Het Wow!-signaal: een mysterie dat al veertig jaar standhoudt

Caroline Kraaijvanger

Het is bijna 40 jaar geleden dat het sterke radiosignaal gedetecteerd werd. En nog altijd is het in nevelen gehuld.

Het is 15 augustus 1977. Met behulp van het Ohio State University Radio Observatory speuren astronomen de hemel af op zoek naar radiosignalen afkomstig van buitenaards leven. Astronoom Jerry Ehman buigt zich over de gegevens die de radiotelescoop in de afgelopen dagen verzameld heeft, wanneer zijn oog valt op een sterk, smalbandig radiosignaal. Het intrigeert hem meteen. Hij omcirkelt het signaal en schrijft er in de kantlijn in zijn enthousiasme ook nog eens het veelzeggende ‘Wow!’ bij. Het Wow!-signaal was geboren.

Hier zie je de radiotelescoop die het Wow!-signaal in 1977 detecteerde. De telescoop – bijgenaamd Big Ear – is uitgerust met twee ‘oren’. Normaliter werd een radiosignaal eerst door het ene oor opgevangen en zo’n 70 seconden later door het andere. Maar het Wow!-signaal vormt hierop een uitzondering. Dat werd alleen door het eerste oor opgevangen. Dat wijst erop dat het radiosignaal vrij abrupt werd afgebroken.

Onverklaarbaar
Inmiddels zijn we veertig jaar verder en is het Wow!-signaal nog steeds zo af en toe het gesprek van de dag. Astronoom Ignas Snellen, verbonden aan de Universiteit Leiden, denkt wel te weten hoe dat komt. “Het is het enige signaal waarvan SETI (het onderzoeksinstituut dat met radiotelescopen zoekt naar signalen van intelligente buitenaardse wezens, red.) beweert dat niet te verklaren is waar het vandaan komt. Als je kijkt naar alle signalen die SETI in de afgelopen vier of vijf decennia heeft opgepikt, is dit eigenlijk het enige signaal dat we niet goed begrijpen.” Volgens astronoom Seth Shostak, verbonden aan het Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (kortweg SETI-instituut) zijn er de afgelopen decennia wel meer van dit soort eenmalig waargenomen, mysterieuze radiosignalen opgevangen, maar springt het wow!-signaal er vooral uit vanwege die opmerking in de kantlijn, waar het uiteindelijk naar vernoemd is. “Het wow!-signaal is beroemd, omdat het zo’n bijdehante naam heeft,” vertelt hij aan Scientias.nl.

EEN TERECHTE ‘WOW!’?

Hadden Shostak en Snellen wanneer zij het Wow!-signaal voor het eerst onder ogen hadden gekregen er ook een enthousiaste ‘Wow!’ bijgeplaatst? “Ik had het signaal zeker onderstreept, denk ik,” stelt Shostak. “Het signaal is opmerkelijk en sterk.” Ook Snellen kan zich het enthousiasme van Ehman wel enigszins voorstellen. “Het signaal was niet alleen heel sterk, maar werd ook nog eens aangetroffen in een stukje hemel waar je geen radiostraling verwacht.”

Eenmalig
Dat we na veertig jaar nog altijd niet met zekerheid kunnen zeggen waar dit signaal zijn oorsprong vond, lijkt misschien verbazingwekkend. Maar astronomen stuiten in de zoektocht naar de bron van het radiosignaal continu op hetzelfde probleem: het signaal is slechts één keer gedetecteerd. “We hebben het sinds augustus 1977 nooit meer gezien,” vertelt Shostak. “Je moet je voorstellen dat je op een avond in de kamer zit en een geluid hoort in de kelder. Je staat op om te gaan kijken, maar wanneer je de kelder binnengaat, hoor je het niet meer. Het is op dat moment onmogelijk om vast te stellen wat de bron van het geluid is.” En zo is het ook met het Wow!-signaal: zolang het geen tweede keer waargenomen wordt, is het onmogelijk om vast te stellen waar het vandaan kwam.

Een aards signaal?
En dus zijn onderzoekers – en het publiek – al bijna vier decennia naar de bron van het signaal aan het gissen. Sommigen schrijven het signaal toe aan een buitenaardse beschaving. Anderen houden het wat dichter bij huis. “Meestal is dit soort signalen het resultaat van menselijke activiteiten die de waarnemingen van de telescoop verstoren,” stelt Shostak. Snellen is het met hem eens. “We hebben hier te maken met een heel sterke radiobron op een heel nauwe frequentieband, wat betekent dat het signaal een heel specifieke golflengte heeft,” vertelt Snellen. “Dergelijke signalen komen normaliter niet uit de ruimte, maar zijn afkomstig van de aarde en worden bijvoorbeeld veroorzaakt door elektrische apparaten of straaljagers.” Maar hoe aannemelijk het ook lijkt dat het Wow!-signaal het resultaat is van een op aarde gecreëerde verstoring: het is niet te bewijzen. “Er zijn manieren om dergelijke aardse verstoringen uit te filteren en dat is in het geval van het Wow!-signaal ook gebeurd,” legt Snellen uit. “En dan lijkt het signaal toch weer afkomstig te zijn uit de ruimte. Maar zeker weten doe je het niet. Daarom willen we het signaal ook graag nog een keer zien.”

DE EQUIVALENT VAN HET WOW!-SIGNAAL

Zijn er recent nog equivalenten van het Wow!-signaal aangetroffen? We vroegen het Shostak. “Het gebeurt niet vaak meer dat we een onverklaarbaar signaal tegenkomen,” stelt Shostak. “Als we nu een vreemd signaal detecteren, checken we het meteen nog een keer.” En meestal levert dat voldoende data op om wilde verhalen nog voor hun ontstaan te ontkrachten en de bron van het signaal te identificeren. Dat er in Ohio in 1977 niet meteen een tweede blik op het vreemde signaal werd geworpen, is te wijten aan de techniek van toen, die de nodige beperkingen kende.

Kometen?
Terwijl Snellen en Shostak hun geld op een aardse verstoring zetten, zijn er ook onderzoekers die er heel andere ideeën op nahouden. Antonio Paris bijvoorbeeld. Hij beweerde recent nog dat het Wow!-signaal veroorzaakt werd door kometen. Snellen kan er heel kort over zijn: “Ik vind dat een heel raar verhaal.” Shostak is nog duidelijker over het werk van Paris. “Het is gewoon fout.” Er is geen hard bewijs dat kometen in staat zijn om zo’n radiosignaal te produceren. En zelfs als kometen in staat zouden zijn om zo’n radiosignaal te produceren, dan zou Big Ear dat met beide oren moeten hebben opgevangen. Het is namelijk ondenkbaar dat een komeet binnen anderhalve minuut (de tijd die verstrijkt tussen het moment waarop het eerste en tweede oor van Big Ear een radiosignaal detecteren) uit het gezichtsveld van de radiotelescoop verdwijnt. “Die hele theorie (van Paris, red.) werkt gewoon niet,” merkt Shostak op.

Loslaten
En zo blijven we dus in een kringetje ronddraaien. “Zonder nieuwe data zal het heel lastig worden om dit mysterie op te lossen,” denkt Shostak. Wordt het dan misschien tijd om het mysterie los te laten? “Als je er elke maand uren over nadenkt en je persoonlijke relaties eronder gaan lijden, zou ik zeker zeggen: ‘Get over it‘,” merkt Shostak lachend op. Hoe je je precies over zo’n mysterie heenzet, lijkt Shostak – die nog regelmatig over het Wow!-signaal schrijft op de SETI-website, er regelmatig over spreekt met de grote media en nog altijd hoopt dat de SETI-telescopen het Wow!-signaal een tweede keer waarnemen – ook niet precies te weten.

“IK DENK DAT WE IN DE KOMENDE TWINTIG JAAR BUITENAARDS LEVEN GAAN VINDEN”

Ondertussen zoeken de radiotelescopen van SETI niet alleen naar het Wow!-signaal dat veertig jaar geleden werd waargenomen, maar speuren ze vooral de hemel af op zoek naar een echt Wow!-signaal: een signaal dat we wel herhaaldelijk kunnen waarnemen en dat (op termijn) onomstotelijk toegeschreven kan worden aan aliens. Wanneer dat signaal zich aandient, is koffiedik kijken. Maar het zal zeker niet nog eens veertig jaar duren, denkt Shostak. “Ik denk dat we in de komende twintig jaar buitenaards leven gaan vinden,” stelt hij. Snellen is het met hem eens, maar verwacht niet dat radiosignalen ons op de aanwezigheid van aliens gaan wijzen. “De kans dat een buitenaardse beschaving zich zo dichtbij bevindt dat we de radiostraling ervan kunnen zien, is echt heel klein.” Hij ziet meer in het bestuderen van de atmosfeer van exoplaneten. “Als we van een afstandje naar de atmosfeer van de aarde kijken, zien we dat deze zuurstof bevat. En dat zit in de atmosfeer, omdat er leven is. Over een jaar of tien kunnen we met nieuwe instrumentatie – zoals de Extra Large Telescope die in Noord-Chili wordt gebouwd – ook de atmosfeer van exoplaneten bestuderen en mogelijk aantonen dat daar leven is. Eigenlijk kunnen we dus pas over een jaar of tien goed gaan zoeken naar buitenaards leven en het is natuurlijk nog maar de vraag of we het gaan vinden. Maar als het er is, lijkt het me heel redelijk dat we het binnen een jaar of 20 vinden.”

Bronmateriaal:

Interview met Seth Shostak en Ignas Snellen

{ https://www.scientias.nl/ }

No, NASA Hasn't Found Alien Life

{ https://www.livescience.com/ }

A Bizarre New Form of Liquid Water Is Discovered

Liquid water exists in two different forms, new research reveals. Here, an illustration of the water molecule in front of an X-ray pattern from high-density amorphous ice, created by creating high pressures and low temperatures.

Credit: Mattias Karlén

Liquid water comes in two forms — low density and high density, scientists have found.

The findings add to the anomalous properties of this ubiquitous, life-giving liquid, which is like no other on Earth.

"The new remarkable property is that we find that water can exist as two different liquids at low temperatures where ice crystallization is slow," Anders Nilsson, a chemical physicist at Stockholm University in Sweden, said in a statement. [The Mysterious Physics of 7 Everyday Things]

Essential element for life

Water is essential for life (at least on Earth). And wherever liquid water exists — whether it's in icebound lakes or scalding hydrothermal vents — tiny microbes have been found. That is why scientists have been excited by the possibility of salty water flows and other evidence of ancient water on Mars — it means there may well have been life early on in the Red Planet's history.

It turns out that water has strange physical properties found in no other liquids known to scientists. For one, it can exist in all three phases at Earth-like temperatures and pressures. For another, its molecular configuration — two hydrogens mated to an oxygen molecule — creates strong polarity, or a highly positively charged region and a highly negatively charged region. That, in turn, allows almost any substance to be dissolved in it; in that way, substances such as calcium ions can travel (dissolved) within water into and out of a cell, for instance, Brian Glazer, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who has studied astrobiology, previously told Live Science. Already, scientists have identified 70 properties of liquid water that differ from other liquid substances.

Researchers have long known that ice can exist in two solid forms: a highly ordered, crystalline form with individual molecules neatly lined up in a repeating pattern, and an amorphous version, where the molecules are scattered more haphazardly. In fact, this amorphous ice is the most abundant type on our planet, and can transform between both a low- and high-density version.

Two phases of liquid water

Scientists wondered whether a similar transition may occur in liquid water. To find out, Nilsson and his colleagues used X-rays to track the distance between individual molecules of H20 at low temperatures. Using this technique, they watched as the water transitioned from an amorphous, glassy, frozen liquid state (essentially, uncrystallized ice), to a viscous liquid, and then almost immediately to another, more viscous liquid with a lower density, the researchers reported today (June 26) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The findings shed new light on the bizarre behavior of liquid water.

"The new results give very strong support to a picture where water at room temperature can't decide in which of the two forms it should be, high or low density, which results in local fluctuations between the two," study co-author Lars G.M. Pettersson, a theoretical chemical physicist at Stockholm University, said in the statement. "In a nutshell: Water is not a complicated liquid, but two simple liquids with a complicated relationship."

Originally published on Live Science.

Editor's Recommendations

• The 18 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics
• 7 Theories on the Origin of Life
• Extreme Life on Earth: 8 Bizarre Creatures

{ https://www.livescience.com/ }

New Conspiracy Theory: Children Kidnapped for Mars Slave Colony

Artist’s illustration of (non-enslaved) astronauts on the surface of Mars.

Credit: NASA/JSC

Even in this age of free-flying conspiracy theories, this one's a doozy.

On Thursday (June 29), a guest on Alex Jones' radio show named Robert David Steele claimed that Mars is inhabited — by people sent to the Red Planet against their will.

"We actually believe that there is a colony on Mars that is populated by children who were kidnapped and sent into space on a 20-year ride, so that once they get to Mars, they have no alternative but to be slaves on the Mars colony," Steele told Jones, the founder of the controversial InfoWars website. [25 Space Conspiracies That Just Won't Die]

{ https://www.space.com/ }

Asteroid Day Rocks! Here Are Some of the Cool Events Happening Worldwide

GTA Online Hackers Activate Secret Alien Mission Early

 Zack Zwiezen

After years of hunting, digging through the code and searching every inch of the game, GTA V fans have finally found life from beyond the stars. And because this is GTA, of course the discovery is tied to digital theft and murder.

A few weeks back, the Gunrunning Update added some new weapons, vehicles and massive underground bunkers to GTA Online. Buried deep in the new update were a series of files and code that seemed to hint at an alien UFO crashing just outside the Zancudo military base. Players were excited at the prospect of figuring out a long-standing mystery involving an alien egg, which was tied to the suspected event.

Members of Team Guru, a GTA V modding and mystery hunting group, spent weeks digging and searching for a way to activate these bits of alien coding. After many sleepless nights, they used a tool created by Guru member Polivilas to switch in-game variables until they were able to activate an alien supply mission by force:

Until GTA Online updates and this mission activates properly, we have no idea if this is the final version of the event, or if it will ever be put into the game officially. But this is conclusive evidence that Rockstar was indeed doing something recently with the idea of aliens crashing in GTA Online. 

The actual mission is a bit underwhelming. Players are told to head to a location and steal some supplies—that’s where the alien egg comes in. When they arrive, they find a large UFO crashed in the swamp and dead scientists and soldiers. Once players have the alien egg, a small group of extraterrestrials spawns in and the player has to kill them. As missions go, it’s not incredibly exciting or different. But after years of searching it’s cool to finally see the theorizing and hard work materialize into something concrete.

While some players are happy that aliens were found, others are disappointed. Many mystery hunters wanted a big single-player easter egg or reward that could justify years of searching. Some are actually hopeful this new alien mission is just the start of something bigger, perhaps eventually involving the long sought-after jetpack.

For now, at least the citizens of Los Santos know they aren’t alone in the universe. And that these alien beings aren’t bulletproof.

Zach Zwiezen is a a writer living in Kansas City, Missouri. He has written for Gamecritics, Killscreen and Entertainment Fuse.

{ http://kotaku.com/video }

Mars Opportunity rover has image of unidentified metallic object, puts internet in a frenzy

Left Panoramic Camera Non-linearized Full frame EDR acquired on Sol 348 of Opportunity's mission to Meridiani Planum at approximately 12:45:41 Mars local solar time, camera commanded to use Filter 7 (432 nm).

NASA/JPL/Cornell

{ http://www.foxnews.com/index.html }

The Search For Alien Astroengineers

  by Bruce Dorminey ,  CONTRIBUTOR

Looking for a lone signal from some far-flung alien civilization is one thing --- looking for its handiwork on galactic scales is quite another. But a handful of astronomers are still hopeful that if hyper-advanced extraterrestrial civilizations can survive through cosmic time, they might choose to macro-engineer whole galaxies in ways that would be detectable in the electromagnetic spectrum.

“If a civilization has engineered half a galaxy, some fraction of the energy being used should glow in the infrared,” James Annis, an astrophysicist at Fermilab, told me. Annis and colleagues conducted the first such search for KIII civilizations in 1999.

Stars are bright in the optical, and any civilization that uses or engineers the stars will eliminate starlight or change its natural appearance, says Annis.

Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: Ray A. Lucas (STScI/AURA)

A nearly perfect ring of hot, blue stars pinwheels about the yellow nucleus of an unusual ring galaxy known as Hoag's Object. This image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures a face-on view of the galaxy's ring of stars.

“We assume that the majority of visible galaxies are natural,” said Annis. “So, we look for galaxies that are different from the majority. Usually this is easily explained as an ongoing galaxy merger.”

In 1964, Soviet physicist Nicolai Kardashev first put forth the idea that an extraterrestrial civilization’s level of technological advancement could be divided into three tiers --- from KI to KIII. We would qualify as a few decades away from being a KI civilization. That is, a civilization capable of harnessing all of its star’s incoming solar radiation. A KII civilization would be capable of directly harnessing its parent star’s energy, usually via a mechanism such as a Dyson’s sphere.

Such hypothetical artificial spheres were put forth by physicist Freeman Dyson as a means for completely encompassing and capturing all of a given star’s energy. Thus, such spheres would mostly be detectable via their waste heat leaking into the infrared spectrum. A full-scale KIII civilization would be capable of directly harnessing all the energy in their host galaxy or galaxies. They might possibly use billions of such Dyson spheres --- or some other means of harnessing their galaxy’s energy that would be impossible for us to even imagine.

If the radiated starlight of the entire galaxy is collected, in the optical spectrum it will look abnormally dark, but will emit waste power in the thermal infrared, Brian Lacki, an astronomer at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, told me.

In a recent paper, Lacki used data from the European Space Agency’s Planck spacecraft to look for microwave sources with a spectrum expected of waste heat. Lacki says he calculated that a very cold KIII structure that shrouded a grand spiral galaxy like the Milky Way would be detectable out to about 2 billion light years.

“If a galaxy had many of its stars [surrounded by] swarms of giant structures, you would expect it to appear dimmer,” Jason Wright, an astronomer at Penn State University, told me. “At mid-infrared wavelengths, we would expect to see all that blocked light.”

A couple of years back, Wright and colleagues searched for excess thermal emission from 100,000 galaxies in the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) all-sky source catalog.

“We did not find any, but our sensitivity was very low, and we hope to do more sensitive searches in the future,” Wright told me.

In a separate search, Lacki also looked for very cold structures that would cloak entire galaxies.

It's possible that aliens would cloak galaxy after galaxy in these structures, says Lacki.

We would then see a bubble hundreds of millions of light years wide, he says, where all the galaxies are invisible in the optical, but shine in the infrared or microwave spectrums.

“We don't see such bubbles, so they must be very, very rare,” said Lacki.

On the other hand, Lacki says if aliens chose to simply rearrange their galaxy’s stars instead of shroud them, such galaxies would have bizarre shapes. However, such macroengineering projects might also involve rearranging the stars in a given galaxy.

Hoag’s Object, classified as a peculiar ring galaxy some 600 million light years away in the constellation of Serpens has been proposed by some as being a potential macro-engineering project. Yet Annis says that it’s more like simply the merger of two galaxies.

The Galaxy Zoo Project, Lacki notes, also had volunteers classify nearly a million galaxies, all of which seemed to be natural.

It’s hard to fathom what would motivate such civilizations to conduct what by Annis’ estimate would be a 100 million-year project.

But Lacki says they might use such collected energy to power computation on unimaginable scales. Or even for hyper-advance particle physics experiments.

To experiment with physics on its most fundamental (Planck) scale, Lacki says one has to build a particle accelerator as bright as a galaxy, using energies at the yotta electron volt (YeV) level. That’s about 100 billion times the Giga electron volt (GeV) energies achieved at the CERN’s Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva, which is currently humanity's highest-energy particle accelerator.

However, in a recent paper published on the online astrophysical site ArXiv, Lacki was able to show that these galactic accelerators are fairly rare.

What’s needed to further the search for such exo-technology?

More data mining of a variety of astronomy surveys, and searches for anomalies and transient, short-term sources, says Dan Werthimer, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley, told me. He notes that the idea is to look for glitches in astronomical data from existing and future sky surveys.

When most people think about searching for extraterrestrial intelligences, they imagine someone like Ellie Arroway searching the skies for radio transmissions. But what about looking in other ways? Perhaps a highly advanced alien civilisation might build structures large enough for us to see.

Could such macro-engineering ultimately be necessitated for very long-lived civilizations to survive?

 Over many trillions of years, Lacki says there may be no choice but to become a KIII civilization. As the expansion of the universe continues to accelerate, Lacki says most galaxies will lose contact with each other and the gas between galaxies will dilute away.

Thus, if a galactic society wants to prepare for the deep future, Lacki says, it might build up a reserve of galactic molecular gas. That way, the civilization could ensure that its galaxy had a steady and wide-ranging supply of stars that would continually generate metals and other elements that can’t be made artificially.

“Societies that learn to work on galactic scales may be the only ones left trillions of years from now,” said Lacki.

Image: Artists impression of a Dyson sphere, composed of a swarm of smaller satellites. Credit: Vedexent/Wikimedia Commons

Follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. And like my 'Distant Wanderers' exoplanet Facebook page.

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Project Blue Book Origins — Part 2 of 3

ByCheryl Costa

 

Columnist Cheryl Costa continues her three-part series of articles on Project Blue Book.

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

It’s not hard to believe that NASA isn’t telling us everything about what goes on in space or that it may already know of the existence of other life forms but is covering it up. It’s a stretch to believe that NASA staged the moon landings in a studio and is currently doing the same out in some desert for the Martian rovers. However, it’s incredulous to consider a claim that for at least 20 years the agency has been kidnapping children and sending them to Mars to work in slave camps. What’s even more unbelievable is that NASA felt it had to publicly deny this accusation after it was made on the home of unbelievable claims … Alex Jones’ InfoWars.

“There are no humans on Mars. There are active rovers on Mars. There was a rumor going around last week that there weren’t. There are. But there are no humans.”

Not real

Guy Webster, a spokesperson for Mars exploration at NASA, was compelled to immediately speak to the Daily Beast, a media company that’s part of Newsweek, to officially deny a slew of incredible and offensive claims made on InfoWars by Robert David Steele, an alleged CIA operative, an activist for open-source intelligence and a presidential candidate for both the Reform Party and the Libertarian Party – he didn’t get either nomination. However, that didn’t stop Jones from booking him on the show to make statements like this:

“We actually believe that there is a colony on Mars that is populated by children who were kidnapped and sent into space on a 20-year ride. So that once they get to Mars they have no alternative but to be slaves on the Mars colony.”

Really? If NASA has the ability to cover up something like that, the CIA should be using NASA scientists as operatives instead of people like this guy. While he correctly points out that video feeds from rovers and the ISS seem to cut away just as the cameras are approaching something unusual, his commentary deteriorates into the depths of depravity with these accusations:

“It goes straight into terrorizing them to adrenalize their blood and then murdering them. It also includes murdering them so that they can have their bone marrow harvested as well as body parts.”

Sadly, this show and its host apparently command such an audience that NASA, rather than shaking its collective heads and walking away, felt it had no choice but to respond to these claims with vehement denials.

Yes, there are cover-ups. Yes, there are top secret files. But a story about sending kidnapped children to slave camps on another planet for the purpose of harvesting their bone marrow is horror porn, not news. The news is that we’ve sunk so low that this moved a government agency to actually address it.

What have we become?

Tags

Alex Jones Bizarre Conspiracy nasa space

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

DUITSE VLIEGENDE SCHOTEL GEVONDEN OP ANTARCTICA?

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WATCH: NASA BETA TESTING PROJECT BLUE BEAM

Just short of Fourth of July, which is only a few days away, man-made auroras have been spread across the skies, causing much amazement along the east coast and parts of Virginia.

This amazing display of auroras, a rare sight, was due to a long-delayed launch of the terrier-improved Malemute rocket which had encountered many obstacles just before its launch, having been delayed an astonishing ten times before it finally launched just before Independence Day.  

The rocket was launched to just above 100 miles above Earth, where the rocket discharged small canisters containing colorful chemicals that burst in the atmosphere to create an artificial aurora. However, that was not the main point of the experiment.

NASA’S ‘FAKE SPACE CLOUDS’ LOOK SUSPICIOUSLY LIKE A FLEET OF UFOS  

NASA was actually researching on a deeper purpose and meaning: getting a better understanding of our Earth's atmosphere, vital to life on Earth and the health of the people and animals living on Earth. The second main point is to test equipment which will be used to study the auroras over Norway, an anomaly in our atmosphere that is vital for us as a species to understand it, such that we will be able to know how mother nature truly works, and the wonders it can do.

NASA has always ventured further, and above much of what humanity can truly do, in the vastness of our skies and beyond. Now, we can only hope that experiments are continued such that it can help our environment - and preserve it better.

Sadly, some parts of the east coast were robbed of the wonderful display as overcast skies blocked the view of the aurora. Let us hope that more chances will arise that will allow this spectacular view.  

RELATED ARTICLES

• Project Blue Beam: Scientists Project Movie in the Sky
• Richard Dolan explains project Blue Beam - NASA's plan for a fake

{ http://www.disclose.tv/ }

NO, YOU’RE not looking at an alien invasion.

These incredible pictures show Nasa’s fake clouds that lit up the sky over the US this morning.

The space agency launched a Malemute sounding rocket from its Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia in the early hours of the morning.

During the eight-minute flight, ten canisters about the size of a soft drink can were shot into space.

The canisters spewed out blue-green and red vapour that formed artificial clouds which were visible from New York to North Carolina.

The fake clouds create a sky-high portrait of the movements in aurora winds – so scientists can better understand how a phenomenon like the Northern Lights affects Earth.

There were more than 2,000 reports and photos of the cloud sightings after its launch at 4.24am ET.

Scientists at the flight centre breathed a sigh of relief after the rocket was delayed several times over the past month, soared to 188 miles into the sky.

The cloud vapours were formed using barium, strontium and cupric oxide.

Nasa assured the public that the chemicals don’t pose a health hazard.

Sightings of the Northern Lights in the UK will be wiped out within the next few decades thanks to changes in solar activity, scientists claim.

These fluctuations could make the Earth more vulnerable to devastating solar blasts and cancer-causing cosmic rays, according to researchers at the University of Reading.

The phenomenal light is one of Iceland’s biggest selling points, but the very north of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland get treated to a display every now and again.

{ https://www.thesun.co.uk/ }

Alien Covenant: Prop & Costume Exhibition

As a lover of practical effects in his movies, it’s clear that Scott’s passion for his Alien series has culminated in the creation of this beautifully designed film, which is echoed in the careful design of each of the props and costumes.

Earlier this month, Prop Store’s very own Stephen Lane was lucky enough to be invited to an Alien: Covenant pre-release prop and costume mini-exhibition (and was even given a sneak peek at the first ten minutes of the film!). From spacesuits to cryo pods to an animatronic Xenomorph head, he was able to get up close and personal with a number of the iconic props and costumes from Ridley’s latest Alien series film – check out some of the pictures below…

ECO All World Systems Survival Suit

Alien: Covenant Costume Designer Janty Yates

Alien Xenomorph Creature Forms and Animatronic Head

Alien Ovomorphs and Animatronic Facehugger

IVA Internal Spacesuit

Alien: Covenant Costume Designer Janty Yates

Covenant Cryogenic Hyper-Sleep Chamber

Alien: Covenant Artwork

If this tickled your fancy, and you love alien as much as we do, then make sure you check out our amazing collection of props and costumes from the Alien film series and see if you can find your very own piece of movie history!

Source propstore.com

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

EXCLUSIVE: British Area 51? Claims secret ALIEN research base uncovered in Farnborough

PARANORMAL investigators claim to have rumbled a top-secret Ministry of Defence (MoD) alien research centre hidden deep underground in a UFO hotspot.

The British Earth and Aerial Mysteries Society (BEAMS) has released a bizarre 109-page report, following a “special investigation” into the former MoD Defence Evaluation and Research Agency site now run by specialist defence, security and aerospace developer Qinetiq.BEAMS claims Farnborough has had high UFO sighting and alien abduction activity for years and thinks this might be connected to the alleged secret base. The group is convinced there is as much underground as above and what goes on there involves aliens, UFOs, intergalactic defence and futuristic flight development.Their bizarre theory is based upon cryptic alien symbols they have “discovered” within the site, alleged intelligence service whistleblower testimonies, and the responses from psychic researchers, the report claims.

The BEAMS website says it was set up in 1991 as as a non profit-making studies group into the paranormal.

It said: “We have set up a network of active investigators who relay their gathered information through to our HQ. 

“As reporters of the truth, duties of the BEAMS Team include research, interviewing, photography and journalism.”

The pair claimed the Qinetiq site was the biggest of three secret underground facilities, also in the UK, including two other suspected ones.

Their report said Government whistleblowers had revealed: “Officers at Chicksands regularly simulated possible outcomes of nuclear war with their counterparts operating from an underground command centre beneath Qinetiq in Farnborough.“One source (who holds a sensitive government post) says that he knows several people currently employed at British underground facilities where acquired alien technology and genetics programmes are being carried out.”The couple said the Cody technology park was also under tight security with armed guards and secret cameras.But the clincher, in their opinion, was the roundabout system near the main building.

Referring to an aerial slide of the roadways on site, which highlighted this roundabout, the report said: “We suggest that this is a stylised, diagrammatic representation of a grey/reptilian figure – just like the Aboriginal supreme creator paintings attempted to portray – which is only visible like this from the air.”

Posing the question “why was it there?”, the report said: “Why incorporate a massive image of an alien, or supreme creator within a top secret subterranean military site – somewhere so sensitive that it is virtually our own British equivalent of the Area 51 complex in Nevada.”

They surmised that the powers behind the site were confident the public would never see through their cryptic code, but “those” who needed to would recognise it instantly.

Besides, if the roundabout did not do the trick, there was more.

The couple concluded the roof and canopy of the main building had purposely been designed in the shape of a flying saucer just to hammer home the purpose of the secret base to those in the know.

They said the existence of the “underground” parts of the site described by “sources” were further proved by Qinetiq’s involvement in mining coupled with a strange rumbling noise they allegedly heard a cross Farnborough over the last 15 years, which they deduced was it being secretly expanded.

Three so-called psychic remote viewers given the name of the site, but no more details, as part of the research, also came back with descriptions of a highly technological and disturbing underground base, they claimed.Not convinced? Neither are some other UFO investigators.Nigel Watson, author of the UFOs: The Nazi Connection, said: “It sounds like they are trying to bring a lot of separate things to make (something) whole.”

But he added that “the idea” of alien or flying saucer bases being underground was “nothing new”, dating back to at least 1962, when Albert Bender, founder of the International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB) in Bridgeport, Connecticut, claimed that alien beings took him to an underground HQ in Antarctica.

He said: “Sceptics think such stories are the product of malicious disinformation or fantasies, yet that doesn’t stop people believing in their existence. Perhaps if we all go under that flying saucer ‘shelter’ we might all believe.”

An MoD spokesman said: “We do not comment on UFO matters.”

Express.co.uk contacted Qinetiq to comment on the strange suggestions and awaits a further response.

A spokesman said: “We’re taking a look at the very detailed dossier and working on a response.”

Source www.express.co.uk

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BIZARRE DISNEY FILM PULLED QUICKLY FROM PUBLIC VIEW IN 1995