A tiny bone is changing how we think about Neanderthals

 By Katie Hunt, CNN

This is the public entrance to the Einhornhöhle cave, the Unicorn cave in English, in the Harz Mountains, Germany, where the tiny piece of engraved bone was found.

(CNN) A tiny piece of bone that once belonged to a giant Ice Age deer is changing how we think about Neanderthals.

Found in Einhornhöhle cave in northern Germany, the decorated deer phalanx, or toe bone, features an engraved geometric pattern and has been dated, using several techniques, to at least 51,000 years old.

It refreshes the debate over to what extent Neanderthals, the heavily built Stone Age hominins that disappeared about 40,000 years ago, were capable of artistic expression and symbolic thought and whether they developed these skills themselves or through interactions with early modern humans, who first arrived in Europe around this time.

"The phalanx from Einhornhöhle with its stacked offset chevrons represents one of the most complex cultural expressions in Neanderthals known so far," according to a study that published Monday in the journal Nature.

The team of German researchers said the small bone appears to be of no practical use, and the chevron design, with its three uniform parallel lines appears to be intentionally created -- perhaps as a personal ornament.

"The choice of material, its preparation before carving and the skilful technique used for the engraving are all indicative of sophisticated expertise and great ability in bone working," said Silvia M. Bello, a researcher at the Centre for Human Evolution Research, Department of Earth Sciences, at the Natural History Museum in London, in a commentary that accompanied the paper. She wasn't involved in the research.

"The presence of incisions artistically arranged in a chevron pattern on the bone of a giant deer, supports the symbolic meaning of this find and raises new questions about how complex Neanderthal behaviour might have been."

The giant deer bone has no practical use and is believed to be purely decorative.

Boiled before decorated

The bone was from a giant deer, an animal that researchers described as "very impressive," but also one that would have been very rare north of the Alps at the time. Choosing the giant deer bone as the raw material emphasizes the special character of the object and supported that it had a symbolic meaning, they said.

The decorated bone was found in the former entrance to the cave about 1 meter behind the person holding the staff in the right of the image.

To understand how the object was made, the researchers made their own versions using stone blades from Baltic flint and carved five bones belonging to Limousin cows. The bones were treated in different ways: one was fresh, another was room dried and a third was dried in the open air, while bone four was boiled once and bone five was boiled twice.

"The fresh bone... it didn't really work out. The bone was really hard. We were constantly slipping with the tools," said Dirk Leder, a research associate at the State Service for Cultural Heritage Lower Saxony, Hannover, Germany, and an author of the study.

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Leder and his colleagues found that the boiled bones offered a softer "mellow" surface to make controlled incisions in a way that closely resembled the original item. They said it took around one-and-a-half hours to make the object using a combination of cutting and scraping.

The earliest evidence for cultural innovation and artistic expression among early modern humans emerged in Africa and dates back to around 100,000 years ago -- where we see we see tools made from material other than stone, such as bone, ivory and antlers, shell bead ornaments, and advancements including the use of pigments, cave art and deliberate burials.

Although scarcer, archeologists have uncovered similar technological and cultural innovation at Neanderthal sites in Europe. These include ornaments such as talons from birds of prey, tooth pendants and evidence of funerary behavior. At some cave sites in Spain, there's evidence -- albeit contentious -- that Neanderthals created abstract motifs and hand stencils.

Complex behavior

Homo sapiens are thought to have first arrived in Europe about 45,000 years ago and overlapped with Neanderthals for thousands of years. During that time, the two groups encountered each other -- sometimes having sex and babies, leaving traces of Neanderthal DNA in our genes.

Given its age, the study authors said they believe the engraved deer bone was of "independent Neanderthal authorship" and not linked to any interactions with Homo sapiens.

Computerized topography scans of the engraved bone showed six lines that show the shape of the chevron symbol.

They noted that the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in central Europe comes from sites in the Upper Danube area of between 43,500 and 38,000 years ago -- several millennia after the engraved bone. They said the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Europe -- pendants made from animal teeth from 45,500 years ago is from 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) away in Bulgaria.

RELATED ARTICLE

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Interactions between early modern humans and Neanderthals were a lot more common than we thought

However, the Natural History Museum's Bello said more recent research had found genetic evidence in a Homo sapien's skull from a site in the Czech Republic -- around 400 kilometers (248 miles) from Einhornhöhle -- that suggested the individual had some Neanderthal DNA, This raises the possibility early modern humans and Neanderthals had interbred more than 50,000 years ago.

"Given this early exchange of genes, we cannot exclude a similarly early exchange of knowledge between modern human and Neanderthal populations, which may have influenced the production of the engraved artefact from Einhornhöhle," she wrote in the commentary.

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"The possibility of an acquired knowledge from modern humans doesn't undervalue, in my opinion, the cognitive abilities of Neanderthals," she wrote.

"On the contrary, the capacity to learn, integrate innovation into one's own culture and adapt to new technologies and abstract concepts should be recognized as an element of behavioural complexity."

{ https://edition.cnn.com/ }

A recent discovery of a bone ornament in Einhornhöhle cave in the northern part of Germany has shed new light on how creative Neanderthals were. An ancient toe bone (also called a phalanx) belonging to a giant deer had geometric patterns engraved into it that date back at least 51,000 years.

It is believed that this is the oldest ever work of art associated with Neanderthals. Other ancient items have been found connected to Neanderthals such as eagle talons that were made into pendants and old cave paintings, but their ages are still being disputed.

This discovery is very significant in regards to learning more information about the creativity of Neanderthals since there has been a lot of debate on this topic. The study read in part, “The phalanx from Einhornhöhle with its stacked offset chevrons represents one of the most complex cultural expressions in Neanderthals known so far.” Since the chevron design on the bone also contained three uniform parallel lines, it is believed that it was intentionally created as a possible ornament.

The ornament was created from a deer bone.

In order to get a better understanding of how the ornament was created, the researchers attempted to make their own version of it. The first thing they did was attempt to recreate the ornament with stone blades from Baltic flint and carved five Limousin cow bones that were all treated differently (fresh, room dried, air dried, boiled once, and boiled twice).

Dirk Leder, who is a research associate at the State Service for Cultural Heritage Lower Saxony, Hannover, Germany, explained that the fresh bone was extremely difficult to work on as the tools were always slipping off of it. They realized that the boiled bones provided a much softer “mellow” surface to carve with the finished product looking quite similar to the original. Furthermore, it took them approximately 1.5 hours to complete the engravings by scraping and cutting the bone.

Silvia M. Bello, who is a researcher at the Centre for Human Evolution Research, Department of Earth Sciences, at the Natural History Museum in London but was not involved with the study, described the intention behind the creation, “The choice of material, its preparation before carving and the skillful technique used for the engraving are all indicative of sophisticated expertise and great ability in bone working,” adding, “The presence of incisions artistically arranged in a chevron pattern on the bone of a giant deer, supports the symbolic meaning of this find and raises new questions about how complex Neanderthal behavior might have been.”

Even though Homo sapiens arrived in Europe at the same time that Neanderthals were there and they did interact with one another, it is believed that the carved deer bone was of “independent Neanderthal authorship” and had no link to Homo sapiens. (A picture of the bone ornament can be seen here.)

The study was published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution where it can be read in full.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Today, I’m going to share with you a number of UFO cases that are not just amazing or incredible. Rather, they are downright crazy. You’ll quickly see what I mean. Here’s our first case of absolute weirdness. It comes from Men in Black expert, Gareth J. Medway. He says of an MIB case that occurred on November 1, 1973: “At the start of a UFO wave in New Hampshire, Florence Dow heard a thumping sound on her porch. Looking out, she saw a man in a black coat and a wide-brimmed black hat, with what appeared to be a face covered with masking tape.” Precisely why anyone might want to cover their face with masking tape after a UFO report is anyone’s guess. And I don’t have a guess!” One more from Gareth: this one comes from January 26, 1986. As Gareth reports it: “About 7.30 pm Paul Rebek of Epping, New South Wales, received a visit from a man who said: ‘Hello sir, I am a representative of the Uranus Peanut Company. Would you like to sample my wares?’ He bought some peanuts off him, and was told: ‘Thank you. The Council will remember you favorably. Good night.’ He turned, but seemed to vanish after a few steps. Rebek thought it must have been ‘a spectral Man In Black.'”

Mary Hyre was a woman who played an integral role in the series of 1960s-era events that led John Keel to write The Mothman Prophecies. In January 1967, Hyre was visited by a creepy, bowl-haired man of around 5-feet in height and who had oddly hypnotic eyes. Throughout the encounter, the black-clad character kept staring at Hyre’s ballpoint pen. To the point where Hyre told him he could keep it. The man did so, laughed loud in a strange fashion, and vanished as mysteriously as he first arrived. Whatever floats your boat, I guess! Moving on: in 1961, a Wisconsin chicken-farmer named Joe Simonton claimed to have met aliens who landed on his property in a classic flying saucer-style craft. They were said to be very human-looking entities, who had an “Italian” appearance, and generously gave the stunned Simonton three pancakes that one of the crew-members happily cooked on his alien grill! And with their good deed for the day duly accomplished, the aliens were gone – presumably to fill the bellies of even more astounded souls.

Simonton, holding the ‘alien pancake’ he kept

What about a dog inside a UFO? Yep. Back in November 1980, a then-serving English policeman named Alan Godfrey had a profound UFO encounter in Todmorden, Yorkshire – a pleasant locale that has its origins in the 17th century. Godfrey’s encounter came just five months after he was involved in the investigation of a curious death in town. The victim was a man named Zigmund Adamski. As most people will know, the not exactly common name of Adamski is a very famous one in Ufology. It was just one of those strange synchronicities that proliferate when the UFO phenomenon looms large. As for Godfrey’s UFO encounter, it occurred undercover of darkness, in the pre-dawn morning of November 29, 1980, while he was out on patrol in his police-car. As he drove along one particular stretch of road, Godfrey was amazed by the sight of what he first thought was a bus positioned oddly in the road. As Godfrey got closer, however, he could see it was something else entirely. It was actually nothing less than a somewhat egg-shaped UFO.

There then followed an experience that contained certain, key elements of the UFO phenomenon, such as missing-time, and recollections of being taken on-board a craft. However, the entity Godfrey was confronted by on the craft was not the typical black-eyed, dwarfish “Grey.” Rather, it was a human-looking figure dressed in a long gown and sporting a beard. That wasn’t all, though: While undergoing hypnotic regression, Godfrey said that also aboard the UFO was a large black dog. This was not the first encounter Godfrey had with an anomalous hound. Years earlier, he had seen a ghostly Labrador. There was also an odd occasion – in the 1960s, and near Todmorden – when what seemed to be a woman with a large black dog stepped out in front of Godfrey’s vehicle, causing him to slam the brakes on. Both the woman and the dog vanished.

Every now and then a story will surface that is so bizarre, yet also intriguing, that it is almost impossible to categorize. Such a story comes from Jan, a woman who encountered a small UFO – as in extremely small – in the southwest of the U.K.. Jan was walking through nearby woods with her dog early one morning when she heard a loud buzzing noise that quickly filled her ears – and clearly those of her dog, too. Puzzled, she looked around, but it was all to no avail – at least, for around two minutes. Then, everything became amazingly clear. As if out of nowhere, a small flying saucer appeared before her, hovering at a height of around four feet off the ground, in a small clearing in the trees. It was circular in shape, silver in color, and had a red band around its middle. And, it was barely four-feet across! She watched, astonished, as the diminutive craft settled to the ground – in decidedly wobbly fashion – and a small door opened. Jan still recalls holding her breath, wondering what might happen next. She soon found out. Out of the door flew three, three-to-four-inches long small humanoid figures: clearly female and glowing brightly, they fluttered around Jan for a minute or two, dressed in silvery mini-skirts! At one point the tiny trio landed on Jan’s right arm, smiled, then flew back into the craft, which shot away into the skies, never to be seen again. Such rogue cases are so often dismissed by Ufology; yet they are weirdly engaging and not at all rare.

It’s official: Ufology is weird!

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

My previous article was on the subject of Philip Corso’s controversial claims in relation to the July 1947 “Roswell UFO Crash” in Lincoln County, New Mexico. The article was mostly on the possibility that the “bodies” found at the crash site were what we might call, in simple terms, “biological robots.” And, that they were constructed, rather than born. This makes me wonder if – should the theory have any merit to it, of course – that the mysterious makers of those biological robots might also be behind the likes of the Men in Black, the Women in Black, the Black Eyed Children, and so on – all of who look creepily odd. There’s a reason why I specifically say all of this. There’s no doubt there are a lot of accounts of people who have encountered strange-looking people and that we might call “semi-humans.” And there’s no doubt that most of the witnesses to these things have said that it’s the faces that gave them away – which is hardly surprising. After all, it’s largely our faces that define us. With that said, let’s take a look at the cases of a few, really creepy-looking people who might not even be human.

Denise Stoner, co-author with Kathleen Marden on The Alien Abduction Files, told me a bizarre but fascinating story. It involved her husband and occurred in Florida only  a couple of years ago. Denise said: “My husband’s run-in with a possible WIB [Woman in Black] was a few days ago when he decided he would take a bike ride around a lake he travels around on a regular basis and knows it well. If he is feeling pretty energetic, he begins near a pool and park complex, rides the trail nearby and then turns into an area that has a Vet memorial then on around the lake that used to be part of the Navy Base – now new housing. When he entered the path, there was a woman jogging with one of those jogging strollers but the top was down so he could not see a baby inside. This woman had sunglasses on that wrapped around her head and looked way too large for her head. She was thin and about 6 ft. tall. She smiled at my husband as he passed on his bike. She was very thin and pale skinned. He still did not feel uncomfortable because not much scares him. He just thought she was a weird person. As he approached her, she dropped her sunglasses to show him huge black eyes that we at least 4X human size and they wrapped around the side of her head. She grinned again and this time he noticed she did not have a real nose; plus her mouth was long and thin with no teeth – only a dark gap.” Denise’s husband quit the area – quickly.

The Black Eyed Children are very much the same: at first glance they look like us, but the closer you get, the weirder things get. Their skin is, to say the least, nothing like ours. It’s plastic-like. One called it “kinda like wax.” Their faces are often like those of a mannequin. Plain, bland, lacking in emotion, and as if sculpted. Or, right out of a factory. One witness said: “His face was so thin and his skin was strange and almost a see-through milky color, no hair that I could see.” Others have said that the BEC seem to have come out on conveyor-belts. In other words, the witnesses got the feeling these things were machines, rather than real children, and being dispatched to perform particular tasks. What those tasks might be, it’s hard to know, since the BEC are elusive on almost every occasion. One other thing regarding the BEC: it’s almost always their not-quite-normal faces that give them away.

In 2015, Dr. David M. Jacobs’ book, Walking Among Us: The Alien Plan to Control Humanity, was published. As the title alone suggests, this is an extremely controversial book. Although it is heavily focused on so-called “alien abductees,” it is not actually about abduction events, at all. Rather, its focus is on how abductees are allegedly being used to assist alien-human hybrids whose role it is to infiltrate human society. And, yes, that word “infiltrate” is intended to suggest that nothing good can come from all of this. Or, from any of it. We’re talking about the way in which potentially hostile aliens – with no real regard for us, the Human Race – are working towards a certain, fateful day. A day when the Earth will be so heavily infested with these part-ET/part-human things that the invasion, take-over, and/or extermination, will be completed before we’ll have even a single chance to do anything about it. Yes, I said it was controversial. Even Jacobs notes this when he says: “My research has uncovered a substantial presence of hybrids living on Earth…”

Are all of these strange-looking characters something along the lines of a biological robot? It sounds totally nutty. Just maybe, though, it’s not.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

For as long as photographs depicting the surface of Mars have been made available by NASA and other space agencies conducting studies of the Red Planet, online sleuths have scoured the images in search of possible anomalies.

Over the years, claims of everything from alien spacecraft and even possible alien skulls, to Bigfoot have turned up in imagery depicting the Martian surface. However, what this really constitutes is an exercise in pareidolia and only shows us, for the most part, how active the human imagination can be.

Perhaps not everything unusual that has been observed on the Martian surface seems quite so outlandish though. One instance involves a peculiar formation that was first spotted more than three decades ago when the Mariner 9 spacecraft managed to photograph the peculiar feature within a crater located near the Martian equator.

On the 58-mile-wide Pollack Crater floor, there appeared to be an unusual-looking region with a lighter coloration than the surrounding Martian terrain. Estimated to be 8.5 by 11 miles in size (think of a standard sheet of printing paper, albeit greatly enlarged), the weird feature was not only a peculiar whitish color but appeared to possess unusual grooves running along its surface.

The anomaly known as “White Rock” within Pollack Crater

(NASA/Public Domain).

Dubbed “White Rock,” the object was subsequently also photographed by the Viking Orbiter and presented a unique series of questions. What was the object, and what caused it to stand out so sharply against the rest of the Martian terrain?

Although the notion that it might represent an ice formation immediately springs to mind, White Rock’s location close to the Martian equator would easily rule this out. So what is this unusual feature?

If not ice, some scientists who continued to puzzle over White Rock began to suspect that it might represent a deposit of water-rich sediments, similar to salts that collect along the surface of dry lake beds in deserts on Earth. This would seem plausible, especially because later in 2004, such deposits were indeed found by NASA’s Opportunity rover while exploring the Meridiani Planum.

Backtracking to 2001, however, with the deployment of NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor orbiter and its Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) instrument, new clues emerged about the mysterious White Rock at the bottom of Pollack Crater. With the new spectrographic information, scientists were able to determine that White Rock showed no signs of water and, in fact, wasn’t white at all: its coloration closely matched other lighter regions on the Martian surface.

Part of what led to the confusion had been an optical illusion presented by the sharp contrast between the lighter material, which rises from the surface of the feature in the form of ridges shaped over time by wind, placed alongside darker basaltic sand (the latter can particularly be observed toward the feature’s northern side, where a field of dark basaltic dunes exists).

Detail of the unusual light colored area within Pollack Crater

(NASA/JPL/Public Domain).

While most scientists would agree that wind action played a significant role in the formation of the peculiar White Rock formation, estimates about its direction vary. Some of the grooves apparent on the feature seem to indicate an easterly or southeastern wind that could have shaped them over time, while others interpret that a wind approaching from the west would have done the job.

This before-and-after pair of images of the same patch of ground in front of NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity 13 days apart documents the arrival of a strange, bright rock at the scene. The rock, called "Pinnacle Island," is seen in the right image on Jan. 8, 2014. The image at left was taken on Dec. 26, 2013. 

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ. )

Steve Squyres, lead scientist for NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, points at a strange rock found by the rover on Jan. 8, 2014, where earlier there had been nothing, during a Jan. 16 presentation. The rock has been named "Pinnacle Island." 

(Image credit: NASA/JPL)

A comparison of two raw Pancam photographs from sols 3528 and 3540 of Opportunity's mission (a sol is a Martian day). Notice the "jelly doughnut"-sized rock in the center of the photograph to the right. Minor adjustments for brightness and contrast. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Opportunity has been exploring Mars since Jan. 24, 2004, when it landed on the Red Planet a few weeks after its robotic twin Spirit. Both` rovers far outlasted their original 90-day mission, with Opportunity still driving today. Spirit's mission officially ended in 2011, several months after the rover stopped communicating with Earth.

Although White Rock initially seemed to stand out from other Martian features with its unusual light coloration, similar features have since been located at places like Ganges Chasma, where another bright grooved region rising from the surface can be seen to almost match the mysterious appearance of White Rock perfectly.

So as it turns out, White Rock isn’t so white, and in fact, it isn’t really a rock either… but it helps illustrate how astronomers are closing in on explaining even some of the more plausible anomalies on the Martian surface.

{https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

For as long as photographs depicting the surface of Mars have been made available by NASA and other space agencies conducting studies of the Red Planet, online sleuths have scoured the images in search of possible anomalies.

Over the years, claims of everything from alien spacecraft and even possible alien skulls, to Bigfoot have turned up in imagery depicting the Martian surface. However, what this really constitutes is an exercise in pareidolia and only shows us, for the most part, how active the human imagination can be.

Perhaps not everything unusual that has been observed on the Martian surface seems quite so outlandish though. One instance involves a peculiar formation that was first spotted more than three decades ago when the Mariner 9 spacecraft managed to photograph the peculiar feature within a crater located near the Martian equator.

On the 58-mile-wide Pollack Crater floor, there appeared to be an unusual-looking region with a lighter coloration than the surrounding Martian terrain. Estimated to be 8.5 by 11 miles in size (think of a standard sheet of printing paper, albeit greatly enlarged), the weird feature was not only a peculiar whitish color but appeared to possess unusual grooves running along its surface.

The anomaly known as “White Rock” within Pollack Crater

(NASA/Public Domain).

Dubbed “White Rock,” the object was subsequently also photographed by the Viking Orbiter and presented a unique series of questions. What was the object, and what caused it to stand out so sharply against the rest of the Martian terrain?

Although the notion that it might represent an ice formation immediately springs to mind, White Rock’s location close to the Martian equator would easily rule this out. So what is this unusual feature?

If not ice, some scientists who continued to puzzle over White Rock began to suspect that it might represent a deposit of water-rich sediments, similar to salts that collect along the surface of dry lake beds in deserts on Earth. This would seem plausible, especially because later in 2004, such deposits were indeed found by NASA’s Opportunity rover while exploring the Meridiani Planum.

Backtracking to 2001, however, with the deployment of NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor orbiter and its Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) instrument, new clues emerged about the mysterious White Rock at the bottom of Pollack Crater. With the new spectrographic information, scientists were able to determine that White Rock showed no signs of water and, in fact, wasn’t white at all: its coloration closely matched other lighter regions on the Martian surface.

Part of what led to the confusion had been an optical illusion presented by the sharp contrast between the lighter material, which rises from the surface of the feature in the form of ridges shaped over time by wind, placed alongside darker basaltic sand (the latter can particularly be observed toward the feature’s northern side, where a field of dark basaltic dunes exists).

Detail of the unusual light colored area within Pollack Crater

(NASA/JPL/Public Domain).

While most scientists would agree that wind action played a significant role in the formation of the peculiar White Rock formation, estimates about its direction vary. Some of the grooves apparent on the feature seem to indicate an easterly or southeastern wind that could have shaped them over time, while others interpret that a wind approaching from the west would have done the job.

This before-and-after pair of images of the same patch of ground in front of NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity 13 days apart documents the arrival of a strange, bright rock at the scene. The rock, called "Pinnacle Island," is seen in the right image on Jan. 8, 2014. The image at left was taken on Dec. 26, 2013. 

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ. )

Steve Squyres, lead scientist for NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, points at a strange rock found by the rover on Jan. 8, 2014, where earlier there had been nothing, during a Jan. 16 presentation. The rock has been named "Pinnacle Island." 

(Image credit: NASA/JPL)

A comparison of two raw Pancam photographs from sols 3528 and 3540 of Opportunity's mission (a sol is a Martian day). Notice the "jelly doughnut"-sized rock in the center of the photograph to the right. Minor adjustments for brightness and contrast. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Opportunity has been exploring Mars since Jan. 24, 2004, when it landed on the Red Planet a few weeks after its robotic twin Spirit. Both` rovers far outlasted their original 90-day mission, with Opportunity still driving today. Spirit's mission officially ended in 2011, several months after the rover stopped communicating with Earth.

Although White Rock initially seemed to stand out from other Martian features with its unusual light coloration, similar features have since been located at places like Ganges Chasma, where another bright grooved region rising from the surface can be seen to almost match the mysterious appearance of White Rock perfectly.

So as it turns out, White Rock isn’t so white, and in fact, it isn’t really a rock either… but it helps illustrate how astronomers are closing in on explaining even some of the more plausible anomalies on the Martian surface.

{https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

For as long as photographs depicting the surface of Mars have been made available by NASA and other space agencies conducting studies of the Red Planet, online sleuths have scoured the images in search of possible anomalies.

Over the years, claims of everything from alien spacecraft and even possible alien skulls, to Bigfoot have turned up in imagery depicting the Martian surface. However, what this really constitutes is an exercise in pareidolia and only shows us, for the most part, how active the human imagination can be.

Perhaps not everything unusual that has been observed on the Martian surface seems quite so outlandish though. One instance involves a peculiar formation that was first spotted more than three decades ago when the Mariner 9 spacecraft managed to photograph the peculiar feature within a crater located near the Martian equator.

On the 58-mile-wide Pollack Crater floor, there appeared to be an unusual-looking region with a lighter coloration than the surrounding Martian terrain. Estimated to be 8.5 by 11 miles in size (think of a standard sheet of printing paper, albeit greatly enlarged), the weird feature was not only a peculiar whitish color but appeared to possess unusual grooves running along its surface.

The anomaly known as “White Rock” within Pollack Crater

(NASA/Public Domain).

Dubbed “White Rock,” the object was subsequently also photographed by the Viking Orbiter and presented a unique series of questions. What was the object, and what caused it to stand out so sharply against the rest of the Martian terrain?

Although the notion that it might represent an ice formation immediately springs to mind, White Rock’s location close to the Martian equator would easily rule this out. So what is this unusual feature?

If not ice, some scientists who continued to puzzle over White Rock began to suspect that it might represent a deposit of water-rich sediments, similar to salts that collect along the surface of dry lake beds in deserts on Earth. This would seem plausible, especially because later in 2004, such deposits were indeed found by NASA’s Opportunity rover while exploring the Meridiani Planum.

Backtracking to 2001, however, with the deployment of NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor orbiter and its Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) instrument, new clues emerged about the mysterious White Rock at the bottom of Pollack Crater. With the new spectrographic information, scientists were able to determine that White Rock showed no signs of water and, in fact, wasn’t white at all: its coloration closely matched other lighter regions on the Martian surface.

Part of what led to the confusion had been an optical illusion presented by the sharp contrast between the lighter material, which rises from the surface of the feature in the form of ridges shaped over time by wind, placed alongside darker basaltic sand (the latter can particularly be observed toward the feature’s northern side, where a field of dark basaltic dunes exists).

Detail of the unusual light colored area within Pollack Crater

(NASA/JPL/Public Domain).

While most scientists would agree that wind action played a significant role in the formation of the peculiar White Rock formation, estimates about its direction vary. Some of the grooves apparent on the feature seem to indicate an easterly or southeastern wind that could have shaped them over time, while others interpret that a wind approaching from the west would have done the job.

This before-and-after pair of images of the same patch of ground in front of NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity 13 days apart documents the arrival of a strange, bright rock at the scene. The rock, called "Pinnacle Island," is seen in the right image on Jan. 8, 2014. The image at left was taken on Dec. 26, 2013. 

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ. )

Steve Squyres, lead scientist for NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, points at a strange rock found by the rover on Jan. 8, 2014, where earlier there had been nothing, during a Jan. 16 presentation. The rock has been named "Pinnacle Island." 

(Image credit: NASA/JPL)

A comparison of two raw Pancam photographs from sols 3528 and 3540 of Opportunity's mission (a sol is a Martian day). Notice the "jelly doughnut"-sized rock in the center of the photograph to the right. Minor adjustments for brightness and contrast. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Opportunity has been exploring Mars since Jan. 24, 2004, when it landed on the Red Planet a few weeks after its robotic twin Spirit. Both` rovers far outlasted their original 90-day mission, with Opportunity still driving today. Spirit's mission officially ended in 2011, several months after the rover stopped communicating with Earth.

Although White Rock initially seemed to stand out from other Martian features with its unusual light coloration, similar features have since been located at places like Ganges Chasma, where another bright grooved region rising from the surface can be seen to almost match the mysterious appearance of White Rock perfectly.

So as it turns out, White Rock isn’t so white, and in fact, it isn’t really a rock either… but it helps illustrate how astronomers are closing in on explaining even some of the more plausible anomalies on the Martian surface.

{https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

The search for methane on other planets is a key element in the search for life on other planets because one cause of the carbon gas is the decaying of organic matter. Unfortunately for life searchers, the most common cause of methane is abiotic or inorganic — either because of magmatic (volcanic) processes or via water-rock reactions that occur at low temperatures and pressures. That’s why the discovery of giant water plumes containing methane erupting from the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus by Cassini spacecraft generated mixed reactions from scientists depending on whether they saw their glass of possible life half empty or half full. The level of that glass just increased with the release of a new study which determined that no known process could generate as much methane as that erupting in plumes on Enceladus. Is it life … or something else?

Cassini image of Enceladus backlit by the sun showing the fountain-like sources of the fine spray of material over the south polar region.

(NASA)

“Here we use a Bayesian statistical approach to quantify the probability that methanogenesis (biotic methane production) might explain the escape rates of molecular hydrogen and methane in Enceladus’s plume, as measured by Cassini instruments”.

Scientists at the University of Arizona and Paris Sciences & Lettres University knew the best way to determine if the methane was being generated by Earthlike microbes eating dihydrogen and producing methane in such huge quantities would be to be to go where they are – on the seafloor of one of the water bodies on Enceladus. Since that’s not currently possible, they did the next best thing — develop mathematical models to calculate the probability of the different known processes of methane generation, both biological and abiotic, captured in the Cassini data. The researchers used the Bayesian statistics approach which expresses probability as a degree of belief in an event.

“We find that the observed escape rates (1) cannot be explained solely by the abiotic alteration of the rocky core by serpentinization; (2) are compatible with the hypothesis of habitable conditions for methanogens; and (3) score the highest likelihood under the hypothesis of methanogenesis, assuming that the probability of life emerging is high enough”.

That’s as close as the authors of the study, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, will get to saying, “We’re not saying it’s alien life, but it’s alien life”. In the University of Arizona press release, Régis Ferrière, an associate professor in the University of Arizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and one of the study’s two lead authors, explains that the results show that even the highest possible estimate of abiotic methane production based on known hydrothermal chemistry is far from sufficient to explain the methane concentration measured in the plumes. Add it together with the probability of biological methanogenesis and the model shows the combination could produce enough methane to match Cassini’s observations. In other words, the probability of life on Enceladus at some point in time just made the glass more than half full.

An artist’s concept of Saturn’s rings and major icy moons.

(NASA)

Then again, it’s just a model. Missions to Enceladus which would settle the argument have been proposed since 2006, with half already canceled and half under study – but none funded and planned. Will this study push the Enceladus mission needle to the ‘planned, funded and scheduled’ side anytime soon? We can only hope.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Clarifying the UFO landscape?

Copyright 2021, InterAmerica, Inc.

My son, Josh, who a few of you met recently, would appreciate it if I’d make clear what my view(s) is (or are) on schizophrenics, UFO visions, and psychopathologies among the UFO fringe; the topic that took up a portion of the July 4th weekend.

When I write that schizophrenics actually see what they say they see, and sometimes present those visions in art and scribblings, I’m saying that they are not making up their visions. They really see what they report, sometimes incoherently but “reliably.”

Yes, some visions (many perhaps) come from neural creations that aren’t actually in front of the observers’ eyes but are what they are seeing.

Are the images real, in a material way? Yes and/or No. Some are material and perceived by sensory vision. Others are contrived from neural memory or creative delusions.

Two papers consider the issue(s):

An integrated network model of psychotic symptoms Jasper Looijestijn a, Jan Dirk Bloma,b, André Alemanc, Hans W. Hoeka,b,d, Rutger Goekoopa,∗ a Parnassia Psychiatric Institute, Kiwistraat 43, The Hague 2552

Are persistent delusions in schizophrenia associated with aberrant salience? Rafeef Abboud a,1, Jonathan P. Roiser a,⁎,1, Hind Khalifeh b,c,d, Sheila Ali a, Isobel Harrison b,c, Helen T. Killaspy b,c, Eileen M. Joyce ea Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London

As you see, the matter is couched in psychiatric jargon; the persons afflicted are psychotic or delusional. 

But are they? Not necessarily. What they see or experience can be real and is often real in a material way. That is when a persons says they see something or saw something, they did. Material reality and intangible reality need not be odd-fellows. They are often bed-fellows – observations as “real” as anything “normal” persons experience daily.

So, how can we discount – or why do we discount — these rapacious ravings or wildly offered renderings out of hand?

No one is pressing the confluence, while some are trying to juxtapose psychedelic and pharmacological into the mix, a wrong-headed approach to reality as I see it. Contrived intrusions into a brain bombards that brain’s mechanisms with biologic flotsam, which adds one more side-bar to what is happening, that side-bar flooded with non-real information.

The problem – one of many – for ufologists is separating the sociopath’s rendering of a UFO event from normal AND schizophrenic accounts.

Psychopaths abound in the UFO community. I have recently seen, among the offerings in the Facebook UFO groups, some of the most tawdry forms of UFO chicanery, stories of abductions and observations that make schizophrenic accounts pale by comparison.

How can any serious UFO researcher cope with such nonsense? They can’t. There are few, if any, qualified UFO enthusiasts with the credentials and training to ferret out the fraudulent reports from the credible reports.

Facebook remains the fount from which sociopaths spring forth, and they overwhelm, making the social media site and those within partners in a social insanity” not unlike that experienced by the nuns of Loudon or the Dutch during the tulip craze of 1637:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudun_possessions
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

RR

• http://ufocon.blogspot.com – The UFO Iconoclast(s)

Source: 

• https://ufocon.blogspot.com/2021/07/clarifying-ufo-landscape.html

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and  posted by peter2011

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk talks Starship space telescopes, artificial gravity

In his latest batch of tweets, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that the company is already thinking about the many potential ways its next-generation Starship launch vehicle could be used in space.

Already, ideas publicly touted by the SpaceX CEO range from using Cargo Starships to clean up space debris with its mouth-like payload bay to a stripped-down, expendable variant of the rocket to rapidly send massive spacecraft throughout the solar system. Now, Musk says that SpaceX has also considered tethering Starships together in space to create a form of artificial gravity for passengers on multi-month journeys between planets, as well as the possibility of turning entire Starships into all-in-one orbital observatories a magnitude more powerful than Hubble.

Apparently invoked during discussions with astrophysicist and Nobel laureate Saul Perlmutter, at least parts of the physics community are already considering the possibilities offered by using Starship as a sort of foundation or spacecraft bus that could carry and operate vast scientific payloads. While Starship has already been officially floated several times as a serious contender for launch services for major future missions, this concept would instead see Starship function as the spacecraft itself.

As of 2021, Starship has yet to reach space or orbit once, but SpaceX isn’t far from that milestone. Eventually, perhaps just a few years from now, Starship will have successfully launched to and operated in orbit dozens or even hundreds of times and become a mature and reliable spacecraft.

At that point, it wouldn’t be out of the question to entrust Starships themselves to serve as long-lasting scientific spacecraft, exploiting a ‘bus’ that could offer abundant power, propulsion, thermal management, navigation, and communications capabilities to any ‘hosted’ payloads. That includes extensively modifying Starships on the ground to create vast space observatories, among numerous other possibilities.

Given Starship’s low production cost, 9-meter (~30 ft) diameter, and nominal ability to deliver at least 100 metric tons (~220,000 lb) of payload to low Earth orbit (LEO), it’s not inconceivable that ships could be outfitted with massive telescopes and scientific instruments. Perhaps more importantly, drastically reduced payload constraints (more than an order of magnitude relative to the Hubble or James Webb telescopes) could allow major innovation in spacecraft/instrument design, radically lowering costs while still improving reliability, redundancy, and performance.

Meanwhile, Musk says that SpaceX has also considered tethering crewed Starships together and spinning them around the center of that tether to create artificial gravity for crewmembers on months-long journeys between Earth, Mars, and other planets. Among fan communities, the tethered gravity concept has been circulating ever since SpaceX first announced Starship in 2016. Loosely researched by NASA and other institutions for decades, no real experimental efforts – save for a single halting test during a 1960s Gemini mission – have ever been pursued.

For Starship, orbital refueling could easily allow SpaceX to cut crewed Earth-Mars transit time to 100 days or less – subjecting astronauts to significantly less time in microgravity than those that crew the International Space Station (ISS). The value proposition of artificial gravity on 3-month cruises is likely substantially less clear-cut given the far-reaching complexity and modifications required to make such a system functional and make Starships compatible.

Regardless, Musk rather cryptically says that SpaceX has considered the concept, though he didn’t elaborate on whether the company ultimately decided to drop the subject or pursue it further.

The post SpaceX CEO Elon Musk talks Starship space telescopes, artificial gravity appeared first on TESLARATI.

Source: 

• https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starship-telescopes-artificial-gravity/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

On July 4, Dr. Steven Greer released his latest documentary film - The Cosmic Hoax. In it, he presented evidence of a decades-long plan to stage an alien false flag invasion. 

He described multiple aspects of the plan and key figures in its implementation. He asserts that the staged event is imminent given recent developments in the mass media and US politics. 

The first video below is Dr. Greer’s answer to the current government and media disinformation campaign promoting 3 big lies: 

1. 1. We do not know what these UAPs/ UFOs are. WE DO. 
2. 2. Humans cannot make craft that can maneuver like UFOs. WE CAN and WE DO. 
3. 3. The UFOs are a threat. THEY ARE NOT. 

But according to Dr. Michael Salla, what's missing in Dr Greer's analysis of a Cosmic Hoax is another kind of alien false flag event. 

In the second video Exopolitics Today podcast, Dr. Michael Salla examines The Cosmic Hoax, pointing out its strengths and shortcomings as an expose on a future alien psyop, especially when it comes to a very different kind of staged alien event - an 'Alien Rescue' or 'Salvation'.

 

 

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

UFO Cover-Up Inside the U.S. Government

In 1952 cameras spotted UFOs flying over the White House lawn in Washington D.C. – these sightings eventually lead to Project Blue Book, created by the U.S. government, in this clip from Season 5, “Aliens and Cover-Ups.”

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

“IF WE HAVEN'T REALLY UNDERSTOOD HUMAN EMOTIONS, CAN WE ACTUALLY ... PUT THEM INTO MACHINES?”

WHEN IT COMES TO EXPRESSING EMOTIONS, HUMAN FACES HAVE A LOT TO SAY.

Without speaking a word, we can signal our disgust to those around us with pursed lips and a furrowed brow. Our joy is expressed just as fast: Eyes open wide and lips upturned. Like an overturned flag signaling otherwise unnoticeable distress on a ship at sea, our facial expressions act as a bridge between our internal life and the outside world.

Robots that can expertly express these kinds of emotions will have a better chance at building human relationships and even persuading humans to do what they want, i.e. taking their medicine on time.

But having a robot nail this interaction every time is an incredibly difficult task, says Bilge Mutlu, an associate professor of computer science and psychology and UW Madison. Even humans don’t always get it right.

“When you look at the psychology literature, our understanding of emotions is incomplete,” Mutlu says. “And if we haven't really understood human emotions, can we actually simplify them and put them into machines? That's an open question.”

WHAT IS THE UNCANNY VALLEY?

For humans, these mismatched interactions can be uncomfortable or awkward, but with robots, they can be downright creepy, thanks to the uncanny valley.

The concept was proposed by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in the 1970s to describe a humanoid robot that looks close — but not quite close enough — to a real human.

According to the uncanny valley concept, humans are comfortable interacting with a more abstract and cute robot (think, Pixar’s WALL-E) or an incredibly human-like robot (think, Battlestar Galactica Cylons.) However, there exists a so-called valley between these two robotic extremes where robots look neither truly human nor robotic. This feeling of the “uncanny” might be the shiver you get when walking through a wax museum or when looking at a robotic Einstein video.

Psychologically, scholars have theorized that this discomfort with the not-quite-human may stem from an instinctual fear or distrust of dead human bodies, explains Niedenthal.

To steer clear of the uncanny valley altogether researchers will typically try and keep their robots on the cuter, more abstract side of the curve, says Mutlu. However, when it comes to programming emotions into your bot, he says avoiding creepiness altogether is a little impossible.

HOW DOES IT WORK

The uncanny valley was a challenge that Chen and colleagues were willing to take when designing Eva.

To start, they chose to design Eva as just a disembodied head. While this may instinctually sound creepy, the researchers explain in their April 2021 paper on the project that this design choice was made to help viewers more clearly separate this robot from humans in their minds. For similar reasons, the team also chose to leave Eva’s skull exposed and color its face a distinctly non-human color: blue.

Admittedly, Chen says this decision was influenced partially by the lab's affection for the 2009 movie “Avatar.”

In addition to their 2021 paper published in the journal HardwareX, the team also recently presented a second paper at the 2021 International Conference on Robotics and Automation which further describes Eva’s latest hardware and software developments.

Underneath its blue skin, Eva is equipped with:

• 42 “muscles”
• Expressive, hand-milled eyes
• Base knowledge of six basic human emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise)

Running an off-the-shelf learning framework on a small Raspberry Pi built into its skull, Eva is able to “look” at human expressions in person or through video and realistically mimic them. This is done by mapping the human face using discrete points, similar to the kind of dot arrays used in motion tracking for CGI in movies. Eva then imagines how these patterns of dots would look on its face and then moves its facial actuators to bring the new face to life.

Altogether, the team reports that Eva can be manufactured for just $900.

WHAT’S NEXT

Eva is still in its infancy, but Chen says he’s excited to see how other researchers will use this open-source platform to design their own emotional robots — from changing the skin tone to programming real human interactions for Eva. In the future, Chen hopes that expressive robots like Eva will find a home as educators or in healthcare to help care for humans when others can’t.

And as for whether or not Chen finds Eva’s smile creepy, he says he could never be scared by a smile like that.

“This is hard for me because the robot is like our baby,” says Chen. “I absolutely love every part of it.”

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

Did The U.S. Government Steal Tesla’s Research?

Nikola Tesla was undoubtedly one of the brightest minds of the 20th century. Many of our modern day commodities owe their existence to his brilliant mind. However, he lived most of his life in a constant battle with the energy brokers of his day, namely Thomas Edison backed by General Electric.

On January 7, 1943, Tesla died alone and impoverished in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel. Two days after his death, the FBI ordered that all of his belongings be seized.

His lifetime work was confiscated by the Office of Alien Property even though he had been an American citizen for 52 years. It was known at the time that Tesla had been working on several important projects, including wireless communications and limitless free energy.

Last photo of Nikola Tesla

Tesla’s plan was to harness energy from the radiation present in the universe, using the entire planet as a conductor. This would have meant that anybody could have free electricity simply by sticking a metal rod into the ground.

These notions did not go well with the power elite, whose interest was maintaining the status quo, that is keeping their multi-billion dollar businesses running.

After all, what good was free energy if they wouldn’t be able to meter and control it? Therefore, many speculate that the U.S. government acted according to the pressure exerted by these big corporations. They eventually shipped his estate to Belgrade, Yugoslavia but not before taking nine years to go through it.

This situation gave rise to a pervasive notion that is strongly supported by circumstantial evidence: Tesla’s research was considered critical, even dangerous and was confiscated for good measure.

His ideas could have constituted an important advancement for humanity and that’s exactly why they were withheld.

It is believed that the technology behind HAARP is based on Tesla’s research. The U.S. has many top-secret compounds around the world and also has a history of secretly developing technology.

Perhaps this is why Tesla’s papers were seized but we might never know for sure.

After years of fielding questions about possible cover-ups, the FBI finally declassified some 250 pages of Tesla-related documents under the Freedom of Information Act in 2016. The bureau followed up with two additional releases, the latest in March 2018.

But even with the publication of these documents, many questions still remain unanswered—and some of Tesla’s files are still missing.

Shortly after an electrical engineer, Dr. John G. Trump (yes it is current President Donal Trump’s uncle) was assigned to review his papers to discover if any of it was of actual tangible value.

He determined that it was “primarily of a speculative, philosophical and promotional character” and said the papers did “not include new sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results.”

Tesla’s extended family, including his nephew Sava Kosanovic, tried desperately to have at least his personal effects returned. Their requests were eventually accepted and some of his personal items were returned to the family.

Recently declassified documents reveal that the FBI, at the time, were concerned with his nephew’s intentions. They had even considered arresting him to prevent Tesla’s work falling into enemy hands.

After a long court battle, Kosanovic, the rightful heir to his uncle’s belongings, was finally given them. Tesla’s possessions and files were sent to Belgrade.

But, interestingly, of the 80 trunks or so of Tesla’s effects, only 60 arrived in Belgrade. Whether the U.S. Government had kept some of the information and effects or not is still, today, unknown.

• 
  Did Nikola Tesla Unintentionally Detect Signals From Another Civilization?

• 
  The Teleforce — Nikola Tesla’s Death Ray

It is also believed that Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative program in the 1980s was probably inspired by Tesla’s “Death Ray”. But if the government is still using some of Tesla’s material for its Research and Development, this would explain why some, if any, of his original works, are still missing today.

Of course, we will never know for sure.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://anomalien.com/ }

Bill Nelson, the former astronaut who is currently the new head of NASA and who just finished reading the classified Pentagon report on UFOs, should know something about them, right? However, the big question yet to be asked is, “If NASA knows about UFOs and UAPs, would it share that information with the people who pay their salaries – the tax-paying public?” The answer to that may be found on the agency’s own Frequently Asked Questions page on its website. It’s not as long as ‘War and Peace’. In fact, it’s not even as long as the Cliffs Notes for ‘War and Peace’ (which is actually four volumes itself!). it’s more like the jacket flap of ‘War and Peace’. If you’re still interested, NASA’s “FAQ: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs/UFOs)“ was updated recently to reflect the latest events in the search for explanations for the military sightings of UAPs. That should make it worth a look while in the bathroom, right?

“One of NASA’s key goals is the search for life in the universe.”

Where have I heard that before?

Right up front is NASA’s Trekkie “To seek out new life and new civilizations” mission statement, which completely ignores its Cold War military purpose from day one. Then the disclaimer:

“To date, NASA has yet to find any credible evidence of extraterrestrial life.”

Did the lawyers make them put that in right up front? More like the scientists, who accept the possibility but need the evidence, which the FAQ again states it hasn’t found … but “We do, however, continue to look.” Isn’t that what they’re paid to do? (Asking for a taxpaying friend.) Speaking of what they DO spend money on …

“NASA does fund research into technosignatures, but not for ground-based, radio-telescope searches due to NASA’s policy of supporting astrophysical research using space-based assets.

We also funded a Topical Workshops, Symposia, and Conference to develop a research agenda to prioritize and guide future theoretical and observational studies of non-radio technosignatures, and to draft a publishable report that can serve as the basis for building a library of technosignatures.”

Boring! There’s astronomers all over the world looking for technosignatures and biosignatures, but you’re the space agency that has put the most people and vehicles in space – vehicles with windows and instruments for watching for UFOs and UAPs. In fact, plenty of people make a point of watching the live International Space Station camera feed for the specific purpose of watching for UFOs as they fly by … and have noticed many times that said feed often mysteriously cuts out when this happens? Coincidence? Is that a frequently-asked question? If not, it should be.

OK, the last FAQ (yes, that’s all there are) is the big one: Does NASA search for or study Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs)? You can hold your breath if you want because the answer is disappointingly short.

“NASA does not actively search for UAPs. However, through our Earth-observing satellites, NASA collects extensive data about Earth’s atmosphere, often in collaboration with the other space agencies of the world. While these data are not specifically collected to identify UAPs or alien technosignatures, they are publicly available and anyone may use them to search the atmosphere.

While NASA doesn’t actively search for UAPs, if we learn of UAPs, it would open up the door to new science questions to explore. Atmospheric scientists, aerospace experts, and other scientists could all contribute to understanding the nature of the phenomenon. Exploring the unknown in space is at the heart of who we are.”

Sorry, NASA. Figuring out what those UFOs and UAPs are is the heart of who WE are … and we’re the taxpayers! It’s time to shape up. Bill Nelson says he believes we’re not alone. Answer the questions or commit to finding out!

We’ll be right here waiting.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

One of the earliest astronomers to ever produce a complete map of the moon, Johann Heinrich von Mädler’s four-quadrant representation of the lunar surface remained an unsurpassed early representation of Earth’s lonely natural satellite for almost half a century.

Known as the Mappa Selenographica, Mädler laboriously poured over the moon on an almost nightly basis through his refractor telescope, not only observing and mapping lunar features but also producing measurements of its various features that included craters and his estimates regarding the height of lunar peaks. Mädler’s collaborations with Berlin banker and fellow astronomer Wilhelm Wolff Beer also resulted in the earliest charts cataloging the surface of Mars.

The map of Mars produced by Johann Heinrich von Mädler and his associate Wilhelm Wolff Beer

(public domain).

While Mädler’s contributions to early astronomy remain of significance today, he is also remembered for one of his curious observations involving the planet Venus. Although documented elsewhere in historical accounts detailing observations of the planet, the anomalous occurrence has since become so closely associated with Mädler that astronomers have given it the apt title of “The Mädler Phenomenon.”

During the spring of 1833, prior even to the publication of his Mappa Selenogra, Mädler had been observing Venus’s approach of an inferior conjunction, a period where both Mercury and Venus are positioned on the same side of the sun. At the time, Mädler was observing Venus through a refractor telescope and had noticed a few minor irregularities in the planet’s appearance which may have been influenced by the planet’s position relative to the Sun. However, Mädler might never have guessed how unusual the planet’s appearance would become in the days ahead.

Johann Heinrich von Mädler

(public domain).

On April 7, as Mädler trained his telescope on Venus, he was surprised by a sudden, significant change in the planet’s appearance. Mädler was able to see long rays or “brushes” of light extending off to the side of the planet, giving it an appearance so curious that had he not known otherwise, the astronomer might have mistaken Earth’s neighbor for being a comet. The observation had not been fleeting either; over the course of the next 20 hours, Mädler was able to continuously observe these unusual beams of luminosity that gave Venus a fan-tailed appearance.

What might have been the cause of this peculiar display? Considering whether the problem had been originating with the telescope itself, Mädler made adjustments but could find no change in the appearance of Venus with adjustments in magnification, angle, or rotation. Mädler also conducted tests to determine if the ghostly rays emanating from Venus could be an illusion, but to no avail; whatever had been producing this curious spectacle appeared to be a real light phenomenon, the likes of which the astronomer had never witnessed before.

Venus photographed on February 5, 1974, during NASA’s Mariner 10 mission

(NASA/Public Domain).

The debate has continued as to what might have been the source of the mystery, although not everyone was convinced by Mädler’s account. In his Celestial Objects, the Reverend T.W. Webb discussed Mädler’s observation, noting that “it is an instructive instance of the oversights which may be incidental even to great philosophers, that it never occurred to [Mädler] to try another telescope.” Of the opposite perspective, R. Baum writing in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association would note in 1988 that “it is difficult to credit the greasy finger hypothesis advanced by one modern astronomer without charging Mädler with gross incompetence, a rather unlikely possibility given his later success.” Baum, however, offered his own take on what could account for the phenomena observed by Mädler, pointing to atmospheric conditions described in the weather diary of John Gadbury as being able to account for the unusual observation.

The likely solution would appear to have been some variety of halo or another effect similar to the atmospheric optical phenomena known as a light pillar. Nonetheless, Mädler’s reputation as a detailed chronicler of astronomical data resulted in the phenomena in question bearing his namesake to this day, being recognized as one of the many curious footnotes in the history of human observation of our planetary neighbors.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Nineteen-eighty-seven was one of the most important years in the field of UFO research. That was the year in which Whitley Strieber’s book, Communion, was published. The alien abduction-themed book became a huge bestseller – even a New York Times bestseller, no less. Strieber’s book was an important one because it didn’t follow the same pathway that so many other abduction books did. Strieber suggested that the black-eyed, dwarfish creatures known as “the Greys” are far from being just entities from another world and who have come to visit us. Strieber’s work suggested something far more than that; something that has deep relevance to the world of robots. Or, maybe, of cyborgs. Some people were excited and intrigued by the story that Strieber told. Others were puzzled, some were appalled by the fact that Strieber brought into Communion matters relative to magic, to the human soul, to immortality, and to life after death – and all in one big mix. Indeed, Strieber put forth the distinct possibility that the Greys may have the ability to operate in both a physical state and a soul-based situation. As for that physical form, Strieber came up with a fascinating theory – based upon his very own experiences with the Greys. He strongly suspected that when not in spirit/soul form, the Greys had the ability to be “downloaded” into physical form. And vice-versa. And, in that particular form, they were far more like biological robots than literal extraterrestrial beings that many of the UFO research community embraced.

Mac Tonnies went down that pathway, too. He said: “Given the vast number of out-of-body and near-death experiences, I find it difficult to reject the prospect of ‘nonlocal’ consciousness; perhaps a sufficiently advanced technology can manipulate the ‘soul’ as easily as we splice genes or mix chemicals in test tubes. If so, encounters with ‘extraterrestrials’ may help provide a working knowledge of how to modify and transfer consciousness – abilities that seem remote to the current terrestrial state-of-the-art, but may prove invaluable in a future where telepresence and virtual reality are integral to communication. Already, the capabilities of brain-machine interfaces are tantalizingly like the popular perception of telepathy, often thought of in strictly ‘paranormal’ or even ‘magical’ terms.’ It should be noted that this is very much like what has become known as Transhumanism. Basically, it’s a case of being in a state of post-human, rather than present-human. Or, post-alien, rather than alien.”

In some respects this parallels what Philip Corso said of the “alien bodies” allegedly found at Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947. Namely, that they weren’t aliens as we understand the term. Rather, they may have been robots designed and “built” to perform specific tasks in relation to alien abduction events – and, quite possibly, that’s just about all they were designed for. If true, it would be highly logical to expect that the Greys still play that robot-like role. If, of course, Corso was telling the truth (and, I should stress that I have massive doubts about anything Corso ever said). Also, if Corso was telling the truth, then the creatures may never have had any degree of self-awareness, and had no knowledge of their place in world history. That provokes another question: who, then, were the creators of the Greys? Corso wasn’t at all sure. Let’s get it right on the target:, he actually had no real clue, at all. The Space Brothers? Cryptoterrestrials? Maybe, no-one – at all – has any idea. And, possibly, no human being has ever seen what we might call “The Controllers” of the Greys. Certainly, I’m only speculating here and musing on matters. As I said, I was not a fan of Corso’s back in 1997 when his book The Day After Roswell was published. I’m  still not a fan now. But, now and again, addressing theories outside one’s own conclusions isn’t a bad thing. After all, none of us really knows the truth of Roswell. A bit of speculation doesn’t hurt.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Has the Earth undergone periods of violent change throughout its long history? If so, what had been the result of these changes and, of equal significance, what instigated them in the first place?

Many ancient texts appear to describe great cataclysms that have affected our planet in various ways, although debate remains as to whether all of them describe real phenomena or are in some cases just myths and allegories conjured from the minds of ancient commentators.

Arguably, the most famous of all these is Plato’s account of the destruction of the fabled Atlantis. While modern scholars generally accept that Plato’s dialogues recounting tales of Atlantis had been aimed at having an instructive purpose, even some of Plato’s early followers were said to have considered the story to have historical roots. Chief among these had been Crantor, a Greek philosopher of the Old Academy and one of the earliest scholars to write commentaries on Plato’s works.

Raphael’s depiction of Plato, seen holding a copy of his “Timeaus,” which describes part of the Atlantis legend

(Public Domain).

Modern science holds a different view on the matter, however. To date, there has been little evidence come to light that supports the existence of a literal island continent that sank into the Atlantic some 9000 years or so before Plato’s time. However, this is not to say that there weren’t incredible changes that the Earth underwent during this period which, although they may be coincidental, certainly have caused some academics to wonder about narratives like the ones Plato offered.

Around 12,700 years ago, as Earth was transitioning from the last major ice age into the modern era (or Holocene) several changes were underway, for which there is an abundance of modern geological evidence. As the glacial formations around the polar regions began to melt and the ice sheets that extended over parts of North America and Eurasia began to slowly thaw, meltwater runoff gradually flowed into the Atlantic Ocean, disrupting the circulation of ocean currents and causing temperature changes lasting for hundreds of years.

Some modern evidence—primarily in the form of concentrations of rare-earth elements in geological strata coinciding with this period—points to even more potentially catastrophic phenomena that might have occurred, having possibly instigated some of the other changes Earth underwent around this time. One emergent theory that had once been ridiculed, but in recent years had increasingly gained support among scientists involves a possible impact event that occurred as Earth exited the Pleistocene, which triggered a period of cold reversal known as the Younger Dryas.

Many modern catastrophists point to this not only as possible evidence of a cataclysmic period in the late Pleistocene but also note the similarity in its timing and the period during which Plato said Atlantis sank beneath Atlantic waters. If nothing else, it might be possible that legends that range from Atlantis to the idea of a “great flood” prevalent in mythologies from all over the world could have been born from what were once actual memories of such events in Earth’s past.

Map depicting the location of Atlantis, as depicted in Ignatius Donnelly’s “Atlantis: The Antediluvian World”

(Public Domain).

Over time, catastrophism has seen sympathy from a range of scholars. These include the Harvard-trained professor and one-time member of the Office of Strategic Services Charles Hapgood, who went on to become a proponent of rapid pole shifts, as well as a champion of the idea that the famous Piri Reis map detailed not merely the coastline of the Americas, but perhaps Antarctica too. Most of Hapgood’s theories, while entertaining (and perhaps not all of them entirely without merit) have nonetheless failed to withstand scientific scrutiny over the ensuing decades.

Nonetheless, others have appeared to champion the catastrophist cause. A 1978 paper by P. Warlow titled “Geomagnetic Reversals?” in the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General, Volume 11, Number 10, revealed a comparatively fresh take on the matter (at least when compared with earlier theories proposed by the likes of Hapgood).

“The enigma of geomagnetic reversals and their apparent link with other phenomena,” Warlow wrote, “such as faunal extinctions, is shown to be explicable by treating these reversals as a relative rather than an absolute effect.” Rather than to suppose that mere magnetic reversals occur, Warlow posited the idea that an actual shift of the Earth’s rotation might periodically take place. Such an idea, he believed, “is sufficient to account for the behaviour of the field in detail during a reversal, and for explaining the links with the various other phenomena.”

Warlow cited information “not only from modern geological and related investigations, but also from astronomy and from ancient sources.” Among the sources he examined had been peculiar accounts from ancient Egypt that appear to describe the sun rising in the West, rather than in the East, a mystery which has been revisited more recently by author Scott Creighton in books like The Great Pyramid Void Enigma.

Of course, geomagnetic reversals certainly have occurred in the past and are widely recognized phenomena, although ideas about the range of effects they may cause remain varied. Geologists have long understood that changes in Earth’s magnetic field resulting in the reversal of the positions of magnetic north and south occur periodically throughout time, leading to alternating periods (known as chrons) where these polarity reversals occur.

As far as what leads to these changes, there are no definite patterns. While geomagnetic reversals appear to occur randomly, a total of 183 have occurred within the last 83 million years, meaning that on average such reversals occur once every 450,000 years or so. Some geomagnetic shifts appear to be far less widespread, which geologists call excursions. One interpretation is that these excursions could be the result of incomplete or failed geomagnetic shifts. Another possibility is that these shifts are instigated by cataclysmic events, and at least some data appears to correlate geomagnetic phenomena with periods like the Younger Dryas.

Will there be another geomagnetic reversal any time soon? Since the last one occurred around 780,000 years ago, some have noted that we appear to be overdue for the next one, which could occur at almost any time given our limited understanding of the mechanisms that might facilitate such changes. However, one thing that remains clear is that they do occur… and gaining a more complete understanding of why and how could be beneficial both in terms of understanding past changes our planet has undergone, as well as those which may await us in the future.

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