Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
Woensdag 23 september 2020
Something 'Out of this World' appeared on Saturn's largest moon Enceladus
Something 'Out of this World' appeared on Saturn's largest moon Enceladus
Astrange phenomenon what looks like a wall has been captured on Saturn's largest moon Enceladus by Cassini Spacecraft.
In 2005, the Cassini spacecraft started multiple close flybys of Enceladus, revealing its surface and environment in greater detail. In particular, Cassini discovered water-rich plumes venting from the south polar region.
According to NASA scientists, the plumes are similar in composition to comets, although recent research suggests much of the eruptions activity on the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus could be in the form of broad, curtain-like eruptions rather than discrete jets.
New observations have revealed that stellar winds are not spherical as previously believed, but instead come in a variety of shapes that resemble those of planetary nebulae — created when a dying star explosively sheds its outer layers, which by a weird naming quirk actually have nothing to do with planets. In fact, those winds could mark out the ‘molds’ by which planetary nebulae are shaped.
The discovery comes as a result of research conducted by a team of astronomers including Leen Decin, from the Institute of Astronomy, KU Leuven, and is detailed in a paper published today in the journal Science. “We noticed these winds are anything but symmetrical or round,” Decin says. “Some of them are actually quite similar in shape to planetary nebulae.”
Winds of red giant stars observed around Gamma Aquilae [Credit: Decin et al., Science (2020)] (L. Decin, ESO/ALMA)
The team believes that this variety in stellar winds and planetary nebulae shape around dying stars are connected and a result of interactions with companion stars in binary pairings, or even from exoplanets in orbit around the stars. “The Sun — which will ultimately become a red giant — is as round as a billiard ball,” Decin explains. “So we wondered; how can such a star produce all these different shapes?”
The findings collected by the team could explain a long-standing mystery of planetary nebulae around stellar remnants like red dwarfs come in a variety of close-but-not-quite-spherical shapes.
Planetary nebulae display such a wide range of complex shapes and structures that although the influence of binary companions has been suggested as a possible cause of this diverse range of asymmetric forms, the fact they can arise around stars with spherically symmetric stellar winds has, until now, remained unexplained.
The answer found by the team is that these winds aren’t symmetric at all and that the shape of the winds directly informs the shape of planetary nebulae.
Dying Stars’ Companions are a Bad Influence
The observations of the stellar winds of 14 AGB stars using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array made by the team were so-detailed that they actually allowed the team to categorize the shapes of the stellar winds and planetary nebula. Some were disc-shaped, some contained spirals, and some were conical — a good indication that the shapes were not created randomly — but, none had spherical symmetry.
Gallery of stellar winds around cool ageing stars, showing a variety of morphologies, including disks, cones, and spirals. The blue colour represents material that is coming towards you, red is material that is moving away from you. (L. Decin, ESO/ALMA)
In fact, the team realized it was the presence of other low-mass stars or exoplanets in the vicinity of the primary star that was shaping the stellar wind and planetary nebula. Professor Decin is on hand to provide a useful and colorful analogy: “Just like how a spoon that you stir in a cup of coffee with some milk can create a spiral pattern, the companion sucks material towards it as it revolves around the star and shapes the stellar wind.”
Stellar winds are important to astronomers as they account for one of the main mechanisms by which stars lose mass. This mechanism becomes even more critical when attempting to understand the death throes of stars of similar sizes to the Sun and as their cores contract and the outer layers swell creating planetary nebulae — the other major contributor to mass-loss in aging stars. Discovering the role played by stellar companions in such a process is a surprise, to say the least.
The stellar wind of R Aquilae resembles the structure of rose petals. (L. Decin, ESO/ALMA)
“All our observations can be explained by the fact that the stars have a companion,” says Decin. “Our findings change a lot. Since the complexity of stellar winds was not accounted for in the past, any previous mass-loss rate estimate of old stars could be wrong by up to a factor of 10.”
Following this discovery, the team will now research how it impacts other crucial characteristics involved in the life and death stars like the Sun. In the process, the team believes that their research will add more depth to our view of stars.
The Stellar winds around R Hydrae take a more conical shape (L. Decin, ESO/ALMA)
“We were very excited when we explored the first images,” adds co-author Miguel Montargès, also from KU Leuven. “Each star, which was only a number before, became an individual by itself. Now, to us, they have their own identity. “This is the magic of having high-precision observations: stars are no longer just points anymore.”
But, whilst we are on the subject of the future, the team says their findings have particular ramifications for the end of our own star.
Death Spiral: How the Sun Dies and What it Leaves Behind
The Sun is roughly halfway through its lifetime, with half its core hydrogen exhausted, meaning that in approximately 5 billion years it will start to die. For a star of the Sun’s mass, this means undergoing the transformation into a red giant.
For stars with masses greater than the Sun, the collapse of their core will spark a new lease of life, with the fusion of helium into heavier elements being kick-started by tremendous gravitational pressure, providing an outward force that halts the collapse.
The Sun, in contrast, will fade as its core cools, the planetary nebula will continue to expand outwards, ultimately resulting in a white dwarf surrounded by diffuse material that was once its outer layers.
The team’s research gives us an idea of just what shape this planetary nebula will take, and how it will be crafted by the solar system’s largest planets. “Jupiter or even Saturn — because they have such a big mass — are going to influence whether the Sun spends its last millennia at the heart of a spiral, a butterfly, or any of the other entrancing shapes we see in planetary nebulae today,” Decin notes.
“Our calculations now indicate that a weak spiral will form in the stellar wind of the old dying Sun.”
Enceladus may be even more interesting than we thought.
In these detailed infrared images of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, reddish areas indicate fresh ice that has been deposited on the surface. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/LPG/CNRS/University of Nantes/Space Science Institute)
Saturn's geyser-spewing moon Enceladus may be even more active than scientists had thought.
Fresh images created using data from NASA's dead Cassini spacecraft show that Enceladus' northern hemisphere was resurfaced with ice relatively recently. This new information adds to the known activity in the southern hemisphere, where Cassini spotted more than 100 geysers blasting icy water into space.
Researchers spotted the northern changes after looking at the heat signature of Enceladus, using reflected sunlight parsed with Cassini's visible and infrared mapping spectrometer instrument, or VIMS.
"Thanks to these infrared eyes [on Cassini], you can go back in time and say that one large region in the northern hemisphere appears also young and was probably active not that long ago, in geologic timelines," Gabriel Tobie, a study co-author and VIMS scientist at the University of Nantes in France, said in a NASA statement.
The team combined VIMS data with visible imagery captured by Cassini to create a new, global map of Enceladus in multiple wavelengths of light, both infrared and visible. The map shows that the infrared signals correlate with recent geologic activity on the moon, the researchers said.
For example, heat signatures match up with the "tiger stripe" gashes near Enceladus' south pole. The tiger stripes are the launch pad for the moon's dramatic geysers, which send water and other material from Enceladus' subsurface ocean out into the void.
To the surprise of scientists, however, the new map also shows infrared features in the moon's northern hemisphere. The data suggests that icy resurfacing also happened up north, but how is not yet clear. The changes could have been due to more icy jets, or slower ice movements through cracks in the crust, team members said.
Enceladus is one of the most promising abodes for alien life in the solar system. In addition to the subsurface ocean and geological activity, the moon likely has an energy source that organisms could tap into — chemical reactions perhaps similar to those that sustain life near Earth's deep-sea hydrothermal vents.
There is no future mission planned yet to target Enceladus, although scientists made the pitch for one during a presentation coordinated by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences on March 31. In the meantime, researchers must rely on data collected by older missions.
Cassini will be a continuing help in providing such information. The mission gathered data about Saturn and its many moons for 13 years before, low on fuel, it was sent on a deliberate suicide plunge into the gas giant's thick atmosphere. Cassini's long-term observations show how the planet and its moons changed over time, providing vital questions for future spacecraft to explore in more detail.
The new study was published online last month in the journal Icarus. The research was led by Rozenn Robidel, a researcher at the laboratory of planetology and geodynamics at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow uson Twitter @Spacedotcomand on Facebook.
The 3rd and final part of this story is born out of tragedy – thedeath of Ufologist and friend Kathy Kasten on August 7, 2012. As with parts 1 and 2 of this 3-part article, the origins of what I’m about to share with you could not have been anticipated. As far back as 2005, I had been corresponding with Kathy on matters relative to Roswell and her suspicions that the incident had nothing to do with aliens, but everything to do with post-war experiments on human guinea-pigs. At the time of her death, Kathy was working on a full-length book on her theory – parts of which closely matched the findings I detailed in Body Snatchers in the Desert, which was encouraging. So far as I am aware, no specific or serious attempt was made by Kathy to find a publisher, as she wanted to have the entire, lengthy manuscript completed before submitting it to a publishing house – rather than just hand over a brief synopsis and a sample chapter or two. Time and fate, however, sadly stepped in and prevented the next step from coming to fruition. Perhaps realizing that she was on a time-limit, one which was closing in, in early 2012 Kathy surprised me by emailing me to say that she was planning on handing over copies of her Roswell files to me, in the event that I might want to make use of the material – any of it or all of it – should I ever decide to write a sequel to my 2005 book, which I eventually did: The Roswell UFO Conspiracy.
It was shortly after Kathy died that her family got in touch, as they had decided to donate to me all of Kathy’s research files, correspondence, and much more – and not just her Roswell-based material. Which was, of course, extremely generous of them. A week or so later, a large amount of files turned up on the doorstep, collectively contained in heavy cardboard boxes. To say there were thousands upon thousands of pages of material, dating back decades, would not be an exaggeration. An Aladdin’s cave? Yep. Due to work and what is known as life, it took me several months to go through the entire collection, some of which had nothing to do with Roswell in particular – and nothing to do with UFOs in general, either. Probably a full third of the material was focused on issues relative to mind-control and mind-manipulation, such as the CIA’s MKUltra program of the 1950s. And there was a lot of material on post-Second World War files on unethical experiments on people in the 1940s and 1950s – which certainly was linked and relevant to Roswell.
Kathy’s notes and records show that from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s, she spoke with a few interesting characters, of a somewhat shadowy nature. They advised her that if she wanted to uncover the truth of Roswell, she would be wise to pursue the work and history of a certain William Randolph “Randy” Lovelace II. That Kathy’s dossier on Lovelace is about five-inches thick demonstrates that she carefully followed the advice of her sources and left pretty much no stone unturned, when it came to the matter of exploring a possible Roswell-Lovelace connection. Of course, for those who aren’t aware of the man himself, there is a big question that needs answering: who, exactly, was William Randolph Lovelace II? Well, let’s take a look.
To say that Lovelace was a fascinating character is an understatement. Born in 1907, he was a physician who graduated from the Harvard Medical School in 1934, and, in 1938, took up a position with the Aeromedical Field Laboratory at Wright Field, Ohio (today, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base). It was at Wright Field that Lovelace undertook groundbreaking research to understand how exposure to high-altitudes could affect the human body and nervous system. Experiments with new and novel oxygen masks and parachutes were of paramount importance, too. A colonel with the Army Air Corps in the Second World War, Lovelace was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and – in 1947 – helped to establish the Lovelace Foundation for Medical Education and Research, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Then, in the late 1950s, NASA invited Lovelace to chair its Special Advisory Committee on Life Sciences. Such were his skills in aviation medicine, Lovelace worked closely alongside the original NASA Mercury astronauts. In 1964, Lovelace was appointed to the position of NASA’s Director of Space Medicine. He died as a result of a plane crash in December 1965, in Aspen, Colorado. Both his wife and the pilot were killed, too.
Strangest of all, back in 2011 I had heard a few rumors of a Lovelace-Roswell connection, but I had largely hit a brick-wall. That Kathy’s family very generously donated all of her files to me in 2012 – and which contained a lot of material on Lovelace and Roswell – allowed me to take my research to a new level. As with parts 1 and 2 of this article, I could never have anticipated how and why such developments could – or would – originate and come together.
Just recently, I wrote an article here at Mysterious Universe titled “Hypnotizing Someone Telepathically: An ‘Eerie, Mystifying, Almost Diabolical Act.'” I thought that today I would share with you another extract from the Defense Intelligence Agency’s “Controlled Offensive Behavior – USSR” document of 1972. As I noted last week: “This one is particularly creepy, as it focuses on the possibility of secretly using ESP to hypnotize people. As you’ll see, it’s a subject that elements of U.S. intelligence were worried about during the Cold War. Maybe, they still are. We’re told the following: ‘According to Ostrander and Schroeder, the ability to put people to sleep and wake them up telepathicallv from a distance of a few yards to over a thousand miles became the most thoroughly tested and perfected contribution of the Soviets to international parapsychology. It is reported that the ability to control a person’s consciousness with telepathy is being further studied and tested in laboratories in Leningrad and Moscow.'”
This matter of using telepathy to hypnotize people makes me think of the disturbing activities of none other than the Black-Eyed Children. If you aren’t familiar with these creepy kids, here’s a bit of background material for you. The phenomenon first surfaced publicly in the late 1990s (although since the publicity began, people have claimed encounters with the BECs going back as early as the 1930s). They’re called the Black-Eyed Children for a very good reason: their eyes are completely black. And, sometimes, larger than normal. That, of course, provokes imagery of the so-called “Gray” aliens that are so well-known in the field of Ufology. There are other weird aspects to the BEC too: their skin is often not just pale, but milk-white. In terms of their ages, they always seem to be frozen in time. By that, I mean I have yet to receive a report that involves a kid less than around eleven and I haven’t come across a case where the kid was more than roughly fourteen. Their clothing is almost always a black hoodie.
Now, we get to the part of the story that relates to the “Controlled Offensive Behavior – USSR” document I highlighted last week. Typically, the BEC arrive on doorsteps late at night. There are some daytime encounters; but, they are definitely in the minority. There’s usually a loud, slow knock on the door, too. I mention that because in some cases the BEC seem not to understand what doorbells are – which is very strange. Here’s when the high-strangeness really begins. Imagine you’re in the unfortunate position of the people who are confronted by the BEC. The likelihood is that if you saw a trio of black-eyed little monsters on the doorstep you wouldn’t open the door. But, here’s the weird thing: many victims of the BEC do open the door. A number of people have said they felt compelled to open the door. Even though they knew they shouldn’t have. It was, for many people, a feeling of being driven to open the door – a kind of hypnotism, even. The kids claim they are lost and need to use the phone. Or, they are homeless and need something to eat. It’s all about entering the home with permission given.
It has to be stressed that most of the time the hypnotism isn’t strong enough to let the BEC into the homes of the people who are targeted. There are, however, a small number of cases in which the BEC have managed to get into homes – and they do seem to place the people inside into states of mind-control. That’s when things get even stranger: people feel sick, weak, and as if their bodes were crashing – kind of like a diabetic whose blood sugar levels were plummeting. The witnesses describe getting a dose of the shakes, of becoming cold and clammy, and of becoming confused and panicky. It’s as if they are being drained of their energy – which may well be the goal. The most important part of all this, however, is that matter of people feeling under the control of the BEC. That aforementioned U.S. government document makes it clear that as far back as the 1920s research into the field of using telepathic powers to hypnotize people existed. Just maybe, then, it’s not just us, or the Russians, who have looked into this eerie area. Perhaps, the BEC use similar powers – or, identical powers, even – to try and find ways into the homes of terrified people.
Linda Moulton Howe: The UFO Black Vault Disclosed! Secret Space Astronauts, Classified Missions
COAST TO COAST AM -
Linda Moulton Howe shared updates related to her report from last month on “secret astronaut” Jon Lavine. In her subsequent reality check efforts on many of Lavine’s claims, she discovered a number of fabrications. But in the face of contradictory facts, Lavine continued to insist his secret astronaut story was real, she noted. It’s possible, she concluded, that the “memory wipes” he claimed to have undergone, may have altered his accuracy or implanted him with false memories.
She spoke with John Greenewald, producer of The Black Vault, who detailed FOIA archives that describe how the CIA and MK-ULTRA had methods as far back as the 1950s to induce selective amnesia and insert false memories on personnel working on specific classified missions.
UFO Over Plymouth, England On Sept 2020, MUFON, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Sept 21, 2020 Location of sighting: Plymouth, England Source: MUFON #111514 This glowing white UFO was caught over Plymouth, England yesterday. The UFO was seen flashing over the city and moving about. You can clearly see in the video that the UFO has not plane or helicopter lights, so its not an aircraft. This object moved too fast to be a satellite. Very interesting raw footage. Its clearly not a rocket or jet, and drones have flashing red or green lights. This is different...this is alien. Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states:
I was walking up a hill to my local shop and normally see a bright star on my way up the hill I looked up and noticed something moving from a right to left motion in one speed on a straight line recored for a few seconds then walked 60 meters down the road and recorded the same ufo on the same line so recorded it again he had military planes flying around earlier in the day but it was so quiet when I recorded it.
Glowing White UFO Shooting Over Youngsville, Louisiana April 14, 2006, MUFON, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: April 14, 2006 Location of sighting: Youngsville, Louisiana, USA Source: MUFON #111517 This just came into MUFON today and I don't like to report old sightings, but these photos are fantastic. This UFO has a trail behind it...and yes, some UFOs do that. Remember the CIA UFO footage that the military recorded in infrared? Yeah that one did it too in raw video footage, so we know that UFOs do sometimes make contrails. The declassified 2014 Chilean Navy UFO video that was released is 100% proof that UFOs make contrails when they want. Yeah, I haven't been making it all up, I gather my info from past sightings. So...these 2006 photos...have data backing them up from past sighings. This looks 100% alien to me. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
2014 Chilean Navy UFO seen in infrared below making clouds.
Eyewitness states:
One evening while playing with cat on blocked watercraft in yard my wife took photos of me playing with the cat. She & I were both unaware of the aerial image when the photos were taken. After the photo prints were downloaded I noticed the phenomenum. It would appear to be an image of an old F-100 Super Sabre flying past with the evening sun reflecting off of the surfaces. There was no sound or we would have looked up towards it. The craft appears to be within appx. 5-miles in the photo. An old F-100 would definitely have made quite a roar at that close proximity. Also, I know of no remaining F-100s still flying today. In the 3 photos, the 1st. shows no anomaly. 2nd. photo shows craft in close. 3rd. photo it appears as a bright speck heading off to the NW towards Lafayette. This may just be some sort of digital photo artifact but I think it's quite odd that the object would show up with such clarity.
Note:The detail stamps show that the photos were taken in the A.M. when in fact this event occurred after work in the evening.
Below is the Chilean Navy declassifies and releases 2014 video of mysterious flying object.
Classic Disk Seen Over City In Russia On Sept 21, 2020. Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Sept 21, 2020
Location of sighting: Russia
Very cool looking disk over a unknown city in Russia. Youtube user Offin caught sight of a metallic disk in the distance, but was unable to record more than ten seconds of the craft. The object does appear to be a classic 1950s style alien disk. With sightings on the rise I'm sure the governments of the world will require lock downs more and more to keep the public from seeing these UFOs.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states: (translated)
I went out to the balcony and looked closely, oh I immediately picked up my phone and tried to record it. But to my regret, the memory on the phone was not enough and the video was immediately interrupted, but the memory of the phone was empty earlier.
Black Sphere UFO Playing Over Water In Russia, Sept 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Sept 20, 2020 Location of sighting: Kemerovo, Siberia, Russia A black sphere was seen flying over the Tom River in Kemerovo, Russia this week. The object which the eyewitness calls a ball seems to have a black mist around it and you don't really notices a smooth surface which a ball should have, but this does not. I can easily tell that the black UFO is intelligently controlled, by the way it almost touches the surface of the water and then rises up to avoid contact with it. It does this several times, but the detail is incredible. Never in my life have I ever seen a ball or balloon with a black mist around it. Many UFOs often have a spiky mist around them...but usually its caused by light if the crafts propulsion, but there...I am confused at what causes it...again propulsion systems? The HD quality of this video...makes my head spin. Wow, just so amazing of detail here. We see its shape, the black mist around it, its odd movement heading to the water and then avoiding it then doing it again. Very important evidence of UFOs here. This is one for the history books. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Grey UFO Flew Past Queen Mary Ship In Torquay, UK Sept 13, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Sept 13, 2020
Location of sighting: Torquay, UK
Source: Twitter
This UFO was caught last week and shared on twitter by the eyewitness. Twitter user Aaron James who goes by the tag @aaronjamesf1 caught a UFO shooting past the Queen Mary ship as it came near Torquay, UK last week.
The UFO has a grey metallic glint to its surface and is shaped like an arm with a white ball on one end. The object appears to be the size of a car and has no visible wings, propellers. UFOs are seen more often over and near the ocean due to the craft coming from underwater bases on the oceans floor. This doesn't look like a drone or any other aircraft. This is alien tech.
Strange Anomaly speeding through the sky over Osijek, Croatia
The last months, the eyewitness had seen unidentified aerial phenomena in the sky over Osijek, Croatia. On September 11, 2020 when searching the sky again for UFOs and Spheres he accidentally recorded a bullet-like object that flew through the sky at an incredible speed.
It is not clear if it is a (Tic Tac) UFO something else like an insect or bird since it looks like the anomaly flies close to the camera, making it appear as if the object is flying at a very high speed, but I could be wrong. The photographer sent the video to Mufon for further investigation.
The anomaly moves from left to the right and can be seen right at the start of the video, followed by a slow motion clip of the object.
U.S. Air Force General on UFOs – ‘I’ve had those cases and reported them’
Air Force General Kenneth Wilsbach said he hadn’t received reports as a PACAF commander from his personnel about any strange aerial vehicles that could be alien since the Pentagon’s announcement on creating a task force to look into the UFO sightings.
Gen. Wilsbach has been flying his whole life and started airplanes when he was 14 years old, particularly gliders at that time. He has flown jets his entire career. He said, “occasionally, you see stuff that you can’t explain.” And he has “had those cases and reported them.” However, they haven’t had any reports, mainly because the task force started just a few weeks ago.
The members of Congress and the U.S. military are concerned that UFOs that Navy pilots have reported seeing since 2014 could indicate that Russia and China have made breakthroughs in advanced technology, including hypersonics.
No U.S. official so far has publicly ventured that space aliens could fly the UFOs.
On Wednesday, Wilsback shook his head and said, “I don’t know” when asked if he personally believes that extraterrestrials have visited our planet.
What could this be? It was found in Arkansas and photos posted on Facebook in hopes of finding an answer.
PHOTO COURTESY DREW BALEDGE
A large, scaly object resembling a giant egg was found in an Arkansas field, leading to an ongoing social media debate over what it might be — and if it was once alive.
Photos of the find were posted Monday by the Arkansas History Unearthed Facebook group (with more than 18,000 members), showing it was oval shaped, more than 2-feet long and seemingly reptilian in origin.
Group member Drew Baledge of Fayetteville, Arkansas, reported the object had been found by someone in a field and he asked: “What, if anything could this possibly be?”
Hundreds have responded in the past day, including many who called the object “creepy” and “scary.” Among their ideas: fossilized dinosaur waste, a prehistoric egg, a petrified turtle shell, and a giant mushroom.
What could this be? It was found in Arkansas and photos posted on Facebook in hopes of finding an answer. FACEBOOK SCREENSHOT
A few wanted to know if it had a heart beat and if it was soft enough to cut open. Several warned the finder not to bring it indoors.
A UC Merced student who has been obsessed with dinosaurs since he was little recently excavated a 65 million-year-old Triceratops skull while digging in North Dakota, the university said July 24, 2019.BY DAVID CARACCIO.
Several people suggested it is a prized geological formation known as a siderite septarian nodule, which is actually correct, according to James Starnes, director of surface geology for the Mississippi Office of Geology.
Septarian nodules are often referred to as a “dragon stone, because the natural patterns make people think of dragon skin,” according to Fossilera.com. The site sells examples of the stone for up to $395.
The photos indicate the specimen is big, which would make it “highly prized” by collectors, Starnes said. “It’s a crazy looking specimen. Really unique and special,” he told McClatchy News.
It could also be ancient. The nodules typically form in muddy sediment, when soils dry out over years and develop “desiccation cracks,” Starnes said. Those cracks later fill in with secondary minerals like calcite, he said.
The age of the nodule would depend on where it was found, Starnes said. The Facebook post did not give an exact location or weight of the stone.
Fayetteville is in the northwestern part of Arkansas, where septarian nodules are known to be found and occasionally ”mistaken for fossilized turtle shells,” the Arkansas Geological Survey reports.
A beautiful new image of Jupiter from the Hubble Space Telescope – captured in August 2020 – shows the planet’s icy moon Europa as well as several famous storms in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
View larger. | This might not be the clearest image of Jupiter you’ve ever seen. Spacecraft images are clearer. But it is the clearest image taken from Earth we can recall. Isn’t it beautiful? It’s from the Hubble Space Telescope. The little moon to the left is Europa. Read below to learn about several famous storms of Jupiter, shown in this image.
Image via NASA/ ESA/ STScI/ A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center)/ M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley)/ the OPAL team.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of Jupiter on August 25, 2020, from a distance of 406 million miles (650 million km) from Earth. That wasn’t when Jupiter was closest to us this year. It was closest on July 15, a couple of days after Earth swept between Jupiter and the sun, as we do once each year. Still, in August, Jupiter and Earth were relatively close, in part accounting for the clarity of this image, which shows Jupter’s icy moonEuropa(sixth-closest of the planet’s 79 known moons) as well as some famous storms in Jupiter’s dense atmosphere.
There are lots of cool things to notice in this image.
First, notice Europa to the left of the planet. It’s the smallest of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons, and is thought to have an ocean beneath its icy surface, possibly holding the ingredients for life.
Now, look at the planet itself. You probably know that the bands we see aren’t on the planet’s surface; instead, when we look at Jupiter, we’re seeing only the uppermost layers of its clouds. The image shows the Great Red Spot, a gigantic storm larger in diameter than our entire Earth, rolling counterclockwise in the atmosphere above Jupiter’s southern hemisphere.NASA said the Red Spot plows into the clouds ahead of it:
… forming a cascade of white and beige ribbons. The Great Red Spot is currently an exceptionally rich red color, with its core and outermost band appearing deeper red.
Researchers say the Great Red Spot now measures about 9,800 miles (14,500 km) across, big enough to swallow Earth. The super-storm is still shrinking as noted in telescopic observations dating back to 1930, but the reason for its dwindling size is a complete mystery.
Now … see the second oval spot below the Great Red Spot? It’s also a storm in Jupiter’s atmosphere, called Red Spot Jr. by scientists. This storm on Jupiter has a long history. NASA said:
Red Spot Jr. is the first storm that astronomers watched develop on a gas giant planet. The huge spot formed between 1998 and 2000, when three small, white, oval-shaped storms merged together. Two of the white spots have been observed since about 1915, but they may have been present even earlier. The third white spot appeared in 1939. In December 2005, the newly formed single white spot turned red, like the much older Great Red Spot.
For the past few years, Red Spot Jr. has been fading in color to its original shade of white after appearing red in 2006. However, now the core of this storm appears to be darkening slightly. This could hint that Red Spot Jr. is on its way to turning to a color more similar to its cousin once again.
Now look more closely at Jupiter’s cloud bands. Note the bright, white, stretched-out storm at mid-northern latitudes (to the upper left of the Great Red Spot and Red Spot Jr). You can see it more clearly in the image below.
View larger. | The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of Jupiter in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light on August 25, 2020. In this photo, the parts of Jupiter’s atmosphere that are at higher altitude, especially over the poles, look red from atmospheric particles absorbing ultraviolet light. Conversely, the blue-hued areas represent the ultraviolet light being reflected off the planet. Image via NASA/ ESA/ STScI/ A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center)/ M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley)/ the OPAL team
NASA said this bright white storm is:
… traveling around the planet at 350 miles (560 km) per hour. This single plume erupted on August 18, 2020 – and ground-based observers have discovered two more that appeared later at the same latitude.
While it’s common for storms to pop up in this region every six years or so, often with multiple storms at once, the timing of the Hubble observations is perfect for showing the structure in the wake of the disturbance, during the early stages of its evolution. Trailing behind the plume are small, rounded features with complex ‘red, white, and blue’ colors in Hubble’s ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light image. Such discrete features typically dissipate on Jupiter, leaving behind only changes in cloud colors and wind speeds, but a similar storm on Saturn led to a long-lasting vortex. The differences in the aftermaths of Jupiter and Saturn storms may be related to the contrasting water abundances in their atmospheres, since water vapor may govern the massive amount of stored-up energy that can be released by these storm eruptions.
Bottom line: A beautiful new image of Jupiter from the Hubble Space Telescope – captured in August 2020 – shows the planet’s icy moon Europa as well as several famous storms in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
Of all the rocky, inner worlds of the solar system, Venus is the most challenging to explore.
With surface temperatures reaching a bewildering 867 degrees Fahrenheit (464 degrees Celsius), even the mosthardened landers can't survive for long. But a new idea, called the Calypso Venus Scout, calls for a bold new mission design: a science probe dangling 20 miles (32 kilometers) below a cloud-borne balloon.
Welcome to hell
Because Venus is only slightly smaller than our own planet, it's taken up the nickname of the "Earth's twin." But if Venus really is a twin of the Earth, it's the evil kind. Despite their similar sizes, the two worlds couldn't be more different. While Earth maintains a balmy climate, with a decent atmosphere keeping the lid on vast expanses of liquid water oceans, Venus is a nightmare world.
Its atmosphere is almost completely carbon dioxide and reaches pressures 92 times that found at Earth's sea level. The noxious atmosphere is so thick that the planet's surface temperatures are the hottest in the inner solar system — warmer even than Mercury, despite sitting 50% farther away from our sun.
Of all the missions of Venus, only the Soviets attempted any landings, with the Venera program. Brutalized by the extreme conditions, most of those landers failed, but a few managed to survive long enough to send back a few quick exposures before succumbing.
No lander has reached the Venusian surface since Venera 14 in 1982. To date, our only records of the surface come from those few Soviet probes and the occasional orbiter. Even though Venus may be our twin, we know far too little about it.
The winds of Venus
Even nearly 40 years after the last Venera mission, we do not have the technology to build a reliable, long-term probe to survey the terrain of Venus like we do on Mars. What's more, with all the interest in Mars exploration, including possible human visits, nobody really wants to spend the money on developing the technologies needed for a still-risky Venus venture.
But there could be another way to do it, and it's called the Calypso Venus Scout, as outlined in a white paper recently posted to the preprint site arXiv.org. Calypso isn't under NASA consideration right now; the paper's author wrote about it to give the decadal survey, the government's long-term planning process for planetary science, a broader sense of current options.
The mission tries to balance the twin challenges of Venus: The surface of Venus is just too dang hot, but orbital missions trying to study the surface are hampered by the miles and miles of thick, hazy cloud layers, making precise measurements incredibly difficult.
So Calypso would go in between.
At an altitude of about 20 miles, the thick clouds of Venus clear away. If you can get a probe below that level, then you should have a clear, unobstructed view of the ground. And while it's still ridiculously hot at that altitude, it's not nearly as hot as the surface: a relatively balmy 260 F (130 C).
Upon Calypso's arrival at Venus, a massive balloon would deploy in the atmosphere, right at the top of the cloud layers, keeping steady at an altitude of about 30 miles (50 km). At that height, the temperature and pressure don't require any ingenious new technology and solar panels can provide ample power to the probe.
From that balloon, a descent module would trail down, held to the balloon by a tether 10-20 miles (15-30 km) long. The descent module would poke beneath the clouds and take some pictures, surveying the terrain as the high-altitude winds blow the balloon around. Then, once the temperatures inside the descent module get too hot to handle, the module would reel back up above the clouds, relaying the data back to Earth while the module cools off for another round.
The better to see you
On its way up and down, the probe would slowly scan the surface of Venus in visible and infrared wavelengths to a potential resolution of just a few inches or centimeters. One of the most powerful aspects of Calypso is that it wouln't be limited to studying just a single landing site, but would be able to survey wide swaths of the Venusian landscape.
Understanding Venus is critical for learning about our own planet. Billions of years ago, Venus really was a twin of Earth, with liquid water oceans and a pleasant atmosphere. But a runaway greenhouse event on Venus evaporated the oceans, allowed carbon dioxide to vent into the atmosphere unchecked, and left the place a ruin. Venus became so dry that plate tectonics completely shut down, locking its surface in place for at least hundreds of millions of years.
Venus is both a time capsule, providing a glimpse into what an Earth-size planet was up to long ago, and a cautionary tale. By studying Venus more, with daring missions like Calypso, we can better learn what our own fate might be.
Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of Your Place in the Universe.Sutter contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
This amazing image shows Jupiter's Great Red Spot in unprecedented detail.
Collated from data gathered over 30 years ago, the recently completed image has undergone digital enhancement.
Now it is possible to clearly see the Great Red Spot, a hurricane twice the size of Earth that has been raging for longer than telescopes have been able to view it.
Jupiter's Great Red Spot: The hurricane is twice the size of Earth and has been raging for longer than telescopes have been able to view it. This digitally enhanced image was collated from data sent back by Voyager 1 in 1979
The image data was taken by Voyager 1 during a fly-by in 1979.
Nasa launched Voyager 1 in 1977 and, 34 years later, it is currently making its way towards the outer edges of our solar system.
It passed Jupiter early on during its epic journey, on the morning of March 4, 1979, when it spent 36minutes imaging the planet from 1.85million kilometres away.
Voyager 1, needless to say, is the most distant man-made object in the universe and is currently 117 AU from Earth. One AU is the distance from Earth to the sun.
Nasa last year released this infrared image showing how the Great Red Spot is a turbulent region. The darker the colour, the colder the area
As it is: This visible light image of shows how the naked eye would view the region
Jupiter's Great Red Spot has fascinated astronomers since the 19th century.
It lies 22 degrees south of Jupiter's equator and has been known to drift to the left and right.
The Red Spot has changed in size over the years. A century ago it measured 25,000miles across but it is now about half that.
However, it remains incredibly stable despite turbulence, upheavals and close encounters with other anticyclones, suggesting it won't disappear any time soon.
In the past few years, we’ve been spoiled with some awesome Jupiter photos, and this one is no exception. This latest, pastel-colored image is so detailed it can serve as a weather report of the planet’s monstrous atmosphere.
An image of Jupiter taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light on Aug. 25, 2020, is giving researchers an entirely new view of the giant planet. Image credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL team.
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot takes all the spotlight when it comes to jovian storms, but while it is undoubtedly a mammoth storm, it’s far from the only one. For instance, opposite to the Great Red Spot (in the top-left part of the picture), there’s a remarkable new storm brewing.
The white stretched-out storm is already traveling around the planet at 350 miles per hour (560 kilometers per hour), despite only emerging on August 18, 2020. It’s also accompanied by two other, smaller storms at about the same latitude. According to a NASA statement, this new Hubble image “shows that Jupiter is clearing out its higher altitude white clouds, especially along the planet’s equator, where an orangish hydrocarbon smog wraps around it.”
Another notable storm is the so-called Red Spot Jr., a storm that appears just below the Great Red Spot in this image. For years, Red Spot Jr. has been fading to a shade of white after appearing red in 2006, but now it seems to be turning towards red once again.
As for the Red Spot itself, it’s still shrinking, for reasons that are not well understood. However, it still measures 9,800 miles across, which makes it big enough to swallow the Earth whole.
No matter how many times you look at it, Jupiter is still stunning. Image credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL team.
The icy satellite Europe is also visible to the left of Jupiter. Europe has drawn astronomers’ attention as one of the prime candidates for extraterrestrial life in our solar system. Not only does Europe have a liquid ocean under its frozen surface, but it also seems to have salt and hydrothermal vents, essentially supplying all the necessary ingredients for life as we know it.
NASA is already preparing a mission to study Europa on-site, with the Europa Clipper spacecraft set for launch sometime between 2023 and 2025. Europa Clipper will conduct detailed reconnaissance of Jupiter’s moon, looking for signs of life and sending a lander to the surface of the satellite.
A team at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has spotted the first comet we’ve ever seen to create an aurora in the ultraviolet spectrum.
Comet 67P. Image Courtesy of ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM.
On Earth, auroras (or ‘polar lights’) are created when charged particles from the Sun hit those in our planet’s atmosphere. They form at the poles because that’s where the Earth’s magnetic field is weakest, allowing such particles to reach the atmosphere.
The discovery of a similar phenomena on a comet, bodies that lack our planet’s magnetic field, has researchers understandably excited.
A space first
“Charged particles from the Sun streaming towards the comet in the solar wind interact with the gas surrounding the comet’s icy, dusty nucleus and create the auroras,” said SwRI Vice President Dr. Jim Burch, in charge of the Ion and Electron Sensor (IES) instrument on board of the craft, in a statement.
“The IES instrument detected the electrons that caused the aurora.”
The IES is installed aboard the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft, which was launched back in 2004 and whose mission ended in 2016. Together with Philae, its lander module, Rosetta was the first of our probes to fly alongside a frozen comet (67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko) as it hurdled towards the Sun, observing how it behaved along the way.
Now, data from Rosetta has revealed ultraviolet auroras around 67P, the first ever seen on a comet. These auroras are produced by charged particles interacting with the ‘coma’, the bubble of gas that is created from and encases the comet. This interaction excites the gases enough to make them glow in ultraviolet (UV) light.
Dr. Joel Parker, a member of SwRI who handled data from the Alice far-ultraviolet (FUV) spectrograph on Rosetta, recounts that at first, the team believed they were seeing 67P’s ‘dayglow’, a well-documented phenomenon created by this bubble of gas interacting with photons (light). But they soon realized that this wasn’t the case.
“We were amazed to discover that the UV emissions are aurora, driven not by photons, but by electrons in the solar wind that break apart water and other molecules in the coma and have been accelerated in the comet’s nearby environment,” he explains.”The resulting excited atoms make this distinctive light.”
The findings show that its possible for auroras to form around comets, despite their lack of a magnetic envelope. The techniques developed by the team to integrate data from several devices and discover these auroras can serve us to find similar phenomena on other comets in the future.
The findings will been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
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