Peru: A Dozen UFOs Suspend Flights in Peru's Jorge Chavez Airport

Source: Planeta UFO and Radio Santiago (Chile)
https://www.radiosantiago.cl/archivo/4907
Date: March 3, 2017

Peru: A Dozen UFOs Suspend Flights in Peru's Jorge Chavez Airport

A flotilla of UFOs allegedly caused the suspension of flight operations at the Jorge Chávez Airport in El Callao (Perú). The sighting ocurred during the month of February, and what startled Peruvian ufologists is that the Corporación Peruana de Aeropuertos y Aviacion Comercial (CORPAC, Peruvian Airports and Commercial Aviation Corporation) recorded the incident in an official document.

With regard to the alleged sighting of the UFO flotilla in the Jorge Chavez Internationa Airport's airspace, ufologist Mario Zegarra says CORPAC filed official documents recording the incident, which hindered air oeprations that evening.



According to Zegarra, there are recordings capturing conversations between the control tower and those pilots unable to take off or land in the airport for at least three hours. 

"The radar at Jorge Chavez captured 12 unidentified contacts on its screen, each identified with code 0000 for UFO," said Zegarra.

Another ufologist, Joshue Cornejo, says that a UFO was recorded at 7:38 that evening using night vision equipment. "These objects cannot be seen unaided," Cornejo noted, but can be captured on the infrared band." 

UFO specialist Mario Zegarra will hold a conference on March 11th in Miraflores.

[Translation (c) 2017, S. Corrales (IHU) with thanks to Guillermo Giménez, Planeta UFO]

POSTED BY INEXPLICATA (IHU) AT 4:08 AM

{  http://inexplicata.blogspot.be/ }

Searching the Deep Biosphere for Clues to Extraterrestrial Life

If life can thrive miles underground on Earth, it might be able to thrive in the subsurface on other worlds

By Tullis C. Onstott

Mars, as seen by the Curiosity rover.  Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS Wikimedia

As a kid growing up I learned that all Earth life relied either directly or indirectly upon sunlight and an atmosphere with O₂, textbook stuff. Then in the late 1970’s, biologists discovered Riftia pachyptila, chemosynthetic tube worms, living around black smoker vents at the the bottom of the Pacific Ocean not far from the Galapagos Islands, the birthplace of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.

Life has never been the same since.

In the early 1990’s Bacillus infernus, a bacterium, was discovered 10,000 feet beneath a farmer’s field in Virginia, where it or its ancestors had been living for 200 million years. Since then entire ecosystems have been uncovered residing miles beneath the surface in deep fractures sustained indefinitely by nothing more than the desultory decay of radiogenic uranium, thorium and potassium or the anemic oxidation of iron-bearing minerals.

With all of this life flourishing in what was previously believed to be a sterile dominion, you can’t help but look at the images of the ancient Martian surface and wonder if life also exists beneath its frozen, dessicated surface. If you had openly asked a question like that in the 16^thcentury you would have been burned at the stake, like Giordano Bruno, an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher and the first astrobiologist. More than a hundred years ago, Percival Lowell believed that he could see evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization living on the surface of Mars, but that optical illusion, along with his scientific credibility, was dispelled within fifteen years of his discovery. In 1901 H. G. Wells, a contemporary of Lowell, published The First Men in the Moon, in which he constructed a fantastically sophisticated society of insect-like creatures, Selenites, living beneath the lunar surface. Since then, the concept of extraterrestrial subsurface life has figured frequently in science fiction novels and movies, even episodes of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation. It is certainly true that if you burrow miles into the Moon or Mars, you will reach a temperature at which fresh liquid water, the essential ingredient for life as we know it, can exist.

But can life survive miles beneath a planet’s surface for billions of years even when that surface is inimical to it? To find out, our team went miles beneath the surface of our own planet, into the mines of South Africa where gold is extracted from the 3 billion year old sedimentary and volcanic rock of the Witwatersrand Basin. This basin has not been metamorphosed since a meteor impacted it 2 billion years ago, creating the colossal Vredefort Impact structure. In the fissures and crevices workers intersected during ultra-deep mining we found saline water that was tens to hundreds of millions of years old, full of hydrogen and methane gas generated by radiation and a natural form of Fischer-Tropsch organic synthesis. And in that water we found complex communities of life forms busily mining nutrients and energy from the rock.

The bedrock of the communities were chemolithoautotrophic Bacteria and Archaea that were fixing CO₂ and N₂ to make biomass. Feeding off their metabolic waste were other chemolithotrophs engaged in a syntrophic dance by excreting their own waste products to be recycled by the primary producers. Even more abundant were the viruses that were shuttling snippets of genes to be incorporated into the evolving microbial genomes. The most dramatic discovery was the presence of multicellular nematodes feeding on the bacteria and reproducing asexually. Similar subsurface communities and, in some cases, the same species have been reported in seafloor vents even though this part of South Africa has been covered by ocean water for 2.5 billion years. One of our primary producers was bacterial species found to be chemotactic and apparently migrating hundred of kilometers beneath the surface. We named it Desulforudis audaxviator. Audaxviator is derived from Jules Verne’s book, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and is Latin for “bold traveller.”

The longevity and internal sustainability of subsurface ecosystems on Earth means that if life emerged early on Mars, then there is no reason to believe it would not be present beneath the surface today. Drilling down miles through frozen rock to reach liquid water on Mars to obtain samples of the subsurface biosphere will likely have to await human colonization of that planet. But many other worlds such as Europa, Enceladus, and even Pluto, have liquid water at depth, an in the case of Europa and Enceladus vent this water to space as plumes that could be readable sampled for life. Yet these planetary bodies differ from Mars in that their surfaces were never habitable for life as we know it. For life to exist beneath their icy crusts, the processes leading to the origin of life have to be able to occur in the absence of sunlight.

As we do not have a complete picture of how life originated on the Earth, but rather just a few pieces of the puzzle, we cannot say with certainty if life can originate beneath the surface of a world. The late physicist Tommy Gold hypothesized that life may have originated beneath the surface of the Earth and subsequently rose to colonize the surface as ocean-evaporating meteorite impacts waned and the surface became more hospitable. Today regions of ancient continental crust exist where DNA life forms and their remains have been completely eradicated by geological heating in the past, or “paleopastuerization.” They are now cool and contain pockets of saline water that are habitable, and in some cases have been isolated from the surface for hundreds of millions to billions of years.

If Tommy Gold was right, then these Darwinian “warm little ponds” may be the locus of ongoing abiotic synthesis of building blocks for life, peptides and nucelotides. If there were any place on this planet where life forms exist as a “shadow biosphere” and do not have the signature ribosomal RNA, it would be the deep subsurface of our planet. Such a discovery would have enormous implications for life elsewhere in our solar system. We only have to go hunt for them.

{ https://www.scientificamerican.com/ }

Mars far more likely to have had life than we thought, researchers find after new water discovery

Andrew Griffin 

{ http://www.independent.co.uk/ }

Exclusive! Churchill's 'found' essay on aliens grips world, mistakenly

JAKE ELLION, SPECIAL TO SEATTLEPI.COM

"And there shall in that time be rumours of things going astray, and there will be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia work base, that has an attachment ... " — Monty Python, "Life of Brian."

Winston Churchill doing research for his essay on the possibility of extraterrestrial life titled "Are We Alone in the Universe?" found at the National Churchill Museum at Westminster College? ... perhaps. 

In a world where many are absolutely desperate for the discovery of alien life, especially intelligent alien life — possibly even the takeover of politics by a superior extraterrestrial life form — news that Winston Churchill had mused about aliens in an unpublished essay nearly broke the internet.

• New York Times: Winston Churchill Wrote of Alien Life in a Lost Essay
• Washington Post: In recently unearthed essay, Winston Churchill anticipated space travel and extraterrestrial life
• Space.com: Winston Churchill on Aliens: 1939 Essay Discovered
• Smithsonian: "Are We Alone in the Universe?" Winston Churchill's Lost Extraterrestrial Essay Says No
• The Independent: Winston Churchill's secret essay about existence of aliens revealed
• And there were many many more!

In fact, we got on the bandwagon and sought to explore what Churchill had written about LGMs (aka Little Green Men). Did he mention UFOs? Did he have conspiracies about aliens living here among us ... you know, not immigrants but ALIENS?

So, we hit the streets and pounded on doors ... well, we started searching the internet. And, while our feats of journalism — one phone call and a couple of emails — are astounding and brilliant, we'll cut to the chase. (Lots more details below.)

First, the Churchill essay in question exists in two very similar unpublished forms, both held in university archives, and in one truncated form published in a newspaper in 1942.

Churchill also stated that he saw great opportunity for space exploration. “One day, possibly in the near future, it may be possible to travel to the moon, or even to Venus or Mars,” he wrote 30 years before Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon.

So, while the essay was certainly forgotten by many and the found version contains paragraphs not published, the bulk of the essay was indeed published.

Second, the 11-page essay in question does in fact ponder the questions of whether extraterrestrial life might exist, where it might exist, whether we could ever discover it or communicate with it, and whether or not we would recognize extraterrestrial organisms as life in the first place.

"Does life exist elsewhere in the Universe?—indeed a fascinating question," Churchill writes in the opening of all extant versions of the essay.

Photo: Hans Wild/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Given the vastness of the Universe, Churchill said it is hard to believe that humans on Earth represent something unique.

Okay, then, what the hell happened?

Timothy Riley, Chief Curator in the National Churchill Museum at Westminster College, said he discovered one version of the essay in 2014 while digging through the museum's archives looking for paintings by Churchill for a retrospective.

That version's title page reads: "'Are We Alone in the Universe?' by The Right Honorable Winston S. Churchill." He was understandably excited about it, but put it aside to complete his other work.

Winston Churchill’s essay titled “Are We Alone in the Universe?” found at the National Churchill Museum at Westminster College.

(Photo courtesy of National Churchill Museum at Westminster College)

Riley passed the copy to astrophysicist Mario Livio — lecturer and author of several books, including the upcoming book "Why?: What Makes Us Curious" published by Simon & Schuster. Riley figured this well-regarded astrophysicist could give some scientific perspective on Churchill's musings.

At that time, Riley says, he knew the essay was a slightly-edited version of a 1939 essay that had not been published, but he did not know about the shorter, though substantial, version published in 1942. He was tipped off to the fact of the published version by another Churchill scholar after Livio published his thoughts on Churchill's musings in the Journal Nature on Feb. 15.

Consequently, Livio published his essay — "Winston Churchill's essay on alien life found" — under the impression that it was an unpublished essay ... which it was ... sort of.

After noting that some viruses can be crystallized, making them hard to categorize, he decides to concentrate on “comparatively highly-organized life,” presumably multicellular life.

"Imagine my thrill that I may be the first scientist to examine this essay," Livio wrote.

His exploration of the essay was primarily about Churchill's scientific bent, reliance on scientific advisors in government and his pretty modern exploration of the prospect of extraterrestrial life.

Churchill had, Livio said, identified early on many of the prospects for life in the universe that would continue to be the focus of attention today.

"Almost 80 years later, the question that obsessed Churchill is one of the hottest topics of scientific research. Searches for signs of subsurface life on Mars are ongoing. Simulations of Venus's climate hint that it may once have been habitable. Astronomers believe that, in a few decades, we will discover some biological signatures of present or past life in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets, or at least be able to constrain its rarity," he wrote.

All living things of the type we know require water,” he wrote. Other life-sustaining liquids cannot be ruled out, he stated, but “nothing in our present knowledge entitles us to make such an assumption.”

The internet frenzy strikes again

The mass-media coverage of the story, meanwhile, very quickly hinged on the idea that this was a "lost" or "discovered" Churchill essay. Harried reporters the world over, in a state of near hysteria to keep up, spread the story like, well, an internet virus.

Riley explains in a email exchange with us: "On February 16, after the Dr. Livio's story in Nature was published, I learned from Christopher Bell, a history professor at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, about the existence of the published version of 'Are there Men on the Moon?'"

Check out Bell's blog post on the topic and read the 1942 version on the Winston Churchill Project at Hillsdale College website.

Riley added in his email:

The essay entitled "Are We Alone in the Universe?" in the National Churchill Museum archive is, with minor typographical differences and the change in title, identical to "Are We Alone in Space?" first drafted in 1939. The essay ("Space?") is in the Churchill Archive Centre in Cambridge (CHAR 8/644). It went unpublished in 1939, though notes in the Cambridge Archive seem to indicate that News of the World was the newspaper chosen to publish the essay at that time.

The essay, "Are There Men on the Moon?" was published in the Sunday Dispatch on March 8, 1942. It was later included in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill (1975).

While it is true that much of "Are There Men on the Moon?" contains the same content as the earlier "Are We Alone in Space?" and the later "Are We Alone in the Universe?" there are important differences.

Here are a few key sentences from that unpublished essay's first pages:

• One is apt to think that the most important characteristics of a living entity are that it can breed and multiply.
• There are certain curious substances called 'viruses'... The particles of which they are presumably composed are too small to be seen under the microscope, but if you keep a small amount of the virus in the proper conditions for a few days, it is found to increase in quantity.
• No one would believe that a lump of sugar or salt could be alive. Well, here we have a crystal ... we know will increase and multiply given the right environment. Is it alive or not?

Photo: Keystone, Getty Images

Churchill stated that a large fraction of extrasolar planets “will be the right size to keep on their surface water and possibly an atmosphere of some sort” and some will be “at the proper distance from their parent sun to maintain a suitable temperature”

Okay, but, did he think ETs exist?

Churchill's conclusion about the existence of alien life in all versions of the essay is that there must be. (You can find more of what he wrote on the topic in the slideshow above.)

According the reprint of the 1942 version published by the Winston Churchill Project in response to all the hubbub, Churchill's essay ends:

All we can say is that with hundreds of thousands of nebulae, each containing thousands of millions of suns, the odds are enormous that there must be immense numbers which possess planets whose circumstances would not render life impossible. If we are sufficiently self-centred and choose to deny that any of these support life, no one can prove we are wrong. But I, for one, am not so immensely impressed by the success we are making of our civilization here that I am prepared to think we are the only spot in this immense universe which contains living, thinking creatures, or that we are the highest type of mental and physical development which has ever appeared in the vast compass of space and time.

Indeed.

Photo: Galerie Bilderwelt, Getty Images

He concludes that Mars and Venus are the only places in the Solar System besides Earth that could sustain life.

Note: We messaged Livio on Facebook and Twitter (the contact info he gave on his personal website), but have not yet heard back. Here's what he told professor and author Chris Bell in a Facebook exchange about the history of the essay:

As I'm sure you understand, all I did was to compare Churchill's points to current scientific thinking. All the comments on the history of the piece have been based on the best knowledge that Tim had on the piece. It's fascinating to find out that the history is even richer.

It was for us, that's for sure.

About Churchill's intellect and scientific explorations, Riley said, "The longer you study Winston Churchill, the harder it is to be surprised, because of the breadth of his intellectual curiosity. And, we know he valued science and saw the power of science to do good, but he also warned repeatedly of the nuclear threat and that science could be devastating."

Photo: Keystone, Getty Images

He defines the most important characteristic of life as the ability to “breed and multiply.”

Jake Ellison can be reached at jakeellisonjournalism@gmail.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook. If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

{http://www.seattlepi.com/ }

Volcanoes Could Make Some Alien Planets Warm Enough for Life

Hydrogen-spewing volcanoes could boost the temperatures of seemingly frigid alien planets enough to maintain liquid water on their surfaces, making the worlds potentially habitable to life as we know it, a new study suggests.

If the newfound TRAPPIST-1h — the most distant of a set of seven Earth-size worlds that orbit a dwarf star just 39 light-years from Earth — boasted such volcanoes, it could be warm enough to hold onto water, study team members said.

In the past, scientists determined that the "habitable zone" — the range of distances from a star that can support liquid water on a world's surface — expands when planets have hydrogen in their atmospheres. However, because hydrogen is such a light gas, it quickly escapes to space, leaving such planets devoid of it within a few tens of millions of years. [5 Amazing Facts About the TRAPPIST-1 System (Video)]

But active volcanoes could change that, according to the new study.

"Our volcanic-hydrogen habitable zone is different, because so long as volcanism is intense enough, it can outpace the rate at which hydrogen escapes into space," lead author Ramses Ramirez, a planetary scientist at Cornell University in New York, told Space.com by email. 

Ramirez and fellow planetary scientist Lisa Kaltenegger, also at Cornell, examined how active hydrogen-rich volcanos could continue to resupply a planet with a hydrogen atmosphere. They found the activity could increase the size of the habitable zone by as much as 60 percent, dramatically extending the region where habitable planets might lie.

According to Ramirez, the increased volcanism "allows potentially habitable conditions for much longer geologic timescales."

Stellar temperature versus distance from the star compared to Earth for the classic habitable zone (shaded blue) and the volcanic habitable zone extension (shaded red).

Credit: R. Ramirez, Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell University

Improving the odds

The hunt for signs of life on worlds beyond the solar system tends to focus on the habitable zone, because water is crucial to life as we know it. (While other evolutionary paths are possible, scientists prefer to focus on the one known to have succeeded at least once.) 

While studying possibilities for early Mars, Ramirez and Kaltenegger realized that massive outgassing of hydrogen early in the life of the Red Planet could have made for a warmer, wetter world. 

"I liked the idea enough that I decided to extend it to the habitable zone," Ramirez said.

The process works well for small planets like Mars, where internal processes would keep the mantle hydrogen-rich. When volcanoes spew lava from the mantle, they can release hydrogen and hydrogen-rich gases into the atmosphere. A hydrogen-rich atmosphere could bump out the outer edge of the habitable zone by as much as 60 percent, giving more worlds the opportunity to hold onto their life-giving water, Ramirez and Kaltenegger said.

That doesn’t mean larger worlds are out of luck. While massive super-Earths are more likely to release hydrogen-poor gases into the air, they could still have enough volcanoes spewing material to outpace the escape of hydrogen into space. Such large worlds also have gravity on their side and are more likely to boast magnetic fields, both of which slow down hydrogen's escape into space.

The exact properties of these volcanoes would depend on their home planet. A planet's mass (which affects how strongly gravity tugs at the lava) and whether it has plate tectonics play key roles in building its volcanoes. On Earth, collision and disruption of the crust through tectonics mix up the material that becomes the lava, creating a variety of chemical compositions. On Mars, where gravity is low and the crust is a single large plate, Ramirez said, volcanic material is less evolved, and the lava flows pile up to create huge volcanoes, including the largest in the solar system, Olympus Mons. [Supervolcanoes Found On Mars (Video)]

Dense hydrogen atmospheres on alien worlds could still bear a strong similarity to Earth's. That could have implications for our young planet, Ramirez said.

"One idea suggested that hydrogen gas concentrations may have been high on the early Earth," he said. (Today, hydrogen is but a trace component of Earth's atmosphere, which is 78 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen.) "If that hypothesis is true, early Earth may have resembled these hydrogen-rich exoplanets."

The research was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The hunt for life

Last week, scientists announced the discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system, a series of seven rocky worlds, each about the same size as Earth, around a dwarf star. At least three of the worlds appear to fall within the habitable zone, assuming they have Earth-like atmospheres. 

TRAPPIST-1h, the most distant of the seven worlds, seems to be out in the cold. But if the small planet has volcanoes venting hydrogen gas, it could just make the cut for habitability, study team members said.

According to Ramirez, TRAPPIST-1h lies just outside the new volcanic hydrogen habitable zone. 

"But it is really close," he said. If volcanoes on the planet released a bit more hydrogen than the team’s models call for, it could hold onto liquid water, he added.

That could mean good news in the hunt for life. Because the TRAPPIST-1 system lies only 39 light-years from Earth, it will make a good target for studying the atmospheres of planets with observatories like NASA's $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in late 2018. 

Exoplanet atmospheres are beginning to release their secrets. When a world passes between Earth and its star, the planet's atmosphere absorbs some of the light, allowing scientists to study the atmosphere's composition. 

Even if "biosignature" gases were found in a planet’s atmosphere, it could still be a challenge to determine if they were produced by living organisms or through other processes, Ramirez said. Still, just locating the signatures would be easier with volcanically active worlds, since hydrogen "puffs up" the atmosphere around a planet, creating a larger atmospheric signal that would be easier to study.

"Biosignatures would be easier to detect in these hydrogen-rich atmospheres," Ramirez said.

Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd or Google+. Follow us at @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS

• TRAPPIST-1 is ‘Most Incredible Star System to Date’ - 5 Amazing Facts | Video
• TRAPPIST-1 System Has 7 Earth-Sized Exoplanets, 3 In Habitable Zone | Video
• 9 New Habitable Zone Planets! Huge Haul of Worlds Found By Space Telescope | Video
• 10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life

{ http://www.space.com/ }

Social media goes into meltdown after someone claims the egg in a pack of Haribo Starmix is actually a UFO (so is he right?) 

• Someone has claimed that the iconic egg in the pick and mix is actually a UFO
• People took to social media in their droves to debate the news
• Some people said it was a lie whilst others claimed it was, in fact, a UFO 

By Bianca London for MailOnline

From the red hearts to the tangy cola bottles, Haribo's Starmix has long been regarded as one of the world's favourite sweet treats - the tagline is 'kids and grown-ups love it so', after all.

But one social media user has thrown everyone off by claiming that the iconic egg in the pick 'n mix is actually a UFO.

Scottish Patter shared a snap of a pack of Haribo and wrote: 'Wait guys, Haribo starmix ?? It's not an egg, it's a UFO', accompanied by some shocked emojis.

Social media has gone into meltdown after someone claimed the Haribo egg in the Starmix pack is actually a UFO

The same image has been doing the rounds on Instagram and Twitter, where shocked users fiercely debated the topic.

The picture amassed thousands of comments from users, with many claiming that there was no way the egg could be mistaken for a UFO.

The top comment read: 'Is everyone off their nut, aye. It's called Starmix, but wit does a heart, a ring, a cola bottle or a fkn bear have to do with space. It's an egg fs [sic].

Another woman agreed, adding: 'The adverts with the kids call it the eggy one so I'm not accepting this', whilst another user said: 'This is actually so untrue because they say and I quote "who's eaten all the fried eggs?" in the adverts.'

The picture amassed thousands of comments from users, with many claiming that there was no way the egg could be mistaken for a UFO

Others did, however, claim that the sweet was in fact a UFO.  One man wrote: 'They are eggs but they represent UFO's as do the cola bottles they are the rockets, the "bears" are astronauts, it's just about making it cute for kids.'

When contacted by MailOnline, a spokesperson for Haribo confirmed the truth, saying that the sweet is definitely an egg

Another woman agreed with him, explaining: 'Egg = UFO, Cola bottles = spaceship, ring = saturns rings, bear = astronaut in his outfit, heart = ok don't know this one.'

When contacted by MailOnline, a spokesperson for Haribo confirmed the truth, explaining: 'This seems to have people a little fry-ed, but we can confirm that even though they look like flying saucers, Haribo Starmix does in fact contain tasty eggs, as well as our other popular and well-known sweet pieces that have been brought together in one bag.'

Others claimed that the sweet was definitely a UFO. One man wrote: 'They are eggs but they represent UFO's as do the cola bottles they are the rockets, the 'bears' are astronauts, it's just about making it cute for kids' and many people backed him up, whilst others joked about how crushed they were by the news

{ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

Gevonden schedels in China zijn mogelijk van een nog onbekende of mysterieuze mensensoort

Archiefbeeld. FOTO: REUTERS

De gevonden schedels in China lijken nu echter een kruising van mens en Neanderthaler. “Het is een zeer belangrijke ontdekking”, aldus Katerina Harvati, expert op het vlak aan de Universiteit van Tübingen. “Zeker omdat alle menselijke fossielen die tot nu toe gevonden werden in Oost-Azië zeer partieel en daarom ook moeilijk te dateren waren.”

Het waren graafmachines die de schedels tussen 2007 en 2014 bovenhaalden in Lingjing, in de provincie Henan. Het betreft gedeeltelijke schedels, gevonden in een gebied dat 105.000 tot 125.000 jaar geleden bevolkt zou geweest zijn. Het zou gaan om schedels van goede jagers, die geoefend waren in het maken van stenen wapens. Nabij de vindplaats werden ook botten van paarden, vee, een dinosaurus en een gigantisch hert gevonden.

Nieuwe mensensoort?

De schedels werden sindsdien onderzocht door wetenschappers van de Chinese Academy of Sciences in de Washington University in St. Louis. Deze week publiceerden ze hun bevindingen in het wetenschappelijk tijdschrift Science. De wenkbrauwbogen en botmassa waren kleiner dan normaal bij neanderthalers en ook de vorm van de schedels leek meer op die van de eerste moderne mensen. Dit terwijl de oorkanalen en de achterkant van de schedels duidelijk gelinkt konden worden aan neanderthalers.

“Dit kan wel eens de ontdekking van een nieuwe mensensoort betekenen”, aldus Xiujie Wu, auteur van het artikel. “Eentje die tot nu toe onbekend was en in Oost-Azië leefde tot zo’n 100.000 jaar geleden.”

Andere experten denken dan weer dat het zou kunnen gaan om schedels van de ‘denisovamens’, een mysterieuze mensensoort waarvan tot nu toe enkel DNA van een vinger en een tand onderzocht werden. Die twee fossielen werden gevonden in een Siberische grot en men gaat ervan uit dat de denisovamens leefde tussen 100.000 en 50.000 jaar geleden.

Deze mensensoort deelde genetisch materiaal met zowel de moderne mens als Neanderthalers. Deze optie werd echter niet opgenomen in de studie omdat er geen genetisch materiaal gerecupereerd kon worden van de schedels.

{ http://www.nieuwsblad.be/ }

The Most Interesting Science News Articles of the Week

Each week we uncover the most interesting and informative articles from around the world, here are 10 of the coolest stories in science this week.

Looking for a light source

MAMMOTH-1, an enormous Lyman-alpha nebula (ELAN) found in a protocluster 10 billion light-years away. The colors and contours indicate surface brightness, and the red arrows show its estimated size.

Credit: Cai et al./Astrophysical Journal

A nebula is an interstellar cloud of gases and dust; an ELAN is a special kind of nebula, so named because it emits Lyman-alpha radiation — a particular wavelength of light emitted when the electron in a hydrogen atom drops down to its lowest energy level. The discovery of a new and rarely seen nebula 10 billion light-years away has created a cosmic mystery: What is lighting up this dusty cloud of gases? [Read more about the nebula.]

Strange sex-life

Myolaimus ibericus seen under a scanning electron microscope. Species of the genus Myolaimus are rare, and this worm is unusual in that it pumps sperm into the female genitalia without the penis-like spicules that are common in nematodes.

Credit: Joaquín Abolafia

A new worm discovered on the Iberian Peninsula is missing something: a penis.

The tiny nematode, found in a compost pile, mates without penetration. Instead, it pumps a capsule full of sperm out of an opening in its body and into a funnel-like structure on the female's vulva. From there, the sperm enter the female's reproductive tract to fertilize her eggs. [Read more about odd worm.]

To the moon

SpaceX will launch two paying passengers on a private flight around the moon in late 2018, the company's founder Elon Musk said Monday, Feb. 27, 2017. The mission would launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy seen here in this artist's illustration and take about five days to loop around the moon and return to Earth.

Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX will fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon in 2018, the company's founder Elon Musk announced Monday (Feb. 27).

The private spaceflight company will use its Falcon Heavy rocket to send the two paying passengers into space aboard one of the company's Dragon spacecraft. The two private citizens, who have not yet been named, approached SpaceX about taking a trip around the moon, and have "already paid a significant deposit" for the cost of the mission, according to a statement from the company. [Read more about trip.]

Red-hot center

The upper layer of Earth's mantle, labeled here as the asthenosphere, is hotter than previously thought, a new study finds.

Credit: vectortatu/Shutterstock

How hot are Earth's scorching insides? A sweltering 2,570 degrees Fahrenheit (1,410 degrees Celsius), a new study finds.

The discovery reveals that the mantle under Earth's oceans — the area just below the crust that extends down to the planet's inner liquid core — is almost 110 degrees F (60 degrees C) hotter than scientists previously thought, the researchers said. [Read more about center of the Earth.]

Childlessness condemned

A person's decision to not have children can spark "moral outrage" in others, even total strangers, a new study finds.

The study comes as more adults in the U.S. are deciding to delay having children, or to forgo having children entirely. [Read more about the odd reaction.]

In life and death

The wrapped body of Louise de Quengo, a church patron buried at the Jacobin convent in the city of Rennes in 1656. Her body was interred with her husband's preserved heart in a lead urn on top of her coffin.

Credit: © 2016 Colleter et al.

Forget roses and chocolates. Modern-day romantic gestures pale in comparison to what one Renaissance couple did after death: The wife went to her final rest with her husband's heart on her coffin. The discoveries raise questions about medieval European funerary rites, researchers from the University of Toulouse in France wrote in the study, published in December in the journal PLOS ONE. [Read more about the eternal love.]

Antarctic heat

Antartica is seeing record-breaking, spring-like temperatures.

Credit: Christopher Wood/Shutterstock

Temperatures on the Antarctic continent reached a record-breaking high of 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit (17.5 degrees Celsius) in 2015, according to a new report of balmy records for the bottom of the world.

And things got even toastier back on Jan. 30, 1982, when the thermometer peaked at 67.6 degrees F (19.8 degrees C) at Signy Research Station on Antarctica's Signy Island, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a division of the United Nations. [Read more about the record.]

Ancient bones

Scientists recently found evidence of ancient lifeforms in rocks in Canada. Within these fossils were tiny tubes of a mineral called hematite, a form of iron. The researchers believe these tubes are relics of an ancient form of microbial life that lived near hydrothermal vents.

Credit: Matthew Dodd

Ancient traces of microbial life that are between 3.77 billion and 4.29 billion years old might have been unearthed in a rocky outcropping in Canada, a new study suggests. However, some scientists are casting doubt on what the findings truly mean.

If the new microfossils truly are evidence of primordial life that once sprang up in ancient hydrothermal vents, it suggests that life began on Earth soon after the planet coalesced, the study authors said. [Read more about the fossils.]

Hunting fortune

Found in a field near the town of Leek in the United Kingdom, the gold jewelry dates back sometime between 400 B.C. and 250 B.C. and could be the oldest example of gold work discovered in Britain.

Credit: copyright Staffordshire City Council

Two amateurs using metal detectors have discovered four gold torques from more than 2,000 years ago in a field near the town of Leek in central England.

The jewelry, which would have been worn as a necklace or bracelet, "dates to around 400 to 250 B.C., and is probably the earliest Iron Age goldwork ever discovered in Britain," Julia Farley, curator of British and European Iron Age collections at the British Museum in London, said in a statement.  [Read more about the link between the treasure.]

Kinky arachnids

Female spiders have paired reproductive organs, so it's possible for two males to mate with a single female at one time.

Credit: Matthew Persons

One autumn night while searching for spiders in his backyard, Matthew Persons came across something unexpected: a wolf spider ménage à trois.

The findings are the first cases on record of one female and two male wolf spiders (Rabidosa punctulata) in a three-way lovefest, a feat that's possible because the females have paired reproductive organs. But this ménage à trois wasn't purely for pleasure. [Read more about the spiders.]

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Roswell UFO ‘wasn’t aliens – it was a top-secret spacecraft built by Nazi scientists’

Rob Waugh for Metro.co.uk

Conspiracy fans have long believed that the American military found a crashed alien spacecraft in Roswell in 1947.

But a new documentary claims the strange craft could have had more earthly origins?

A documentary ‘UFOS in the Third Reich’ claimed that the incident actually happened during testing of a copper-coloured craft called ‘The Bell’.

Nigel Watson, author of UFOs: The Nazi Connection, said, ‘With these stories spread all over the Internet, and fictional films like ‘Iron Sky’ that depicts a Nazi moon base and advanced spaceships, the Nazi connection gets stronger every day despite the lonely voices of the sceptics.

‘Supporters of the idea that the flying saucers are of Nazi origin claim that they established an underground base at New Swabia, Antarctica after World War II to continue a secret world war to continue their ideological plans.

‘Ernest Zundal (under the pseudonym Mattern-Friedrich or Christof Friedrich) in his book UFOs, ‘Nazi Secret Weapon’ (Samisdat, 1975) even stated that Hitler faked his own death and escaped there to continue the war in secret. With or without Hitler, they continued to develop flying saucers and they even found an entrance to the hollow Earth. Zundal was rather cavalier about these claims, mainly because he used the interest in UFOs as a hook to put forward his neo-Nazi ideas and beliefs.’

‘From here it has been suggested that this alliance has worked with the CIA and the US ‘military-industrial complex’ to create vast underground bases at Dulce (New Mexico); Area 51 (Nevada); Camp Hero (Long Island); and Denver International Airport. Similar bases are reputed to exist in Australia and Europe.’

‘This all comes from rumours about secret Nazi projects that were used to explain the waves of UFO sightings of UFOs throughout Europe in the 1950s, and provided as an alternative to the extraterrestrial invader explanation. This context, combined with the fact that no flying saucer craft was ever successfully produced by the Nazis,indicates this is a myth that has grown over the years.’

{http://metro.co.uk/news/ }

New Image Shows Dazzling Edge of a Massive Spiral Galaxy

Cassie Kelly

When observing galaxies far, far away from Earth, it’s all about perspective. Scientists may see spiral galaxies from a face-on point-of-view and gaze closely at magnificent spiraling arms and a deep, luminous core — but it’s only two-dimensional. An angled view might show the three-dimensional shape a little better, but to really understand what’s in a galaxy, it takes seeing it from the edge.

Unfortunately, we rarely have multiple views of galaxies. Even with all of our spacecrafts drifting through the universe, we still have such a small field to work with. It’s like trying to see the other side of a bagel in China while standing in New York. You’d have to walk for ages to get to the other side of it.

So, it’s always exciting to get new images to further understand the various shapes and sizes of neighboring galaxies and ultimately, to better understand our own Milky Way. In this newly released image from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, we can see spiral galaxy NGC 1055 — about 55 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus, or Sea Monster, and is believed to be 15 percent larger than the Milky Way — in all of its edgy glory.

In this edge-on view of NGC 1055, scientists are able to see what a galaxy is really made of. 

With this kind of view, scientists can see where new stars form relative to old ones, measure the lengths of the entire disc and its core, and even catch weird anomalies. In NGC 1055, there is some strange “warping,” which is evident on the upper right side where the dark galactic dust seems to be getting peeled off the galaxy like a Band-Aid. Upon closer inspection, the whole thing seems to be twisting at odd angles. Scientists believe this is because of an interaction with a nearby galaxy, in which gravity is pulling on the structure.

WHAT'S NEXT

• 

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Nevertheless, NGC 1055 seems to be moseying through the universe quite beautifully.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

Intruders: An Historical Perspective of Alien Abduction

For a more in-depth version of this article please read The Alien Enigma by JP Robinson.

Alien abduction stories as we understand them today only vary from historical accounts of similar experiences because of the modern concept of alien visitation. UFOs have been described in various guises throughout history along with spacemen, people from the heavens or stars, often called gods, angels or spirits. But accounts of star people coming down and taking humans from their homes and performing experiments on them, is not a commonly reported theme in the annals of recorded history. However, there are parallels to the many events described during alien abductions which exist within folklore, religion and anthropology.

Correlations between the abduction experience and shamanic experiences (including the implantation of foreign objects into the body and surgery-like procedures) or even stories of contact with fairies, suggest that modern accounts of alien abduction should be considered as part of a greater history of strange encounters.

As author Dr. Gregory L. Little wrote “there is a process that has been ongoing - probably for all of humanity's history - that manifests itself through the appearance of archetypal creatures and beings. John Keel was one of the first to recognise this. Others, including Vallee, Clark, and many British ufologists have long pointed out the resemblance between modern UFO reports and the ancient traditions. It doesn't really matter what we call the process underlying UFOs, abductions, and all of the related phenomena, but it is important to see that they all tie together.”

A 1960s report published by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research called UFOs and Related Subjects: An Annotated Bibliography, revealed the following; “Many of the UFO reports now being published in the popular press recount alleged incidents that are strikingly similar to demonic possession and psychic phenomena which has long been known to theologians and parapsychologists.”

Even astronomer Carl Sagan theorised that tales of contact with demons which are common throughout history share remarkable similarities with the alien abduction experience. He wrote “...most of the central elements of the alien abduction account are present, including sexually obsessive non-humans who live in the sky, walk through walls, communicate telepathically, and perform breeding experiments on the human species.”

In the past it was said that demons could assume any physical form in order to seduce their victims more successfully. Similarities with modern abduction stories include the fact that most victims of the demonic figures were taken unwillingly from their bedrooms at night and many of them described the presence of several different types of demon at the time of their abduction, some of whom simply stood by and watched.

Some alien abductees who have experienced sexual encounters with their abductors have described the sexual organ of the intruder as being cold as ice – in particular the insect-like creatures. The writer Vignate chronicled the trials of Artois in 1468, in which he wrote of Satan forcing sex on a victim; for the first time Satan’s sexual organ was described as being ice-cold. St. Augustine believed that people were actually being abducted by demons and forced to engage in sexual acts with them; “(Demons) have often injured women, desiring and acting carnally with them.”

 In the past, demons or goblins which were often referred to as an incubus (seeks sexual intercourse with women) or a succubus (seeks males) were not considered as a figment of people’s imagination, rather they were very much accepted as real entities. As Martin Del Rio wrote in his 1599 book Disqusitionum Magicarum, “...to disagree [with their existence] is only obstinacy and foolhardiness; for it is the universal opinion of the fathers, theologians, and writers on philosophy, the truth of which is generally acknowledges by all ages and peoples.” Ten years earlier in 1589, Peter Binsfield wrote “[the incubus] is an indisputable truth which is not only proved certain by experience, but also confirmed by history.”

The concept of crossbreeding and genetic manipulation, which many researchers have suggested is the main purpose behind the modern abduction phenomenon, had already reared its ugly head in centuries gone by. According to ancient texts, the act of collecting sperm from abducted males and impregnating female victims with the semen taken was precisely what an incubus or succubus would do in order to create hybrid offspring. The movie Rosemary’s Baby dealt with this exact scenario, as a demon impregnated Rosemary with the seed which would later be born as the spawn of Satan.

Medieval writing from this period mentions such demonic acts: “Devils do indeed collect human semen...therefore devils can transfer the semen which they have collected and inject it into the bodies of others” and “Devils in the form of women yield to males and receive their semen; by cunning skill, the demons preserve its potency, and afterwards,...they become incubi and pour it into female repositories.”

‘The Devil’s Mark’ (also referred to as ‘fairy bruising’ or ‘the witch’s teat’) features in medieval reports and describes the physical mark left upon the devil’s victims for identification. These permanent scars were believed to have been caused by the demon’s claws scratching the flesh or by the red hot kiss of the devil ‘licking’ the victim. The mark of the Devil “is imprinted on the most secret parts of the body”. Parallels can be drawn with the scars left following an alleged alien abduction, as in both instances the marks have appeared the next day after a nocturnal encounter with an intruder.

The marks left on alien abductees in modern accounts resemble those described in the past as the ‘Devil’s Mark’, “cuts or scoops on the back of the legs, arms, neck, purplish circular spots around the abdomen and genitals, and in patterns consistent with those from medieval times ascribed to witches, incubi and fairies.”

Ancient examples of ‘fairy abductions’ also share striking similarities with modern tales of alien interference. As explained in An Encyclopaedia of Fairies (Briggs, 1976), those who were taken by the fairies were almost always given a special drink described as a thick liquid previous to any sexual encounter. The victims (most commonly women) were then paralysed before they were carried (levitated or flown) away into “fairyland” which is always located nearby although it cannot be perceived under ‘normal’ conditions. The paralysis plays a central role in fairy lore as without it the abducted humans cannot enter fairyland. The word “stroke” which we associate with conditions of paralysis originated from the ancient terms “fairy-stroke” and “elf-stroke”.

Another interesting connection with fairies are the tales of will-o-the-wisps, which under modern guises could be called ‘orbs’. It was believed that fairies travelled in these circular globes of light before or after abductions took place; these days any witnesses to such phenomena would most likely refer to a moving ball of light as a UFO.

It could just be possible that whatever is being described nowadays as extraterrestrial encounters of some sort could well have been depicted in different ways throughout the ages, depending on cultural understandings of what could be responsible for such unusual activity. Just as we today may consider the concept of fairies and demons to belong in the realms of religious superstition and folklore, future humans may well look back on our explanations of alien visitors with similar derision.

{ http://www.jp-robinson.com/ }

Does Alien Life Exist?| 5 Unexplained UFO Sightings & Potential Extraterrestrial Encounters...

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

Half Mile Alien Hovers Above Shopping Mall In Zimbabwe, March 2017, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: March 2017

Location of sighting: Mukubu Mall, Zimbabwe 

 

Imagine a giant figure floating above you. This figure appears to be about half a mile tall with a long slender dark body. This is a very tall alien. The being is so tall they are afraid to walk for fear of hurting someone, so instead, they float above, watching the people below and their reactions. Size in this universe seems to have no limits. 

Scott C. Waring

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

V Shaped UFO Decloaks In Front Of Eyewitness In Houston, Texas, TV News Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: March 2017
Location of sighting: Houston, Texas, USA
News source: 

http://abc13.com/science/unsolved-ufo-case-bewilders-houston-investigator/1778769/

I like how seriously the TV News presents this case. Also the MUFON investigator handled it very well. UFO can materialise out of thin air...when they decloak in front of people. Its just technology, not magic. However, debunking a UFO sighting is much harder than everyone assumes. You actually need evidence, not words, to debunk a sighting. Without the evidence, the word debunk...is just a bluff in an effort to create fake news and profits to those news networks who need the money. 
Scott 

News states:
HOUSTON (KTRK) - The Mutual UFO Network in Houston reports around 80 speculated UFO sightings a year. That is excluding the ones that are seen but rather not revealed. One top UFO master, Fletcher Gray, clarifies why so a hefty portion of the sightings aren't UFOs. However, he likewise says there is one case that regardless he can't make sense of. 

Simply over the Katy territory an orange light is spotted, seen coasting around. Down beneath, tourists are persuaded it's a UFO. Dim backpedaled to Katy with Eyewitness News to research. "It's glinting as it travels during that time sky," Gray says.

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

Three UFOs Over Small Town In Colombia On Feb 20, 2017, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: February 20, 2017
Location of sighting: Municipio De Garzon Huila, Colombia

The eyewitness said he saw the three UFOs over the area. He first noticed them in the afternoon and they stayed in the area until sunset that night. He said they moved around and once zoomed together in a group, then shoot off far away from one another. In the video below, you can see a guy on a motorcycle also stopping in the road to look at the UFOs above. 
Scott C. Waring

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

UFO recorded in the sky above Garzón in Colombia 20-Feb-2017

Here’s one new footage of a bright ring-shaped object hovering in the sky above Garzón in Colombia. This was filmed on 20th February 2017.

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

Couple Runs Home and Locks Door After Seeing A UFO Above A Famous Beach In Cornwall

A couple left mesmerized after spotting a UFO hovering over them in the sky while on a night stroll along Portreath Beach in Cornwall.

Just a few weeks ago, two women claimed to have seen a huge UFO in Penzance that left them shocked and in awe.

Sharing their sighting in Portreath, a woman known only as Miss Couzens said they were walking along the beach when things started to get eerie. She added that they were watching the ocean when noticed that they could not hear it. She described the environment before their sighting as peaceful.

They were on the bench by the café sitting down. Then they noticed everything went silent as soon as they looked at the ocean. They started to feel eerie, and they felt like they were in a different time zone.

They looked up and saw a UFO they described as massive black boomerang object, which made them sitting frozen and staring this unknown aerial thing. As they left mesmerized by the UFO, they heard a humming sound and the UFO just disappeared.

The couple stated their sighting took place on Monday, February 20.

After their UFO sighting, Miss Couzens said that they ran from the beach, went home, and locked their doors.

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

Massive UFO About The Size of Jupiter Crashes Into The Sun

Some conspiracy theorists went into a frenzy after discovering images from Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, which is jointly operated by European Space Agency and National Aeronautics and Space Administration, showing an apparent UFO of about the size of Jupiter crashed into the sun.

The UFO is being described as made up of a transparent group of rings. Many believe the spacecraft collided by accident, but others suggest the extraterrestrial UFO was using the sun to refuel.
The video uploaded by Paranormal Crucible revealed that the object is about the size of the Jupiter.

After the massive object allegedly crashed into the sun, it generated a bright flash. Scientists have yet to offer an explanation for this bizarre event.

It’s not the first time conspiracy theorists discovered the so-called alien spacecraft flying near the sun’s surface. Since last year, a lot of images circulated online, which conspiracy theorists suggested showed extraterrestrial spaceships gathering near the sun and sucking solar power.

The images seem to show a white spot that is joined to the surface of the sun with a connected line.

YouTuber StreetCap1 also uploaded the video of the alleged massive UFO feeding off the solar energy.

Some UFO hunters who viewed the video think the UFO is glowing white, but it appears yellow because of the sun’s plasma. They suggest the craft is made from an unknown material that is resistant from the surface of the sun.

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