REVEALED: 8 UFO sightings in Mackay and beyond

by Melanie Plane

AS HALLOWEEN celebrations get under way today, we've taken an extraterrestrial approach.

In light of all things creepy, we've compiled a list of reported 'UFO sightings' from across the wider Mackay and western regions documented by Brisbane based non-profit association UFO Research Queensland Incorporated.

UFO Research Queensland Incorporated established in 1956 to receive, research and record sightings. While UFORQ has been collecting sighting reports since 1956, they have yet to commit the bulk of their reports to electronic format. Currently you can view all reports received from 1998 to the present.

blob:https://m.dailymercury.com.au/73f0ae88-4504-4c0f-a3f5-0ea5099d6f6f

'UFO' sighted over Mackay: Amanda Brown captured these lights over Mackay on Monday night, October 30, 2017.

MACKAY WIDER REGION SIGHTINGS

1. MARLBOROUGH: 

In Marlborough, between Mackay and Rockhampton back in 1992-39, a woman and her family who lived on a cattle station were returning from Rockhampton at night and saw a light below them while driving over a range.

The light reportedly passed over them and seemed the size of a dinner plate. As they approached home, a man walked out onto the track in front of them, and next moment the light was there.

The woman next remembers arriving at the family bungalow very tired, and decided to leave the groceries in their vehicle and go straight to bed. Her partner refused to talk about the incident. She has had encounters since.

2. MACKAY:

 In Mackay on February 14, 2012 a resident reported two UFO sightings at 4.22am and 4.30am. The resident, who had not seen a UFO before, said they were a passionate follower of satellites and general astronomy, so had their nose in the air quite often and knew exactly what to look for when identifying a satellite or anything similar.

First sighting at 4.22am: In the sky SSW of Mackay at an altitude of about 40° East, moving SSW there was a red solid light that seemed to shoot a red flare out to the East (I thought that it may be space junk re-entry at first). Then three red lights seemed to be rotating, or flashing, underneath it. No sound, no navigation lights (like a helicopter or plane). It was travelling at about the speed of a satellite and seemed to be at about satellite height.

Second sighting, approximately 4.30am: In the sky to the South of Mackay at an altitude of about 30° East, moving to the South there was a bar of horizontal white lights (probably about 5-7 lights, it was a fair way away) that looked a bit like a jet airliner side-on, but instead of travelling left to right, or right to left, it just kept travelling South like a side-on plane. No navigation lights and no noise, but it seemed much further away. Slow travelling to the South and wandering just a little.

3. CAMERON'S POCKET, MACKAY:

 In Cameron's Pocket just north of Mackay on Monday December 18, 2006 at 2am, a man observed a bright light to the NNW shoot off and come back in a cloudless sky. Its elevation varied between 25 and 60 degrees. The light was prominent in the sky and flashing colours.

4. WALKERSTON: 

A taxi driver travelling on the Peak Downs Hwy, close to Dane Street at Walkerston on Saturday, November 21, 2015 at 12.30am noticed a strange light in the sky. The driver, who was taking a passenger to Patricia Court, was looking through the windscreen when they saw an oblong, orange light about the size of a street light seen at about 150 metres away above them in the sky. It was not clearly outlined and moved across sky, rotated and changed direction from south towards north, then north east, then north north west, then north west, then slightly west south west. The light then disappeared.

5. RAVENSWOOD: 

In 1991, a resident reported a sighting of a min-min light between the Burdekin Dam and Ravenswood. The resident said it was either May or June in 1991 and there were five people in the car who all worked at the Coutts Burdekin Wildernoss Lodge and were on their way to Townsville for a night out. The light followed the car, through the trees for about 15 minutes. It looked like a car headlight. At first it was behind them on the left hand-side, then it caught up to them and overtook them, then went across in front of the car and was travelling beside them on the right hand-side. It then seemed to slow and the last they saw it, it was directly behind the car and further back. The group were all quite frightened at the time and trying to explain what it could be. What the reporting person found most strange is that the incident was never really discussed again between them, even though they lived and worked together. The wilderness lodge closed down at the end of June and the five all lost contact. The reporting person said they have thought about the incident many times since and would be a sceptic if they hadn't witnessed the phenomena.

6. TIERI: 

In about 1982 or '83 a family moved to a new mining town called Tieri which is about one hour north-east of Emerald. At the time there was no street lighting so the night sky was very clear. At about 7 or 8 in the evening the reporting person was riding their bike down the street not far from their home. For some reason they looked up at the sky and saw what they thought was a very bright satellite moving across the sky. It moved at a steady almost satellite-like speed, but then began doing perfect and seemingly random 90 degree turns in the sky. It did this for about 10-15 seconds and then shot off and disappeared.

7. CLERMONT: 

In April 18, 2007 at 10.40pm on Rubywale Rd, the reporting person witnessed a very bright, to sharp white light, not to be likened to any Automotive 12- or 24-volt lights, or lights from a residence or camplight. It seemed as though it may have landed, due to the shadows of what seemed like lights behind tree branches, and the way the light seemed to be going in a upward elevation. The light was very, very bright.

8. CLERMONT: 

On June 5, 2010 at 6am the reporting person saw a weird light in the eastern sky. It was travelling very slowly, and looked to be about 200 meters above the trees. This was on a mine site in central Queensland. There were no flashing lights as on planes or choppers. It had several lights on it, the main light was on the front and seemed to be pointing downwards. The object was slightly covered by fog or cloud, but the morning was crystal clear with no cloud or fog. The object slowly turned away from me and faded and totally disappeared from sight. Several people saw the same light.

{ https://www.dailymercury.com.au/ }

Video: U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Force-11 Encounters Unknowns on November 14, 2004 near San Diego – Part I/3

Posted by: Robert Powell 

Editor’s note: This series by Robert Powell chronicles his discovery and investigation of the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Force-11 investigation. It is a three part series.

I am going to tell you about a Navy-UFO encounter that deserves a congressional investigation to determine if this happened or not. I am going to create three posts related to a recent UFO event that occurred in November of 2004 and involved the Navy’s Carrier Strike Group 11 off the southwest coast of California. This will be the first post and it will include the information that I initially obtained on the incident. If after reading these three posts you are reasonably convinced that this event happened then I will ask you to join me in a letter-writing campaign to a congressional subcommittee requesting that they ask for a debriefing of the incident from the Navy. Please share this story with anyone that you know who would be interested. You can use the hashtags: #F18UFO #UFO.

U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Force-11.

(Credit: US Navy)

I was first told of this UFO incident in July of 2016 by an individual who was involved in the investigation of this event. He told me that the incident had been partially leaked to the internet, so that I could begin my investigation without involving my friend. Knowing a few of the key words I was able to locate the leaked story here: https://fightersweep.com/1460/x-files-edition/ (Ignore the UFO photos in the article as those are just add-ons by the author for effect and are not related to the actual event.)

What attracted me to this story was that it was not on a typical UFO site but was found on a site authored by a formal naval aviator and who predominately writes about naval aviator stories, not UFOs. So he had no UFO agenda to push. And the author went out of his way to establish the excellent background of the commanding officer of the F-18s known as the Black Aces. The story was full of “navy talk” and I spent considerable time deciphering that WSO = weapons system officer, SPY1 = phased array radar, E-2C Hawkeye = type of airborne early warning aircraft, BFM = basic fighter maneuvers, etc. Once I had read the full story, I felt that there was a strong likelihood that the event my friend had directed me to had actually occurred.

USS Nimitz

I next began online investigations to verify the identity of the individuals in the story and I found that those officers were all legitimate and had served in the Navy during that time. I searched additional websites for clues to this event. First, I found a Navy Event Summary document that had been leaked to the internet by an unknown source that mentioned this event. The document had much of the same information as was provided in the naval aviator’s story: dates and locations match up; USS Princeton detects objects on radar and dispatches the F18s; F18s don’t find a radar target but detect the object visually; F18s engage the unknown; and F18s are outmatched by the unknowns. I then ran the Navy Event Summary document by a retired naval officer and he indicated that the document looked legitimate in terms of its format. A copy of this summary document can be found here.

My friend who had originally told me about this case indicated that there had been video taken of the object and that it had been released to the internet several years ago and then was later removed. A copy of that video was obtained using the WayBack machine which is an internet site that maintains historical website data. The video is taken in the infra-red and depicts a hot object in the video cross-hairs for about 75 seconds before the object rapidly moves out of the video frame and towards the left. The altitude shown on the video matches the approximate altitude of the jets and the shape of the object in the video matches the pilots’ descriptions. A copy of this video can be found here.

Of these three documents, the one that I find the strongest is the story by the naval aviator. The Navy Event Summary and the F-18 video support the story but more was needed. The question in my mind then became—could I support this information from another source. In December of 2016 I submitted nine FOIAs to various departments of the Navy and Marines to try and verify this event. In Part II of this series, I will share the information on the FOIAs that I submitted.

{ http://www.openminds.tv/  }

OUTER LIMITS

Image: Alfonso Elia/Cosanti Foundation

The City of the Future Is Hiding in the Arizona Desert

Daniel Oberhaus

Paolo Soleri’s radical experiment in urban planning has been running in the middle of the Arizona desert for nearly 50 years.

This story is part of OUTER LIMITS, a Motherboard series about people, technology, and going outside. Let us be your guide.

In the museum of vaporware from the twentieth century's imaginarium, one will find a suite of technologies doomed to be perennially futuristic: personal jetpacks and flying cars, moon bases and generation ships, teleportation, and fusion energy. As for the museum itself, it will be an arcology: A building whose design is informed by its local environment, and the poster child of futures that never materialized.

A portmanteau of 'architecture' and 'ecology,' arcology was first theorized by the Italian architect Paolo Soleri in the late 1960s. Billed by its creator as the blueprint for a "city in the image of man," arcologies challenged the notion of the urban environment as something separate from and antagonistic to nature. In Soleri's cities, cars would be useless and the very notion of roads would be abolished as divisive constructs. Work and living spaces would be nearly indistinguishable. There'd be no need to ever use a light bulb during the day or air conditioning during the summer, even in the desert.

If it sounds utopian, that's because it is. At a time when concerns about how human activity is destroying nature have reached a fever pitch, Soleri's ideas sound both attractive and necessary. The renegade architect dedicated the better part of his career to turning his arcological vision into a reality, but 40 years later, arcologies are still mostly the purview of science fiction writers rather than architects.

Nevertheless, a small community has formed around Soleri's ideas over the past half century. Today, these arcology evangelists are committed to shaping the future in accordance with Soleri's ideals. I went to visit them at Arcosanti, a futuristic housing development in the middle of the Sonoran desert. I originally set out to figure out why Soleri's dream had died, but by the time I left Arcosanti, it was apparent that arcology is far from dead. If anything, the architects of the future are just getting started.

The Vault, a community space at Arcosanti and the first element of the city to be built by Soleri.

Image: Daniel Oberhaus/Motherboard

ARCOSANTI

Phoenix, Arizona, is spread out over 500 square miles, and a seemingly endless grid of blacktop connects its 1.5 million residents. If you drive about an hour north from downtown, you will finally hit the outer limits of this urban sprawl. There is no official marker, no wall or signpost to let you know that you have made it out of the city. It's just that at a certain point, the stripmalls and uniform beige housing developments give way to creosote, cacti, and the equally beige landscape of the Sonoran desert.

Drive another half hour beyond the illegible city limits and you'll find yourself at a small outcropping of fast food joints and gas stations, a bastion of civilization in the wilds of the Prescott and Tonto National Forests that border the interstate. If you look past the McDonald's sign into the distance, you can just barely make out a small cluster of buildings against the sparse landscape of the high desert.

This is Arcosanti, arcology's eminent proof-of-concept and Soleri's magnum opus.

"We're here to be a part of the landscape, not in spite of it."

Arcosanti has about 80 permanent residents, most of whom are employed by the Soleri's non-profit Cosanti Foundation to help maintain and expand the premises. Each member has a role at Arcosanti, ranging from metalwork at the onsite foundry to IT support and maintaining Soleri's extensive archive. Like other company towns, the Cosanti Foundation subsidizes its employees' meals and apartments, and pays them US minimum wage. It's not much, but the residents of Arcosanti didn't come to live and work in the desert to get rich. Rather, they are motivated by a far more profound goal: The creation of a city where humans live in harmony not only with nature, but also one another. The residents spend each day literally building this city of the future.

When I arrived at Arcosanti earlier this month, the weekly community meeting had just begun. This is a time for members to reflect on the work of the past week and make announcements relevant to the community. The meeting was held at the Vault, a public space under the massive concrete arches that were the first elements of Arcosanti to be constructed by Soleri. It was well before noon, but many of the community members were dressed in soiled work clothes, having already put in a full day's work.

Presiding over the meeting was Jeff Stein, Arcosanti's executive director. An architect by training, Stein has held various roles in the Cosanti Foundation since Soleri's death in 2013. He first met the visionary architect in 1975 when he attended a workshop taught by Soleri at Arcosanti. These workshops are still held regularly today, and most of Cosanti's employees have attended at least one. There they learn trade skills and the arcological principles that guided Soleri's unique approach to architecture. These skills are then put to the test at Arcosanti, most of which has been built by students and non-professional architects.

"The meaning of the course is based on hard work. We want to discourage whoever envisions a pleasant 5-6 weeks vacation. The Student Spectator is not welcome," reads a poster advertising Soleri's 9th workshop in 1969.

Image courtesy of the Cosanti Foundation.

"We're here to be a part of the landscape, not in spite of it," Stein told me as we 
walked toward his office after the community meeting. "The point of all Soleri's architecture is connection: How do you connect people to one another and to their surroundings?"

Visitors to Arcosanti will immediately notice its unusual design, which makes the complex feel more like an immersive work of art than a city in progress. George Lucas visited the site in the 70s and it was allegedly the model for the desert planet Tatooine in Star Wars. At Arcosanti the preferred window shapes are circles rather than squares, roofs often double as stairs, and individual buildings blend into one another through a network of hallways that often end in stunning vistas of the surrounding desert. But hidden beneath Arcosanti's beautiful aesthetics is an extreme pragmatism, a posthumous reminder from Soleri that art and functionality need not be mutually exclusive.

Stein's apartment/office was previously Soleri's studio and a sterling example of his philosophies in action. The apartment is located in the "East Crescent neighborhood" of Arcosanti and when we arrived, Stein pointed at a small hidden door in the bottom corner of the room.

"We're at the top of the three-story solar greenhouse that is the heating system for this apartment and the rest of East Crescent," Stein told me. "That's my fireplace."

Jeff Stein looks out one of the windows at Arcosanti.

Image: Daniel Oberhaus/Motherboard

As Stein explained, the sun heats up the air in the greenhouse so that during the cold desert winters, this air rises and provides a source of 120-degree heat in the form of fragrant, oxygen-rich air through the trapdoor. Gesturing at the windows of the apartment, Stein explained how Soleri had placed them so that the Sun would illuminate different parts of his studio at different times of the day and year, providing a free and reliable source of heat and light for its occupant.

These were just a few of the design choices that demonstrated Soleri's masterful ability to harness the power of the local environment for human use without damaging that environment in the process. Indeed, Soleri was so adept at this practice that the only air conditioners needed on site are in the archive for preservation purposes, even though temperatures in the desert can reach nearly 120 F during the summer. This is also the reason that there are surprisingly few light bulbs or solar panels at Arcosanti—Soleri was able to keep energy requirements to a minimum with architectural decisions that allowed for plenty of natural light0

"The buildings here are built to try to explain—as good architecture always does—their place and the connection to this place," Stein said. "This desert has a fragile and rich ecology all its own, and Soleri thought maybe we could build some things understanding that."

PAOLO

Soleri was born in Turin, Italy, in 1919. He emigrated to the United States in 1947 to partake in an apprenticeship program under Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West, Wright's home and studio located in the desert outside of Phoenix. By this time, Wright was already an internationally renowned architect famous for his ability to integrate his architecture with its natural surroundings.

For the year-and-a-half Soleri studied under Wright, he lived in a canvas tent outside of Taliesin West with the other apprentices (these temporary structures were originally a product of necessity while Wright's apprentices built the foundations of permanent structures, but today architecture students apprenticing at Taliesin still live in makeshift shelters of their own design). It was here, while literally living off the land in the Sonoran desert and studying under an architect revered for his ability to integrate the natural and artificial in his architecture, that Soleri's ideas about arcology first took shape.

Paolo Soleri (center, in white) teaches students about ceramics during a workshop in the mid-1970s.

Image: Ivan Pintar/Cosanti Foundation

Shortly after finishing his apprenticeship with Wright, Soleri began designing and building a personal residence for Nora Woods, the wife of a wealthy industrialist from the east coast. The resulting house, known as The Dome, turned Soleri into something of an overnight celebrity in the architecture world. After briefly returning to Italy in the early 1950s to design and build a ceramics factory, Soleri made his way back to Arizona.

In 1956, Soleri began building Cosanti (a portmanteau of the Italian words 'cosa,' meaning 'thing' and 'anti' meaning 'against'), his personal home and studio in the Phoenix suburb of Paradise Valley. Around this time, a friend introduced Soleri to the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a turn-of-the-century philosopher/geologist/Jesuit priest whose writings attempted to contextualize human evolution in the greater context of the evolution of the universe.

Today, most evolutionary biologists consider Chardin's thought to be little more than mysticism with hardly any scientific foundations. Nevertheless, his project of situating contemporary human life as a minor event in the grand scheme of cosmic evolution had a profound effect on Soleri's thought and architecture.

The Dome, the house built for Nora Woods outside of Cave Creek, Arizona that brought Soleri international fame as an architect.

Image: Cosanti Foundation

"Chardin was saying it was clear that humans were not the end of anything, but somewhere in the middle of evolution as a biological life form," Stein told me. "Chardin didn't know what would trigger continued social evolution for humans, but when Soleri was reading him in 1957, he knew what it was: It was the city. That was Soleri's a-ha moment."

In 1964, Soleri and his wife Colly formed the Cosanti Foundation, a non-profit organization that was dedicated to radically rethinking the role of the city in contemporary life. Around this time, Soleri was supporting his family through architectural commissions, lecturing at Arizona State University and putting his knowledge of ceramics he had gleaned while building the Italian ceramics factory to use by making small ceramic bells.

At the same time, he was formulating his theories of ecologically integrated architecture. This train of thought culminated in The City in the Image of Man, a 1969 book featuring dozens of detailed plans for Soleri's "lean linear cities" and arcologies, including the blueprint for Arcosanti. Like any good student, Soleri's approach to architecture went far beyond the limits imposed by his teacher, Frank Lloyd Wright. Whereas Wright was in the business of making extravagant single-family homes that were integrated with their natural environments, Soleri's book called for the rethinking of the entire concept of the city.

A crew of students makes designs in a mound of silt at Arcosanti. Concrete was then poured on this mound and the silt was removed to form a structure, in this case, a foundry.

Image: Ivan Pintar/Cosanti Foundation

"Soleri's notion of architecture and ecology in City in the Image of Man is not just an ecovillage surrounded by the natural landscape," Stein said. "It's a city that is so connected and so complex that it develops its own human ecology inside it. He was thinking of the city as the newest life form on the planet."

According to Stein, the book made a big splash in architecture circles and by the following year Soleri's ideas had generated enough traction to turn his theories into a living experiment. In 1970, Soleri and a handful of architectural students broke ground at Arcosanti, a city meant to house 5,000 people and the world's first experiment in arcology.

THE FUTURE OF ARCOLOGY

Today, Arcosanti is home to under 100 people and only a tiny fragment of the planned city has actually been built. This isn't to say that the project is a failure, however. Rather, it points to the magnitude of the problems that Soleri was challenging with his radical approach to architecture and urban planning.

"Soleri was confronting the American dream of big cars, and road building and single family houses and urban sprawl," Stein told me as we strolled around Arcosanti. "Cities are the biggest cultural artefact we make and he wanted to reconstitute the entirety of urban civilization."

At a time that the first mega shopping malls were cropping up across the United States, and just before Reagan's supply side policies revived American consumerism, Soleri was preaching about the virtues of restraint and thrift, minimalism and the pleasures of life that cannot be bought. For Stein, Soleri's emphasis on limits in an age of limitless expansion is part of the reason why his architectural ideas never really took root in the US. They seemed un-American.

The sky suite at Arcosanti, which is rented out to guests as an additional source of income.

Image: Daniel Oberhaus/Motherboard

Today, cities are built as thin "layers" over the Earth's surface, sprawling in every direction without much consideration for their impact on the natural environment they encroach upon. Cities and the buildings they consist of are ultimately beholden to the profit motive—the mental and emotional health of city dwellers, as well as the impact of the city on the environment are secondary considerations.

In Stein's view, our species is beginning to pay the price for our reckless urban development. In the US, for example, approximately one-fifth of our country's energy use can be attributed to industrial manufacturing, a lot of which is geared toward consumer products. Nearly a third is used by the transportation sector. As Stein was quick to point out, automobiles eat up a sizeable chunk of this energy consumption, even though most of this energy is being used to commute within cities, not between them. The other 50 percent of our energy consumption mostly goes toward the creation and maintenance of the buildings that comprise our cities. Most of this energy is for electricity, which is mostly used for lighting and air conditioning in residential and commercial buildings.

At the same time, our species' energy is overwhelmingly sourced from fossil fuels, the main driver of anthropogenic climate change. This climate change has had a number of devastating effects on communities all over the world, and is profoundly shaping contemporary urban existence. Already more than half of the world's population lives in an urban environment and the UN has documented a global trend of population movement from the country to the city.

A view of the foundry apse (bottom left) and the Vault (upper right).

Image: Yuki Yanagimoto/Cosanti Foundation

In some cases, this urban concentration is a direct result of the impact that climate change has had on rural populations' ability to farm, in other instances, these farmers' labor has been rendered obsolete by technology. Moreover, scientists are predicting a massive migration from coastal cities to inland urban environments as people flee neighborhoods that have succumbed to flooding and rising tides. In the United States alone, coastal flooding is estimated to displace over 13 million Americans by the end of the century.

In other words, if we're going to be able to handle the challenges presented by climate change-driven urbanization, we're going to have to radically rethink the city.

Soleri's notion of arcologies offers a stark alternative to the forces that are driving climate change and a solution to the problems it creates. By prioritizing ultra dense housing and efficient intracity travel, arcologies abolish the need for city roads and automobiles to traverse them. These cities operate on principles of minimal energy consumption and environmental destruction. They facilitate face to face human interaction and are designed to maximize the interaction between all residents in a city, rather than the ghettoization of certain populations in ways that prevent equitable access to resources.

Soleri's idea that the city is best conceived as a new type of biological organism may sound like the ravings of a crazed artist who spent a bit too much time alone in the desert. But in the last few decades, a number of systems theorists have arrived at similar conclusions by way of math and physics.

At the forefront of this new paradigm of urban planning is Geoffrey West, a theoretical physicist at the Santa Fe Institute who has spent much of his career looking how biological organisms and artificial systems like cities are able to scale effectively. West's insight is that nature has elegant organizational strategies for maximizing energy efficiency that can be mathematically described. These observations can be used as a guide for human urban planning if the city is thought of as a biological organism.

Stein praised West's work, but he said this thinking is still too niche in academia. "So far nobody connected with evolutionary biology has had anything to do with designing cities," he said.

In this sense, calling Arcosanti an "urban laboratory" is more than a flattering euphemism—it is a living experiment that is meant to confront a variety of academic disciplines with questions about how they can use their specialized knowledge to think about the way we inhabit space. In addition to a suite of artistic events, such as the annual Form music festival, Arcosanti regularly hosts university students in disciplines ranging from media studies to natural history in an effort to push the limits of what is possible with arcology ever further.

Today, Arcosanti is the closest thing to a real arcological city that exists in the US. For the most part, arcological innovation seems to be happening elsewhere.

Stein told me about a recent conference he attended in Australia dedicated to discussing ideas for the development of so-called "Ecocities." The conference had several hundred attendees from all over the world, only a small fraction of whom were Americans. He pointed to Singapore, a population-dense country where the Tiajin Eco-city serves as a sterling example of arcological principles being implemented at scale. Similar projects have been proposed with vary degrees of adoption elsewhere, although as Choire Sicha pointed out at The Awl, most of these projects have stalled out due to lack of funding.

Stein doesn't pretend that Soleri or Arcosanti hold all or even most of the solutions to Earth's environmental problems. According to Stein, many of Soleri's ideas would be prohibitively expensive to build. Still, they hold immense value insofar as they offer an alternative way to thinking about how we understand our relationship with the natural environment in the future.

As we finished our tour around Arcosanti, Stein told me that he doesn't like to use the word "sustainability" when he refers to the project. The reason, he said, is because this isn't about sustaining the cities we've already built, but challenging the assumptions that made them that way in the first place.

"We talk about transformation instead because there has to be a huge transformation in consciousness for anyone to think what we're doing is sustainable," Stein said. "The problems we're facing aren't going to be solved with more Toyota Priuses."

As I climbed into my car and began my slog back toward the heart of Phoenix's urban sprawl, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was traveling backward in time. I had seen the future at Arcosanti that afternoon, but as the five-lane freeway grew packed with vehicles in the evening rush hour and an endless stream of advertisements and headlights assaulted my senses, that future felt more remote than ever.

{ https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us }

Ancient Genetic Data Reshapes Theories About How Humans Populated the Earth

Human migration wasn't always consistent.

By Sarah Sloat

Humans have been leaving home in search for new opportunities for thousands of years, but their ancient migration patterns have always been somewhat difficult to trace. Until recently, the main clues researchers have used to map the historic flow of ancient humans have been artifacts and analyses of ancient bones, but these haven’t always given a clear picture of how humans populated the Earth.

On Monday, however, a team of United Kingdom-based geneticists and anthropologists reported in a Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciencesstudy that they’ve come up with a new method of mapping these routes that takes into account genetic data. Their new analysis suggests the migration of humans over the last 14,000 years is more complicated than scientists previously realized.

Co-author and Cambridge University professor Marta Mirazòn Lahr, Ph.D. said in a statement that old assumptions about the migration patterns of ancient humans are now being called into question. The study confirms a strong link between technological change and human mobility, but it also points out that that the hunter-gatherers who lived in Europe after the peak of the last Ice Age were far less mobile than previously believed, as Lahr explains:

These are fascinating results — we associate a hunting and gathering lifestyle with nomadism and high mobility, and the development of the first farming villages and towns with sedentary societies. Yet, early farmers were on the move in search of more and more land to match their progressively larger populations, while the post-glacial hunters seemed to have met their needs locally.

The new method, which required the creation of a 2D model that incorporated population dynamics data, confirms the theory that human migration has been on the rise since the beginning of the Holocene era (which began approximately 11,700 years ago) but suggests that it happened in “three distinct pulses,” rather than gradually.

The three major “pulses” of migration Lahr and her team identified matched up with the Neolithic period, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. The Neolithic period, which is when when agriculture and animal domestication first spread, saw a “well-known population expansion” that peaked around 7,500 years ago, the authors write. The other two peaks that the analysis identified were not as clearly defined by previous research: The peak during the Bronze Age, the period when complex civilizations in places like Mesopotamia and Egypt emerged and trade routes between Asia and Europe were established, happened about 5,000 years ago. The third migration pulse, the Iron Age, began around 3,200 years ago and witnessed a surge in European population sizes and global trade and warfare.

Because the new model was capable of creating spatiotemporally explicit simulation, the researchers were also able to compare the mobility of people between different time periods and different regions.

“One of the great features of this new method is that it can be used not only on genetic data, but also on the variation in the shape of ancient fossils,” explained co-author and University of Oxford graduate student Liisa Loog in a statement. “This means that the mathematical framework behind our method can easily be extended beyond the study of human movement: We can now explore changes in migration rates through time in animals are long extinct.”

Understanding ancient migration is particularly important for academics because it reveals not only how cultures are shaped by movement but explains how our current genetic profiles came to be. The authors hope that subsequent analysis of their findings will explain the variations of human genetic, morphological, and cultural traits. The Holocene era, which this model draws this data from, has witnessed the rise and fall of all human civilizations and is still the era we’re living in — and understanding the movements of our ancestors during this time will very likely help us understand ourselves better in the future.

If you liked this article, check out this video "Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past".

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

Last week, several people in Siberia reported a vaguely apocalyptic ball of light in the sky, which is both unsettling and on-brand for this year. While eyewitnesses thought the glowing sphere was the end of times or maybe even a UFO, the actual cause of the event might be something even more bizarre.

According to The Siberian Times, stargazers in the Yamalo-Nenets region of Russia had little explanation for what they were witnessing. Out of nowhere, a glowing circle seemed to appear in the sky like something from Twin Peaks: The Return.

One onlooker, Vasily Zubkov, said he was caught off-guard by the ominous orb and chalked it up to an impending doom. After waking up to a fresh hell every day this year, being eaten alive by a giant light wouldn’t even seem that unusual.

“I went out to smoke a cigarette and thought it was the end of the world,” he posted on the social media site VK.

Another VK user, Anastasia Boldyreva, put it more bluntly: “Aliens arrived.”

The Siberian Times @siberian_times

Reports of a giant glowing ball lighting the sky over Salekhard, the Yamal peninsula

 http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/reports-of-spectacular-ufo-signaled-by-a-giant-glowing-ball-lighting-the-sky-in-northern-siberia/ …

12:10 PM - Oct 27, 2017

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Obviously, the giant light ball wasn’t aliens or the apocalypse, but it was still something weird as hell. On October 26, Russia’s Ministry of Defense announced on Facebook that it had launched a Topol-M ballistic missile as part of a test mission. This, combined with some especially bright Northern Lights on display, could have accounted for the strange glow. Honestly, intercontinental missiles are much creepier than the other explanations.

While there hasn’t been any definite confirmation on what the glowing bubble was, we know what it definitely wasn’t: aliens. Please stop saying it’s aliens, you guys — if you keep talking about them like this they won’t ever visit.

If you liked this article, check out this video of an expert look at xenomorph biology from Alien.

Photos via Getty Images / Dean Mouhtaropoulos

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A Timeline for Humanity’s Colonization of Space

by Victor Tangermann 

 

SpaceX

Humans have long desired to explore the vast realms of space. Today, we are finally poised to send people out into the cosmos. Indeed, a number of private and public space companies are gearing up for Space Race 2.0 — a (very expensive) competition that inches us closer to uncovering answers about our universe and exploring new realms of our own humanity.

Though they are still in the race, shifting priorities and limited budgets have undermined NASA’s lead in exploring the solar system and beyond. In the meantime, private entities like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are flush with cash, and they are stepping up to try and engineer better, bigger, and faster rockets.

And this is a good thing because, if humans are to find life on other planets, or perhaps a new planet for ourselves, more work needs to be done. Engineers and scientists need to develop life support systems, find reliable sources of water and fuel, overcome the negative effects living in space has on the body, and find a faster way to travel.

There is still much to be done, but sending the average person to the Moon and beyond no longer seems so far out of reach. Yet, when will it finally happen? When will humans finally roam across an alien world? Here’s a comprehensive timeline of our future beyond Earth.

Late 2017: Heavy Falcon Launch

SpaceX plans to launch the Falcon Heavy for the first time before the end of 2017. Because the rocket can be reused, the Falcon Heavy rocket can deliver its payload into space at only a third of the cost of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy. This lower upfront cost means that more organizations can carry out experiments in outer space. One of these experiments is the Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 solar sail that will launch on board a Heavy Falcon in early 2018.

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket lives up to its name. 27 rocket engines weigh down the 70-meter (229-foot), 1.4-metric-ton (3.1-million-pound) rocket. That’s a lot of extra weight, but the payload makes it worthwhile — the rocket can launch 63,800 kg (140,660 lbs) of equipment, cargo, and passengers into orbit around Earth. That’s more than double the weight that the Space Shuttle can haul to the same altitude.

2018: Preparing for Space Tourism

In 2018, SpaceX plans to launch more than ever before, sending 30 rockets into orbit (up from 20 in 2017). More attempts give the company more data to show how it can perfect its technology to launch rockets cheaply and securely. Eventually, this inexpensive and safe spaceflight will make space tourism finally viable. In fact, just this year, SpaceX announced that they would be sending two humans to orbit the Moon in 2018.

Image Credit: Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic is gearing up to launch its first astronauts into space before the end of February 2018. Before it launches with passengers on board, though, the spacecraft will have to undergo a series of test flights.

The space plane, called the VSS Unity, completed its fifth ‘glide flight’ (distinct from the vertical trajectory of traditional space rockets) earlier in 2017. In the first months of 2018, it will be taking flights closer to the Karaman line, the official border between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space located 100 km (62 miles) above the Earth’s surface.

Image Credit: Planetary Society

Around that same time in early 2018, scientists will test the LightSail 2, a device that moves through space by harnessing the power of solar photons — no fuel tanks or thrusters required. The LightSail 2, a citizen-funded spacecraft and created by the Planetary Society (the largest nonprofit organization that promotes the exploration of outer space), would be a proof of concept that solar sailing could propel spacecraft deeper into space. The unmanned, light-propelled spacecraft will hitch a ride on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket before taking its test flight at an altitude of 720 km (447.4 miles).

2019: Space Tourism and Observation

Image Credit: Blue Origin

Blue Origin, the spaceflight services company started by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, recently announced that it intends to take tourists to space before April 2019. In groups of six, passengers will board an 18-meter (60-foot) rocket to the edge of space, around 100 km (62 miles) from the Earth’s surface. Once there, they will experience zero-gravity flight. Three independent parachutes and a retro-thrust system ensure that passengers will gently sail back to Earth. This experience does not come cheap — a ticket to board the New Glenn to reach Earth orbit is rumored to cost anywhere between $150,000 and $250,000. And, yet, there’s little question that people will want to sign up — Virgin Galactic, a competing space tourism project, reportedly already has 700 people signed up.

In 2019, Blue Origin plans to add two- and three-stage rockets to its arsenal. They are fully reusable, up to 99 meters (326 feet) tall, and can deliver payloads at a relatively low cost, competing with SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rockets.

Image Credit: NASA

NASA also intends to launch its James Webb Telescope in the first quarter of 2019. The telescope will observe the solar system in the infrared to see every phase of the solar system’s maturation; it will ultimately be 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope, thanks to its array of 18 hexagonal mirror segments. With a combined mirror diameter of 6.5 meters (the Hubble measures in at only 2.4), the James Webb Telescope will be able to detect events such as the formation of galaxies dating back to the time of the Big Bang. It will also have a special focus on discovering new planets that could be capable of supporting life.

2020-2025: “Earth Reliant” and Beyond

From finding evidence of liquid water to detecting organic matter in the soil of the Red Planet’s surface, the Curiosity rover has answered some fundamental questions about what it’s like on Mars.

However, that information has also sparked more questions about what other elements may be present. To this end, in an effort to establish whether oxygen is present in the Martian atmosphere, and at what concentration, Curiosity’s successor, the Mars 2020 rover, will be saddled with a host of sensors and instruments that will allow it to answer this question. Information about oxygen concentration will be important if humans are ever able to visit the Red Planet themselves, which could be possible as early as 2030.

There are other things that need to happen if we’re going to colonize other planets. NASA has established three phases that we need to complete before this is possible. In the first, which NASA calls “Earth Reliant,” we continue to test the feasibility of living in space and conduct more research aboard the ISS. In the second (“Proving Ground”), operations around the Moon will be used to establish ways to return humans to the Earth safely. With those stages complete, we will finally reach the third stage (“Earth Independent”) in which humans establish a self-sufficient colony on Mars.

Image Credit: NASA

Just over 50 years after humans first touched the lunar surface, NASA is gearing up to launch another manned spacecraft to go beyond the Moon. The astronauts will be on board a ship called the Orion, which will lift off using NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), a modular heavy launch vehicle. SLS is similar to SpaceX’s Heavy Falcon and has a maximum payload of 70 to 130 metric tons (150,000 to 290,000 lbs).

First, though, the spacecraft will do a few test runs without any humans on board. The first mission, Exploration Mission-1, is slated for late 2018. The SLS will launch the unmanned craft, travel to the Moon, enter orbit about 100 km (62 miles) above the lunar surface, and use gravity to propel itself into deep, unexplored space. The goal of this mission is to see if the craft can help humans survive a trip to distant planets.

The second mission (Exploration Mission-2), planned for August 2021, will be NASA’s first manned test flight beyond the Moon. “During this mission, we have a number of tests designed to demonstrate critical functions, including mission planning, system performance, crew interfaces, and navigation and guidance in deep space,” Bill Hill, the deputy associated administrator of Exploration Systems Development at NASA Headquarters said in a 2016 NASA blog.

To gain enough momentum to make the trip around the Moon, the spacecraft will have to make multiple orbits around Earth, occasionally igniting its thrusters. During its stable orbit of the Moon, the Orion will gather data and test the spacecraft’s capabilities for interplanetary flight.

2022: Making Mars Habitable

While NASA spends the 2020s exploring how to best keep humans healthy in space, SpaceX plans to start putting down the infrastructure for humans to colonize it. SpaceX anticipates completing its first 54.6-million-km (33.9-million-mile) trip to Mars in 2022.

Image Credit: SpaceX

In his update earlier this year, Elon Musk revealed plans for a rocket that is far bigger and more powerful than NASA’s Space Launch System and even his agency’s own Falcon Heavy — the BFR. A rocket that big would have enough space for fuel to take humans to Mars, or even allow for Earth-based city-to-city travel.

With a maximum payload of 150 tons, the enormous 106-meter (347.7-feet) rocket would break the current record for biggest payload (including cargo, fuel, and passengers) launched into orbit, while providing the lowest cost for each additional launch.

To reach the Moon, the BFR would launch from the Earth’s surface, transfer propellant from fuel depots previously stationed in Earth’s orbit, accelerate in orbit, pick up an injection of fuel for the remaining distance to the lunar surface on the way, and land. SpaceX plans to refuel the rocket once it is in orbit in order to extend its range and payload capacity so that it can return safely to Earth.

Tests have already shown that it’s possible to refuel rockets in space. NASA conducted the Robotic Refueling Mission in 2011, and it successfully completed a robot-actuated propellant transfer on an exposed platform of the International Space Station.

Image Credit: SpaceX

By 2022, SpaceX expects to land at least two cargo ships on Mars in order to establish a habitat for humans. The primary goal of those initial missions is to find a reliable source of water on the Martian surface.

2024: Manned Missions on the BFR

Image Credit: SpaceX

Two years after those cargo ships establish an infrastructure, SpaceX plans to send humans to inhabit a colony on Mars. The passengers aboard the BFR’s 40-cabin Mars transit module will be the first to make the unprecedented trip.

This is, Musk would probably admit, an aggressive timeline. And it may not work in SpaceX’s favor: Due to planetary alignments and other factors such as solar power requirements and fuel limitations, the launch window of Earth-Mars travel is only a few weeks, according to Wired. And that’s assuming that all the other pieces fall perfectly into place — neither the BFR nor its predecessor, the Falcon Heavy, has yet had a successful launch.

Should the BFR mission make it to Mars, it will contain the materials to construct a propellant production plant as part of its Martian colony. The plan would suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into deep-cryo CO4 fuel using  solar power.

2025-2030: A Year in Space

Image Credit: NASA

SpaceX might be ready to send humans to live in space by the early 2020s, but NASA is a little more cautious. The government space agency is planning to put astronauts into orbit for a year to find out if humans are indeed ready to live on a different planet.

In March 2016, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly completed a similar year-long missionaboard the ISS to test the effects of zero gravity on the human body and what that will mean for future space travel to Mars. Unlike Kelly’s mission, however, NASA’s 2021 mission will put astronauts in orbit around the Moon. They’ll be in a “deep-space gateway” — a small ISS-like station that will serve as a testing ground for future deep space missions, including later missions to Mars. It will be built over five earlier missions, four of them with humans aboard. The effects of spending a year in lunar orbit on the human body, caused by factors such as different day-night cycles and solar radiation, are still unknown.

2030s: NASA Sends Humans to Mars

Five years after SpaceX’s manned missions to Mars, NASA plans to send its own spacecraft to the Red Planet. Using data and samples from the Curiosity and Mars 2020 rovers, NASA will first establish how humans could sustain themselves on the Martian surface before sending manned spacecraft from its deep-space gateway to do so.

{ https://futurism.com/ }

Kepler finds 20 NEW potentially habitable alien planets similar to Earth

There could be more habitable planets out there than we think. A new analysis of data obtained by the Kepler space telescope has revealed 20 alien world candidates capable of harboring life as we know it.

The updated list includes several planets that orbit stars like our sun. Some have relatively long orbital periods, similar to Earth’s, and others much shorter, only months or Earth weeks.

“The exoplanet where the year lasts longer, exactly 395 Earth days, is just one of the most promising,” said Jeff Coughlin, Kepler’s team author of the finding.

Called KOI-7923.01 (Kepler Object of Interest), the alien world is 97 percent the size of the Earth, but it has a slightly cooler average temperature, mainly due to the distance it maintains with its star, which is also not as hot as our sun.

However, the latter does not represent an impediment to the existence of liquid water on its surface, something essential for life as we know it.

‘If you had to choose one to send a spacecraft to, it’s not a bad option,’ Jeff Coughlin, a Kepler team lead who helped find the potential planets, told New Scientist.

This means that KOI-7923.01 is has a landscape more similar to tundra regions on Earth, than temperate ones. However, it’s still warm enough and large enough to hold liquid water on its surface, reports New Scientists.

Astronomers cataloged the new planets using a new tool called Robovetter, which has the ability to automatically analyze what the Kepler Space Telescope has found.

“The catalog contains 8054 KOIs of which 4034 are planet candidates with periods between 0.25 and 632 days. Of these candidates, 219 are new in this catalog and include two new candidates in multi-planet systems (KOI-82.06 and KOI-2926.05), and ten new high-reliability, terrestrial-size, habitable zone candidates,” wrote astronomers in the new study available at arXiv.org.

In order to be 100 percent sure, researchers need to perform follow-up studies to confirm the above-mentioned candidates.

Kepler has made stunning discoveries.

Earlier this year, the Kepler space telescope located 219 exoplanet candidates, and ten could be habitable. During a press briefing in early 2017 at NASA’s Ames Research Center, astronomers reveled what is considered as the ‘most reliable’ catalog of potentially habitable worlds in our galaxy, bringing the total number to 4,034.

Astronomers say that more than 2,300 planets spotted during the Kepler missions have been confirmed, including more than 30 Earth-sized planets that are located in the so-called Goldilocks Zone’ of their host star.

The newly released catalog features the results from Kepler’s final survey made from the Constellation of Cygnus and includes the spacecraft’s first four years of data.

From the 4,034 candidates that have been spotted by astronomers, 2,335 have been verified.

These results could eventually prove helpful as a guide in the search for alien life, say scientists, saying that the lis offers ‘the most complete and reliable accounting of distant worlds to date.’

‘This new result presented today has implications for understanding the frequency of different types of planets and galaxies, and helping us to advance our knowledge on how planets are formed,’ said Mario Perez, Kepler program scientist in the Astrophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, during the conference.

(H/T New Scientist)

Source:

NASA

arXiv: Planetary Candidates Observed by Kepler. VIII. A Fully Automated Catalog With Measured Completeness and Reliability Based on Data Release 25

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Astronomers have just made a fascinating discovery on Jupiter

An international team of researchers has discovered that Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, also has austral auroras (south) and that, against all odds, they act independently of the northern ones (Borealis), according to a study published in Nature Astronomy.

Researchers from ESA and NASA have discovered that unlike Earth’s polar lights, the intense auroras seen at Jupiter’s poles unexpectedly behave independently of one another. Jupiter’s northern auroras are erratic and “do not coincide in behavior, neither in intensity nor in frequency with those found on Jupiter’s southern pole”

Auroras are planetary phenomena that take place when the wind of energetic particles of a star collides with the magnetic field of a planet (magnetosphere).

Using ESA’s XMM.Newton and NASA’s Chandra X-Ray space observatories, astronomers were able to observe high-energy X-Rays produced by the auroras on each of Jupiter’s poles.

Experts found that the southern auroras on Jupiter pulse every 11 minutes consistently, while those at the planet’s northern pole flared chaotically.

“These auroras don’t seem to act in unison like those that we’re often familiar with here on Earth,” says lead author William Dunn of University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UK, and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, USA.

via GIPHY

“We thought the activity would be coordinated through Jupiter’s magnetic field, but the behavior we found is really puzzling.

“It’s stranger still considering that Saturn – another gas giant planet – doesn’t produce any X-ray auroras that we can detect, so this throws up a couple of questions that we’re currently unsure how to answer.

“Firstly, how does Jupiter produce bright and energetic X-ray auroras at all when its neighbor doesn’t, and secondly, how does it do so independently at each pole?”

This finding raises numerous questions about how auroras occur through the universe. Interestingly, Jupiter’s independently pulsing auroras indicate that astronomers have a long way to go in order to understand how the planet itself produces some of its most energetic emissions, reports the European Space Agency.

via GIPHY

“Charged particles have to hit Jupiter’s atmosphere at exceptionally fast speeds in order to generate the X-ray pulses that we’ve seen. We don’t yet understand what processes cause this, but these observations tell us that they act independently in the northern and southern hemispheres,” adds Licia Ray, from Lancaster University, UK, and a co-author.

Future studies of Jupiter’s auroras will help shed light on the phenomena produced on the gas giants poles.

In the next two years, astronomers are planning on more X-Ray observational campaigns using XMM-Newton and Chandra, and observations from NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which started orbiting Jupiter in mid-2016.

In addition to the above, ESA’s Juice Spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter by 2029, and will investigate not only the Gas giant atmosphere and magnetosphere, but will also observe its auroras and the effect they cause on the Galilean Moons.

“This is a breakthrough finding, and it couldn’t have been done without ESA’s XMM-Newton,” adds Norbert Schartel, ESA project scientist for XMM-Newton.

“The space observatory was critical to this study, providing detailed data at a high spectral resolution such that the team could explore the vibrant colors of the auroras and figure out details about the particles involved: if they’re moving fast, whether they’re an oxygen or sulfur ion, and so on.

“Coordinated observations like these, with telescopes such as XMM-Newton, Chandra and Juno working together, are key in exploring and further understanding environments and phenomena across the Universe, and the processes that produce them.”

(H/T ESA)

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IS PLANET EARTH BEING TERRAFORMED BY NON-HUMANS?

Some things happening on planet earth today just don’t make sense if you’re looking at them from the perspective of an ordinary human being.

WHAT REASONS DO OUR SPACE VISITORS BRING TO EARTH?

Scientific interest, tourism, curiosity? This question is one of the most important and most implausible questions in the study and understanding of Ufology.  

Scholars from around the world are divided into trends or currents of thought about what would be the reason why aliens are appearing on our planet. Some ardently defend the thesis that our visitors would be a kind of cosmic brothers coming to Earth to warn us of an impending cataclysm and about to decimate the humanity of the universal map.

MALICIOUS OR BENEVOLENT?

Certain proponents of this theory even imagine that these same beings would promote an evacuation of our planet. Other ufologists believe that aliens have an evil essence and that they are coming to Earth only to get what they need - cells, blood and even human and animal organs. The more radical researchers of this idea also argue that abductions, so abundant all over the world, are the means by which visitors satisfy even their sexual appetite, without the least compassion for us.  

RELATED ARTICLES

• Alien Expert: We Are Now Sharing Our Planet With a NEW Species of HUMANS
• Researchers believe that Humans Originated From Another Planet 

  Ufo mania  

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VLIEGTUIG HEEFT AANVARING MET UFO  OP 30.000 VOET ( VIDEO ) 

Afgelopen vrijdagavond vliegt het basketbalteam van de Oklahoma City Thunder met een gecharterd vliegtuig van Delta Airlines naar Chicago.

Wat een routinevlucht had moeten worden, werd een toch opzienbarende gebeurtenis met een aanvaring met een onbekend object op 30.000 voet hoogte.

De Oklahoma City Thunder is een basketbalteam uit Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ze spelen in de NBA (Northwest Division, Western Conference). Het thuishonk van de Thunder is de Oklahoma City Arena. 

Afgelopen vrijdagavond speelden ze een wedstrijd in Minneapolis met een gecharterde Boeing 757 van Delta Airlines terug naar Chicago.

Alles is goed totdat het toestel iets raakte op een hoogte van 30.000 voet (9,1 kilometer hoogte).

Het vliegtuig landde veilig in Chicago en er waren geen gewonden. Na de landing zag de neus van het toestel er zo uit.

Delta Airlines is met een officiële verklaring gekomen en zegt dat het vliegtuig tijdens de landing werd geraakt door een vogel.

Dit terwijl de spelers zeggen dat er een botsing plaatsvond op een hoogte van 30.000 voet. De spelers van Oklahoma City Thunder vliegen wekelijks en zij zijn echt wel in staat om te bepalen of een vliegtuig op kruishoogte vliegt of dat de landing is ingezet.

Het lijkt er dan ook op dat Delta Airlines de werkelijke reden voor die enorme deuk niet bekend wil maken, tenzij ook de vliegers geen idee hebben wat ze op die hoogte hebben geraakt.

Als het vliegtuig zich inderdaad op 30.000 voet bevond ten tijde van de aanvaring, dan was het zeker geen vogel. De schade lijkt ook te groot om veroorzaakt te kunnen worden door een vogel. 

 

We hebben eerder geschreven over nog een incident wat hier heel veel op lijkt:

Volgens de onderstaande video uit Zuid Amerika gaat het wel degelijk af en toe mis. 

Zo vertellen ze het verhaal van wat er gebeurde op 15 mei 2015 met een Boeing 777 van Aeromexico. 

Dit toestel vertrok die dag om half acht ’s avonds voor een vlucht naar Madrid in Spanje. Ongeveer anderhalf uur na vertrek besloot de bemanning onverwacht een noodlanding te maken in Cancun omdat ze zeiden dat er storingen optraden in het elektrische systeem. 

Na de landing in Cancun nam een passagier een foto van het toestel dat er toen zo uit zag:

Volgens de onderstaande video heeft dit vliegtuig een botsing gehad met een onbekend vliegend object; een UFO dus. 

De officiële versie van het verhaal is dat ze al direct na vertrek een blikseminslag hadden waardoor de schade ontstond en er eveneens problemen waren met het elektrische systeem. 

 

De botsing van de 777 met een onbekend object lijkt veel op die die een vliegtuig van Air China twee jaar geleden had en waar wij toen het volgende over schreven: 

De vlucht was in de vroege ochtend van 4 juni vertrokken van Chengdu naar Guangzhou. Het vertrek van de Boeing 757 verliep zonder problemen. Twintig minuten na take-off, terwijl ze zich op een hoogte bevinden van 26.000 voet, krijgt de verkeersleiding een noodoproep van het toestel en wordt besloten een noodlanding te maken in Shunagliu. 

Deze verliep zonder problemen en er werd de passagiers meegedeeld dat een en ander het gevolg was van een technisch mankement. Echter, direct na het incident had één van de passagiers de tegenwoordigheid van geest om enkele foto’s te maken.

De officiële verklaring kwam al vrij snel daarna: het was een vogel geweest. Als we dan kijken naar de grootte van de toegebrachte schade, dan moet het wel een enorme vogel zijn geweest. Een die bovendien iets van een soort verfstrepen heeft achtergelaten.

Een vogelaanvaring bij deze vlucht is uitgesloten omdat én het vliegtuig daarvoor te hoog vloog én omdat er geen sporen zijn gevonden op het vliegtuig zoals bloedspetters of veren. 

{ http://niburu.co/ }

Alleged UFO Encounter Captured By F-18 from Carrier Strike Group 11 Near San Diego

On November 14, 2004, numerous aviators and seaman from the USS Nimitz carrier battle group were witness to events that demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt the existence of advanced airborne technologies far superior to anything America presently deploys.

The government has long covered up these kinds of UFO incidents, asking service personnel to not discuss the details but the case of the USS Nimitz and a UFO encounter its crew had on November 14, 2004 have since been independently confirmed by two former senior Pentagon officials, Christopher Mellon and Luis Elizondo, who have spoken directly to some of the pilots involved, read more here.

Below: Extract taken from the Official Navy event document 2004.

1. Fast Eagles (F-18 110/100) upon take off were vectored by Princetown and Banger to intercept unid contact. Princeton informed fast eagles that the contact was moving at 100 KTS - 25KFT ASL.

2. Fast Eagles (110/100) could not find unid airborne contact at location given by Princetown. While searching for unid air contact, Fast Eagles spotted large unid object in water at 1430L. Pilots saw steam/smoke/churning around object. Pilot describes object initially as resembling a downed airliner, also stated that it was much larger than a submarine.

3. While descending from 24K FT to gain better view of the unid contact in the water, Fast Eagle 110 sighted an airborne contact which appeared to be capsule shaped (wingless, mobile, white, oblong pill shaped, 25-30 Feet in length, no visible markings and no glass) 5NM west from position of unid in water.

4. Capsule (UFO) passed under Fast Eagle 110 then Fast Eagle 110 began turn to acquire capsule. While 110 descending and turning, capsule began climbing and turned inside of Fast Eagle’s turn radius.

5. Pilot estimated that capsule achieved 600-700 KTS. The 110 could not keep up with the rate of turn and the gain of altitude by the capsule. 110 lost visual ID of capsule in haze. Last visual contact had capsule at 14 KFT heading due east.

6. Fast Eagle 100 was flying high cover and saw the engagement by Fast Eagle 110 and confirms 110 visual ID. 100 lost contact in haze as well.

This infrared video was allegedly captured from one of the F-18’s (Fast Eagles 100/110) from the U.S. Navy USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group-1, involved in the UFO incident. This video was leaked online by an unknown source, but was confirmed to be real by someone with inside knowledge of the incident according to OpenMindsTV.

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

Huge Light Beam appears to shoot from UFO at high altitude above Melbourne, Australia

On October 30, 2017 UFOLou recorded an intense flash in the sky above Melbourne, Australia.

The flash is quite strange, only lasts a millisecond and looks like a distant laser, but not originating from the ground.

Although some people suggest that it is an atmospheric phenomenon like a fireball/meteor, you can see a rectangular-shaped object at the bottom of the flash. See image above.

The flash/laser/light beam starts at 2.35 minutes in the video.

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

'Glowing ball' UFO sparks fears of apocalypse and alien invasion after illuminating night sky with spectacular light show

According to witnesses, the glowing ball rose from behind trees and resembled "a portal to another dimension"

Will Stewart

A giant UFO resembling an enormous glowing ball lit up the night sky, sparking fears of an alien invasion or the end of days.

The huge mass of light illuminated the sky in northern Siberia, Russia, last night.

Within minutes, witnesses were speaking of "aliens arriving" and the "end of the world".

The extraordinary scenes were captured by photographer Sergey Anisimov in the town of Salekhard, which straddles the Arctic Circle.

He said: "I was taken aback for a few minutes, not understanding what was happening.

"The glowing ball rose from behind the trees and moved in my direction.

"My first thought was about the most powerful searchlight, but the speed of changing everything around changed the idea of what was happening.

"The ball began to turn into an arc and gradually dissipated."

He later returned home to find local children talking about the multi-coloured light show, citing "aliens" and a "portal to another dimension".

Some 520 miles further east, another photographer, Alexey Yakovlev, admitted feeling scared as he witnessed the UFO in Strezhevoi, in the north of Tomsk region, reported The Siberian Times .

"At first I thought, it was such a radiance of such an unusual form, round in shape.

"But gradually the ball began to expand, it became clear that this is not some radiance - and it became scary.

"It's good that I was not alone - a group of people cannot hallucinate."

On social media, witness Vasily Zubkov said: "I went out to smoke a cigarette and thought it was the end of the world."

Anastasia Boldyreva added: "Aliens arrived."

"It's a gap in the space-time continuum," claimed Nurgazy Taabaldiev.

The Russian defence ministry confirmed there was an unusual object flying at high speed over northern Siberia.

But experts have suggested there were two reasons for the eerie spectacle in the Siberian night sky.

The first was that a vivid display of the Northern Lights, also known as aurora borealis, was under way.

This would explain why photographers were out watching the sky when the UFO appeared.

The second theory is that Russian President Vladimir Putin was attempting to frighten the West with grandiose military exercises by his strategic nuclear forces.

Missiles tests were under way from submarines and aircraft last night, and the exercises included the launch of a super-powerful Topol rocket from Plesetsk cosmodrome, 550 miles north of Moscow.

From a mobile launcher, it was successfully aimed at the Kura testing range in Kamchatka on the country's Pacific coast.

It was the the trace of this rocket - capable of carrying nuclear missiles - that caused this extraordinary phenomenon in the night sky, say the Russian media.

Photographer Yakovlev accurately speculated: "It seems I accidentally shot the launch of a secret space rocket from Plesetsk."

The launch was then confirmed by the defence ministry in Moscow. Other missiles were launched from a submarine and aircraft.

{ http://www.mirror.co.uk/ }

A Giant Discovery That Overshadows the Pyramids of Giza: Long-Lost Pyramids Confirmed in Egypt

The Long Lost Ancient Egyptian Pyramids that overshadow the Pyramids at the Giza Plateau seem to be a reality. These so-called lost Pyramids could change the entire history of Ancient Egypt.

The mysterious ‘pyramids’ discovered in 2012 by American researcher Angela Micol were dismissed at first by many as being only sandy mounds and not man-made structures in the desert. But 34 rare, antique maps might prove these structures, re-discovered in 2012 might be Pyramids larger than those found at the Giza Plateau. According to satellite imagery, one of the monuments is three times the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

“It has emerged these formations are labeled as pyramids on several old and rare maps,” Micol told Discovery News.

These structures could outshadow the Pyramids of the Giza Plateau

According to Micol, the site where the monuments were found includes a 620 ft-wide triangular plateau which is believed to be nearly three times the size of the best-known Ancient Egyptian Pyramid.

This has not been the first time the archaeological community has dismissed huge discoveries. It seems that every once in a while, when a history changing discovery is made somewhere on the planet, it is quickly dismissed by scholars as being unimportant or fake. The best example of that are the Bosnian Pyramid located in Visoko.

Not long ago, the discovery of the giant Underground Ancient Egyptian labyrinth had similar problems with mainstream scholars and governments who decided to maintain the discovery a secret.

“The images speak for themselves,” Micol said when she first announced her findings. “It’s very obvious what the sites may contain, but field research is needed to verify they are, in fact, pyramids.”

While authoritative scholars have remained skeptical about the finding and dismissed the ‘structures’ as “Google Earth Anomalies” evidence has surfaced which supports Micol’s findings.

“After the buzz simmered down, I was contacted by an Egyptian couple who claimed to have important historical references for both sites,” Micol said.

The couple where Medhat Kamal El-Kady, former ambassador to the Sultanate of Oman, and his wife Haidy Farouk Abdel-Hamid, a lawyer, former counselor at the Egyptian presidency and adviser of border issues and international issues of sovereignty who happened to be collectors of ancient maps, old documents, books and other rare historical documents.

According to Micol, three maps dating from 1753 to the late 1880s show the existence of the pyramids

The story gets extremely interesting here. According to Medhat Kamal El-Kady and Haidy Farouk Abdel-Hamid the formations discovered by Micol near Abu Sdihum are labeled as being Pyramids in several ancient maps of the region.

“For this case only, we have more than 34 maps and 12 old documents, mostly by scientists and senior officials of irrigation,” El-Kady and Farouk told Discovery News.

According to the couple, there are at least three maps that verify Micol’s findings:

Amap which dates back to 1753, made by Robert de Vaugoudy.

A rare map made by Napoleon Bonaparte’s Engineers.

And a map by Major Brown, which dates back to the 1880’s. 

Interestingly, there are several ancient documents that prove the mounds discovered by Micol are in fact ancient pyramids, which were buried in an attempt to hide their existence forever.

Even though the site hasn’t been investigated properly by archaeologists who remain extremely skeptical about the finding, according to Mohamed Aly Soliman, one of the individuals who visited the site near Abu Sidhum stated that these mounds were built with different layers that do not belong the surrounding landscape, meaning that these were artificial structures made by ancient Egyptians and not natural formations as many have dismissed.

“Those mounds are definitely hiding an ancient site below them,” Mohamed Aly Soliman, who led the preliminary expedition near Abu Sidhum, told Discovery News.

“First of all, the land around them is just a normal flat land. It is just desert — sand and stones,” he said. “The mounds are different: You will find pottery everywhere, seashells and transported layers. These are different layers, not belonging to the place, and were used by the Egyptians to hide and protect their buried sites,” he said.

“Describing himself as “one of the many Egyptians obsessed with the pharaohs’ civilization,” Aly has a background as a private investigator and has been studying to identify archaeological sites in Egypt.

“If we look back in history we will find that pharaohs were using seashells in building their tombs and pyramids for ventilation purpose,” Aly said.

According to legends, the area near the pyramids is said to harbor ancient secrets and contain ‘great magic’.

If the discovery proves to be a genuine Pyramid, it would be the largest ever discovered in Egypt, making it an unprecedented discovery in the history of mankind.

‘The images speak for themselves. It’s very obvious what the sites may contain, but field research is needed to verify they are, in fact, pyramids,’ said Micol

Source Source Source

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

FACEBOOKER RECORDS A CRYSTAL CLEAR VIDEO OF MULTIPLE UFOS WHILE DRIVING THROUGH THE DESERT IN ARIZONA

Yesterday, a gentleman named Mauricio Morales posted some remarkable pictures on the internet that ended up going fairly viral across social media.They were snaps of Unidentified Flying Objects(UFOs, which does not mean they are extraterrestrial in origin).

That being said, don’ t be fooled, there is a tremendous amount of evidence pointing toward the fact that some of these UFOs, whose presence were officially acknowledged within the mainstream using declassified documents and hundreds of high ranking military / political whistleblowers, are indeed extraterrestrial in origin.

There is ample evidence suggesting that many are‘ ours’ as well.

We’ ve written about this quite extensively, and
if you want to learn more about that and sift through all of the evidence we’ ve accumulated over the past 8 years, please visit the exopolitics section of our website here.Another great place to start is with UFO researcher Richard Dolan.

Here’ s Morales’ statement on what he experienced from his Facebook post:

“As I was driving back to Phoenix this evening, I was a few miles past Parker, AZ when I saw a shooting star with a green hue in the corner of my eye.I kept driving
for a few miles and noticed a small orange light far in the distance to my right.At firstI thought that maybe a meteor had hit nearby and set a fire in the desert or possibly a distant antenna light.

I didn’ t quite think much of it and continued to drive for another three miles.I noticed that the light was gone.I drove another half of a mile and I saw the light appear again.This is when I realized that whatever this was, wasn’ t normal.

I was about a quarter of a mile from the crossing between Highway 72 and Highway 95 between Parker and Quartzsite, Arizona.

I immediately pulled over and attached my camera to my tripod.To my SW direction, there were six orange-red lights floating around in the horizon.Some of them would die out and then brighten back up, others just seemed to float and hover away slowly.They seemed to travel in a parallel pattern with a very bright fiery glisten.I took photos and videos and in less than 15 minutes, the mysterious objects vanished without a trace.

All of the photographs are timestamped and are not edited whatsoever.The video is slightly cropped for better viewing.

Whatever this was, I have never seen anything like this in my life before.Super cool experience.

*UPDATE * 4 / 11 / 17 11: 22 pm
I have noticed that my camera’s clock is set 8 minutes ahead.Which means that the time stamps are all 8 minutes ahead.I also saw a video of the same exact thing but from the opposite end in El Centro, CA.That means that whatever this was, it was visible
for at least 100 miles.

ABC15 is reporting that the photos were part of the meteor.They were not.The meteor struck about 10 minutes before I pulled over on HWY 95 and got footage of these lights.The difference in lighting you see in the photos is because I was using different settings to get a more visible photo of what they were.”

Some Recent Video Footage

Below is some footage from Dr.Steven Greer, founder of The Disclosure Project and the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence(CSETI).Known to some as the“ Father of the Disclosure Movement, ”he was instrumental in bringing forth hundreds of military whistleblowers of all ranks, with verified backgrounds, to share their experiences and testify on the UFO / extraterrestrial phenomenon.

He has ha d high – level meetings within the Pentagon about this issue, and that was confirmed( in his documentary Sirius Disclosure) by Apollo 14 astronaut and the 6 thman to walk on the Moon, Dr.Edgar Mitchell.

“Yes there has been a crashed craft, and bodies recovered….We are not alone in the universe, they have been coming here for a long time….I happen to be privileged enough to be in on the fact that we have been visited on this planet, and the UFO phenomenon is real.”

–Doctor Edgar Mitchell, 6 the man to walk on the moon(source)

Twin Ships Witnessed – Vero Beach FL – January 27, 2015, from Sirius Disclosure on Vimeo.

“Intelligent beings from other star systems have been and are visiting our planet Earth. They are variously referred to as Visitors, Others, Star People, Et’s, etc…They are visiting Earth now; this is not a matter of conjecture or wishful thinking. – Theodor C. Loder III, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences, University of New Hampshire (source)

When it comes to real footage of UFOs (unidentified flying objects), a film from the 1991 NASA STS-48 Discovery Space Shuttle mission definitely ranks as some of the best. This footage is real and well-documented and has been the subject of a rigorous scientific investigation by multiple researchers and institutions. (1)(2)(3)

Why Are So Many People Interested In UFOs?

The top google searchers every single year always show UFOs and extraterrestrials as a hot topic.Every year, the masses seem to become more and more curious, which is also evident from the fact that the most viewed file in the FBI vault deals with a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft and bodies.You can access that file and read more about it here.

Perhaps it’ s the secrecy around this subject that is really grinding people’ s gears and sparking their curiosity.It’ s human nature to explore the unknown, and when information is kept from us, there will inevitably be backlash.

“This thing has gotten so highly – classified… it is just impossible to get anything on it.I have no idea who controls the flow of need – to – know because, frankly, I was told in such an emphatic way that it was none of my business that I’ ve never tried to make it to be my business since.I have been interested in this subjectfor a long time and I do know that whatever the Air Force has on the subject is going to remain highly classified.”–Senator Barry Goldwater, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee(source)

“Behind the scenes, high ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs.But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.”Former head of CIA, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, 1960(source)

Or perhaps, it’ s just like NASA astronaut and Princeton physics professor Dr.Brian O’ leary said, “there is abundant evidence that we are being contacted, that civilizations have been visiting us for a very long time.”(source)

We are definitely living in one of the most interesting times in human history.The birth of the industrial, scientific and technological / information revolutions brought with them a host of problems.One of these problems, as President Eisenhower, JFK and dozens of other presidents and politicians warned us about in the past, is the fact that a powerful group of people and the corporations they run, headed by the big banks, have taken control over almost every aspect of our lives.Today, many people are waking up to this reality in various ways.

One way is,for example, through healthcare and seeing through the manipulation of science by big drug companies.Another is big food, becoming aware of all of the pesticides and harmful ingredients that are added to it.Another realm is politics and false flag terrorism, and seeing through the fact that many soldiers are sent to die
for corporate interests and an agenda set out by the financial elite.However, more people are starting to understand our reality and thus making more conscious choices, voting with their dollars.

More and more souls on the plant today desire peace, and that is made clear by all of the humanitarian and activist movements that’ ve been unearthed.Not many souls on the planet want to see others suffer, and we have the potential to create a human experience where everybody has their needs met.This is possible, but there are systems put in place to make you think this is not possible because our economy would be completely destroyed.True, it would be, but that would be a necessary step in the re – design of the human experience.

There are those who capitalize off of our enslavement, our 9 – 5 work schedules, our attention being put towards our own lives, sports and entertainment.We’ ve strayed from our natural path of curiosity and exploration because we’ re told from a young age that“ this is who we are” and that“ this is how it is.”

This type of thinking is changing, the anti – war movement is stronger than ever, and it’ s clear that
if our planet and our countries were really a democracy, things would be a lot different.We are one human race and there are no need
for borders.

Based on all of my research, experiences and gut feelings, this massive shift in consciousness that’ s occurring in the human population is a primary reason why“ they” are coming around more often…

source:collective-evolution.com

{ https://www.alienslatest.org/ }

Kunstmatige intelligentie: omarmen of wantrouwen?

Thomas van Zwol

Iedereen heeft het erover: kunstmatige intelligentie. Maar wat is het precies? En moeten we er naar uitzien of voor vrezen?

Bij kunstmatige intelligentie denken veel mensen al snel aan robots die al dan niet het slechtste met de mensheid voor hebben. Maar kunstmatige intelligentie is veel breder dan dat en het is zelfs zo breed dat er niet echt een eenduidige definitie voor bestaat. Dat komt mede doordat ‘intelligentie’ zelf zo lastig te vangen is in een definitie. Jan Broersen, universitair hoofddocent en onderzoeker aan de Universiteit Utrecht, vat het samen als “het via computationele middelen proberen nabootsen van onze intelligentie.” Hij voegt nog toe dat hij denkt dat de eerste onderzoekers van kunstmatige intelligentie het nog breder zagen: “Volgens mij hadden zij in hun hoofd dat artificiële intelligentie het nabootsen van de mens in álle aspecten is.”

Van de slimme thermostaat tot Netflix
Tegenwoordig vinden we al op veel plekken vormen van kunstmatige intelligentie: in de slimme thermostaat zit het, maar ook bij Netflix voor de aanbevelingen die ze elke gebruiker doen en wat te denken van Alpha Go? Een belangrijke toepassing op dit moment is volgens Broersen het beoordelen van informatie. “Facebook gebruikt het bijvoorbeeld om nepnieuws te onderscheiden van echt nieuws, wat volgens mij ontzettend lastig is.”

Wat is KI?
Russell en Norvig splitsen in hun boek Artificial Intelligence: a modern approach de kunstmatige intelligentie op in vier subdomeinen: systemen die denken als een mens, systemen die zich gedragen als een mens, systemen die rationeel denken en systemen die zich rationeel gedragen. Op het gebied van systemen die denken of zich gedragen als een mens is er nog een lange weg te gaan, we weten immers niet eens hoe mensen precies denken, dus laat staan dat we dat in een computer kunnen inbouwen. Een computer die rationeel kan handelen en/of denken is daarentegen een stuk makkelijker te maken: voor rationeel ‘denken’ moet een computer in staat zijn om geldige afleidingen te maken uit kennis die de computer al bezit. Om een simpel voorbeeld te geven, als de computer weet dat A gelijk is aan B en ook dat B gelijk is aan C, dan moet de computer kunnen deduceren dat A gelijk is aan C. Rationeel handelen is handelen op zo’n manier dat het de beste uitkomst tot gevolg heeft. Dat zorgt echter voor een moeilijkheid omdat het soms niet mogelijk is om door rationeel denken tot de juiste handeling te komen: als je je hand op een hete ondergrond legt is de rationele handeling om hem direct terug te trekken, maar die handeling komt niet voort uit rationele gedachten, maar uit een reflex.

“MENS ZIJN IS MEER DAN ALLEEN INTELLIGENTIE EN IK WEET NIET OF WE DAT ZULLEN KUNNEN BENADEREN”

Strong vs Weak
Daarnaast wordt kunstmatige intelligentie ook verdeeld in strong AI (sterke KI) en weak AI (zwakke KI). Een strong AI is een systeem dat ‘echt’ kan denken en een bewustzijn heeft, een weak AI is een systeem dat alleen kan handelen alsof het denkt en een bewustzijn heeft. Het probleem is dat deze termen niet heel duidelijk gedefinieerd zijn. Om op Alpha Go terug te komen, op het gebied van het spelen van Go is het een strong AI, maar gezien in een bredere context is het een weak AI omdat het niet verder komt dan het spelen van het spel. Dit is ook het onderscheid dat door veel mensen gemaakt wordt wanneer ze zeggen dat een kunstmatige intelligentie nooit kan bestaan: daarmee bedoelen ze niet dat Alpha Go geen kunstmatige intelligentie is, maar dat een strong AI met dezelfde capaciteiten als een mens niet mogelijk is. Jan Broersen vraagt zich ook af of we ooit tot strong AI zullen komen: “Mens zijn is meer dan alleen intelligentie. Ik weet niet of we dat zullen kunnen benaderen. De wetenschappers die begonnen met het onderzoek in artificiële intelligentie hadden de verwachting dat dat haalbaar moest zijn, alleen veel wetenschappers kijken daar tegenwoordig anders tegenaan.”

KI IN OORLOGSSITUATIES

Het lijkt een kwestie van tijd voor ontwikkelingen binnen de robotica en kunstmatige intelligentie leiden tot zogenoemde ‘killer robots’: autonome wapens die zelf kunnen beslissen of ze iemand doden of niet. Hoe gaan we daar grip op houden? We vroegen het robotica-deskundige Koen Hindriks recent. Lees hier wat hij daarover te vertellen had.

Morele vraagstukken
Of het ooit zover komt dat een strong AI gemaakt wordt is een vraag waar nu geen antwoord op te geven is. Maar dat is ook niet van belang, belangrijker zijn de morele vraagstukken die gepaard gaan met de ontwikkeling van kunstmatige intelligentie. Want ook toepassingen die bedoeld zijn om de mens te helpen in plaats van te doden, hebben aspecten waar goed over nagedacht moet worden. Volgens Broersen is het gevaar van kunstmatige intelligentie niet zozeer dat zij kwaadaardig tegenover de mens zullen zijn, maar eerder dat mensen ze voor ‘kwaadaardige’ doeleinden zullen gebruiken. Op dit moment is het vooral oplichting dat hij ziet als gevaar: “Met nieuwe technologie zie je dat in eerste instantie de snelle jongens erop springen. Iedereen kan AI-technieken downloaden van het internet. Vervolgens trainen ze deze AI’s op wat financiële data en zeggen ze dat ze op basis van ‘advanced AI’ aanbevelingen kunnen doen voor de aankoop van aandelen en dergelijke. Veel mensen zullen daarin trappen, want AI is een buzz-woord en niet iedereen weet goed wat het inhoudt.” Op het moment dat AI wat verder is en er autonome systemen komen, komt er een ander belangrijk vraagstuk naar voren: wie is verantwoordelijke als er iets gebeurd door toedoen van een kunstmatige intelligentie? “Voor de wet kunnen we dit allemaal dicht timmeren. In het Europees Parlement zijn er al gesprekken over een wet die zegt dat een AI aansprakelijk kan worden gehouden. Maar moreel gezien ligt die vraag toch een stuk complexer.”

Over een jaar of twintig is de zelfrijdende auto – bomvol met KI – een feit, zo denkt Broersen.

 DanielReche / Pixabay

Autonome systemen
Een systeem dat autonoom kan handelen moet altijd een manier hebben waarop het goede van slechte opties kan onderscheiden. Neem bijvoorbeeld een routeplanner: autonoom stippelt deze een route uit van punt A naar B. Het doel dat het hierbij heeft, is het minimaliseren van de tijd die het kost om van A naar B te komen. Alle verschillende routes die er mogelijk zijn hebben een bepaalde waarde: de tijd in minuten die de route afleggen kost. Deze waarde in minuten geeft aan welke optie beter is dan een andere optie. De routeplanner ‘kiest’ dan vervolgens de route met het laagste aantal minuten waarmee het zijn doel voltooit. De regels waar een routeplanner aan moet voldoen zijn redelijk eenvoudig te programmeren, maar dat wordt lastiger wanneer de systemen complexer worden. “Als er veel verschillende situaties zijn waar een artificiële intelligentie voor kan komen te staan, dan is het onmogelijk om voor al die verschillende situaties de regels in te bouwen in het systeem. Voor zulk soort situaties wordt er vaak gebruik gemaakt van een subsymbolisch systeem, zoals bijvoorbeeld een neuraal netwerk.” Subsymbolisch betekent dat er niet langer regels zijn die in woorden uit zijn te drukken, maar dat de AI van veel verschillende situaties geleerd heeft wat de regels zouden moeten zijn.

“HET IS ZEER WAARSCHIJNLIJK DAT KI EEN KEER DE VERKEERDE BESLISSING NEEMT. EN WIE IS ER DAN VERANTWOORDELIJK?”

Stel je de volgende situatie voor: een zelfrijdende auto nadert een zebrapad waar een voetganger wil oversteken. Op het moment dat de auto wil gaan remmen om de voetganger over te laten steken, merkt de auto dat de remmen niet meer werken. Na een snelle berekening komt de auto tot de conclusie dat er twee opties zijn: of de voetganger die inmiddels aan het oversteken is, doodrijden of de auto tegen de muur sturen waarbij de bestuurder omkomt. Als deze situatie tijdens de training niet aan bod is gekomen, dan zal de auto uit de situaties die wel aan bod zijn gekomen moeten afleiden wat het moet doen. Er is sprake van abstracte regels die niet in woorden zijn uit te drukken, maar die het systeem moet halen uit de voorbeelden die het wel kent. Omdat het onmogelijk is om tijdens het leren alle mogelijke situaties aan bod te laten komen, zal het systeem op basis van wat het geleerd heeft, moeten handelen. Maar omdat er enorm veel situaties mogelijk zijn, is er zeer waarschijnlijk wel een specifieke situatie waarin de AI het verkeerde besluit neemt. “De vraag is dan wie verantwoordelijk is. Wettelijk gezien kan dat allemaal dicht getimmerd worden, maar moreel gezien is het een stuk moeilijker. Dit is ook mijn onderzoeksgebied, want waar ligt die verantwoordelijkheid nou precies? De één vindt bij de AI en de ander bij degene die de AI heeft ingezet, de maker. Het antwoord is niet eenvoudig.” Volgens Broersen zie je dat de discussie al langzaam op gang komt, maar zal hij pas echt gevoerd worden wanneer er ongelukken gebeuren met kunstmatige intelligentie, en die zijn onvermijdelijk als AI overal om ons heen is.

Gedragspatronen
Broersen denkt overigens dat het niet lang meer gaat duren voor KI overal is. Hij verwacht dat over een jaar of twintig de zelfrijdende auto een feit is. Maar KI zal op veel meer plekken te vinden zijn dan alleen in de zelfrijdende auto. “Ik denk dat het overal aanwezig zal zijn en dan vooral in de informatievoorziening en -vergaring. We dragen nu allemaal al een apparaat bij ons waar we alles mee doen en de bedrijven daarachter zullen in toenemende mate artificiële intelligentie gaan gebruiken om onze gedragspatronen te analyseren. Die informatie zullen ze gebruiken om ons te beïnvloeden en te voorspellen wat we willen, want dat is waar AI heel goed in is.”

Zelf is Broersen heel nieuwsgierig of kunstmatige intelligentie ooit in staat zal zijn om muziek te maken die mensen raakt: “Ik denk dat je voor muziek gevoel voor schoonheid en emotie nodig hebt. Als een computer in staat is om muziek te maken die mij raakt, dan zal ik misschien overstag moeten gaan en zeggen dat AI misschien toch in staat is om ons in alle opzichten te evenaren.” Of dat ooit zo zal zijn is iets wat we moeten afwachten, maar dat de ontwikkelingen snel gaan, daarover bestaat geen discussie.

Thomas van Zwol (1991) heeft de bachelor Kunstmatige Intelligentie aan de Universiteit Utrecht afgerond en is nu bezig zijn opleiding Journalistiek af te maken. Binnen de KI heeft hij zich gespecialiseerd in agents en machine learning. Door zijn wetenschappelijke achtergrond is hij als journalist goed in staat om onderzoeken te begrijpen om de informatie vervolgens op zo’n manier op te schrijven dat het voor veel mensen toegankelijk is.

Bronmateriaal:

Interview met Jan Broersen, universitair hoofddocent en onderzoeker aan de Universiteit Utrecht
Russell, S. J., Norvig, P., & Canny, J. (2003). Artificial intelligence: A modern approach
Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: HypnoArt / Pixabay

{ https://www.scientias.nl/  }

Onderzoekers zien kometen buiten ons zonnestelsel sterven

Caroline Kraaijvanger

{ https://www.scientias.nl/ }