Whatever They Told You About Ufo Sightings Is Dead Wrong…And Here’s Why

The Ultimate Ufo Sightings Trick

Take for instance the high number of photographs that have been published of UFOs. Even if you’re definitely the most skeptical person when it regards an Arizona UFO, or any place else for that matter, you could just have a different opinion as soon as you read about this important event that happened on March 13th, 1997 when thousands of people witnessed what was thought to be a UFO sighting in Arizona. UFOs aren’t so hampered. The UFO looks like it’s been seen by plenty of individuals. Throughout that time period, there were two triangle UFOs sighted in the identical location.

With the numbers of UFO sightings increasing each calendar year, it’s important that you know precisely where to report a UFO sighting and what information will be necessary as a way to report it successfully. UFO sightings aren’t a modern phenomenon, they aren’t a US-only phenomenon. UFO sightings are now able to easily be captured on video, while it’s through a telephone or video camera. Usually once you speak about UFO sightings, most men and women feel that I mistook it for something else or they may think that it is only a crap. On weekdays it appears that UFO sightings are driven by men and women that are routinely outside daily, rain or shine. As an example, over Midlothian, many sightings are made from January to March. Recently, among the most renowned mass sightings was the Phoenix Lights.

The Ufo Sightings Cover Up

The Nazca tribe proved immensely skilled not just in agricultural procedures but also in art. A lot of UFO sightings were reported in america, with 26 sightings occurring during November. There’s additionally a lengthy standing agreement between the united states and UK which enables the United States government to check aircraft in United Kingdom air space.

The military was tracking strange aircraft in the area for around a couple of weeks, the operator said. Police did not want to comment. Lots of people, including Leverger himself, pondered in the event the incident was some sort of atmospheric incident or perhaps a meteor. Then explain someone who died in the incident has a fortune in a financial institution and should you help them get the amount from the bank you will secure a lot of money. Another report resulted in the discovery a meteor had descended Scotland. Information can become so out of shape it’s tricky to see the actual picture. My view is that we’re handling something inter-dimensional, he explained.

All About Ufo Sightings

There was no one in the vehicle. There’s a complete fleet of them, among the pilot said. As the craft came closer to their place, Globa was able to get a more comprehensive appearance. Someone has to cover science and every previous scientist. Hard science progresses by searching for an explanation of phenomena that are not explained by existing theories. In reality, scientists and lots of non-believers make no fuss about expressing their scepticism in regards to extrasensory perception. UFO experts claimed that the amount of sightings has increased in recent decades.

Source: 

• http://footageofufos.com/2019/07/whatever-they-told-you-about-ufo-sightings-is-dead-wrong-and-heres-why/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

Hiker Films a Strange Object Near Area 51

An unidentified flying object has been filmed from a mountain overlooking top secret US air base Area 51 by a hiker while hiking just miles away Area 51.

The hiker states: “Area 51 from Tikaboo Peak the base is very active. A great look into Area 51 just as the snow stopped.”

“To get the best video, and pictures of Area 51 out there, I do feel the weather had a lot to do with the great shots I was able to get. Between the snowstorms, and clouds the base would just illuminate long enough for me to film, and take pictures.”

 RT America’s Natasha Sweatte reports on this sighting. UFOSightingsHotspot.blogspot.com

See the original 22-minute video here:

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

With the number of UFO sightings on the increase, it’s tough to get excited about those reported by the general public with blurred and often questionable and frustratingly short videos. That’s why sightings by the military or UFOs with very distinct descriptions get more attention in the UFOlogy circles. A good example occurred last week when a UFO investigator in Chile sounded convinced that the orbs declared that UFOs seen crossing the skies and making sharp maneuvers over Concepcion were “Foo fighters.” A similar incident occurred this week when a UFO was recorded by a drone in Argentina and its speed caused some sites to refer to it as a “fastwalker.” Not only that, this UFO holds up fairy well under high magnification … enough to determine it’s not a bug or a bird.

Did you see that fastwalker?

That “whoosh” you just heard was the sound of ufologists’ ears perking up. Why? “Fastwalkers” is a term used by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) as shorthand for unidentified aerial phenomena that appear on radar screens moving faster than known Earth aircraft and changing directions at seemingly impossible speeds and angles. In addition, Argentina is known for its frequent UFO sightings and its big UFOlogy community, so sightings are taken more seriously there. Finally, the owner of the video (uploaded on July 14) — Mariano López – is a drone operator who has seen and recorded UFOs before and believes this is his best sighting. (Watch it here.)

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Image left: Fastwalker near Area 51 - Image right: Fastwalker Argentina

“This is the best UFO filmed from a drone so far, in which you notice several details. It was captured with the drone Dji Phantom in Mar Chiquita, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is located 34 kilometers from the city of Mar del Plata. It was filmed with the Gopro at a resolution of 4K at 30 frames per second.”

The YouTube page also has Lopez’s previous UFO video uploaded on March 23, 2019. (See it here.) That one is less distinct and one could make a case that it’s a very fast bird or an insect close to the drone’s camera. That’s not the case with the more recent video. Lopez has spent more time on this one – adding the mandatory slow-motion and tracking circle. However, what’s most interesting is the magnification starting at about 1:20 in the video. Whatever, this is, it can’t be mistaken for a bird of bug. Could it be another drone? If it was, drone-operator Lopez would probably be trying to buy one rather than speculate on it being a UFO.

Since “Fastwalker” is merely a description, albeit a military one, it’s appropriate for UFO sights like sightings.info to use it. However, it doesn’t go beyond that in trying to identify the object. No one else seems to have seen it and Lopez doesn’t appear to have reported it to the media, the military or any Argentine UFO investigators. That leaves it wide open for speculation and skepticism.

A strange, new drone? Secret military plane? Alien space ship? Camera anomaly? Mutant bird? Something else? What would NORAD say?

Let’s hope Mariano Lopez keeps his drones flying and his keen eyes watching for more Fastwalkers.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Dan J of Barstow, San Bernardino, California, had a very disturbing encounter with two sinister entities in early 2011. Those entities have become known in paranormal research as Shadow People. But, what are they? The Official Shadow People Archives website says of these creepy things: “Sometimes it appears as the mere silhouette of a person, usually male, but generally lacking any other characteristics of gender. However, in no way does the description end there. There are ‘hatted’ shadow beings, hooded shadows, cloaked ones, and solid or wispy, smoky types. Some are seen only from the waist up. Others clearly have legs that are seen fleeing from their observers. They dart into corners, through walls, into closets, or behind television sets, bushes, and buildings. Sometimes they simply fade into the dark recesses of the night. Lacking in the description is one common denominator unifying the many different types of shadow people that enter our world, except that they are ‘intensely dark.'”

In a July 2013 interview with Psychology Today, Rosemary Ellen Guiley – an expert on paranormal phenomena – said: “I discovered that many Shadow People experiencers are also ET experiencers, especially abductees. Through a long process, I concluded that Shadow People are a shape-shifted form taken by Djinn. Therefore, there is a profound connection between Djinn and bad hauntings and ET abductions. Furthermore, the footprints of the Djinn are evident throughout our mythologies about ancient aliens and gods. The picture that emerged is of a major Djinn involvement in all of our entity contact experiences throughout history.”

With that all said, let’s now return to the case of Dan. A no-nonsense, tough biker, Dan is hardly the kind of person who it’s easy to intimidate and scare. But, the shadow-things that intruded on his sleep – as he slept in a tent on the slopes of Mt. Rainier, Washington State in the summer of 2011 – had Dan in a state of near-hysteria. An enthusiastic outdoorsman, Dan spent four days hiking around the huge, 14,000-foot-plus high mountain. He would live to regret doing that. It was around 3:00 a.m. when Dan woke with a start – and with an unsettling and intense feeling of being watched very closely. He lay still, holding his breath and clenching his fists. Something was definitely afoot; of that much he was sure. That’s an understatement. In seconds, Dan was “rushed” by two skinny, spindly shadowy monsters that were humanoid in appearance.

Dan suddenly found himself unable to move as the two figures hovered over him – at which point Dan he felt incredibly weak, short of breath and dizzy. A cold sweat enveloped him. All the time, the Shadow People had their index fingers on his stomach. It was only when they removed their silhouette-like fingers that the weakness went away, and normality suddenly returned, as the pair exited the tent at high speed. Dan didn’t even try and get back to sleep: he lept out of the tent, got all of his belongings together, jumped in his truck and hit the road. Unfortunately for Dan, this was not the end of things: the Shadow People were not about to leave Dan alone.

Three nights later, Dan had an almost identical experience – even down to the Shadow People once again touching his stomach with their fingers and causing him to feel suddenly weak and near-completely incapacitated. This time, though, the location was the living-room of his Barstow-based apartment. The creatures came back on two more occasions: one several weeks later and the final time in August 2014 – more than three years later after the encounters had begun.

Dan had a deep suspicion that the Shadow People has the ability to take away his strength, and to the point where he was so weak he could barely move. It was a sign that he had been “zapped” – to use Dan’s very own and concise description – by something that was feeding on him. Indeed, Dan was unable to shake off the idea that what he had encountered were akin to supernatural vampires, surfacing in the dead of night and on the prowl for a tasty feast – which they found in Dan himself. What particularly worried Dan, though, was that the Shadow People clearly knew where Dan lived: he remains baffled and concerned by this admittedly odd and unsettling issue.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

We are far from documenting all of the great mysteries of our history and prehistory. Throughout the world there are places that have remained hidden from out gaze right up into modern times, sequestered in a realm beyond our knowledge to evade our insatiable drive for discovery. One such place sat entombed in darkness and forgotten for tens of thousands of years in a remote area of France, stuck in time even as the world above it marched on into new eras. It is a magnificent caves system of cryptic paintings of great historical importance that has managed to elude understanding and has since its discovery been sealed off yet again, off-limits to most and keeping its secrets close as it always has.

One of the greatest archeological discoveries made in modern times happened quite by accident. On September 12, 1940, an 18-year-old Marcel Ravidat was out exploring in the countryside of southwestern France, near the village of Montignac in the Dordogne region, along with his faithful dog. It was a perfectly normal day until at some point the dog tumbled down a hole in the ground at a place called the hill of Lascaux. Ravidat would call some friends to come investigate the hole with him, as it seemed to lead off into the murk into a passageway, and their minds raced with the wonders that may lie down there in the clinging dark. They went about widening the hole until they were able to fit through, and armed with a makeshift lamp they penetrated into the gloom, where they would find an ancient world lost to mankind for millennia, long a stranger to the light, and which would become a mystery that has fascinated scientists to this day.

After descending through a 49ft deep shaft and squeezing through some very narrow passageways, the corridor emptied into a larger room that seemed mundane at first until the walls were licked by the flickering illumination of their lamp. There covering the walls and dancing about in the lamplight were myriad ancient paintings depicting various animals, humans, and more, as well as abstract symbols, all mostly in red, yellow, and black. Excited by this incredible new treasure they had found, the boys returned the following day and delved deeper into the complex to find other alcoves and chambers similarly adorned with these mysterious paintings, and that is when they would finally come out with their discovery and the real research on what would come to be known as the Lascaux Caves would begin in earnest.

It was found that the mysterious cave system was divided into several main areas that between them held hundreds upon hundreds of ancient cave paintings depicting animals, including deer, aurochs, ibex, bison, deer, equines, birds, and feline species, as well as human figures, bears, lions, a rhinoceros, and abstract signs, yet none of trees, vegetation, or the landscape itself, and none of reindeer, odd because that is believed to have been the main source of food for the people who painted it all. Most of the animals seen were of species long extinct, belonging to the Upper Paleolithic era, and most can be identified, yet there are also some anomalies among them, such as a monstrous creature with panther skin, the tail of a deer, a bison’s hump, two horns, and a prominent male member. What was this thing? No one knows.

All of these figures are meticulously rendered in a variety of mineral pigments, with some amount of engraving directly into the stone also seen, all of it often incorporating the angles and curves of the walls themselves into the designs. The paintings in general show great skill and care in their creation, often exhibiting artistic skills and techniques far ahead of their time. Among the different sections of the caves are the so-called Hall of the Bulls, which shows various horses, stags, and bulls, including an immense, 17-foot-long image of a bull, as well as another section called the Nave, which holds painting referred to as “The Crossed Bison,” which uses tricks of perspective that were very advanced for their era, and the Abside (Apse), a smallish chamber in which practically every inch is covered in thousands of entwined, overlapping, engraved drawings, and other sections with names like the Shaft of the Dead Man, the Chamber of Engravings, the Painted Gallery, the Chamber of Felines, and others.

It is all rather breathtaking in its ambitious majesty, but it is also permeated with a great deal of mystery, and there is much we don’t know about this place. One thing that has never been agreed on is just how old the paintings actually are. From the species depicted and the various tools found scattered about it is believed that they date to between 17,300 to 20,000 years ago, but it is still debated as to exactly how old they really are. It is also not fully understood why the paintings were made in the first place. While there are other cave paintings to be found in the region, there is nothing approaching the grand scale of what can be seen in the Lascaux Caves, suggesting this place had some special significance among the people that made it, but just what this might be is unclear, with theories ranging from that this was a place for rituals to that it held some spiritual capacity. Making it all more impressive is that a main component in the pigments used are certain manganese oxides that do not exist in the immediate area, with the nearest source lying 250 kilometres away, meaning these artists went through great lengths to import these materials and then lock themselves deep underground with animal fat lamps to complete their work over the course of generations.

Another mystery still is that no one really knows what all of these paintings actually mean, and although some seem to tell a story and even continue on into other rooms, no one is quite sure what that story is or why it was recorded here in this manner. One idea is that these paintings tell spiritual stories or even creation myths, while another is that they are rituals to bring success in hunting, or another still that they are just hunting records or records of the wildlife of the area. No one really knows, and there are fewer and fewer opportunities to study these wonders because in modern times the caves are almost completely off limits to even scientists and researchers.

This wasn’t always the case. The caves were opened to the public in 1948, where they began to attract droves and droves of people coming to peer into this window to the past, but this unfortunately led to a change in the cool, dark atmosphere within the cave that began to seriously threaten the paintings. Factors such as carbon dioxide, heat, humidity, artificial lighting, changes in air circulation and temperature, and various contaminants conspired to lead to visible deterioration of the paintings that began to progress at an alarming rate. By the 1960s there were crystals, algae, and lichens appearing within the caves, and they were finally closed down to the public in 1963. This severely limited access to the caves, but things would get even worse still, when in 2000 a destructive white mold was found running amok here, and in 2007 a mysterious black fungus of an entirely new species never seen before began doing irreparable damage to the paintings, and in 2008 the caves were closed altogether for three months, with only a single person allowed in for 20 minutes at a time once a week to monitor the site and take readings.

Since then the fungus problem has been ongoing, and access is still extremely limited, meaning very few people have had the privilege of seeing these paintings up close. Even researchers and experts are only allowed very limited access to the caves at present, making study of the ancient treasures inside an agonizingly slow process. Tourists are able to see the paintings only through a replica cave called Lascaux II, created in 1983 only about 200 meters from the actual site, which holds recreations of certain sections of the real caves, and this is about as close as most people will ever get to seeing the real thing. It is somewhat sad to think that this piece of our past might forever be hidden away down in the earth like it did for millennia before its discovery, to keep its secrets that only the long dead know of. One can only hope that we find the answers we seek, but until then this remains a window to another era which was open to us for a time, but which has had the curtains pulled over it once again.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

“I do not like the idea of being a domestic cat, but what’s the solution? I think one of the solutions that seems to be the best option is to add an AI layer. This is something that I think will really be important on a civilization level scale.”

Who said anything about being a domestic cat? And why is it so bad? Garfield seems to be doing well and most house cats seem to rule the homes they live in while doing nothing to earn it other than the occasional purr. And yet, that’s what seems to be worrying billionaire and man-you-don’t-want-licking-your-face Elon Musk, whose solution to not being a house cat (you would think he has enough money to get plastic surgery) is to implant wires into brains and download all of their data into massive computers. Not HIS brain, mind you – but probably his computers and his wires. Do you trust him with your mind? Do you trust him with your milk or tuna?

“Even in a benign AI scenario we will be left behind,” he said. “With a high-bandwidth brain-machine interface, we can actually go along for the ride. We can have the option of merging with AI.”

At a presentation at the California Academy of Sciences this week, Musk explained that artificial intelligence is leaving our puny human brains behind, but his company Neuralink has a way for us to at least keep pace with it. Neuralink’s product is a computer chip attached to ultrafine, electrode-studded wires that will be inserted into a brain (yours?) by a surgical robot, which first drilled the hole. The robot will then connect the chip to a computer that will read brain “spikes,” interpret them and then store them faster than you can say “this sounds a lot scarier than that Russian face-aging app.” That’s because it is, although Neuralink’s president Max Hodak assured The New York Times that they’re not trying to hide anything – well, not anymore … this is the first announcement since Musk founded and financed the company two years ago.

“We want this burden of stealth mode off of us so that we can keep building and do things like normal people, such as publish papers.”

Publish papers? Does Elon I-can’t-get-to-Mars-soon-enough Musk know that this guy just wants to write papers about his brain-data-sucking device?

“All this will occur I think quite slowly. It’s not as if Neuralink will suddenly have this incredible neural lace and take over people’s brains. It will take a long time.”

That comment sounds like Musk is smoking pot again. In reality, Neuralink has made considerable progress. It showed the Times a lab rat with 1,500 electrodes in its brain connected to a computer that is reading and interpreting them – a system they say is already advanced enough for scientific research or medical applications. They’re also upgrading the robot to use a laser drill because the mechanical ones cause too much brain vibrations. Could that be why Musk feels like he’s becoming a cat?

Neuralink says it plans to conduct testing on humans by 2020. It already has a jump on its competition because it uses ultra-thin wires and the robot can insert them at different depths inside a brain. It still needs to find a better material for the wires, since the salt in brains causes them to deteriorate and Musk wants them to stay in your head permanently so he knows when you change your mind about buying a Tesla. Musk may be anxious to get some return on his $100 million investment, especially since Neuralink is hiring more people without a product to sell. Then again, isn’t that the Muskian way?

Someone who didn’t go with Neuralink

“[If two people both had Neuralinks, they’d] effectively have a really high-bandwidth telepathy … potentially a new kind of communication, a conceptual telepathy. It would also be consensual.”

Consensual? Did Musk throw that last word in about brain-to-brain communications because he was worried about privacy … or does he know the first thoughts most people would send across the wires?

A lot of people have already trusted Elon Musk with their money. How many will trust him with their thoughts?

Will you?

What else will this cat man do?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

© Photo : MISIS National University of Science and Technology

A massive and mysterious underground structure has been detected beneath the ancient Naryn-Kala fortress in Derbent, Russia. Scientists still aren’t sure what the void may be, but the current thinking is that the structure may be evidence of the oldest church in Russia, dating all the way back to 300 CE.

Karyn-Nala

Derbent is in what is today known as the republic of Dagestan which lies on the Caspian Sea just north of Azerbaijan. Derbent is recognized as the oldest occupied city in what is now Russia and evidence exists suggesting Derbent has been inhabited since at least the 8th century. Because of its location perfectly situated between Asia and Europe, Derbent has changed hands many times throughout the centuries between Persian, Arab, Mongol, Timurid, Shirvan and Iranian kingdoms. In 1813 the city became part of Russia as a result of the Russo-Persian War. 

The Naryn-Kala fortress is believed to have been built in the 6th century by the last kingdom of the Persian Empire shortly before the rise of Islam throughout the region. Today, the fortress is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is still being actively excavated by archaeologists.

In one such excavation, scientists with the Russian Academy of Sciences and two Russian universities discovered a massive underground structure by using muon radiography, a revolutionary new form of imaging which leverages cosmic rays as a non-invasive source of radiation. Already, muon radiography has enabled scientists to detect previously unknown structures in the Great Pyramid of Giza and other archaeological sites.

The underground structure is roughly cross-shaped with a dome in the center and measures around 11 metres (36 feet) high, 15 metres (50 feet) from north to south, and 13 metres (43 feet) from east to west. It was originally believed that the structure was a water tank, but the latest muon radiography offers a previously unknown level of detail that suggests it may have been something more.

A cemetery just outside the walls of Karyn-Nala.

Natalia Polukhina, the senior author on the published study of the mysterious void in Naryn-Kala, says the shape of the structure and its location indicates that it likely played an important role in the fortress at the time:

The unusual building, in which we have put our detectors, has the shape of a cross, oriented strictly to the sides of the world, one side is two meters longer than the others. As the archaeologists who began excavations say, during construction, the building was entirely on the surface and it stands on the highest point of the Naryn-Kala. What is the sense to put the tank on the surface, and even on the highest mountain? It is strange. Currently, there are more questions than answers.

It’s still impossible to determine the structure’s purpose until actual physical excavations are conducted – if they ever can be without harming the ancient fortress.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

The club of weird, giant, prehistoric bird-lizards we call dinosaurs just got a new member, and this one has a face like a shovel. Aquilarhinus palimentus was discovered at Big Bend National Park in the Chihuahuan Desert and belongs to a group of other strange-faced dinosaurs called Hadrosaurids, known for their distinctive “duck-bill” jaws. This newly identified hadrosaurid genus roamed the Earth roughly 80 million years ago when the Chihuahuan desert was a lush river delta, and represents the most primitive species of hadrosaurid yet discovered.

The discovery was published in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology earlier this week. According to the paper, the name Aquilarhinus palimentus refers to the shape of the dinosaurs face and is Latin for eagle-nosed shovel-chin, which sounds like an insult from a schoolyard bully. If dinosaurs have ghosts, that’s one angry shovel-faced dino-ghost. You can see an artist’s rendition of the unfortunate beast here.

Part of the dinosaur’s remains were actually discovered in the 1980’s by paleontologist Tom Lehman, one of the co-authors of the new study and professor of paleontology at Texas Tech University. The fossils were originally misidentified as belonging to a member of the Gryposaurus genus of duck-billed dinos. Revisiting the fossilized bones, however, showed that this was an example of an entirely new subspecies of Hadrosaurid.

Art of two Hadrosaurids feeding in a river bed.

Old shovel-face represents the most primitive example of the Hadrosaurid family of dinosaurs ever discovered. According to professor Tom Lehman:

“This new species is particularly interesting because it is among the earlier representatives of the duck-billed dinosaurs, and it shows us what the narial crest, or nose, of these animals looked like before the wide variety of distinctive noses evolved in later species of duck-billed dinosaurs.

In addition, instead of a duck bill, this animal had a shovel-shaped beak that suggests it had a unique way of feeding. Most of what we know about duck-billed dinosaurs is based on the wide variety of species found in Alberta, Canada, Montana and Utah. So, this new species also is interesting because it shows us that duck-billed dinosaurs that lived in Texas were different from those that lived farther north.”

The Hadrosaur evolutionary tree, of which the recently discovered dinosaur is the earliest known member.

Credit: Debivort (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The area of big Bend National Park where the discovery was made looked very different 80 million years ago when Aquilarhinus palimentus was alive. It was a wet and silty river delta and researchers believe Aquilarhinus palimentus used its unique jaw to scoop silt out of the river bed, eating the loosely rooted plants of the tidal river delta. The researchers believe that when the dinosaur died, its remains were washed downstream and covered with silt over the course of millions of years.

According to the researchers this discovery suggests that there may be many more lineages of Hadrosaurid yet to be discovered, and if the previous findings are to be any indication they’ll likely also be ridiculous.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

The story of human origins is a mysterious and complex tale, and one full of shadows. These aren’t just the shadows of a past that we can’t fully recall, either through the study of the historical record or earlier anthropological evidence; modern science continues to discover the literal “shadow” of our past relatives in our modern DNA.

Human ancestry was far more diverse and complex than was once believed, and every year we are adding new members to our ancient family tree. But unlike in the past when such discoveries were made in the dusty floors of caves or in ancient burial sites, today we can learn almost as much about our complex origins from studying the genetics of modern human groups around the world.

And, rather strikingly, we continue to find traces of unknown hominid ancestors when doing so.

Reconstruction of Homo neanderthalensis skull.

Science Alert recently reported on a study led by João Teixeira of the University of Adelaide, and his colleague, biologist Alan Cooper, who discovered evidence of what they believe to be “ghost” ancestors in modern DNA.

One such discovery, made in 2018 but which had not been widely reported at that time, indicated an unusual genetic trait that is discernible in the population of Flores, Indonesia, which the researchers believe to be “as divergent from modern human DNA as Neanderthal or Denisovan.”

Neanderthal fossils were first discovered at the Feldhofer Cave of the Neander Valley, near Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1856. Although different in appearance from modern humans, there is still some debate as to whether they should be categorized as an entirely different species from us, or as a subspecies of modern humans. The Denisovans weren’t discovered until fairly recently, and going off of little more than a fingertip fragment and teeth recovered from Denisova cave in Siberia. Since then, other fragmentary remains have been discovered, including one mysterious hominid jawbone found off the Taiwanese coast which some believe could have Denisovan origins.

The Penghu jaw fragment, recovered by fishermen off the coast of Taiwan sometime prior to 2008.

In all of the aforementioned cases, the discovery of these archaic human groups involved physical remains recovered from what a type site (the location after which the species or group is named) or other location. There is now also genetic evidence of encounters between modern humans and these known, but now-extinct relatives; shortly after our exit from Africa, Homo sapiens encountered Neanderthals, and the results of these interactions can still be found in the DNA of as much as 2% of modern populations. Similar genetic traces of our interactions with the Denisovans can be found (albeit to a lesser degree than that of Neanderthals).

However, there are also traces of interactions between humans and species that cannot be identified. According to Science Alert:

The first unknown extinct hominid – named EH1 – was roughly genetically equidistant from Denisovans and Neanderthals. The ancestor of all Asian and Australo-Papuan populations bred with EH1, resulting in 2.6 to 3.4 percent shared EH1 ancestry.

The other “unknown” in this equation, as discussed earlier in relation to genetic traces found among the modern populations of Indonesia (dubbed EH2) “only appears in short-statured people that live near Liang Bua Cave,” which, not surprisingly, is where evidence of Homo floriensis, a diminutive species that have been likened to real-life “Hobbits” of the ancient world, was discovered in 2004 (we should note that the unidentified EH2 is not taken to be one and the same as Homo floriensis, but rather some other extinct hominid type that remains undocumented).

As Teixeira and Cooper summarize, “At least 3 different hominin groups appear to have been involved in Asia, of which only the Denisovans are currently known. Several interbreeding events are inferred to have taken place east of Wallace’s Line, consistent with archaeological evidence of widespread and early hominin presence in the area.”

Teixeira and Cooper’s paper appeared in the journal PNAS. 

Current archaeological evidence, as with that of fossil remains, provides no evidence that these archaic human groups made it as far south as Australia and Tasmania (both being parts of the ancient continent of Sahul, as it would have existed prior to 18,000 years ago). However, as the authors of the PNAS study have noted, genetic evidence in this region of the world “remains enigmatic,” hinting at further possibilities with relation to the many mysteries in our ancient family tree… and the “ghosts” of others whom our ancestors occasionally encountered.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Ancient Sphinx Found On Mars Hill, Proof Of Religious Creatures Thriving On Mars, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: July 19, 2019
Location of discovery: Mars
Source photo: 

• http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/192406
  
  

This ancient sphinx on Mars is positioned on top of a hill so that it can be seen for a long ways. The sphinx has a head, nose, mouth, chin, eyes, forehead, neck, front arms and body with small tail. The sphinx is ancient beyond ancient which you can tell from it crumbling to pieces everywhere. Still its an important find, proof that an intelligent species once thrived on this planet and create monuments to their gods.
Scott C. Waring-Taiwan

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

A Japanese spacecraft has landed on an asteroid after blasting it with a bullet. The mission will bring back rock samples to Earth.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

A computer graphic image provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) shows the Japanese unmanned spacecraft Hayabusa-2 approaching the asteroid Ryugu. 

Associated Press

• The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa-2 has landed on the surfaceof an asteroid called Ryugu that's over 5.5 million miles from Earth.
• Ryugu is a carbon-rich rock that could hold clues to the history of our solar system. The rock might contain amino acids, the essential building blocks of life.
• Hayabusa-2 blasted a hole in the asteroid in April in order to collect samples from subsurface rock that's been sheltered from the wear and tear of space.
• NASA is also conducting a mission to visit an asteroid and collect samples, but without the explosives.
  

The life of an asteroid is lonely. The rocks spend eons drifting through the cold vacuum of space.

But on Wednesday, the asteroid Ryugu welcomed a special visitor: Japan's Hayabusa-2 probe successfully landed on the asteroid's surface at 9:06 p.m. ET.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launchedHayabusa-2 into space in December 2014. Its mission: explore and collect samples from Ryugu, a primitive asteroid half-a-mile in diameter that orbits the sun at a distance up to 131 million miles (211 million kilometers).

The probe reached its destination in June 2018, then got to work making observations, measuring the asteroid's gravity, and rehearsing to touch down. It blasted the asteroid with a copper plate and a box of explosives in April in order to loosen rocks and expose material under the surface, then successfully landed on Ryugu last night to gather up the rock and soil debris.

The spacecraft captured the images below as it left the asteroid's surface.

"First photo was taken at 10:06:32 JST (on-board time) and you can see the gravel flying upwards. Second shot was at 10:08:53 where the darker region near the centre is due to touchdown," JAXA tweeted.

These images were taken right after Hayabusa-2 touched down on Ryugu asteroid on July 11, 2019. JAXA/Associated Press

Ancient rock samples

Asteroids are made of rock and metal, and they take all kinds of quirky shapes, ranging in size from pebbles to 600-mile megaliths. Most of them hang out in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, though Ryugu's orbit sometimes takes it between Mars and Earth.

Some asteroids date back to the dawn of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago, when materials leftover from the formation of planets coalesced into these chunks of rock. In that sense, asteroids can serve as time capsules: What scientists find in those primitive rocks could tell us a lot about the solar system's history.

Ryugu is a C-type asteroid, which means it's rich with organic carbon molecules, water, and possibly amino acids. Amino acids form the building blocks for protein and were essential to the evolution of life on Earth. Some theories posit that an asteroid first brought amino acids here, gifting our planet with the seeds of life, though that's still debated.

About three-quarters of our solar system's asteroids are C-type. Hayabusa-2 aims to be the first mission to bring samples from such an asteroid back to Earth.

The probe initially landed on Ryugu in February and collected shallow samples from just below the surface, but mission managers decided to gather some deeper rock samples as well, since that material hasn't been exposed to harsh weathering from space. To accomplish that, the probe had to lift back off the asteroid, then blast a 10-meter crater into the surface in order to access to the rock beneath.

So in April, Hayabusa-2 released and detonated a box of explosives in space that shot a copper plate into the asteroid.

Wednesday's landing then made a splash in all that freed-up material.

The Japanese Hayabusa-2 spacecraft lands on an asteroid to collect samples.JAXA/Associated Press

"These images were taken before and after touchdown by the small monitor camera (CAM-H). The first is 4 seconds before touchdown, the second is at touchdown itself and the third is 4 seconds after touchdown. In the third image, you can see the amount of rocks that rise," JAXA tweeted.

After it touched down, Hayabusa-2 then collected a new set of samples and left Ryugu's surface. At the end of this year, it will begin the 5.5 million-mile (9 million-kilometer) journey home. So far, everything is on schedule.

—HAYABUSA2@JAXA (@haya2e_jaxa) July 11, 2019 " data-e2e-name="embed-container" data-media-container="embed">

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NASA is on a similar mission

NASA is also studying a far-off asteroid.

The agency's OSIRIS-REx mission reached a much smaller C-type asteroid, Bennu, in August 2018. But the probe didn't land on Bennu's surface; instead, it's been orbiting at a record-breakingly close distance.

The plan is for OSIRIS-REx to approach Bennu's surface in July 2020, but the spacecraft will only make contact for about five seconds. During that quick instant, it will blow nitrogen gas to stir up dust and pebbles and collect the samples. If all goes according to plan, it will return that material to Earth in 2023.

The asteroid's surface has turned out to be rougher than expected, however, and debris flying off the space rock can pose a threat to the orbiting spacecraft. So NASA is still choosing its sampling site.

But Bennu has already made a significant finding: In December, before it entered orbit around Bennu, the probe discovered that the asteroid harbored ingredients for water (oxygen and hydrogen atoms bonded together). Though Bennu is too small to host liquid water, it's possible that water could have once existed on its parent asteroid, which Bennu broke away from between 700 million and 2 billion years ago.

Though NASA's asteroid-exploration mission will collect a larger quantity of sample material than Japan's, the JAXA team hopes that comparing the samples from two different sites on the same asteroid will yield novel information about how long-term space exposure changes asteroids over time.

Both Bennu and Ryugu could also teach scientists a lot about the history of the solar system and potentially — if they contain organic materials — about the origins of life on Earth.

• SEE ALSO: NASA simulated the terrifying scenario of a 260-meter-wide asteroid hurtling toward Earth, exploring what would happen if a fragment broke off and hit New York

{ https://www.businessinsider.com/ }

"Apollo on steroids": NASA's mission to get the first woman and next man to the moon by 2024

Fifty years after the Apollo 11 launch, NASA is setting its sights on a trip back to the moon. The goal is to return to the lunar surface by 2024, in a mission described as "Apollo on steroids" – but some critics argue that's unrealistic amid budget concerns and already-missed deadlines.

Orion is NASA's first design of a deep space crew capsule since the Apollo era. It looks similar to Apollo's capsule from the outside, but it's 50% bigger and can hold four astronauts.  

"When we went last time, the goal was land a person on the moon and return them safely to Earth. And we did that," said Mark Kirasich, who oversees NASA's Orion program. "This time, it's a little bit different. It's about a sustainable, long-term, human space exploration program."

Orion would launch on top of a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket designed to be more powerful than the Apollo-era Saturn V. It would then fly to a mini-space station orbiting the moon called Gateway, where the crew would dock before taking a lunar lander down to the moon's surface. 

A handful of companies are now proposing designs for Gateway, including Northrop Grumman. With Grumman's design, up to four astronauts could live and work for up to two months. 

"It's a place where they can cook their food, where they can gather and socialize, but really, do their work," said Frank DeMauro, who oversees the company's space systems.  

But it's not that simple. Orion and the SLS rocket are years behind schedule and billions over budget. Fed up, the Trump administration ordered NASA to put Americans back on the moon by 2024 this March. 

"If NASA is not currently capable of landing American astronauts on the moon in five years, we need to change the organization, not the mission," said Vice President Mike Pence at the time.

Last week, NASA did just that, and ousted the two top managers of the program responsible for NASA's lunar efforts. 
 
"It was entirely my decision," said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. "But at the end of the day, we need to be very clear that NASA is committed to cost and schedule."  
 
Bridenstine says it could take an additional $20 billion over 5 years to meet the new deadline, and that his next step is to get support from Congress.

"If the Congress follows what we have put forward, we will have the first woman and the next man on the moon in 2024," he said.

That congressional budget approval remains a big if -- but without it, NASA's new moon mission has no chance. The organization's administrator will testify before the Senate Wednesday.

{ https://www.cbsnews.com/cbs-this-morning }

Origin of Greek Civilization Believed Found On Monumental Pyramid Island

A new discovery has possibly revealed the origin of Ancient Greek culture. In a remote and uninhabited pyramid-shaped islet, archaeologists have found evidence of a rich cultural and monumental landscape dating from earlier than the Minoan period. The evidence so far is that it was a major religious center created with technical knowledge pre-dating that found at Minoan Knossos by at least 400 years, indicating that it played a significant role in the development of Greek civilization .

The Curious Pyramid Isle

The barren islet of Daskalio lies just of the coast of the island of Keros, which is one of the Cyclades islands in the Aegean Sea, and was once part of Keros before sea-levels rose. Daskalio has been the subject of intense archaeological investigations since 2015 when an undisturbed site was located.

The research is being carried out by a multinational team, supported by the Greek government and the British School in Athens. The large-scale project is being funded by several international institutes.

Special Deposit South on Keros, with Dhaskalio in the background.µ

Cambridge Keros Project

Earliest Greek Urban Center

The project is led by Colin Renfrew and Michael Boyd and has found ‘the earliest truly monumental complex of buildings ever unearthed anywhere in the Greek world’ reports The Independent . The islet had a settlement with metal-working shops, buildings and even indoor plumbing, and all of this a millennium before the Minoans, who are often thought of as the first European civilization. According to the Keep Talking Greece website, the team of archaeologists have uncovered ‘a complex, stratified and technically expert society’.

Daskalio has a distinctive pyramid shape which is due to the extensive engineering activities of the ancient people of the Aegean islands. They deliberately exaggerated the pyramidal shapeof the rocky outcrop by creating a number of huge terraces on Daskalio, that measured in total about 1,000 feet (300 m). There were 6 terraces and upon them were built a number of buildings, mostly in marble. Some of the buildings were two floors and had staircases and were built using marble. The cultural landscape was built within a four-decade period and based on a single design.

The island was sculpted with terraces and white stone to make it dazzle for miles around . 

Cambridge Keros Project

Ancient Religious Center

The complex has been dated to about 4,600 years ago. It is believed that the pyramid-island was a religious site that attracted pilgrims from far and wide, who buried small statues here as sacrifices to unknown deities. The summit of the pyramid- islet was an open-area possibly used for sacrifices or votive offerings . The identity of the gods that were worshipped here is unknown.

There is no arable land on the rocky outcrop and little on Keros. Therefore, the inhabitants of ancient Daskalio may have been dependent on religious pilgrims and also engaged in trade. Keep Talking Greece reports that archaeological finds indicate that the settlers’ “trade extended over a wide network reaching beyond the Cyclades.” There is evidence that the inhabitants specialized in metallurgy and they may have traded their metal products for food and other goods.

Such a huge complex required a great deal of labor and organization, especially to bring the marble from the quarries on Naxos that was used in its construction. According to the Independent, it is estimated that at “least 3,500 maritime voyages to transport between 7,000 and 10,000 tonnes of shining white marble.” This indicated that the builders of the complex were already great mariners and shipbuilders.

The huge scale of the work required would suggest a powerful and unified state or a league of smaller political entities. It is probable that the site was related to the first Hellenic state in history. The engineering, complexity of organization, shipbuilding and metal-working needed to achieve the building of such a place indicates that this civilization was already quite advanced by this time indicating the culture had existed and had been developing for hundreds of years or more. This political entity was at least contemporaneous with, and may have influenced the development of the Minoans in Crete and later the Mycenaeans.

• The Realm of Poseidon: A Mythical Voyage Around the Aegean
• Dozens of Shipwrecks Dating Back Thousands of Years Found in the Aegean Sea
• Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: The Most Magnificent Monuments of Antiquity

One-handled cup with grooved decoration from Dhaskalio. 

Cambridge Keros Project

Influence of Ancient Egyptians?

It appears that the Bronze Age complex was part of a wave of similar monumental buildings that occurred around the world at this time. This was a result of new technologies or the exchange of new ideas, spread via trade routes. The pyramid shape of the islet would seem to indicate the influence of Ancient Egypt , who associated this shape with their creator-god. It is possible that the pyramid-shaped island represented to the early Greeks, land rising from the primordial sea, a belief inspired by Ancient Egyptian myths.

The construction of the pyramid-shaped complex is arguably related to the importance that the Greeks attached to mountains in their religion. For example, Mount Olympus was regarded as the home of Zeus and the other deities in their mythology. It is reasonable to assume that the idea that mountains were sacred may have originated in the Cyclades and indicates that the Aegean islands played a decisive role in the religious development of the Ancient Hellenic World.

The Independent quotes Michael Boyd, saying that the team’s research “suggests that these very early Greeks were organizationally, technically and politically much more advanced than previously thought.” This may indicate that the Cyclades Islands were possibly the cradle of Hellenic civilization. Their religious ideas, technology, and political organization may have influenced the Minoans and in turn the Greeks on the mainland.

It seems likely that the pyramid-island will continue to provide more insights into some of the earliest Hellenic societies.

• Top image: Daskalio, Keros could be the birthplace of the Greek civilization.        Source: CC BY-SA 3.0

By Ed Whelan

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

Long Frozen Organisms in the Arctic Awakened, Hinting at Life on Other Planets

In recent years, researchers have reawakened life in frozen organisms in the Arctic permafrost, bringing them back to life. These studies are now challenging accepted ideas as to the resilience of lifeforms, indicating the future of the environment after global warming , and even the chances of life on other planets. They have revived moss and even worms that had been assumed dead in glaciers and in the frozen earth but are now often being revealed by thawing glaciers.

Moss Revival After 150 Years

In 2009, Catherine Le Farge, an evolutionary biologist, and her colleagues were working at the edge of a massive glacier known as the Teardrop, in Northern Canada. She came across a number of specimens of moss “of the species Aulacomnium turgidum finally free from its icy entombment,” according to Stuff. There were some green tints on the plant, even though it had been frozen in ice since the mid-19th century.

This material was presumed to be dead but the verdant hues on the moss indicated to Le Farge that this was something worth investigating. She decided to bring the samples back to her University in Edmonton and placed them in nutrient-rich soil in a bright and warm environment. After a period of time, a number of the mosses came into leaf, despite being ‘dead’ for over a century. Le Farge is quoted by Stuff as stating that "We were pretty blown away."

The moss had desiccated in the extreme cold and this meant that it did not become frozen solid. Typically, ice can form in the tissues of living and dead organisms and this means that it “can shred cell membranes and other vital biological machinery” according to Stuff. This unique biological characteristic of moss meant that it could be revived.

Frozen lifeforms, such as the moss, have been successfully revived.

(angelacina1 / Public Domain )

Frozen Worms Awakened

Following on from the work of Le Farge and her colleagues, other scientists have begun to revive frozen organisms. Peter Convey and his team from the British Antarctic Survey have “awakened a 1500-year-old moss buried more than three feet underground in the Antarctic permafrost,” according to Annith. It appears that the frozen ice can preserve the mosses from environmental damage and the radiation that can lead to the break-down of their DNA and preserve the plants.

Researchers have been able to renew and bring to life bacteria and complex multiple cell organisms that have been entombed in glaciers . One of the most exciting instances of this is the work of Tatiana Vishnivetskaya, from the University of Tennessee, on nematodes (roundworms), that are thousands of years old and were found in the Tundra of Siberia.

She announced an ‘accidental discovery’ when she was working with the organisms in Petrie dishes says Stuff. The scientist saw the worms reawakening , even though they had been frozen for thousands of years. Her work has shown that it is not only a simple organism that can survive in the brutal environment of extremely low temperatures.

• Ancient mega-virus that does not resemble any virus on Earth is set to be revived
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Researchers have revived frozen lifeforms from the Arctic, such as worms. 

(John Donges / CC BY-SA 2.0 )

The recent research has shown that desolate areas like the Arctic are not just dead zones. Instead, it appears that “glaciers and permafrost are not merely graveyards for multicellular life” according to Stuff. It is also showing that a select few species have great resilience.

It also appears that some organisms can wait for a more favorable environment as part of their survival strategy. They are able to stay literally frozen in time or become ‘ zombies’ until conditions mean that they can be revived.

What Does This Say About Life on Other Planets?

Some believe that the ability of organisms to survive in the extreme cold can have repercussions for the possibility of life on other planets . If lifeforms can survive in a glacier could they not also survive in apparently desolate and uninhabitable worlds ? The resilience of certain organismsmay make it more probable that life may exist elsewhere in the universe.

Northern polar ice cap on Mars. Does the ice hold frozen lifeforms?

(Fabio Bettani / Public Domain )

The discovery that some organisms can survive in the extreme cold can help us understand how areas, which are now frozen, may look after global warming. As the glaciers and permafrost thaws and retreats, it means that something that can survive in the ice can re-colonize the environment. For example, mosses can flourish once again and prepare the way for other plants and even animals to colonize formerly frozen lands.

The studies by Le Farge, Covney, and others are demonstrating that ancient life can be renewed and the resilience of some forms of biological life . This is very positive given the growing concerns over the environment. The research may give hope that life will be able to survive even the impending environmental disasters predicted by many scientists and environmentalists.

BAS, the team studying the frozen lifeforms, research stations in the British Antarctic Territory.

4(Ravenpuff / CC BY-SA 3.0 )

• Top image: Ellesmere Island Canada where researchers are reviving frozen lifeforms. Source: James / Adobe Stock.

By Ed Whelan

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

The Mars Rat and Other Unexplained Features on the Martian Planet

In September 2012, a photograph snapped by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity caught the attention of Internet sleuths everywhere. This picture appears to show a large rat hiding among some Martian rocks, and after its release it quickly went viral.

The image of what looks like a camouflaged rodent was spotted by a UFO enthusiast inspecting a panoramic shot taken at the “Rocknest” site.

“It’s a cute rodent on Mars,” wrote ufologist Scott Waring , on his UFO Sightings Daily website. “Note its lighter-color upper and lower eyelids, its nose and cheek areas, its ear, its front leg and stomach.”

Over the next several years, Waring continued to spot artifacts in imagery captured by NASA landers, which he believed had been left behind by an ancient civilization that once existed on the Red Planet.

The artifacts Waring identified on his website included a large Roman-style arch, a fossilized tree stump, the remains of a crashed spacecraft, massive skyscrapers and the carved outline of a woman’s body in the Martian rock bed.

With respect to the rodent, Waring suggested that perhaps NASA flew the rodent there secretly as part of an experiment to evaluate Mars’s capacity to support life. This assertion of course makes little sense, because it doesn’t explain how the rat could have survived the 253-day trip from Earth to Mars, or how it could have been moving around on Mars with no breathable air.

After a while, even some who were initially interested in his work grew disenchanted with Waring. In response to the growing criticism, he shut down his website and disappeared from public view in 2017.

In defense of Waring, a cursory examination of the photographic evidence he analysed does seem to reveal the images he claims to see. And he is hardly the only one to report anomalies on Mars, which at first glance all look to have been intelligently designed.

At various times, space aficionados pouring over photographs taken on the Martian surface have identified objects that look like rusted machinery, broken pottery, carved stone figures, bones, skulls, helmets, and statues of people or animals.

And then of course there’s the infamous Face on Mars. This particular image, which was captured from space by the Viking 1 orbiter in 1976, helped spawn a whole cottage industry of researchers seeking (and often claiming to find) evidence of ancient ruins left behind by an ancient but now extinct civilization.

Pareidolia vs. Paranoia

The individuals who identify these oddities aren’t crazy, nor are they simply making things up to get attention. Many have legitimate scientific or technical credentials. But regardless of their training or background, or the purity of their intentions, these men and women may be falling victim to a phenomenon known as pareidolia. This label describes the tendency of the human brain to search for meaningful patterns in all types of visual images, and to actually see such patterns even when they aren’t there.

“Pareidolia is a normal neuroperceptual phenomenon,” explains Dr. Kang Lee, a neuroscientist from the University of Toronto. Dr. Lee has sponsored research that reveals how the brain is hard-wired to see hidden shapes in unremarkable objects or random imagery. “It happens in auditory and tactile domains as well … [pareidolia] helps us to be super alert to things … and thus is evolutionarily advantageous.”

Pareidolia may indeed explain many of the amazing wonders observers claim to see when looking at photographs taken on Mars. But it is also a convenient catch-all rationalization of the type that skeptics frequently rely on to dismiss anything that doesn’t fit their narrow worldviews.

It may be safe to conclude that there are no rats running around on Mars, since its climate would make that impossible. And there is no doubt that rocks with funny shapes can easily be misidentified. But claims that geometrical regularities can be spotted on images taken from orbit above Mars aren’t as easy for the open-minded to discount. There is plenty of dispute about whether natural processes can create such shapes, and if so how often they can create them.

What are the Mars Anomalies, Really?

It is not well known by the general public. But in the Cydonia region, where the supposedly debunked Face on Mars sits, there are actually several features on the landscape that show signs of geometrical regularity, which is considered one of the distinctive markers of intelligent design.

These features include the so-called D&M Pyramid , a five-sided figure first discovered by researchers Vince DiPiertro and Greg Molenaar; an area called “ the City ,” which contains more than a dozen pyramidal shapes; the Cliff, a long, linear rock mesa that looks like a giant ‘one’ from overhead; and the Tholus, a precisely circular mound in an isolated region that does not appear to be the result of either volcanic activity or meteor impact.

Adding further intrigue, Mars anomaly researchers say these objects have been arranged on the Cydonia plateau in a way that creates a larger, more comprehensive geometrical pattern. 

The Mars anomaly research community has spent decades investigating these unusual features. Individual researchers, most of whom have some type of scientific training, have written dozens of papers and made hundreds of presentations explaining their reasons for concluding these landforms are not 100-percent natural. It is the existence of multiple anomalies here that has led to so much focus on the Cydonia area, which would continue to be studied intensely even if the debunking of the Face was accepted as genuine ( which it isn’t by most alternative researchers).

Dismissing such features as examples of pareidolia, or as “tricks of light and shadows” to use NASA’s terminology, may in the end prove to be the correct judgment. Nature may be more capable of producing geometrically suggestive shapes than many believe, even in arrangements that appear to have mathematical significance. But the only way to resolve such mysteries with complete certainty is to send manned missions there to examine these anomalies up close.

Pareidolia is a legitimate phenomenon with real explanatory power. But if the theory is applied too broadly or with an assumption of infallibility, it may obfuscate more than it enlightens.

Overall, the alleged anomalies observed in Martian photographs are a mixed bag.  While some of the claims made are worthy of being scoffed at, in other instances there is enough ambiguity in the images to make the case for further investigation. Without such an examination, pareidolia will remain a hypothesis rather than an established fact.

If a manned mission is someday dispatched to Mars, what it discovers may surprise and disappoint the believers. Then again, it may surprise and disappoint the skeptics instead.

By Nathan Falde

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

Crop Circle Found In Switzerland: Is This Proof Of UFO On Earth?

Did We Mishear Neil Armstrong's Famous First Words on the Moon?

Here's What We Thought We Knew About the Moon Before Apollo 11

By Passant Rabie

Turns out, the moon isn't fluffy!

This view of the Apollo 12 lunar module was captured from lunar orbit by command module pilot Richard Gordon shortly after the two modules separated to prepare for the lunar landing.

(Image: © NASA)

Before humanity first set foot on the lunar surface, the moon was an elusive rock in our night sky. Scientists weren't sure how it formed or what it was made of, and there was even a common misconception that the moon's surface would be fluffy.

"There was real concern that our lunar landers would sink into the surface because the material was so fluffy," Paul Hayne, assistant professor at the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado, told Space.com.

This was not merely an irrational fear; rather, it was based on observations from Earth that showed the surface of the moon to be quite fluffy.

• Related: The Moon: 10 Surprising Lunar Facts

"What they didn't know was that layer of fluffy material was not very deep," Hayne added. "So, fortunately, nobody sunk into the moon, and that misconception was put to bed."

More coverage: 

• Relive the Apollo 11 Moon Landing Mission in Real Time
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• Apollo 11 at 50: A Complete Guide to the Historic Moon Landing

A fluffy moon? No.

It may be obvious to us today that the moon wouldn't have swallowed the lunar lander whole, but before Apollo 11, the moon hid many secrets in its shadows.

"We actually didn't know a whole lot about the moon before Apollo," Sarah Noble, the Apollo next-generation sample analysis program executive at NASA headquarters in Washington, told Space.com. "So, in some ways, we wanted to learn everything."

Scientists were (and still are) curious about how the moon came to be in the first place. 

Before Apollo, there were different theories regarding the formation of the moon, including that the moon had already formed before it got caught in Earth's gravitational field, or that the moon and Earth formed at the same time about 4.5 billion years ago. But the theory that a number of scientists were leaning toward was that it had been formed as a result of a giant impactbetween Earth and another planetary body the size of Mars.

What made the moon?

One of the main samples that Apollo astronauts were looking to collect was a piece of the original crust of the moon, which scientists could use to test their hypotheses about how the moon was formed, Noble said. 

"The astronauts were all so well trained that it was believed they had the equivalent of a master's degree in geology by the time they got there," Noble said. "It showed in their ability to pick out the right samples."

The samples collected from the moon had the same isotopic formation as geological samples from Earth, therefore supporting the impact theory. Although it is the leading moon formation theory today, some are still arguing in favor of other ways the moon could have come to be.

The testing of these samples also showed that there is water on the moon, even though scientists had believed that it was completely dry.

Another thing that astronomers wondered about when looking at the moon was the origin of the craters on its surface.

"The first thing you notice when you look at the moon through a telescope was the craters," Hayne said. "There was still debate about the origins of the craters before the Apollo missions."

At the time, there were two competing theories. Scientists believed that either the craters had been formed by volcanic activity on the moon, or that the craters were a result of impacts between the moon and other bodies in space.

However, observing the shapes of the craters and analyzing the samples brought back by Apollo supported the theory that the craters were formed by collisions. 

The Apollo missions also provided insight into the violent space environment, according to Hayne. 

"What we found on the moon was that the entire surface of the moon had been impacted by meteorites, and because it doesn't have rivers, those impacts had not been erased over time," he said. "From looking at the moon's impact history, we know that the Earth has also been hit by meteors."

A lunar time capsule

The difference between the impacts left over on the moon's surface and that of Earth's is that Earth's flowing rivers or growing greenery have erased the marks left behind, while they remained visible on the moon.

Knowing that impacts were an occurrence in space has allowed us to prepare for possible future asteroid collisions here on Earth, Hayne added.

In addition to the moon, the Apollo missions provided more insights regarding our whole solar system. 

Before Apollo, scientists had made observations of other planets, but there was no way to determine the ages of those bodies. 

However, by testing the samples of moon rocks and lunar soil collected from the Apollo missions and analyzing their composition and structure, researchers estimated the age of the moon and used that knowledge to help figure out the ages of other objects in the solar system. 

"The entire chronology of the solar system events is now connected to the ages of the samples collected by Apollo," Hayne said. 

• What Moon Craters Can Tell Us About Earth, and Our Solar System
• The Moon's Surface Is Totally Cracked 
• The Moon: 10 Surprising Lunar Facts 

Follow Passant Rabie on Twitter @passantrabie. 

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }