R.I.P. Kepler

NASA announced Tuesday that Kepler, an orbital telescope that’s been spotting and analyzing distant planets for the past nine years, has run out of fuel and will no longer carry out scientific research.

Since it launched in March 2009, the telescope identified over 2,600 planets outside of our solar system, and found that as much as half of the stars visible from Earth could be surrounded by small, rocky, Earth-like planets.

Running On Fumes

Back in July, it became clear that the Kepler Space Telescope was running low on fuel — NASA has since been planning a replacement to take over the iconic satellite’s ongoing search for exoplanets.

A Legacy

Though Kepler will no longer collect any more data, there’s still plenty of images for NASA and other scientists to examine.

Just like biologists continue to discover new species by examining the samples already found in museum collections, the data already gathered by Kepler could keep astronomers busy for years to come.

READ MORE: NASA Retires Kepler Space Telescope, Passes Planet-Hunting Torch [NASA]

More on Kepler: The Kepler Space Telescope is About to run out of Fuel

PEER REVIEWED CONTENT FROM PARTNERS WE LOVE

1. The electrostatic environments of the giant planets
   Carlos I Calle et al.,Electrostatic Phenomena on Planetary Surfaces
2. Absolute densities in exoplanetary systems: Photodynamical modelling of Kepler-138
   Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
3. The importance of stupidity in scientific research.
   Martin A Schwartz,Semantic Scholar

{ https://futurism.com/ }

'Tunnel to the underworld’: Strange subterranean passages found beneath ancient Mexican pyramid

© INAH / Mauricio Marat

The 15-meter-wide (50 ft) chamber, located around 8 meters (26 ft) under the surface is believed to have been used for sacred funerary rituals. An additional tunnel leading to the Plaza of the Moon was also discovered, opening at the southern end.

via GIPHY

“These large offering (ritual) complexes are the sacred core of the city of Teotihuacán,” archaeologist Verónica Ortega from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Mexico said in a press release.

“All people considered it the mecca of civilisation, so what is found inside can help unravel the relationships this ancient metropolis had with other regions of Mesoamerica,” Ortega added.

• READ MORE: Ancient Mayan discovery: 7,000yo skeleton unearthed in Mexican cave (PHOTOS)

© Instituto de Geofísica de la UNAM

© INAH / Mauricio Marat

Researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and the Institute of Geophysics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) discovered the passageways using an imaging technique called electrical resistivity tomography in the summer of 2017, but the findings have only just been announced.

At its peak, the city of Teotihuacan, 40 km northeast of modern-day Mexico City, was once home to 125,000 inhabitants. The population carried out human sacrifices to honor the gods, earn a bountiful harvest and good fortune in war. Further excavations at the site have yet to be announced, but researchers are optimistic they will turn up more exciting discoveries.

© Instituto de Geofísica de la UNAM

“In the excavations carried out in the tunnels under the main body of the pyramid, at the end of the 1980s, archaeologists Ruben Cabrera and Saburo Sugiyama found skeletons with deformed crania... along with various obsidian objects, so there’s a good possibility of making similar finds in this newly discovered tunnel,” Ortega said.

{ https://www.rt.com/news/ }

Russia successfully tested key component of revolutionary deep-space "Ion Drive Engine"

{https://www.disclose.tv/ }

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

Coronal Mass Ejections from the Sun Pose a Big Threat to Earth

BY MIHAI ANDREI

One of the biggest threats to Earth is nuclear war. Another of the biggest existential threats actually comes from our own sun.

A depiction of a coronal mass ejection, with Earth to scale.

Image credits: NASA / Goddard.

As a result of its magnetic poles reversing position, the sun goes through 11-year solar cycles in activity, appearance and other physical phenomena that have been observed for centuries. It is during these seasonal cycles that solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) occur. These CMEs spew massive amounts of X-rays, charged particles, and magnetized plasma across the solar system.

According to research scientist Dean Pesnell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, we are entering a cyclical period when there are few if any sunspots and subsequent solar flares. However, the Sun’s activity should soon be on the rise again, as long as the Sun does not enter a “grand” minimum solar period.

During such periods, sunspot and solar flare activity diminish for days at a time. The date of the minimum solar period is calculated by taking the average of sunspot activity over 12 months. As a result, identifying the precise date of the minimum solar period usually happens six months after it takes place.

CMEs Can Interfere with Electronic Communication and Navigation Equipment

There are three classifications of CMEs based on the intensity of their emitted x-rays — C-class, M-class and X-class, the highest intensity category. To put this in perspective, one X2 CME on September 6, 2017, caused widespread blackouts and the loss of all electronic communications for up to an hour on the sunlit side of Earth. It also affected navigation equipment for as much as an hour afterward.

This event may not seem significant at first. However, earlier in the final days of October 2003, now known as the “Halloween Events,” there were extreme solar storms and flares so powerful that current detectors were oversaturated. The most powerful CME of that solar storm was classified as an X45. The effects were severe:

• Sweden lost all electrical power for over an hour.
• Several of NASA’s observation satellites failed temporarily or had to be disabled.
• Japan’s ADEOS-II satellite was destroyed.
• The U.S. global positioning satellite system was severely interrupted.

An X45 extreme coronal mass ejection has not struck Earth since 1859. During what is known as the Carrington Event, telegraph equipment in the affected area burned up as the result of this CME.

NASA analysts have examined this CME event and estimated that if it occurred today, the damage would be as high as $2 trillion in the first year alone. Full recovery could take between four and 10 years.

An ejection in a different wavelength.

Image credits: NASA.

Monitoring for Solar Flares and CMEs

Currently, most of our solar flare warnings come from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), whose mission was recently extended to this December. However, SOHO was primarily designed to study the sun, not to report on solar flares and CMEs. It does only this as a secondary function.

The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), launched in October 2006, is another NASA solar observation mission. Two nearly identical observatories, STEREO A and STEREO B — one ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind — trace the flow of energy and matter from the sun to Earth. This enables stereoscopic imaging of the sun and solar phenomena such as CMEs.

The STEREO mission has revealed the 3D structure of CMEs. Violent eruptions of matter from the sun can disrupt satellites and power grids, and studying these eruptions helps to understand why they happen.

However, in 2015, contact was lost for several months when the STEREO B spacecraft passed behind the sun. Later analysis of the telemetry concluded that the spacecraft was in an uncontrolled spin too rapid to be corrected. On October 11, 2016, recovery attempts ended.

STEREO A still is operational and collecting data from the sun. However, it is not collecting CME data.

CME Warning Equipment Could Be Stationed at Lagrange Points

There are five points between celestial bodies such as the Earth and the sun, called Lagrange (L) points, where the orbital angular momentum and gravitational forces all balance. That allows objects to be parked there indefinitely. Positioning warning spacecraft at some of these five Lagrange points would optimize the time between CME detection and when the CME would reach the Earth.

• L1 lies about one million miles from Earth. L1 is currently occupied by the Deep Space Climate Observatory and has an uninterrupted view of the Sun.
• L2 also lies a million miles from Earth, but in the opposite direction of the sun. At this point, a spacecraft can get a clear view of deep space. NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) is currently at this spot, measuring the cosmic background radiation left over from the Big Bang. The James Webb Space Telescope will move into this region later in 2018.
• The third Lagrange point, L3, lies behind the sun and opposite Earth’s orbit. For now, science has not found a use for this spot mostly due to cost concerns. The complete configuration is depicted below:

L1, L2, and L3 are all unstable points with precarious equilibrium. Spacecraft must make continual slight adjustments to maintain their positions at these points in space.

L4 and L5, however, are stable, “like a ball in a large bowl,” according to the European Space Agency (ESA). They provide a unique view of streams of charged material heading toward Earth, which allows scientists to better measure the speed of the coronal mass ejections headed toward Earth.

Currently, spacecraft parked at L1 offer only a four- to six-hour warning of a CME. A warning spacecraft parked at L4 or L5 could provide as much as 15 to 17 hours of warning.  However, power-grid operators need at least one full day’s warning to prepare for a Carrington-type coronal mass ejection.

The ESA plans to launch a satellite to L5 in 2023 at the cost of almost half a billion dollars.

The bottom line is that within two years, we will have no operational systems in space watching for coronal mass ejections headed for Earth.

CMEs Are Capable of Widespread Damage

The destruction from a massive Carrington-type CME would be widespread, starting with all satellites in Earth orbit. Various GPS satellites would likely be destroyed or disabled for an unknown period of time.

Also, all navigation systems would be adversely affected. Such a CME could easily inject a trillion-watt current into electrical grids, effectively frying them.

We saw a sample of this damage in 1989 when eastern Canada’s power grid was knocked offline. All airborne aircraft would be at risk from radiation and electronic surges. Also, the International Space Station could be at risk depending on its position at the time of impact. Sewage treatment plants, air conditioning units in buildings and homes, gas station pumps, and media transmissions would all be knocked offline for an undetermined amount of time.

A Carrington-type event today would plunge the affected part of the world into a brief dark era, possibly causing public panic. No one has estimated how many people might come down with radiation poisoning or even die from such a CME impact.

As a result, it behooves the U.S. government, NASA and the ESA to reprioritize their near-term programs to ensure that a solar flare detection system is in place and operational at L5 as soon as possible. After all, $500 million dollars is pocket change compared to $2-plus trillion in estimated damage.

About the Author

Dr. Stephen Schwalbe is an associate professor at American Military University. He is also an adjunct professor at Columbia College.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

Parker solar probe comes closer to the sun than any other man-made spacecraft

 BY TIBI PUIU

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has beaten a decades-old record for making the closet approach to the sun by of any man-made spacecraft.

Illustration of NASA”s Parker Solar Probe.

Credit: NASA.

The previous record for the closest solar approach was set by the German-American Helios 2 spacecraft in April 1976. On 29 October 2018, at exactly 1:04 pm EDT (17:04 GMT), Parker moved closer than 42.73 million kilometers (26.55 million miles) from the Sun’s surface.

Parker is set to break other records soon, such as the top heliocentric and geocentric speeds. In 1976, the same Helios 2 set the record for heliocentric speed (relative to the sun) at 246,960 kilometers per hour (153,454 miles per hour). Parker is expected to beat this record on 29 October at about 10:54 pm EDT.

What’s more, the probe — tasked with studying the inner workings of the sun — is expected to reach a staggering top speed of 692,017 km/h (430,000 mph) during its final pass around the sun, shattering any previous record for geocentric speed (relative to Earth). It won’t be until 2025 until this happens, however.

“Parker Solar Probe has been one of our most challenging missions to date,” said Omar Baez, Nasa’a launch director, when the probe first launched in August 2018. “I’m very proud of the team that worked to make this happen. We at Nasa and the Launch Services Program are thrilled to be part of this mission.”

The influence of solar activity on Earth and other worlds is known as space weather, but there are many mysterious aspects of it that are still unknown to scientists. This is what Parker is for.

For its mission, Parker carries a range of instruments that can study the sun both remotely and in situ (directly) — the kind of observations that might unravel some of the sun’s most well-kept secrets.

Of course, NASA has several specific questions it wants Parker to answer. One of them has to do with the mystery of the acceleration of solar wind — the constant ejection of magnetized material from the sun. Somewhere, somehow, this solar wind is accelerated to supersonic speeds.

Parker will fly straight through the corona — the sun’s atmosphere that extends millions of kilometers into outer space. The corona is scorching hot, reaching temperatures in the range of millions of degrees Celsius. However, the sun’s surface has a temperature of only about 6,000 degrees Celsius. This makes no sense at first glance: how is it possible that the surface of the sun is so cold compared to its atmosphere? Well, scientists hope that Parker might come up with an answer to this counter-intuitive conundrum.

During its closest flyby, slated for June 2025, Parker will be only 6.1 million kilometers (3.8 million miles) from the sun’s surface, where temperatures can reach millions of degrees Celsius. Meanwhile, Parker will complete 24 perihelions, looping between Venus and the Sun.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

Kepler, de telescoop die minstens 2.600 nieuwe werelden ontdekte, is niet meer - HLN.be

Bron: AP, Space

Het Kepler Space Observatory cirkelde tien jaar lang net zoals de aarde in een baan rond de zon en speurde met zijn telescoop het heelal af op zoek naar andere exoplaneten (planeten die draaien rond andere sterren dan onze zon). 

Lees ook

NASA geeft nieuwe wending aan speurtocht naar buitenaards leven

Sinds enkele maanden kampte de satelliet, die zijn verwachte levensduur al ruim overschreden had, met een nijpend brandstoftekort. De voorbije weken werd het steeds moeilijker om de telescoop op sterren te richten en mogelijke exoplaneten te identificeren. Nu komt er helemaal geen reactie meer. Kepler bevindt zich momenteel op zo’n 150 miljoen kilometer van de aarde en zal zich in een stabiele baan om de zon blijven bewegen.

Ontdekkingen

Kepler speurde bijna tien jaar lang het heelal af op zoek naar dipjes in de helderheid van sterren: dat kan wijzen op het bestaan van een planeet die eromheen cirkelt. “Het was alsof je probeerde een vlo te detecteren die over de koplamp van een auto kroop terwijl de auto 160 kilometer verderop stond”, zegt NASA-wetenschapper William Boruki, die aan het hoofd stond van het eerste Kepler-wetenschapsteam.

De Keplertelescoop ontdekte meer dan 2.600 planeten buiten ons zonnestelsel en daarnaast nog zo’n 2.900 potentiële kandidaat-exoplaneten, waarvan de data nog verder moet onderzocht worden. Zo onthulde de satelliet het bestaan van rotsachtige planeten ongeveer zo groot als de aarde, waar leven mogelijk zou kunnen zijn. Kepler stootte ook op enkele superaardes: planeten die groter zijn dan de aarde, maar kleiner dan planeet Neptunus. Vorig jaar slaagde de satelliet er zelfs in om een zonnestelsel met acht planeten te identificeren, net zoals het onze.

“Het heeft ons begrip van onze plek in de kosmos compleet veranderd”, zegt Paul Hertz, directeur astrofysica bij NASA. “Voor we Kepler lanceerden, wisten we niet of planeten vaak voorkwamen of zeldzaam waren in onze Melkweg. Maar dankzij Kepler en zijn wetenschappelijke missie weten we nu dat planeten in onze Melkweg vaker voorkomen dan sterren.”

Opvolger

De Keplertelescoop concentreerde zich op sterren die duizenden lichtjaren van ons verwijderd zijn en toonde volgens NASA dat er statistisch gezien minstens één planeet rond elke ster in de Melkweg cirkelt.

In april werd de TESS-ruimtetelescoop gelanceerd: deze opvolger van Kepler concentreert zich op sterren dichter bij huis en identificeerde al enkele mogelijke planeten.

{ https://www.hln.be/  - HLN.be}

“Dit is het einde”: 80 jaar geleden veroorzaakte hoorspel over aliens massahysterie, zou E.T. vandaag ook paniek zaaien?- HLN.be

Bron: Live Science

Op 30 oktober 1938 onderbrak een acteur de radio-uitzending met enkele verontrustende nieuwsberichten. Hij sprak met een dringende toon over “drie explosies” en “lichtflitsen” die afkomstig zouden zijn van marsmannetjes en hun ruimtevaartuig. De acteur voerde ook enkele getuigen op –althans dat leek zo want in feite waren het ook gewoon acteurs- die het drama dat zich afspeelde, omschreven. Daarbij werden termen zoals “UFO’s” en “vreemde wezentjes” in de mond genomen. Een hittestraal zou daarbij al tientallen mensen gedood hebben. Paniek.

Hoewel het programma doorspekt was met theatrale elementen, geloofden veel mensen dat het allemaal echt was. Krantenkoppen verschenen daags nadien en kopten: “Duizenden luisteraars renden weg van hun huizen in New Jersey en New York, velen met handdoeken over het gezicht als bescherming tegen de giftige gassen”. Latere studies suggereren evenwel dat de paniek veel minder groot was dan de nieuwsberichten destijds deden vermoeden.

Lees ook

Geen aliens?... Misschien zochten we nog niet genoeg!

Minst waarschijnlijke scenario 

Ruimtewetenschappers geloofden toen overigens ook al niet in een mogelijke invasie van marsmannetjes. Ze waren zich er van bewust dat de planeet niet in staat is om een beschaving van intelligente buitenaardse wezens te herbergen. “Tegen het einde van de jaren ’30 wisten we dat er weinig zuurstof was. Bovendien vonden we geen vloeibaar water”, aldus Seth Shostak, senior astronoom aan het SETI-instituut (search for extraterrestrial intelligence).

Sterker nog, de gewelddadige aflevering die Welles beschrijft en liet opvoeren tijdens de radio-uitzending, is verreweg het minst waarschijnlijke scenario voor een eerste ontmoeting tussen buitenaards leven en de mens. De wezentjes zouden immers niet alleen bestaan, maar ook op de hoogte zijn van de mens én in het bezit van technisch geavanceerde wapens.

Buitenaardse wezens afluisteren

SETI scant dagelijks het luchtruim op radiosignalen die geproduceerd worden door vormen van intelligent leven. En hoewel er waarschijnlijk veel minder intelligent leven in het universum is dan microbieel leven, zouden intelligente buitenaardse wezens hun aanwezigheid mogelijk over veel grotere afstanden kunnen uitzenden.

“Microben kunnen zuurstof in de atmosfeer maken, maar intelligent leven kan gigantische lasers of radiozenders maken, dus je kan ze, als ze bestaan, misschien wel vanop grotere afstand horen,” aldus Shostak. En natuurlijk vereist het vinden van buitenaardse signalen het eigenlijke bestaan van zo’n buitenaards leven, maar volgens Shostak is het slechts een kwestie van tijd.

Massahysterie of fascinatie?

Een soortgelijke aankondiging –als toepasselijk mopje voor Halloween- over ongewenst bezoek van buitenaards leven zou volgens Michael Wall, auteur van “Out There” (een wetenschappelijke gids over buitenaards leven), vandaag de dag eerder fascinatie dan angst opwekken. “Met al het nieuws over exoplaneten zijn mensen er klaar voor”, zegt hij.

Een eerste ontmoeting met E.T. zou dus een stuk minder beangstigend zijn dan de aliens die “War of The Worlds” aankondigde. Na de uitzending beweerde Orson Welles dat hij geen idee had dat zijn wezens met tentakels en vuurwapens zo serieus genomen zouden worden. Hij verontschuldigde zich: “Het was een schokkende ervaring om te beseffen dat ik zo’n wijdverspreide terreur had veroorzaakt.” 

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Army Remote Viewer Peers Into The Origins of Humanity To Find Out If Humans Were Created

 Published By Arjun Walia

IN BRIEF

• The Facts:

  Joseph Mcmoneagle, one of the most successful Army-trained remote viewers, peered into the past to look into the possible origins of human history. He saw that we were created by intelligent beings in what he called a 'laboratory.'

• Reflect On:

  Why is the mainstream story of human history still limited to Darwin's Theory of Evolution? Why have so many discoveries, like giants, and life on other planets, been completely concealed and brushed off as a conspiracy theory?

The true origins of human history remain a mystery, but that’s not what mainstream academia would have us believe. Since Darwin, human evolution and ‘the survival of the fittest’ has been pushed on the population as some sort of scientific truth, despite the fact that it remains a theory with multiple loopholes and ‘missing links.’ If you question it, in some circumstances, you are almost considered a nut.

This continues to happen in many different fields of knowledge; when you question beliefs that have been ingrained for so long you get a harsh response, and in some cases, you’re liable to be fined, put in jail or at the very least you receive tremendous amounts of hate and censorship.  What we don’t hear about is the fact that there are several hundred scientists, if not several thousand, who have spoken up against the scientific validity of the theory of evolution.  I recently wrote an article about more than 500 scientists coming together to reject Darwin’s theory of evolution and explain why it’s not really valid at all.

Our DNA Originated Somewhere Else

Even one of the founding fathers of DNA, Francis Crick, believed that human DNA must have originated from somewhere else in the galaxy, whereby “organisms were deliberately transmitted to earth by intelligent beings on another planet.” You can read more about that here. I also recently wrote about a paper that was publishedby 33 scientists in the Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology Journal suggesting that the flourishing life during the Cambrian era (Cambrian Explosion) originated from the stars.

“With the rapidly increasing number of exoplanets that have been discovered in the habitable zones of long-lived red dwarf stars (Gillon et al., 2016), the prospects for genetic exchanges between life-bearing Earth-like planets cannot be ignored. ” (The study)

There is a great little blurb from Cosmos Magazine, one of the few outlets who is talking about the study.

Serious inquiry into the origins of human history are not encouraged in the mainstream. Yet as we dig a little on what’s being done, there is a lot to find out, with new theories and discoveries that seem to be popping up every single year.  Modern day education is hardly keeping up with this, and in fact continues to promulgate old theories and notions that have long been disproven. As a result, nobody beyond ardent self-motivated researchers are learning about new developments or have any knowledge of these viewpoints.

Opening Our Minds

The suppression of the discoveries of giant humanoid skeletons falls directly into this category, though the secrecy that wraps up the Smithsonian is a topic for another article. Suffice it to say that successful cover-ups of information are possible in part due to the phenomenon of ‘cognitive dissonance’, which speaks to the extreme discomfort that a piece of information that disrupts the worldview you grew up with can have on you. Many of us have and do experience this, including myself. In today’s day and age, it’s important to practice overcoming the discomfort to keep an open mind.

Consider entertaining new ideas without necessarily accepting them, just give them a chance to swirl in your mind a bit. With new information constantly emerging at a rapid pace in all fields, an open mind is what serves us best. If we stay closed and refuse to even look at or acknowledge evidence that contradicts what we believe, we will never advance towards actual truth, and simply be caught up in an agnostic state while never really getting to the bottom of the questions that are naturally on our mind.

The StarGate Program

The StarGate program was co-founded by Russell Targ (watch his banned TED talk about ESP here), Hal Puthoff, who is now a member of the ‘To The Stars Academy’ with Tom Delonge, and other notable names who have worked on Deep Black Budget programs within the U.S. government. They are currently spearheading an effort to let the American public know that UFOs are real and that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that, as Louis Elizondo says, “we are not alone, whatever that means.”

The StarGate program investigated parapsychological phenomenon like remote viewing, telepathy, telekinesis, and clairvoyance. The program yielded high statistically significant results and was used multiple times for intelligence gathering purposes. A lot of interesting information came out of the literature that was declassified in 1995 after the program ran for more than two decades.

It was a complete mystery why the program was shut down: remote viewing, for example, which is the ability to describe the physical characteristics at a given location irrespective of distance, was found to be repeatable, even more than findings in the hard sciences, with a success rate of over 80 percent. Remote viewing was how the rings around Jupiter were actually discovered by Ingo Swann before NASA was able to measure them. You can read more about that here.

To summarize, over the years, the back-and-forth criticism of protocols, refinement of methods and successful replication of this type of remote viewing in independent laboratories has yielded considerable scientific evidence for the reality of the [remote viewing] phenomenon. Adding to the strength of these results was the discovery that a growing number of individuals could be found to demonstrate high-quality remote viewing, often to their own surprise. . . . The development of this capability at SRI has evolved to the point where visiting CIA personnel with no previous exposure to such concepts have performed well under controlled laboratory conditions.” (source)

The Breadth Of Remote Viewing

There are examples in the literature, from remote viewers looking at classified Russian technology during the cold-war era, locating a lost spy plane in Africa and the prediction of future events. Yes, along with remote viewing comes the ability to view into the past, and view into the future. Obviously, this gets tricky, especially if we look at quantum physics, which works in tandem with parapsychology. In quantum physics, experiments have also shown how what happened in the past can change the future, and what happens in the future can change the past, on a quantum scale. You can read more about that here.

There were multiple people working within the Remote Viewing Program, which was conducted at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in conjunction with multiple intelligence agencies, and one of them was Joseph Mcmoneagle. Many of these people, after decades in the program, continued on with their research and experimentation long after the program was declassified. Joseph was one of the most successful Army-trained remote viewers, and one of the original members of project Stargate. He was actually awarded the Legion of Merit for “producing crucial and vital intelligence unavailable from any other source” to the intelligence community.

The Origins Of Humanity

In 1983, McMoneagle worked with Robert A. Monroe, founder of the Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia, which provided basic out-of-body orientation for many of the military remote viewers. There, he conducted a session seeking to discover the origin of humanity. As the late great author and researcher Jim Marrs points out in his best selling book Our Occulted History points out:

During the 129-minute session, he described a shoreline on what appeared to him to be a primitive Earth. He later estimated a time of about thirty million to fifty million years after the time of the dinosaurs. Cavorting on this shoreline was a large family of protohumans-hairy animals about four feet in height, walking upright and possessing eyes exhibiting a spark of intelligence despite a somewhat smaller cranial capacity. Two things surprised McMoneagle in this session. These creatures appeared to be aware of his psychic presence, and they did not originate at that location.

McMoneagle described his experience in his 1998 book, The Ultimate Time Machine:

This particular species of animal is put…specifically in that barrier place…called the meeting of the land and the sea…I also get the impression that they’re…ah…they were put there. They mysteriously appeared. They are not descended from an earlier species, they were put there (by a) seed ship…no, that’s not right. Keep wanting to say ship, but it’s not a ship. I keep seeing a…myself…I keep seeing…oh, hell, for lack of a better word, let’s call it a laboratory, where they are actually inventing these creatures. They are actually constructing animals from genes. Why would they be doing that? Can we do this yet…here and now? Like cutting up genes and then pasting them back together. You know, sort of like splicing plants…or grafting them, one to another…Interesting, it’s like they are building eggs by injecting stuff into them with a mixture of DNA or gene parts of pieces.

He described these creatures as delicate-looking aquiline-featured humanoids, unclothed, in possession of a prehensile tail and large “doe-like” eyes. They seemed to be using some sort of light that McMoneagle had a hard time describing, but eventually described it as a “grow light.”

Marrs got the impression that it was like someone tending to a garden, and planting seeds, but “there isn’t any concern about the seeds after they are planted…It’s simply like…well…put these seeds here and on to better and bigger business. No concern about backtracking and checking on the condition of the seeds. They can live or die, survive or perish.” The session ended with him moving closer in time and perceiving these beings growing in size and ability, eventually becoming herding humans.

The surveillance of and interference with humanity is documented in the lore of almost all civilizations that have roamed the planet. Although some have called this mere ‘interpretation,’ it reminds me of people referring to the confirmation of spiritual and metaphysical realms as a result of quantum physics. It is simply labelled as an interpretation due to the fact that it upsets so many belief systems and long-held preconceived ideas.

The Takeaway

The story of human history has a lot of holes. From the UFO extraterrestrial phenomena to the discovery of strange skeletal remains, to the rejection of Darwinism all the way to the existence of intelligence ancient civilizations like Atlantis, and others that thrived possibly millions of years ago, we are like, as author Graham Hancock coined, a species with amnesia. But perhaps we are starting to remember. Perhaps our only two explanations are incorrect, or perhaps they’re both correct, combined with other factors. The point is, what we’ve been told is not true, and the recognition of that fact will lead us on the path towards true discovery, and away from the concealment and manipulation of information and truth.

I’m not saying this is how humans are created, perhaps it is just some sort of glimpse into something much bigger that took place billions of years ago?

{ https://www.collective-evolution.com/ }

A triangular UFO that photographs show resembled a flying stingray was seen recently in Ohio near the site of a famous encounter 45 years ago between a UFO and a military helicopter – an encounter the military acknowledged but has never resolved. Have the aliens returned? Why was there no encounter this time? Or is it one of ours?

“It looked just like a sting ray and was all black. I have the original 2 photos of the craft as well as zoomed screen shots which show the craft in very plain view.”

This report comes from the site UFOStalker.com (includes five photos) which covers sightings on MUFON. The witness saw the UFO on September 3rd, 2018, and admitted that he was taking photos of a drill site with his father and neither heard nor saw anything unusual. However, they spotted the UFO in two photos taken no more than two seconds apart. Even under magnification, they admitted being unable to tell if the UFO was ascending or descending, but figured, because of the location of the pointy end, it was heading towards the Mansfield Lahm Air National Guard Base in the nearby city of Mansfield where the 179th Airlift Wing (179 AW) unit is stationed.

That’s where the story gets interesting. He claims the father showed the photo to “10-15 airmen from the wing” and none would admit to knowing what it is nor were any aware of unusual base activity on September 3rd. However, Perrysville is also the location of another report of a triangular UFO in 2016. Also, the witness claims that the photo becomes “distorted” when it is forwarded via email.

Then there’s the famous incident over Mansfield on October 6, 1973, when an Army Reserve helicopter with four crew members returning to Cleveland “encountered a near midair collision with an unidentified flying object” and filed an official signed report to their superiors. It has become known as the “Coyne/Helicopter” incident because the commander of the chopper was Major Larry Coyne, who retold the story numerous times.

“We were flying along at about 2,500 feet when the crew chief on the helicopter observed a red light on the east horizon. He then informed me that the light was closing on the helicopter — that it was coming at us on a collision course. I looked to the right and observed that the object became bigger and the light became brighter, and I began to descend the helicopter toward the ground, to get out of the collision course path. We were descending and this object was like a missile locked onto the helicopter, only it came at us on a perpendicular angle, to hit us almost broadside. It looked like we were going to collide with it and we braced for impact, and then I heard the crewmen in the back say, ‘Look up!’ and I observed this craft stopped directly in front of us — stopped — it was hovering, right over the helicopter! It was a bright green light. And all of the red night lights that we utilize for night navigation were dissolved in this green light — the whole cabin turned green. It hit all of us directly in the face. We assumed it was a high-performance fighter, but when it stopped directly in front of us, then all four of us realized that was no high-performance aircraft. This craft, from the angle that we saw it, was cigar-shaped. It had no wings, no vertical or horizontal stabilizer, was approximately 60 feet long, 15-20 feet in height.”

Coyne stated that the craft took off at an estimated speed of 1000 knots (1150 mph). There were eyewitnesses on the ground who also saw the helicopter and the UFO and made detailed drawings of the craft. Coyne described the incident to a United Nations conference set up by Grenada in 1978 and to numerous UFO investigators and has been described as a credible witness, making this a credible event.

So, the Mansfield, Ohio, area has another unexplained UFO incident. While the shapes are dissimilar, the proximity to an air base is not, lending credence to them being secret military aircraft sightings that the military is not interested in revealing, even to its own personnel. Also, the “cigar shape” was a common UFO descriptor in the UFO-crazy 70’s while the “triangle” is popular today, matching the description of the rumored TR-3B. Forty-five years later, the question still remains … is the military becoming more open about UFOs or is it (or some other foreign military) responsible for the sightings?

If you live in the Mansfield area, have your phone ready and keep looking!

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

History is filled with all manner of mysteries that continue to perplex us well into modern times, and in many ways it almost seems as if there is just as much that we don’t know as that which we do. Among some of the oddities that tend to emerge from the depths of history are various artifacts and objects that defy easy classification and manage to confuse and compel. Such strange items might simply puzzle us, while others threaten to change history as we know it, but all are elusive oddities we struggle to understand. From out of place artifacts that should not exist, to strange objects that defy understanding, to just plain weird discoveries, here is a selection of strange historical oddities that have been found over the years.

Many such strange discoveries take the form of ancient artifacts that have turned up in places where they have no business being. In 1933, an archeological dig headed by archaeologist José García Payón in Mexico’s Toluca Valley, just 43 miles from Mexico City, came across a rather strange find among the many pre and post-Columbian artifacts uncovered at the site. The area was determined to have been a grave site, and as such had many grave offerings left by long forgotten visitors, such as various objects made of gold, copper, turquoise, rock crystal, jet, bone, shell and pottery, all dated to between 1476 and 1510 AD, but there amongst them was found a small terra cotta head that did not fit any of the known designs for the people of that region. Indeed, it was to prove far stranger.

When the head was examined, it was immediately apparent that it was very old, and that it had a distinctive style very similar to artifacts found in ancient Rome, which didn’t seem to make any sense at all, as this was a pre-Columbian grave site in Mexico. Later carbon dating done on the head itself put its origins at somewhere between around the 9th and 13th century AD , making it far older than the site it was found at, and generating theories that it was evidence of some sort of contact between the ancient Romans and the Mesoamericans. For his part, Payón himself sort of swept the strange find under the carpet, not publishing anything on the finding until 1960. In later years what has come to be known as the Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca head has been further discussed and analyzed, and in 2001 it was examined by the archeologist Romeo H. Hristov, of the University of New Mexico. Hristov came to the conclusion that it actually dated to the 2nd century AD, and that due to its age and the distinctive hairstyle and beard of the head that it must have been a Roman artifact that had been brought to the region in pre-Columbian times, an assertion that would be shared by Bernard Andreae, a director emeritus of the German Institute of Archaeology in Rome, Italy, who would write:

[the head] is without any doubt Roman, and the lab analysis has confirmed that it is ancient. The stylistic examination tells us more precisely that it is a Roman work from around the II century A.D., and the hairstyle and the shape of the beard present the typical traits of the Severian emperors period [193-235 A.D.], exactly in the ‘fashion’ of the epoch.

The Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca head

The origins of the mysterious head and how it would up in Mexico have continued to be discussed and debated, and there have been many other ideas on the matter. For some it was simply an artifact brought over by early European explorers or even Vikings in pre-Columbian times, although how it ended up at the Mexican grave site is unclear. It could have also been brought over at some point by traders from Asia, such as China or India, where it somehow managed to venture out to that site. It could even have somehow drifted to Mexico from some far away Roman shipwreck or could just be a complete hoax that was planted at the site as a prank. For now the mysteries swirl, but one thing for sure is that an ancient Roman terra cotta head is certainly a strange thing to turn up outside of Mexico City.

Almost as strange was a discovery made in 1954, when an amateur archeologist by the name of Guy Mellgren stumbled across something decidedly while exploring in the state of Maine, in the United States. Mellgren had been poking around at the site of what was once a Native American settlement at Naskeag Point on Penobscot Bay in Brooklin, Maine, when he found a treasure trove of old Native artifacts, but as he sifted through his find he came across what appeared to be an ancient silver coin, which seemed jarringly out of place there amongst the Native relics. Unsure of what he had found, Mellgren brought the coin to specialists and things would get even weirder still.

Experts who examined the highly corroded coin at first thought it to be a 12th century British penny, and it was subsequently sorted of filed away with the other relics, but in 1978 the coin was re-examined and found to in fact be a very old Norwegian coin, dating all the way back to the reign of Olaf Kyrre, who was King of Norway between the years of 1067 to 1093 AD. This has been confirmed by other experts and is not really in dispute, but what is less clear is how it ended up in a Native American settlement that dates to 1180 to 1235. Although Norse Vikings from settlements in Greenland are known to have reached areas of Newfoundland long before Columbus arrived on these shores, how would a Viking coin find its way to Maine in pre-Columbian America, far south of where Vikings were ever thought to have ventured? Theories have ranged from that the Vikings did travel south, where they made contact with the Natives of the region, which would rewrite history as we know it, or that Natives from further north traded the coin with other tribes, after which it made its way to Maine being passed along. What makes it all even more baffling is that among the 30,000 artifacts found at the site this one coin is the only thing at all that is of Norse origin. Of course there is also the idea that the coin was a hoax, but in the end the “Goddard Coin,” also called the “Maine Penny” remains a curious unsolved mystery.

The Maine Penny

Other much larger out of place artifacts have been found on occasion, and a good example would be a gigantic, 80-ton boulder found on a hillside at Hidden Mountain, in Los Lunas, New Mexico in 1933. In this year a Frank Hibben, an archaeologist from the University of New Mexico, was led to the monolithic stone by a local guide, who claimed it had first been found in the 1880s. Upon this enormous slab of solid rock was a flattened area upon which was inscribed a passage written in ancient Hebrew, which is odd considering the inscription was estimated as being anywhere between 500 to 2,000 years old, putting it well out of the time frame for ancient Paleo Hebrew to have any business being in North America.

Experts that have examined what has come to be known as the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone believe it may have been used as an ancient Samaritan mezuzah, which were boulders placed at synagogues and other important places and etched with passages from the Decalogue, but this still doesn’t explain why or how it ended up all the way over in New Mexico up to 2,000 years ago. While there has been much talk that it is evidence of pre-Columbian visitation by Semitic explorers, there is also much criticism that it is likely a hoax, either by settlers in the 1800s or perhaps even carried out by Hibben himself to support his own fringe theories on Pre-Clovis migration to North America. Archaeologist Kenneth Feder is among the skeptics, and has flat out denied the authenticity of the stone, saying:

There are no pre-Columbian ancient Hebrew settlements, no sites containing the everyday detritus of a band of ancient Hebrews, nothing that even a cursory knowledge of how the archaeological record forms would demand there would be. From an archaeological standpoint, that’s plainly impossible.

The Los Lunas boulder

However, the stone has still managed to be widely discussed and debated, and it is far from solved. It is hard to study, as its immense size make it unable to be moved to a museum, vandals have destroyed portions of the inscription, and there has never been a consensus on where this mysterious boulder came from or why it holds ancient Hebrew. Is this monstrous boulder with its enigmatic markings evidence of the pre-Columbian presence of Hebrew speaking settlers in the New World, or is it all fake? Who knows?

Some odd historical objects are not necessarily out of place, but still manage to remain confounding and anomalous all the same. In 1929, German theologian Gustav Adolf Deissmann was cataloging items at the vast library of the Topkapı Palace, in Istanbul, Turkey, when he came across an old, dusty bundled up wad of seemingly discarded gazelle skin parchment. It would have seemed like just basically garbage at the time, but when the parchment was unfurled it would prove to hold within it quite an amazing discovery indeed.

There upon the parchment was a portion of an intricate map, unlike anything Deissmann had ever seen, and when it was analyzed by experts it was found to have been made by the Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis in 1513 AD. Although only a third of the map was intact, the rest missing, it was found that this was not just any ordinary old map, as it seemed to be part of an actual map of the world, and it was shockingly accurate for its time. Here was a map that correctly outlined such far flung lands as Europe, Africa, Caribbean islands, and even South America, islands such as the Azores and Canary Islands, and Japan, as well as uncharted areas such as Nova Scotia, the coast of Antarctica, and the Andes Mountains, at a time when many of these places had not even been discovered yet and all with impressive accuracy that should have been impossible at the time. Indeed, some experts have even said that it simply could not have been done with anything less than satellite imagery, and this is a map drawn up in 1513.

The Piri Reis map

No one could figure out how this could have been done, but there were hints in that the map listed some of its sources, including numerous other Arab and Indian maps, and even mentioning a long lost and nearly mythical map supposedly compiled by Christopher Columbus, which is thought to have been the first map of the world that he is speculated to have made while in the West Indies. This map has never been found, but it is strongly believed that somehow Piri Reis had seen it and used it together with around 20 other maps to craft his own, although none of the source maps mentioned, nor the missing portions of the map, have ever been located. To this day the stunning accuracy of the Piri Reis Map remains a baffling anomaly. How did he get this information? How was he able to map out places not even known to have been discovered at the time? What would the lost portions reveal? We may never know.

Some historical anomalies are rather numerous, yet still manage to baffle as no one is really sure what they are. Throughout many portions of what was once the Roman Empire there have been found over 100 small bronze objects measuring around 2 to 5 inches across and with a unique shape of 12 flat pentagonal faces with holes and knobs upon them. While many examples of these artifacts have been found, and they are most certainly Roman in origin, the problem is no one has the slightest idea of what they were used for. There are no known written records or design plans for them, and these “dodecahedrons” have been speculated as being everything from navigational tools, to zodiac instruments, to astronomy tools, knitting instruments, calendars, candlestick holders or even children’s toys. Your guess is as good as anyone’s, and although there are many of these objects and they seem to have been rather common they will likely nevertheless remain an impenetrable mystery.

A Roman dodecahedron

Not all enigmatic historical objects are so old, and there have been a few such oddities in more recent times as well. In 1968 a building in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States was being renovated when a wall was torn down to reveal hiding behind it a brand new looking World War I era motorcycle with a distinctive design no one had ever seen before. It had a unique engine design not seen in any other motorcycle of the time, an innovative and one-of-a-kind brake system, had specially made parts not found in any other motorcycle then or since, and overall it was far more advanced than anything else of its era. It also still ran smoothly and seemed none the worse for wear after decades hidden away forgotten behind a wall. Most oddly of all, the one-of-a-kind bike had the word “Traub” written upon it, its meaning just as cryptic as anything else about it.

When the first owners of the building were tracked down they were able to shed a bit of light on the mystery, saying that their son had stolen the motorcycle and hidden it behind the wall before leaving to fight overseas during the war, but this did little to explain where it came from in the first place or who built it. The mysterious motorcycle has since become part of the collection of the Wheels Through Time Museum, and to this day there has not been found any other example of this bike and its design, nor any other parts for it, no one knows who made it, and it remains a cipher.

The Traub Motorcycle

Even more recently was an unusual find made in 2014 by rangers at the Great Basin National Park, in Nevada. As they were patrolling a rather remote area of the park they found a tree in the middle of nowhere that had leaning against it a very old looking rifle, just neatly propped up and abandoned out there in the wilderness. It was soon found that the rifle was an antique Model 1873 Winchester rifle that had been manufactured between the years of 1873 and 1919, and which would have been considered a valuable heirloom. It was also in very good condition, and even now no one can figure out why anyone would just leave this old-fashioned antique weapon out there against that tree. Was it left there by some pioneer, gold prospector, or hunter from the 19th century? Was it put out there by a gun collector for reasons we will never know? Was it left behind by a time traveler? Who knows? The gun sits in a museum with no known owner.

Here we have looked at just a sampling of odd and unusual historical objects that have managed to evade understanding either by being out of place, coming out of nowhere, or being just plain weird. It is interesting to think that for as much as we think we like to know about history and for as much progress we have made in chronicling it there can still be these oddities that pop up from time to time to challenge our perceptions and serve as frustrating riddles we may never solve. It certainly seems that history is far from fully illuminated, and hiding out there in the nooks, crannies, and shadows are plenty of anomalies that manage to stay obscured in the mists of time, teasing us from the recesses of past eras.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Amazing UFO video filmed over Albufeira, Portugal

Here’s one really interesting footage that was filmed over Albufeira in Portugal. This was recorded on 13th August 2017 but it was just published online now,

Witness report:

Two big balls flying by with different speeds

I was walking the dog, and when I looked back to call him, I saw this two big balls flying by. They have different speed. It was really weird… I stopped the video to take a picture. It’s not so good one…
I thought immediately it was an UFO, I am near the Faro Airport and know exactly how are the planes and helicopters.
When I get home I showed the video to everyone and everyone says it was really very weird. I tried to get some answers online in portuguese, and nobody could explain anything, or others didn’t even respond my emails.
Someone gave me this website to report it, but I didn’t do it for a long long time, just because I don’t understand some of this questionary.
Recorded with Samsung Galaxy S5

Author (source: MUFON)

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

Famous 86-mile UFO Hot Pursuit Still Defies Air Force Explanation

Two Portage County, Ohio sheriff deputies spotted an abandoned vehicle along a road near Ravenna at 5 am on April 17, 1966. Deputy Dale Spaur got out of his car while Wilbur “Barney” Neff remained his.

Deputy Spaur heard a strange humming noise, and when he turned around, he saw a giant unidentified flying object. The UFO reportedly rose from behind the trees and hovered over them as the ground drenched in bright light.

An 86-mile chase then followed at speeds of over 100 mph from Ohio to Pennsylvania that took the deputies and a few more on a harrowing ride.

The bizarre trek ended in Conway, Pennsylvania but for law enforcement officers involved, it would last for the rest of their lives.

The close encounter marks the fourth instalment of The Parajournal, The Times video series by award-winning videographer Gwen Titley.

The dispatcher initially instructed to shoot the object but Sgt. Henry Shoenfelt told Spaur and Neff to stand down, wondering if the two have found a government weather balloon.

Police Chief Gerald Buchert, who was on patrol in nearby Mantua, heard the call of the deputies about lights in the sky. He immediately went home to get his camera. He snapped photos of what he described as two table saucers put together.

As the UFO zipped away toward the east, Spaur and Neff gave chase.

Spaur said that the UFO looked like the head of a flashlight from the ground. He estimated the object to be approximately 40 feet wide and 20 feet tall.

He later would say to reporters that the lines of the object were very distinct and it looked like somebody had control over it as it was not just floating around. It could manoeuvre, he added.

Spaur said the chase slowed down near Rochester as cars got tangled up in a mess of bridges.

When Spaur came out from under the bridge, the UFO came down and waited for them as if it knew these two cars were following.

As Spaur and Neff got too close to the object, it would speed up. The two did not able to follow it as they were now low on gas and their tires were balding. They decided to pull into an Atlantic service station where Conway Patrolman Frank Panzanella met them.

By 6:15 am, Spaur noticed three fighter jets chasing the aircraft. He then alerted the dispatch about it. The officers could pick up chatter on their police radios from the pilots.

The object hovered then shot straight out of sight.

Unfortunately, Buchert’s photos were severely fogged and had processing defects. It proved nothing.

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

Originally Published on Readers Digest

{ https://www.rd.com/ }

Then WHY hasn't NASA been shut-down?

{https://www.disclose.tv/ }

Merrylin Cryptid Museum: Proof for the Existence of Mythical Beings or Elaborate Hoaxes?