STUNNINGLY COMPLEX NEW CROP CIRCLE APPEARS IN CLEY HILL, WARMINSTER JULY 18, 2017

IT’S HUGE, ANCIENT, AND LURKS ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA OF GALILEE

Scientists are baffled after the discovery of something huge and ancient that is lying on the bed of the Sea of Galilee and it is not a natural formation. Archaeologists from Israel conducted a survey of the seabed in 2003 and found a huge rock monument lying on the seabed.

STRANGE ROCK FORMATION IS MADE UP OF THOUSANDS OF STONES  

When they took a closer look at the strange, mysterious shape, they found that the monument was made up of many thousands of stones that had been arranged meticulously in a pyramid that was said to measure up to 230 feet in diameter, stood 39 feet tall and weighed in at 60,000 tons. This meant that the strange formation was around twice the size of Stonehenge and about six times heavier than the Eiffel Tower.  

The structure, which is said to be circular, was first discovered in 2003 by researchers when they conducted a sonar survey of the Sea of Galilee. Scientists have struggled to narrow down a civilization that could have built the formation as they have said that it is between 2,000 and 12,000 years old. In other words, the scientists know very little about the underwater structure.  

IT IS THOUGHT THAT ROCK FORMATION WAS BUILT DRY LAND BEFORE FLOODS

The only thing that scientists believe they do know is that the huge pile of rocks had been built on dry land and then the region was flooded. Scuba divers have been down to the structure to get a better look at it, and they found that it is constructed of basalt boulders which are about 3.2 feet in length. The rocks were said to have been piled up, and they form what seems to be a cairn.  

Scientists do not know why the huge rock formation was made, but it has been said that it could have been a nursery for fish. There is another theory that the structure is related to European ancient burial sites, while it has also been suggested that perhaps it is a Reverse Atlantis, which will one day rise from under the sea and bring catastrophe with it.

The mysterious huge rock formation was located about 1600 feet from the southwest coast of the Sea of Galilee where many other prehistoric sites have been found close-by. One of these is Bet Yerah, the ancient city which was said to have been in existence over 4,000 years ago.  

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A FULL-SIZED BEATING HUMAN HEART GREW FROM STEM CELLS FOR THE FIRST TIME

The use of stem cells has been controversial since its inception. Typically this is related to embryonic stem cells for religious reasons: pro-life groups protested in California according to CNS, because its protesters opposed the "abortion holocaust" that has been going on in the U.S. (http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/pro-life-groups-protest-embryonic-stem-cell-research). Other religious groups simply feel that this is an act of scientists playing God. And they might be onto something; scientists might be able to soon create life with stem cells, if a recent breakthrough is any indication of the future. For the first time ever, scientists have been able to create a beating human heart from stem cells.  

SCIENTISTS MAY SOON BE ABLE TO GROW HEARTS FOR TRANSPLANTS

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This technology serves a purpose. Up until now, almost half of the 4,000 on the waiting list for heart transplants are going without every year. Considering the absolute necessity of a heart, within five years more than 7,000 people could die while waiting. Unfortunately even if a heart is received it's not a guarantee for survival. If the transplanted organ is rejected, it could lead to death outright or require the patient to need another heart transplant within a few years due to complications. In the best case scenario, they could have to take medicine daily to make sure the tissue isn't rejected

While it would be optimal to create a new heart out a person's own tissue to ensure that it wouldn't be rejected, the construction of the heart is so specialized that it would be near-impossible to create. This leaves those in need of a heart in a desperate situation of hoping not only that they'll receive one but, if they do, that it won't kill them.  

This has led scientists on a hunt for other viable options. One of the possible solutions that Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School have come up with is to just make a new heart in a lab. They can't yet do this from scratch, however, and so used 73 donor hearts that were unfit for transplantation as a base. By using a detergent, they washed the hearts and cleaned off the cells that would make the organ be rejected if transplanted, so that there was a fresh start to work from.

At the same time they prepared human skin cells by turning them into stem cells by using messenger RNA to trick them into changing. These stem cells are pluriponent, meaning they could become specialized to any human cell with a push in the right direction. Scientists encouraged them to become two different types of cardiac cells. For two weeks the cells were put in conditions like a heart growing in the human body. And after only two weeks, the constructed hearts looked exactly like immature hearts that are grown inside the human body. It was found they acted like them, too; when given a surge of electricity, they began to beat.

This makes researchers a step closer to actually building a human heart. But researchers still have some kinks to work through. Even though it only took two weeks to get to this point, scientists would like to be able to shave that time down even further. For people waiting for a heart, a matter of days or even hours could make a huge difference. Beyond that, researchers want to be able to grow a larger number of stem cells, as tens of billions are needed for a single heart.

This is a great solution. There are some possible negative consequences that I can see further down the line, however, in particular for those squeamish about scientists actually creating people. With this technology, I could see an entire person being grown in a lab several decades, or perhaps centuries down the line. This could be something that scares both people on a religious and on simply a moral level.

Personally my favorite alternative is the idea of a pig heart being transplanted into a human body. I've been watching this take shape for years, and have been very interested in the possibilities. There's been great progress made recently, as reported by outlets like Nature World News (http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/20659/20160411/baboons-with-pig-heart-transplants-can-now-survive-for-2-years-are-humans-next.htm) wherein a baboon which has had a pig heart transplant has lived for more than two years. To my knowledge the hearts are cleaned and prepared in the detergent solution similarly to the base for the stem cells, but there would be a much larger supply to be used. I think both the possibility of animal-human transplants and the use of stem cells to create entirely new organs should be pursued.

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JUPITER SIZED OBJECT SEEMS TO HAVE COLLIDED WITH THE SUN

A mysterious huge UFO has been seen skidding off the moon’s surface.

The huge UFO was captured by the Solar Observatory spacecraft and many researchers have been left speechless wondering what it is.

THE SUN SEEMS TO HAVE REACTION TO OBJECT HITTING IT  

The huge UFO takes on the appearance of three semi-transparent rings and it seems to be around the same size as the Jupiter, the biggest planet in the solar system. The images captured reveals the strange object crashing into the surface of the sun and it then ricochets and continues on its way away from the sun. According to the researchers what is strange about it is the reaction the sun has just moments after it has made an impact as the sun seems to glow brighter in reaction to the object hitting it.

The images were taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft. The spacecraft is run by the European Space Agency and NASA jointly and it seems that the huge object was hovering very close to the surface

THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME UFO HAS BEEN SEEN NEAR SUN

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The appearance of this object is not the first time that a UFO has been said to have been seen close to the sun. On many occasions, NASA has dismissed strange anomalies and said that they are nothing more than just specks of dust or lens flare on the camera lens. What was different this time around is that the UFO does seem to create some type of energy in the sun when it comes close to it.  

Occasionally NASA has said that they do not have any idea as to what the strange objects are. In 2012 another big UFO was seemingly draining energy away from the sun and as yet it has not been debunked.

There are some who think that the bizarre UFO may have in fact collided with the sun by accident but then there are others who say that the object crashed into the sun intentionally. Some have speculated that this was to refuel by taking energy that is intense away from the surface of the sun.  

Paranormal crucible uploaded an image that gave some scale to the strange UFO and revealed that it was around the size of Jupiter.

UFOLOGISTS THINK THAT UFOS DRAW POWER FROM THE SUN

NASA has not yet given an explanation for the strange large UFO and people are waiting to hear if they have a natural explanation as to what the object might be. Ufologists have said that there is no doubt that it is of unknown origin and the craft skidded onto the surface of the sun so that it could draw in solar energy. It was said that the craft could have been using the energy of the sun so as to fuel itself or perhaps recharge and it left at high speed. This would mean that the craft is made up of material that is resistant to the surface of the sun. This does seem to be an incredible sighting and in some ways, the craft does take on a biological appearance. It does seem that extra-terrestrials do have a lot of interest in the sun.

Perhaps NASA even knows what the objects are that visit the sun? The craft is certainly large enough to have alien life on-board; in this case, it could be an inter-dimensional world that floats around on which alien life live.

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LOST ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY: NIKOLA TESLA AND THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GIZA

Anyone else find it odd that they would cut/carve 2.5 MILLION stone blocks, with lazer-cut precision, all for the purpose of being a tomb...then when it came time to construct the actual coffin, they use crude saws and raking techniques to shape the "sarcophagus"? Give this video a thumbs up if you think that the Pyramids of Giza were NOT built to be tombs

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IT'S NOT A METEOR - SOMETHING MASSIVE JUST ENTERED EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE

The people behind the YouTube channel BPEarthWatch have revealed that a huge object that is not a meteor has entered into the atmosphere of Earth on December 2.

BPEarthWatch monitor meteor radar data that is incoming and then delivers facts about it and up to now they have done a good job doing so. In the video, the operator of the channel explains that when objects or meteors hit the upper atmosphere of the Earth, they have signatures that are picked up electronically by a VHF transmitter and a receiver system.

A CLOAKED SPACE SHIP?  

The system then bounces a signal from the ionosphere of the Earth, and it can identify the ionization trail of an object that is incoming, and this can then be converted over to data that is tangible. BPEarthWatch has said that the signal they received on December 2 did not have Sporadic E, which is a false signal that is found only in the summer months.

They said that what was seen was something very different and it was very big and had come in very slowly. The operator of the channel said that it was something that would not be classed as being normal and they were not sure what it was. They went on to say that there had not been any meteors around that were so big and which would come to Earth with a signal that would last as long.

There has been some talk about the fact that the radar echo heard might have been down to the launch of a rocket or perhaps it was a UFO. The video below allows you to hear what the radar echo sounds like, a frequency noise that continues on for some time. The graph shows the spikes in the sound frequency undulating up and down.  

Another video shows the sound some 30 minutes later from the previous video, and this one has narration over the top. They go on to explain that the sounds and graph on this video are considered normal, and it is meteors or objects in the upper atmosphere of Earth and is shown as an ionization trail. The voice goes on to explain that the other video differed from this one and they have never seen it before.  

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it'S NOT THE FIRST TIME!( peter2011)

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There are plenty of strange sightings of ghosts and mystery monsters on land or on sea, but one interesting area of such anomalous reports are those that happen under the waves in the dark waters of our planet. Here divers have come across a whole new world of the paranormal and cryptozoology, encountering things in the water that most would probably not expect to find there, things beyond our wildest dreams or even nightmares. From ghosts, to mermaids, to other strange creatures, here are some truly intriguing tales of the strangeness these divers have seen through their masks.

One very curious type of strange underwater encounter is that of what appear to be ghosts or spirits of some sort dwelling in the watery depths. Underwater is not the sort of locale one might usually associate with hauntings, but such reports are actually more numerous than you might at first think. Many of these phenomena tend to congregate around shipwrecks, and it seems that in a sense such wrecks are the haunted houses of the sea. By far one of the more well known and investigated such haunted sites is a place called called Chuuk Lagoon, also more commonly known as Truk Lagoon, which when taken with its surrounding beautiful and picturesque azure waters of Micronesia seems to be a place far removed from ghosts, yet this is a place with a dark history that stands in stark contrast to the bright tropical splendor to be found here.

During World War II, a massive U.S. led naval and air attack was launched here in 1944, in an offensive called Operation Hailstone, which sought to drive out the Japanese forces using Truk Lagoon as a base of naval operations and crucial stop-off point for supplies. Over two bloody days, from February 17 to 18, 1944, the merciless attacks would sink around 60 ships in the lagoon, including naval and merchant ships alike, as well as hundreds of aircraft, making it one of the largest underwater graveyards in the world. It is also estimated that around 3,000 people died in the attack, and considering the loss of life here and the rusted ships, tanks, and aircraft absolutely littering the bottom of the lagoon it is perhaps no surprise that it should be said to be quite haunted.

Divers to the site have reported coming across the ghostly sound of voices shouting out, shadowy figures in the water, and oddest of all a sunken Japanese ship called the Hoki Maru, which had been sunk with a shipment of trucks aboard and from which can be purportedly be heard the sounds of spectral truck, grinding machinery, and engines revving. Other wrecked ships in the area reportedly produce the sound of grinding noises from engine rooms that have not been operational for many decades, and other anomalous noises of machinery or even human voices echoing out through the water. The lagoon was investigated by a team with the TV program Destination Truth, allegedly making recordings of what sound like the sound of long dead truck engines starting as well as a human voice calling out underwater, and the team even claims they picked up the heat signatures of a human figure lurking in the wrecks even when no one else should have been there.

The undersea graveyard of Truk Lagoon is by no means the only reported instance of haunted shipwrecks. There is the 19th century wreck of the British mail ship the RMS Rhone, which was sunk in October 1867 in a hurricane near Salt Island, in the British Virgin Islands. Divers exploring the wreck often claim to see the unsettling sight of ghostly swimmers frantically swimming from the wreck towards the surface only to vanish midway. In the 1940s there was the 1942 case of the U.S. cargo ship the USAT Liberty, which was sunk by a Japanese torpedo in 1942, the wreck of which is supposedly haunted by a ghostly torpedo that flies at divers to startle them before disappearing.

Also from 1942 is the wreck of the American tanker S.S. Gulf America, which was sunk by a German torpedo near Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Its wreck is said to be prowled by shadowy shapes, specters, and disembodied voices. In 1956 the Italian S.S. Andrea Doria was destroyed and sunk after accidentally being hit by the warship M.S. Stockholm. Divers at its wreck are said to be constantly pushed, pulled, and poked by unseen hands, and human figures moving about in the murk are commonly seen. The site is also known for being plagued by an inordinately high rate of diver deaths, although whether this is due to its depth and location or ghosts is unclear.

Other ghostly dive experiences don’t seem to be tied to shipwrecks, but can be every bit as spooky. One such dive was recorded by a very unique group of Florida-based paranormal investigators that focus on underwater hauntings or curses, and which calls itself Paranormal Divers. The group delved into a supposedly haunted underwater cavern and came back with quite the story to tell. They were reportedly diving in about 130 feet of water in the flooded cavern of an undisclosed location, said to be the haunt of a ghostly drowned diver, when one of the crew started hearing unearthly screams emanating from the murky waters below. The frightened diver then whirled about to take photos, and captured what the group claims to be the very first photographic evidence of an underwater ghost, showing a seemingly spectral diving face mask. The group would say of the incident:

This is an image of a diver’s face mask frame, taken at 130 feet in a flooded underground cavern shaft. There was no diver present in the deep portion of the cavern during the time of this shot. Our photographer took the frame in sequence after the team heard screaming coming from below. We panned deeply and shot the black water and the source of the screaming voice…which was the EXACT site of a diver death. This is the real thing. To our knowledge, the first underwater ghost photo ever taken in history.

The photo in question is inconclusive to say the least. It certainly shows something hovering in the darkness that could be said to be a diving mask, but as to what its origins are it is hard to say. It could be a trick of light, another diver, or a ghost, and considering that we only have the word of the Paranormal Divers to go on, although it could be supernatural in nature we have no evidence at all that it is. In another report, a commenter on a scuba diving site gave an account of a harrowing encounter with the unexplained under the waves. The witness claims that he was out with two diving buddies in the Puget Sound, along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington, hunting for prawns at about 1 AM when something happened that none of them could quite explain. The witness says:

The creepiest dive of my life though, two buddies of mine and I were on a night dive in the Puget Sound hunting prawns. It was about 1 am and we’re a good 100 ft deep, the pitchiest black you could imagine. We used to do this thing on night dives where we’d get in a circle, turn off our lights, then stir up the water and watch the bioluminescence float around us like floating stars in a black watery space. Beautiful. Only this one time we turn off our lights, stir up the water, and the water glows just enough to reveal a fourth person sitting in our circle.
We were at a dive resort so it wasn’t so odd to see another diver, only it was 1 am — we’d seen no one else prepping a dive at the dock. He was also alone which was odd considering the dangerous conditions of a night dive in those waters, and he had no fins or gloves. I don’t know how he swam so well without fins or didn’t get hypothermia without boots or gloves. We wore drysuits because it was so cold but this dude was in a wet suit with exposed skin and we thought we saw a giant gash in one of the legs.
So the three of us all notice him and we’re too fucking scared to move, I can hear my buddies panting in their regs (regulator breathing equipment), and the guy just smiles and waves, then swims away.

In yet another report first published in the Santa Rosa Communicator in 2011, a ghost was spotted in a so-called “blue hole,” or underwater sinkhole. Two scuba diving instructors were apparently carrying out a dive at the blue hole when they noticed something strange through the grate which supposedly keeps anyone from going down into the more dangerous territory of the hole’s unexplored depths. There past the grating they claimed to have seen a solitary diver wandering about wearing a pink tank. At first they thought it was just another diver who had somehow managed to infiltrate past the security measures, but as they drew closer the mysterious diver allegedly vanished into thin air right before their eyes. When they asked the people running the hole if there was another diver there, they were told that they had been the only divers there all day. Apparently, it turned out that this had not been the first report of a mysteriously vanishing diver in the hole, and authorities would tell them that there had been at least five other similar reports from there.

Ghosts are certainly not the only strange thing one is liable to come across while floating through the waters of our world, and there are plenty of stories of mysterious creatures appearing to scuba divers as well. In 1988, a professional scuba diver named Robert Froster was diving near the coast of Florida when he noticed some strange disturbance in the water in his periphery vision. When he turned to see what it was, he saw a figure dashing through water that had been rendered murky and foggy through the stirring up of sediments. Whatever it was appeared to be undulating somewhat towards him, and when it got to within 20 yards the diver noticed that the thing had arm-like appendages that seemed to be tipped in talons and were reaching out towards him. As it drew closer still, Froster claimed that he could see that its top half had smooth skin, unmistakable breasts, and a head of flowing hair, while the bottom half was covered in scales. Whatever it was did not seem friendly, and the frightened diver would say of its gaze, “I’ve never seen such evil hate in the eyes of any human or animal before.” He was able to make it to the surface and aboard his vessel without further incident.

In another account from August of 1991, a diver was out in the water near Cape Aya, on the Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine, in the Black Sea. He was about 100 meters off of the coast in calm seas under a full moon when he suddenly felt something poking at his shoulder. Turning around to see what it was, there was only the splashing of water all around. Thinking that his friends were playing a practical joke on him, the witness began to swim towards shore thinking nothing of it. That was when he experienced a strong kick to his shoulder, and this time when he turned around he was met with the sight of the face of a woman there in the water, although her eyes were described as being much larger than normal, and even creepier still she seemed to exude a bioluminescence.

The scared witness immediately made his way towards shore with as much vigor as he could muster, and behind him he could hear thrashing in the water, which he forced himself not to look back at, afraid of what he might see. As he drew near to shore, perhaps thinking that he was away from the thing that he had seen, he felt another powerful jab to his shoulder, and he saw again the face of the mysterious swimming woman, her eyes black and expressing what he called “disappointment.” The swimmer rushed onto shore screaming, and looking back he could purportedly make out a silvery body splashing on the surface to disappear down into the black depths. Although the terrifying experience was over, he found himself obsessed by what he had seen, even seeing the strange woman in his dreams, and felt compelled to go back several times to the same location but never saw her again.

Also from the Black Sea is an extremely strange report from the summer of 2002, near Odessa, Ukraine. In this account, three Ukrainian divers had headed out to go exploring a weird, crater-like hollow depression on the bottom that they had previously discovered in the area. As they approached the locale, they say they noticed an unusual cube-like structure covered in seaweed and shellfish on the bottom, and they approached to try and pry some of the numerous cockleshells from it. As they did this, they claim that an ominous, resounding voice blared out from all around them, reverberating through the water to command them, “Don’t do that! Don’t do that!” over and over again.

As soon as this mysterious voice echoed out around them, the scenery shimmered and changed, with some sort of ancient ruins suddenly becoming visible to them, complete with classical Greek-style columns. Among these ruins were seen two bizarre humanoid beings, around 2.5 meters in height and just hovering there in the water without any discernible diving suits or breathing equipment, seemingly totally able to breathe underwater. All they wore were tight-fitting suits of some sort, and they were near one of the ruins apparently studying it with some sort of circular object or device of some kind. Having seen enough, the divers made their way to the surface, where the previously calm sea was seen to be roiling and dotted with mysterious green lights glowing and flickering under the surface.

Another strange account of an encounter with underwater humanoids supposedly happened at Russia’s Lake Baikal in 1982. Navy divers in the lake on a training exercise reported coming across unknown human-like organisms swimming about at a depth of around 164 feet. The huge humanoids were described as being around 10-feet tall, and wearing some sort of skin-tight silver suits and round helmets on their heads. When the divers tried to pursue the creatures in order to catch them they fought back, and three of the Russian divers purportedly died as a result, with four others seriously injured, after they were propelled from the depths by a powerful, mysterious force, causing massive decompression injuries.

These would not be the only alleged giant underwater humanoids to be spotted in Russian lakes, and they were supposedly reported from all over remote waters at the time. Indeed, that very same year there was a training exercise of reconnaissance divers going on at Issik Kul Lake, a frigid, deep water lake in the Transiliysk Ala Tau area. This mission was supposedly actually warned about what had happened at Baikal, by a Major-General V. Demyanko, commander of the Military Diver Service of the Engineer Forces of the Ministry of Defense, USSR.

Such stories were further fueled by an account from a B. Borovikov, who came across such enormous underwater humanoids while diving in the Black Sea to hunt sharks in 1996. He claimed that as he was diving at a depth of around 8 meters in the Anapa area, he was terrified to see a group of massive humanoid creatures around 3 meters in length ascending from below. They were described as being milky white in color, with human-like faces but tails like fish. The entity in front reportedly saw Borovikov and stopped to stare with bulging, frog-like eyes, and another passed while waving with a webbed hand. The whole group approached until they were unsettling close, before suddenly darting off into the murk. Whatever these cases are describing, these accounts and more have been covered in some depth in a book by UFOlogists Paul Stonehill and Philip Mantle, called Russia’s USO Secrets: Unidentified Submersible Objects in Russian and International Waters.

These are bizarre cases to be sure, but perhaps not quite as much so as what happened to a Russian submariner and diver named Nikolay M., as he was diving one day in 1997 in the Bay of Finland, in the Saint Petersburg region of Russia. Nikolay allegedly was diving in shallow water when he saw an elongated object on the bottom which was reminiscent of a cucumber. He at first took it to be a part of some sort of wreckage, and tried to get it to the surface by tying some old rope around it, but he was ultimately unable to budge the odd object.

Undeterred, he decided to actually haul it out with his car, which was on shore and not that far away. He retrieved a pneumatic drill in order to drill holes in the thing to attack a sling to it, but when he started drilling into the object it began to issue forth streamers of a thick dark liquid like oil, which crept out into the water. In spite of this startling development, he kept pressure on the drill to go deeper, after which it stopped upon hitting something within. At this point the object reportedly split open to regurgitate a bubble containing a humanoid creature with porcelain white skin and a bleeding wound where the drill had apparently hit it.

The creature did not seem pleased, and fixed the diver with a malevolent gaze, after which it lashed out with taloned hands to grab his arm and cut into his flesh. Nikolay then supposedly used the drill to bore into his attacker, after which it let go and he lost consciousness. The next thing he knew, he was being dragged from the water by rescuers. It was found that he had sustained deep cuts on his arm and lost a piece of his hand, but there was no sign of the strange cucumber object or its bizarre, unearthly occupant. What did this man see? Was it some sort of cocoon? If so, for what? Nobody knows.

It is hard to know what to make of some of these cases, largely due to the fact that they have taken place in a world that most of us ever really see, under the waters of our world. While we may never be able to fully explain what has happened in any of these incidents, it does make it clear that beneath the sheen of our seas and lakes, lying down beneath where the naked eye can penetrate, there are sometimes incredible, even frightening phenomena lurking down below.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Hey, budding screenwriters! Does your script about dinosaur DNA being used to bring them back to life to exact revenge against humans for destroying the planet they once cared for and loved need a Jurassic spark? Well, here’s your new plot twist. Paleontologists in China have discovered hundreds of well-preserve pterosaur eggs, with at least 16 containing partial embryos. Will flying lizards darken our skies once again? Should dogs and cats be nervous?

“We want to call this region ‘Pterosaur Eden.’”

That perfect line to open a movie comes from paleontologist Shunxing Jiang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (try fitting that on a business card), the lead author of the study(published in the journal Science), as he described the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region site where at least 215 eggs were found in a block of sandstone. Those eggs all belonged to a single species of pterosaur, Hamipterus tianshanensis, which flew over what is now northwestern China during the early Cretaceous Period, 120 million years ago.

The eggs were discovered in 2014 by a team of paleontogists which included pterosaur expert Alexander Kellner, a co-author of the new study and paleontologist at the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, who recognized that this cache was from a new species which he named Hamipterus tianshanensis. The fossils indicated to Kellner that this pterosaur had an adult wingspan of 11 feet, spiked teeth and no feathers. They also showed that H. tianshanensis buried its eggs in lake shores and river banks.

However, the eggs found in ‘Pterosaur Eden’ were not buried there by the parent pterosaurs but by storms and floods which washed them, along with hatched through adult creatures, to the site where they were found in a fossilized jumble of broken bones and eggs. Fortunately, this sandstone block of the eggs survived intact, waiting 120 million years until 3D scanning was perfected.

While the embryos were unfortunately jumbled about inside the eggs, those scans showed that, had they hatched, their legs were developed enough that they would have been able to walk immediately, but underdeveloped wing bones indicated that flight would take a little time. The embryos were toothless, another surprise since it was believed that they were born bite-ready, but their fast growth meant teeth and flight wings were ready pretty quickly after hatching.

Will the next film about pterosaurs being cloned be fiction or a documentary? Unfortunately, this particular find was all fossils and no flesh, so there was no DNA suitable for cloning. That doesn’t take away from the magnitude of this discovery, since the fragility of eggs means that very few from dinosaurs and pterosaurs (which were not dinosaurs) have survived. The researchers believe this site will eventually yield more of the 3 inch (7.2cm) long H. tianshanensis eggs. Will one contain an intact pterosaur suitable for cloning? Speaking like a true paleontologist, Kellner is hopeful.

“Now that we know what they look like, we can go back and find more. You just have to get your knees down and look.”

That’s all the help you get for now, budding screenwriters. Get your fingers down and write.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Is something big going through our atmosphere? Mysterious incoming radar signal/sound detected!

Is something big going through our atmosphere? On December 2, 2017 the meteor detector at LiveMeteors detected a weird unusual radar return on the tracker.

The meteor tracker doesn't detect objects, it detects ionizations which may or may not be from an object. A normal viewing would be some dots and you hear some beeps, but on December 2, it gave a huge radar return and a large burst of sound which lasted for about 2 minutes.

According to LiveMeteors, if you hear a strong continuous signal that runs for more than a minute or, that is unlikely to be a meteor echo. VHF radio waves are sometimes affected by an unusual form of ionosphere propagation called “Sporadic E.”

Then they say that “Sporadic E” is specific to summer season in the Northern Hemisphere.

Considering that it is now winter season in that part of the world it is unlikely that the strange signal was a so called “Sporadic E.”

So, if it was not a “Sporadic E” then what has caused the strange radio signals and sound?

Image left: The mysterious radar signal - Image right: Normal view.

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Liquid Oceans In Icy Bodies Expand Potential Worlds In The Solar System To Find Alien Life

Ice worlds beyond the orbit of Neptune known as Trans-Neptunian Objects may have liquid oceans beneath their icy surface, a NASA study suggested. If correct, this could impact our search for potentially habitable worlds in the Solar System.  

( NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI )

A new NASA study has suggested that there could be a high number of icy worlds in the Solar System that has liquid water below the surface.

The findings expand the number of worlds where alien life can be possibly found since liquid water is essential to supporting known form of life. Astronomers think that there are dozens of these potentially habitable worlds.

Trans-Neptunian Objects

Bodies called the Trans-Neptunian Objects, or TNOs, which include the dwarf planet Pluto, lie beyond the orbit of Neptune. These worlds are relatively very far from the sun that their surface temperatures of about 200 degrees Celsius below zero are cold enough to prevent liquid water to exist.

In the new study, however, Prabal Saxena of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and colleagues found evidence that the gravitational interaction of these TNOs with their moons may produce enough heat in the interior of these bodies to sustain liquid oceans beneath their icy surface.

How Liquid Subsurface Oceans Form In Frigid Worlds

Astronomers think that liquid water may exist in Pluto and other outer solar system bodies because analysis of light reflected from some TNOs revealed signatures of ammonia hydrates and crystalline water ice. Researchers suggest that these emerged to the surface from an interior liquid water source through a process known as cryovolcanism.

Most of the long-lived heat inside of TNOs were from the decay of radioactive elements that were infused into these objects. The heat is warm enough to melt a layer of the icy crust and generate a subsurface ocean that can last for billions of years. As the radioactive elements decay into more stable ones, however, they stop releasing heat and this can eventually cool down the interior of these bodies causing any subsurface ocean to freeze.

Implications In The Search For Alien Life

If the findings of the study, which was published in Icarus on Nov. 24, are right, these could have implications in the search for potentially habitable worlds beyond Earth. The presence of water has long been associated with potentials for supporting life.

In an earlier study revealing the likely composition of habitable planets, researchers suggested that even in worlds outside the solar system, the most habitable planets are highly likely waterworlds with oceans.

"These objects need to be considered as potential reservoirs of water and life. If our study is correct, we now may have more places in our solar system that possess some of the critical elements for extraterrestrial life," Saxena said.

TAG

• Neptune, 
• Oceans, 
• water, 
• Pluto

{http://www.techtimes.com/ }

Voyager fires up thrusters after 37 years at13bn miles from earth

The Golden Record carried a message from Earth on board NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions..

IT WAS the first man-made object to venture into interstellar space and its mission to the planets in our solar system brought back new discoveries and information, including the first active volcanoes and lightning seen outside of earth. Its most famous moments came as it flew past Saturn and Jupiter sending back pictures of the mysterious giants' rings and moons.

Now four years after it left the solar system to drift in deep space, Voyager 1 – the iconic space craft launched 40 years ago to explore the cosmos and carry a greeting from earth to aliens – has woken up. Its thrusters were revived by NASA at a mind-bending distance of 13 billion miles from Earth.

After decades of operation, the attitude control thrusters that turn the spacecraft's antennae in the direction of earth have degraded, leading scientists to make a decision to fire up the four back-up thrusters, last used in 1980.

{ http://www.heraldscotland.com/ }

We mapped every UFO sighting recorded in Essex

Intergalactic explorers like to head to the coast

By Lottie O'Neill

Residents of Essex have been sighting Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) for decades.

We've made a map of all the UFO sightings recorded in Essex as part of an out-of-this-world investigation.

Even if you are skeptical of the idea of little green men visiting our planet, it's interesting to read accounts of those who believe they saw another life form.

READ MORE

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Some of the earliest sightings date back to 1992, and with the vast amount of similar data being recorded, it's hard to determine whether or not we are really alone.

According to the data tracking website, UFO Stalker , there has been 24 strange encounters across the county.

The majority of Martians seem to fly to the south of Essex, with Romford, Canvey Island and Southend-on-Sea being hotspots.

One extraterrestrial explorer ventured out to Braintree, and another two had a mosey around Colchester.

The most popular intergalactic destination seems to be Southend, with six separate sightings being recorded, perhaps to enjoy a day at Adventure Island.

The stories that follow the sightings are even more spooky, with many of them allegedly describing similar crafts.

One spooky tale from Basildon described seeing a large black triangular craft flying slowly above a house. The object made no noise and wasn't like any other craft the spotter had seen before.

He wrote: "I have never seen anything like this in all these years and really hope I never will again."

Another record from Harlow disclosed they saw a light travelling through the sky, and then two circles emitting blue light opening and the travelling light disappearing through it. A few moments later the circles disappear and the travelling light couldn't be seen.

Then, in Romford, 21 years ago, someone saw a disc shaped craft rising above the trees.

The author also believes they were abducted in their sleep and claims to have seen another world where other beings, similar to humans, lived.

Many sightings reference three orbs of light in a triangular shape, or either a black triangular craft, it seems these are common for the intergalactic explorers.

The oldest UFO sighting in Essex, at Southend, happened in 1992 and it wasn't reported on the website until 24 years later.

A fishing crew were night fishing on a small cabin boat out off the coast when they thought they saw a helicopter. However, the lights started moving in a zig zag pattern and in sharp movements, quicker than a plane or helicopter could perform.

They couldn't hear a lot of noise like most aircrafts produce, but instead, a slight hum, and as it got closer the crew hid inside the cabin on the boat.

The cabin was then illuminated and felt brighter than the sun, but the spooked fisherman didn't feel pain or heat from the light.

The author wrote: "People think you're crazy or just making it up, so we told very few. I only spoke about this to my wife, even she thought we are mad and should keep it quiet."

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) closed the UFO files in November 2009, as well as the hotline number which members of the public had used since 1997 to report their alien encounters.

The staff from the UFO desk were redeployed, and they told the Home Office and the Civil Aviation Authority that they no longer wanted to receive UFO reports, as they were not going to investigate it.

In the last year that the desk was open, the MoD received a record-breaking number of reports, 643 separate sightings, compared to the one to two hundred annual average before this.

A collection of 25 files, and 4300 pages of UFO sightings are now available at the National Archives, and although 'Britain's X-Files' may be closed, residents are still reporting what they have seen online.

Dr David Clarke, an expert in UFO history, said about the closure of the UFO desk to the National Archives: "It is often said about UFOs that 'the truth is out there,' in my opinion the truth is actually in here - in these files - and I would encourage everyone who is interested in this subject whether you believe or whether you disbelieve take the time to take a look at the content of these files."

Remember, the next time you look up at the night sky, there may something looking back at you.

{ http://www.essexlive.news/ }

Lie detector test PROVES airman saw UFO near RAF base in shock case

A FORMER airman has taken a lie detector test to prove he saw a UFO land near an RAF base.

By Tom Towers 

Larry Warren, 56, supposedly saw aliens floating underneath a craft in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, in 1980.

The mystery has since been dubbed “Britain’s Roswell” and has baffled conspiracy theorists for decades.

Warren – stationed with the US air force at RAF Bentwaters – passed every question on the polygraph test and now hopes the world will believe his account.

Former police detective Gary Heseltine – who probed the 7/7 bombings – said the test has finally vindicated Larry.

CASCADE/GETTY

BIZARRE: Larry Warren claims he saw aliens floating underneath a craft

He edits UFO Truth Magazine and announced the news to his readers.

He said: “Larry Warren, the original military whistleblower of Britain’s most famous and unsolved cold case, The Rendlesham Forest, recently agreed to undertake a professional polygraph test with one of the UK’s leading experts.

“He undertook the test where he was questioned about his involvement along with many other questions about his general honesty and integrity.

“I can now reveal that Larry Warren has successfully passed the tests on all counts.”

CASCADE

VINDICATED: Warren has now passed every question on a polygraph test

“I can now reveal that Larry Warren has successfully passed the tests on all counts”

Former police detective Gary Heseltine

The incident took place over three successive nights and three air force men were sent out to investigate.

One of them, Kim Pennington, got close enough to touch the side of the mysterious object.

He and one other airman made sketches of the craft for witness statements.

Two nights later, Deputy Base Commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt observed strange flashing lights in the trees.

One of the beams hit the ground just a few feet away and reportedly struck weapons storage bunkers at the NATO base.

This led to allegations that weapons of mass destruction were being stored there – something the UK and US governments will neither confirm nor deny.

Earlier this year, The National Archives opened up a selection of 15 files stored by the Ministry of Defence detailing reports of aliens.

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{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

Every official record of a UFO sighting in Gloucestershire revealed

Tewkesbury, Cheltenham and Gloucester are popular among aliens fancying a getaway

By Conor Gogarty

The humans of Gloucestershire are not alone.

At least, that's what some may glean from our UFO map, the result of an explosive investigation into alien sightings across the county.

According to the UFO Stalker website, there have been no less than 16 extraterrestrial invasions witnessed in Gloucestershire in recent years.

Tewkesbury, Cheltenham and Gloucester are hotspots for aliens fancying a getaway, with 11 of the 16 sightings coming around those three areas.

It may be a popular tourist destination for us mere homo sapiens, but the Cotswolds has been emphatically snubbed by those from other planets.

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• Proof at last! 'Bright red object' floats in skies above Gloucester

Only one adventurous intergalactic explorer decided to have a mosey around Cirencester.

Lydney, however, has proved something of a hit with the Martians, with three UFOs checking in, perhaps for a spot of Go Ape.

Many of the eye-witness accounts that accompany the entries on UFO Stalker have a flair for the dramatic.

One person was driving home from a baby shower in July 2016 on the A433, when he saw something not of this earth.

They wrote: "I checked my rear view mirror, I was surprised to see a large white circle, size of a football, glowing like a headlight, following directly behind my car."

READ MORE

• Another silvery UFO caught on camera floating over Gloucestershire

A 47-year-old computer consultant from Cheltenham also saw something shocking, from his block of flats in 2010.

He wrote: "I have noticed an orange light in the western sky after dark, corresponding to the common position of Venus and visible when other stars are not (due to street lighting).

"I thought i could perceive it to be a cluster of different coloured lights instead of a single source.

"The object now appeared to be moving closer and slightly to my left heading for the centre of cheltenham (which is just south of my location).

READ MORE

• UPDATED: What are these 'weird white lights' moving in the night sky

"As it moved it presented itself at an angle to me and I could see the red strobe light was centred on the underside of the object which now clearly had strong white lights at the front, throwing a beam or twin beams straight ahead, like landing lights or car headlights."

The witness added that the UFO was a large black triangle in the air, which floated off towards Oxfordshire after a while.

{ http://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/ }

What the Pliocene epoch can teach us about future warming on Earth

About 3 million years ago, carbon dioxide levels were similar to today’s. What other changes might we expect?

BY ALEXANDRA WITZE 

 

BLAST FROM THE PAST  Three million years ago, Earth’s climate was so warm that the High Arctic supported forests (illustrated) in which camels and other animals roamed.

JULIUS T. CSOTON

Imagine a world where the polar ice sheets are melting, sea level is rising and the atmosphere is stuffed with about 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide. Sound familiar? It should. We’re living it. But the description also matches Earth a little over 3 million years ago, in the middle of the geologic epoch known as the Pliocene.

To understand how our planet might respond as global temperatures rise, scientists are looking to warm periods of the past. These include the steamy worlds of the Cretaceous Period, such as around 90 million years ago, and the boundary of the Paleocene and Eocene epochs, about 56 million years ago.

But to many researchers, the best reference for today’s warming is the more recent Pliocene, which lasted from 5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago. The mid-Pliocene was the last time atmospheric CO₂ levels were similar to today’s, trapping heat and raising global temperatures to above the levels Earth is experiencing now.

New research is illuminating how the planet responded to Pliocene warmth. One set of scientists has fanned out across the Arctic, gathering geologic clues to how temperatures there may have been as much as 19 degrees Celsius higher than today. The warmth allowed trees to spread far to the north, creating Arctic forests where three-toed horses, giant camels and other animals roamed. When lightning struck, wildfires roared across the landscape, spewing soot into the air and altering the region’s climate.

Amount of CO₂ in Earth’s atmosphere
(parts per million) 

Mid-Pliocene

350–450

Pre-Industrial

280

Today

400+

Other researchers are pushing the frontiers of climate modeling, simulating how the oceans, atmosphere and land responded as Pliocene temperatures soared. One new study shows how the warmth may have triggered huge changes in ocean circulation, setting up an enormous overturning current in the Pacific Ocean, similar to the “conveyor belt” in today’s Atlantic that drives weather and climate. A second new paper suggests that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets might have responded differently to Pliocene heat, melting at different times.

All this research into the last great warm period is helping scientists think more deeply about how the future might play out. It may not be a road map to the next 100 years, but the Pliocene is a rough guide to the high sea levels, vanishing ice and altered weather patterns that might arrive hundreds to thousands of years from now.

“It’s a case study for understanding how warm climates function,” says Heather Ford, a paleoceanographer at the University of Cambridge. “It’s our closest analog for future climate change.”

Walk through history

Teasing out the history of the Pliocene is a little like digging through a family’s past. One group of enthusiasts goes through genealogical records, collecting data on who lived where, and when. Another group uses computer software and modeling to look for broad patterns that describe how the family grew and moved over time.

The data detectives begin their work in rocks and sediments dating to the Pliocene that are scattered around the world like family-tree histories in city library archives. In 1988, the U.S. Geological Survey began a project called PRISM, for Pliocene Research, Interpretation and Synoptic Mapping, which aims to gather as many geologic clues as possible about Pliocene environments.

Chemical and geologic clues within deep-sea sediment cores, like this one from the Pliocene drilled from the seabed off Alaska’s southern coast, can reveal past ocean temperatures. Paleoclimatologists use the data to reconstruct which periods were warm and which were cold.

 JRSO/INTERNATIONAL OCEAN DISCOVERY PROGRAM 

At its start, PRISM focused on a collection of deep-sea cores drilled from the floor of the North Atlantic Ocean. Different types of marine organisms thrive in water of different temperatures. By comparing the relative abundance of species of tiny organisms preserved in the deep-sea cores, PRISM scientists could roughly map how cold-loving organisms gave way to warm ones (and vice versa) at different times in the past. Early results from the project, reported in 1992 by USGS research geologist Harry Dowsett and colleagues, showed that during the Pliocene, warming was amplified at higher latitudes in the North Atlantic.

Scientists continue to add to the PRISM records. One international team drilled a sediment core from beneath a Siberian lake and found that summer air temperatures there, in the mid-Pliocene, were as high as 15° C (about 59° Fahrenheit). That’s 8 degrees warmer than today (SN: 6/15/13, p. 13). Other researchers uncovered clues, such as plant fossils from peat bogs, that suggest mean annual temperatures on Canada’s now-frozen Ellesmere Island near Greenland were as much as 18 degrees higher than today (SN: 4/6/13, p. 9).

Now, a new group of biologists, geoscientists and other experts in past landscapes have banded together in a project called PoLAR-FIT, for Pliocene Landscape and Arctic Remains — Frozen in Time. The team is focusing on the Arctic because, just as today’s Arctic is warming faster than other parts of the planet, the Pliocene Arctic warmed more than the rest of the globe. “That’s what we call polar amplification,” says Tamara Fletcher, a team member and paleoecologist at the University of Montana in Missoula. “It was even more magnified in the Pliocene than what we’re seeing today.”

PoLAR-FIT scientists travel to the Arctic to collect geologic evidence about how the region responded to rising temperatures in the Pliocene. In the thawing permafrost slopes of Ellesmere Island, for instance, Fletcher and colleagues have been mapping black layers of charcoal in sediments dating from the Pliocene. Each charcoal layer represents a fire that burned through the ancient forest. By tracking the events across Ellesmere and other nearby islands, Fletcher’s team discovered that fire was widespreadacross what is now the Canadian Arctic.

Wildfires swept the Arctic during the warm Pliocene, leaving behind beds of dark charcoal that are visible today.

 T. FLETCHER

Wildfires changed vegetation across the landscape, possibly altering how the Arctic responded to rising temperatures. Soot rising from the fires would have darkened the skies, potentially leading to local or regional weather changes. “How important is that to the warming?” asks Bette Otto-Bliesner, a paleoclimatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. “That’s something we’re still trying to determine.” Fletcher, Otto-Bliesner and colleagues described the charcoal discovery, along with modeling studies of the fires’ effects, in Seattle in October at a meeting of the Geological Society of America.

In 2012, about 283,280 square kilometers of forest burned in Russia. Three years later, more than 20,230 square kilometers burned in Alaska. Last summer, a wildfire broke out in the icy landscape of western Greenland. “We’re already seeing fire in the Arctic, which is unusual today,” Fletcher says. “But it wouldn’t have been unusual in the Pliocene.”

While the work doesn’t predict how much of the Arctic will burn as temperatures rise, the findings do suggest that people need to prepare for more fires in the future.

Story continues below image

As temperatures rise, Arctic fires, like the one that burned in Greenland in August, may become more common.

ESA, PIERRE MARKUSE/FLICKR (CC BY 2.0)

Trapped ocean heat

Scientists like Fletcher are the genealogists of the Pliocene, collecting records of past environments. Other researchers — the computer modelers — put those old records into broad context, like historians analyzing family trees for patterns of migration and change. 

The modelers begin with data on Pliocene temperatures — such as how hot it got on Ellesmere Island or in the North Atlantic Ocean, as revealed by plant fossils or seafloor sediments. Scientists can also estimate how much CO₂ was in the atmosphere at the time by looking at clues such as the density of holes in fossilized leaves of Pliocene plants, which used those openings to take up CO₂. Estimates vary, but most suggest CO₂ levels were about 350 to 450 ppm in the mid-Pliocene.

Foraminifera, tiny sea organisms, are used to calculate past ocean temperatures, by the chemistry of their shells and the amount of cold-loving versus warm-loving species present in deep-sea cores.

USGS

It’s not clear what caused the gas buildup during the Pliocene; one possibility is it came from long-term changes in the way carbon cycles between the land, ocean and atmosphere. But no matter the source, the high levels of CO₂ caused temperatures to soar by trapping heat in the atmosphere.

The Pliocene isn’t a perfect crystal ball for today. For starters, scientists know why CO₂ levels are now increasing — burning of fossil fuels and other human activities (SN: 5/30/15, p. 15). As the Industrial Revolution was gaining steam, in the 19th century, atmospheric CO₂ levels were around 280 ppm. Today that level is just above 400 ppm, and rising.

Modeling the Pliocene climate can help reveal how Earth responded in somewhat similar conditions. That means studying changes in the Pliocene atmosphere, the land surface and most of all the oceans, which absorb the bulk of planetary warming. “That’s the sort of thing you can understand from studying past warm episodes,” Ford says. “What was different about how heat and carbon were moving around in the ocean?” 

Ford has begun working with climatologist Natalie Burls of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., to try to track how the oceans’ major water masses shifted during the Pliocene. Today the North Atlantic has a deep, cold, salty layer that is crucial to the ocean’s “conveyor belt” circulation. In this pattern, warm waters flow northward from the tropics, then cool and become saltier and denser as they reach higher latitudes. That cool water sinks and travels southward, where it warms and rises and begins the cycle all over again.

This conveyor belt circulation is important to today’s Atlantic climate, because it allows the warm Gulf Stream to moderate temperatures from the U.S. East Coast to Western Europe. Burls and colleagues have now found that a similar pattern might have existed in the Pacific during the Pliocene. They call it the Pacific meridional overturning circulation, or PMOC, just as today’s similar Atlantic circulation is known as the AMOC.

Burls’ team discovered this phenomenon by modeling how the Pliocene ocean would have responded to higher temperatures. Because the Arctic was so warm, the temperature difference between the equator and the mid- and high latitudes was not as great as it is today. The weaker temperature gradient would have meant less rainfall and more evaporation in the midlatitude North Pacific. As a result, its uppermost waters would have gotten saltier.

Deep ocean changes

Ocean circulation today is driven in part by a deep circulation pattern in the North Atlantic (top). Currents there flow north and then become cooler and saltier, causing the water to sink and return southward in a conveyor belt–like circulation. In the warm Pliocene, some 3 million years ago, a similar conveyor belt may have set up in the Pacific (bottom) thanks to reduced rainfall in the North Pacific (dotted circle).

N. BURLS

When the North Pacific waters got salty enough, they cooled and sank, setting up an enormous current that dove deep off the coast of northeastern Russia and traveled southward until the water warmed enough to once again rise toward the surface. Real-world data back the claim: Accumulations of calcium carbonate in deep-sea Pacific sediments show that the Pliocene ocean experienced huge shifts at the time, with waters churning all the way from the surface down to about three kilometers deep, as would be expected from a conveyor belt–type circulation. The team reported the finding in Science Advances in September.

What happened in the Pliocene Pacific may say something about the Pacific of the distant future, Burls says. As temperatures rise today, most of the heat is being taken up by the surface layers of the oceans. Over the short term, that works to prevent changes in deep ocean circulation. “Today we’re very quickly turning on the heating, and it will take a while for the deep ocean to adjust,” Burls says.

But in the longer term, thousands of years from now, waters in the North Pacific may eventually become warm and salty enough to establish a PMOC, just as there was in the Pliocene. And that could lead to major changes in weather and climate patterns around the globe.

Land bridges and ice sheets

Other modelers are looking beyond the Pacific to improve their understanding of how different parts of the Pliocene world behaved. About a dozen research groups recently launched a new effort called PlioMIP2, or Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project, Phase 2, to model the climate of a time somewhat similar to today in the mid-Pliocene, about 3.205 million years ago.

“We’re working to produce the best picture that we can of what life seemed to be like at the time,” says Alan Haywood, a climate modeler at the University of Leeds in England and a leader of the effort.

In one discovery, project scientists have found that small changes in the geography of their modeled world make a big improvement in the final results. Early models did not accurately capture how much the polar regions heated up. So PlioMIP2 researchers updated their starting conditions. Instead of assuming that the landmasses of the Pliocene world were identical to today, the group made two small, plausible changes in the Arctic. The researchers made a land bridge between Russia and Alaska by closing the Bering Strait, and they added land to connect a few modern islands in the Canadian Arctic, including Ellesmere.

The change “seems small, but it actually can have a huge impact on climate,” says Otto-Bliesner. For instance, closing the Bering Strait cut off a flow in which relatively fresh water from the Pacific travels over the Arctic and into the North Atlantic. With the updated geography, the PlioMIP2 models suddenly did a much better job of simulating heat in the high Arctic.

Otto-Bliesner will describe the team’s results in New Orleans this month at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Another PlioMIP2 group, Deepak Chandan and Richard Peltier of the University of Toronto, reported similar findings in July in Climate of the Past. They too found that closing the Bering Strait allowed their model to better simulate the Arctic heating.

Other Pliocene modelers are trying to figure out how the planet’s enormous ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica might respond to rising temperatures. Geologic evidence, such as ancient beaches from the Pliocene, suggest that global sea levels then were as much as 25 meters higher than today. If all of Greenland’s ice were to melt, global sea levels would rise about six meters; if all of Antarctica went, it would contribute about 60 meters. So parts of these ice sheets, but not all, must have melted during the long-ago warm period.

Several of the PlioMIP2 research groups are modeling how the polar ice sheets responded in the heat of the Pliocene. “It will tell us how much we should be worried,” Otto-Bliesner says.

Arctic heat-up

Simulations of the Arctic during the Pliocene show excess heat (deeper red colors) compared with before the Industrial Revolution (left) and today (right). Today’s differences are smaller because levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are closer to Pliocene levels.

D. CHANDAN AND RICHARD PELTIER

One new study suggests that the northern and southern ice sheets may have behaved out of phase with each other. In a simulation of the mid- to late Pliocene, climate modeler Bas de Boer of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and colleagues found that as Greenland’s ice melted, Antarctica’s ice could have been relatively stable, and vice versa.

“At different points, they could be contributing to the sea level story or against it,” says Haywood. He, along with colleagues, reported the results in the Oct. 30 Geophysical Research Letters.

That out-of-sync melting suggests the Pliocene was a complicated time. Just because global temperatures were high doesn’t mean that all of Earth’s ice sheets melted equally. (Today, both Greenland and West Antarctica are losing ice to the oceans as global temperatures rise.)

The Pliocene wound to an end around 2.6 million years ago, as CO₂ levels dropped. Chemical reactions with eroding rocks may have sucked much of the CO₂ out of the atmosphere and tucked it away in the oceans, removing the greenhouse gas. The planet entered a long-term cooling trend. Since the end of the Pliocene, Earth has been in and out of a series of ice ages.

But now, greenhouse gases are once again flooding into the atmosphere. Global temperatures are ticking up inexorably year after year. That makes the lessons of the past all the more relevant for the future.

---

This article appears in the December 9, 2017 issue of Science News with the headline, "Lessons from the Pliocene: A warm period in the past offers a window to the future."

Citations

B. de Boer et al. The transient response of ice volume to orbital forcing during the warm late Pliocene. Geophysical Research Letters. Vol. 44, 2017. doi:10.1002/2017GL073535.

N.J. Burls et al. Active Pacific meridional overturning circulation (PMOC) during the warm Pliocene. Science Advances. Vol. 3, September 13, 2017, e1700156.

D. Chandan & R. Peltier. Regional and global climate for the mid-Pliocene using the University of Toronto version of CCSM4 and PlioMIP2 boundary conditions. Clim. Past. Vol. 13, 2017, p. 919.

B. Otto-Bliesner et al. Amplified North Atlantic warming in the late Pliocene by changes in Arctic gateways. Geophysical Research Letters. Vol. 44, p. 957.

A.M. Haywood et al. Integrating geological archives and climate models for the mid-Pliocene warm period. Nature Communciations. Vol. 7, February 16, 2016, p. 10646.

Further Reading

E. Wayman. Millions of years ago, frozen ice sheet in East Antarctica melted. Science News Online, July 22, 2013.

E. Wayman. Taking Antarctica’s temperature. Science News. Vol. 184, July 27, 2013, p. 18.

E. Wayman. The Arctic was once warmer, covered by trees. Science News. Vol. 183, June 15, 2013, p. 13.

E. Wayman. Camel ancestors lived in the Arctic. Science News. Vol. 183, April 6, 2013, p. 9.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }