the future and the past as continuous. A closed system progresses from order to disorder according to the second rule of thermodynamics (or entropy). If you scramble an egg to produce an omelet, you’ve added a lot of chaos to the closed system that was the egg.
The arrow of time is an essential consequence of the second law. A process that develops entropy, like whisking an egg, is irreversible. An omelet won’t turn back into an egg, and billiard balls won’t spontaneously reassemble a triangle. Entropy, like an arrow, goes in one direction, and we see it as time.
The second rule of thermodynamics holds us captive, but an international team of scientists sought to test it in the quantum world. Since nature cannot do such a test, scientists utilized an IBM quantum computer.
Ordinary computers, such as the one you’re reading this on, work with bits of data. A bit is either a 1 or a 0. A qubit is a fundamental unit of information used by quantum computers. A qubit may be both a 1 and a 0, allowing the system to process data considerably quicker.
The researchers used qubits to simulate subatomic particles in a four-step experiment. They entangled the qubits first, such that whatever occurred to one affected the others. Then they utilized microwave radio pulses to evolve the quantum computer’s initial order into a more sophisticated state.
A specific algorithm changes the quantum computer to bring order out of chaos. They’re zapped by another microwave pulse, but this time they go back to their old selves. That is, they are de-aged by a millionth of a second.
Argonne National Laboratory researcher Valerii M. Vinokur compares it to pushing against a pond’s waves to restore them to their source.
Success was not guaranteed since quantum mechanics is about probability. In a two-qubit quantum computer, however, the algorithm accomplished a time leap 85 percent of the time. With three qubits, the success rate decreased to around 50%, which the scientists blamed on flaws in current quantum computers.
The results are exciting but don’t go buying flux capacitors just yet. This experiment also illustrates that manipulating even a simulated particle in time is difficult. Our ability to produce such an external force to influence even one quantum wave is limited.
To time-reverse even ONE quantum particle is impossible for nature alone, says research author Vinokur. “The system comprising two particles is even more irreversible, let alone the eggs — comprising billions of particles — we break to prepare an omelette.”
A press release from the Department of Energy notes that the “timeline required for [an external force] to spontaneously appear and properly manipulate the quantum waves” to appear in nature and unscramble an egg “would extend longer than that of the universe itself.” In other words, this tech specifically binds to quantum computation.
But the study isn’t just a high-tech exercise. While the approach won’t help us build real-world time machines, it will improve quantum computation.
Einstein’s equations don’t prohibit time travel, but they make it a difficult task, as Kurt Gödel demonstrated.
Bob Lazar is the most important entity in exposing the alleged secret activities related to extraterrestrials and UFOs happening at Area-51. He is widely recognized as the Area-51 whistle-blower who revealed aliens and the government worked together on secret bases in 1989. Thirty years ago, he claimed to have worked as an engineer near Area-51 at a hangar called S-4. There, as he claims, UFOs with tiny alien seats were made out of a material called Element 115.
Note: Bob Lazar’s Element 115 is not “Moscovium,” an element that was first synthesized in 2003 and added to the Periodic Table in 2015.
The story of Element 115 gets weirder when Bob claimed that the FBI raided his business. His followers found this to be very suspicious, and have theorized that the FBI was attempting to recover samples of Element 115 that Lazar took from Area-51.
According toMotherboard, the FBI did actually raid Bob’s United Nuclear Scientific Equipment and Supplies, which sells radioactive ore and isotopes, X-Ray components, electrical items, high-powered magnets, lab equipment, jet engines, and UFO T-shirts.
This claim was revealed in Jeremy Corbell’s documentary “Bob Lazar: Area 51 and Flying Saucers.” Lazar and the documentary frame the raid as an attempt by the U.S. government to seize alien fuel that Lazar allegedly stole from Area-51. But the documents obtained by Motherboard had nothing to do with Element 115.
Corbell told Express.co.uk: “Lazar did have a stabilized version of Element 115 in his possession at one time. He did tests on it – and filmed the element bending light due to its unique gravitational characteristics. A handful of witnesses observed these tests – including investigative reporter, George Knapp. There is footage of one of these tests in my film. Lazar was able to acquire some of the element when it was being machined at Area 51.”
Someone can still question the credibility of Bob Lazar, but there are many authentic people to confirm his credibility. George Knapp stated that he had spoken with former employees who worked with Bob and verified that he was a physicist, however, these claims were made informally and off the record. Knapp said that those employees were friends of Lazar’s and only specifically named Joe Vaninetti as being one who confirmed it. Vaninetti had a significant interest in UFOs and was involved in UFO research with Bob, both before and after Bob claimed to have worked at S-4. (Click here to read more about Lazar’s credibility)
Element 115: An Alien Fuel?
According to Bob, this alien artifact is a highly radioactive element that allows alien spacecraft to traverse the cosmos, impervious to gravity’s effects. Lazar has been claiming for years that he worked on the material at Area-51 and that it can be used to power spacecraft.
“It’s a superheavy element,”Lazar once told Larry King. “It’s a unique element. When it’s exposed to radiation, it produces its own gravitational field—its own antigravitational field, and it’s what’s used to lift and propel the craft.” The UFO fuel is stable and did not decay, according to Lazar. He said that the fuel creates gravity waves to propel the UFO.
In his initial TV interviews (check the video below) with George Knapp back in 1989, Bob first discussed Element 115 and how it was used in the propulsion system of the alien craft hidden at the S-4 facility. He never denied or confirmed if aliens had given them Element 115 but he told that they had 500 pounds (227 kg) for reverse engineering purposes.
In 2014, Bob did another interview with Knapp where he discussed Element 115 and how it is created both synthetically and naturally through a supernova, which is the cataclysmic explosion of a star.
Bob Lazar further explained in his interviews that bombarding Element 115 with protons leads to it creating Element 116 (Livermorium), which immediately decays and produces antimatter. The antimatter collides with normal particles creating a massive energy burst, which can be used for propulsion. It is quite likely Element 115 could also be the famed exotic matter that is needed to create traversable wormholes that physicists such as Drs. Kip Thorne and Carl Sagan have speculated, and was the subject of a recently leaked Defense Intelligence Reference Document titled “Traversable Wormholes, Stargates, and Negative Energy.”
In September 2020, Corbell shared a photo of Lazar holding Aerogel that was used to package Element 115 for transport. He said that he could not include this part in his Netflix documentary but promised to publish the clip on his YouTube channel, discussing Element 115 and how he observed it functioning (Editor’s note: I searched throughout Corbell’s channel but could not find a clip explaining Element 115).
This image features Bob Lazar and the Aerogel that was used to package the ELEMENT 115 for transport. There has been a lot of confusion about this – and about the function of ELEMENT 115 in alien spacecraft. And this is a core aspect of what Bob Lazar has told you.
“It’s reported that a distortion occurs – a gravitational distortion. This is highlighted by how these vehicles appear to negate the effects of inertia. You’ve heard it thousands of times from credible witnesses regarding their UFO encounters… ‘It shot off at an IMPOSSIBLE speed.’ Cmdr. Fravor & Cmdr. Select Underwood used those exact words to me when describing their encounters with the TIC TAC UFO. The craft displayed instantaneous acceleration – and was immediately gone from both sight and radar. Even the Princeton with it’s SPY-1 radar system confirmed this in real-time.
-So what’s up with these transmedium machines – these UFOs that fly with impunity in our airspace? Maybe ELEMENT 115 can give us a glimpse into the UFO presence on Planet Earth,” Corbell wrote.
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A UFO Wave in Canada and a Mysterious Alien Copper Plate
A UFO Wave in Canada and a Mysterious Alien Copper Plate
The UFO phenomenon often seems to happen in waves. Every once in a while a particular place will seem to draw these strange anomalies to it for reasons we can’t possibly comprehend. On occasion, some of these spates of UFO sightings will take a sharp turn into the truly bizarre, and one of these was a case from Canada that ended with a piece of physical evidence in the form of a copper disk apparently left behind by aliens, and which has never been deciphered.
In 1967, the city of Edmonton, in the Canadian province of Alberta, would experience a series of very strange events. It seems to have begun in the early morning hours of May 8, 1967, when a 14-year-old boy by the name of Ricky Banyard saw “a spaceship” in the sky as he walked through the Mount Pleasant Cemetery on his way home at around 2 a.m. It was described as being spherical in shape, with red and green lights and top and bottom parts that were spinning.
From the bottom of the craft emanated a beam of bright white light that seemed to be scouting the ground below like a searchlight. The boy went to get his friend, Glenn Coates, and they both watched as it made its way towards some trees in the cemetery. They decided to get some binoculars and hide behind a tree nearby, where they were able to get a close look at the object, and Banyard would explain what they saw:
It was 200 to 300 feet in the air and made a muffled whistling noise as it hovered. A white ribbon of light came from the bottom of it and spread out in a rectangular shape about 15 centimeters above the ground. The ground was white, as though white hot under it. When I stepped out from the trees for a better look, the light disappeared then there was kind of a screaming noise like a jet starting up. All the lights in the ship went out and there were about seven or eight bangs and it took off.
A UFO Wave in Canada and a Mysterious Alien Copper Plate 1
When they inspected the area where the light had hit the ground, they found some rectangular-shaped black streaks on the gravel road that wound through the cemetery. Banyard would make a sketch of the UFO, and when word got out about what he had seen there were droves of curiosity coming to the cemetery every night hoping to get a glimpse of the mysterious object. Two days after Banyard’s experience, a middle-aged couple living nearby also saw what they described as a spherical craft with red and blue flashing lights on its edges and a beam shooting down from beneath it.
Ten days after that, a 29-year-old school janitor by the name of Jack Strangman saw a “whitish, oval-shaped” object lurking over the cemetery, and at around the same time a “really bright, egg-shaped” craft with two pulsing red lights at each end was seen streaking away from the cemetery and into the night by a witness named Norman Fibke. This series of sightings stirred up a lot of media coverage and talk at the time, and strange lights would be seen in the skies of Edmonton throughout the summer, but it would not be until November of that year that the strangest case of all would emerge.
On November 4th, 1967, an Italian immigrant in the area known only as “L.R.” walked back to his home after dinner with friends at around 11:30 p.m. and then sat in his room having a cigarette and relaxing, when he looked out through the window and noticed an extremely bright red light streaking through the sky over the Saskatchewan River near the Riverside Municipal Golf Course. He watched as it took a trajectory towards the ground and then stopped to hover in the sky. Although he had at first thought it was a plane, he could now see that it was not, and his curiosity caused him to go to the window for a closer look. He could see that the object was round in shape, and had a very bright red, pulsating light, almost blinding in its intensity.
A UFO Wave in Canada and a Mysterious Alien Copper Plate 2
As he watched the strange object hover, its fierce red light suddenly blinked out, and it was as if the whole craft had vanished, and shortly after this, an ethereal blue ring appeared in the air, which then descended towards the ground to seemingly evaporate. Soon after, another blue ring did the same, then another, and after this, the red light blazed on once again and a smaller light ejected from the bottom of the craft to go flying towards the ground.
This smaller object seemed to be a silver sphere with a slight violet glow, and as the larger craft remained stationary it flew around over the golf course, creating a buzzing noise as it did so, finally landing on the ground to seemingly vanish. After a few minutes the light went on again and this smaller object flew up towards the larger one to disappear within it. After this, the larger object became brighter, its red light pulsating furiously before the craft shot off into the distance.
The next day, L.R. went out to take a look at the area where he had seen the strange light show the night before. He made his way out over the golf course and after some time of looking around discovered where he surmised the smaller craft had landed. It was a circular patch of flattened grass about 16 feet wide, and off to the side were some anomalous holes in the ground. As he surveyed the area some more, something glinting in the grass nearby caught his eye, and when he went to see what it was he found lying there a plate made of what looked like copper, measuring approximately 17.3 cm (6.8 inches) wide by 12.5 cm (4.9 inches) high.
Upon its surface were what appeared to be some sort of hieroglyphic-like drawings and symbols, their meaning inscrutable. Mesmerized by what he was seeing, L.R. picked up the plate to find that it was extraordinarily thin, only about 1 mm (0.04 inches) thick, and after studying the strange pictographs on its surface he took it home with him. At this time, he was convinced that this plate had come from one of the crafts he had seen, so he was very careful not to damage it as he had the impression that it was quite fragile.
A UFO Wave in Canada and a Mysterious Alien Copper Plate 3
Back at his home, L.R. wondered what he should do next and whether he should show the mysterious plate to someone, but in the end he decided that no one would believe him and so he held onto it and kept it a secret for years. When he went back to Italy six years later, he brought the strange artifact along with him, and somehow word got out about it in an Italian magazine on unsolved mysteries called Il Giornale dei Misteri. This captured the attention of UFO researcher
Daniela Giordano, who talked personally with L.R. and has said of their correspondence:
At that time I was living in Rome and after some telephone calls to the magazine, I obtained the telephone numbers of L.R. who was living in Southern Italy, near Naples. Thus, I got in telephone contact with him. He confirmed the story and told me he was not interested in analyzing the plate, in spite of my insistence. It was just like a lucky mascot for him, stored in his strongbox, and all this interest in his story was starting to disturb him. Moreover, he didn’t have much interest in UFOs and related matters. So, after this conversation, I proposed to send a friend of mine, living closer to his town, with the task of taking a photo of this strange plate, nothing more.
He agreed, and I sent my friend to see him. Since this, I have had no further contact with him, but I have been working in my free time to try to understand this puzzling plate. As far as I know, no other researchers have ever studied or done research on this strange object.
The photo that Giordano managed to get of the plate is the only known photographic evidence of the mysterious object. Giordano would manage to track L.R. down again years later and hear that he had lost the plate when the police had stopped him one day on his way to work and confiscated his car and the bag he always carried it around after his vehicle had been hit by a mysterious gunshot.
A week later he got his car back, but not the plate, and he would never see it again. Where it went is anyone’s guess, and this means the only sign that it ever existed at all are the testimonies of L.R. and Giordano and the photograph. You can see the photo here. It is all a truly bizarre case tied in with other sightings from the same area, and we are left to wonder just what was going on here. Was this something dropped or intentionally left behind? Was it just a hoax? If it was real, then where did it go and what did it say? We will probably never know.
ONE OF THE first images in the opening episode of the new History Channel show “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation” is a 2017 headline from the New York Times projected on a flickering screen: “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious UFO Program.”
It’s the story that launched Luis Elizondo into the public eye, the article that “shocked the world,” the narrator of “Unidentified” declares, before continuing, “A clandestine U.S. government program had been investigating UFOs. For eight years, the secret program was run by this man, Lue Elizondo.” The camera then pans to a visual of the former military intelligence case officer in a darkened house peering out warily through half-drawn window shades.
It’s an odd scene. Is Elizondo on the lookout for aliens or a bad guy from his old spook life? Either way, the History Channel show, which premiered on Friday and is being promoted as “groundbreaking nonfiction,” goes on to follow Elizondo as he re-investigates strange UFO incidents he says he learned of when he was at the Pentagon running the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, known as AATIP. It’s as if Agent Mulder had handed off his X-Files to another paranoid government agent, this one with a pug face and billy-goat beard. In the screener I saw for “Unidentified,” the narrator says that Elizondo quit the Pentagon because he was “frustrated by what he says was a cover-up.”
Whatever the truth about otherworldly UFOs (cue a collective eye-roll from scientists), there is one crucial detail missing from “Unidentified,” as well as from all the many stories that have quoted Elizondo since he outed himself nearly two years ago to a wide-eyed news media: There is no discernible evidence that he ever worked for a government UFO program, much less led one.
Yes, AATIP existed, and it “did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena,” Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood told me. However, he added: “Mr. Elizondo had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program while he worked in OUSDI [the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence], up until the time he resigned effective 10/4/2017.”
That directly contradicts an email sent by a spokesperson for To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, a UFO research and entertainment company that Elizondo joined after he left the Defense Department.
There is no discernible evidence that Luis Elizondo ever worked for a government UFO program, much less led one.
The email was sent over a year ago by Kari DeLonge, a public relations representative for To the Stars, to John Greenewald, a UFO researcher who runs an online archive of Freedom of Information Act-obtained government documents on a website called the Black Vault. At the time, Greenewald had become frustrated at the lack of tangible information about AATIP and Elizondo’s role; additionally, Elizondo had spurned Greenewald’s interview requests.
Greenewald told me that he had asked DeLonge specifically where Elizondo worked within the Department of Defense when he ran AATIP.
“Hi John – Thanks for reaching out,” DeLonge wrote. “The program was initially run out of [the Defense Intelligence Agency] but when Lue took it over in 2010 as Director, he ran it out of the Office for the Secretary of Defense (OSD) under the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (USDI). Hope that clarifies.”
I tried contacting Elizondo multiple times via email and his cellphone. He has not responded. It’s not as if he is on retreat somewhere; I noticed that in the run-up to his star turn on the new History Channel show, he has been speaking to everyone from the New York Times to UFO media personalities and military bloggers.
Indeed, judging by all the UFO stories lighting up the internet this week, the self-described “career spy” is having another big moment in the media spotlight. The timing is either an auspicious coincidence or the “flying saucers are here” brigade’s well-oiled PR machine is working overtime.
ANOTHER IMPORTANT DETAIL being glossed over or entirely left out of the breathless coverage surrounding the release of “Unidentified” is the relationship between its executive producer, Tom DeLonge, Elizondo, and other former Pentagon officials and members of the intelligence community who appear in the show.
DeLonge, a musician of Blink-182 fame and longtime UFO enthusiast, is the co-founder and interim CEO of To the Stars, the company Elizondo joined in October 2017, several days after he resigned from the Department of Defense. Since the company’s inception, certain members of its “elite team,” including Elizondo, have appeared frequently in the news media.
This week is a prime example. Another former Pentagon official with a prominent role in “Unidentified” appeared several days ago on “Fox & Friends.”
“We know that UFOs exist,” Chris Mellon, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, pronounced on the show. “This is no longer an issue. The issue is why are they here? Where are they coming from? And what is the technology behind these devices that we are observing?”
Mellon, like Elizondo, works for To the Stars (his title, according to the company’s website, is national security affairs adviser). “Fox & Friends” neglected to mention this connection, along with the fact that the History Channel show was made by the company Elizondo and Mellon work for.
I’m not surprised. By now, Elizondo and Mellon have come to rely on a largely passive and credulous press to generate sensational UFO headlines.
The Pentagon on April 23, 2015.
Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
AMID THE MOUNTAINof media coverage of Elizondo in the last two years, I have found only one story that provides official confirmation that he headed the government UFO program known as AATIP.
“Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White confirmed to Politico that the program existed and was run by Elizondo,” Bryan Bender wrote in December 2017. (Earlier this year, White, a Trump administration political appointee, resigned amid an internal probe into charges of misconduct.)
But Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood told me that he “cannot confirm” White’s statement.
As it happens, Bender, who is Politico’s defense editor, had a recurring role in the first episode of “Unidentified.” He appeared on camera numerous times as a kind of authoritative character witness for Elizondo, Mellon, and their UFO investigations.
“If you were trying to come up with the A-team of former, high-level government officials who would come forward on this issue, you can’t really think of a better team,” Bender says in the screener. “Lue Elizondo, Chris Mellon — these guys still have security clearances, still have networks in Washington, still are in the business, if you will.”
“We know that UFOs exist. This is no longer an issue. The issue is why are they here? Where are they coming from? And what is the technology behind these devices that we are observing?”
That last part sounds like a cryptic reference to contract work they might be doing for a U.S. intelligence agency or some other government entity. Elizondo confirmed to me earlier this year that he is, in fact, working as a government contractor, “but it’s not what you think it is,” he said. Mellon did not respond to my request for comment.
In the feverish UFO community, in which conspiracy theories have long thrived like a mutating virus (sometimes with good reason), some suspect that DeLonge is being played like a useful idiot — and that his To the Stars Academy is a front for some kind of black ops project.
If he is not a stooge, he is certainly an odd figure for Mellon and Elizondo to hitch their wagons to.
In fact, the whole origin story of To the Stars, which DeLonge recapped in a bizarre public rollout in October 2017 and in an even more bizarre interview with podcast host Joe Rogan, is pretty bananas. In sum, DeLonge claims that he is the military’s chosen vessel for UFO disclosure.
“Why you?” Rogan asked on his podcast. “What could you do?”
“Communication,” DeLong responded. “They don’t have a way to make a movie, a book. They don’t have a way to go on a show like this.”
It’s worth noting that, several years before DeLonge took on this momentous communications assignment, he created a website called Strange Times that was essentially a clearinghouse for UFO news and conspiracies. “Think of it as a Huffington Post for the tin-foil-helmet wearing crowd,” wrote one music blogger.
Somehow, we are to believe that this is the mindset with which staid former members of the military and intelligence community sought to join forces. But perhaps there’s a more innocent answer. To the Stars, which raised more than $2 million from investors, was originally hyped as a UFO research company that would explore the “outer edges of science,” but its Security and Exchange Commission filing identifies it as a “Motion Picture & Video Tape Production” concern.
That designation seems appropriate now with the making of “Unidentified,” which lists DeLonge as executive producer. (He is also prominently featured in the show.) He appears to be having the last laugh at everyone who called him looney tunes for having chased after Bigfoot and flying saucers in the Nevada desert.
THE ADVANCED AEROSPACE Threat Identification Program received widespread press coverage after Elizondo disclosed its existence almost two years ago. “You can laugh if you want, but a lot of people are taking this revelation seriously,” Brett Baer said on Fox News days after the New York Times broke the story with its lavish front-page Sunday spread on December 17, 2017.
Virtually overnight, Elizondo went from living “in the shadows,” in his words, to hopscotching between cable news studios, where he talked gravely about hypersonic, gravity-defying “unidentified aerial vehicles” that, in recent years, had encroached on military training areas in restricted airspace. Many of these reports were conveniently illustrated with videos taken from cockpit cameras of F-18 fighter jets that Elizondo had arranged for the Pentagon to release just before he quit. The grainy footage of tiny, darting objects, combined with Elizondo’s earnest claims of “compelling evidence” for “phenomena” he couldn’t identify, made for great television. (Sherwood, the Pentagon spokesperson, said the videos were released “for research purposes … and not for general public release,” which seems a meaningless distinction given their widespread use by news organizations.)
Months later, after the attention from the mainstream media died down, Elizondo hit the UFO banquet circuit, where he stroked the egos of believers. “People may have associated you with being fringe or out there,” he told one rapt audience of hundreds at a UFO conference last July. “All along, you were right.” It was the first public forum in which Elizondo laid out the history and objectives of the AATIP; soundbites from his talk were sprinkled throughout the first episode of “Unidentified.”
By then, though, longtime UFO researchers were having trouble finding out what the program exactly did, as well as the scope of Elizondo’s role. FOIA requests were turning up dry.
The grainy footage of tiny, darting objects, combined with Elizondo’s earnest claims of “compelling evidence” for “phenomena” he couldn’t identify, made for great television.
Elizondo was ready for them. “In the Department of Defense, there’s always a paper trail,” he told the audience at the UFO conference. “When you establish an organization, there’s a paper trail. When you dis-establish an organization, there’s a paper trail. You won’t find one for this program.”
Some dubious, unofficial documents leaked out to George Knapp, a Las Vegas TV journalist who, for decades, has been a fixture in the UFO media orbit. Knapp has been a vocal defender of Elizondo and DeLonge for the past two years, pushing back on critics who have raised thorny questions about To the Stars. Knapp also purchased stock in the company, something he has not always revealed to readers and viewers in his reporting.
In an email to The Intercept, Knapp acknowledged buying 400 shares of the academy’s stock in 2018, “not as an investment, but as a way to support their fledgling company and their work.” He wrote that he had “made that information public” and “informed” his employer” at KLAS-TV in Las Vegas. Knapp also said that he put the shares in a trust that “would be donated to a charity.” He believes that transaction has been completed and that he now owns “zero stock” in the company, he wrote.
As it happens, Knapp also appeared in the first episode of “Unidentified,” lauding DeLonge for his “unprecedented” efforts in advancing the UFO issue.
Another fixture in the UFO orbit is John Greenewald, the FOIA researcher and a sort of antithesis to Knapp. Initially enthusiastic about To the Stars, Greenewald became increasingly skeptical when he was unable to verify many of Elizondo’s claims about the government’s UFO program through FOIA requests and conversations with Pentagon representatives. So last year, Greenewald reached out to To the Stars spokesperson Kari DeLonge (Tom’s sister) for more information about Elizondo’s involvement in AATIP.
I mentioned Kari DeLonge’s response — about Elizondo having taken over AATIP and run it “out of the Office for the Secretary of Defense (OSD) under the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (USDI)” — to Sherwood, the Pentagon spokesperson who had told me unequivocally that Elizondo “had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program while he worked in OUSDI.”
I then asked Sherwood how he knew that Elizondo hadn’t worked for AATIP during his time with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, where he was based from 2008 until his retirement in 2017. Sherwood said he’d spoken with OUSDI leadership, including individuals who are “still there” from the time when Elizondo started working in the office.
Maybe Elizondo was running AATIP under the purview of another office or agency within the Department of Defense? Sherwood acknowledged that Elizondo “worked for other organizations in DoD.” But that, too, would have contradicted Kari DeLonge’s statement to Greenewald.
Kari DeLonge did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
It bears noting that, although Elizondo has made a point of providing various documents to reporters (including me) to establish his bona fides, he does not appear to have supplied any materials that validate his connection to the government UFO program he insists he led. No memorandums, no emails discussing deliverables or findings, and no paperwork addressed to or from him that connects him to AATIP.
The documents he has provided include recent annual Defense Department performance evaluations and his October 4, 2017 resignation letter to then-Defense Secretary James Mattis, which bears the apparent seal of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense. In the letter, Elizondo alludes to internal opposition at the Pentagon to investigate UFOs that he wrote had menaced Navy Pilots and posed an “existential threat to our national security.” He was leaving, he strongly implied in his letter, because the Pentagon wasn’t taking that threat seriously.
The letter does not mention AATIP or Elizondo’s role as its director.
IN “UNIDENTIFIED,” POLITICO’S Bender describes Elizondo as “in many ways, an enigma. Here is a guy who spent decades in the intelligence community.”
That much appears to be true. Elizondo retired as an official at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. A public records search also reveals a series of home addresses for Elizondo over the last two decades that are close to intelligence facilities in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico (the site of an unacknowledged government surveillance program called “Echelon”) and in Grovetown, Georgia.
“Being from Georgia, I can assure you, there is no reason anyone in their right mind would live in Grovetown unless they were working at Fort Gordon, home of the Army’s principle signals intelligence units and school,” Tim McMillan, who, like Greenewald, has a longtime interest in UFOs but has come to doubt Elizondo’s involvement with any government UFO program.
In 2017, when Elizondo outed himself to the Times, he was portrayed as a reluctant whistleblower and a little paranoid. The three reporters who shared bylines on the story, including freelancer Leslie Kean (who wrote in 2016 that she was “privileged to welcome” Chris Mellon into the UFO organization to which she belonged) met Elizondo in a “nondescript Washington hotel where he sat with his back to the wall, keeping an eye on the door.”
On the Times’s podcast, “The Daily,” Helene Cooper, the newspaper’s Pentagon correspondent, described Elizondo as a “spooky, secretive guy” but added that he was “completely credible.” He showed her documents, pictures, and military videos of potential UFOs, which appeared fantastic to her, but also persuasive. “I did believe him,” Cooper said on the podcast. “It seemed completely credible to me in the moment.”
Later on, after she left the hotel room, Cooper acknowledged that doubts crept in. In the end, though, she decided that what mattered most was whether the Pentagon’s UFO program was real. That, she said, was the focus of the story.’
Two Dark Sphere Shaped UFOs Sighted Over East Kilbride, Scotland. September 10, 2022
Witness statement:
"I recorded this on my Sony Xperia 5, in East Kilbride, Scotland on 10th of September 2022 at 8pm. There are two objects in the sky, moving at a steady speed. They were not massive, I reckon about the size of a jeep, maybe twice that size at most. Definitely smaller than a plane and alot bigger than a Drone. They had no lights, no wings, no windows and no propellers. They also were completely silent. The objects looked alot bigger in real life. In the video the objects appear to be black but in real life they had a similar color to a cloud, not quite white but not quite grey." He also when on to add, "I just saw them in the sky while on a walk and thought they moved quite unnatural, almost too steady and in a perfect straight line. They were also were in a uniform formation, one behind the other which was strange. I recorded them super quick, maybe 10 seconds after seeing them. I have never seen anything like it so I knew I needed to film them. No physical effects on myself or surroundings” They looked to have a sphere or tic tac shape. They looked solid and metallic. They seemed to have some smoke coming out of them sometimes but was hard to know if it was just them moving through clouds, causing an effect that looked like smoke. In terms of height, they were flying about twice the height of a typical city building, definitely lower than a plane would travel in.”
Thanks to Kiamh2230 for allowing me the use of his video and to view the original:
Check out this interesting daytime footage of a 3 bright linked UFOs hovering in the sky above Orlando, Florida. This was filmed back in July 17, 2022 but it was just now submitted to MUFON’s website.
Witness report:
What was seen I got recorded on my mobile phone. It was 3 bright lights stationary in the sky very early in the morning which stayed together and then moved straight down and then it went back up again to the same place in the sky again and hovered in the same place before shooting of to the side of the villa while flashing red but the returned straight back again to the same spot in the sky and hovered again for the 3rd time.
Special reports are: General George S. Brown Briefed on UFOs, Is Mars Our Ancestral Home Planet? Lockheed Martin Builds Space Fence, Who Built the Pyramids? Aliens in the Capital in 1939, Carbon 60, and Strange Craft.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over California, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, South Carolina , Texas, and Washington
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over Australia, Belgium, Bermuda, Canada, France, Russia, 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 and DOD investigated UFOs for more than forty years; and I continue this advanced research. I believe the God of the universe has spread life throughout the cosmos and UFOs are visiting us in ever-increasing numbers.
Forward these files to your friends and neighbors. Like my site?
Special Projects
General George S. Brown Briefed on UFOs
General Brown Chairman of Joint Chiefs
I briefed General Brown every morning in Vietnam. He stated, “I don’t know whether this story has ever been told or not. They weren’t called UFOs. They were called enemy helicopters. And they were only seen at night, and they were only seen in certain places. They were seen up around the DMZ in the early summer of ’68. And this resulted in quite a little battle. And in the course of this, an Australian destroyer took a hit, and we never found any enemy, we only found ourselves when this had all been sorted out. And this caused some shooting there, and there was no enemy at all involved but we always reacted. Always after dark. The same thing happened up at Pleiku at the Highlands in ’69.”. USAF Chief of Staff, Department of Defense transcript of press conference in Illinois, October 16, 1973. He became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1974 to 1978.
Is Mars Our Ancestral Home Planet?
Clouds on Mars
Mars has been in the headlines as NASA, world governments, SpaceX, and billionaires focus on arriving on the Red Planet. Mars is an absolute obsession, as “Mars mania marches on,” notes National Geographic.
But why? By NASA accounts, Mars is a cold, desolate desert. One could travel to the Atacama Desert in Chile and get a much more survivable Mars-like experience. What’s the draw to Mars exactly? Is it, as Geographic suggests, thatwe merely don’t want to be alone in the universe?
It’s as if humans have a built-in drive to get to Mars. Given the dangers, one would think we might focus more and saving the environment here on Earth. However, Elon Musk has said, “He is determined to voyage to the Red Planet by 2026, despite the dangers. One day, he hopes to establish a self-sustaining Martian civilization.”
Tuned In to Mars
Many species on Earth have the instinctual urge to return to their birthplace. To get there, they are capable of extraordinary feats of navigation and endurance.
According to ancient astronaut theorists, life on Earth may have originated on Mars billions of years ago. Now, we are hardwired to want to go back, even in its current desolate form. Although things look bleak, nothing will stop us from getting to Mars.
Some 4 billion years ago, Mars was more Earth-like, but it lost its magnetic field for unknown reasons. Then, the solar winds stripped the planet of most of its atmosphere. To escape, perhaps life traveled to Earth or seeded life via organic molecules on Martian meteorites or even spaceships.
Remarkably, there might be a physiological sign that Mars could be our original home world.
“When astronauts actually go into space, their circadian rhythms, their body clocks change from 24-hour days to a 24.9-hour day; and that happens to be the exact rotational period of a single day on Mars,” says the author, Michael Bara.
Thus, Bara suggests it’s evidence humans going to Mars may be returning there after thousands of years.
Here on Earth, humans’ “body clock” may tend to cycle between 24.2 to 24.9 hours. With exposure to sunlight and a routine, it tends to stay synchronized to the 24-hour day.
See the clip from Ancient Aliens Season 16 below:
Humans and ETs on Mars?
Mars Tubes
It sounds unreal, but some say astronauts and extraterrestrials currently have a base on the Red Planet. A few months ago, Haim Eshed, the Israeli Space Security Chief for 30 years, claimed ,”A secret underground base on Mars exists. There, American astronauts and ETs work together and have for years.”
We remain open-minded. After all, mainstream news is now routinely reporting on real UFOs.
Long, Ago, Eshed claims that the US government signed an agreement with extraterrestrials. If so, it might coincide with the stories about President Eisenhower in the mid-50s. According to Philip Schneider, a structural engineer with a high-level security clearance, Eisenhower made a pact with three alien species. (Schneider died under highly suspicious circumstances.) Eshed suggested that the common use of U.S. spacecraft may be the milestone when ETs deem humanity worthy of further contact.
A Martian base is inevitable. According to Nick Pope, former UFO investigator for the UK Ministry of Defense. “I think the next few years are going to be absolutely pivotal in Mars research. We are seeing mission after mission and mission, and again, we might wonder, why?” said Pope. As humans venture out into space, we’ll need a base. “Is it because when humanity expands out into the cosmos, we are going to have to have a planetary base? Mars is a good place for that,” Pope continued.
A Martian Open pit mine with huge marking YHWH sign
Cut into the plains of Lunae Planum. at 5° South and 297° by European Space Agency photo. https://youtu.be/YCTYkYcYuI0
Huge signs probably showing ownership. The symbol Y and an H can be made out on the YHWH, mining sign. “Yahweh is the national God of Israel. Many men in Naval Hospitals claim to have been to Mars.
Certainly, it’s common sense that humans would need a base, and what would be better than our closest neighboring planet?
Similarly, former Air Force weather observer and contactee Charles Hall claims there has long been an alien agreement with the government.
In exchange for exoplanets to colonize, the Tall White extraterrestrials wanted help building bases for their occasional use, claims Hall.
“Tall White” ETs.
Former Canadian Defense Minister Paul Helyer claims some of the tall whites can be seen in our various cities such as Las Vegas.
Recently, researchers published a study that enormous lava tubes on Mars would make suitable temporary hideouts for astronauts. Similar tunnels on the Moon may also serve as protection from radiation. Perhaps, astronauts may find life is already taking shelter there? NASA high ranking persons assured me that there is life on Mars, but it is classified.
A Voyage to Mars
Today, NASA is partnered with SpaceX, which beat out two other private companies to win a $2.89 billion contract to get astronauts to the Moon. If successful, it will the first time NASA astronauts will walk on the Moon since 1972. Eventually, NASA hopes to fly people as well as supplies to the Moon and beyond.
Space X Launch Center Vandenberg AFB
Effectively, NASA shifted both the cost and risk to the private space-flight company.
Recently, SpaceX founder Elon Musk made some interesting comments . A casual Musk spoke with Peter Diamandis, who is launching a competition with a $100 million prize. The XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition is the largest incentive prize in history to tackle the biggest threats facing humanity on Earth: climate change and rebalancing Earth’s carbon cycle.
“Going to Mars is dangerous, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s a long journey,”
said Musk.
Then, Musk suggested dying for the glorious adventure would all be worth it.
“You might not come back alive, but it is a glorious adventure, and it will be an amazing experience.
“Yeah, honestly, a bunch of people will probably die in the beginning.”
“It’s tough going over there.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V76I8xoSv7Q
Terraforming Mars
Today, Mars is barren, but there are plans to terraform the planet. Perhaps, it will return it to its more Earth-like conditions from the distant past.
If Elon Musk has his way, the planet could be warmed by exploding nuclear bombs over the Martian polar ice caps. Then, the radiation created would escape into space, he suggests. One almost sees a pattern of recklessness. Otherwise, scientists have ideas to redirect comets or asteroids to hit Mars. So, maybe it’s not so crazy? For ancient astronaut theorists, such an idea may have been carried out by extraterrestrials in Earth’s past. In short, Mars’ current state is the opposite of Earth today. While we have too much carbon dioxide due to our activities, the Red Planet does not have nearly enough to create beneficial global warming. It’s too bad we can’t export our excess CO2 to Mars, though it still wouldn’t be nearly enough.
MOXIE
Currently, NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s MOXIE experiment aims to change what little CO2 there is on Mars to oxygen. Since the amount would be so small, a more feasible plan may be to export oxygen-creating extremophile microorganisms from Earth. Some 2.5 billion years ago, it was similar cyanobacteria that created our oxygen-rich atmosphere.
Unfortunately, NASA determined in 1976 that using microorganisms to create a breathable atmosphere might take thousands of years. Moreover, since Mars has lost its magnetic field, it would be a lost cause anyway. Therefore, the first problem is fixing Mar’s magnetic field. But how?
Mars' Magnetic Field
Interestingly, according to the Planetary Society: “While we don’t have the technology to churn the core of a planet faster to revive its magnetic field, NASA’s Chief Scientist Dr. Jim Green and his colleagues have theorized that a magnetic field placed at point called L1 between the Sun and Mars, where their gravities roughly cancel out, could in theory encompass Mars and protect it from the solar wind.”
Currently, Green says scientists can already place a weak field at the stable Sun-Mars L1 Lagrange point. (2,000 Gauss) So, if they can figure out how to make the magnetic field stronger ( more like 10,000 Gauss), it could work.
Again, talk about saving the Martian atmosphere harkens back to the ancient astronaut theory. To save the atmosphere on their home planet, the Anunnaki came to Earth to mine for gold. Then, they used the gold in some unknown way to protect their atmosphere. Perhaps, they were creating a protective magnetic field? Maybe it’s not so far-fetched after all?
Martians Returning Home
Martians May be living in these tubes
Rich Richard Buchli D.V.M. writes, “We have here what appears to be a huge network of closed tubes. These tubes range from 500 to over a thousand feet in diameter. Just think of what could be transported within such a network. Temperatures reach 90 degrees around the equator in the summer months.If all went well, then Mars might become more Earth-like again. However, due to the lower gravity, conditions would likely be similar to living in the Himalayan Mountains, cold with thin, oxygen-low air. Interestingly, there are signs of lost ancient cultures in the Himalayas here on Earth. Likewise, Martian conditions in the higher altitudes of Chile and Tibet coincide with frequent UFO reports.
In addition,to the tubes on Mars has a series of pyramids like those built on Earth
Maybe, just maybe, the ETs found conditions there just perfect. We don’t know what is happening within the tubes that could hold cities.
Considering everything, it seems like a better bet to restore the environment here on the Blue Planet before we head on over to the Red one. Nevertheless, seeing astronauts on Mars seems inevitable in our quest to find other life in the universe. As when we arrived on the Moon, humans will become the extraterrestrials, if not Martians returning home. by Ancient Code Team
Editor’s Note: A civilization on Mars is likely to have gone underground because of meteorite bombardment. Subway tubes would likely be used to transport water, atmosphere, and supplies between underground facilities. The bombardments of meteorites probably made Earth and Mars more habitable by modifying their atmosphere. When a meteorite enters a planet’s atmosphere, extreme heat causes some of the minerals and organic matter on its outer crust to be released as water and carbon dioxide that traps more energy from sunlight to sustain liquid oceans. NASA scientists informed me that life exists on Mars but it classified Secret.
Lockheed Martin Builds Space Fence
In March of 2020 the United States Space Force (USSF) declared operational acceptance and initial operational capability of the Space Fence radar on the Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Space Fence, now the world’s most advanced radar, provides detection, tracking and accurate measurement of space objects, including satellites UFOs, and orbital debris, primarily in low-earth orbit (LEO). The new radar permits the detection of much smaller microsatellites and debris than current systems. It also significantly improves the timeliness with which operators can detect space events. The flexibility and sensitivity of the system also provides coverage of objects in geosynchronous orbit while maintaining the surveillance fence.
Before Space Fence, the Space Surveillance Network (SSN) tracked more than 20,000 objects. Now, the catalog size is 250,000 Space Fence also detects closely spaced objects, breakups, maneuvers, and launches. According to the Space Force, the system is the most sensitive search radar in the SSN, capable of detecting objects in orbit as small as a marble in low Earth orbit (LEO).
Protecting National Assets. During testing, the system tracked a significant amount of debris from an anti-satellite test conducted by India, proving the radar’s ability to automatically predict and correlate their next orbital crossing times.
Marshall Islands Space Fence Buildings
Lockheed Martin’s success developing an affordable Space Fence and building it in the remote Marshall Islands is a great engineering accomplishment and huge advancement in radar technology. With the initial operational capability milestone, Space Fence now provides crucial support of military and commercial space operations.
The U.S. Air Force selected Lockheed Martin to build a $914 million Space Fence Radar .
Space Resources
Lockheed Martin’s Space Fence solution, an advanced ground-based radar system, will enhance the way the U.S. detects catalogs and measures more than 200,000 orbiting objects. With better timeliness and improved surveillance coverage, the system will protect space assets against potential crashes that can intensify the debris problem in space.
“Space Fence will locate and track space objects with more precision than ever before to help the Air Force transform space situational awareness from being reactive to predictive.”
On 16 December 2002, US President George W. Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive which outlined a plan to begin deployment of operational ballistic missile defense systems by 2004. The following day the US formally requested from the UK and Denmark use of facilities in RAF Fylingdales, England and Thule, Greenland respectively, as a part of the NMD Program.
The projected cost of the program for the years 2004 to 2009 was 53 billion US dollars.
Who Built the Pyramids?
Ancient Pyramid with god or pharaoh on one side
The amazing pyramid of Khufu is perhaps one of the buildings of antiquity that has aroused most curiosity among people. Its construction method is unsubstantiated … Just how is it possible that the Egyptians were able to erect something so precise and technically difficult? There may have existed an advanced race on Earth such as the stories of Atlantis. This fonder civilization may still exist flying UFOs and hiding on Earth. The Sumerians claim gods or Exterrestrials provided the advanced technology. Antarctica has numerous pyramids that suggests an advanced civilization existed there. Numerous famous people have visited structures on Antarctica with central heat and lighting indicating advanced technology/.
Pyramids of Giza
Many people consider the great Pyramid of Giza to be one of the oldest, greatest, and most perfect, and scientific ‘monuments’ on the face of the Earth, created thousands of years ago. However, many people are unaware that the Great Pyramid isn’t only an architectural and engineering marvel, it is a geographical one too: It is located at the exact intersection of the longest line of latitude and the longest line of longitude. Additionally, a river flows beneath it, and it is thought to be a power station sending out communications.
Center of World’ Map According to experts, the Great Pyramid is the most accurately aligned structure ever created by human beings. It is said that the pyramid faces true north with a mere 3/60th of a degree of error. It is assumed that when it was initially raised that it was precisely aligned with the North Pole, the position of which has shifted slightly over time. But this isn’t even the most puzzling aspect of the geographical positioning of the pyramid.
Pyramid Power, the secret energy harnessed by the ancients, preserves food stuffs, amplifies thought forms, and increases sexual vitality
As an author with a vivid imagination, I believe this latitude positioning is proof that it was constructed by an advanced ancient civilization. I believe the Pyramids weren’t tombs, but machines that generated energy by breaking water into hydrogen and oxygen … long before the Pharaohs. Over one hundred shafts cut into the limestone bedrock over the Giza plateau brought in the water from the river Nile. Why they were creating energy … you need to read my book. lol.
Did a highly advanced civilization exist in prehistory? Is the Giza Pyramid a remnant of prehistory of an alien technology? Then, what was the power source that fueled such a civilization? The technology of harmonic resonance claims renowned master craftsman and engineer Christopher Dunn. In a brilliant piece of reverse engineering based on twenty years of research, Dunn reveals that the Great Pyramid of Giza was actually a large acoustical device by its size and dimensions, this crystal edifice created a harmonic resonance with the Earth and converted Earth’s vibrational energies to microwave radiation. The author shows how the pyramid’s numerous chambers and passageways were positioned with the deliberate precision to maximize its acoustical qualities. This may be the same technology discovered by Nikola Tesla and the solution to our own clean energy need
Knowledge They Would Need to Know
1) The builders possessed highly sophisticated knowledge of mathematics and geometry.
2) Had knowledge of the true dimensions of the earth to extreme precision.
3) Possessed exceptionally advanced technical instrumentation to site The Great Pyramid.
High Precision Placement of the Great Pyramid
There is simply no way that the precise positioning of the Great Pyramid was due to chance. And it is doubtful also that it was built as a local project purely for the local populous or Pharaoh. Indeed, located exactly where it is upon the earth reveals the remarkable intent of the builders; their aim being to achieve a very elegant mathematical connection between the pyramid itself, and the earth form.
Perhaps the first interesting thing that one discovers about the Great Pyramid is that it is perfectly oriented to the four points of the compass – only being out by 3 arc minutes – a discrepancy of less than 0.06 percent.
The Great Pyramid of Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid and allegedly built in 2570 BC as the tomb of Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khufu although no remains or artifacts exist within the pyramid. Egyptians claim it was built in twenty years that most researchers find very hard to believe. Twenty years is just too little time to complete something so precise, so important and so great. 3 million stone blocks weighing up to 60 tons, were transported from different quarries that were 100s of kilometers away.
The names of the builders of Giza are as yet uncertain. A number of old texts and tomb inscriptions refer to builders and artists of the Old Kingdom, but do not specifically refer to work on the Pyramids.
The following tools and techniques are generally thought to have been used by builders during the old Kingdom: copper chisels, transporting causeways, ramps, sledges, roller, mud brick construction embankments, levers, plumb rules, set squares, ropes, saws, dolomite pounders, tubular drills, and wooden molds. Of all these tools, only one plumb rule, one square, and a number of stone dolerite pounders have actually been found.
The actual techniques used for quarrying, transporting, and placing large stone blocks have been pondered and debated, but have not, as yet, been empirically demonstrated.
We cannot forget that they did not have traced roads, and that the wheel had not yet been invented. Better yet, the ancient Egyptians cut stone blocks with such precision that even the most advanced saws that we have today would not be able to match the accuracy of ancient Egyptians. Many Egyptologists stress that there are marks that have been left on the surface of some of the blocks that raise interesting questions. It has been demonstrated by researchers that the pyramid builders used a material, 50 times stronger than diamond to cut and shape the giant stone monuments and sarcophagi seen across Egypt, but what kind of material is 50 times stronger than diamond? Today, researchers are unaware of a material of similar characteristics. Yet, these giant blocks of stone were so precisely cut and placed into position that we today, with modern technology are not able to reproduce that ancient Egyptians did thousands of years ago. So, what kind of technology did the ancient builders possess?
Flat Plateau built brfore Pyramids
The Giza plateau was flattened the surface of in such a way that between the ground level separating a pyramid of the other, there is only one centimeter in error.
But here are more interesting details. In addition to the huge stone blocks, the Egyptian pyramids were covered by 27,000 tiles of blocks polished to perfection. These tiles were placed one by one on the surface of the monumental construction. These huge pieces of rock had a weight of around 16 tons each. Now the question is, how did the ancient builders move so much weight? It would be interesting to mention that today, in a construction process where you need the transport huge blocks of stone, giant machines are used which are able to move only certain blocks of stone due to their weight. This only demonstrates that the original pyramid builders had access to advanced technology that helped them achieve such incredible feats of engineering, design, and architecture.
Giza Pyramids location built to imitates the Belt of Orion
Egyptian pyramids were supposedly built by Egyptians in about 3000 BC, as attempt to imitate the stars in the Belt of Orion. They were not exactly at the correct angle to match up with the pyramids unless the location of the stars is traced back to the belt when it was exactly aligned with the pyramids in 10,500 BC. Allegedly no civilized humans were living on the earth at that time.
. Sitting next to the Giza pyramid is the Sphinx’s lion body with this human head that looks tiny sitting on top and was likely carved out of lion’s head. The water erosion on the Spink also indicates it was built in 10,500 B.C., probably to celebrate the constellation of Leo the Lion rising directly behind the sun. When I visited the Sphinx, it was obvious there are signs of water erosion all over the Sphinx. The Egyptians kept very careful historical records but there are no records of them building the Sphinx or Giza pyramids.
Sphinx
The accuracy with which the pyramids are oriented north is simply stunning, considering that the ancient Egyptians did not leave any record of such geodetic knowledge in their ancient texts. But if the ancient Egyptians did not have such knowledge thousands of years ago in different scientific fields, so how is it possible that the pyramids are oriented so well?
There is another feature that makes the Great Pyramid something even more spectacular. The faces are not smooth, but they form two vertical planes which make up an angle of 27 minutes. Therefore, the great pyramid of Egypt does not have four sides but eight. With all of these characteristics, the ancient builders of the Pyramids of Egypt wanted to point out the equinoxes and solstices.
Impressively, the pyramid sits right on top of the Earth’s geographical center and is perfectly aligned with the constellation of Orion!
It has eight sides, and this makes the Great Pyramid of Giza to be the only eight-sided Egyptian pyramid!
Eight-Sided Giza Pyramid
To catch on the details, it can only be seen from the air, either at dawn or sunset on the spring and autumn equinoxes. Once the sun casts shadows on it, then the eight-sided pyramid will be visible.
The interior of the pyramid is as incredible as the outside. Inside the Pyramid, the air is very dense, and if you enter the great pyramid with a flashlight or cameras to record the inside, you would be surprised to find out that the batteries run out very quickly. All of these incredible aspects make us reconsider whether the ancient Egyptians were actually capable to erect such monuments. Did they have the necessary knowledge and technology to calculate and construct these amazing monuments or are we missing something? Sophisticated equipment has detected a hidden chamber that has never been entered in the Giza pyramid, No Queen or King wren found in the clear chambers.
It is possible that the pyramids were built by a civilization that predates the ancient Egyptian. Our guide within the pyramid who was a Greek Archeologist claimed a much more sophisticated civilization built the pyramids and Egyptians are aware of it but refuse to release the information. A far more advanced civilization that passed on, to the Egyptian civilization, their knowledge and technology, merging and passing on their beliefs and culture. Martians or other ETs may have traveled here bringing the building secrets.
Whoever built these incredible structures deserves all the credit and respect, since these incredible monuments have been able to withstand the test of time.
Numerous famous people have visited structures on Antarctica with central heat and automatic lighting indicating advanced technology/.
Antarctic Pyramids
Pyramids exist all over the world and even under the sea suggesting many are thousands if not millions of years old. Antarctica has numerous pyramids that suggests an advanced civilization existed there. Numerous famous people have visited structures on Antarctica with central heat and lighting indicating advanced technology/.
Mars also has pyramids indicating Martians also built them.
Aliens in the Capital in 1939
Cordell Hull the Secretary of State took his cousin the Reverend Turner Holt into the sub-basement of the US Capital building to show him and made whim swear he would never tell anyone what he was about to see. Hull took Holt into a room that contained four glass containers where a child could easily fit. In each of the containers was a creature of horrendous vintage. The tiny hominoid. Hot asked his family to keep the information secret until he and Hull where dead creatures were floating in a liquid in some sort of preservative. According to Reverend Holt, Condell Hull told him that this had to be kept secret to prevent worldwide panic before revealing this information. And Holt” s children did just that. Thanks to Insane UFO Encounters | Top 20 UFO Cases of ALL TIME
Strange Craft
The True Story of an Air Force Intelligence Officer’s Life with UFOs
U.S. Air Force Major George Filer belongs to the generation of pilots and aviators who first became aware of the strange aircraft showing up in the Earth’s atmosphere after World War II. These men – military professionals who flew planes, served as radar operators and air traffic controllers at airfields around the world – began to whisper amongst themselves about encounters with suspected extraterrestrial aircraft.
During secret debriefings at U.S. bases, pilots and air crew told their commanders of seeing UFOs off their plane’s wings. Award-winning investigative author John Guerra spent four years interviewing Filer, a decorated intelligence officer.
From objects in the skies over Cold War Europe to a UFOs over during the Cuban Missile Crisis to lights over the DMZ in Vietnam Filer leaves nothing out about his Air Force UFO encounters,
Filer’s most memorable case – the shooting of an alien at Fort Dix Army Base in 1978 – is fully recounted for the first time in this book. As a member of the Disclosure Project, military experts, astronauts, and scientists urge the U.S. government to release all it knows about UFOs to the public.
Filer describes his UFO encounters in this incredible book, by John L. Guerra.
Special reports are: General George S. Brown Briefed on UFOs, Is Mars Our Ancestral Home Planet? Lockheed Martin Builds Space Fence, Who Built the Pyramids? Aliens in the Capital in 1939, Carbon 60, and Strange Craft.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over California, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, South Carolina , Texas, and Washington
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over Australia, Belgium, Bermuda, Canada, France, Russia, 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 and DOD investigated UFOs for more than forty years; and I continue this advanced research. I believe the God of the universe has spread life throughout the cosmos and UFOs are visiting us in ever-increasing numbers.
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UFO Sightings in the United States
Sightings are from MUFON CMS
California Object
El cajon on June 27, 2022, shape-shifting UAP, this object was flying at jet speed in a very straight trajectory with no means of propulsion . I have been looking at the sky for a long time for these and it seemed very surreal, almost supernatural like a weird energy not normal.
LA on August 18, 2022,, I’m a 52-year-old retired F/A-18 pilot and tactical jet instructor for the US Navy. At 03:20 AM while in our Gulfstream G650, call sign TWY670, in route from Miami “KOPF” to Maui “PHOG” at FL470, I witnessed 2 UAP’s at 50,000 feet in a circular format that we reported to LA center that informed us they had no radar contacts in or around us. I then turned our Traffic Collision Avoidance System “TCAS” to ABOVE mode also to receive no active aircraft activity as well. Three UAP’s joined the formation in their circular orbit. I took my iPhone out and attempted to record the UAP’s. Another aircraft also reported the incident, and LA center reported it to the FAA Presidential Aerial Security Administration in Washington DC.
Florida Lights
Orlandoon August 24 , 2022, while driving I saw rectangular in shape object that seemed stationary so took pictures. Initially I thought it was an advertising banner but no aircraft towing it .
Idaho Light
Stanley on August 20, 2022, camping and saw a straight line on the horizon moving upwards growing longer than disappeared in a dark area that blocked out stars behind it. I took 7 photos incident lasted one minute.
New Jersey Object
Chicagoon August 20, 2022, on the Metra Rock Island train going home Mew Jersey Object looked out window at 5 43 pm and saw a box shaped object hovering in the sky. Grabbed my phone and took a picture then a video.
Kentucky Triangle
Edmonton on August 11, 2005, I was returning home with my 10-year-old son at dusk when we saw this silent object. We were on highway 68-80 at the top of a hill when I saw a red and green light. My son said, “look its a triangle.” right over our heads at 300 yards with a metallic color.
Michigan Lights
Bay Cityon August 17 , 2021, I’m a regular guy who was trying to take a picture of the moon and this thing flew into my world.
Missouri Object
Portageville on August 19, 2022 , almost every night and morning there is strange activities.
New Hampshire Lights
Candia on March 6, 2022, while driving a glowing object hovered outside of our car. It zoomed off quickly and then reappeared in front of our car and hovered in front of us.
New Jersey Lights
Wanaqueon August 14 , 2021, while traveling north bound on route 287 I observed a dark horseshoe object traveling southwest above the road in a slow straight flight pattern. I also saw a bright white object towards the northeast sky possibly from that other object.
Easleyon August 21, 2022, the craft disappears when you change shades to edit. It is like a cloaking field. They are here and we can’t see them. The time was 6:47 PM, I live high up and have a fabulous view.
Note:Cellphones sometimes produce green objects due to reflections. However, this object has a “honeycomb” so I can’t say for sure that it is a reflection. Given available information I will classify the sighting as unidentified. Thanks to Will Pucket/www.ufosnw.com/newsite/
Texas Object
San Antonio on August 7, 2022, an object that appeared on my photograph that I did not see when I took the photo. It clearly shows a ship like that is rounded and visible with wings. I took the photo in a cemetery and flash moves up to craft suggesting soul taken from body.
Vermont Light
Alborg on August 19, 2022, y cousin encountered this UFO. She said it just slowly drifted over the lakefront and then it just faded into the distance. Similar lights in Texas on August 5, 2022.
Washington D.C. Object
District on August 17, 2021, here was a red orb floating over the capital with some black line, stick like figure following it..The cigar was stationary for one single minute then disappeared and our phones would not take pictures.
Worldwide UFO Sightings
Australia Lights
Melbourne on August 6 , 2021, dome shaped craft with vertical columns. Main craft had another column at the top with lights all the way up the column. There were lights around the craft too. I have several videos of different crafts around this area.
Belgium Lights
Namur on August 15 , 2021, a t first it looked like a star that shone very brightly, that’s what appealed to me. Then this “star” moved to the right and another arrived in its direction.
Bermuda Lights
OFF the Coast on August 9, 2022, photo taken from a cruise ship at sundown. The two objects were there one second and gone the next. When I zoomed in on the objects, I realized they were at the same level and they had structure to them.
Note:Many photos of UFOs can be explained as reflections, lens flares, birds, etc. The witness points out that the lights were only in one photo. This lends credibility that the lights could be real objects so I have classified the sighting as unidentified. Thanks to Will Pucket/www.ufosnw.com/newsite/
Canada Lights
Lake Orionon August 19 , 2021, boating during the evening, I noticed a large cloud in the distance. The shape was very strange like a noodle reflecting the light from the ground. Others on the boat joked it was a UFO. Note: The witness saw Star-Link communication satellites
Novosibirsk on April 28,. 2019 I saw a bright light , this form is so long .I hate it.
UK/Scotland Ball Object
Inverkeithing on August 7 , 2021, after looking at my photos on my phone I seen this sphere like shape that seemed to be hovering in the air on the beach in Fiffe where I was at that moment.
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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.
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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)
Dinosaur-Eating Galloping Crocodiles Once Existed in the Sahara Desert
Dinosaur-Eating Galloping Crocodiles Once Existed in the Sahara Desert
Believe it or not, but 100 million years ago the area of the present-day scorching hot Sahara Desert was a lush swamp home not just to dinosaurs, but also to several kinds of prehistoric crocodilians. But that’s not all. These diverse ancient crocodiles came in all shapes and sizes. Some of them were galloping crocodiles, able to chase after prey on land, while others were so big and powerful that they were effective dinosaur hunters.
During excavations beginning in the 1990s, the famed paleontologist and dinosaur hunter, Paul Sereno, came across a staggering find when he and his team uncovered the fossilized skeleton of a giant prehistoric crocodile in the African Sahara known as a Sarcosuchus imperator or SuperCroc. While fragments of this majestic monster had already been discovered in 1966, Sereno unearthed several partial skeletons dating back 110 million years in Niger. With a head as big as Sereno was tall, the team estimated that this SuperCroc had measured about 40 ft long (12.19 m).
If Jupiter's Orbit got Weirder, it Would Actually Make Earth More Habitable
If Jupiter's Orbit got Weirder, it Would Actually Make Earth More Habitable
Earth is not just habitable, it’s unusually habitable. It’s rather wet for a planet so close to its Sun, it’s geologically active, and it has a stable orbit, all of which are necessary for life as we know it. But there are also secondary advantages, such as not being constantly bombarded by large asteroids, and having a rotational axis that is fairly stable. This is due in part thanks to the planet Jupiter. The giant planet has helped clear the solar system of asteroid debris and may have helped stabilize the orbits of the inner planets. So life is good. But a new study shows that if Jupiter had a different orbit, life could be even better.
The study looked at the way Jupiter affects Earth’s orbit and axial tilt over time. Both of these are important factors in our weather and climate. For example, Earth has a very circular orbit. In mathematical terms, the shape of an orbit is measured by its eccentricity. At e = 0, the orbit is a perfect circle, and the more elliptical an orbit is, the closer e gets to 1. Earth’s orbit has an e = 0.017. This means Earth is slightly closer to the Sun for a bit less than half the year, and slightly farther away for a bit more than half. This is because the Earth moves slightly faster in its orbit when closer to the Sun rather than farther.
The eccentricity of different orbits. Credit: Wikipedia user Phoenix7777
At this point, astute readers will be eager to point out that this eccentricity is not why we have seasons, and they’d be mostly right. Our regular seasons are caused by the axial tilt of the Earth, which is currently about 23.4 degrees. Because of this tilt, the Sun is higher during the Summer, and lower in the sky during Winter. And, of course, when it’s Summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s Winter in the Southern Hemisphere.
Interestingly, for the Northern Hemisphere, it is Summer when the Earth is a bit farther from the Sun, and that means Northern Summers are just slightly longer than Southern Summers. Since more of the land mass on Earth is in the Northern Hemisphere, that means Earth is a bit more habitable than it would be if we had a circular orbit. It doesn’t affect our daily lives, but it does come into play on geological scales.
How orbital eccentricity and axial tilt affect seasons. Credit: Vervoort, et al
Over time the axial tilt of Earth changes slightly, giving more extreme or mild Winters. Earth’s axis also precesses over time, meaning that its orientation relative to the elliptical shape of Earth’s orbit also shifts. All of these factors underly what is known as the Milankovitch cycle. This is a measure of how much overall heat Earth’s terrestrial surface receives, known as insolation. It varies over thousands of years. Twelve thousand years ago, at the dawn of human civilization, insulation was very high, giving us a particularly pleasant world. Currently, it’s somewhat lower, and without the effects of global warming, we would be in a cool period.
Changes in insolation due to the Milankovitch cycles. Credit: Wikipedia
Part of the Milankovitch cycle is due to the slight gravitational tug of Jupiter. But since Jupiter also has a circular orbit (e = 0.048), this isn’t a significant factor. In this recent study, the team created simulated solar systems where Jupiter’s orbit had a higher eccentricity. They thought a more eccentric Jupiter would make Earth less habitable, but they were surprised to find it actually made things better. With an increased gravitational effect from Jupiter, the Earth would have better insolation over its surface, so that even more of Earth’s land masses would be within a temperate range.
This has big implications for potentially habitable worlds in other star systems. Although we tend to focus on whether a world is within the habitable zone, that’s only the first requirement for a truly habitable world. Other factors such as insolation depend on the presence of other planets in the system. There’s a gravitational dance between worlds that can make or break a planet’s chances for life.
How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually. Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth's surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth's radius. The featured illustration shows what would happen if all of the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a ball.
The radius of this ball would be only about 700 kilometers, less than half the radius of the Earth's Moon, but slightly larger than Saturn's moon Rhea which, like many moons in our outer Solar System, is mostly water ice. How even this much water came to be on the Earth and whether any significant amount is trapped far beneath Earth's surface remain topics of research.
Illustration Credit & Copyright: Jack Cook, Adam Nieman, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Howard Perlman, USGS
Detailed Description
This image shows blue spheres representing relative amounts of Earth's water in comparison to the size of the Earth. Are you surprised that these water spheres look so small? They are only small in relation to the size of the Earth. These images attempt to show three dimensions, so each sphere represents "volume." They show that in comparison to the volume of the globe, the amount of water on the planet is very small. Oceans account for only a "thin film" of water on the surface.
Spheres representing all of Earth's water, Earth's liquid fresh water, and water in lakes and rivers
The largest sphere represents all of Earth's water. Its diameter is about 860 miles (the distance from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Topeka, Kansas) and has a volume of about 332,500,000 cubic miles (mi3) (1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers (km3)). This sphere includes all of the water in the oceans, ice caps, lakes, rivers, groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant.
Liquid fresh water
How much of the total water is fresh water, which people and many other life forms need to survive? The blue sphere over Kentucky represents the world's liquid fresh water (groundwater, lakes, swamp water, and rivers). The volume comes to about 2,551,100 mi3 (10,633,450 km3), of which 99 percent is groundwater, much of which is not accessible to humans. The diameter of this sphere is about 169.5 miles (272.8 kilometers).
Water in lakes and rivers
Do you notice the "tiny" bubble over Atlanta, Georgia? That one represents fresh water in all the lakes and rivers on the planet. Most of the water people and life of earth need every day comes from these surface-water sources. The volume of this sphere is about 22,339 mi3 (93,113 km3). The diameter of this sphere is about 34.9 miles (56.2 kilometers). Yes, Lake Michigan looks way bigger than this sphere, but you have to try to imagine a bubble almost 35 miles high—whereas the average depth of Lake Michigan is less than 300 feet (91 meters).
Strange activity over Venice Beach You be the Judge.
Scientists Terrifying New Discovery of Ancient Aliens Base Under Ocean
Mystery holes have been spotted on the ocean floor, which is baffling scientists.
These holes were discovered by oceanographers earlier this year, and they have no idea what made them, or how they came about. However, UFO experts are certain the strange markings are proof of alien visits.
Here’s one interesting UFO footage of a two huge solid UFOs flying across the sky above Scotland city East Kilride. This happened on 9th September 2022.
Witness report:
I recorded this on my Sony Xperia 5, in East Kilbride, Scotland on 10th of September 2022 at 8pm. There are two objects in the sky, moving at a steady speed.
They were not massive, I reckon about the size of a jeep, maybe twice that size at most. Definitely smaller than a plane and alot bigger than a Drone. They had no lights, no wings, no windows and no propellers. They also were completely silent. The objects looked alot bigger in real life. In the video the objects appear to be black but in real life they had a similar color to a cloud, not quite white but not quite grey. They looked to have a sphere or tic tac shape. They looked solid and metallic. They seemed to have some smoke coming out of them sometimes but was hard to know if it was just them moving through clouds, causing an effect that looked like smoke.
In terms of height, they were flying about twice the height of a typical city building, definitely lower than a plane would travel in.
Bright UFO flying over Sacramento, California YESTERDAY
Bright UFO flying over Sacramento, California YESTERDAY
This UFO sighting was just submitted to me and it happened over Sacramento, California on 9th September 2022.
Witness report:
I was about to smoke a cigarette in my backyard when I looked up and saw this light standing still then it started moving so I took out my phone and captured what I could
A lot of things viewed as unusual by the people from the present day used to take place in ancient Egypt. While some of these aspects are fascinating, others can be simply regarded as odd. Going beyond this, ancient Egypt has proven to be a fantastic civilization which continues to inspire individuals even today. Out of the countless lesser-known aspects regarding ancient Egypt, some interesting ones are revealed here.
1. World's First Known Female Pharaoh
Ancient Egypt gave the world the first female pharaoh who is still known in the present day. Her name was Merneith. She lived around 5000 years ago, belonging to the First Dynasty. She died around 2950 BC, after ascending to the throne once her husband, Pharaoh Djet, died. The son of the couple, Den, should have become pharaoh, but he was too young. So, around 2990 BC, his mother's reign began. Merneith (who had royal blood, being a descendant of Pharaoh Narmer who had unified Egypt and started the First Dynasty in the past) took care of state matters. Even though not much is really known about her, one thing remains certain: during her administration the ancient Egyptian economy thrived and, later on, thanks to his mother's guidance, Den came to be regarded as the greatest pharaoh of the First Dynasty.
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The tomb of the female pharaoh was discovered at Abydos. It was very unusual for the tomb of a woman, being identical to other tombs that had been constructed for great male pharaohs. It included 40 sacrificed servants, many sacrificed animals, and a boat on which the soul of the female pharaoh could sail in the afterlife to meet the Sun god, Ra. In this way, Merneith set the ground for other great female pharaohs who are probably a little more well-known such as Hatshepsut and Cleopatra. However, the reality of female pharaohs is not the only fascinating and lesser-known fact about ancient Egypt. So, let the adventure into the old world of gods and mummies begin!
2. Tutankhamun’s Beard
In ancient Egypt, having hair on one's body was seen as dirty and a sign one was lacking in personal hygiene. Because of this, both men and women shaved off all the hair from their bodies. This included shaving their heads. After doing this, women would wear beautifully adorned wigs with complex designs according to the fashion of the times. In the case of the pharaoh, the beard was a symbol of masculinity and power. But, obviously, the pharaoh could not grow a beard because hair on the body implied uncleanliness. So, an artificial beard would be attached to the pharaoh's face using strings to keep it in place. The funerary gold mask of Pharaoh Tutankhamun presents an example of such a beard.
In the case of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, Carter and his team had not been the best archaeologists. Instead, they were much closer to the image of treasure hunters. As a result, while handling the solid gold funerary mask they managed to break off the beard. Unable to use the same method applied by the ancient Egyptians who had crafted the mask, around the year 1944 the beard was fixed back onto the mask using a piece of wood. That was how the relic was displayed until August 2014 when the beard was accidentally broken off again by some Egyptian employees from the museum. Obviously, these museographers realized the gravity of the situation, so they decided to hide their mistake by gluing the beard back on using adhesive. To make it look even better, they removed the visible remains of the adhesive substance by using some metal tools to scrape them off. Ultimately, the mask ended up looking really bad.
To fix the relic, a restoration commission from Germany showed up. They worked for nine weeks just to remove the adhesive substance. They masked the scratches and reattached the beard using beeswax, the exact substance that had originally been used in this regard by the ancient Egyptians. The eight museographers, including the museum's director, were sent to trial and they will have to pay a large fine.
The famous burial mask of King Tutankhamun on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt
On the 24th of November 1922, Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. This was thought to have been sealed and untouched, the only tomb of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh that had escaped the action of tomb raiders. Wrong!
Carter understood that others had entered the place before him. Officially, he promised that the tomb would only be unsealed and opened in the presence of Egyptian officials. So, of course, he illegally entered the tomb the night before the grand event. This was no big deal, because others had been there before him, twice actually. The proof of this was a large crack in the exterior door. This had been sealed back up. Also, the pharaoh's belongings from the antechamber were found in disorder, as the tomb raiders had robbed the place in haste. This had happened shortly after the pharaoh's burial. These thieves had been interested in jewelry and precious metal items. Also, they had come for the things which had to be stolen immediately. This refers to perfumes, precious oils, and clothing items. These could not last for years inside the tomb, so if the thieves wanted to sell them for profit, they had to remove them quickly.
Other cracks on the doors of the tomb clearly suggested the second tomb raiding event. The first grave robbers had only broken into the antechamber. The second ones had a larger team and they had been better organized. Their purpose was to access all of the funerary chambers. There was a written inventory detailing everything that had been placed inside the tomb. Carter discovered it. After consulting it, he understood that, in 1922, less than half off all the jewelry and precious metal items originally deposited inside the tomb had remained. This suggests that the tomb raiders had to get out of there quickly, only taking what they could carry.
Not even the seal on the tomb had been the original one. Instead, this had been replaced by the one of Horemheb. This pharaoh had received the throne from Ay (the vizier who had succeeded Pharaoh Tutankhamun). To hide all of this, repairs were made, and the cracks were covered. However, everything had to be done in great haste due to the lack of time, just as the tomb raiders had previously operated. After the second grave robbing event, the tombs of Ramesses II and Ramesses IV were built close to the tomb of Tutankhamun. Tutankhamun was thought to lack importance as a pharaoh, so his tomb no longer attracted interest. Also, the entry to the tomb was covered by sand and, in time, the place was forgotten. The grave robbers switched their attention towards the tombs of other more important pharaohs which had more to offer.
A lot has been discussed about the process of mummification and its stages. However, fewer people have knowledge regarding the costs of this process. It is obvious that nobody got mummified for free in ancient Egypt. Also, it must be mentioned that ancient Egyptians did not use money. The first coins from the area were introduced around 360 BC, but, despite this, ancient Egyptian priests were highly aware of the value of luxury goods and precious metals. These priests were actually the inventors of the mummification business. Their purpose was to obtain profit, as every person had to be mummified after death if he or she wanted to even have an afterlife.
According to Herodotus, Egyptian priests had come up with three main types of mummification. The first was meant for the rich who had to pay what would be equal to about 20,000 euros today for a premium mummification process. The brain was taken out through the nose, the corpse was eviscerated, bathed in expensive wines, spices and oils, kept with salt for around 70 days, the eyes were replaced with two onions and the organs were nicely placed in specialized canopic jars. After the corpse dried up, it would be wrapped in expensive cloth along with specific amulets and sealed with wax and resin. The mummy was given to the family who also had to pay for a sarcophagus, a pyramid or a tomb, some slaves to kill for the mummy to have servants in the afterlife and a few mummified animals. With a relatively decent sarcophagus costing around five goats or a slave, this entire luxury mummification package proved to be really costly.
The type of mummification meant for the middle-class cost around half the price of the luxury package. In this case, the body was not eviscerated. It was just injected with a certain cedar oil which had the effect of dissolving the internal organs. Because this could get messy, a stopper was introduced in the anus of the corpse until the liquefaction was complete. After that, the stopper was removed and all the liquid allowed to flow out of the corpse which was afterwards kept with salt for 70 days. The mummy was then given to the living family members who took it to a common cemetery. The last type of mummification was reserved for the poor and it was paid by the state. The guts were removed, the corpse was washed and kept with salt for 70 days. After this, it was taken out to the desert and buried there without any amulets on it.
Criminals in ancient Egypt were always burned at the stake to prevent them from having an afterlife. As for nobles who had committed crimes during life, they were allowed to kill themselves and their corpses underwent a simple mummification procedure. The major blasphemers were mummified in goat skin, so that the gods from the world beyond could know of their actions. As for pets, animal mummification cost between 1000 and 5000 euros in today’s money. Those who wanted to impress others would mummify larger animals such as crocodiles or bulls.
Corruption has always existed, and even ancient Egypt had to confront this reality. Horemheb ruled Egypt as a pharaoh between the years 1319/1306 and 1292 BC. He was the first ancient Egyptian ruler who led a serious fight against corruption. During the reign ofAkhenatenand that of his son, Tutankhamun, corruption had increased and gotten out of control. Starting as a commoner, Horemheb managed to become a general and, later on, he sat on the throne as pharaoh.
Tutankhamun had died at the age of 18 in suspicious circumstances. He was succeeded by the vizier Ay who was murdered. Horemheb did not want to share their fate. As a pharaoh, he issued drastic laws and worked hard to eradicate corruption. To be sure he was in control, he personally replaced all judges and state officials. He also made bribery punishable by death. This had never been applied before in this regard, the harshest punishment for bribery until the time of Horemheb was a threat that the god Anubis would be very upset with the individual in the afterlife. As he thought Anubis had more important issues to attend to, Horemheb radically changed the system and dealt with punishments personally.
Death was the sentence given to thieves. Mutilation was inflicted upon those who committed fraud and those who set taxes too high for the population. The mutilation referred to here consisted of cutting off the nose and the ears of the trespasser. The person would then be exiled to Tharu, a region ancient Greeks began to refer to as Rhinocolura, because a lot of people who lived there had no noses.
Detail of a statue of Horemheb, at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
To a certain extent, the fight against corruption undergone by Pharaoh Horemheb proved successful for a time. The ancient Egyptian ruler actually died a natural death, but, afterwards, his example was no longer followed.
Top image: Ancient columns at the Temple of Horus at Edfu, Egypt.
The ancient city of Lacedaemon – is it the legendary Atlantis?
The ancient city of Lacedaemon – is it the legendary Atlantis?
Artist’s depiction of Atlantis. Credit: BigStockPhoto
The name Lacedaemon is derived from the verb, λαγχάνω (lachano), to assign somebody something by lot, and δαίμων (daemon), which means God in ancient Greek. Lacedaemon therefore denotes the divine lot, a piece of the world given to the God Poseidon, according to Plato, who identifies Lacedaemon with Atlantis.
I consider it worthwile to mention a remark by J. Spanuth in his book, ‘ Atlantis: Heimat, Reich and Schicksal der Germanen ’, (Tuebingen 1965), that Atlantis is “the oldest, most disputed, most hazardous and clearly most thankless, but still the most rewarding and most intriguing matter that Antiquity has bequeathed to us”.
There is a vast bibliography about Atlantis, but the modern scholarship concluded that to locate Atlantis and to prove the validity of its identification, four points of agreement must be met and generally accepted. (See E.Bloedow. ‘ Fire and Flood from Heaven: Was Atlantis at Troy ?’ La Parola del Passato 48, 1993, pp.109-160.
Atlantis was an island.
It lay beyond the “Pillars of Hercules”.
It was larger than Asia and Libya together.
Its destruction (sinking) produced a barrier of impassable mud.
These four prerequisites are completely fulfilled in the case of Lacedaemon.
The name, features, and location of Lacedaemon have been hotly debated from Antiquity to modern times. Lacedaemon was mentioned for the first time in the second Book of Iliad, in the so-called Catalogue of the Ships, verse 581, as the first city of the Kingdom of Menelaos in Lakonia – “Οι δ’ είχον κοίλην Λακεδαίμονα κητώεσσαν” (‘E de ichon kili Lacedaemon kitoesan’). Κοίλη (‘kili’) and κητώεσσα (‘kitoesan’) are the two traditional epithets steadily connected with Lacedaemon. ‘Κili’ means hollow, everybody agrees on that, but the epithet ‘kitoesan’ has been variously interpreted. It might refer either to its geological formation and identity – that it is full of ravines and subterranean caustic splits – or to its island nature, in this case abounded with κήτη (‘kiti’), sea monsters or big fish (dolphins, turtles, whales, seals etc.).
The Iliad by Homer.
Credit: BigStockPhoto
Taking for granted that in northern Lakonia there once existed a huge lake from the Pleiocene period, measuring 35 square kilometres, the epithet ‘kitoesan’ may well fit the geology of the site of Lacedaemon. The lake is now dry and contains big deposits of lignite layers, similar to those in the adjacent plain of Megalopolis. The date of dessication or draining of the lake in the area of mount Taygetos is of paramount importance for the history of Lacedaemon, its identity, and identification with Atlantis.
Plato, in Timaeus and Critias, describes Atlantis as an island in what he calls a ‘Pontos’, a word meaning Sea or Sea-lake (Timaius 24E Critias 113-114 B). The other geological and geographical coordinate of the area is the Πέλαγος (‘Pelagos’), erroneously interpreted by Atlantologists as ‘Ocean’. Pelagos in Greek signifies a large and extensive area, such as the Aegean Pelagos or the Ionian Pelagos. Pontos was the huge lake of Lacedaemon, Pelagos was the large and navigable river Eurotas.
The inhabitants of Atlantis, known by various names, like Hyperboreans, Phaeakes, Phoinikes, Atlantes, Minyans etc, were thought to live in a remote area, safe in their natural environment, reluctant to be visited by other people. There they lived a whole millenium, eternally young, and they were beloved to the Gods. Tyndareos, the father of Helen and the divine Twins Kastor and Polydeukes lived where Lakonia ended, very close to Arcadia - “εν τοις εσχάτοις της Λακεδαιμονίας” (‘En tis eshatis tis Lacedaemonias’).
We have reasons to suppose that the area of the lake was covered by small islands, some natural, others artificial, founded upon wooden tree trunks, taken from the densely forested mount Taygetos, an activity described by Plato in reference with the works of the Atlantians in the main island in the Pontos. The work and the plan may be paralleled with the miraculous achievements of the Venetians in the large Lagoon in the Adriatic. This “Civitas Serenissima” was built entirely upon wooden trunks and was composed of numerous islands, constructed densely to each other.
The city of Venice was built on wooden foundations.
Plato himself speaks of other islands, besides Atlantis, in the same Pontos. Atlantis lay at the eastern fringes of the sea, near the exit of the river, beyond the Pillars of Hercules and was surrounded by islands, which were approached from Atlantis both by sea and land (Timaeus: “εξ ης επιβατόν επί τας άλλας νήσους τοις τότε εγένετο πορευομένοις”). Plato seems to know well not only the geophysical conditions of the area of Lacedaemon, he also knew the geography of the island group and most probably the names of the islands, at least of some of them.
Taking that into consideration, we may come to the solution of the most difficult of the Platonic references to Atlantis, which is described by Plato as being larger than Asia and Libya together. What was known as ‘Asia’ and ‘Libya’ at the time were small islands in the lake of Lacedaemon, and we know that Asia and Libya were Laconian toponymics (see my book LACEDAEMON, volume II, p. 399 ff).
Accordingly, we fix one of the four points of agreement posed by Atlantologists. Plato’s trustworthines is strengthened by the reference in ‘The Odyssey’ that Ithaca, the original homeland of Odysseus, lay in a similar landscape. It is described as “χθαμαλή εν αλί, πανυπερτάτη προς ζόφον”, i.e. hollow and the most remote to North-West, though many other islands that were close to each other, lay to the East and South (“νήσοι πολλαί, μάλα σχεδόν αλλήλησιν”, Odyssey, book 9, 22-3).
Arethusa fountain old view, Ithaca island, Greece. Created by Provost, published on L'Illustration. Credit: BigStockPhoto
Odysseus, the Argonaut, was at home in Lacedaemon, where he acquired the famous composite-bow of Iphitos and it was not a mere coincidence that his descendant Telemachos came to Lacedaemon many years or centuries thereafter to visit Menelaos and Helen in order to be informed about his farther’s return to Ithaca.
Featured image: Artist’s depiction of Atlantis. Credit: BigStockPhoto
UFO researchers and proponents for the search for intelligent life (SETI) are treated like rock stars these days – in fact, some like Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge ARE rock stars. However, they all owe a debt of gratitude to those who paved the way for them – making a path that was mostly rocky dirt roads filled with pothole and traps set by those who wished to disrupt or ridicule their quest to find or prove the existence of extraterrestrial life. One of those people is best known by his last name and a mathematical term that together have given hope to those on traveling on that path that has now become a highway paved and repaired with government support. We’re referring of course to the Drake Equation – a formula for estimating the number of active extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy – and Frank Drake, its inventor, whopassed away recently at the age of 92.
Arecibo Observatory
Frank Donald Drake was born on May 28, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois, and said he first considered the idea of life on other planets as an eight-year-old far beyond his years contemplating what it might mean if intelligent life was the result of chance. Drake studied astronomy at Cornell University while pursuing a degree in Engineering Physics, followed by graduate school at Harvard University where he received a M.S. and Ph.D. in Astronomy. From Harvard, Frank Drake moved to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia, to a job in radio astronomical research. It was there he mapped the center of the Milky Way Galaxy for the first time and discovered the ionosphere and magnetosphere of Jupiter. It was also at NRAO that Drake first connected to another giant in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence – the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Like Drake, Arecibo was a giant in SETI for decades (the world's largest single-aperture telescope for 53 years) until breaks in cables forced it to be decommissioned and demolished in 2020.
“In 1960, radio astronomer Frank D. Drake, then at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia, carried out humanity's first modern attempt to detect interstellar radio transmissions. Project Ozma was named after the queen of L. Frank Baum's imaginary land of Oz -- a place "very far away, difficult to reach, and populated by strange and exotic beings."”
To this day, not many people know about Project Ozma, but even fewer knew of it in 1960 because Drake and the project team at NRAO decided to keep it quiet for fear of being ridiculed by the science and astronomy communities and the general public. “Ozma” was the perfect name because L. Frank Baum, the Oz series author, claimed he communicated with Oz by radio to learn of the events taking place in The Emerald City. Drake used the NRAO’s 26-meter radio telescope to search for possible signals from the stars Tau Ceti (in the constellation Cetus) and Epsilon Eridani (in the constellation Eridanus) star systems – both are nearby and Sun-like.
“From April to July 1960, for six hours a day, the receiver on the 85-foot antenna was tuned to the frequency of the 21-centimeter emission line of interstellar hydrogen. The assumption was that this frequency, 1420 MHz, would be known by any technologically sophisticated society, and would constitute a universal “hailing frequency.”
The total cost of the project was about two thousand dollars.”
Compare that to today’s ‘rock star’ budgets and rock star publicity for SETI projects and you have some idea of how challenging Project Ozma was. Unfortunately, the six months of listening picked up no extraterrestrial signals and the project was terminated in July 1960. One benefit – the project intrigued Carl Sagan, then a graduate student, and he and Drake became lifelong friends and collaborators. A second benefit, pointed out by the SETI Institute website, was that Ozma inspired other searches for signals from other stars, prompting in 1961 the first scientific meeting at NRAO to discuss SETI searches … that meeting was where Frank Drake unveiled the equation that bears his name.
The Drake equation has been called “second most-famous equation in science (after E= mc2)” and, since it was developed for astronomers, is not an easy one to simplify. Per the SETI Institute (full explanation here), the first six terms, when multiplied together, yield the average number of new technologically transmitting societies that are formed in the Milky Way galaxy each year. When multiplied by the last term, L: the average lifetime they stay on the air, you get the average number of message-transmitting intelligent societies in the Milky Way Galaxy now. The higher that number, the better the chances of finding extraterrestrials.
At the time of the NRAO meeting in 1961, Drake was hoping the equation would stimulate conversations amongst the attendees, since only one of the variables was known at that time. Drake plugged in his own estimates for the variables and came up with an average of 10,000 intelligent civilizations per year. As expected, determining the probability of life being intelligent is the hardest to quantify. It is a credit to Frank Drake that, while his equation has been exercised and criticized for 60 years, no one has developed a better one.
Creating such a famous equation would be enough for many astronomers and scientists, but Frank Drake went on to teach and influence an army of followers as an astronomy professor at Cornell and the University of California, Santa Cruz. At Arecibo, he was involved in a project that beamed a radio message to a cluster of stars. He also directed the SETI Institute's Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe and chaired the institute's board of trustees. With Carl Sagan, he helped create two messages sent from humanity that were engraved on a plaque on the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes and on gold records placed on the Voyager 1 and 2 probes. Frank Drake continued to serve on the SETI Institute's board of trustees until he died on September 2, 2022, at his home in Aptos, California, from natural causes at the age of 92.
Thank you, Frank Drake, for your service to astronomy,science and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Throughout the field of the UFO phenomena there are those that study it, and those who seem to have actually become a part of it. In some cases we have the tales of what have come to be called "contactees," or those people who have met or even been abducted by these otherwordly entities. They almost always have rather strange stories to tell, and one of these is certainly the tale of a woman who seems to have been targeted by aliens from an early age and would become a mainstay on the UFO convention circuit along with her entourage of two of the most famous UFO researchers in the field at the time.
Barbara Hudson was initiated fairly early into the world of UFO weirdness. When she was just 15 years old she claims that she had been awoken one night by a tall man standing near her bed, his features indistinct in the shadows. Barbara thought at first it was a human intruder, but as she was about to scream out to her parents, the stranger released beams from his eyes that supposedly paralyzed her and held her in place, completely frozen. She also felt her mind become foggy, entering a sort of daze or trance, and when the man held his hand out and asked her to follow him she found that she was unable to resist. A grey mist then appeared, and within this mist was what looked like an elevator, which she was ushered into and then brought to a large room with screens on the wall showing the planet earth, as well as “many instruments and colored lights” and more of those strange tall beings. These figures gave her some fruit to eat, before taking her back into the elevator and into her room, leaving her there to lose consciousness.
For years Barbara would try to put this strange incident out of her mind and get on with her life. She would eventually move to New York City, marry and have a child, although she divorced, renting out an apartment in Manhattan where she lived with her parents. Life had seemed to have gotten somewhat back to normal, but just when she thought that she had seen the last of those tall strangers, her life would get weird again. One cold afternoon in February of 1960, Barbara was changing her baby’s diapers when the doorbell rang. It was a bit odd because she hadn’t been expecting anyone, but she didn’t think much of it at first and went to the door to see who it was. She opened the door on its chain just a crack, and there standing in the hall was a man she had never met and who had a demeanor of utter strangeness.
This stranger was described as standing around a bit over 6 feet in height and with a very slender, almost skeletal build, wearing an ill-fitting navy blue suit with a dark tie and a white shirt that all hung awkwardly off of his bony frame. His skin was dark, his eyes deeply set within his face beneath a mop of brown, wavy hair. For a moment he just stood there staring at her with a neutral look that was impossible to read, and just as Barbara was about to close the door in his face he spoke, telling her that he was the exterminator who had been sent by the management of the apartment to spray her apartment for bugs. Looking at his hands, she could see that he was indeed carrying an insect sprayer, as well as a black briefcase, but it was weird because no one had told her anything about an exterminator coming over. As odd as the situation was, Barbara nevertheless showed the man in, where he went to the kitchen and began spraying.
At some point, the man stopped and turned to Barbara, told her not to be afraid and that he meant her no harm, and then marched across the room to pick up a book on the bookshelf, specifically one called Flying Saucers Have Landed, by another alien contactee by the name of George Adamski. Oddly, the man had gone straight to the book and knew exactly where it was, and when he picked it up was described as fondling it lovingly with both hands. He then asked Barbara what she thought of the book, and whether she believed anything within its pages, to which she responded that she did. The man then asked her where she thought aliens came from, and she answered that they were probably from Mars or Venus. This elicited a smile from the stranger as he gently put the book back down and leaned forward to kiss Barbara on the cheek before heading towards the door.
Despite the sheer bizarreness of the situation, not only was Barbara completely calm throughout all of this, but she even went ahead to open the door for the stranger. The man quietly walked out and went down the stairs to the first floor, where he turned to face her again. This time the man spoke again, telling her that she was wrong and that he was in fact an alien but that he was not from Mars or Venus, but rather he was from Saturn, before telling her he would see her again and hurrying off. When he was gone, whatever spell he had placed on her wore off, and Barbara was hit with a sudden wave of fear and panic. She quickly closed the door and locked it, before hurrying to the window to look outside, but the man seems to have never come back out of the apartment as far as she could see, leaving her sitting there with a cold, wet feeling of dread. Unfortunately for her, this would not be the end of such strange incidents.
Later that same year, three tall, thin men in dark suits and with gaunt faces very similar to that of the “exterminator” she had met came to her apartment and once again she felt as if they had put her into a sort of hypnotic trance. The men told her they wanted her to join a secret organization they called simply “the group,” and that they had something to show her that concerned UFOs. They invited her to come out for a drive with them and she felt oddly compelled to do as they said, following them out to the street to a waiting dark sedan. They drove her out to a remote locale at Long Island, remaining silent the entire way, and when the car stopped they were at some sort of compound populated by both humans and aliens alike. The men with her explained that this was “the group,” and that they had been recruited from both Earth and around the galaxy for the purpose of letting the world know about aliens and UFOs. They then instructed her that she was to go to seminars being held by the author and UFO researcher James Willett Moseley at the series of Giant Rock Flying Saucer Conventions going on at the time so that she could “keep an eye on things.” Thus would begin the next strange chapter of her weird story.
At the convention, Barbara would meet Moseley, as well as the UFO author Gray Barker, who was perhaps most well-known for introducing the world to the notion of the Men in Black with his 1956 book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. The two researchers were fascinated by Barbara’s story, and from there her, Barker and Beckley seem to have become an inseparable trio, with them even inviting her along when they did an investigation into the Mothman sightings at Point Pleasant, West Virginia, with some of these activities being covered in Gray Barker’s The Silver Bridge (1970). Barbara became very involved with the UFO conference scene, often appearing with Moseley and Barker, and she started work on a book about her experiences, an excerpt of which would appear in Beckley’s UFO newsletter Saucer News, in an article entitled A Visitor From Saturn? Rather strangely, Barbara would allegedly send a rough draft of some of her writings to the writer George H. Smith, who was famous for adult-themed schlock with titles like Orgy Buyer and The Sex and Savagery of the Hells Angels, who used Hudson’s name as a pseudonym and whipped up her outline into a lurid, sex-soaked work of fiction called Those Sexy Saucer People (1967). As for Barbara’s own book, it never would be fully finished and would forever remain a work in progress.
Gray Barker
As for Moseley and Barker, they would claim that they fully believed Barbara’s story and found her to be very reliable, enthusiastically endorsing her weird story. They also gave other strange anecdotes about their time with her, telling of a time at Point Pleasant where she had met possibly one of her friends from Saturn in the form of a tall gaunt man she had seen weeping and whistling the theme of Gone With the Wind in the dark in the abandoned power-plant. On another occasion, Barker claimed to have seen Barbara’s doppelganger while at a separate convention across the country. Unfortunately, most of the information we have on Barbara Hudson and her experiences were related by Barker himself, and here is where we get into some problems.
Although he was a prolific author on UFOs and the paranormal and his books advocated the existence of UFOs and extraterrestrials, Barker himself was known to be privately a pretty hardcore skeptic. He mostly churned out his various UFO writings for money, but didn’t really believe in most of what he wrote, even telling friends and family that the subject matter was a joke and calling his own books “kookie books.” He was also known to intentionally greatly embellish facts in his books and omit certain things or play up certain angles in order to make the cases he covered seem more outlandish and mysterious. This personal disdain for the UFO field and for the true believers out there fueled a series of elaborate hoaxes he concocted to fool UFO enthusiasts, and he is known for having relentlessly pranked John Keel during his investigation into the Mothman phenomenon.
His partner in crime, Moseley, was no better. Also a private skeptic, Moseley went through great lengths to orchestrate elaborate hoaxes to discredit UFO believers. He did not do this necessarily out of spite or for kicks, but rather because he believed the UFO field was full of fakers, hoaxes and nonsense that muddied the waters because people were too quick to accept it as real. He believed that some of the UFO phenomena truly was unexplainable and mysterious, but that it was hard to get at the real truth, and that only after weeding out the hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and misidentifications could one truly get close to the truth. To him, his hoaxes were simply to prove that many in the UFO community were too quick to accept something as real and were a gullible lot.
James Moseley
Together, Moseley and Barker came up with some doozies. In one hoax, they faked a letter from the United States government and sent it to self-proclaimed alien contactee George Adamski. The letter stated that the United States Department of State was pleased with Adamski's research into UFOs, that the government knew that Adamski had actually spoken to extraterrestrials in a California desert in 1952, and that they had their own evidence bearing out his extraordinary claims. The letter was even printed on official State Department stationary and letterhead complete with white-seal, blue-embossed paper, the American eagle watermark and the Seal of State impressed upon it, and it was signed by a R.E. Straith. Barker would use the hoax in his 1967 book on Adamski, calling the letter "one of the great unsolved mysteries of the UFO field.” Adamski would swallow the bait hook, line, and sinker, widely publicizing the letter and using it as evidence to back his various bizarre claims on UFO contacts, exactly proving Moseley’s point. The letter would be debated within the UFO community for years as possibly real, and even when Moseley publicly admitted that it was all a hoax there have been those right up to the present day who still suspect it might be the real deal.
Another one of Barker and Moseley’s more infamous hoaxes was the so-called Lost Creek saucer video. In 1966, the two had the idea to create footage of a flying saucer they planned to present as real and see how far or how blindly people would believe it. To this end, they had an assistant hold a fake saucer on a fishing pole in front of a car as Moseley drove and Barker filmed. The resulting footage was presented as the real deal and made big waves at the time, inspiring a lot of discussion and with many in the UFO community hailing it as an amazing piece of genuine footage. Barker himself would carry it around to his lectures at UFO conventions before eventually admitting it was fake and explaining how he had done it.
Considering this ruthless trolling of the UFO community by Barker and Moseley, it is hard to know just what to make of the fact that they were such champions of Barbara Hudson’s story and made such a point of traveling around to conventions with her. It seems very likely that, while she likely believed what she was saying, Barker and Moseley almost certainly did not, and that she was just another one of their trolling runs. How much of what she said of her experiences was actually true and how much of it was fed to her, played up, or even fabricated by Barker and Moseley? They were such unrepentant hoaxers that it is really hard to say for sure, and we are left to wonder. Was Barbara Moseley the real deal? Was she just a delusional woman? Was she perhaps the victim of two of the most notorious hoaxers in the UFO field? Whatever the case may be, it sure is a strange tale of one of the weirder UFO contactees out there.
The U.S. Navy has released a new video from an incident that involved six unidentified drones flying over its most advanced surface combatant, the USS Zumwalt. The incident occurred in the waters off the coast of Southern California in April 2019.
The War Zone received the video via the Freedom of Information act as part of our ongoing investigation into reports of drone swarm incidents that occurred near Navy vessels intermittently throughout 2019 off Southern California. Our previous update in the investigation produced a number of briefing documents, including an unclassified video and photographs that provided a significant increase in detail about these strange incidents. While the bulk of the drone swarm events occurred in July of 2019, we learned of several new events that occurred earlier in the year. Among these was the incident involving the USS Zumwalt.
The incident occurred at approximately 8:30 PM Pacific Time on April 24th 2019, around 17 nautical miles from the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton in international waters. During the event, the USS Zumwalt reported that as many as six unknown unmanned aerial systems (UAS) were seen operating nearby at altitudes ranging from 300 to 1000 feet. At one point in the incident, the UAS reportedly crossed over the deck of the USS Zumwalt. As in similar past incidents, the drones were documented by the Ship Nautical Or Otherwise Photographic Interpretation and Exploitation team, or "SNOOPIE team." These sailors essentially act to document dangerous, uncertain, or unusual situations using a variety of commercial-grade cameras.
You can view the newly obtained footage from the incident and listen to a sailor’s accompanying narration here:
A briefing slide and photograph from the incident was previously published by The War Zone, and is shown again below:
US Navy via FOIA
It should be noted that the USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) is a unique vessel as the lead ship in its class of controversial, but technologically advanced stealthy surface combatants. The ship'sstealth technology is designed to allow it to be more survivable than other destroyers, including being able to operate closer to enemy territory during certain operations.
Detailed analysis of the low-resolution video is difficult given that it was taken at night. While unclassified records released to the public tend to be underwhelming, it is likely that the USS Zumwalt had access to a range of sophisticated sensors during the incident.
The only clear feature in the video is a set of several lights in a rectangular formation. The lights appear to be white and green, with an intermittently blinking red light presumed to be in the center of the object. A sailor comments that the UASs do not appear to be armed in the narration.
For further analysis, we spoke with David Kovar, CEO of URSA Inc. Kovar’s firm specializes in drone security issues, including criminal investigations and UAV threat management. Kovar stated that “I’m unable to determine much of the configuration of the aircraft. It appears to have four regularly spaced running, or navigation lights.”
Kovar stated that given the context of the narration and the briefing slide, the object could be a “multi-rotor, likely a quad, UAV with running lights.” However, he noted that this assessment is based on a typical configuration of quadcopter lights. He stated that while the video could match other objects, as well, given the lack of detail in the video, it appears consistent with the description of a UAS in the narration and the briefing slide. Of course, other potential types exist, including smaller gasoline-powered fixed-wing types that pack long ranges or hybrid types that can takeoff and land vertically but are more efficient in forwarding flight with the help of a pusher propeller and wing-like appendages. The latter has become a favorite of the Chinese Navy.
A former drone industry analyst who declined to be named due to their current employment highlighted several other features of interest. The analyst commented that “while the video isn't of the best quality, I don't see anything on the drone that would make me think it's something that couldn't be purchased off the shelf from a current commercial drone manufacturer.” The analyst added, “the fact that the narrator said that there was a pattern of flight where there were no changes in altitude tells me that the drones were either programmed to fly a certain route or controlled from a distance while possibly on altitude hold, which to me isn't the hallmark of any advanced technology.”
They further commented, “what is interesting is that they reported 6 drones and they were 17 miles off the coast of Southern California. This tells me that these drones were likely launched from a boat and that this was likely a planned 'mission' because no one has 6 drones on a boat for recreational purposes.” The analyst further stated that physically capturing the drone “is really the only way a forensic assessment can be made to determine the origin and capabilities associated with an [unidentified] drone.”
The observation of bright lights on unidentified UAS has been a recurring feature in several of the other drone swarm incidents we have investigated. In a previous interview, DroneSec CEO Mike Monnik told The War Zone that his firm’s database of drone incidents has registered an uptick in swarm events, and that in some cases less capable drones are used as “canaries” that intentionally distract or probe the defense of a potential target. There is also a long Cold War history of technologies designed to intentionally stimulate air defense systems in order to capture valuable signals intelligence, which you can read more about here.
As in the other drone swarm cases from this general area and timeframe, several key questions remain unanswered. Based on the briefing slide above, we have reached out to Carrier Strike Group Nine to inquire if the operator of the drones was ever positively identified, or if any effort was made to track the drones to their ultimate destination. They have not responded at the time of writing. The Chief of Naval Operations Michael Gilday previously stated that the Navy did not get to the bottom of similar incidents that occurred in the same region later in the same year. In a congressional hearing earlier this year, representatives of the Navy and Department of Defense explained that several of the incidents were in fact related to drone swarms, but did not offer further details.
While details about these incidents have been difficult to come by, drone swarms are becoming a general area of increasing interest for the Navy. Just in the last month, the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division ran an event called “Silent Swarm 22.” Conducted at ranges with the Michigan National Guard's National All-Domain Warfighting Center, this was a “large scale experimentation event” that brought together over 150 participants to focus on “Electromagnetic Warfare (EW) employed on small multi-domain unmanned systems (UxS).”
Notably, the logo, seen below, for the event depicts a warship surrounded by a web and a swarm of various fixed-wing and rotor-wing drones. Reflections of the drones can be seen in the water, perhaps a nod to the “multi-domain” reference and the more inclusive UxS acronym in the event’s description.
Michigan National Guard
This is just one of a number of major Navy exercises focusing on unmanned systems, and those efforts are only accelerating and have been for years
While the Navy focuses on forward-looking efforts to employ drone swarms, it is not the only player in this space. The string of drone swarm incidents throughout 2019 demonstrates that surveillance of key naval assets is being conducted in the areas where they train – often within miles of the American coast. Drone swarms are not a theoretical emerging technology threat, but rather a present tense reality. U.S. adversaries are openly developing and deploying these capabilities and all indications point to the fact that networked swarms of lower-end drones will be absolutely critical to prevailing in future high-end maritime conflicts.
The inherent difficulty of reliably detecting, tracking, and countering drones has created a unique challenge for the Pentagon in recent years. In fact, it is among the department’s biggest tactical and strategic concerns. The often ambiguous footage from incidents has led to an overlap of the drone issue with longstanding cultural interest in UFOs – a dilemma that The War Zone has reported on for some time. Disambiguating drone surveillance incidents from headier claims appears to be a priority of lawmakers, though it remains to be seen how the Department of Defense will make such distinctions in practice.
Perhaps more importantly, it remains to be seen how effective the Navy and Department of Defense will be in investigating and resolving these incidents in an era when once considered highly advanced drone technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated and accessible.
Update 9/1/22:
We reached out to DroneSec, a drone security intelligence firm based in Melbourne, for their comment on the video from the USS Zumwalt incident. Due to the time zone difference, we were not able to include their response before initial publication. DroneSec CEO Mike Monnik told us via email that “given the alleged unaltered speed and altitude, it was possibly on a preplanned route. Either this was enabled as the UAS approached the ship, or it was already conducting its preprogrammed route and the USS Zumwalt entered the area.” Monnik stated, “in our opinion, we don't believe it is a fixed-wing given the slight visibility of the cross-section.” He also told us that the DroneSec team found visual similarities with the DJI Inspire, which also has lights in a box shape and a comparable LED light sequence. A video of the DJI Inspire operating at night can be seen below:
Note that given the clarity of the video, this is not a positive identification, but rather an estimate of the general type of drone that may have been employed. While LED light sequences can be helpful in identifying drones in some cases, there are significant limitations in drawing inferences based on this alone. Monnik emphasized that “UAS can often modify their own light sequence by color, frequency and speed,” and that these features are readily available in some commercially available drones.
The USS Zumwalt is the most advanced United States Navy guided missile destroyer in existence today. Much larger than any other active destroyer or cruiser in the US Navy, the USS Zumwalt’s futuristic appearance is the result of a design that gives the ship stealth capabilities against radar detection and a wave-piercing tumblehome hull to dramatically reduce drag and increase fuel efficiency. Powered by an integrated electric propulsion (IEP) system and managed by a much smaller crew that previous warships, the USS Zumwalt was created to be the next generation in fighting ships and to strike fear in enemy navies. While that may be true, a recently released video shows that one enemy laughs in the pointed face of the USS Zumwalt -- drones. The video, released by the U.S. Navy, shows as many as six mysterious drones or unmanned aerial systems (UAS) swarming the USS Zumwalt in the waters off the coast of Southern California in April 2019. Who … or what … controls these mysterious aircraft that seem fearless against the latest and best of the U.S. Navy?
The USS Zumwalt
“The War Zone received the video via the Freedom of Information act as part of our ongoing investigation into reports of drone swarm incidents that occurred near Navy vessels intermittently throughout 2019 off Southern California.”
Credit for convincing the U.S. Navy to release the video goes to the intrepid team at The War Zone/The Drive, which has obtained a number of such videos, photos and data files via its relentless requests under the Freedom of Information Act. The War Zone is responsible for obtaining a number of videos of drone swarm events around naval warships off the coast of California in July of 2019, but the bulk of those have been around conventional warships and aircraft carriers … not the next generation in fighting vessels.
“The incident occurred at approximately 8:30 PM Pacific Time on April 24th 2019, around 17 nautical miles from the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton in international waters. During the event, the USS Zumwalt reported that as many as six unknown unmanned aerial systems (UAS) were seen operating nearby at altitudes ranging from 300 to 1000 feet.”
An altitude of 300 feet is a mere stone’s throw to a ship like the USS Zumwalt – almost within swatting distance. In fact, one of the drones was reported to have crossed directly over the deck of the USS Zumwalt. That should make them a piece of cake to identify, right? Well, take a look at the video yourself here and see if you can identify them. Finished?
What do you think? As The War Zone points out, all you can see in this nighttime, low-resolution video is a group of bright lights flying in a rectangular formation – the lights are green and white with an intermittently blinking red light in the center. That’s even worse than most UFO/UAP videos. Fortunately, the USS Zumwalt had a SNOOPIE Team -- Ship Nautical Or Otherwise Photographic Interpretation and Exploitation team – which immediately investigates and documents unusual UAS encounters such as this one. A chart showing the Zumwalt’s “Interaction with MULTIPLE UNK UAS” and a timeline of the events can be seen on The War Zone’s website. That chart includes another photo, a map showing the location of the USS Zumwalt at the time of the encounter, and a plot of the path of the drones superimposed on the path of the Zumwalt. All of this data adds up to what looks to be a very close encounter between the Navy’s latest warship and a swarm of unknown aerial phenomena.
“What is interesting is that they reported six drones, and they were 17 miles off the coast of Southern California. This tells me that these drones were likely launched from a boat and that this was a planned ‘mission’ because no one has six drones on a boat for recreational purposes.”
So, what did the USS Zumwalt encounter on the night of April 24th 2019? The War Zone asked an anonymous (by their request) drone analyst who suspected this was a military exercise using pre-programmed drones flying predetermined paths and hovering at selected locations. That did not impress the analyst as being the actions and maneuvers of “any advanced technology” – it could be done off-the-shelf, non-military, commercial drones. David Kovar, CEO of URSA Inc., a drone security company, agreed.
“Given the context of the narration and the briefing slide, the object could be a multi-rotor, likely a quad, UAV with running lights.”
While those analyses hint at ‘what’ these mysterious UAS are, they don’t indicate ‘whose’ they are. Earlier this year, the War Zone obtains photographs of UAP encounters in 2019 reported by the USS Kidd, USS Rafael Peralta, USS Russell, USS John Finn, and USS Paul Hamilton during weeks of maneuvers near California’s Channel Islands, and was able to identify the possible source of the swarms of drones – the Hong Kong-flagged bulk carrier MV Bass Strait. In that group of photos, one image was labeled “Quadcopter style UAS.” Could the drones harassing the USS Zumwalt have been from a Hong Kong carrier too?
“The Chief of Naval Operations Michael Gilday previously stated that the Navy did not get to the bottom of similar incidents that occurred in the same region later in the same year.”
The War Zone received no response to requests for information on the identity of the drones’ operators – noting that not all drone swarms were linked to the Honk Kong vessel or any other ship. It also noted that the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division held an event in July 2022 called “Silent Swarm 22” at the Michigan National Guard's National All-Domain Warfighting Center which tested “Electromagnetic Warfare (EW) employed on small multi-domain unmanned systems (UxS).” The logo of the exercise (these days, you can’t have an exercise without a logo for a patch) shows drones flying around a ship and, interestingly, reflections of the drones on the surface of the water. The War Zone thinks this is a wink to the biggest concern of Pentagon’s new UAP investigation department – transmedium or multi-domain UAPs.
As of this writing, no other information is available about mysterious, unidentified UAPs swarming the USS Zumwalt, the U.S. Navy’s latest stealth flagship destroyer. Kudos as always to the team an The War Zone.
I figured that having just published an article on the mysteries of the planet Mars, I would now write one that focuses on our Moon. And, there are more than a few mysteries out there, to be sure! Our strange Moon story goes back to the 1970s, but it is still a fascinating story. According to the family of a Raymond Wallis, he was someone who, way back in 1975, took on the alias of a “Mr. Axelrod,” when a team of remote-viewers at Area 51 were focusing their attention not on the Russians or even the Chinese, but on the Moon itself. Something strange had caught the attention of those working on the program. Answers needed to be found. Reportedly, and incredibly, several of the remote-viewers had significant success in psychically uncovering evidence that there were several underground, alien bases on the Moon. So the story goes, the team hit a brick-wall because, in a rather sinister fashion, the aliens somehow knew when they were being watched. So, the team decided to do something that they rarely ever did. They decided to go outside of the box – or in their case a secure series of rooms at Area 51’s S-4 – and approach one of the leading figures in the field of remote-viewing, a man named Ingo Swann. Before we get directly to Swann, let's have a look at the phenomenon of Remote-Viewing.
(NASA) The surface of the Moon
Extra-sensory perception (ESP), clairvoyance, precognition, and astral-projection have all been utilized by the CIA, the KGB, and British Intelligence on more than a few occasions. As astonishing as it may sound, the world of psychic 007’s is all too real. It’s a subject that has been researched, with varying degrees of success, for decades. Remote Viewing is also a phenomenon that allows for travel into different realms of time. The earliest indication of serious interest on the part of the U.S. Government in the field of psychic phenomena can be found in a formerly classified CIA document written in 1977 by Dr. Kenneth A. Kress - then an engineer with the CIA’s Office of Technical Services - and titled Parapsychology in Intelligence. According to Kress: “Anecdotal reports of extrasensory perception capabilities have reached U.S. national security agencies at least since World War II, when Hitler was said to rely on astrologers and seers. Suggestions for military applications of ESP continued to be received after World War II.
In 1952, the Department of Defense was lectured on the possible usefulness of extrasensory perception in psychological warfare. “In 1961, the CIA’s Office of Technical Services became interested in the claims of ESP. Technical project officers soon contacted Stephen I. Abrams, the Director of the Parapsychological Laboratory, Oxford University, England. Under the auspices of Project ULTRA, Abrams prepared a review article which claimed ESP was demonstrated but not understood or controllable.” Kress added with these words: “The report was read with interest but produced no further action for another decade.” Indeed, it was in the early part of the 1970s that the research really took off. In April 1972, Dr. Russell Targ, a laser physicist with a personal interest in parapsychology and the power of the human mind, met with CIA personnel from the Office of Strategic Intelligence, specifically to discuss paranormal phenomena. Now, let us get back to our main character in this story, Ingo Swann.
(Nick Redfern) A Moon-Area 51 connection?
A secret, Area 51-based group interested in the mysteries of the Moon? It sounds wild. The possibility that the Moon could be home to a race of extraterrestrials that live deep below its surface? It sounds incredible, right? It is, however, amazing fact: Swann himself publicly confirmed the sensational story, which probably did not please the team at Area 51. Swann, who died in 2013, was considered to be one of the U.S. Government’s leading Remote-Viewers, those near-unique individuals whose psychic powers and extra-sensory perception (ESP) were harnessed, from the 1970s onwards, to spy on the former Soviet Union. Swann proved to be a highly-skilled remote-viewer, one whose talents were employed on a number of espionage-themed operations focusing on overseas targets that might have proven hostile to the United States. As a result, Swann came into contact with a variety of shadowy figures within the realm of government secrecy, and the world of intelligence-gathering, including a truly Machiavellian character known, very mysteriously, only by the name of Mr. Axelrod – seemingly a leading figure in this hidden, mysterious group.
It was in February 1975 that Swann was contacted out of the blue by what he personally described as a certain highly-placed figure in Washington, D.C., who guardedly advised Swann that he, Swann, would soon be receiving a telephone call from the aforementioned Mr. Axelrod. Swann’s source quietly advised him that while he could not offer much at that time by way of a meaningful explanation, Swann should be keenly aware that the call would concern a matter of great urgency and importance. A somewhat concerned Swann waited…and waited…and waited. You get the picture. Finally, roughly around four weeks later, a call arrived, and Swann was asked to make a cloak-and-dagger rendezvous, only mere hours later, at the National Museum of Natural History within the Smithsonian. Despite the somewhat fraught, last-minute nature of the conversation, Swann unhesitatingly agreed, and quickly – albeit with a degree of concern and trepidation – made his careful way to the meeting-place, where he was greeted by a man who Swann said "looked like a Marine." Although all the basic formalities were exchanged, Swann was hardly clear on what was afoot: he was driven by car to a second location, where nothing less than a helicopter was waiting to take him to a destination unknown. Such was the security and secrecy surrounding the journey Swann was blindfolded for the approximately thirty-minute flight. In other words, the experience was rapidly becoming one of near-007-like proportions.
On landing, Swann was then taken to an elevator that descended for an incredibly significant period of time – perhaps into the bowels of some secret, underground installation, Swann thought, and probably with a high degree of logical justification. With the blindfold finally removed, Swann gathered his bearings, and was then introduced to the enigmatic Mr. Axelrod (in reality, Raymond Wallis), who admitted this was not his real name, but suggested to Swann it was an identity that served the particular purposes of the meeting. Axelrod wasted no time, at all, and got straight to the absolute point, asking Swann a great deal of curious questions about the nature of remote-viewing. Axelrod also made it clear that he wished to make use of Swann’s skills – on what was clearly a secret operation – for a significant sum of money. It truly was one of those offers that one cannot refuse. And Swann, most assuredly, did not refuse it. Axelrod asked Swann, pointedly, what he knew about our Moon. Now, finally, the purpose of the strange meeting was becoming much clearer. Someone within officialdom was secretly looking to have the Moon remote-viewed – which is precisely what Swann went ahead and did.
By Swann’s own admission, he was utterly floored by what he found: during an initial targeting, his mind focused in on sensational imagery of what looked to be a huge tower, similar in size to the Secretariat Building at the United Nations, but one that soared upwards from the Moon’s surface. This was no human-made structure, Swann was told: it was the work of nothing less than mysterious extraterrestrials. In follow-up remote-viewing sessions, Swann was able to perceive on the surface of the Moon a wealth of domed structures, advanced machinery, additional tall towers, large cross-like structures, curious tubular constructions across the landscape, and even evidence of what looked like extensive mining operations. Someone, or something, had secretly constructed nothing less than a Moon-base.
Intriguingly, Swann was also able to focus his mind on what appeared to be a group of people – that appeared very human – housed in some sort of enclosure on the Moon, that were busily burrowing into the side of a cliff. The only oddity: they were all utterly naked. Rather ominously, and very quickly, at that point Axelrod terminated the experiment, amid dark and disturbing allusions to the possibility that the Moon-based entities were possibly acutely aware they were being spied upon via the means of astral-travel. It was even implied that Swann’s very actions might now place him in grave danger, if the beings decided to turn the tables and pay him a visit of a deadly, cosmic kind – which, very fortunately for Swann, they did not. Notably, Axelrod also inquired of Swann if he knew of a man named George Leonard. Swann replied that, no, he was not familiar with the name. It transpired that during that very same time frame that the shadowy Axelrod was employing Swann to seek out the mysteries of the Moon, Leonard, an author, was hard at work, toiling on a manuscript titled Somebody Else is on the Moon. In 1977, Leonard’s manuscript appeared in book form, and, to a significant degree, focused its attention upon the very matter about which Axelrod was so deeply troubled: namely, unusual, intelligently-designed structures, or installations, on the Moon.
Before we go any further in this strange saga, let's have a look at the Moon itself. As NASA says: "The brightest and largest object in our night sky, the Moon makes Earth a more livable planet by moderating our home planet's wobble on its axis, leading to a relatively stable climate. It also causes tides, creating a rhythm that has guided humans for thousands of years. The Moon was likely formed after a Mars-sized body collided with Earth. Earth's Moon is the fifth largest of the 200+ moons orbiting planets in our solar system. Earth's only natural satellite is simply called 'the Moon' because people didn't know other moons existed until Galileo Galilei discovered four moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610." Now, let us get back to the key parts of the story.
On one particular occasion Axelrod casually asked Swann if he had heard of a man named George Leonard. At the time, Swann had not heard of Leonard. He soon would, though. Axelrod told Swann, on a particular date in 1975 that Swann could not recall when he went public with the story, that Leonard was working on a book that was, said Axelrod, “of interest to us.” Not only that: the book would focus, in part, of some of the things that had concerned Axelrod and his team in 1975. The implication was that someone “on the inside” was secretly and constantly monitoring Leonard’s research and writing. Swann was amazed when, in 1976, he was provided – by Axelrod - with a then-newly-surfaced copy of Leonard’s book, Somebody Else is on the Moon, which was published by David McKay. Notably, the back-cover of the book details for the reader some of the highlights of the story: “Immense mechanical rigs, some over a mile;” “Strange geometric ground markings and symbols;” “constructions several times higher than anything built on Earth;” and “Somebody is doing something on our Moon – and doing it right now, on a stunningly massive scale!” To Swann, this sounded very much like what Axelrod knew back in 1975. And it most certainly mirrored what Swan had found for Axelrod.
The odd, near-Deep-Throat-like meetings between Swann and Axelrod / Wallis – on the nature of what was afoot on the Moon – continued until 1977, after which time they came to an abrupt end, with Swann, unsurprisingly, left scratching his head about the distinctly odd sequence of events. Had Swann really psychically accessed a fantastically-advanced base on the Moon that had been constructed by space-faring extraterrestrials? Or, does the fact that Swann recalled those working on the facility looked like everyday members of the Human Race – albeit naked ones! – mean that this was a secret installation of very terrestrial origins, one that Axelrod was trying to learn more about, due to being left out of a particular, highly classified governmental loop? Could there be sinister extraterrestrials below the surface of our Moon? Just maybe, there really could.
NOTE:
The photo of the Moon used in this article was taken by employees of NASA. Because NASA is an arm of the U.S. Government, the picture is considered public domain.
Check out this strange circular rainbow cloud spotted in China on August 21, 2022.
This is called a "scarf cloud", which occurs when a thunderstorm's updraft creates a pileus cloud and the sun's angle interacts with the ice crystals in the pileus cloud.
The scarf cloud is formed by the cooling and condensation of moist air forced up and over the peak. When the sunlight is at the right angle, the light diffracts between the droplets and the ice crystals in the cloud, creating a rainbow color.
Long cigar shaped UFO moving slowly over Orange Park, Florida 4-Sep-2022
Long cigar shaped UFO moving slowly over Orange Park, Florida 4-Sep-2022
This really long bright cigar-shaped UFO was seen and recorded in the sky above Orange Park, Florida on 4th September 2022.
Witness report:
Observed this long rectangular/cigar shaped might moving slowly from the northeast to east. I filmed it for about 10 seconds before it went behind the treeline. Estimate that it was probably 5 miles away and would have been in the vicinity of buckman bridge in Jacksonville.
Indonesia’s 31,000-year-old Amputee Shatters the History of Surgery
Indonesia’s 31,000-year-old Amputee Shatters the History of Surgery
Archaeologists in Borneo, Indonesia have unearthed the skeleton of a man who was an amputee, and he underwent his complicated medical procedure some 31,000 years ago!
Until now, all archaeological evidence has suggested the first medical procedures began when humans started inhabiting agricultural settlements during the so-called Neolithic Revolution, which began around 10,000 years ago. Historians of human physiological development generally agree that having bodies designed to walk over 20 miles (32.2 kilometers) a day, for foraging, hunting and fishing, would have been subjected to multiple medical issues when farming began.
Archaeologists in China and Egypt have discovered ancient remains with signs of amputated toes and fingers, with one prosthetic toe dating back 3,000 years . And in 2016 StatNews reported on the discovery of a 6th-century-AD skeleton found in a Frankish Empire-era cemetery in Austria. With an “iron-and-wood prosthetic foot,” this amputee represented the oldest skeleton found in Europe with a prosthetic limb.
Now, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature, a team of researchers has identified the oldest evidence of an amputee surgery, in Borneo, dating way back to 29000 BC.
Liang Tebo burial features of the 29000 BC amputee of Borneo, Indonesia: a) A single adult inhumation (TB1); the skull is to the right of the scale bar; b) in situ nodule of red ochre (a natural earth pigment) next to the mandible; c) Maxilla and mandible. Scale bar, 5 centimeters or 2 inches.
The Assumption That Farming Led to Amputee Tech is False
When humans first turned to agriculture around 10,000 years ago, no matter where on the globe or what type of crops were being grown, the height, strength and general health of the people rapidly declined. This demonstrable fact has led to the widely-accepted assumption that the onset of farming also brought about the necessity of more advanced surgical procedures.
In this new study, however, lead researcher and author, Professor Tim Ryan Maloney of Griffith University, Australia demonstrates that the “assumption” couldn’t have been further from the truth. His new study on the discovery of a 31,000-year-old amputee in Borneo demonstrates the origins of surgery began in prehistoric times, way before farming.
Legacy of Borneo’s 31,000-year-old Amputee Surgeons
The new paper focuses on a discovery made in 2020 on the Sangkulirang–Mangkalihat Peninsula of East Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo). Approximately 2.5 kilometers (15.53 miles) from the Marang River, a matrix of caves and rock shelters are peppered across the karst terrain. Excavations in the vast three-chambered Liang Tebo limestone cave revealed evidence of prehistoric human occupation, including rock art that was painted at least 40,000 years ago, representing some of the earliest rock art ever created.
In 2020, archaeologists dug a trench in which they discovered an adult skeleton (TB1) who had “the distal third of their left lower leg surgically amputated.” The scientists write in their paper that the amputation most probably occurred when the person was a child and that they lived for another 6–9 years after the operation. And dating to “at least 31,000 years ago” this find changes everything that was previously assumed about the origins of surgical procedures.
Surgically amputated site of the left tibia and fibula showing the evidence of amputation.
The Liang Tebo cave skeleton’s limb amputation suggests groups of modern humans foraging in Asia “had developed sophisticated medical knowledge and skills long before the Neolithic farming transition,” according to the new Nature study. The paper says the surgical amputation of TB1’s left lower leg 31,000 years ago “has important implications for our understanding of the evolution of pre-Holocene (the last 11,700 years) human medico-socio-cultural practices.” Until now, scientists generally assumed that complex surgical procedures like this were way beyond the capabilities of foraging cultures .
What is perhaps most interesting about this discovery is that until about 100 years ago in Western medicine, successful surgical amputations without antibiotics generally resulted in blood infections and often death. But in the 31,000-year-old case of TB1, the new study implies that “the Late Pleistocene ‘surgeon(s)’ who amputated this individual’s lower left leg must have possessed detailed knowledge “of limb anatomy and muscular and vascular systems to have prevented fatal blood loss and infection.”
Artist ‘s impression of Tebo1, the oldest amputee on record. The individual had their lower left leg amputated as a child and survived into early adulthood in an artistic community 31,000 years ago in Borneo, Indonesia.
Now that the “great assumption” about Neolithic tech has been shattered, some new assertions are being made based on the discovery of the 31,000-year-old amputee.
The ancient surgeons must have used plants (and perhaps maggots) to clean, dress and disinfect the man’s severed leg wound. They must also have administered some kind of pain relief while controlling their patient’s temperature, diet and recovery movements, to have prevented post-op infection.
Furthermore, the fact that the man recovered after the amputation in what is a very challenging karst stone terrain suggests a very caring community of people looked after him after the operation, and for the rest of his life.
The scientists concluded their paper by suggesting early human colonists in what are today the rainforests of Borneo were challenged by the warmer and much more humid climate. Experiencing an increase in wound infections the people responded by making rapid advances “in medical technology.” Thus, they must have developed new pharmaceuticals from the bountiful and biodiverse environment in which they lived as hunter-gatherers.
Top image:Left: Liang Tebo burial features of the 29000-BC amputee of Borneo, Indonesia: a) A single adult inhumation (TB1); the skull is to the right of the scale bar; Middle: Artist ‘s impression of Tebo1, the oldest amputee on record; Right: Surgically amputated site of the left tibia and fibula showing the evidence of amputation.
Source: Maloney, et al. / Nature; Jose Garcia ( Garciartist) and Griffith University / Nature; Maloney, et al. / Nature
MYTHISCH VERZONKEN EILANDENRIJK BIJ WALES BESTOND WELLICHT ECHT: OUDE LANDKAART KOMT OVEREEN MET BODEMVONDSTEN
MYTHISCH VERZONKEN EILANDENRIJK BIJ WALES BESTOND WELLICHT ECHT: OUDE LANDKAART KOMT OVEREEN MET BODEMVONDSTEN
Jeannette Kras
Verdwenen eilanden die in oude literatuur worden beschreven, spreken ook nu nog tot de verbeelding. Zo zijn er twee eilanden voor de westkust van Wales die op een belangrijke landkaart uit de Middeleeuwen zijn weergegeven en die opduiken in de lokale folklore en poëzie.
Het is heel aannemelijk dat deze eilanden echt hebben bestaan, maar door de zee zijn opgeslokt ergens rond de zestiende eeuw na Christus. Wetenschappers hebben nieuw bewijsmateriaal gevonden en dat aan elkaar gekoppeld. Daarmee wordt er meer bekend over de mogelijke evolutie van de kustlijn van West-Wales.
Op basis van geologische gegevens en een middeleeuwse landkaart maken onderzoekers van de Universiteit van Swansea en de Universiteit van Oxford een reconstructie van het ontstaan en de ondergang van de twee mythische eilanden die waarschijnlijk niet ver van de Britse kust af hebben gelegen en mogelijk generaties lang bewoond zijn door mensen. Er werd in de folklore gesproken over Cantre’r Gwaelod (‘The Lowland Hundred’), een gezonken koninkrijk.
De studie is geïnspireerd op de Gough Map, de oudste bewaard gebleven kaart van Groot-Brittannië. Deze bijzondere kaart vindt waarschijnlijk zijn oorsprong in de dertiende eeuw na Christus en wordt bewaard in de Bodleian Library van de Universiteit van Oxford.
Vergaan eilandrijk De middeleeuwse cartografen verantwoordelijk voor de Gough Map gingen uiterst zorgvuldig te werk. De kaart toont twee eilanden in Cardigan Bay in het westen van Wales, die niet meer bestaan. Elk eiland is afgebeeld op ongeveer een kwart van de grootte van het eiland Anglesey in Noord-Wales. De ene ligt tussen Aberystwyth en Aberdovey en de andere tussen Aberdovey en Barmouth in het noorden.
De studie, gepubliceerd in vakblad Atlantic Geoscience, onderzoekt cultuurhistorische bronnen en geologisch bewijs van de kustlijn en de zeebodem. Zo komen de wetenschappers tot een model van hoe de kust is geëvolueerd sinds de laatste ijstijd, die ongeveer tienduizend jaar geleden eindigde. Al met al biedt het team een plausibele verklaring voor de ‘verloren’ eilanden.
Gletsjerafzettingen en erosiekrachten De eilanden zouden de overblijfselen zijn geweest van laaggelegen land dat bedekt was met relatief zachte gletsjerafzettingen, die zijn ontstaan tijdens de laatste ijstijd. In de duizenden jaren daarna heeft erosie het land uitgesleten en bleven de eilanden over, waarna die rond de zestiende eeuw ook waren weggesleten en verdwenen.
Wanneer fijnere sedimenten van gletsjerafzettingen in de loop van de tijd door erosie verdwijnen, blijven het grovere grind en de keien op de zeebodem achter. De ligging van de eilanden valt samen met de locatie van onderzeese ophopingen van grind en keien, die lokaal ook wel ‘sarns’ worden genoemd.
Ptolemaeus “We weten dat de kust van West-Wales in de loop van de tijd aanzienlijk is veranderd. Bewijs van de Romeinse cartograaf Ptolemaeus suggereert dat de kustlijn tweeduizend jaar geleden misschien zo’n dertien kilometer verder in zee lag dan nu het geval is”, legt professor Simon Haslett van Swansea University uit. “De Gough Map is buitengewoon nauwkeurig als je bedenkt welke primitieve middelen de middeleeuwse cartografen slechts tot hun beschikking hadden. De makers hebben de twee eilanden duidelijk gemarkeerd op de landkaart.”
Eerste klimaatvluchtelingen “Dit onderzoek vergroot ons begrip van de mogelijke processen die langs de kust van Cardigan Bay plaatsvonden en die ertoe hebben geleid dat het er nu zo uitziet. Het kan ook helpen bij toekomstig onderzoek naar de postglaciale evolutie van vergelijkbare laaglanden in andere delen van Noordwest-Europa”, vertelt Haslett.
“Het begrijpen van de kustlijndynamiek is nog nooit zo belangrijk geweest. Sommige steden in het gebied dat we hebben bestudeerd, zijn extra kwetsbaar voor klimaatverandering. Het zou goed kunnen dat dit gaat leiden tot de eerste klimaatvluchtelingen in het Verenigd Koninkrijk”, aldus de onderzoeker.
The Lowland Hundred Onderzoeker professor David Willis van de Universiteit van Oxford voegt hier nog aan toe: “Ons bewijsmateriaal biedt een verklaring voor het ontstaan van het verhaal van Cantre’r Gwaelod (‘The Lowland Hundred’). Dit verloren land zou in een ver verleden verwoest zijn door een catastrofale overstroming. Er wordt in de middeleeuwse poëzie naar verwezen in het Black Book of Carmarthen en neemt ook in latere folklore een belangrijke plaats in.” Hoe bijzonder is het dat dit eilandenrijk niet alleen in sprookjes, maar wellicht ook in het echt heeft bestaan.
HET REGENT DIAMANTEN OP NEPTUNUS WAARDOOR NIEUWE IJSSOORT ONTSTAAT: HET BIZARRE SUPERHETE ZWARTE IJS
HET REGENT DIAMANTEN OP NEPTUNUS WAARDOOR NIEUWE IJSSOORT ONTSTAAT: HET BIZARRE SUPERHETE ZWARTE IJS
Jeannette Kras
Het regent diamanten, niet op aarde helaas, wel op Neptunus en Uranus. Volgens een nieuwe studie komen diamantregens zelfs nog vaker voor dan gedacht.
De wetenschappers ontdekten dat zuurstof de vorming van diamantregen stimuleert. Ook vonden ze bewijs dat door de diamanten een hele vreemde toestand van water zou kunnen ontstaan, die wordt omschreven als ‘superheet, zwart ijs’.
Dit superionische ijs ontstaat onder hoge druk en hoge temperaturen. Onder deze extreme omstandigheden breken watermoleculen uit elkaar en vormen zuurstofatomen een kristalrooster waarin de waterstofkernen vrij rondzweven. Omdat deze vrij zwevende kernen elektrisch geladen zijn, kan superionisch water elektrische stroom geleiden en de ongebruikelijke magnetische velden op Uranus en Neptunus verklaren.
Zwart, zwaar en superheet ijs Een zwart ijsblokje is vier keer zo zwaar als een gewoon ijsblokje en heeft een temperatuur van duizenden graden Celsius. Deze vorm van water is misschien wel een van de meest voorkomende in het universum. De kernen van ijsreuzen als Neptunus en soortgelijke exoplaneten zouden weleens vol kunnen zitten met het zwarte goedje.
De studie, die in Science Advances verscheen, simuleert de omstandigheden op ijsreuzen door in het laboratorium met een enorm sterke laser op een stuk PET-plastic te schieten. Wonderlijk genoeg lijken deze processen chemisch gezien erg op elkaar en ontstaan er op deze manier nanodiamantjes en superionisch ijs. De bevindingen vormen een basis voor een nieuwe manier om nanodiamanten te fabriceren, die nuttig zijn voor het toedienen van medicijnen, om medische sensoren te maken, voor niet-invasieve chirurgie, duurzame productie en kwantumelektronica.
Schieten op plastic In het vorige experiment bestudeerden de onderzoekers een plastic materiaal gemaakt van een mengsel van waterstof en koolstof, belangrijke componenten van de algehele chemische samenstelling van Neptunus en Uranus. Maar naast koolstof en waterstof bevatten de ijsreuzen ook andere elementen, zoals grote hoeveelheden zuurstof.
In het meer recente experiment gebruikten de onderzoekers PET-plastic – vaak gebruikt in voedselverpakkingen, plastic flessen en containers – om de samenstelling van deze planeten nauwkeuriger te reproduceren. “PET heeft een goede balans tussen koolstof, waterstof en zuurstof om de activiteit in ijsplaneten te simuleren”, zegt Dominik Kraus, professor aan de Universiteit van Rostock.
Schokgolf Er werd dus met een laser op een dun vel PET-plastic geschoten. De sterke laserflitsen die het folie-achtige materiaal raakten, verhitten het kort tot 6000 graden Celsius en genereerden zo een schokgolf die de materie gedurende enkele nanoseconden tot miljoenen keren de atmosferische druk comprimeerde. De wetenschappers konden vaststellen dat kleine diamanten, zogenaamde nanodiamanten, zich onder extreme druk vormden.
“Het effect van de zuurstof was een versnelling van de splitsing van koolstof en waterstof om zo de vorming van nanodiamanten te stimuleren”, zei Kraus. “Het betekende dat de koolstofatomen gemakkelijker konden combineren en diamanten konden vormen.”
De onderzoekers voorspellen dat diamanten op Neptunus en Uranus veel groter worden dan de nanodiamanten die in deze experimenten werden geproduceerd. In de loop van duizenden jaren zouden de diamanten langzaam door de ijslagen van de planeten kunnen zinken en samenkomen in een dikke laag rond de vaste planetaire kern. Het team vond ook bewijs dat zich in combinatie met de diamanten superionisch water zou kunnen vormen, ook wel ‘heet, zwart ijs’ genoemd.
Veel ijsreuzen De bevindingen kunnen ook van invloed zijn op ons begrip van planeten in verre sterrenstelsels, te meer omdat wetenschappers nu denken dat ijsreuzen de meest voorkomende planeten buiten ons zonnestelsel zijn. “We weten dat de kern van de aarde voornamelijk uit ijzer bestaat, maar veel experimenten onderzoeken nog steeds hoe de aanwezigheid van lichtere elementen de omstandigheden van smelting en andere faseovergangen kan veranderen”, zegt onderzoeker Silvia Pandolfi. “Ons experiment laat zien hoe deze elementen de omstandigheden kunnen veranderen waarin diamanten zich vormen op ijsreuzen. Als we planeten nauwkeurig willen modelleren, moeten we zo dicht mogelijk bij de werkelijke samenstelling van de planeten komen.”
Ruwe diamanten Het onderzoek helpt ons niet alleen om andere planeten beter te begrijpen, het is ook een stap vooruit in de productie van nanodiamanten op aarde. “De manier waarop nanodiamanten momenteel worden gemaakt, is door een hoop koolstof of diamant te nemen en die op te blazen met explosieven”, zegt wetenschapper Benjamin Ofori-Okai. “Dit creëert nanodiamanten van verschillende groottes en vormen en is moeilijk te controleren. Wat we in dit experiment zien, is een andere reactiviteit van dezelfde soort diamant onder hoge temperatuur en druk. In sommige gevallen lijken de diamanten sneller gevormd te worden dan in andere gevallen, wat suggereert dat de aanwezigheid van de andere chemicaliën dit proces kan versnellen. Laserproductie zou een schonere en gemakkelijker gecontroleerde methode kunnen zijn om nanodiamanten te produceren. Als we manieren kunnen bedenken om sommige dingen aan de reactiviteit te veranderen, kunnen we ook veranderen hoe snel ze vorm krijgen en dus hoe groot ze worden.”
Ethanol Vervolgonderzoek is al in de maak: de onderzoekers willen soortgelijke experimenten uitvoeren met vloeibare monsters die ethanol, water en ammoniak bevatten – waar Uranus en Neptunus voor een groot gedeelte uit zijn opgebouwd – waardoor ze nog beter kunnen begrijpen hoe de diamantregen precies ontstaat op andere planeten.
Human and Neanderthal brains were roughly the same size.
Credit: Adapted from Alamy
More than 500,000 years ago, the ancestors of Neanderthals and modern humans were migrating around the world when a fateful genetic mutation caused some of their brains to suddenly improve. This mutation, researchers report in Science1,2, dramatically increased the number of brain cells in the hominins that preceded modern humans, probably giving them a cognitive advantage over their Neanderthal cousins.
“This is a surprisingly important gene,” says Arnold Kriegstein, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco. However, he expects that it will turn out to be one of many genetic tweaks that gave humans an evolutionary advantage over other hominins. “I think it sheds a whole new light on human evolution.”
When researchers first fully sequenced a Neanderthal genome in 20143, they identified 96 amino acids — the building blocks that make up proteins — that differ between Neanderthals and modern humans in addition to a number of other genetic tweaks. Scientists have been studying this list to learn which of these helped modern humans to outcompete Neanderthals and other hominins.
Cognitive advantage
To neuroscientists Anneline Pinson and Wieland Huttner at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, one gene stood out. The gene, TKTL1, encodes a protein that is made when a fetus’s brain is first developing. A single genetic mutation in the human version of TKTL1 changed one amino acid, resulting in a protein that is different from those found in hominin ancestors, Neanderthals and non-human primates.
The team suspected that this protein could be driving neural progenitor cells — which develop into neurons — to proliferate as the brain develops, specifically in an area called the neocortex, which is involved in cognitive function. That, they reasoned, could be a contributor to modern humans’ cognitive advantage over human ancestors.
To test this, Pinson and her team inserted either the human or ancestral version of TKTL1 into the brains of mouse and ferret embryos. The animals with the human gene developed significantly more neural progenitor cells. When the researchers engineered neocortex cells from a human fetus to produce the ancestral version, they found that the fetal tissue produced fewer progenitor cells and fewer neurons than it normally would. The same was true when they inserted the ancestral version of TKTL1 into brain organoids — mini-brain-like structures grown from human stem cells.
Brain size
Fossil records suggest that human and Neanderthal brains were roughly the same size, meaning that the neocortices of modern humans are either denser or take up a larger portion of the brain. Huttner and Pinson say that they were surprised that such a small genetic change could affect neocortex development so drastically. “It was a coincidental mutation that had enormous consequences,” Huttner says.
Neuroscientist Alysson Muotri at the University of California, San Diego, is more sceptical. He points out that different cell lines behave differently when made into organoids and would like to see the ancestral version of TKTL1 tested in more human cells. Furthermore, he says, the original Neanderthal genome was compared with that of a modern European — human populations in other parts of the world might share some genetic variants with Neanderthals.
Pinson says that the Neanderthal version of TKTL1 is very rare among modern humans, adding that it’s unknown whether it causes any disease or cognitive differences. The only way to prove that it has a role in cognitive function, Huttner says, would be to genetically engineer mice or ferrets that always have the human form of the gene and test their behaviour compared with animals that have the ancestral version. Pinson says she is now planning to look further into the mechanisms through which TKTKL1 drives the birth of brain cells.
Repair Work Underway, Preparations Continue for Next Launch Opportunity
Repair Work Underway, Preparations Continue for Next Launch Opportunity
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is seen at Launch Pad 39B Thursday, Sept. 8, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as teams work to replace the seal on an interface, called the quick disconnect, between the liquid hydrogen fuel feed line on the mobile launcher and the rocket.
Photo Credit: (NASA/Chad Siwik)
Engineers are making progress repairing the area where a liquid hydrogen leak was detected during the Artemis I launch attempt Sept. 3, and NASA is preserving options for the next launch opportunity as early as Friday, Sept. 23.
Technicians constructed a tent-like enclosure around the work area to protect the hardware and teams from weather and other environmental conditions at Launch Pad 39B. They have disconnected the ground- and rocket-side plates on the interface, called a quick disconnect, for the liquid hydrogen fuel feed line, performed initial inspections, and began replacing two seals – one surrounding the 8-inch line used to fill and drain liquid hydrogen from the core stage, and another surrounding the 4-inch bleed line used to redirect some of the propellant during tanking operations. The SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft are in good condition while remaining at the launch pad.
Once the work is complete, engineers will reconnect the plates and perform initial tests to evaluate the new seals. Teams will check the new seals under cryogenic, or supercold, conditions no earlier than Sept. 17 in which the rocket’s core stage and interim cryogenic propulsion stage will be loaded with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen to validate the repair under the conditions it would experience on launch day. Engineers are in the process of developing a full plan for the checkouts.
NASA has submitted a request to the Eastern Range for an extension of the current testing requirement for the flight termination system. NASA is respecting the range’s processes for review of the request, and the agency continues to provide detailed information to support a range decision.
In the meantime, NASA is instructing the Artemis team to move forward with all preparations required for testing, followed by launch, including preparations to ensure adequate supplies of propellants and gases used in tanking operations, as well as flight operations planning for the mission. NASA has requested the following launch opportunities:
Sept 23: Two-hour launch window opens at 6:47 a.m. EDT; landing on Oct. 18
Sept. 27: 70-minute launch window opens at 11:37 a.m.; landing on Nov. 5
NASA’s teams internally are preparing to support additional dates in the event flexibility is required. The agency will evaluate and adjust launch opportunities and alternate dates based on progress at the pad and to align with other planned activities, including DART’s planned impact with an asteroid, the west coast launch of a government payload, and the launch of Crew-5 to the International Space Station.
Listen to a replay of today’s media teleconference on the status of the Artemis I mission. Artemis I is an uncrewed flight test to provide a foundation for human exploration in deep space and demonstrate our commitment and capability to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond.
Disk Shaped UFO Sighted Over Freeway In Los Angeles, California. September 3, 2022
This footage was captured while the witness was driving along the freeway and he took three quick videos and upload them to Instagram. In the footage we can see what looks like a disk shaped UFO just cruising along to the shock of the witness. This was sighted over Los Angeles, California on September 3, 2022 around 9:30am
Thanks to 19th Galaxy for allowing me the use of this footage and to view the original:
UFOs Sighted From The ISS, SpaceX & Bogotá, Colombia. As Seen On The Live Show. September 7, 2022
Guys, This video i did without me talking as these are some of the footages i've showed on my live show so if you would like to hear my opinions on the footages please check out the show:
Clip 1.This was sighted durning the Russian cosmonauts spacewalk on September 2, 2022 and in the footage this object comes into view with the camera operater asking "What is that object?" and following the UFO with the camera until it's out of view. Go to the 7.22.55 to 7.27.55 mark in the video to see and hear.
Clip 2.This object was spotted durning the SpaceX launch of 51 Starlink satellites Sunday, September 4, 2022 at 10:09 p.m. This UFO flies past the rocket but could this be more ice? Go to 22:44 mark in the video and have a look.
Strange UFO Seen in Shakopee, Minnesota, Sept 2022 👽
Video shared on Reddit by Smencil and filmed on September 3, 2022 at 5:46PM in Shakopee, Minnesota. There’s more to say, more to explore together and we invite you now to join this new journey with us on Section 51 ! Subscribe now !
New UFO Video allegedly declassified by the Pentagon
"The Pentagon has declassified a new video from 4/24/19 involving the USS Zumwalt, detecting six unidentified objects on it, including one crossed the deck according to the report. Spokeswoman Susan Gough announced that they have no information about its origin."
UFO Lights in Austria, Feb 2015
Video shared on Instagram and filmed in Gesause National Park in Austria in February 2015. No further information...
Strange Lights in the Sky, USA, July 2021
Video shared on Reddit by Shibby_Laterr187 and filmed in USA, uploaded on Odysee in July 2021. No further information...
The UFO Lie: Shocking truth of Pentagon AAWSAP program | The Basement Office
Everything you were told is wrong. In 2017, the New York Times released a bombshell story revealing AATIP, the Pentagon's "UFO program" and Lue Elizondo, the director of that program.
It proclaimed a shocking truth:
UFOs are real. Since then, that story has been reprinted hundreds and thousands of times across the world and Mr. Elizondo has reached the status of cultural icon. But we've since learned that the whole story... was wrong. In this episode, we reveal the real story of the Pentagon's AAWSAP program - led by scientist James Lacatski - and it's even crazier than you could possibly imagine: $22 million in taxpayer money spent on werewolves, ghosts, goblins, and "dinobeavers" at the infamous Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. But UFO advocates, who are currently lobbying Congress to spend money on UFO investigations, hope you never find out about that. | Season 3, Episode 1
Hi folks, I work hard to put these videos together everyday and all I ask is that you take a moment to "like", "share" and or "subscribe" to the channel. Thank you so much, UFO Video Addicts
US Navy fighter pilot Clarence Clem talks about a UFO hovering over the Hanford nuclear site in 1945
US Navy fighter pilot Clarence Clem talks about a UFO hovering over the Hanford nuclear site in 1945
In July 2014, UFO historian Jan Aldrich revealed that his research group, Project 1947, had secured World War II-era documents from Headquarters Fourth Air Force, which referred to overflights of the Hanford site by “unidentified aircraft”.
One of them, dated January 23, 1945, and directed to the Commanding General of the Army Air Forces and the Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Training, states:
Resulting from an unidentified aircraft flying over the Hanford Engineering Company Plant at Pasco, Wash. on at least three nights in the past month (this Company is engaged in undisclosed projects for the War and Navy Departments) this HQ was requested by [Western Defense Command], about ten days ago, to move one [battery] of searchlights from Seattle to the Pasco plant. The Thirteenth Naval District has made arrangements for Naval Air Station, Pasco, to employ both radar and fighter aircraft in attempting interception of these unidentified aircraft. The airspace over the Hanford Company is both a Danger area and a Restricted area. Our battery of searchlights has been in place since 15 January; one incident has occurred since that date in which a brief radar contact was made—attempted night interception again failed.
So here we have an official document referring an unidentified aircraft flying over the Top Secret Hanford atomic materials production plant on three occasions in January 1945. At least one of those “aircraft” was tracked on radar and successfully eluded the U.S. Navy fighter sent up to intercept it. In conclusion, declassified military documents confirm the events described by former USN fighter pilot Bud Clem. Unfortunately, when Robert Hastings attempted to notify Clem of the discovery of those documents by Jan Aldrich, in July 2014, he learned that Clem had died the previous month. UFO incursions at U.S. atomic/thermonuclear weapons sites, from the 1940s onward, are detailed in thousands of declassified Army, Air Force, Navy, FBI, and CIA documents.
Moreover, hundreds of U.S. military veterans have now discussed their involvement in one or more of those incidents in video interviews. One of them, former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Junior Grade Clarence R. “Bud” Clem, says that a UFO monitored one of our fissile materials facilities—the Hanford plutonium-production plant in Washington State—on three different nights in January 1945, some seven months before Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. Clem says that members of his Navy Hellcat F6F fighter squadron chased them away.
UFOs and Nukes researcher Robert Hastings first learned of the incidents when Clem wrote to him in 2009, but it was not until December 2013 that funds became available to capture the former fighter pilot on video.
Breaking: NASA Just Released First-Ever Images Of Venus’ Surface Taken With Visible Light
Breaking: NASA Just Released First-Ever Images Of Venus’ Surface Taken With Visible Light
The Parker Solar Probe has taken the first visible-light photographs of Venus’s surface. Normally, the planet’s surface is shrouded by dense cloud cover, but the probe was recently able to picture the nightside of Venus using its Wide-Field Imager (WISPR) in wavelengths that the human eye can observe.
The Parker Solar Probe took images of the night side of Venus, revealing surface features in dark and light markings.
Image via NASA.
Brian Wood, lead author on the new study and physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, said: “Venus is the third brightest thing in the sky, but until recently we have not had much information on what the surface looked like because our view of it is blocked by a thick atmosphere. Now, we finally are seeing the surface in visible wavelengths for the first time from space,”
Unexpected Capabilities
The first WISPR images of Venus were taken in July 2020 as Parker embarked on its third flyby, which the spacecraft uses to bend its orbit closer to the Sun. WISPR was designed to see faint features in the solar atmosphere and wind, and some scientists thought they might be able to use WISPR to image the cloud tops veiling Venus as Parker passed the planet.
“The objective was to measure the speed of the clouds,” said WISPR project scientist Angelos Vourlidas, co-author on the new paper and researcher at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
But instead of just seeing clouds, WISPR also saw through to the surface of the planet. The images were so striking that the scientists turned on the cameras again during the fourth pass in February 2021. During the 2021 flyby, the spacecraft’s orbit lined up perfectly for WISPR to image Venus’ nightside in entirety.
“The images and video just blew me away,” Wood said.
Glowing like an Iron from the Forge
Clouds obstruct most of the visible light coming from Venus’ surface, but the very longest visible wavelengths, which border the near-infrared wavelengths, make it through. On the dayside, this red light gets lost amid the bright sunshine reflected off Venus’ cloud tops, but in the darkness of night, the WISPR cameras were able to pick up this faint glow caused by the incredible heat emanating from the surface.
“The surface of Venus, even on the nightside, is about 860 degrees,” Wood said. “It's so hot that the rocky surface of Venus is visibly glowing, like a piece of iron pulled from a forge.”
As it passed by Venus, WISPR picked up a range of wavelengths from 470 nanometers to 800 nanometers. Some of that light is the near-infrared – wavelengths that we cannot see, but sense as heat – and some is in the visible range, between 380 nanometers and about 750 nanometers.
Venus in a New Light
In 1975, the Venera 9 lander sent the first tantalizing glimpses of the surface after landing on Venus. Since then, Venus’ surface has been revealed further with radar and infrared instruments, which can peer through the thick clouds by using wavelengths of light invisible to the human eye. NASA’s Magellan mission created the first maps in the 1990s using radar and JAXA’s Akatsuki spacecraft gathered infrared images after reaching orbit around Venus in 2016. The new images from Parker add to these findings by extending the observations to red wavelengths at the edge of what we can see.
The WISPR images show features on the Venusian surface, such as the continental region Aphrodite Terra, the Tellus Regio plateau, and the Aino Planitia plains. Since higher altitude regions are about 85 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than lower areas, they show up as dark patches amidst the brighter lowlands. These features can also be seen in previous radar images, such as those taken by Magellan.
As Parker Solar Probe flew by Venus on its fourth flyby, its WISPR instrument captured these images, strung into a video, showing the nightside surface of the planet.
Credits: NASA/APL/NRL
The first of these photographs were captured by the Parker Solar Probe in July 2020, during its third flyby of Venus to tilt its orbit closer to the Sun. Scientists opted to analyze the Venusian clouds with the capacity to resolve fine detail in the solar atmosphere but were shocked to discover the planet’s complete nightside as well. The camera captured a faint glow emanating from the planet since WISPR also records certain infrared wavelengths that the planet emits owing to its extraordinarily hot surface, which is roughly 860 degrees Fahrenheit even at night.
Show only Left Show only Right Surface features seen in the WISPR images (left) match ones seen in those from the Magellan mission (right). Credits: NASA/APL/NRL (left), Magellan Team/JPL/USGS (right)
Nicola Fox, division director for the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, explained: “We’re thrilled with the science insights Parker Solar Probe has provided thus far. Parker continues to outperform our expectations, and we are excited that these novel observations taken during our gravity assist maneuver can help advance Venus research in unexpected ways,”
Beyond looking at surface features, the new WISPR images will help scientists better understand the geology and mineral make-up of Venus. When heated, materials glow at unique wavelengths. By combining the new images with previous ones, scientists now have a wider range of wavelengths to study, which can help identify what minerals are on the surface of the planet. Such techniques have previously been used to study the surface of the Moon. Future missions will continue to expand this range of wavelengths, which will contribute to our understanding of habitable planets.
This information could also help scientists understand the planet’s evolution. While Venus, Earth, and Mars all formed around the same time, they are very different today. The atmosphere on Mars is a fraction of Earth’s while Venus has a much thicker atmosphere. Scientists suspect volcanism played a role in creating the dense Venusian atmosphere, but more data are needed to know how. The new WISPR images might provide clues about how volcanos may have affected the planet’s atmosphere.
In addition to the surface glow, the new images show a bright ring around the edge of the planet caused by oxygen atoms emitting light in the atmosphere. Called airglow, this type of light is also present in Earth’s atmosphere, where it’s visible from space and sometimes from the ground at night.
Flyby Science
While Parker Solar Probe’s primary goal is solar science, the Venusian flybys are providing exciting opportunities for bonus data that wasn’t expected at the mission’s launch.
WISPR has also imaged Venus’ orbital dust ring – a doughnut-shaped track of microscopic particles strewn in the wake of Venus’ orbit around the Sun – and the FIELDS instrument made direct measurements of radio waves in the Venusian atmosphere, helping scientists understand how the upper atmosphere changes during the Sun’s 11-year cycle of activity.
In December 2021, researchers published new findings about the rediscovery of the comet-like tail of plasma streaming out behind Venus, called a “tail ray”. The new results showed this tail of particles extending nearly 5,000 miles out from the Venusian atmosphere. This tail could be how Venus’ water escaped from the planet, contributing to its current dry and inhospitable environment.
While the geometry of the next two flybys likely won’t allow Parker to image the nightside, scientists will continue to use Parker’s other instruments to study Venus’ space environment. In November 2024, the spacecraft will have a final chance to image the surface on its seventh and final flyby.
The Future of Venus Research
Parker Solar Probe, which is built and operated by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, isn’t the first mission to gather bonus data on flybys, but its recent successes have inspired other missions to turn on their instruments as they pass Venus. In addition to Parker, the ESA (European Space Agency) BepiColombo mission and the ESA and NASA Solar Orbiter mission have decided to gather data during their flybys in the coming years.
More spacecraft are headed to Venus around the end of this decade with NASA’s DAVINCI and VERITAS missions and ESA’s EnVision mission. These missions will help image and sample Venus’ atmosphere, as well as remap the surface at higher resolution with infrared wavelengths. This information will help scientists determine the surface mineral make-up and better understand the planet’s geologic history.
“By studying the surface and atmosphere of Venus, we hope the upcoming missions will help scientists understand the evolution of Venus and what was responsible for making Venus inhospitable today,” said Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters. “While both DAVINCI and VERITAS will use primarily near-infrared imaging, Parker’s results have shown the value of imaging a wide range of wavelengths.”
The congressional document reveals that someUFOs are not man-made and pose a national security threat to the United States. Finally, the subject of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) is considered serious due to the lack of information about them and increasing military encounters. Meanwhile, UFO enthusiasts are waiting for the Pentagon to release a 23-minute video that will reportedly leave viewers “rattled.” Luis Elizondo claimed that it shows UFOs moving in a strange pattern.
It is more than 4 years since the New York Times article revealed the existence of the secret program (AATI) funded by the United States Army to investigate UFOs. Luis Elizondo ran the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATI) from 2007 to 2012. Since then, he has spoken about various incidents that happened to the US pilots and possibilities of alien existence.
Elizondo, who resigned from the Pentagon in 2017, has made several bold statements since then. His claims literally change the US government’s perspective on viewing UFOs. Moreover, he refused to talk more as he is afraid of being arrested.
In 2021, he stated to have seen the UFO footage, describing it as showing unidentified floating objects for 23 minutes. He made this revelation while talking to the YouTube channels Fade to Black and Witness Citizen UAP. During the talk, Elizondo revealed that the UFO video was extremely compelling.
According to Elizondo, the video is said to show multiple UFOs which are moving in ways and strange “patterns” that humans do not conventionally understand – with data recorded using US military systems.
Lue Elizondo was a former US Army intelligence officer who helped trace terrorists after 9/11. credit: The Sun
He also mentioned this video in his interview with GQ. He stated: “It was the overwhelming weight of evidence and data. I was talking to pilots routinely. There’s videos out there [in government, that the public haven’t seen] – there’s one that’s 23 minutes long. There’s another one where this thing is 50 feet away from the cockpit. I mean, it ain’t ours. We know that. Sometimes you just couldn’t believe it – you’d have seven or eight incidents in a single day. I’d get these emails from an admiral or a ship’s captain saying, ‘Lue, what do you want me to do? I can’t keep people below deck forever. These things are swarming my ship, they’re all over the place.’ That’s tough. I kept promising the cavalry was coming and I’d have answers for them and the cavalry never came. Senior leadership didn’t want to deal with it.”
While discussing the 23-minute UFO video, Elizondo mentioned that it is a very compelling footage. “I did not say what it was. I sent it out to some highly trained experts in the ISR (Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) community. And when they came back to me, the title of the email was quote unquote ‘that UFO video’.”
He added: “It is definitive and its perplexing, every time you think you are like ‘thats what I am looking at’ – bang, it changes.”
When quizzed by host Jimmy Church on the way the object moved, its speed and if it was “beyond our capabilities,” Elizondo said it was enough to make officials “raise our eyebrows and say woah.”
Here is the transcript of Luis Elizondo’s interview with Sean of Witness Citizen, where he talked about the 23-minute video and 50-foot photo:
Elizondo: You know, the problem is that this battle isn’t over. We won a major battle with the report coming out of the UAP report, it was historic like you said, in the very first sentence of the very first paragraph. It says this is a preliminary report which means there are other reports, you know, congratulations, you won, you got it, right? And then it said that there were 144 incidents and only one they were able to identify. By the way, that was only in the last year and a half, it was from November 2019 and forward. By the way, it only involved the navy, right, so yeah, so people say, well there was one from the Nimitz, okay.
Sean: That equipment sucks or…
Elizondo: This is… well, so, you’ve got a lot of stuff happening, right? So, you know, we’re just now starting this journey together.
Sean: Yeah, you know, it is kind of overwhelming for a lot of people but I’ll tell you, the message is getting out there in the right way and the way that I kind of… uh… evaluate, that is talking to my wife because she’s not very into this stuff, so not that, she’s not against it, we did see something together but she’s not like me, she doesn’t have a podcast. But the news comes on, they talk about the report, I come home later, ask her about it, what was your takeaway? And she says, well, I guess they only identified one out of what a hundred something, and I’m like, yes…
Elizondo: Right.
Sean: …That’s exactly right, honey.
Elizondo: Exactly, by the way, some of these things were really, really close, so you know, you tell me.
Sean: Wow, that’s crazy, yeah… Oh, when are we going to see that 50-foot away pic?
Elizondo: Oh, man, that’s not up to me, but yeah, there’s a couple there that will rattle you pretty good, um… Yeah, there’s one I won’t go into detail, but the video is about 23 minutes long, it’s pretty good, man, gotta get that popcorn and some 3D glasses and maybe some coca-cola or something…
In order to have a glimpse of what the Navy and Air Force might capture in their camera, see the video below by the U.S. Navy that has been recently released, showing the support ship Shahid Baziar, from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, unlawfully towing the Saildrone Explorer. From this video, one may wonder how many high-quality UFO videos are in possession of the US Navy.
Elizondo clarifies that his job was never intended to study UFOs. It was to hunt terrorists and spies – and then use those same skills to hunt UFOs. “It’s the same thing,” he said. He further noted: “I didn’t care if it was supernatural technology, bottom line is there is something over controlled US airspace performing in ways we can’t – we’ve got to figure it out.” (Source)
He compared the growing push for disclosure on what the US knows about the mysterious craft to when mankind first came out of caves to look at the stars, or when man-made fire. He said the world may see a “paradigm shift” in our thinking – just like when the astronomer Galileo established the Earth was not the center of the Solar System.
“They tried to persecute him, to put him to the death – but at the end [the revelation] didn’t disrupt society and it benefited the species,” Elizondo said.
Most Mysterious Recent Archaeological Finds Scientists Still Can't Explain
Most Mysterious Recent Archaeological Finds Scientists Still Can't Explain
Archaeologists put in relentless efforts to discover new historically significant sites and artifacts every single day. The discovery of such sites is always a remarkable achievement but the next job for archaeologists commences here onward as they have to explain its purpose, importance and history. It is not an easy job for them as well as other experts working with them in related fields. At times they get stuck in pursuing an answer to certain questions and they may not be successful for quite a long time. Resultant, certain archaeological sites and artifacts remain unexplained. This means there are several recent discoveries which are still without any logical explanation
What is the greatest challenge facing humans as we prepare for the first crewed missions to Mars? Solar and cosmic radiation? Atrophying bone and muscle? Growing food? How about laundry? It’s strange but true, right now we don’t have a way to clean laundry in space.
In the microgravity environment of space, just about every single aspect of how we do our laundry here on Earth becomes a deadly hazard with a single point of failure. All that sudsy water, heat cycling, spinning mass, and even the buildup of static electricity, lint, or fumes could compromise a mission or even cost lives. But surely it’s just a matter of engineering, right? If other hygiene activities like showering have been successfully adapted for life in space, why not laundry?
Making Do Without
For shorter missions it’s just not needed. The longest Apollo and Shuttle missions were generally about two weeks long, which you may know from experience you can pack for. Lugging all that laundry around is still lighter and cheaper than bringing a washer and dryer with you, especially if you’d be shipping them to space at a cost of roughly $50,000 per kilogram.
Every space station we’ve built so far has orbited just a few hundred miles above the Earth, so while missions can last up to a year, laundry is just part of the resupply process. Fresh new clothes and linens, rigorously washed many times on Earth to remove lint, are launched aboard a resupply mission. Used clothes and linens are later packed into the resupply vessel which then undocks, de-orbits, and burns up as it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere. While this sanitizes the clothing with unparalleled effectiveness, it also makes them impossible to wear again.
But for the journey to Mars, which takes six or seven months in microgravity with no chance for resupply, with current methods every astronaut would require at least 35 kilos (75 pounds) of laundry per transit. Certainly to go beyond Mars, we reach a point where cleaning laundry in microgravity, and reclaiming used air and water, becomes more mass- and power-efficient than bringing hundreds of pounds of limited-use garments per person on every mission.
Non-Liquid Solutions
One key strategy is to somehow make clothes soil slower. Simple things like wearing the same clothes on alternating days helps. Spacecraft environments are engineered to maintain a comfortable temperature and humidity, which reduces sweating. Also in microgravity clothes tend to float away from the skin, slowing their absorption of sweat and oils.
Pushing the envelope starts with experiments like NASA’s Intravehicular Activity Clothing Study and Advanced Clothing System (ACS), and JAXA’s J-Wear, which have effectively demonstrated that antimicrobial materials and treatments can make clothing last for weeks instead of days. The two main strategies are including copper oxide or silver in the fabric, or dousing the fabric in antimicrobial compounds.
Commander Ken Bowersox of Crew 6 washed his shorts in a plastic bag!
Credit: NASA
Another way to save mass is to find ways to use soiled laundry. During the Mir program Russian scientists designed a bacteria farm that could digest cosmonauts’ undergarments and produce methane for power or propulsion. More recently ISS Expedition 6 Science Officer Don Pettit used folded dirty underwear in lieu of actual soil to fashion planters for tomato and basil seeds. Expedition 6 also saw Commander Ken Bowersox wash his shorts in a plastic bag. This never became a common practice on the ISS.
Counterintuitively, fluid-less options like vacuum exposure, ultraviolet, and microwaves have been found to only half work. While they kill many bacteria, they can have trouble penetrating biofilms and do not remove the bacteria’s waste products or physical remains – which is what causes the malodor of used clothing.
Weightless Washing
Perhaps the earliest practical attempt at a microgravity washing machine is the Advanced Microgravity Compatible Integrated Laundry System (AMCILS), conceptualized by UMPQUA Research Company in the 1980s. This washer-dryer combo notably relied on water jets to agitate the clothes and microwaves to dry them. As of 2017 a prototype completed parabolic zero-G testing.
In 2021 six teams of summer interns at NASA’s Glenn Research Center each spent a week designing a space washing machine. The overall Best Design award went to a team that used a central corkscrew rather than a drum, to soak and agitate the laundry. NASA has hinted that the program may grow in the coming years, taking on the scale of programs like the Human Exploration Rover Challenge.
In August of 2020 parties from NASA and Tide’s parent company Proctor and Gamble jointly signed a Space Act Agreement to develop low-toxicity detergent use in microgravity, compatible with the water reclamation system on the ISS. The result of the Agreement is P&G Telescience Investigation of Detergent Experiments (PGTIDE), to-date the most rigorously flight-tested space laundry experiment.
jsc2021e064546 (11/30/2021)
Jessica Zinna, Tide Scientist at P&G, prepares a load of laundry that will be washed in Tide’s laundry detergent solution for P&G Telescience Investigation of Detergent Experiments (PGTIDE). The detergent will be on board SpaceX CRS-24.
Following the signing of a Space Act Agreement with NASA, Tide is developing a detergent solution for space that will aid in planned space travel such as the Artemis Moon missions and a crewed roundtrip Mars mission.
Image courtesy of P&G.
The PGTIDE experiment consists of three distinct efforts. Launching in December of 2021, Objective 1’s payload is a sample of Tide Infinity, the experimental detergent. In the O-1 experiment Astronauts on the ISS produced a variety of stains on a variety of fabrics and tested the effectiveness of Tide Infinity at removing them. The experiment was repeated on the ground to control for the effect of microgravity on the detergent. Throughout this phase scientists monitored the stability of Infinity during months of microgravity and the higher ambient radiation levels of space.
Objective 2 payloads, including Tide To Go Pens and Wipes and Tide Rescue Spray, launched to the ISS in July of this year. The main O-2 experiment will have astronauts treat a sample group of pre-stained fabrics from Earth and a group of fabrics they stain in flight. The dependent variable will be the stain removal efficacy of unmodified To Go products in space over the course of several months.
Lastly, NASA and Tide researchers may design a combo washer-dryer that uses the Infinity detergent with as little power and water as possible. The washer-dryer would be intended for use in the low-gravity environment of a Moon or Mars colony, so unfortunately we may still be years away from true deep space washing.
Tide Infinity And Beyond
Picture your favorite science fiction scene. Maybe it’s a great battle. Maybe it’s an impassioned speech that has stuck with you for years. Maybe it’s a moment where you realize just how deep a friendship runs between two characters. Now ask yourself, in that scene, are their socks clean?
Doing laundry in space is not as flashy as, for example, a full-flow staged combustion engine. But it may prove equally important for going to Mars and beyond. Both technologies are essentially ways to get more performance for less mass. And in space, dropping mass is the only way forward.
For as long as we have been recording our lives in history, humanity has been preoccupied with longevity and immortality. So far, we haven’t even gotten close.
In the rest of the animal kingdom, however, we’ve seen amazing instances of death defiance. From animals that keep living even after being cut in half, to animals that can withstand crazy temperatures and radiation, to long-living animals, and immortal beings. Immortal?! Wait for it – we’re getting there.
Star Formation in the Center of the Milky Way Started at the Core and Then Worked its way out
Star Formation in the Center of the Milky Way Started at the Core and Then Worked its way out
One of the biggest questions facing astronomers today concerns star formation and its role in the evolution of galaxies. In particular, astronomers are curious whether the process began in the central regions of galaxies, where stars are more tightly bound. Previous observations have shown that numerous galaxies experienced intense periods of star formation in their centers roughly one billion years after the Big Bang. For some time, astronomers have wanted to conduct similar observations of the Milky Way’s Galactic Center to study rapid star formation more closely.
Unfortunately, it has been very difficult for astronomers to study the center of the Milky Way because of how bright and densely packed the region is, which makes it difficult to discern individual stars and clusters. Thanks to a new analysis of a high-resolution infrared survey, a team of astronomers has created the first reconstruction of the star formation history in the Galactic Center. According to their findings, most young stars in this region formed in loose stellar associations that dispersed outwards to fill the Galactic Disk over the course of many eons (as opposed to tightly-knit massive clusters).
This is an image of the center of the Milky Way. The bright white area right of center is home to the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A star. Credit: By NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/CXC/STScI
While astronomers use our galaxy to learn about the properties of galaxies in general, there are notable differences between the Milky Way and others. For starters, our galaxy has a relatively low rate of stellar formation (only a few solar masses a year), whereas “starburst” galaxies experience episodes that last a few million years where they produce tens or even hundreds of solar masses per year. Interestingly, that high formation rate was the norm among galaxies ten billion years ago, with tens of solar masses produced every year.
But in the Milky Way’s central region, about 1,300 light-years around our galaxy’s supermassive black hole (SMBH), star formation rates over the past 100 million years have been observed to be ten times higher than on average. In short, our galaxy’s core is as productive as a starburst galaxy or as productive as galaxies were ten billion years ago. Astronomers have been hoping to study this region to learn more about the factors influencing star formation in galaxies. Unfortunately, this has been far more difficult than studying other galaxies because of how our Solar System is embedded in the Milky Way’s disk.
Our observatories must contend with the massive amounts of light-obscuring dust between Earth and the Galactic Center. To circumvent this problem, astronomers rely on instruments that observe the Universe in the infrared, millimeter-wave, or radio wavelengths. These can image the radiation absorbed by the dust, or passes through it, thus revealing objects that are otherwise obscured in visible light. Another issue (already mentioned) is how the Galactic Center is so crowded, making it difficult to discern individual stars (except for the very bright ones that stand out from the rest).
Astronomers know that stars continue to form in the Galactic Center, as indicated by ionized radiation and x-ray emissions. But it has been extremely difficult to spot young stars, those that formed in the past few million years. Prior to this analysis, astronomers could only account for two massive star clusters and a few isolated young stars at the center of our galaxy – about 10% of the expected stellar mass. This has left many questions unanswered about the locations of all the other young stars and their properties.
The central region of the Milky Way in infrared light, acquired by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Stolovy (Spitzer Science Center/Caltech)
To address this question, Nogueras-Lara, Neumayer, and Schödel consulted data from the GALACTICNUCLEUS campaign, a survey that uses the HAWK-I infrared camera – part of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. Together they took nearly 150 short-exposure pictures of the Milky Way’s central region in the J, H, and Ks infrared bands and examined an area totaling 64,000 square light-years around the Galactic Center. These pictures were then combined via holographic imaging to correct for atmospheric distortion and map the region in much finer detail than ever before.
Whereas only a few tens of stars had been previously mapped, the GALACTICNUCLEUS survey provided individual data for 3 million stars in the Galactic Center. Moreover, the team noticed that the area known as Sagittarius B1 contains considerably more young stars than other regions, made evident by the way they ionize surrounding gas clouds. With these high-resolution observations, Nogueras-Lara and his colleagues were able to study the region’s stars in detail for the first time – including the statistical distribution of stellar luminosity.
This is particularly important because luminosity distribution changes gradually (and in a predictable fashion) for stars that formed around the same time. Given such a distribution, it is possible to reconstruct a history of star formation based on those that formed more than 7 billion years ago, between 2 and 7 billion years ago (the “intermediate bracket”), and within the last 2 billion years. Upon analyzing their data, the team found that Sag B1 had an older “intermediate bracket” population and a large population of stars that were 10 million years old or younger. As Nogueras-Lara said in an MPIA press release:
“Our study represents a big step forward in finding the young stars in the Galactic Center. The young stars we found have a total mass of more than 400,000 solar masses. That is nearly ten times higher than the combined mass of the two massive star clusters that were previously known in the central region.”.
The all-sky view that the Gaia survey would have of a simulated Milky-Way-like galaxy.
Credit: Sanderson et al.
Interestingly, the stars were also found to be dispersed and not part of a massive cluster, which suggests they were born in one or more looser stellar associations that rapidly dissolved as they orbited the Galactic Center over several million years. While these results pertain specifically to Sag B1, they could mean that young stars in the Galactic Center were generally born in loose associations that have since dispersed into separate stars. This would explain why the young populations are so much harder to resolve and require high-resolution surveys in multiple wavelengths.
Another interesting finding was that there is also an older population of stars in Sag B1. In the innermost regions of the Galactic Center, there are stars more than 7 billion years old but virtually no stars in the intermediate range. This could mean that star formation began in the innermost part of the Galactic Center and then spread to the “nuclear disk,” the small disk of stars surrounding the center. Indications of this inside-out mechanism of star formation have already been observed in other galaxies, and these latest results suggest this is also true of the Milky Way.
Looking ahead, the team hopes to conduct follow-up observations using the K-band Multi-Object Spectrograph (KMOS) instrument on the VLT. By adding spectral observations to the overall luminosity distribution they observed, they hope to identify some of the very young stars in the Galactic Center directly. In addition, there are plans to track the proper motions of the newly-discovered stars based on data obtained by missions like the ESA’s Gaia Observatory. While stars that formed in the same association get dispersed over time, their motion is still likely to be very similar, indicating a common origin.
Ergo, tracking the proper motion of stars in Sag B1 will allow astronomers to deduce if the young stars observed there were indeed born in one or more loose associations. As Nadine Neumayer summarized:
“Both kinds of measurements will serve to hopefully confirm, but definitely refine, the results of the now-published work. At the same time, we and our colleagues will start exploring what the new insights into star formation in the Galactic Center can tell us about high-productivity star formation in other galaxies.”
China's Yutu-2 rover has spotted two intact spheres of translucent glass up to an inch thick on the far side of the moon.
Images returned by the rover, which landed on the moon in January 2019, show the glass globules looking like a couple of tiny ball bearings.
Small glass 'spherules' are actually common on the moon, although they're typically less than 0.03 of an inch (3mm) in diameter.
These newly-found glass spheres are much bigger, measuring around 0.5-inch to 1-inch (1.5 cm to 2.5 cm), according to the scientists.
Glass forms on the moon when silicate material – rock-forming minerals – are subjected to high temperatures.
It's known that volcanic glass deposits were formed during explosive eruptions in the moon's history, when it was volcanically active.
Today, new glass can be formed on the moon due to the heat generated from impacts by meteorites with the lunar surface.
Pictured are the centimeter-sized glass globules collected by the Apollo 16 missions (a, b) and those observed by Yutu-2 (c, d)
Images returned by the rover show the glass globules looking like a couple of tiny ball bearings
GLASS ON THE MOON
Glass is ubiquitous in lunar regolith - the dusty blanket of sediment on its surface.
Glass forms on the moon when silicate material – rock-forming minerals – are subjected to high temperatures.
It's known that volcanic glass deposits were formed during explosive eruptions in the moon's history, when it was volcanically active.
Today, new glass can be formed on the moon due to the heat generated from impacts by meteorites with the lunar surface.
The new findings have been described in a paper authored by a team led by planetary geologist Zhiyong Xiao of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
'Transparent and translucent glasses on the Moon are less than 1 mm in diameters, and larger ones are dark and opaque,' they say.
'The globules were formed or exposed recently as evidenced by their intact shapes and surface exposure.'
Exact composition of the glass is yet to be determined, however.
'Glass is ubiquitous in lunar regolith, and volcanism and hypervelocity impacts are the major mechanisms of forming lunar glasses,' the team say.
'Volcanic glasses on the Moon occur as quenched skin of basaltic rocks or as glass spherules in pyroclastic deposits.'
Volcanic glasses were returned by NASA's Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, although some of these were darker and larger than the spotted specimens – up to 1.5 inches thick.
This is not the first time Yutu-2 has come across odd lunar features – last year, it returned photos of a 'mystery hut' in the horizon, which researchers initially had trouble identifying.
On closer inspection, it was revealed in January that it was a rabbit-shaped rock, surrounded by its own rocky 'droppings' and morsels of food.
Images show the locations of glass globules along the Yutu-2 rover path on the moon. (a) Red dot marks the location of the Chang'e-4 mission to the moon (which included Yutu-2). (b) Route of the Yutu-2 rover before July 2020, and the landing site is marked in red. Tips of the green arrows point to the locations of the confirmed and possible glass globules
Volcanic glasses were returned by NASA's Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Here, lunar volcanic glasses are displayed at the Natural History Museum in Vienna from the Apollo 15 mission in 1971
YUTU-2 MISSION
Yutu-2 is the robotic lunar rover component of China's Chang'e 4 mission to the far side of the Moon.
It launched on December 7, 2018, entered lunar orbit on December 12, and made the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon January 3, 2019.
Yutu-2 is exploring Von Kármán crater, where an ancient lunar impact may have exposed the Moon's mantle.
The finding is a coincidence as the name of the rover, Yutu, happens to be Chinese for 'Jade Rabbit'.
Yutu-2 has been traversing the 115-mile-wide (186km) Von Kármán crater ever since it landed on the moon attached to the Chang'e-4 spacecraft on January 3, 2019.
Chang'e 4 was China's fourth mission to the moon and the second to send a rover.
Glass is ubiquitous in lunar regolith - the dusty blanket of sediment on the moon's surface, according to scientists
The Yutu 2 rover (pictured) became the first spacecraft to land on the dark side of the moon in January 2019
The Chang'e 1 and 2 missions were orbiters, while Chang'e 3 landed on the near side of the moon with the first Yutu rover.
Beijing also launched Chang'e-5 in November 2020, which successfully returned the first moon samples to Earth in more than 40 years.
China has also just approved three more missions to the Moon – Chang'e 6, 7 and 8 – launching from 2024 onwards.
China's Yutu 2 team said an oddly-shaped rock looks like a small but 'lifelike' crouching bunny like a statue set in stone, surrounded by its own rocky 'droppings' and morsels of food
NASA, meanwhile, is gearing up to send humans to the moon 'no earlier than 2025', as part of its Artemis mission, a follow-up to the Apollo missions.
The Artemis mission will be the first to land humans on the moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972.
NASA is also working on a project to build the first lunar space station, codenamed the Lunar Gateway, as part of a long-term project to send humans to Mars.
NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the moon in 2025 as part of the Artemis mission
Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the moon in Greek mythology.
NASA has chosen her to personify its path back to the moon, which will see astronauts return to the lunar surface by 2025 - including the first woman and the next man.
Artemis 1, formerly Exploration Mission-1, is the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that will enable human exploration to the moon and Mars.
Artemis 1 will be the first integrated flight test of NASA’s deep space exploration system: the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Artemis 1 will be an uncrewed flight that will provide a foundation for human deep space exploration, and demonstrate our commitment and capability to extend human existence to the moon and beyond.
During this flight, the spacecraft will launch on the most powerful rocket in the world and fly farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever flown.
It will travel 280,000 miles (450,600 km) from Earth, thousands of miles beyond the moon over the course of about a three-week mission.
Artemis 1, formerly Exploration Mission-1, is the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that will enable human exploration to the moon and Mars. This graphic explains the various stages of the mission
Orion will stay in space longer than any ship for astronauts has done without docking to a space station and return home faster and hotter than ever before.
With this first exploration mission, NASA is leading the next steps of human exploration into deep space where astronauts will build and begin testing the systems near the moon needed for lunar surface missions and exploration to other destinations farther from Earth, including Mars.
The will take crew on a different trajectory and test Orion’s critical systems with humans aboard.
Together, Orion, SLS and the ground systems at Kennedy will be able to meet the most challenging crew and cargo mission needs in deep space.
Eventually NASA seeks to establish a sustainable human presence on the moon by 2028 as a result of the Artemis mission.
The space agency hopes this colony will uncover new scientific discoveries, demonstrate new technological advancements and lay the foundation for private companies to build a lunar economy.
Scientists think the spheres were made by a recent meteor impact.
The two spheres spotted by Yutu 2
(Image credit: Xiao et al., Science Bulletin)
China's Yutu-2 rover has spotted two strange glass spheres on the far side of the moon.
Glistening like translucent pearls against the moon's dry and dusty landscape, the lunar "spherules"' are the first of their kind to be found on the lunar surface and formed fairly recently, researchers say.
Glass has been spotted on the moon before; by both the Yutu-2 rover and NASA’s Apollo 16 mission. It forms whensilicon-rich minerals, such as pyroxene and feldspar, are rapidly superheated.
However, this is the first time glass spheres have been found on the moon. Scientists don't know the exact origins of these spherules, but they think the little balls, or globules, may have been made during an explosive eruption in the moon's volcanic history or after a high-speed impact with a meteorite. The researchers will publish their findings Feb. 26 in the journal Science Bulletin.
"The globules simply blow our mind, since they are so unique on the moon," lead author Zhiyong Xiao, a planetary geologist at Sun Yat-sen University in China, said in a statement. "It is a bit unfortunate that when we first found these glasses, the rover had just passed by them and no compositional data were obtained, but such globules might be pretty common at the lunar farside."
Glass spherules, also known as microtektites, have been found on Earth around the sites of meteorite impacts, Live Science previously reported. Upon being struck by a meteorite, chunks of planetary crust are thrown up into the air, and the molten silicate minerals contained therein combine to form tiny glass beads that are sprinkled like crumbs over the surrounding landscape.
The recently discovered microtektites, measuring 0.6 to 1 inch (15 to 25 millimeters) in diameter, are larger than those found on Earth. However, they are smaller than the glass chunks that Apollo 16 astronauts found near an impact crater on the moon's near side, the largest of which measured 1.57 inches (40 mm) in diameter
The microtektites discovered by Yutu-2 were also found near impact craters, leading the researchers to believe that the tiny spheres formed from a feldspar-rich igneous rock, called anorthosite, that melted and reformed in the immediate aftermath of a meteor collision.
"The first discovery of macro-sized translucent glass globules on the moon confirms that lunar anorthosites are excellent raw materials to manufacture glasses with good light-admitting quality," Xiao said. "Their existence on the moon indicates that impact events on the other planetary bodies could also form tektite-like impact glasses."
Collecting these ball-bearing-like spheres and studying their composition and ages could help scientists understand the impact history of the moon, as well as provide useful information about potential building materials on the lunar surface.
"At the dawn of constructing human bases to the moon, lunar anorthosites are a promising and widespread resource," Xiao said.
The Yutu-2 rover, whose name means "jade rabbit" in Mandarin, was launched from China's Chang'e 4 lunar lander in January 2019 after successfully completing the first-ever soft landing on the moon's far side. Trundling across the moon's 115-mile-wide (186 kilometers) Von Kármán crater, the rover's short time on our lunar neighbor has been eventful. During that time, the rover has taken a detailed scan beneath the moon's surface, spotted a mysterious "gel-like" substance believed to be more lunar glass and even glimpsed an object that first appeared to be a mysterious hut but was later revealed as a rabbit-shaped rock.
Chang'e 4 is China's fourth mission to the moon and its second to land a rover on the lunar surface. China also landed its Zhurong rover on Mars last year and is currently building the Tiangong space station, which is set for completion by the end of 2022. China has also declared that it will establish a lunar research station on the moon's south pole by 2029.
A much-less-controlled lunar landing of a Chinese spacecraft is projected to take place on March 4, when a now-defunct rocket stage from a 2014 moon mission is expected to smash into the moon's surface while traveling at 5,771 mph (9,288 km/h), Live Science previously reported.
UFO with possible docking station caught near the sun
UFO with possible docking station caught near the sun
In recent weeks, many strange UFO-like objects have been observed by the various solar satellites.
Besides hexagon and circular objects, a huge rectangular craft with possible docking station for incoming and outgoing smaller UFOs at the rear of the mothership has been caught at the moment it passing the sun.
The video show some of these possible alien craft.
Two F-14 fighter jets chased a large triangular UFO and disappeared, Puerto Rico, December 28, 1988
Two F-14 fighter jets chased a large triangular UFO and disappeared, Puerto Rico, December 28, 1988
On December 28, 1988, at approximately 7:45 pm, a large triangle craft roughly the size of a baseball field was seen moving steadily along in the region near the naval air station in Puerto Rico, according to many witnesses (over a hundred). Three F-14s intercepted the moving UFO and apparently tried to force it to change its course.
As the navy fighter planes engaged the large craft, it slowed down its forward speed almost to a standstill. One plane, in particular, stayed mostly to the right of the UFO and another stayed behind the UFO making close approaches at times. The third plane apparently stayed a bit farther out. The F-14 in the rear came close to the object, but as it flew either over or under the object, it was not seen again. Small red lights were also seen at times flying outside the large craft and may have served to protect the craft. It was as if the fighter plane had somehow been drawn into the large craft. The second aircraft made a sweep closer to the large object and was seen by one ground witness—using binoculars—to suddenly disappear—possibly being taken in by the UFO. The third F-14 reportedly high-tailed it out of the area on afterburner with glowing red lights chasing after it apparently in pursuit, according to ground witnesses.
James Webb ST just captured massive clouds on an Alien Planet in unprecedented detail
James Webb ST just captured massive clouds on an Alien Planet in unprecedented detail
A weird alien world cloaked in clouds of sand-like silicate granules has been discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The exoplanet finding, revealed in a recent paper as the first of its kind, was made by the NIRSpec and MIRI instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope. Astronomers discovered indications of silicate-rich clouds surrounding a brown dwarf roughly 20 times the size of Jupiter in the data. The discovery backs up several previous speculations concerning these strange planet-like planets.
Astronomers have long suspected that some types of brown dwarfs have turbulent, rapidly changing atmospheres.
(Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Brown dwarfs are weird objects that are not quite large enough to ignite into stars but are also not small enough to be considered planets. Brown dwarfs, while unable to consume normal hydrogen, can generate their own light and heat by burning deuterium (a less common isotope of hydrogen that contains an extra neutron).
VHS 1256 b is a brown dwarf that orbits two tiny red dwarf stars 72 light-years from Earth in the constellation Corvus, or the Crow, in the southern sky. Astronomers spotted the odd exoplanet in 2016, and its reddish glow has perplexed them ever since. They suspected that the glow was created by some kind of atmosphere. According to Forbes, observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have now corroborated those predictions, demonstrating that VHS 1256 b must be surrounded in dense clouds filled of sand-like silicate grains.
Water, methane, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sodium, and potassium were also found in the atmosphere of VHS 1256 b by Webb.
"We will know more from iterations on the data reduction,"said Brittany Miles, an astronomer at the University of California, Irvine and the project's principal researcher, in an email to Space.com. "So far, it appears to be pretty close to theoretical expectations."
The Webb data were so thorough that they revealed that the ratio of the various gases changes throughout the atmosphere of VHS 1256 b, implying that the atmosphere is not static, but rather chaotic and turbulent.
"There is an expected ratio of, example, methane and carbon monoxide in a tranquil atmosphere,"Sasha Hinkley, an astronomer at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and one of the study's co-authors, told Forbes (opens in new tab). "However, we're finding that this ratio is significantly skewed in many planetary atmospheres, implying that there is turbulent vertical mixing in these atmospheres, dredging up carbon dioxide from deep down to mix with methane higher up in the atmosphere."
VHS 1256 b is small for a brown dwarf, suggesting that the body is young. The exoplanet orbits its two parent stars 360 sun-Earth distances apart in an oval-shaped orbit that takes 17,000 years to complete.
“One of a Kind” Massive Triple Star System Detected
“One of a Kind” Massive Triple Star System Detected
Earlier this year, researchers revealed the discovery of an extraordinarily compact “one-of-a-kind” system of three stars. A partnership between two young researchers at theNiels Bohr Instituteat theUniversity of Copenhagenis currently focusing on how this unusual combination of a binary set of stars and a revolving larger star can form.
Tertiary star formation on a massive scale
The star system is made up of a binary set of stars, two stars that orbit each other, and one more massive star that orbits the binary.
“As far as we know, it is the first of its kind ever detected”, Alejandro Vigna-Gomez says. “We know of many tertiary star systems (three star systems), but they are typically significantly less massive. The massive stars in this triple are very close together – it is a compact system. The orbital period of the binary (~1 d) is the same as that of the rotation of Earth (1 day). The combined mass of the two of them is twelve times the mass of our Sun – so rather big stars. The tertiary star is approximately 16 times the mass of our Sun, so even bigger! The inner orbit is circular in shape with close to six revolutions of the tertiary star around the binary per year. Pretty fast, when you consider the size of them – unsurprisingly, the system is very luminous, so at first they were detected as a stellar binary”.
Alejandro Vigna-Gomez from Mexico and Bin Liu from China in front of the blackboard in the old auditorium A at Blegdamsvej.
Credit: Ola J. Joensen/NBI
The dedication of amateurs led to the discovery of the star system
The initial discovery of the unusual nature of this highly peculiar system was equally remarkable in that it was discovered by amateur astronomers.
A group of amateur astronomers who were combing through a public data set fromNASA’sTESS observatory (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) discovered something unusual.
The level of professionalism can be quite high among amateurs, and they made the professional astronomers aware of anomalies in the detection. It was discovered that what had previously been thought to be two stars were really three. These kinds of communities are known as citizen scientists.
The combination of expertise in dynamics and stellar evolution proved to be fruitful
Postdoc Alejandro Vigna-Gomez explains that when investigating the formation of the star system, several options were considered.
If, for instance, the bigger star formed first, it would likely have ejected material that would have disrupted the formation of a binary that close.
Another possibility is that the binary and the third star formed separately from each other and eventually encountered and locked in their orbits because of gravity.
– or a third possibility, where two binaries formed and one merged into one, bigger star.
This is where the combined efforts of Bin Liu, an expert on dynamics, and Alejandro Vigna-Gomez’s knowledge of star formation came in handy. They coded the options and ran more than 100.000 iterations on the computer, in order to assess the most likely outcome of this scenario.
The result turned out to be in favor of the two binary systems forming initially and one of them merging with one star. Their results show that the two binary scenario could in fact explain the origin of the triple system.
The way forward requires the expertise of an astronomer specializing in observations
“Now we have a model of the most likely scenario on this unique system. But a model is not enough. And there are two ways in which we can prove or disentangle our theory on this formation”, postdoc Alejandro explains. ”One is studying the system in detail and the other is to make statistical analysis on a population of stars. If we go into the system in detail, we shall have to rely on the expertise of an astronomer. We already have some preliminary observations, but we still need to go through the data, and make sure we are interpreting it well”.Bin Liu continues: “We also encourage people in the scientific community to look at the data deeply”, Postdoc Bin Liu says. “Maybe there are more compact systems buried in the data. What we really want to know is whether this kind of system is common in our universe”.Alejandro Vigna-Gomez and Bin Liu have now mapped ut quite a lot of work for themselves. “We need to find an adequate telescope with available observing time somewhere in the world and talk to someone who is really an expert from the observational point of view. The data from telescopes needs to be understood correctly. What you see in a telescope is not entirely what you get, so to say. It must be interpreted”.
So more collaboration is underway, very much in the spirit of Niels Bohr, Alejandro says:
“A Chinese and a Mexican with each their different fields, dynamics, and star formation, meet at the Niels Bohr Institute and are now on the way to yet more scientific collaboration”.
Reference:
“Mergers prompted by dynamics in compact, multiple-star systems: a stellar-reduction case for the massive triple TIC 470710327” by Alejandro Vigna-Gómez, Bin Liu, David R Aguilera-Dena, Evgeni Grishin, Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz and Melinda Soares-Furtado, 29 June 2022,Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.
Ufo's bestaan écht en dit is waarom | UITGEZOCHT #14
Boven Nederland zijn de laatste tijd opvallend veel ufo's gespot. Bij elkaar al meer dan 900. Zijn het buitenaardse wezentjes die hier even komen rondneuzen? Of is er een andere verklaring? #uitgezocht #ufo #spacex
"Ik weet dat buitenaards leven bestaat" | De outsiders | NPO 3 TV
Tim den Besten ontmoet Anton, die er zeker van is dat we geregeld bezocht worden door buitenaards leven. Samen gaan ze op zoek naar aliens en ufo’s.
Toen Anton 23 jaar was zag hij enkele geruisloze lichtbollen over zich heen scheren. Sindsdien heeft hij vaker dergelijke verschijningen gezien en is hij er van overtuigd dat er buitenaardse wezens op aarde zijn. Hij heeft er zelfs een gesproken - veel aliens hebben immers een menselijke vorm. De inmiddels zeventigjarige Anton brengt in kaart waar en wanneer de wezens op aarde verschijnen.
Ook in het tweede seizoen van De outsiders gaat Tim den Besten op zoek naar mensen die bewust kiezen voor een leven buiten de gebaande paden. Wat zeggen de verhalen van deze en andere outsiders over de manier waarop de meesten van ons leven?
NASA gaat officieel onderzoek doen naar ufo's | Op1
De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA gaat officieel onderzoek doen naar ufo's. Ruimtevaartjournalist Marjolijn van Heemstra: “Dit is echt historisch. Normaal wordt er onderzoek gedaan door Defensie, wat niet toegankelijk is voor publiek.”
UFO te Zien op Livestream NASA!?
21/04/2016 · Afgelopen zondag was er een mogelijke UFO te zien op de livestream van NASA. Kort nadat de UFO in beeld was gooide NASA de stream op zwart!De Illuminati in
VS: geen bewijs dat ufo's van aliens zijn
Er is geen bewijs dat ufo's van buitenaardse wezens zijn. Dat zeggen Amerikaanse experts. Toch kunnen ze niet met zekerheid zeggen dat de vliegende objecten niet toch van aliens zijn. #jeugdjournaal#ufo#aliens
Area 51: hysterie, mysterie en 1001 complotten
Een geplande bestorming, twee gearresteerde Nederlanders. Area 51 is al weken, zo niet jaren, een veel besproken stukje aarde. Wat is toch die aantrekkingskracht van die zwaarbeveiligde militaire basis in de Amerikaanse staat Nevada? En wat weten we erover?
Het blijft een mysterieus fenomeen: ufo's. De Unidentified flying objects worden bijna altijd in een zin genoemd met buitenaards leven of tijdreizigers. Maar is dat ook zo?
Bij De Telegraaf vind je het laatste nieuws uit binnen- en buitenland. Je krijgt alles te weten op het gebied van entertainment, misdaad, geld, verkeer en royalty. Ook delen wij de meest opmerkelijke video's die je niet gemist moet hebben. Wil je meer (exclusieve) video's? Meld je dan hier aan voor onze video-nieuwsbrief: https://telegraaf.nl/videoupdate
Caught in the Webb! NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captures a stunning photograph of thousands of never-before-seen young stars in the Tarantula Nebula, 161,000 light-years away from Earth
Caught in the Webb! NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captures a stunning photograph of thousands of never-before-seen young stars in the Tarantula Nebula, 161,000 light-years away from Earth
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning look at the Tarantula Nebula
The stellar nursery, officially known as 30 Doradus, sits 161,000 light-years away in the Large Megallanic Cloud galaxy
'Take a moment to stare into thousands of never-before-seen young stars in the Tarantula Nebula,' NASA said. [The James Webb] reveals details of the structure and composition of the nebula.'
The Tarantula Nebula has been fascinating astronomers for years because it has a similar type of chemical composition as the huge star-forming regions seen in the universe's so-called 'cosmic noon'
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captured thousands of never-before-seen young stars in a spider-shaped stellar nursery known as the Tarantula Nebula.
The cosmic nursery is officially called 30 Doradus and is located 161,000 light-years away in the Large Megallanic Cloud galaxy, which happens to be the biggest and brightest star-forming region in the Local Group - the galaxies closest to our Milky Way.
'Take a moment to stare into thousands of never-before-seen young stars in the Tarantula Nebula,' NASA shared on Twitter. [The James Webb] reveals details of the structure and composition of the nebula, as well as background galaxies.'
'The Tarantula Nebula gets its name from its dusty filaments. The largest and brightest star-forming region near our galaxy, it's home to the hottest, most massive stars known!' the space agency said.
Scroll down for video's
'Take a moment to stare into thousands of never-before-seen young stars in the Tarantula Nebula,' NASA shared on Twitter. [The James Webb] reveals details of the structure and composition of the nebula, as well as background galaxies.' The stellar nursery is officially called 30 Doradus - but is known as the Tarantula Nebula - and is located 161,000 light-years away in the Large Megallanic Cloud galaxy
This nebula gives us information about what star formation might have looked like at its peak in our cosmic history.
Viewed with Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the region resembles a burrowing tarantula’s home, lined with its silk. The nebula’s cavity centered in the NIRCam image appears to be hollowed out by blistering radiation from a cluster of massive young stars, which sparkle pale blue in the image.
Only the densest surrounding areas of the nebula can resist erosion by these stars’ powerful stellar winds, forming pillars that appear to point back toward the cluster. These pillars contain forming protostars, or very young stars, which will eventually emerge from their dusty cocoons and take their turn shaping the nebula.
The Tarantula Nebula has been fascinating astronomers for years because it has a similar type of chemical composition as the huge star-forming regions seen in the universe's so-called 'cosmic noon' - meaning when the cosmos was only a few billion years old and such star formation was at a peak.
The cosmic region takes on a different appearance when viewed in the longer infrared wavelengths detected by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). In this image (above), the hot stars fade and the cooler gas and dust seem to glow. Embedded within the stellar nursery clouds are protostars that are still gaining mass. The shorter wavelengths of life absorbed or scattered by dust grains in the nebula - and don't reach Webb to be detected
Star-forming regions in the Milky Way don't have the same chemical composition and are not producing at that same super-fast rate as the Tarantula Nebula.
The cosmic region takes on a different appearance when viewed in the longer infrared wavelengths detected by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).
In this image, the hot stars fade and the cooler gas and dust seem to glow.
Embedded within the stellar nursery clouds are protostars that are still gaining mass. The shorter wavelengths of life absorbed or scattered by dust grains in the nebula - and don't reach Webb to be detected - while the longer mid-infrared wavelengths penetrate that dust and reveal details that scientists may not have seen before.
'Despite humanity’s thousands of years of stargazing, the star-formation process still holds many mysteries – many of them due to our previous inability to get crisp images of what was happening behind the thick clouds of stellar nurseries,' NASA shared in a statement.
Just a few days ago, the James Webb captured its first image on an exoplanet located just 385 light-years from Earth, showing incredible details never seen by human eyes.
The exoplanet known as HIP 65426 is just 15 to 20 million years old, which is much younger to our 4.5-billion-year-old Earth.
The telescope used its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) that can block out surrounding starlight to snap epic images of the exoplanet HIP 65426.
The alien world was first discovered in 2017 by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, in Chile, but the long wavelengths were blocked by Earth's atmosphere.
However, since Webb is soaring through space, it was able to take direct shots of the planet that astronomers can process to remove the starlight and uncover the planet.
NASA said it is a gas giant that is without a rocky surface and therefore could not host life.
'But Webb's first capture of an exoplanet already hints at future possibilities for studying distant worlds, NASA shared in a statement.
NASA's James Webb Telescope captured detailed images of its first exoplanet that sits outside of our solar system. The telescope used its powerful technologies to 'see' the exoplanets longer wavelengths that are missed by Earth-based telescopes. The exoplanet is just 15 to 20 million years old, which is much younger to our 4.5-billion-year-old Earth
The 'Cosmic Cliffs' of the Carina Nebula are seen in an image divided horizontally by an undulating line between a cloudscape forming a nebula along the bottom portion and a comparatively clear upper portion, with data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Telescope: NASA's $10 billion telescope is designed to detect light from the earliest stars and galaxies
The James Webb telescope has been described as a 'time machine' that could help unravel the secrets of our universe.
The telescope will be used to look back to the first galaxies born in the early universe more than 13.5 billion years ago, and observe the sources of stars, exoplanets, and even the moons and planets of our solar system.
The vast telescope, which has already cost more than $7 billion (£5 billion), is considered a successor to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope
The James Webb Telescope and most of its instruments have an operating temperature of roughly 40 Kelvin – about minus 387 Fahrenheit (minus 233 Celsius).
It is the world's biggest and most powerful orbital space telescope, capable of peering back 100-200 million years after the Big Bang.
The orbiting infrared observatory is designed to be about 100 times more powerful than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA likes to think of James Webb as a successor to Hubble rather than a replacement, as the two will work in tandem for a while.
The Hubble telescope was launched on April 24, 1990, via the space shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
It circles the Earth at a speed of about 17,000mph (27,300kph) in low Earth orbit at about 340 miles in altitude.
NASA deelt nieuw beeld van James Webb-telescoop: “Toont duizenden nooit eerder waargenomen sterren”
NASA heeft een nieuwe foto gedeeld die genomen is door de James Webb-ruimtetelescoop. Het beeld toont nooit eerder waargenomen jonge sterren in een gaswolk, die bekend staat als de ‘Tarantula-nevel’.
De gaswolk of nevel ligt in het Grote Magelhaense Wolk-sterrenstelsel, dat zich 161.000 lichtjaren (één lichtjaar is ongeveer gelijk aan 9.460.000.000.000 kilometer, red.) van onze Aarde bevindt en in een baan rond de Melkweg draait. De nevel wordt ook wel ‘30 Doradus’ genoemd en is een gebied met duizenden sterren, meer bepaald de heetste en grootste sterren die astronomen kennen, aldus NASA. De sterren verhitten het aanwezige gas en stof in de nevel, waardoor die aan de hemel zichtbaar wordt. De nevel heeft zijn naam gekregen door de gelijkenis met “het web van een tarantula”.
Op het beeld van de James Webb-telescoop is een gebied van 340 lichtjaren groot te zien. De Tarantula-nevel werd al eerder vastgelegd, maar de ‘NIRCam’ – of de Nabije-infraroodcamera – van de telescoop laat toe om door de nevel heen te kijken en dus meer sterren waar te nemen. Zo kan de camera het felle licht van een helder object blokkeren, waardoor het mogelijk wordt om een donkerder hemellichaam van dichtbij te fotograferen.
De Tarantula-nevel is interessant voor onderzoekers omdat hij nieuwe sterren “aan een razendsnel” tempo produceert. Het beeld geeft wetenschappers bovendien meer inzicht in de manier waarop sterren ontstaan.
Wat laat de foto precies zien?
De fonkelende blauwe sterren in het midden van de foto hebben de kracht om het gas om zich heen weg te blazen en zijn dus verantwoordelijk voor de holte in de nevel. Rond de middelste holte zijn de stoffige vezels te zien waaruit het ‘web van de Tarantula-nevel’ bestaat.
Alleen de meest compacte gebieden rond de nevel kunnen aan de kracht van de sterren weerstaan, en vormen zo zones waarin nog meer jonge sterren, of ‘protosterren’, worden geproduceerd. Wanneer die sterren ‘volgroeid’ zijn, komen ze uit hun cocon en geven ze de nevel op hun beurt vorm, aldus NASA.
De felle ster in het midden is op zich niet speciaal, maar is wel erg helder waardoor de zogenaamde ‘diffractiepieken’ te zien zijn. Die pieken zijn het gevolg van de spiegels van de James Webb-telescoop en de manier waarop die het licht naar de wetenschappelijke instrumenten sturen.
Bekijk ook deze video's:
The James Webb Space Telescope Explained In 9 Minutes
How the James Webb Space Telescope will revolutionize astrophysics
Why the James Webb Space Telescope looks like that
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Suspicious cube-shaped cloud hovering in the sky over England
Suspicious cube-shaped cloud hovering in the sky over England
A footage out of England shows what appears to be a perfectly cube-shaped cloud hovering in the sky.
The rare sky phenomenon was captured earlier this week by Megan Coombs during a visit to a National Trust site in Surrey with the appropriately spooky name 'Devil's Punch Bowl.'
Megan said that "there is something mega suspicious" about the box-like cloud in the sky that seems to have one of its sides illuminated by the sun, reports CoasttoCoast.
It is not the first time square or rectangular clouds have been observed. It looks like these clouds are formed as a result of geoengineering/weather modification.
This UFO sighting was filmed over Hamilton in New Zealand ion 18th March 2022 but it was just recently submitted to MUFON.
Witness report:
While my partner and I were in our lounge watching a UFO documentary, my partner had some sort of sudden inclination to look out the window, perhaps as a result of the doco we were watching. She saw glowing lights tracing a path across the sky. Initially we only saw 3, but then 2 more started catching up to the first 3 from beyond the horizon to the southwest. The 5 amber glowing lights seemed to speed up and slow down as they traced a path across the sky. Perhaps with the exact time info off the video, you will be able to more easily confirm the air traffic from that date and time. We live in a city where it is common for hot air balloons to fly at night as part of a local festival, which had concluded around that time, but they do not fly as high as what we saw, the colouring of the light seemed too bright, large and consistently visible to be the occasional flame of a hot air balloon. I could also find no report or event listing of any flying at night. Hot air balloons do not have the flight control capabilities we saw: The lights seemed to speed up and slow down in relationship to eachother to move as a group, as well as at least one of them changing its flight direction to circle back for the others. From visual comparisons I first thought it might have been starlink satellites, but these seemed too low, the wrong colour, and too oddly spaced. Also starlink satellites would not stop or reverse course in the sky I presume. I got my cellphone and filmed the lights for 4 minutes exactly, and stopped filming as they started to fade once they had flown over us. It looked as though they became obscured by cloud cover that was impossible for us to see against the night sky, as they seemed to just disappear of their own accord. After that we went inside to try and find out whether we could explain what we saw through conventional means, but did not manage to, regardless we presumed that we had simply seen something with a mundane explanation and mostly moved on and forgot about it. The more time goes on the more I keep coming back to the fact that I never managed to successfully explain what it was. This is not the first time my partner has suddenly felt compelled to look out a window and immediately sees an amber light moving strangely in the sky. Last time she did so in the early hours of the morning and woke up suddenly, instantly knowing specifically that there was a “UFO” in the sky for her to look at, but that night for whatever reason we both didn’t feel compelled to get a phone and film it.
Supermassive black hole 12 billion Times more Enormous than our Sun Discovered
Supermassive black hole 12 billion Times more Enormous than our Sun Discovered
Astrophysicists have found an out-of-place supermassive black hole -- 12 billion times more enormous than the sun -- that mysteriously formed when the cosmos was less than 900 million years old.
Such behemoths are usually found in the more modern cosmos, which seemingly offers more feeding material. Black holes are areas of space so condensed with matter that not even photons of light can discharge their gravitational fists. They are sensed as they pull and eat neighbouring stars and dust, making a cosmic zoo of noticeable phenomenon, such gas jets and rapidly spinning accretion disks.
“Before this finding the most enormous black hole identified within 1 billion years after the Big Bang was about 5 billion solar mass, less than half the mass of the new discovery,” Bram Venemans, research staff researcher with Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, wrote in an email to Discovery News. The finding, reported in this week’s Nature, offers a serious challenge to theories about how black holes grew in the early cosmos.
Researchers previously expected young black holes started off with between 100 and 100,000 times the mass of the sun and matured from there by consuming in intergalactic matter and/or merging with other black holes.
It may need either very extraordinary ways to grow the black hole within a very short time, or the presence of a huge seed black hole when the first generation of stars and galaxies formed,” lead scientist Xue-Bing Wu, with China’s Peking University in Beijing, said in an email to Discovery News.
Neither clarification fits with present theories. “A very stimulating feature of this work is that the outcomes hint that in the early cosmos the supermassive black holes and their host galaxies did not co-evolve,” said astrophysicist Akos Bogdan, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who was not involved in the study. It is improbable the black hole’s parent galaxy would be as big as what calculations based on existing theories would conclude. “This would propose that -- at least in this case -- the black hole is developing faster than the galaxy, questioning the often expected co-evolution of galaxies and their central black holes through cosmic time,” added Venemans. The newly discovered black hole exists in in an enormously bright quasar that existed when the cosmos was about 857 million years old – about 6% of the cosmos’s current 13.8-billion-year age.
“We can comparatively easily sense this object because it is brighter than others at the same distance,” Wu said. Observations with numerous ground- and space-based telescopes carry on, as well as a search for any comparable giant siblings.
“These objects are so far away from us so most of them look (very) faint even if their inherent brightness is large,” Wu said.
Planet Nine may be responsible for tilting the Sun
Planet Nine may be responsible for tilting the Sun
How our possible rogue planet may be messing with our solar system
Earlier this year an announcement raised a tantalizing possibility: a ninth planet lurking in the outer reaches of our solar system. The announcement turned the astronomy and planetary science world upside down.
Caltech astronomer Michael Brown and theoretical astrophysicist Konstantin Batygin found evidence for a possible 10 Earth mass planet that may be tilting long-orbiting dwarf planets on their sides and shepherding them into clusters far past the orbit of Neptune in highly eccentric orbits. In the last several months, more and more papers have been published about the possible planet and how it might prove an explanation for other strange things happening in our solar system.
At a press conference held this afternoon, at the AAS Division of Planetary Sciences annual meeting in Pasadena Ca, another announcement was made about Planet Nine’s effects on the spin-axis tilt of our Sun. This time, the paper titled Solar Obliquity Induced by Planet Nine is lead by Caltech graduate student Elizabeth Bailey, with Brown and Batygin as co-authors.
We’ve known that the Sun is tilted for about 200 years, but scientists have never known why. Only the catch here is, the Sun isn’t actually tilted at all. We are. To explain this oddity and what’s happening to our solar system we spoke with co-author and theoretical astrophysicist, Konstantin Batygin.
Astronomy Magazine: What’s happening with the alignment in our solar system?
Konstantin Batygin: When planetary systems form, they form from very flat discs. The motion that everything in our entire planetary system forms in a very proto planetary flat disc is one of the basic principles of planetary formation theory. The planetary orbits themselves are fully consistent- If you look at how inclined the planets are with respect to each other they are only inclined by no more than one degree so the planets of the solar system are remarkably flat.
AM: What about the Sun?
KB: The Sun’s rotation was measured for the first time in 1850 and something that was recognized right away as that its spin axis, its north pole, is tilted with respect to the rest of the planets by 6 degrees. So even though 6 degrees isn’t much, it is a big number compared to the mutual planet-planet misalignments. So the Sun is basically an outlier within the solar system. This is a long-standing issue and one that is recognized but people don’t really talk much about it. Everything in the solar system rotates roughly on the same plane except for the most massive object, the Sun which is kind of a big deal.
Hypothetical Planet 9, and 9 related eTNOs
WikiMedia Commons
AM: Why is there this misalignment between the Sun and the orbits of the planets?
KB: We asked ourselves, “what obliquity, what misalignment would Planet Nine induce in the solar system?” because it must induce some. We know that Planet Nine’s orbit in inclined. As a result, when Planet Nine torques the rest of the solar system, the two sort of act as two precessing tops. Planet Nine being in its own plane induced a precession on the remainder of the solar system as if the plane of the solar system was a flat top on the surface of a table.
AM: So Planet Nine’s gravitational influence is forcing the solar system to wobble?
KB: If you imagine that the Sun and the planets were co-planar, meaning they were locked into the same plane 4 billion years ago, and allow the clock to run forward in the presence of Planet Nine, then 4 billion years later the Sun would have been apparently tilted by exactly it’s current obliquity, or 6 degrees. But what’s actually going on is that the Sun is staying put in its fixed reference frame and it’s the planetary orbits that are being tilted by Planet Nine. So Planet Nine has tilted the entire disk of the solar system by 6 degrees and because we live on that disc … to us it looks like the Sun is tilted, but it’s actually the other way around.
AM: How could Planet Nine have that much influence on our entire solar system when it’s so far out?
KB: Here’s why: Planet Nine is only 10 Earth masses as compared to Jupiter’s 300 Earth masses, but its orbit is huge. So it’s an argument that is basically like an asymmetrical see-saw or a dolly. Planet Nine has a really long orbit so it can assert quite a bit of torque on the inner planets without having to apply so much force. Planet Nine has as much angular momentum as the entire solar system combined, because it’s orbit is so big.
AM: Have there been other theories about how this tilt may have happened before your theory of Planet Nine?
KB: I actually had theorized this in 2012 and wrote about it and the theory was almost exactly the same, except for it wasn’t Planet Nine doing the torqueing but a companion star. I theorized that a young star was bound to the Sun, and tilting the entire proto-planetary disc from which planets form. It’s believed that most stars are born binary but most of them lose their companions by the time they come out of the birth cluster.
AM: Does this help us better understand planet formation or solar system formation?
KB: It does help us understand planet formation because planet formation theory dictates that all things must start out co-planar, in the same plane. The fact that the Sun is tilted with respect to the rest of the solar system is almost a violation of that very fundamental principle, so understanding what’s going on there is important. But there’s also a second component to why this calculation is interesting. We very quickly realized that Planet Nine must do something, it must tilt the solar system by some angle and we thought to ourselves what if this angle was really big? What if the Sun was tilted by 40 degrees in our calculations? That would actually be evidence against Planet Nine, instead we got this beautiful agreement of the theory.
AM: Has this new data helped with your search for Planet Nine?
KB: What we’ve found is that the direction into which the Sun is tilted by Planet Nine is intimately related to the orbit of Planet Nine itself. This is more or less a consistency check, it doesn’t help us or really provide too much new information but it gives us more confidence that we are actually barking up the right tree
Although the Webb telescope’s first image of an exoplanet looks like a pixelated light bulb, it actually demonstrates the observatory’s infrared prowess. The star symbol marks the exoplanet HIP 65426 b’s star, which Webb has blocked from the image.
Credit: Aarynn Carter, the ERS 1386 team
The James Webb Space Telescope has taken its first picture of a planet beyond the Solar System — opening a window to understanding other worlds and underscoring the telescope’s immense capabilities.
The image is of a planet called HIP 65426 b, an object similar to Jupiter, but younger and hotter, that lies 107 parsecs from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. It is the first exoplanet image ever taken at deep infrared wavelengths, which allow astronomers to study the full range of a planet’s brightness and what it is made of.
“It gives us wavelengths we’ve never seen planets at before,” says Beth Biller, an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and a member of the discovery team. The image was reported in a paper on the arXiv preprint server on 31 August1; the report has not been peer reviewed.
The finding confirms how powerful Webb will be for studying exoplanets. Launched in December as a collaboration between NASA and the European and Canadian space agencies, the telescope began doing science in June, using its 6.5-metre-wide primary mirror to observe the Universe from a spot around 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. The fact that it was able to take such a sharp picture of HIP 65426 b suggests that it will be able to photograph even smaller planets, the size of Saturn or even Neptune, orbiting other stars. That would drastically improve scientific understanding of far-away planetary systems.
The Webb telescope imaged HIP 65426 b at multiple infrared wavelengths (from left to right: 3.00, 4.44, 11.4 and 15.5 micrometres).
Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA, A. Carter (UCSC), the ERS 1386 team and A. Pagan (STScI)
Astronomers know of more than 5,000 exoplanets, but they have taken pictures of only around 20. Imaging exoplanets directly is difficult, because they are often lost in the glare of the star around which they orbit.
But observing them at infrared wavelengths, as Webb does, helps to boost the contrast between star and planet. “You’re in the regime where planets are brightest and stars are dimmest,” says Aarynn Carter, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and lead author of the preprint.
‘Baby Jupiter’
Carter and his colleagues chose to study HIP 65426 b after other astronomers discovered it in 20172 using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. In July this year, Carter’s team used instruments on Webb to physically block the light from HIP 65426 b’s star, allowing the planet to pop into view. HIP 65426 b orbits its star at roughly twice the distance that Pluto orbits the Sun.
Unlocking the additional infrared wavelengths allowed the astronomers to better understand how much energy the planet’s atmosphere radiates. That, in turn, allowed them to use models of stellar evolution to pin down its mass to 7 times, and its radius to 1.45 times, that of Jupiter.
HIP 65426 b is probably around 14 million years old, making it “a baby Jupiter”, Biller says. It’s “like Jupiter, but right after it formed”. Our Solar System is around 4.5 billion years old.
Future studies will probably probe how HIP 65426 b formed and evolved over time. Meanwhile, other astronomers are planning to use Webb to study many other exoplanets, especially big ones that lie relatively far from their host star and can thus be imaged directly.
Such work complements other ways in which Webb can observe exoplanets, such as analysing the starlight passing through a planet’s atmosphere to see what chemical compounds the atmosphere contains. Astronomers can’t use that technique on HIP 65426 b, because it lies too far away from its star. But Carter’s team is applying spectral analysis to a different planet, which is substantially larger than Jupiter and is known as VHS 1256 b. It lies 22 parsecs away from Earth in the constellation Corvus.
The findings of that analysis were reported on arXiv on 1 September3, and include signs of silicate grains — essentially, hot sand — in the atmosphere of VHS 1256 b. “That’s a hugely exciting result,” Carter says. It is the first time that sandy grains have been spotted in the atmosphere of a planet beyond the Solar System.
Such sand clouds can form when temperatures on the planet are hot enough to vaporize rock-forming minerals.
Even Short Flights to Space Cause Cell Mutations That Could Lead to Cancer and Heart Disease
Even Short Flights to Space Cause Cell Mutations That Could Lead to Cancer and Heart Disease
Spaceflight can be dangerous – and not just because astronauts are strapped to an ongoing massive explosion for their ascent into orbit. Its long-term effects on the human body are starting to come more clearly into focus, and so far, none of the answers have been good. Now a new study from Mount Sinai Medical Hospital has found that, even on relatively short duration spaceflights, astronauts suffer potentially damaging DNS mutations.
The study, published in the August edition of Nature Communications Biology, was conducted on 14 astronauts that flew on shuttle flights from 1998 to 2001. These astronauts, the overwhelming majority of whom were men, with an average age of 42, had their blood drawn before their shuttle flights and then again right after. Scientists have used these blood samples for the last twenty years, and this new study utilizes them and the dramatically improved DNA sequencing technology that the previous two decades have brought us.
What the researchers found in these old blood samples are known as somatic mutations in the hematopoietic system, where blood cells are formed. Somatic mutations are mutations that happen to a person during their life, but don’t affect their egg or sperm cells, meaning they won’t be passed on to the next generation. In this particular instance, the mutations they found were associated with a disorder called clonal hematopoiesis (CH), where more blood cells come from one specific clone.
UT video on how make a novel radiation shield.
That isn’t necessarily cause for immediate alarm – in fact, CH doesn’t usually have symptoms associated with it. However, it indicates an increased risk factor for cardiovascular disease and blood cancer. And the somatic mutations the researchers found in the astronaut’s DNA were similar to those caused by ultraviolet radiation or specific chemicals.
Even more concerning, the most frequently changed gene was one responsible for producing a tumor-suppressing protein and is commonly associated with acute myeloid leukemia. However, even this change was below a standard threshold that doctors use to actually diagnose someone with CH.
However, these astronauts were only in space for an average of 12 days. Longer missions, such as those to Mars or even a permanent based on the Moon, could lead to much more damaging effects that have yet to be studied. There have already been plenty of studies of Mark and Scott Kelly, two twin astronauts who acted as a controlled pair to study microgravity and spaceflight’s effects on the human body. The effects do not appear to be good.
NASA video discussing the health limits of radiation. Credit – NASA Video YouTube Channel
And the CH gene change wasn’t the only problem found in the shuttle astronauts either. There was a surprisingly high amount of mitochondrial DNA floating in their bloodstreams, which can lead to inflammation problems. All of these issues point to the difficulty of the human body in dealing with spaceflight. None so far are red flags, but they certainly seem worth keeping an eye on while we restart our human exploration of the solar system.
Graphical depiction of the undergoing changes that astronauts suffer from when traveling in space. Credit – Communications Biology / Mount Sinai Health System
Sometimes, space probes that have long since ceased sending back data can still usher in new discoveries. That was the case recently when scientists used data from Rosetta, a probe that eventually crashed into comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2016, to understand what changes occur on a comet’s surface as it continues its spin around the Sun.
Published in the August 26 edition of The Planetary Science Journal, the paper from researchers at Cornell was inspired by the need to find a safe landing area for a future potential sample return mission. The idea wasn’t just to find a specific place on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko but to better understand how the geological processes of a comet’s orbit around the Sun affect its surface.
There was plenty of data to look at. Rosetta spent over two years orbiting the comet and even sent a lander, Philae, down to it. It circled 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko while the comet reached its perihelion – the part of its orbit nearest the Sun and the one most active periods of its orbit geologically.
UT discusses the Rosetta mission.
The increased temperatures on the comet’s surface in late 2015 caused significant shifts in 16 different flat regions on the surface that Rosetta was watching. Sublimation is the process by which the ice that usually blankets the comet’s body is changed directly into a gas by the heat from the Sun. The changes to the region also included the erosion of some of the edges of the depressions on the surface and other material settling back down onto it.
Changes like this would make it difficult for any landing craft to find a stable site using remote sensing methodologies. Philae itself ran into trouble when it bounced off the comet’s surface and ended up in a strange orientation that made the rest of its mission difficult. Such are the hazards of landing on a body where the gravity is 1/10000 what it is on Earth.
Even those challenges aren’t enough to stop scientists from exploring them, though. Many believe that comets are what seeded Earth with the necessary chemicals for life, including water. They were formed during the solar system’s birth and haven’t changed much since then, so they provide a unique look into how the solar system was before the formation of planets.
UT discussion of why it’s hard to land on a comet.
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko might even expect another visitor, as it is one of the most easily accessed comets. Its orbital period of 6.45 years means it runs the full gamut of environments that comets experience in a relatively short time. And it is already one of the best observed, with both Philae and Rosetta sending back hundreds of pictures of it.
Whether or not we ever return to it is still up in the air, but we will undoubtedly be back to visit more comets. A better understanding of how their surfaces form and what that means for landing on them will undoubtedly prove useful in the long run.
Live: UFO comes close to ISS astronauts during spacewalk
Live: UFO comes close to ISS astronauts during spacewalk
During a recent spacewalk Russian cosmonauts Commander Oleg Artemyev and Flight Engineer Denis Matveev exit the ISS to continue outfitting the European robotic arm on the station's Nauka laboratory when suddenly an unknown object comes into view next to the service module solar battery.
The MCC (control center) who monitors the spacewalk through a live cam noticed the object upon the operator ask Oleg Artemyev to see and describe the object but Oleg said that she did not understand what the operator was asking her, so he ordered Oleg to continue to work on the European robotic arm.
It seems impossible that the astronaut did not see the UFO, but it could be that the astronaut not wanted to talk about the UFO which came very close the ISS since they are not allowed to talk about UFO encounters in space.
Remarkably, the camera continues to track the object until it disappears from view, proving that this is not space debris, but an extraordinary object under intelligent control, unknown to the space agencies.
The UFO incident (and conversation) can be seen from 7.22.55 to 7.27.55 minutes in the following live video. (Click CC video for English translation).
Strange cylindrical objects falling out of a massive dark cloud
Strange cylindrical objects falling out of a massive dark cloud
With the sun active and the climate changing the temperatures, we will be seeing many weather events that will be hard to understand or explain.
As the world changes and shows us new things...Watch with an open mind. Cylinder shaped tubes of maybe ice are falling from the sky and it's not raining, but could be large hail? This week we have some freak accidents with large hail hitting people...this can kill you.
Could these objects be part of a weather modification (geoengineering) program? Like cloud seeding which is a type of weather modification that aims to change the amount or type of precipitation that falls from clouds by dispersing substances into the air that serve as cloud condensation or ice nuclei, which alter the microphysical processes within the cloud.
Whether these cylindrical objects (Ice or... something else?) are the result of cloud seeding or not, it definitely looks manufactured and I've never seen this before.
The video shows many cylindrical objects falling from the sky and 'Bruce sees all' simply wanted to share it with you. Every object has another object following it and all of them all the same shape.
Secret diplomatic mission to underwater cities in Atlantic ocean
Secret diplomatic mission to underwater cities in Atlantic ocean
JP, who currently serves with the US Army as a quartermaster and chemical repairer, was recently taken on a covert mission to an underwater city off the Florida coast in the Bermuda triangle region.
He said that he witnessed tall human looking beings that inhabited the city which was protected by a giant underwater dome. He said that there were two other domed cities adjacent to the one he visited.
He also said that he was there with a small contingent of soldiers to protect a civilian negotiator who met with leaders of the underwater city to conduct negotiations.
In this Exopolitics Today interview, JP discusses his mission, the people involved, and what he witnessed at the bottom of the ocean in the Bermuda triangle region.
Large UFO Hovering Over Powerline's In Tacoma Washington!(UFO SIGHTING)
UFO hovering over powerline's in Tacoma Washington.
Video source MUFON Case # 124399
Airline Pilot Sees Foofighter over Wilmington, North Carolina Aug 12, 2022, UFO Sighting News.
Eyewitness states: Who: I am an airline pilot with a major airline in the United States. I am a former military pilot. When: August 12, 2022, over a 35 minute period from approximately 0055-0130 ET (0455-0530 UTC). Where:At the first sighting we were approximately over the city of Wilmington, NC. At last sighting we were approximately over Richmond, VA. We were traveling almost due north and the objects were directly in front of us. It was impossible to tell exactly where the objects were; in the 35+ minutes we were watching them they never seemed to get closer. Narrative:
We took off from St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands for a 4-hour flight to Washington Dulles airport. We departed at 2202 ET and landed at 0148 ET. At roughly 0055 ET I began seeing slow pulses of light in the sky directly in front of us (to our north). The pulses would last usually 8-10 seconds each and had gaps of darkness lasting anywhere from 10 seconds to over a minute. They were slowly moving from left to right. The pulses would be gradual (start very dim and grow into a bright light about the brightness of Venus, and then fade away). As an airline pilot, I am positive I was not seeing other airliners. Very few civilian aircraft can fly above 41,000 feet, and the objects were about 10 degrees above the horizon from our perspective. I was not able to tell the distance of the object from our aircraft, but in the 35+ minutes we watched, they never seemed to get any closer even though we covered about 250 nautical miles in that time. For this reason I believe they were in either the upper atmosphere or in space. After a few minutes of watching, the Captain (who until this point had been very quiet) asked me if I was seeing the lights. I said yes and we started discussing what they could be. I started filming and taking photos at this point. We began seeing 2 lights at a time, often at different altitudes, but always moving generally from left to right when the pulse was at its peak. At one point we watched 2 lights flying in “formation”, almost side by side. When I looked very carefully, I could see the lights even after the pulse faded, but it was very dim and would sometimes fade away completely. When the pulse was dim they lights seemed to be traveling to the left. For a brief time we saw 3 objects at one time. At no point did we see a strobe light or navigation lights on the objects. The best way to describe what we saw is 2-3 aircraft circling in left hand turns with their landing lights on, which means that they were only clearly visible when the lights were facing towards us. Because we were flying towards Washington DC we discussed the possibility it was fighter aircraft flying circles over the city due to a security threat. This was clearly not the case however, because we were 300+ miles from DC when we spotted them, and they never seemed to get closer as we neared the city. They also were far higher in elevation than modern fighters can fly, and there would be no reason to have their landing lights on in that phase of flight. Additionally, fighter aircraft have their landing lights mounted within their landing gear which would have been retracted, and therefore could not have been visible. As a former fighter/attack pilot I am extremely familiar with capabilities of modern aircraft, have trained in CAP (protecting locations from aerial threats) and I am 100% we were not seeing military aircraft or flares. I have spent a lot of time wondering if they could have been a train of Starlink satellites, and the light pulses were sunlight reflecting off the satellites. I don’t think this is the case, for the following reasons. We spotted them in the middle of the night; 5 hours after sunset, when it is less likely to spot satellites. We also saw the pulses an estimated 80+ times, and we only stopped seeing them due to us descending into the clouds. From looking online, starlink trains are typically 40-60 satellites. The sighting also lasted 35+ minutes, which is far longer than a satellite train. I believe it was the same 2-3 objects the entire time, and they were flying in circles. Lastly, the objects appeared to be flying in circles, which is not characteristic of satellites.
This is my first sighting. I have 4 videos and several photos. Unfortunately, they were taken from my iphone, at night. You can see the pulses, but the relative motion is difficult to make out. In one video I filmed my displays, which shows my altitude, and location.
UAP passing slowly west to east
I have filmed these objects passing slowly on a few occasions. Always going west to east. Footage taken 20 th may 2021 .
This daytime UFO was seen and filmed in the sky above Shakopee, a city in and the county seat of Scott County, Minnesota on 3rd September 2022.
Witness report:
This was yesterday 09/03/2022 at 5:46PM in Shakopee MN. Near several airports and Mystic Lake Casino with its multiple spotlights. It might have been past Rice Lake. I didn’t see any plane pulling it and it was out of view to the naked eye, my video hasn’t compressed anything. That’s all I could get with HD 60 fps at x6 zoom on my iPhone 11 Pro Max.
This daytime UFO was seen and filmed in the sky above Shakopee, a city in and the county seat of Scott County, Minnesota on 3rd September 2022.
Witness report:
This was yesterday 09/03/2022 at 5:46PM in Shakopee MN. Near several airports and Mystic Lake Casino with its multiple spotlights. It might have been past Rice Lake. I didn’t see any plane pulling it and it was out of view to the naked eye, my video hasn’t compressed anything. That’s all I could get with HD 60 fps at x6 zoom on my iPhone 11 Pro Max.
Even Short Flights to Space Cause Cell Mutations That Could Lead to Cancer and Heart Disease
Even Short Flights to Space Cause Cell Mutations That Could Lead to Cancer and Heart Disease
Spaceflight can be dangerous – and not just because astronauts are strapped to an ongoing massive explosion for their ascent into orbit. Its long-term effects on the human body are starting to come more clearly into focus, and so far, none of the answers have been good. Now a new study from Mount Sinai Medical Hospital has found that, even on relatively short duration spaceflights, astronauts suffer potentially damaging DNS mutations.
The study, published in the August edition of Nature Communications Biology, was conducted on 14 astronauts that flew on shuttle flights from 1998 to 2001. These astronauts, the overwhelming majority of whom were men, with an average age of 42, had their blood drawn before their shuttle flights and then again right after. Scientists have used these blood samples for the last twenty years, and this new study utilizes them and the dramatically improved DNA sequencing technology that the previous two decades have brought us.
What the researchers found in these old blood samples are known as somatic mutations in the hematopoietic system, where blood cells are formed. Somatic mutations are mutations that happen to a person during their life, but don’t affect their egg or sperm cells, meaning they won’t be passed on to the next generation. In this particular instance, the mutations they found were associated with a disorder called clonal hematopoiesis (CH), where more blood cells come from one specific clone.
UT video on how make a novel radiation shield.
That isn’t necessarily cause for immediate alarm – in fact, CH doesn’t usually have symptoms associated with it. However, it indicates an increased risk factor for cardiovascular disease and blood cancer. And the somatic mutations the researchers found in the astronaut’s DNA were similar to those caused by ultraviolet radiation or specific chemicals.
Even more concerning, the most frequently changed gene was one responsible for producing a tumor-suppressing protein and is commonly associated with acute myeloid leukemia. However, even this change was below a standard threshold that doctors use to actually diagnose someone with CH.
However, these astronauts were only in space for an average of 12 days. Longer missions, such as those to Mars or even a permanent based on the Moon, could lead to much more damaging effects that have yet to be studied. There have already been plenty of studies of Mark and Scott Kelly, two twin astronauts who acted as a controlled pair to study microgravity and spaceflight’s effects on the human body. The effects do not appear to be good.
NASA video discussing the health limits of radiation. Credit – NASA Video YouTube Channel
And the CH gene change wasn’t the only problem found in the shuttle astronauts either. There was a surprisingly high amount of mitochondrial DNA floating in their bloodstreams, which can lead to inflammation problems. All of these issues point to the difficulty of the human body in dealing with spaceflight. None so far are red flags, but they certainly seem worth keeping an eye on while we restart our human exploration of the solar system.
Graphical depiction of the undergoing changes that astronauts suffer from when traveling in space. Credit – Communications Biology / Mount Sinai Health System
A UFO sighting took place during the current tropical cyclone season over the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. The object was spotted in the sky by a local resident named Juanito Juan.
Juan says he was taking photos of some ominous, oncoming storm clouds when he spotted a metallic, disc-shaped UFO in the sky.
Looking like the prototypical flying saucer, Juan snapped several photos of the object which appear to show some of its movement in the sky.
“This photo was taken today 8/17/22 in the rural area of Tamaulipas by a person who calls himself Juanito Juan, during the afternoon of this day and when he wanted to take some photos of the storm clouds, he noticed this object and took this sequence.
Chinese Astronauts Successfully Grow Rice in Space
Chinese Astronauts Successfully Grow Rice in Space
Rice is one of the world’s staple crops. It is regularly eaten by more than half the world’s population. And now, it’s been grown in microgravity, on board the newly launched Chinese Wentian space laboratory.
Wentian launched in July and joined up with the Tianhe module of China’s new space station. Its original complement of eight experiments included one that attempted to grow rice in microgravity.
Rice typically grows to 3-4 ft over four months, and the stalks on Wentian have not been able to complete their entire maturation cycle since the experiment started in July. However, they seem to be on track compared to their Earth-bound counterparts.
Rice growing on the space Tiangong space station. Credit – CGTN
There were actually two types of rice launched as part of the experiment. A tall shoot variety reached almost 30 centimeters in the first month of growth, and a dwarf variety reached around 5 cm. Both of these growth amounts are on par for these particular rice varieties on Earth.
Rice isn’t the only thing in the experiment, though. Scientists added Arabidopsis thaliana. It’s a common flowering plant typically used to study genetic mutations, which can be especially helpful when carrying out an experiment in space.
Rice and mutation studies both have a long history in spaceflight. The Apollo 11 astronauts ate freeze-dried chicken and rice during their journey to the moon. And any space-based farming effort will surely include rice. So this is a step in the right direction.
Arabidopsis thaliana growing on the Tiangong space station. Credit – Chinese Academy of Sciences
This also isn’t the first time China has sent rice into space. Some hitched a ride on the Chang’e 5 in November of 2020 on its ride around the moon. Other crops have ridden with other Chinese spacecraft as well. These studies focused on improving the yield of these crops, as rice that is expected to the radiation environment of space have higher yields once planted back on Earth. This burgeoning industry has seen more than 200 types of crops modified in this way, and experiments are continuing.
This isn’t the first time rice has been successfully grown in space. A team of students from Indonesia tested the effects of growing rice in microgravity on the ISS back in 2016.
For now, the experiment continues apace, and the scientists running it hope to get seeds that they can bring back to Earth to study if there were any significant differences having been grown in microgravity. Assuming there isn’t, these experiments could point to a bright future in space for one of the world’s most important crops.
Mysterious concentric rings of light caught by James Webb Space Telescope
Mysterious concentric rings of light caught by James Webb Space Telescope
Scientist Judy Schmidt: Nope, I don't know what this is. Some kind of spiral nebula around WR140. I'm sure we'll find out more later.
The Universe, truly, is full of wonders, and the James Webb Space Telescope has just given us our best views of one of them yet.
The object in question is a star around 5,600 light-years away, and Webb's infrared eye has picked out an extraordinary detail: it's surrounded by what appear to be concentric rings of light radiating outward.
While Webb's characteristic diffraction spikes are not 'real', those concentric rings are – and there's a wonderful and fascinating explanation for them.
The star is actually a binary pair of rare stars in the constellation of Cygnus, and their interactions produce precise periodic eruptions of dust that are expanding out in shells into the space around the pair over time.
These shells of dust are glowing in infrared, which has allowed an instrument as sensitive as Webb's MIRI to resolve them in exquisite detail.
The star is what is known as a colliding wind binary, consisting of an extremely rare Wolf-Rayet star, called WR 140, and a hot, massive O-type star companion – another rare object.
Wolf-Rayet stars are very hot, very luminous, and very old; at the end of their main-sequence lifespan. They are significantly depleted in hydrogen, rich in nitrogen or carbon, and losing mass at a very high rate.
O-type stars are among the most massive stars known, also very hot and bright; because they are so massive, their lifespans are incredibly brief.
3 orange rotating UFOS make explosion with triangle in middle then more orange lights appear – New Mexico
3 orange rotating UFOS make explosion with triangle in middle then more orange lights appear – New Mexico
This strange UFO event happened over Carlsbad in New Mexico on 29th August 2022.
Witness report:
In the dessert (SW) out by Carlsbad, NM at 10:21 PM on 8/29/2022 a storm with abnormally thick clouds suddenly started to form with a lot of cool wind and very bright flashes of lightning that seemed to only light up the top half of the storm clouds with no visible bolts of lightning or sound/thunder. A large hovering and blinking light (about the size of an airplane light but seemed to “twinkle” yellow and white) appeared to the left of the storm clouds (video 1 shows this) with smaller and random half second lights blinking randomly around the sky moving from E-W. Suddenly the blinking light appeared to move much closer as it went from a tiny blinking light to 3 very large orange balls of light that were spinning (horizontally) from E-W ( Video 2 and 3) and gaining speed at an incredible rate, then they seemed to create an explosion of energy that created a tube like cloud structure (vertically) with “corkscrew” like appearance on the outside with an upside down triangular shape in the center. A very faint white ball of light seemed to shoot out of the cloud tunnel and go to the right (in less than half a second) where suddenly more large orange balls of light start to randomly appear one by one in a vertical stacking pattern 1, 2, 3, 4. There was no sound created from any of this. This all happened in about 90 seconds. When the videos are slowed down you can see multiple tiny silver reflections ( they appear as a tiny twinkle in regular speed) from small flat top crafts that are zipping through the sky, there is another craft that appears for .5-1 ( second that looks to be almost egg/ball shaped but large light in the center top and it has a small ball it seems to be controlling hovering below it. There appears to be multiple different craft in the sky at one time and they all seem to be “working together”. This was recorded from 2 different angles on the 8/29/22, and the orange balls of light that rotate and also seem to stack randomly have been seen in the same spot almost every night since. Locals in Hobbs,NM are reporting seeing this same activity for at least 2 months now.
Sightings of strange objects in the sky, became the raw materials for Hollywood, to present visions of potential threats. Scientists and astronomers express varying degrees of enthusiasm, for the possibility of intelligent life in the universe. In fact, NASA has officially joined the search party, to hunt aliens and UFOs. And today, we bring to you the 7 most mysterious, yet true sightings of UFOs, from around the world!
NASA Woke Up Voyager 1 From 14.6 billion miles Away, And The Spacecraft Actually Signaled Back
NASA Woke Up Voyager 1 From 14.6 billion miles Away, And The Spacecraft Actually Signaled Back
The Voyager probes started their journey to the edge of the unknown in 1977, and they're still going strong decades later. NASA began receiving garbled communications from Voyager 1 earlier this year, prompting concerns that the legendary spacecraft was on the verge of a major system failure. Fortunately, NASA today says that it was able to resolve the problem with the 45-year-old spacecraft, but solving this enigma has lead to another that may be more difficult to solve.
Despite its name, Voyager 1 was the second of the probes to be launched. The "Grand Tour" of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune was made possible by a rare alignment of the outer planets. Voyager 1 travelled directly to Jupiter and Saturn before entering interstellar space and passing Voyager 2. Voyager 1 became the first man-made object to escape the solar system in 2012.
This past May, NASA stated that something had gone wrong with the craft's attitude articulation and control system (AACS). This system is in charge of keeping Voyager's antenna pointing at Earth. If it fails, NASA may lose contact with the ageing probe for good. Surprisingly, the agency was still receiving good data while AACS was returning jumbled updates. Something was clearly wrong.
Communicating with a spacecraft this old is never going to be easy, but when you consider that Voyager 1 is more than 14.6 billion miles (23.5 billion kilometers) away, give or take a million miles, each communication takes nearly a full day to go to or from Voyager 1. NASA claims that the skewed AACS telemetry has been corrected after months of inquiry. The system itself was operational, but it began sending telemetry data via an inbuilt computer that had been known to fail for years.
A circuit board that is a component of the Voyager's AACS subsystem.
The team tried a low-risk fix: notifying AACS to switch to the working computer, which worked flawlessly. Voyager 1 is now sending accurate data, which explains why the probe continued to operate despite the garbled orientation updates. However, it does not explain why AACS chose to use a broken machine in the first place.
NASA is still looking into what caused the mishap. The following step is to perform a full memory readout of the AACS, which may point to the triggering event. This should help engineers figure out what went wrong. The crew is "cautiously confident" that the fundamental issue may be identified and fixed while Voyager continues to explore.
Bryce Zabel, a CNN reporter has done a marvelous job in presenting the detailed Roswell incident in his personal blog. He collectively mentioned top witnesses’ statements that assure Roswell disclosure is on a fast track. The legendary incident that happened in 1947 was indeed real, according to moon-walking astronaut Edgar Mitchell. He claimed in his interviews that he had informants that had told him about the inside story of Roswell, but he never disclosed their names.
“Make no mistake, Roswell happened. I’ve seen secret files which show the government knew about it — but decided not to tell the public,” claimed Edgar Mitchell, Ph.D., Apollo 14 Astronaut.
In February 1971, after the successful completion of the mission, the Apollo 14 crew returned to Earth. Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell became the fifth and sixth astronauts to walk on the moon’s surface. While Shepard chose to live in the glory, Mitchell became the main troublemaker for many years.
He publicly accepted the existence of aliens after being on the Moon and stuck to it until his death. He accused the US government of hiding the truth about contact with aliens. Immediately after his return, Mitchell left NASA and immersed himself in studying UFOs, ancient history, and human consciousness.
Edgar Mitchell, 1971. Image credit: NASA
Mitchell grew up in the small town of Artesia, a few miles from the very Roswell airbase where the crash allegedly occurred. The astronaut claimed that many of his neighbors, acquaintances, and friends worked at that base, and what he heard from them is enough for him to consider the Roswell incident a real UFO crash. Mitchell did not disclose the names of his informants, referring to the fact that they all signed a non-disclosure agreement and he did not want them to have any problems.
Michell, who claimed he briefed the highest members of the Pentagon, said the reality is that there was an advanced civilization that could penetrate our air defenses at will and that we could not stop them in any way, shape, or form, immediately doomed the Roswell incident to become one of the greatest coverups in history.
ET stopped Nuclear War
According to Mitchell, he once had a confidential conversation with a Navy admiral, who secretly told him that in fact, aliens had established contact with the government back in the early 1940s. They were interested in earthly weapons, primarily the atomic bomb. At the very beginning of the Cold War between the USSR and the USA, aliens often came to Earth because they feared nuclear war and tried to influence the world elites in some way. (Source)
Growing up in New Mexico gave him a unique insight to the Roswell area, he told the UK’s Mirror in 2015.
“White Sands was a testing ground for atomic weapons – and that’s what the extraterrestrials were interested in… They wanted to know about our military capabilities. My own experience talking to people has made it clear the ETs had been attempting to keep us from going to war and help create peace on Earth.”
According to a 2015 story, Apollo 14 astronaut said: “My own experience talking to people has made it clear the ETs had been attempting to keep us from going to war and help create peace on Earth.”
However, he clarified in his interview with Observer that he did not make those statements but at the same time, he somewhat agreed with those words. He said: “I don’t remember speaking to them personally. I don’t know where they got that information. I didn’t make those statements. Somebody has added to my words. Those weren’t my exact words but I don’t necessarily disagree with those statemen
However, the 2016 Wikileak emails say Mitchell was worried about space weaponization. Despite the fact that aliens might be violent as shown in various sci-fi, the notable astronaut called them nonviolent in his email. In January 2015, he sent an email to Podesta, asking him to have an urgent meeting to discuss Disclosure and Zero Point Energy (ZPE). He was concerned about the peace in spac
Mitchell wrote: “My Catholic colleague Terri Mansfield will be there too, to bring us up to date on the Vatican’s awareness of ETI. Another colleague is working on a new Space Treaty, citing involvement with Russia and China. However, with Russia’s extreme interference in Ukraine, I believe we must pursue another route for peace in space and ZPE on Earth.”
Mitchell emailed Podesta again on September 18, 2015. He wrote: “Because the War in Space race is heating up, I felt you should be aware of several factors as you and I schedule our Skype talk. Remember, our nonviolent ETI from the contiguous universe are helping us bring zero point energy to Earth. They will not tolerate any forms of military violence on Earth or in space.”
Why Believe the Roswell Crash?
Bryce Zabel writes: “That storyline has hundreds of witnesses testifying to roughly the same fact trail. Some were first-hand witnesses to debris and even the recovery of bodies, and several accounts came from death bed confessions. Many more witnesses were family members who learned of the secret their fathers and husbands had kept inside them for decades. There were many dozens who attested to extremely tight security and transportation of material in the aftermath of what crashed at Roswell.”
Jesse Marcel was an intelligence officer of the 509th Bombardment Group at Roswell Army Air Field and was tasked with investigating the 1947 Roswell crash
Moreover, the hype of Roswell stories has increased. The New York Times started covering this issue in the summer of 2020 and is continuing its investigation into crash wreckage. Besides, the former head of the AATIP Luis Elizondo gave his candid take on the 1947 Roswell crash in New Mexico and more in an interview with the Roswell Daily Record.
Elizondo: “I’ll share with you… some of the observations that were made by some people. Before I was part of AATIP, I had no idea about Roswell, other than that there was sort of some alleged crash at some point and some farmer found debris — but during my time with AATIP, there was some very interesting anecdotal information that suggests there wasn’t just one crash, there may have been two crashes, and that somehow it may have been related to some sort of testing that was being done at the time at White Sands, and that material was recovered.
And that material that was recovered, samples of that material found their way into the hands of private citizens, some of them, but that the … allegedly the larger sections of debris were all recovered by the U.S. Government.”
During the interview, Elizondo said that while he headed the AATIP, his job was to concentrate on current UAP incidents, however, he added that he had conversations with so-called “graybeards” at the Pentagon who had been involved with UAPs since Project Blue Book. It was from these individuals that Elizondo learned what probably occurred at Roswell in 1947.
Elizondo: ”These individuals were convinced that the events in New Mexico were not fiction. In fact that it was a, very much a real event and that some very exotic material was recovered… And then there was a subsequent effort to try to be very dismissive about what occurred in New Mexico. But again, I will share with you that it was, from my understanding, it wasn’t one, it was two crashes, and it may have been related to some sort of nuclear-type testing of technology that we were doing, atomic and/or nuclear technology at Los Alamos at the time.”
Although the Webb telescope’s first image of an exoplanet looks like a pixelated light bulb, it actually demonstrates the observatory’s infrared prowess. The star symbol marks the exoplanet HIP 65426 b’s star, which Webb has blocked from the image.
Credit: Aarynn Carter, the ERS 1386 team
The James Webb Space Telescope has taken its first picture of a planet beyond the Solar System — opening a window to understanding other worlds and underscoring the telescope’s immense capabilities.
The image is of a planet called HIP 65426 b, an object similar to Jupiter, but younger and hotter, that lies 107 parsecs from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. It is the first exoplanet image ever taken at deep infrared wavelengths, which allow astronomers to study the full range of a planet’s brightness and what it is made of.
“It gives us wavelengths we’ve never seen planets at before,” says Beth Biller, an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and a member of the discovery team. The image was reported in a paper on the arXiv preprint server on 31 August1; the report has not been peer reviewed.
The finding confirms how powerful Webb will be for studying exoplanets. Launched in December as a collaboration between NASA and the European and Canadian space agencies, the telescope began doing science in June, using its 6.5-metre-wide primary mirror to observe the Universe from a spot around 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. The fact that it was able to take such a sharp picture of HIP 65426 b suggests that it will be able to photograph even smaller planets, the size of Saturn or even Neptune, orbiting other stars. That would drastically improve scientific understanding of far-away planetary systems.
The Webb telescope imaged HIP 65426 b at multiple infrared wavelengths (from left to right: 3.00, 4.44, 11.4 and 15.5 micrometres).
Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA, A. Carter (UCSC), the ERS 1386 team and A. Pagan (STScI)
Astronomers know of more than 5,000 exoplanets, but they have taken pictures of only around 20. Imaging exoplanets directly is difficult, because they are often lost in the glare of the star around which they orbit.
But observing them at infrared wavelengths, as Webb does, helps to boost the contrast between star and planet. “You’re in the regime where planets are brightest and stars are dimmest,” says Aarynn Carter, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and lead author of the preprint.
‘Baby Jupiter’
Carter and his colleagues chose to study HIP 65426 b after other astronomers discovered it in 20172 using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. In July this year, Carter’s team used instruments on Webb to physically block the light from HIP 65426 b’s star, allowing the planet to pop into view. HIP 65426 b orbits its star at roughly twice the distance that Pluto orbits the Sun.
Unlocking the additional infrared wavelengths allowed the astronomers to better understand how much energy the planet’s atmosphere radiates. That, in turn, allowed them to use models of stellar evolution to pin down its mass to 7 times, and its radius to 1.45 times, that of Jupiter.
Four revelations from the Webb telescope about distant galaxies
HIP 65426 b is probably around 14 million years old, making it “a baby Jupiter”, Biller says. It’s “like Jupiter, but right after it formed”. Our Solar System is around 4.5 billion years old.
Future studies will probably probe how HIP 65426 b formed and evolved over time. Meanwhile, other astronomers are planning to use Webb to study many other exoplanets, especially big ones that lie relatively far from their host star and can thus be imaged directly.
Such work complements other ways in which Webb can observe exoplanets, such as analysing the starlight passing through a planet’s atmosphere to see what chemical compounds the atmosphere contains. Astronomers can’t use that technique on HIP 65426 b, because it lies too far away from its star. But Carter’s team is applying spectral analysis to a different planet, which is substantially larger than Jupiter and is known as VHS 1256 b. It lies 22 parsecs away from Earth in the constellation Corvus.
The findings of that analysis were reported on arXiv on 1 September3, and include signs of silicate grains — essentially, hot sand — in the atmosphere of VHS 1256 b. “That’s a hugely exciting result,” Carter says. It is the first time that sandy grains have been spotted in the atmosphere of a planet beyond the Solar System.
Such sand clouds can form when temperatures on the planet are hot enough to vaporize rock-forming minerals.
The Universe, truly, is full of wonders, and the James Webb Space Telescope has just given us our best views of one of them yet.
The object in question is a star around 5,600 light-years away, and Webb's infrared eye has picked out an extraordinary detail: it's surrounded by what appear to be concentric rings of light radiating outward.
While Webb's characteristic diffraction spikes are not 'real', those concentric rings are – and there's a wonderful and fascinating explanation for them.
The star is actually a binary pair of rare stars in the constellation of Cygnus, and their interactions produce precise periodic eruptions of dust that are expanding out in shells into the space around the pair over time.
These shells of dust are glowing in infrared, which has allowed an instrument as sensitive as Webb's MIRI to resolve them in exquisite detail.
The full image as processed by Judy Schmidt. (JWST/MIRI/Judy Schmidt)
The star is what is known as a colliding wind binary, consisting of an extremely rare Wolf-Rayet star, called WR 140, and a hot, massive O-type star companion – another rare object.
Wolf-Rayet stars are very hot, very luminous, and very old; at the end of their main-sequence lifespan. They are significantly depleted in hydrogen, rich in nitrogen or carbon, and losing mass at a very high rate.
O-type stars are among the most massive stars known, also very hot and bright; because they are so massive, their lifespans are incredibly brief.
Both stars in the WR 140 system have fast stellar winds, blowing out into space at around 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) per second. Both are therefore losing mass at a pretty furious rate. So far so normal, for both stars.
Where it gets interesting is their orbit, which is elliptical. This means the stars don't describe nice, neat circles around each other, but ovals, with a point at which they are farthest apart from each other (apastron) and a point at which they are closest to each other (periastron).
When the two stars enter periastron – a distance about a third greater than the distance between Earth and the Sun – they become close enough that their powerful winds collide.
This produces shocks in the material around the stars, accelerating particles and generating energetic radiation, such as X-rays. These colliding winds also induce episodes of dust formation as the material in the colliding stellar wind cools.
This process can be seen in the animation below, which shows what the system would look like from the top down.
Animation showing how the WR 140 binary produces dust at periastron. (NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted/STScI)
The dust is a form of carbon, which absorbs ultraviolet light from the two stars. This heats the dust, causing it to re-emit thermal radiation – which is what is observed by Webb in infrared wavelengths.
The dust is then blown outward by the stellar wind, resulting in the expansion of the partial dust shells. They expand and cool as they are blown outward, losing heat and density.
What you're looking at in Webb's image is a bit like a series of bubbles; the edge of each dust shell is more visible because you're looking at a denser concentration of material due to perspective.
Because the binary star's orbit has a 7.94-year period, the wind collision and dust production occur like clockwork every 7.94 years. This means you can count the rings of the nebula around the binary, like tree rings, to determine the age of the outermost visible dust shell.
Around 20 rings are visible, which means you can see around 160 years' worth of dust shells in the Webb image. The most recent WR 140 periastron was observed in 2016.
Webb's observation of WR 140 was requested by a team led by astrophysicist Ryan Lau of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science.
They're preparing a paper on the observations, so it's possible that we're on the brink of finding out something new about this fascinating, crazy star.
Now, Webb has done it again, this time capturing an almost perfect Einstein ring whose light has traveled roughly 12 billion light-years to reach us. And we can't stop staring.
You can see the colorized image, which was shared by astronomy grad student Spaceguy44 on Reddit, below.
As Spaceguy44 explains on Reddit, an Einstein ring occurs when a distant galaxy has been magnified and wrapped into an almost-perfect ring by a massive galaxy in front of it.
The galaxy in question is called SPT-S J041839-4751.8.
Here's a more distant view of it, also processed by Spaceguy44:
According to Spaceguy44, we wouldn't be able to see this galaxy at all if it wasn't for the Einstein ring.
And the presence of Einstein rings, in addition to looking beautiful, allows us to study these otherwise almost impossible to see galaxies.
This process is known as gravitational lensing, and it's an effect predicted by Einstein – hence the name.
The effect only happens when the distant galaxy, the closer magnifying galaxy, and the observer (in this case the Webb space telescope) line up.
If you want to try it for yourself, Spaceguy44 says that the stem and base of a wine glass create a similar effect. Try doing it with a page of a book and seeing the word zoomed in.
Although catching sight of Einstein rings is rare, it's not unheard of. Hubble previously captured images of spectacular Einstein rings.
This isn't even the first time Webb has captured the Einstein ring of SPT-S J041839-4751.8.
The image uses three different filters. Red is the F1000W filter, which captures wavelengths of light at 10µm. Green is the F770W filter, for 7.7µm wavelengths. Blue is the F560W filter which picks up 5.6µm wavelengths.
The images were then aligned and colorized by Spaceguy44 using astropy, and further processing was done in GIMP.
Editor's note (29 August 2022):
This article has been updated to change reference of 'light-years away' to 'light travel time'. Due to the vast distance the light from this galaxy has traveled to reach us, it is undoubtedly now much further away due to the expansion of the Universe.
Documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell has stunned UFO enthusiasts with his piece of evidence on the phenomenon and information he received while studying UFOs. He is the one who shared the video footage showing the UFO as a transmedium vehicle. Additionally, he says that UFOs and aliens are just a small part of a larger reality along with other interesting and eye-opening statements in an extensive interview with Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal.
Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell is an American contemporary artist and investigative filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California. He did extensive research on nanotechnology, aerospace exploration, and exotic propulsion systems, as well as an in-depth examination into the life and discoveries of the enigmatic “Godfather of Conspiracy” John Lear.
Corbell has documented the surgical removal of alleged off-world alien implants, and has filmed NASA’s analysis of anomalous materials alleged to be physical evidence of extraterrestrial nano-technology from UFO landing sites. He has obtained deathbed confessions from former CIA and government intelligence officials who claim to expose the truth about UFOs and the worldwide coverup of the ultimate truth.
Jeremy Corbell with former Pentagon UFO official Luis Elizondo.
Corbell released the film “Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers” on Netflix, adding credibility to Lazar’s case. Moreover, his 2-hour interview with Curt Jaimungal discussed dozens of topics that added great information to the UAP/UFO phenomena. In 2021, he leaked a film of the US Navy photographed & filmed “spherical” shaped UFOs & advanced transmedium vehicles. In the footage shared by filmmaker and UFO enthusiast Jeremy Corbell, a flying object can be seen disappearing into the water off California.
In this interview, he covers a variety of controversial subjects including the release of the Tic-Tac videos by the government, possible government disinformation campaigns, and the claims of Bob Lazar that he once worked on backward engineering an alien craft.
UFOs and Aliens Just Small Part of ‘Larger Reality’
Corbell asserted in the interview that aliens and UFOs are a small part of a much larger reality of this mysterious and mind-boggling phenomenon.
He said:
“UFOs appear to be part of a larger phenomenon meaning UFOs are kind of an auxiliary implication of a much larger reality. So this idea that what we’re seeing are machines from other planets. I’m unconvinced what we may be seeing is an alternate reality. You know maybe it is something closer to dimensional travel.
There seems to be another version of reality that is occurring and that somehow once they pop through into our reality. And th is is not just from a cursory look at the ufo phenomenon, this is from talking with thousands of close encounter eyewitnesses who tell me that this is something bigger than just flying machines.
To give you an example at Skinwalker Ranch. The report is that a piece of the sky opened up like a tear and out of this came “Beings” came “Craft.” So, UFOs is a symptom, it’s part of this alternate reality, The phenomenon as I call it. But it’s not just about UFOs represent this phenomenon.
I know this to be true that Skinwalker ranch is the best example of this because you have UFO phenomena. But you also have cattle mutilation which is often associated with lights in the sky. So, cattle mutilation is something a concrete example.
Cattle mutilation, Is this a UFO phenomenon or a government experiment, or is this a private corporation that’s going around mutilating these cows and draining their blood in the dead of the night? Nobody has ever been caught during these cattle mutilations.
They are the same across the board. They’re drained of blood. The farmers and people that are cattle ranchers see UFOs oftentimes during these mutilations so I can’t separate them.”
Watch the full interview below
Dr. Travis Taylor’s Statement On Skinwalker Ranch
Dr. Taylor joined businessman Brandon Fugals’s team at Fugals’s infamous Skinwalker ranch three years ago and firmly believed he would be able to resolve the ranch’s assorted mysteries in short order. But the longer he stayed, the stranger things became. In his interview with investigative journalist George Knapp, he said: “You know, I had never seen a UFO until I got out there. Now, I have seen more UFOs now than you can count.” (Source)
In the surprisingly candid and wide-ranging interview, Dr. Taylor shared his opinions about the role of science in the pursuit of the unknown, his personal experiences with strange phenomena on Skinwalker Ranch, the physical effects of close encounter cases, and the mysterious “hitchhiker effect” that multiple UFO/paranormal eyewitnesses have reported.
In his opinion, this unexplained phenomenon can be different for people in regards to their brain activity. Hypothetically speaking, he said that the phenomenon can be connected with different planes in the universe. He added that he could go along with the idea of a portal but was not sure. He believes it is bizarre but there is some truth to it.
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The Black Pyramid of Ukraine & Other Lesser-Known Ancient Constructions. Zohar Stargate 9-1-2022
The Black Pyramid of Ukraine & Other Lesser-Known Ancient Constructions. Zohar Stargate 9-1-2022
The Black Pyramid of Ukraine & Other Lesser-Known Ancient Constructions. Zohar Stargate 9-1-2022
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Premiered 15 hours ago
It is claimed that the remains of an ancient pyramid structure can be found in Ukraine. Efforts to research the site, however, have allegedly been thwarted by strange entities who have forced investigators to turn back. Here we digdeeper…
Abducted By ALIENS (UFO Encounters of the 4th Kind)
Abducted By ALIENS (UFO Encounters of the 4th Kind)
Are we being taken by beings from outer space or another dimension? A troubling phenomenon has been occurring for centuries – countless individuals have very real memories of being taken secretly against their will by Alien entities, many being subjected to complex physical and psychological procedures.
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01-09-2022
A Planet has Been Found That Shifts In and Out of the Habitable Zone
A Planet has Been Found That Shifts In and Out of the Habitable Zone
A super-Earth planet has been found orbiting a red dwarf star, only 37 light-years from the Earth. Named Ross 508 b, the newly found world has an unusual elliptical orbit that causes it to shift in and out of the habitable zone. Therefore, part of the time conditions would be conducive for liquid water to exist on the planet’s surface, but other times it wouldn’t.
The relatively small size and low luminosity of red dwarf stars means the habitable zone of this exoplanet is very close to the star, Ross 508. Therefore, the ever-changing conditions and likely high radiation environment doesn’t bode well for any type of habitability on this world, especially since this planet zips around its star every 11 days. The planet is about four times the mass of the Earth.
The Subaru Telescope. Credit: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
This exoplanet is the first to be discovered by a new infrared spectrograph on the Subaru Telescope, located at the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii. The Subaru Telescope is the flagship telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
Red dwarf stars, also called M dwarf or M-type stars, are the smallest and coolest kind of stars on the main sequence and they are also the most numerous, accounting for three-quarters of the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. But because of their low luminosity, individual red dwarfs cannot be easily observed. They are very faint in visible light due to their low surface temperature of less than 4000 degrees.
The astronomers who discovered Ross 508b say that exoplanet discoveries around cool M dwarfs have been limited, as well. Previous planet searches using visible light spectrometers have only discovered three planets around very nearby red dwarfs, such as Proxima Centauri b. That’s why astronomers are so excited about the new InfraRed Doppler instrument on Subaru.
“Ross 508b is the first successful detection of a super-Earth using only near-infrared spectroscopy,” said Dr. Hiroki Harakawa, the lead author of the discovery paper, in a press release. “Prior to this, in the detection of low-mass planets such as super-Earths, near-infrared observations alone were not accurate enough, and verification by high-precision line-of-sight velocity measurements in visible light was necessary. This study shows that IRD-SSP alone is capable of detecting planets, and clearly demonstrates the advantage of IRD-SSP in its ability to search with a high precision even for late-type red dwarfs that are too faint to be observed with visible light.”
In total, more than 5,000 exoplanets have been confirmed so far. Exoplanet hunters say that understanding what makes planets habitable – or not — is of keen interest to those who study astrobiology, which studies how life originated on Earth and where it might exist in the Solar System and beyond.
Astronomers say the new infrared instrument offers a better chance to find more exoplanets candidates around red dwarfs, and more opportunities to investigate the possibility of life on other varied and unusual worlds.
NASA Gives a Detailed Analysis of all the Landing Debris Perseverance Has Found on Mars
NASA Gives a Detailed Analysis of all the Landing Debris Perseverance Has Found on Mars
Arecent blog by Dr. Justin Maki, Imaging Scientist and the Deputy Principal Investigator on the Perseverance rover Mastcam-Z camera, provides a detailed account about the debris the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) system left scattered around the Martian surface while delivering the Perseverance rover to Jezero Crater. This blog highlights how much hardware goes into sending our brave, robotic explorers to the Red Planet while discussing the importance of imaging such debris.
“For example, on Sol 414 (April 19, 2022), the Ingenuity helicopter returned a detailed color image of the discarded parachute and backshell located 1 km to the northwest of the landing site.” Dr. Maki writes. But how important is it to locate and identify debris from past missions on Mars?
Image of Perseverance’s backshell taken by the Ingenuity helicopter on Sol 414 (April 19, 2022). (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Dr. Briony Horgan, Co-Investigator of the Perseverance rover and an Associate Professor of Planetary Science in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University said, “The contamination concerns are pretty minor, but we actually do use hardware on the surface to track dust accumulation!” The parachutes are especially good for this and measuring their brightness over time can help us understand how dust deposition is changing over time due to local weather conditions.”
Dr. Maki continues in his blog, “A few weeks later, Perseverance entered the Hogwallow Flats region and acquired a high-resolution, 360-degree Mastcam-Z panorama. As those images were being downlinked to Earth, a science team member in Europe spotted the bright material (at 2:50 AM Pacific time) in a Sol 467 (June 12, 2022) Mastcam-Z image and immediately suggested that it might be a piece of debris from the Entry, Decent, and Landing (EDL) system. Later that morning it was confirmed by the EDL hardware team at JPL: Perseverance had imaged a piece of multi-layer insulation (MLI), likely from the skycrane, which flew away from Perseverance’s landing site after touchdown, ensuring it would crash safely out of range from the rover.” But with debris being scattered around the Martian surface, can it interfere with Perseverance rover operations?
Image of EDL debris taken by Perseverance’s Left Mastcam-Z camera on Sol 467 (June 13, 2022). (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)
“Mars 2020 includes several design features to guard against this type of debris interfering with rover operations.,” said Steven Lee, who is the Deputy Project Manager for Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity. “The presence of debris on the ground in itself does not pose a risk to Perseverance’s mission. Only two rover components could touch debris on the ground. First, the mobility system is designed to be robust to a wide variety of terrain types and could easily drive right over this debris. Likewise, the sampling system is designed to operate in an environment with dust and pebbles (including dust and pebbles created during abrading or coring). We also occasionally perform a “percuss to clean chuck” operation to shake material out of the corer’s chuck.”
NASA’s Perseverance rover isn’t the first Mars rover to photograph its own debris, as Dr. Maki states in his blog, “The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity rover imaged a heatshield up close on Sol 335 (January 2, 2004) of the surface mission. Those images revealed a debris field that stretched several meters, and included charred heatshield material, metal springs, and thermal blanket material. The Curiosity images also showed a rock (“heatshield rock”) that is believed to be a meteorite – the original version of EDL debris.” Going forward, what specific steps can be taken to reduce this debris on future missions?
Image of Opportunity’s heat shield taken on Sol 335 (January 2, 2004). (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell)
“For the moment, the number of missions that we’ve landed on Mars has been so small that it’s a very minor contributor to the surface,” said Dr. Horgan. “And I like to imagine that one day future Mars inhabitants will preserve these historic spacecraft landing sites and the hardware, perhaps as the first interplanetary parks!”
Researchers Release The Most Convincing UFO Photo In History
One of the most convincing UFO images from the 20th century has been given a high-res make-over, revitalizing discussion around what has been dubbed “the finest image of a UFO ever made public”...
Floating, pulsating Red Orb UFO in Michigan, August 2022 👽
Video shared on Reddit by RareandSacred and filmed in Grand Rapids, Michigan next to Prehistoric Norton Mounds on August 27, 2022.
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Crashed UFO On The Moon Discovered By A Researcher
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Ancient Aliens: New Proof of Alien Life Found in Ice Cave (Season 18)
Ancient Astronaut Theorists conduct an experiment in the Blackcomb Glacier Ice Cave to locate signs of extraterrestrial life, in this clip from Season 18, "Ancient Aliens On Location: Evidence of Alien Life."
Watch all new episodes of Ancient Aliens, Fridays at 9/8c, and next day on The HISTORY Channel website at http://history.com/schedule.
Ancient Aliens: Reptile Sky Gods Descend to Earth (Season 18)
Ancient Astronaut Theorists investigate Nomali statues and their connection to sky stones, in this clip from Season 18, "Ancient Aliens On Location: Mysterious Artifacts."
Watch all new episodes of Ancient Aliens, Fridays at 9/8c, and next day on The HISTORY Channel website at http://history.com/schedule.
Strange UFO lights over oilfield in Kennedy, Texas – August 2022
Strange UFO lights over oilfield in Kennedy, Texas – August 2022
Thins interesting footage was filmed over the oilfield in Kennedy, Texas recently. According to the author of the video the workers have been seeing lots of crazy lights in the sky while working In the oilfield.
Strange UFO lights over oilfield in Kennedy, Texas – August 2022
Strange UFO lights over oilfield in Kennedy, Texas – August 2022
Thins interesting footage was filmed over the oilfield in Kennedy, Texas recently. According to the author of the video the workers have been seeing lots of crazy lights in the sky while working In the oilfield.
August 10 612 BC: Nineveh, the Largest City in the World, Fell
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 Babyloniawhich 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.
(Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin / CC BY-SA 4.0)
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.
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.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
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