Ancient Egypt: Did aliens build the pyramids? Archeologist addresses SHOCK UFO claims

ANCIENT Egypt’s imposing Great Pyramids of Giza of have been at the heart of conspiracy debate and wild UFO claims for decades – but were the pyramids built by ancient aliens?

Video shows strange object flying over Tucson

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Auroral Sounds: Why the Northern Lights Crackle

The study is a continuation of a hypothesis that Unto K. Laine, Professor Emeritus, published three years ago on the origin of the sounds heard during the displays of the Northern Lights. His theory postulated that the sounds are generated when a magnetic storm causes charges in the temperature inversion layer of the lower atmosphere, to be discharged at an altitude of 70 to 80 meters.

Credit: Aalto University

A recent research paper presented by Laine at the ICSV26 congress in Montreal provides a more detailed account of the sound generation. According to this study, when the Northern Lights occur, the spectrum of the temporal envelope of the crackling noise (or in other words, the rapid changes in the sound amplitude) contain frequencies of the Schumann resonances.

The Schumann resonances refer to the low-frequency electromagnetic resonances occurring around the Earth, the strongest of them being below 50 Hz. Laine has now observed that these resonances generated similar rhythmic structures in all the measured crackling sounds.

’Previous international research has shown that a geomagnetic storm occurring during the Northern Lights reinforces the Schumann resonances. For the first time, such resonances have been found to activate the sound generation mechanism in the temperature inversion layer at altitudes of between 70 to 80 metres where the accumulated electric charges give rise to corona discharges and crackling sounds. In addition to the nine lowest Schumann resonances, the spectra also include their difference and sum frequencies or in other words, distortion components. This non-linearity also lends support to the hypothesis of auroral sounds generation,’ Laine says.

Credit:  D. Kalmančok, M. Šebeň, Comenius University   / Wikimedia Commons

The research material consisted of 25 sound events measured on the ground in September 2001 and in March 2012 in Southern Finland, during the display of active Northern Lights. Although the measurements were conducted at different locations using various equipment, the results nevertheless point to the same direction.

The results will be published today (10 July) at the ICSV26 congress in Montreal, which brings together more than 2,000 researchers in acoustics from around the globe.

• Contacts and sources:
  Minna Hölttä
• Aalto University

Source:

{  https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

How Fast Is the Universe Expanding Exactly?

Exactly how fast is the universe expanding?

Scientists are still not completely sure, but a Princeton-led team of astrophysicists has used the neutron star merger detected in 2017 to come up with a more precise value for this figure, known as the Hubble constant. Their work appears in the current issue of the journal Nature Astronomy

.The collision of two neutron stars (GW170817) flung out an extraordinary fireball of material and energy that is allowing a Princeton-led team of astrophysicists to calculate the Hubble constant, the speed of the universe’s expansion. They used a super-high-resolution radio ‘movie’ (left) that they compared to a computer model (right). To generate their ‘movie,’ the science team combined data from enough radio telescopes spread over a large enough region to generate an image with such high resolution that if it were an optical camera, it could see individual hairs on someone’s head 6 miles away. The movie emphasizes observations taken 75 days and 230 days after the merger. The middle panel shows the radio afterglow light curve.

Mov3High[1] from Princeton University on Vimeo.

Video by Ore Gottlieb and Ehud Nakar, Tel Aviv University

“The Hubble constant is one of the most fundamental pieces of information that describes the state of the universe in the past, present and future,” said Kenta Hotokezaka, the Lyman Spitzer, Jr. Postdoctoral Fellow in Princeton’s Department of Astrophysical Sciences. “So we’d like to know what its value is.”

Currently, the two most successful techniques for estimating the Hubble constant are based on observations of either the cosmic microwave background or stars blowing themselves to pieces in the distant universe.

But those figures disagree: Measurements of exploding stars — Type Ia supernovae — suggest that the universe is expanding faster than is predicted by Planck observations of the cosmic microwave background.

“So either one of them is incorrect, or the models of the physics which underpin them are wrong,” said Hotokezaka. “We’d like to know what is really happening in the universe, so we need a third, independent check.”

He and his colleagues — Princeton’s NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow Kento Masuda, Ore Gottlieb and Ehud Nakar from Tel Aviv University in Israel, Samaya Nissanke from the University of Amsterdam, Gregg Hallinan and Kunal Mooley from the California Institute of Technology, and Adam Deller from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia — found that independent check by using the merger of two neutron stars.

Neutron star mergers are phenomenally energetic events in which two massive stars whip around each other hundreds of times per second before merging in an extraordinary collision that flings out a burst of gravitational waves and an enormous blast of material. In the case of the neutron star merger that was detected on Aug. 17, 2017, the two stars — each the size of Manhattan and with almost twice the mass of the sun — were moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light before they collided.

The gravitational wave burst from a neutron star merger makes a distinctive pattern known as a “standard siren.” Based on the shape of the gravitational wave signal, astrophysicists can calculate how strong the gravitational waves should have been. They can then compare that to the measured strength of the signal to work out how far away the merger occurred.

Credit: Ore Gottlieb and Ehud Nakar, Tel Aviv University

But there’s a catch — this only works if they know how the merging stars were oriented with respect to Earth’s telescopes. The gravitational wave data can’t distinguish between mergers that were nearby and edge-on, distant and face-on, or something in between.

To separate those possibilities, the researchers used a super-high-resolution radio “movie” of the fireball of material that was left behind after the neutron stars merged. To make their movie, they combined data from radio telescopes spread across the world.

“The resolution of the radio images we made was so high, if it was an optical camera, it could see individual hairs on someone’s head 3 miles away,” said Deller.

“By comparing the miniscule changes in the location and shape of this distant bullet of radio-emitting gas against several models including one developed on supercomputers, we were able to determine the orientation of the merging neutron stars,” said Nakar.

Using this, they calculated how far away the merging neutron stars were — and then, by comparing that with how fast their host galaxy is rushing away from ours, they could measure the Hubble constant.

After the 2017 neutron star merger (GW170817) was registered by nearly every astronomical instrument on the planet, astrophysicists calculated that the Hubble constant value was between 66 and 90 kilometers per second per megaparsec. By using tight constraints on the orientation of the collision, published last year by Mooley and several of the same co-authors, including Hotokezaka, the current group of collaborators were able to pin that estimate down further, to between 65.3 and 75.6 km/s/Mpc.

While that precision is “quite good,” said Hotokezaka, it’s still not good enough to distinguish between the Planck and Type Ia models. He and his colleagues estimate that to get that level of precision, they would need data from 15 more collisions like GW170817 — with its helpful abundance of data up and down the entire electromagnetic spectrum — or 50 to 100 collisions that are detected only with gravitational waves.

“This is the first time that astronomers have been able to measure the Hubble constant by using a joint analysis of a gravitational-wave signals and radio images,” said Hotokezaka. “It is remarkable that only a single merger event allows us to measure the Hubble constant with a high precision — and this approach relies neither on the cosmological model (Planck) nor the cosmic-distance ladder (Type Ia).”

 The research was supported by Princeton University, the Israel Science Foundation, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation (AST-1654815), and the Australian Research Council (FT150100415).

• Contacts and sources:
  Liz Fuller-Wright
  Princeton University
• Citation: “A Hubble constant measurement from superluminal motion of the jet in GW170817″ by K. Hotokezaka, E. Nakar, O. Gottlieb, S. Nissanke, K. Masuda, G. Hallinan, K. P. Mooley and A. T. Deller appears in the current issue of the journal Nature Astronomy (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-019-0820-1.)

 

Source:

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

UFO Expert Warns People Against Trying To Contact Aliens

In a recent interview, UFO abduction expert and former CIA operative, Derrel Sims, warned humans against trying to contact aliens. He claimed that if we attempt to contact extraterrestrials, we could end up getting physically injured or even dying since aliens are malevolent beings.

On his website called Alien Hunter, Sims documented his first ever encounter with aliens which happened in 1952 when he was just four years of age. He explained that the extraterrestrial showed up in his bedroom and attempted to alter his mind into thinking that it was a clown. He believes that the alien was trying to modify his memories so that he wouldn’t remember seeing it or being abducted. He wrote, “I know inside, ‘He wants me to remember this as a bad dream of a clown.’” Years later, after Sims became a husband and a father, he realized that extraterrestrials had attempted to make contact with his 6-year-old son.

Since his experiences were less than pleasant, Sims believes that aliens are manipulative and can victimize humans through different ways. This is why he is warning people against trying to contact the otherworldly beings.

In his interview with the YouTube channel UAMN TV, he said, “It’s an uninformed position for them to get in contact with whoever’s out there,” adding, “Some people have done that and died as a result. Some people have been injured.”

He recalled a terrifying story that a producer told him in 1994. A television and movie production crew flashed strong lights into the sky at an area that was known for UFO activity in order to try and contact aliens. After they flashed their lights into the sky, something appeared out of nowhere and the crew vanished. The producer still doesn’t know what happened to the crew.

Sims also made an interesting comparison. He said that a human looking for contact with aliens is like a dog that is chasing a moving car. He explained that eventually the car will stop moving and the dog may not like whoever is driving the vehicle. The same goes with humans who are chasing the idea of contacting UFOs and aliens. When or if we do meet them, we may not like them and we could very well regret it.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

The U.S. Air Force’s mysterious unmanned X-37B space plane is approaching 700 days in Earth orbit on the fifth mission (OTV-5) of the super-secret Orbital Test Vehicle project. No one outside of a select few members of the military and the government know anything about the space plane. However, you can now add a non-military astronomer and photographer to the list after he not only located the X-37B in orbit but managed to take multiple photographs of it. How did he do it? Has he been whisked away to secret detention center?

“When I tried to observe it again [in] mid-June, it didn’t meet the predicted time and path. It turned out to have maneuvered to another orbit. Thanks to the amateur satellite observers’ network, it was rapidly found in orbit again, and I was able to take some images on June 30 and July 2.”

Live Science reports that astronomer and satellite tracker Ralf Vandebergh of the Netherlands has been on a months-long quest to find the X-37B. He first spotted it in May 2019 – confirming it’s still in space – and began preparations for photographing it. Unfortunately, when he pointed his 10-inch F/4,8 aperture Newtonian telescope with an Astrolumina ALccd 5L-11 mono CMOS camera at where the X-37B was expected to be … it wasn’t there. He found it again – confirming that it is making maneuvers in space – and took two sets of photos (they can be seen here and here)

Ralf Vandebergh

@ralfvandebergh

 

“It is really a small object, even at only 300 kilometers [186 miles] altitude, so don’t expect the detail level of ground-based images of the real space shuttle.”

An artist's illustration of the U.S. Air Force's X-37B space plane in orbit. The OTV-5 mission launched on Sept. 7, 2017.

Vandebergh is far too modest in describing his success.

“We can recognize a bit of the nose, payload bay and tail of this mini-shuttle, with even a sign of some smaller detail.”

Does Vandebergh’s discovery put him in any danger? Probably not. The Air Force has released a few photos of the space plane on the ground and after landings, and revealed at least one detail of its current mission – it’s carrying the Advanced Structurally Embedded Thermal Spreader (ASETS-II), which are experimental oscillating heat pipes the Air Force is testing for eventual use on long-duration space missions.

Then again, he may want to at least start wearing a fake mustache for a while.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Bryan Bender: Politico’s Defense Editor Talks UFOs

Open Minds UFO Radio: Bryan Bender is the defense editor for POLITICO Pro and can be seen adding commentary on the History Channel’s Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation. He was previously a D.C.-based reporter for the Boston Globe and Jane’s Defence Weekly, where he covered US military operations in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and the Balkans.

Bryan also writes about terrorism, the international arms trade, and government secrecy. He is the author of “You Are Not Forgotten,“ the story of an Iraq War veteran’s search for a missing World War II fighter pilot in the South Pacific. He is currently a board member of the Military Reporters and Editors Association. Regarding UFOs, Bender has broken several important stories. He published an article revealing the Pentagon’s secretive UFO program, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), the same day as the New York Times. For that story, the Department of Defense (DoD) confirmed to him AATIP did exist and that a career intelligence officer, Luis Elizondo, ran it. Bender also broke the news regrind the Navy creating new UFO reporting guidelines and another story revealing that US Senators were briefed on UFOs. In this interview, we discuss how Bender came to know AATIP existed, how he vetted that information, and his thoughts on the nature of government UFO research and where it may this all might lead to.

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

Hundred Thousands of People Are Planning To Storm Area 51 To Find Truth of Alien Contact

To find proof of alien contact, more than 120,000 individuals have pledged to meet up and storm Nevada desert’s Area 51.

The ambitious plan is being organised through Facebook and is scheduled to take place on September 20, 2019, at 3 am. The meeting place will be at the Area 51 Alien Center in Amargosa Valley, Nevada. Those taking part will then proceed to Area 51, a classified military facility believed to housed alien technology and aliens themselves.

The group organisers are planning to do the Naruto run so that they can move faster than the area security’s bullet. Naruto running is a meme inspired by a popular anime character Naruto Uzumaki who has a distinctive running style.

Dodging bullets is something that no one succeeded in the past. In January, the local sheriff’s office and Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) officers shot a man carrying an unidentified cylindrical object after attempting to drive into the site.

It remains to be seen whether the group is just doing some grand scale internet trolling or serious about the attempt to gain access to the controversial Area 51.

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

Heather Taddy and Chuck Zukowski Discuss Their New Show Alien Highway

Open Minds UFO Radio: Chuck Zukowski and Heather Taddy are co-hosts of the Travel Channel’s new series Alien Highway. Along with Chuck’s son, Daniel, they are investigating paranormal incidents and hot spots. For the past 30 years, Chuck has been an IC Mask Design Engineering contractor. He’s been on microchip design teams working on projects as simple as optics for traffic light controllers, and as complex as Spy Satellites, Deep Space Probes, and LIDAR technology. Chuck was also a volunteer Deputy Sheriff for El Paso County Sheriff’s Department for eight years and was terminated for running animal mutilation investigations within his county. As a UFO/Paranormal Field Investigator, Chuck has been researching and Field Investigating the unknown for more than three decades. Heather Taddy starred on A&E’s hit television series “Paranormal State,” which chronicled investigations from the world-renowned college-run club at Pennsylvania State University, The Paranormal Research Society (PRS). Serving as the Team Documentarian, Taddy traveled across the country, helping and educating families experiencing paranormal activity. Showing no fear when it comes to the paranormal, Taddy is often seen on the series isolating her self in some of the world’s most notoriously haunted locations. In this episode, we talk about some of what we will see in the show, what it was like conducting investigations together and how their various paranormal interests relate to one another.

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

Nederlander weet geheimzinnig Amerikaans ruimteschip vast te leggen op camera - HLN.be

Caspar Naber

Bron: AD.nl

De foto, gepubliceerd op de vooraanstaande Amerikaanse astronomiesite space.com, leverde de Nederlander tot zijn verrassing veel buitenlandse media-aandacht op. “Ik had verwacht dat alleen echte satellietvolgers zouden reageren’’, zegt hij hoorbaar verbaasd over de telefoon.

De amateur-astrofotograaf schrijft de belangstelling toe aan het feit dat de media de X-37B bij zijn lancering, in september 2017 vanaf de Amerikaanse vlieg- en ruimtevaartbasis Kennedy Space Center in Florida, omschreven als ’geheimzinnig ruimteveer’. Daarvan is alleen bekend dat het experimenten uitvoert en informatie verzamelt over objecten in de ruimte.

Lees ook

Beruchte sigaarvormige ruimterots is géén ufo, maar wat dan wel?

340 kilometer hoogte

Vandebergh wist het robotachtige ruimtevliegtuig te fotograferen op een hoogte van zo’n 340 kilometer. Dat deed hij ‘gewoon’ bij hem thuis met een op een telescoop gemonteerde astrocamera. “Wittem ligt tussen de heuvels in een dal. Dat schermt het strooilicht af van de omliggende steden Aken, Heerlen en Maastricht.” Hij is blij met het eindresultaat maar vond het voortraject naar eigen zeggen ‘het allermooist’. 

Als actieve satellietspotter wist hij dat de X-37B in juni veel passages over Nederland zou maken. “Ik ben een paar maanden op jacht geweest naar het ruimtevliegtuig. Dat spotte ik in mei voor het eerst met het blote oog maar op dat moment kon ik geen opnames maken. Na te hebben uitgerekend wanneer hij het best te fotograferen zou zijn - midden juni - zat ik klaar met mijn camera. Maar op het verwachte moment kwam de mini-shuttle niet opdagen.’’

Spanning

Vandebergh meldde het aan de groep satellietspotters waarvan hij deel uitmaakt. Die ontdekte dat het ruimtevliegtuig zich in een andere baan om de aarde bevond. De amateur-waarnemers maakten een nieuwe berekening van het moment waarop het onbemande ruimtevliegtuig opnieuw voorbij zou komen. Een paar dagen later vonden ze de X-37B terug. 

“Het allermooist vond ik de spanning’’, zegt de astronoom terugblikkend. Hij wist dat de mini-spaceshuttle in de loop van juli alleen nog overdag over Nederland zou komen en daardoor niet meer te fotograferen zou zijn. “Daardoor vroeg ik me constant af: haal ik het nog?’’  

Verbaasd

Op 30 juni en 2 juli waren de atmosferische omstandigheden volgens hem ideaal en stelde hij zijn telescoop met camera op. De opnames op 30 juni waren volgens hem al geslaagd maar Vandebergh publiceerde ze niet in afwachting van betere. Die maakte hij twee dagen later.   

“Het was een super geslaagde opname’’, zegt Vandenbergh terugblikkend. “Op de afbeelding is een stuk van de neus van het ruimtevliegtuig te herkennen en ook de laadruimte. Je kunt zelfs zien dat de laaddeuren openstaan. De gedetailleerdheid verbaasde me omdat je dat niet verwacht gelet op de hoogte en afmetingen van de X-37B. Die is ongeveer zo groot als een zakenvliegtuigje waarmee je amper één vleugel van de echte spaceshuttle kunt bedekken.’’   

Toestellen als de X-37B zijn volgens hem normaal gesproken nauwelijks te zien boven onze horizon. Dit omdat ze op een lagere lengtegraad in een baan om de aarde worden gelanceerd. Vandebergh: “De mini-spaceshuttle werd op een iets hogere lengtegraad gelanceerd, net als het internationaal ruimtestation ISS.’’ 

Hoogtepunt

Hoe leuk hij alle media-aandacht ook vindt, de foto van de X-37B is voor hem minder bijzonder dan voor de buitenwereld. “Een écht hoogtepunt was de foto die ik in 2009 maakte van twee Amerikaanse astronauten die aan het werk waren buiten ruimtestation ISS. De eerste keer dat iemand erin was geslaagd om vanaf de aarde mensen in de ruimte te fotograferen.’’ Hij probeerde zo’n foto al sinds 2007 te maken maar dat lukte niet doordat de astronauten telkens op een niet-zichtbaar deel van het ruimtestation zaten of in de schaduw of doordat het zicht gewoon niet goed was.  

Teleurstellingen

“In deze hobby moet je veel geduld hebben en ben je afhankelijk van de weersomstandigheden en de atmosfeer. Daardoor is het een liefhebberij met veel teleurstellingen en slechts af en toe geluksmomenten. Als het lukt is dat mooi maar voor mij geen reden om een gat in de lucht te springen. Dat vind ik overdreven’’, aldus de amateur-astrofotograaf.

View image on Twitter

Ralf Vandebergh@ralfvandebergh

The #OTV5 / #X37B space plane photographed in orbit! Finally an image showing this mini-Space Shuttle which is only a fraction in size of the real Shuttle.

http://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=154946 

… @SPACEdotcom @planet4589 @Marco_Langbroek @Astroguyz

@govertschilling @phi48 @Sterne_Weltraum

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Ralf Vandebergh@ralfvandebergh

TODAY it is exactly 10 years ago that I took the FIRST PHOTO OF A HUMAN IN SPACE FROM THE GROUND - during mission STS-119 #ISS. Read what analyses I did to be sure of it:http://www.ralfvandebergh-astrophotography.simpsite.nl/astronauts-in-the-telescope … @NASAKennedy @NASAJPL @NASA_Johnson @esaoperations @esa @ESA_nl @ruimtevaart @csa_asc

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Belief in Intelligent Life on Other Planets at Record High, UFOs Not Yet a Threat

Most Don’t View UFOs As A Threat To U.S. National Security.

Roughly 6 in 10 Americans think it is likely intelligent life exists on other planets and do not view UFOs as a threat to national security, a new poll finds.

A Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds 61% believe intelligent life on other planets is likely, including 31% who find it very likely. That’s the highest level of belief measured to date.

By party, Republicans (31%), Democrats (31%), and unaffiliated voters (32%) are equally likely to believe intelligent life on other planets is very likely. Men (39%) are somewhat more likely than are women (24%) to say it is very likely.

Recently, a number of top U.S. Senators have been briefed on UFO sightings by U.S. Navy pilots. Those experiences have been documented by the History Channel in a new six-part series Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.

The series follows Luis Elizondo, a former military intelligence official who confirmed the existence the Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

AATIP refers to UFOs as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). Mr. Elizondo resigned from the post to investigate the phenomena with his team. That team includes former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge. Steve Justice, who worked at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, is also on the team.

Chris Mellon, who served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, is the team’s government liaison. He has played a key role in setting up those recent briefings and believes UFOs are a serious threat to national security.

But Americans do not view UFOs as a threat, at least as of now.

An equal number (61%) do not believe UFOs pose a national security threat to the United States. Twelve percent (12%) disagree and 27% are unsure.

By party, Republicans (13%) are only slightly less likely than Democrats (16%) to view UFOs as a threat to national security, while unaffiliated voters (9%) are least likely.

That may be due to the fact only 11% report ever seeing or knowing someone who has seen a UFO, while 80% have not and do not. Still, according to the U.S. Census Bureau Population Clock, that 11% translates to more than 36 million adults nationwide.

By party, Republicans (11%) and Democrats (11%) are equally likely to report having seen or knowing someone who has seen a UFO, while unaffiliated voters (12%) are not statistically likely to disagree.

• The national survey of 1,000 American adults was conducted June 23-24, 2019 by Rasmussen Reports.

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

U.S. fighter jets to get 'UFO trackers': New radar being fitted to military aircraft to track enemy planes will also make it easier to pinpoint unexplained objects, expert says

• Infrared search and track systems are designed to help track enemy aircraft
• But the systems could have the side-effect of assisting investigations into UFOs 
• Air Force jets and Navy Super Hornet planes are due to get the sensors soon 

By TIM STICKINGS FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

New trackers on U.S. fighter jets could make it easier for them to detect UFOs, an aviation expert has said. 

The infrared search and track systems (IRSTs) are designed to hunt down enemy planes - but could also have the side-effect of helping pilots to investigate unexplained objects.

Military writer Tyler Rogoway said the technology has existed for decades but is now 'exponentially more capable' and could be a 'revolutionary' step in gathering UFO data.

Writing for The War Zone, of which he is the editor, he said the Navy's Super Hornet fleet and Air Force planes including the F-15C are due to get the sensors in the near future.  

Jets such as the Navy's fleet of Super Hornets (one of which is pictured in a file photo) will be equipped with infrared technology that could help investigate UFOs

The new technology 'could result in a major breakthrough, or at least a major uptick, when it comes to detecting and gathering information on so-called unidentified flying objects, if they are indeed out there,' he said.  

It 'could even serve as the final technological element needed to springboard potentially revolutionary data collection on the phenomenon,' he added. 

As a result the Pentagon may get 'more than it bargained for' with the new technology, he suggested.   

The IRSTs would be able to detect more because of their highly sensitive equipment and fast computer processing, Rogoway said. 

The new equipment is an upgrade compared to regular radar technology, which has certain limitations.   

One advantage of IRSTs is that, unlike radars, they do not emit any energy themselves. 

That makes the detection system, in itself, harder to detect, and much harder to jam. 

In addition, the IRST will keep working and tracking enemy aircraft even if the plane's radar system fails, he said.  

As a result, the technology could be of great help to American pilots against stealthy aircraft nearby.  

An image released by the Pentagon shows an unidentified object which was tracked by pilots off the east coast of the U.S. in 2015 

Eurofighter Typhoon jets also feature the technology, which goes by the name of PIRATE. 

They were previously used on older U.S. planes such as the F-101 Voodoo, a jet which was retired from the Air Force in 1972.  

Earlier this year it emerged that a number of pilots in the United States Navy reported seeing UFOs over American airspace between 2014 and 2015. 

One of them, Ryan Graves, said he saw UFOs regularly in the airspace off the Eastern seaboard between Florida and Virginia. 

Graves said he reported what he saw to the Pentagon and to members of Congress. 

In 2014, a pilot operating one of the Super Hornet fighter jets reported that he nearly collided with a UFO.

Another pilot, Danny Accoin, said he noticed a flying object on his radar, missile system, and infrared camera, but was not able to see it in his helmet. 

The UFOs were spotted in areas that were designated for fighter jet training, which makes it unlikely that these were commercial drones or other objects that are classified.

But none of the pilots or the Pentagon would speculate as to what they believed the objects were. 

Read more:

• U.S. Fighter Jets Are About To Get Infrared Sensors That Could Be Huge For UFO Reporting - The Drive

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

Back in 2015, astronomers noticed a star that was behaving in a very unusual way. Nicknamed “Tabby’s Star” after astronomer Tabetha Boyajian, the star exhibits strange and unexplained dips in its light output. This led many to speculate that Tabby’s Star was surrounded by some sort of artificial technological structure like a Dyson sphere constructed by an advanced alien civilization. Radio monitoring of Tabby’s Star didn’t turn up any alien chatter or anything else unusual, but it didn’t explain what was going on with the star either. Now astronomers have discovered another star with mysterious dips in its light output (behavior which usually suggests it’s being orbited by something) for which astronomers also have absolutely no explanation.

According to Scientific American, the star was discovered using the now-retired Kepler space telescope, an extremely precise exoplanet hunting space telescope. After analyzing Kepler’s data on the star, called HD 139139 (it doesn’t have a fancy name like Tabby’s Star yet), for more than a year, astronomers have no explanation for what might be causing its anomalous behavior. Andrew Vanderburg, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin says:

“We’ve never seen anything like this in Kepler, and Kepler’s looked at 500,000 stars.”

As an exoplanet hunting telescope, Kepler’s job was to look for periodic dips in brightness coming from stars. These dips in brightness usually indicate orbiting planets as they pass in front of the star. Data from these observations are fed through algorithms that look for repeated patterns, a good indicator exoplanets considering they should be spinning around the star in a consistent pattern. Some of the patterns though are too complex for the algorithms to handle, and are instead placed in the hands of volunteer civilian astronomers. It was one of these astronomers contacted Vanderburg  and told him to check out HD 139139, a star the size of the sun about 350 light-years away.

So what exactly makes this star so strange? According to Vanderburg:

“When I got that e-mail, I looked more closely and said, ‘okay, this definitely looks like a multiplanet system. But I can’t find any [planets] that appear to line up.'”

The dips in light make the star seem like it should be a multiplanet system, but it can’t be. The star displayed 28 dips in light, each of which lasted between 45 minutes and 7.5 hours with no repeats. The team says it looked more like noise than an actual signal. The team thought it may be a glitch in the system, but after checking again, the data turned out to be real.

One explanation was that this star had at least 14 planets and perhaps as many as 28—more planets than any other known system. That would in itself be very strange, but in order for even that explanation to work all of those exoplanets would have to be the same size, only slightly larger than Earth.

Yet there’s another problem with that explanation, according to Vanderburg. based on the short duration of the light dips, the planets would need to be in extremely close orbit to the star. But that doesn’t match the lack of a repeated pattern in the light dips. For there to be no repeats in the 80 days the telescope was pointed at the star is essentially impossible if the planets were as close to the star as they would need to be. So it’s not planets.

Among the other proposed explanations are a second, invisible source of gravity pulling on the star, the dust cloud of a planet disintegrating in front of the star, and short-lived starspots (cooler versions of our suns sunspots that have never been observed). For various reasons, none of these explanations hold up either.

A Dyson sphere is a theoretical structure that could harvest the energy of the enclosed star.

Vanderburg says there was one explanation left out of the recent paper he published on the star: an alien megastructure. Vanderburg says that explanation is extremely unlikely (which is the least surprising thing here), but astronomer Jason Wright, who led the investigation into Tabby’s Star, says HD 139139 will definitely be added to the list of places being investigated for alien technosignatures.

It’s unlikely any further investigations will happen for a while, though. The Kepler space telescope has been decommissioned and there are few other telescopes that can match its precision. So until another telescope is pointed at this mysterious star, all we’re left with is wild speculation. And the experts that are running the numbers and actually have the know-how to comment on it, of course.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

CONCEALED: The white marble pyramid was hidden on the Greek island 

(Pic: Cambridge Keros Project)

An ancient Greek pyramid dating back to the Bronze Age – making it the same age as Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt – has been discovered on an island in the Aegean Sea and has archeologists and Greek historians throwing around the exclamation “This changes everything!” It certainly changes one thing … who knew the Greeks built pyramids? And how did they get a pyramid’s worth of marble to an island 4,600 years ago? Did they get any advice from the Egyptians or the early Brits? Did they give them any?

“It is by far the largest prehistoric marine transport operation that has ever come to light anywhere in the world. It demonstrates quite clearly just how important, and integral to their culture, seafaring was to these early Bronze Age Aegean people.”

Keros

The story broke this week in The Independent but the actual announcement of the discovery was made earlier by members of the four-year Cambridge Keros Project centered at the University of Cambridge, with help from the Ephorate of the Cyclades and the Cyprus Institute. Keros is the well-known Aegean island where the large collection of artistic and unbroken marble Cycladic figurines now called the “Keros Hoard” was previously found. The nearby smaller island of Dhaskalio, was once linked to Keros by a narrow causeway, is where pyramid was discovered under what was once a settlement. There are few quality marble formations on Keros or Dhaskalio, so this massive pyramid-covering amount of the stone had to be transported there by Bronze Age sailors – a concept that archeologists and historians never believed these ancient Greeks were capable of.

How much marble? The project team estimates between 7,000 and 10,000 tons of glossy white marble was transported by sea from the island of Naxos, about 10 km (6.2 miles) north. It’s estimated that the Aegean boats at that time — Cycladic boats that were only 10-15 meter long and capable of carrying only between one and two tons of stone – made over 3,500 trips over a 20-year period totaling 45,000 miles.

What the builders used all of that marble for was a six-step terrace pyramid built by terraforming the island’s small mountain. (Photo here.) The terraces were six meters wide the end result was a thousand meters of glistening marble pyramid. The archeologists believe the top terrace was once flat and used for ceremonies, and Greek sanctuary expert Dr. Alan Peatfield of University College Dublin’s School of Archaeology thinks this may have been the first and a model for the later ones.

Aerial view of sophisticated prehistoric public architecture uncovered at Keros, Greece.

Image credit: Cambridge Keros project

Excavation in Trench B at the staircase.

Image credit: Cambridge Keros Project

An intact metalworking hearth from 2500 BCE at Keros, Greece. Image credit: Cambridge Keros Project

ENGINEERING: The pyramid shape of the island is man-made 

(Pic: Cambridge Keros Project)

“It is potentially a fundamental place of origin for the phenomenon of sacred mountains within the Greek world.”

If it was the first, it was an impressive start, according to Professor Colin Renfrew of the University of Cambridge and co-director of the excavation.

“At Dhaskalio we see a number of sophisticated architectural techniques employed in a well-thought through manner. These include massive entranceways, stone-flagged stairways, and an intricate drainage system covering the entire island. This gives the clear impression of a skilled architect and a guiding hand planning and executing a building programme whose scope can only be compared with a site like Knossos on Crete.”

An Egyptian steppe pyramid

The mountain pyramid may have symbolized the importance of Dhaskalio and Keros as a metalworking center and marketplace for metal products such as high-quality daggers. With those metal products being found throughout the islands, this new discovery reinforces the new theory that the seafaring skills of the ancient Greeks began earlier and were much more impressive than first thought.

Is it just a coincidence that this Greek pyramid, Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids (and possibly those in Central and South America and Asia) were built at about the same times? Or was something else going on that influenced these nearly simultaneous  “This changes everything!” constructions? That’s a question for another day and a different set of experts.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }