Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
09-01-2015
5 Most Convincing Cases of Reported Alien Abductions
5 Most Convincing Cases of Reported Alien Abductions
Ever since man looked up and saw the stars, the question “Are we alone?” has featured profoundly in the human psyche. So many movies, magazines, comics, and newspaper reports have played with the notion of aliens and abductions and countless alleged abductees have been eager to share their stories. But of course, many of these abduction stories should be taken with a grain of salt. If you’re one of the many believers in aliens and UFOs, then these stories may prove not just fascinating but a bit scary, too. If you don’t believe, and truly think that we are all alone in this universe, the accounts of alien abductions are at very least entertaining and, at most, might give you pause.
One of the biggest questions when it comes to aliens is whether they mean to do us harm or if they are friendly. Stories of alien abduction and the victims’ experiences certainly vary on that point. There are certain common denominators in alien abduction stories, though, one being that the victim saw bright lights, felt as though they were being operated on or even probed, lost a large chunk of time, and experienced amnesia. With the sheer volume of abduction stories that have come to light, even before the digital age and the sensationalism attendant to it, one has to wonder if there’s not a grain of truth in these stories.
Since the mid twentieth century, organizations such as the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) have investigated cases of UFO sightings and alien abductions. Organizations like MUFON are attempting to add credibility to the often maligned field of UFO research.
But how do we, the untrained eyes, weed out the hoaxers from those who truly believe in their experience? We’ve rounded up the top five most fascinating and convincing alien abduction stories. Of course, cynics will say these experiences could be the result of drugs or mental disorders but for those of us who remain on the fence about the phenomenon of alien abduction, these stories might just persuade you.
5. Barney and Betty Hill (1961)
The story of Barney and Betty Hill is quite interesting not just abduction-wise, but sociologically. After this couple went public with their story, other testimonies of abduction began to swarm the media. Barney and Betty were on the road going home to New Hampshire after a trip to Canada when they saw a bright light in the sky. They stopped their car and, using binoculars, reportedly saw alien-like creatures in the ball of light. After the couple got back in their car, they lost 2 hours of their lives and ended up 35 miles away from where they last remembered being. Betty’s dress was ripped and Barney’s shoes were scuffed, and their watches were stopped at the time when the saw the light. The couple became famous for their experience, and numerous news segments and documentaries scrambled to recount the odd story.
4. Allagash Waterway Abduction (1976)
Probably one of the more famous abduction stories of the bunch, the Allagash Waterway abduction involved four men: brothers Jim and Jack Weiner, and Chuck Rack and Charlie Foltz. The brothers knew the other men from art school, and the four had set out for a leisurely fishing trip. After a day of unsuccessful fishing with little food to spare, the group decided to take their canoe and try some night fishing, and left a large campfire to help them find their way back.
While fishing that night, the group noticed a glowing orb over the trees moving about and changing colors. Then the orb came to the canoe and, so they say, engulfed the entire group. The next thing the men remember is being at the campground, their fire burnt down to ashes. The men later began to independently experience nightmares of strange beings examining them and boarding a spaceship. They went through hypnosis and all four men had consistent experiences concerning being medically examined while the others helplessly watched. Because the four men were also artists, they were able to depict their experiences on paper with very disturbing results. The four men’s stories were featured on “Unsolved Mysteries” and they appeared on national news.
3. John Salter, Jr. (1988)
This story is probably one of the few that actually has a very positive ending. John Salter, Jr. and his son John III appeared to have lost about an hour of time as they were traveling on the highway, after suddenly finding out that they were driving in the opposite direction and were an hour later then they believed. With no memory of the missing hour, the men continued with their journey until they saw an apparent UFO in the air.
The sight of the UFO jogged their memory; they remembered seeing a group of what they thought to be children, as well as a taller half-human, half-alien creature. The men say they were not afraid of the aliens, and instead felt very protected and bonded with the aliens. The two men were then guided to a room where they had a thorough medical examination and procedure. After all was said and done, John Jr. and John III reported an overall improvement in their health. The most unusual and convincing aspect of this story? John Jr.’s permanent forehead scar almost completely disappeared after the incident…
2. Kelly Cahill (1993)
Australian Kelly Cahill claims to have experienced an alien abduction as she and her family were driving home. She saw a UFO-like craft in the sky with a diameter of about 150 feet, as well as a blinding light. After the initial panic – and upon noticing a second car – she and her husband simply continued their drive home with their three children.
Upon returning home, Kelly realized that they were missing a good chunk of time and remarked upon an odd triangular mark by her naval. Kelly would consequently be hospitalised a couple of times, once for a uterine infection and again for severe stomach pain. As time progressed, Kelly began to remember other things such as humiliating medical procedures, frightening creatures, and mind control. And what’s extra strange about this report? The family in that second car reported having an identical experience as the Cahills but didn’t want to be publicly named for fear of scrutiny.
1. Clayton and Donna Lee (2005)
Houston native Clayton Lee claims that he has been abducted by aliens numerous times, with experiences beginning during his childhood. When he married his wife Donna, she too became a victim of these abductions. Donna even believes that the aliens took a fetus from her body. When their local news station covered them, a hypnotist was brought in to jog the couple’s memories with unsettling results. Recalled memories included Clayton screaming, “Stop touching me!” The couple’s story caught the attention of Harvard psychiatrist Susan Clancy, who put out a call to the public to try to collect stories that were similar to Clayton and Donna’s experiences – she was overwhelmed with responses. Clayton and Donna were also interviewed on the Bill O’Reilly show, and have been held up as a modern example of, variously, paranoia and psychosis or enormously convincing examples of alien abduction. We’ll leave it to you to decide.
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WE'VE BEEN ABDUCTED BY ALIENS AND LIVED TO TELL THE TALE
WE'VE BEEN ABDUCTED BY ALIENS AND LIVED TO TELL THE TALE
Abducted by Aliens: Twins Tell Their Story
Audrey and Debbie not only said that aliens exist, but that they've made contact with them. The twins said it started when they were young.
"I was probably about 5 years old or so ... and a bright blue light would come in to the room and the door would open, and there would be like, a foggy kind of misty blue light, just shining through the whole house," Audrey said. "And these two figures would come in. There would be a tall one, they had black capes, but they were bald and had big eyes."
Audrey and her sister call their visitors "The Bald Men," but they're better known in UFO circles as "The Greys," a race of extraterrestrials, categorized by the grayish color of their skin.
The twins' first encounter with aliens, they say, came during childhood and continued into adulthood. They also believe they've been abducted together on the same spaceship -- only to compare stories afterwards.
"We have been together on abductions," Audrey said. "We have been up in crafts and seen our house from above. So we realized they are not from here. They are very good at mind erasing or whatever you want to call it. They'll leave you with bits and pieces of things you can remember. So we do remember certain things of being there together."
When asked why aliens would continue to abduct them together, the twins had no explanation.
"That's the question I always ask myself,"Debbie said. "A lot of times I'll wake up in tears saying, 'Why me? Why me? Why can't this happen to somebody else.'"
Extraterrestrials Can Embody People's Fears
No matter what anyone else believes, people like Audrey and Debbie are convinced that what they've witnessed is real.
Twin sisters Audrey and Debbie, who have asked that their last name and hometown be withheld, tell their story of alien abduction.
"I remember one time being on a spaceship and standing there on the spaceship and the floor and the walls isappeared. And I was staring at the Earth," Debbie said.
They said they realize their stories sound too fantastic and, at times, like the stuff of sci-fi blockbusters.
In science fiction, aliens are often ointhropomorphic and benign creatures, like "E.T.," "My Favorite Martian," the classic "Star Trek" television series or the hit movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
But extraterrestrials can also embody people's fears, looking radically different from human life.
Pop culture depictions of aliens don't seem to be slowing down. On cable, there's the acclaimed mini-series "Torchwood: Children of Earth," where the aliens' sinister thoughts are spoken through possessed children. And this fall, ABC will add a new series to the list of those on creatures from outer space.
The members of Starborn believe, however, that this is not just the stuff of science fiction, but fact. They said that coming forward with their beliefs is challenging.
'Experiencers' Come Forward With Beliefs
Terrell Copeland, a former U.S. Marine, traveled the farthest to attend the "secret" meeting, driving 600 miles from rural Virginia. Copeland's foray into the paranormal began two years ago with a UFO sighting he said was captured on his cell phone from his apartment in downtown Suffolk, Va.
"It was an orb of light," he said. "Just a big ball of light. It wasn't moving. One was solid white. The other was directly across the street from it ... up 300 feet above ground and was changing colors very rapidly. "This is ... this is not usual. Something's wrong here. Maybe I am in over my head. I'm not supposed to be looking at this stuff," Copeland, 27, who drives forklifts at a warehouse for a living, recalled thinking.
But after the video of what Copeland said he witnessed in the sky was posted on YouTube, he said a strange visitor came to his front door.
"I woke up from the nap by the sound of someone trying to enter my apartment," he said. "And I said, 'Who is it?' There was no answer. Still just, you know, you could see the door knob moving and like a scratching at the door. And I keep a firearm. It was on my table. And my thought was to get up and check.
"I was in complete paralysis. The only things I could move were my eyes. And I heard a voice through the door say, 'You don't need that weapon. We won't harm.'"
Soon after, Copeland said he started experiencing what he calls "missing time." During a span of two nights, Copeland said, he missed four hours -- not as a result of sleep.
Spiritual Transformation
"When you see these object[s], and then you do the research and you see that there are so many people who have experienced the same thing as you ... you have to say to yourself... maybe there is something to this," he said.
27-year-old Terrell Copeland, who says he has had encounters with aliens, said he was known for being a quirky kid.
(Courtesy Terrell Copeland)
With the number of unexplained UFO sightings mounting, Copeland began keeping a log and sketching what he believes he witnessed during the "missing time" episodes.
"I was a in a room and I saw a woman who did not have complete human features," he recalled from the night he said he was abducted in 2006. "She had the typical black eyes that you hear about. She had an elongated skull. And that startled me. And the next memory I have is me standing on my balcony waving at this cylinder-shaped ship."
Copeland said that his experiences with aliens have spiritually transformed him.
"I just want to be a better person because if I feel if someone from above took notice of me ... then maybe I'm doing something right. And if I'm doing something right, maybe I can do it better," he said.
Growing Number Believe They Have Been Abducted
Copeland's otherworldly convictions are shared by thousands of believers. Hundreds flocked to the national convention of the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, in Denver this month to share their experiences with like-minded believers.
Stace Tussel, a single working mother and cum laude college graduate, has been reluctant to talk about her close encounters with extraterrestrials.
"I'm not necessarily fearful," she said. "I'm a bit nervous about how people may react. I do believe that I have experienced contact with non-human intelligence."
Tussel said she has videos and scars to prove it.
"I've had multiple witness sightings or experiences, but also marks that would show up on my body -- scars like the one on my finger," Tussel said. "I did wake up one time with three red diagonal lines. I've woken up with the handprints and fingerprints that I couldn't have made myself and nobody else could have made myself."
When asked if she's simply a more vivid dreamer than other people, Tussel said, "I don't know if dreaming would cause a stigmata-type effect where you're getting bodily scars or marks."
Tussel, an education consultant, blogs in her spare time about UFOs and crop circles. While many have been proven to be man-made hoaxes, she believes some crop circles could be the result of an alien spacecraft or extraterrestrial communication.
She doesn't care for the phrase "alien abduction," opting instead to call herself an "experiencer."
"I don't believe I was taken against my will," she said. "I believe that all my life, I've been prepared to share information, to experience information and contact with non-human intelligence."
Psychologists Say Media Images Re-Enacted in Dreams
But she prefers to leave the details of her experiences to the imagination.
"I don't want to go into too much detail on certain kinds of beings that I saw because of the graphic nature of some of the things that I saw and experienced," she said.
While Tussel and others are thoroughly convinced, psychologists say the media-generated images of alien kidnappings can become easily engrained in our subconscious and then vividly re-enacted in our dreams.
What tends to be similar is they come in the night, they take you some place, you're in a spaceship," Harvard University psychology researcher Susan Clancy said. "The aliens tend to look the same, which is that sort of greenish, triangular head, big eyes and they perform medical or sexual experiments on you."
Clancy and Richard McNally, who conduct psychological research examining false memories, believe a common disorder called sleep paralysis can explain why so many self-proclaimed "abductees" are absolutely convinced what they've experienced is real.
"A lot of people who had it think they're going crazy or they think that there are aliens or they think that there are ghosts out there," Clancy "And they're kind of freaked out."
Experts say sleep paralysis, the feeling of being awake, but unable to move during sleep, is quite common. Sufferers say they feel as if they're totally paralyzed -- a symptom that parallels what abductees like Copeland describe during their experiences with alleged extraterrestrial life.
"I couldn't move," Copeland said. "I was in complete paralysis, the only thing I could move were my eyes."
Clancy, herself, suffered from sleep paralysis and admitted that the feeling was so powerful that, for a moment, she was also convinced that her visions were real.
"It was so powerful at the time,"she said. "While I'm levitating in the air -- that's what it felt like -- and spinning like a rotisserie chicken. I had this feeling that something was a presence. And I was thinking, 'Oh, my God, it's real.' But then it was over and then I woke up."
But for the majority of believers, Clancy said, their visions are likely facets of their imagination.
The abductees or experiencers ABC News spoke to reject any scientific explanation, asserting their belief that what they've been through is real.
"I can't sit here and tell you that I'm 100 percent sure what I say happened, happened,"Copeland said. "It could be sleep paralysis. But I highly doubt it.
"I can remember vividly where I was, what I was doing and I was not awake. I could feel I was actually there."
{ greatdreams.com }
09-01-2015 om 22:07
geschreven door peter
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New Horizons approaches Pluto after 9 years
New Horizons approaches Pluto after 9 years
New Horizons should fly past Pluto in July of this year.Image Credit: NASA
The long-running NASA spacecraft will soon become the first ever to visit this distant, icy world.
Launched back in 2006, the New Horizons probe has spent the better part of its 1,873-day journey hibernating to preserve its electrical components for when it arrives at its destination.
Pluto itself is a rather mysterious world - discovered in 1930 it was long considered to be the ninth planet in the solar system until the discovery of several other similarly sized objects saw it demoted to the new classification of dwarf planet.
Up until now studies of this tiny world have been limited to what can be determined through telescopes so any pictures returned by New Horizons will be the first close-up images ever taken.
The Hubble Space Telescope's photo of Pluto in 2006
The rendez-vous is scheduled to take place in July however the probe is now close enough that within the next few weeks it should be able to start returning some impressive photographs.
"For decades we thought Pluto was this odd little body on the planetary outskirts; now we know it's really a gateway to an entire region of new worlds in the Kuiper Belt, and New Horizons is going to provide the first close-up look at them," said project scientist Dr Hal Weaver.
Comet C/2014 Q2 in a combination of L V R and OIII filters. Imaged with the TOA 150 telescope 6303 CCD on the robotic Tzec Muan Network, Siding Spring, Australia. Jan. 8, 2015.
Nick Howes, used with permission
If, like me, you have been fascinated with the appearance of Comet Lovejoy in the night sky this month, you may have tried to track it down with a pair of binoculars or telescope. Using just a 250mm lens on my DSLR was enough for me to pinpoint the interplanetary vagabond glowing beneath the constellation of Orion. Although mildly chuffed with my very amateur astrophotography attempt, seasoned astronomers are having a field day with a comet whose brightness has outstripped expectations.
Discovered last August by Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy, C/2014 Q2 can currently be seen passing through the boundaries of the constellation Eridanus, near Orion. SPACE.com has a handy guide and map so you too can track down Lovejoy’s beautiful blue-green fuzz.
As can be seen in Howes’ observation of Lovejoy, the comet has some wonderful structure in its tail. Comets are composed of a solid nucleus (ices, rock and dust), coma (the dust and gas surrounding the nucleus) and a tail. Often comets will appear to have two tails — charged particles follow the sun’s interplanetary magnetic field, whereas neutral particles are ‘blown’ away with the solar wind.
Late last year, the European Rosetta mission landed the Philae lander on a comet for the first time in history, so many cometary mysteries are currently being revealed. But as we look at Comet Lovejoy as it continues to make its journey through the inner solar system, we can only imagine what the nucleus must look like up-close; ice being heated by the sun, outgassing and spluttering vapor and dust into space.
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Thousands reportedly spot UFO over Argentina (Videos)
Thousands reportedly spot UFO over Argentina (Videos)
Several Argentinean news outlets reported the sighting, although there is not much detail given. What was seen is most often described as a bright light that slowly moved over the city. According to Argentinian news website Noticias Villaguay, one witness described the light as “a white light, large, and down green.”
Some say the light blinked on and off periodically, and at one point disappeared. This can be seen in at least one of the several videos captured by witnesses and posted to YouTube.
The object was also seen in the town of Larroque, which is about 20 miles west of Gualeguaychú. Witnesses also reported that they saw a similar object the night before on Saturday, January 3.
Some have speculated that the object was a drone, or a lit up glider. But according to Maxima Online, others disagree. They say that a drone or glider would not have been seen as far away as 20 miles.
Several witnesses captured video, although not much can be seen but a light in the sky. In fact, in several videos the light seems to be stationary. However, slow movement and blinking can be seen in others.
One YouTube witness wrote in the description of his video: “The filming is dense that no cuts or anything edition only music so you do not think it’s fake.”
In another video people can be seen out on the street watching the object. That witness wrote in their video’s description: “Thousands of reports came in Pueblo Belgrano neighborhood, Gualeguaychú and Larroque. They speak of a powerful and zigzag light traveling through the sky.”
Gualeguaychú is in the Argentinean province of Entre Ríos, near the border with Uruguay. It is most famous for its yearly carnival, which begins on January 10.
Marker shows location of Gualeguaychú, Entre Ríos, Argentina. (Credit: Google Maps)
In 2011, the Argentinean Air Force followed the lead of several of its neighbors, including Chile and Uruguay, and created an official UFO investigation organization. They are called the Commission for the Investigation of Aerospace Phenomena (Spanish acronym CIFA). Since their inception there has not been much information released regarding their work. One would expect this would be the sort of case they have been waiting for, given the media attention it has received.
Whether or not CIFA will investigated this case is yet to be seen. Thus far there have not been any comments posted by any Argentinean officials or law enforcement regarding this sighting.
Note:We were first made aware of this story by a posting on The UFO Chronicles.
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Daily 2 Cents: Green UFO Over Caribbean -- Rare Butterfly Is Half Male, Half Female -- Want A Used Popemobile?
Daily 2 Cents: Green UFO Over Caribbean -- Rare Butterfly Is Half Male, Half Female -- Want A Used Popemobile?
Green UFO Over Caribbean
1/2/2015 - On a cruise ship traveling from Florida to Caribbean island (near Puerto Rico). Took back to back photos almost 30 seconds from each other and saw on the second photo this green object. Then I looked at photo and then look up and it was gone. - MUFON CMS
Pope Francis is holding a raffle to raise money for the poor, and the grand prize will put your own paltry Church Bingo Night winnings to shame: it’s a used Popemobile!
Yes, rather than just selling his old 4×4 Fiat Panda on craigslist like the average, fallible motorist might, Pope Francis has decided to raffle off his supermini to raise money for some of the charities that he supports. Unfortunately, to buy one of the 10 euro tickets, participants will have to make a pilgrimage all the way to the Vatican, since they’re not being sold online.
According to CNN, the Pope is also donating to the raffle several of his bicycles, a camera, an espresso machine, a leather suitcase, and a panama hat (which is disappointing, because usually when you hear that the pope is raffling off one of his old hats, you imagine something a bit more unique). Apparently, all of those items were actually presents that Pope Francis has decided to re-gift, which is something a lot of us do in the month following Christmas (although, again, not always for such a worthy cause).
There will be 13 main prizes given out in Thursday’s drawing, along with 30 unspecified consolation prizes.
And if you’re wondering why the pope drives a Fiat, it’s because the famously frugal pontiff prefers compact cars (it’s the same reason he drove a Kia Soul when visiting Korea last August). And if you’re wondering why James Bond drives a Fiat, we’re afraid we still don’t know the answer to that question. - The News Wheel
Spiny monster from the depths of world's oldest lake
Lake Baikal is a paradise of biodiversity, "the Galapagos of Russia". Thousands of species of plants and animals live there, and some 60 per cent of them, including the photogenic Baikal seal, are found nowhere else. This little beauty is also unique to the lake.
I say little, it's actually a giant. It looks to be the giant spiny amphipod, Acanthogammarus victorii, which is about 70 millimetres long. The typical freshwater shrimps found in Europe (Gammarus pulex) grow only to about 20 mm. Gigantism in the lake is thought to be fuelled by high levels of dissolved oxygen.
Baikal has more than 350 species of amphipod, occupying the full range of lake habitats. This one feeds on the organic matter, like dead insects and fish, that drifts down through the water. Amphipods are the trash collectors of Baikal, and help maintain its exceptional purity.
Kamenskaya has been photographing the lake's wonders for years but can't see her love waning. "One can never end the dialogue with Lake Baikal. The feeling of satisfaction will never come." Despite having walked hundreds of kilometres on the lake's frozen surface and taken thousands of shots, she says she has only touched upon its mystery. - More photos and credits -New Scientist
An unusual butterfly that is half male and half female recently caught the eyes of a volunteer at a butterfly exhibit at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
Chris Johnson, a retired chemical engineer from Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, was volunteering at the exhibit when he stumbled across the unusual sight.
Johnson noticed that the insect's two right wings were typical of the females of its species — they were larger, and brown with yellow and white spots. But its two left wings were smaller and darker, with splashes of green, blue and purple, a pattern characteristic of males.
Johnson spotted the creature while emptying out the butterfly exhibit's pupa chamber, where the insects hatch from their chrysalises and cocoons. "It slowly opened up, and the wings were so dramatically different, it was immediately apparent what it was," he said.
Johnson and his supervisor, exhibit coordinator David Schloss, isolated the butterfly and contacted Entomology Collection Manager Jason Weintraub.
A butterfly expert later confirmed that the remarkable insect was a Common Archduke butterfly (Lexias pardalis) with a rare condition called gynandromorphy, which means outwardly having both male and female characteristics. (This is distinct from hermaphroditism, in which an organism has both male and female reproductive organs, but has external characteristics of one gender.)
The condition is most commonly noticed in birds and butterflies, whose two sexes can have very different coloration, Weintraub said. It can occur when the sex chromosomes fail to separate during cell division in early development, a process known as nondisjunction. As a result of this failure, some of the animal's cells have a female genotype, and others have a male genotype, giving rise to an animal with both male and female characteristics.
Because gynandromorphy can be easily overlooked in species in which the two sexes look similar to each other, scientists don't know how rare the condition is.
The butterfly that Johnson found is a member of a species belonging the family Nymphalidae, commonly known as "brush-footed" butterflies, and it lives in tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia. It was shipped in October 2014, in a group of pupas from a sustainable butterfly farm on Penang Island in Malaysia, according to the academy staff.
Differences between the males and females of any species result from a process called sexual selection, in which one gender (usually females) select mates of the other gender based on the presence of certain traits, which become passed from generation to generation over thousands of years.
The rare butterfly was preserved and pinned, and will be on display at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University for visitors to see from Jan. 17 through Feb. 16, the academy staff said. - Live Science
Teenage boy nearly dies after live EEL gets trapped in his throat for 5 hours
A teenage boy nearly died after swallowing a live eel that lodged in his windpipe for five hours, doctors have revealed.
The unnamed 16-year-old boy had been fishing in Bangladesh when he caught a 6.5 inch long Guchi Bail - Indian spiny eel - and placed it between his teeth.
Unfortunately the eel slipped out of his mouth and down his throat, according to the UK-based science journal BioMed Central.
The youngster ran back to his house where his family saw the fish inside his throat and frantically tried to pull it out only for it to slip further down.
He began having breathing problems and was taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital where doctors examined his throat but could not see the fish.
They decided to carry out an emergency operation in which they cut a hole in the front of his neck and inserted a tube into his windpipe to help him breathe.
Five hours after the accident had occurred, doctors spotted the tail fin of a fish through the hole they had created in his windpipe.
They were able to grab it with a pair of forceps and pull the fish out which by now was dead.
The boy's surgeon Kanu Sana later said: "This is the second case I have come across to date. "
The other was a 45-year-old man who came from a rural village about 300 kilometres away.
'It was 12 hours after he swallowed the fish. Unfortunately he didn't survive." - Irish Mirror
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Black and Purple UFO Flies Across Simi Valley, California
Black and Purple UFO Flies Across Simi Valley, California
A mysterious round object in black and purple colors moved across the sky from east to west in Simi Valley, California in broad daylight. While flying at constant speed in nearly clear sky, the unidentified flying object made no sound at all.
The strange activity in the air was witnessed by three people – 39-year-old father working in IT industry, 8-year-old daughter in third grade, and a former science teacher grandmother.
At first sight, the father thought he saw a helium balloon, but this impression suddenly changed when he observed that the round object flew at constant speed and height. The UFO moved across the sky instead of going up as the helium balloon normally does. The family can’t remember seeing such object with similar behavior before, so they think it was an alien object. They failed to take any picture because it flew from their sight in a minute.
The witnesses all agree that the sky was clear with only little clouds during the time of sighting. The family was playing in the backyard, watching hummingbirds when the object came to their view. They described the size of the object similar to a helium balloon, but the other characteristics – speed, height, and direction – did not look like any free-flying balloon.
According to the father witness, the object was flying towards west of Simi Valley in Thousand Oaks and others might have observed it, especially those who were outside looking at the sky or were driving in the car. His daughter first noticed the UFO, then his mother, and followed by him. His mother said to him that she observed something like fans on both sides of the round object, but he did not see it because when he looked up, the aerial thing already a bit far.
Thoughts On ETs By Albert Einstein In A Newly Released Digital Papers
Thoughts On ETs By Albert Einstein In A Newly Released Digital Papers
Early in December 2014, Albert Einstein’s digital papers were released and many were excited to know about any mention of space travel from the great man’s work. While Einstein died two years earlier than the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, the theory about rocket flight had existed for many decades by that time. Many people were theorizing about it, including Hermann Oberth, a physicist from Germany.
The first digital release, however, only covers the life of Einstein up to 1923, when Oberth only started to write about spaceflight. So, while searching for the terms space travel or rocket, nothing can be found in the digital papers. Perhaps, in the later volumes these terms would come out.
However, there is still an interesting item from January 1920 wherein the professor said that earth is not the only planet that supports life because it is not singular in any other respect. He added that if intelligent life exists somewhere in the universe, it’s not right to assume that these ETs would contact mankind by wireless radio. He said that light rays, would be the first method attempted because they can be controlled much more easily.
Einstein thought of what we have known today as radio Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) may sound surprising because most searches until today primarily rely on radio signal. But it is also important to note that in 1920, Einstein lacked information. Radio searchers are preferred for SETI because radio waves penetrate more easily in pervasive dust in space, which can block shorter-wavelength light from reaching Earth. Astronomers did not have full understanding yet about the nature of interstellar dust in 1920.
Still, Optical SETI searchers by teams from many places, including teams at Harvard, favored light beams even though it is harder to search for light beams that would have to be aimed exactly in planet Earth’s direction, as compared to radio signals that scattered in space.
Einstein’s digital papers also mention about Mars saying that it’s a pity humans don’t live on Mars and just observed nastic antics of man by telescope.
Heeft Curiosity gefossiliseerde levensvormen gevonden op Mars?
Heeft Curiosity gefossiliseerde levensvormen gevonden op Mars?
The landscape surrounding Curiosity when the rover began to explore Yellowknife Bay in December 2012.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Een geobioloog heeft mogelijk gefossiliseerde levensvormen gevonden op Mars. Het gaat om sedimentaire structuren die erg doen denken aan structuren die op aarde worden gevormd door microben.
Dit zijn nieuwe aanwijzingen dat er ooit leven was op Mars, hoewel het geen direct bewijs is voor het bestaan ervan. In een studie die is gepubliceerd in het tijdschrift Astrobiology houdt Nora Noffke van de Amerikaanse Old Dominion University NASA-foto’s van sedimentaire structuren op het Marsoppervlak tegen het licht.
De structuren zijn waargenomen op foto’s van het 3,7 miljard jaar oude Gillespie Lake in de Gale-krater. De foto’s zijn op 17 december 2012 gemaakt door Marsverkenner Curiosity. Noffke analyseerde de foto’s en vergeleek ze met foto’s van sedimentaire structuren in Portsmouth Island in de Verenigde Staten, Carbla Point in Australië en Mellum in Duitsland.
Tijdens de analyse zag Noffke, die al meer dan 20 jaar onderzoek doet naar sedimentair gesteente, opvallende gelijkenissen tussen de morfologische structuren in Gillespie Lake en gesteente op aarde. Ze zegt dat haar ontdekking nog geen bewijs is voor leven op Mars. “Het enige wat ik kan zeggen is: dit is mijn hypothese en hier is al het bewijs dat ik heb verzameld,” schreef ze.
Overlay of sketch on photograph of Gillespie Lake to assist in the identification of the structures on the rock bed surface.
Noffke (2105)/ASTROBIOLOGY
Er is een mogelijkheid dat de sedimentaire structuren op Mars niet zijn gemaakt door microben, maar dan zouden de waargenomen overeenkomsten ‘wel heel erg toevallig’ zijn, zei ze.
Planeetwetenschapper Chris McKay van het Ames Research Center van NASA sprak lovende woorden over het werk van Noffke. “Het is de meest zorgvuldige analyse binnen dit onderzoeksterrein die ik tot nu toe heb gezien,” zei hij.
What is a star seed? Better yet, who is a starseed? If you trace the origins of human lineage, you end up with a plethora of questions. For example, if we were to believe the bible’s origins of mankind and assume that we came from Adam and Eve, then that assumption wouldn’t explain the genetic differences in our population. Continuing with the bible story, we are led to believe that Noah and his family were the only survivors of the Great Flood, which means we are allegedly all descendents of Noah and his family. Are we to assume that Noah brought aboard two of every ethnicity as well? That’s highly unlikely.
Let’s examine the other possibilities.
Zecharia Sitchin believes our DNA was geneticallymanipulated, which remains a possibility, but why would the Anunnaki create various ethnicities instead of one slave race?
That leads us to another, more feasible, possibility. We were seeded here from various star nations. In this premise, genetic and ethnic diversity is explained. It also covers the differences in our bloodtypes, such as Rh negative, Rh positive, A, B, AB and O blood types. Perhaps some star nations have people with predominantly red hair and freckles while others have dark skinned inhabitants? Maybe some, such as the Pleiadians, have blonde hair and blue eyes?
It’s also possible that Sitchin’s premise is correct, while other star nations ALSO seeded the planet with their genetic offspring.
Perhaps we would look at ourselves differently if we saw a planet inhabited by various star nations versus segregating ourselves from one another through patriotism, nationality and prejudice?
Is it possible that our planet is one gigantic galactic experiment to see how various star nations would get along with one another?
About the Author:
Gregg Prescott, M.S. is the founder and editor of In5D and BodyMindSoulSpirit. He hosts a weekly spiritual show on In5D Radio and promotes spiritual, metaphysical and esoteric conferences in the United States through In5dEvents. Gregg is currently working in collaboration with Michelle Walling, CHLC, in opening a holisticwalk-in clinic called Alternative Holistic Healthcare (AHH) in Sarasota, FL with subsequent subsidiaries around the world based upon this model.
The witnesses watched one object disappear into the horizon, and then suddenly noticed another object nearby. Pictured: Northern Durham, NC, area. (Credit: Google)
Two North Carolina witnesses at Durham reported watching what appeared to be multiple triangle-shaped UFOs hovering and drifting in the area over a one hour and 25-minute period beginning about 9:20 p.m. on January 7, 2015, according to testimony in Case 62491 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.
The two were driving to a gas station in northern Durham when the first object was observed.
“My girlfriend and I witnessed an extremely bright hovering object, amber in color,” the reporting witness stated. “We decided to drive around to get a better view of it over the treetops and witnessed what looked like a triangular light pattern – one very large, very bright amber light in the nose and a smaller flashing light on each wingtip and center which stayed illuminated but strobed brighter in order from left to right.”
The object moved in the opposite direction of their car.
“Because it was so far away we could not make out any structure. The large light was unlike anything we had seen in the sky before in terms of its size and brightness.”
Witness illustration of the object they saw beginning at 9:20 p.m. on January 7, 2015. (Credit: MUFON)
But once the object was out of view they continued to the gas station. On the way back to the house they encountered the object again, hovering close to its original position.
“It was much closer and we turned into a neighborhood to get a good look. The object was very close. I would compare it to watching a plane in take-off pass overhead in terms of its distance. As we pulled into the neighborhood it stopped hovering and began moving – drifting might be a more fitting verb – across the sky towards us.”
They parked their car and got out as the object passed directly overhead.
“As it did we both witnessed the solid black outline of an equilateral diamond – a small white running light in the center and at each tip with an oversized, amber-colored, seemingly directional (forward to forward-down) light at its nose and a significantly dimmer light on its tail. The three lights from wingtip to wingtip constantly strobed in a right-to-left direction as it moved away from us.”
The object was silent as it passed over and disappeared behind the tree line.
“We jumped back into our car to try and get a better angle to continue watching it, but as we circled the woods which it had passed over it was nowhere in sight – until we happened to catch the faint strobe of the object now a great distance away.”
They moved to another location to continue to watch the object.
“We drove to my girlfriend’s parent’s house and watched this object glide back and forth across the sky at a great distance – like a commercial plane at altitude – for over an hour. At one point her mother came outside to watch it pass at about 45-degrees above the horizon, close enough to make out the triangular front of the object.”
The witness described the object’s movement.
“We kept noticing that it seemed to pass in a straight line until we could not see it anymore and then begin its trajectory again from where it started – but we never saw it fly back. We assumed that we simply missed its return path. Finally we watched one disappear, not behind trees, but simply into the distance and made sure to watch for its return. It never flew back.”
The witnesses described the object as having a solid black outline of an equilateral diamond – a small white running light in the center and at each tip with an oversized, amber-colored, seemingly directional (forward to forward-down) light at its nose and a significantly dimmer light on its tail. (Credit: Google)
But suddenly the object was once again close and over their left shoulders.
“We were in disbelief that it could have 1) flown back to this position with such speed and; 2) have done so without us noticing. We tracked the object as it passed about 60-degrees above the horizon when suddenly we noticed a second, identical object flying towards us from a great distance. We continued watching these two objects pass back across the sky.”
The total sighting lasted from 9:20 to 10:45 p.m.
“At 10:45 p.m. I finally came inside and out of the frigid cold to write this report.”
Durham is the county seat of Durham County, NC, population 245,475.
Please remember that most UFO sighting can be explained as something natural or man-made. The above quotes were edited for clarity. Please report UFO activity to MUFON.com.
YouTube channel ParaPulseTV hit the streets to ask people if they’ve seen a UFO in their lifetime, or know someone that has. According to their statistics, 10-14% of the population has seen something strange in the sky.
Hiya folks, thanks for tuning in to ParaPulseTV. I’m Mike your host and the purpose of the channel is to promote open social discussion about the ufo phenomenon and other paranormal subjects. Even if you’re a devoted skeptic, there are a lot people reporting things that if proven true would reshape our very existence and so have no business being ignored by the rest of mankind. Besides that we’ve got somewhere between 10-14% of people in all walks of life, pilots and ex-military included, swearing to us that they’ve seen a ufo, often performing impossible or highly strange maneuvers in their reports. So either there’s a genuine medical issue here that’s affecting a sizable chunk of society, or there’s more to the story.
DIAMOND SHAPED UFO SPOTTED OVER VENTURA CALIFORNIA DECEMBER 20, 2014 …….. VENTURA CALIFORNIA
Shape: Diamond
Duration: 10 minutes
I was hiking down from Grant Park on the road that goes down towards City Hall, and I noticed a black craft flying basically above highway 33 at an altitude of about 3000 to 4000 feet (rough estimate). The craft looked like a hexagon (6 corners), though due to the distance, it was a bit hard to know if that was its exact shape. It was black in color. At times, it would turn sideways, and it was clear that it was flat as a board. It did not have an exhaust, but during the sighting, there appeared to be a whitish, halo effect around it, but only during part of the sighting. It went slowly over westwards towards the ocean and then turned in southerly direction and then slowly continued in a somewhat easterly direction thereafter. During the time that I saw it, it basically made a large “c” type of a travel pattern. Most interestingly, it seemed at the end to simply rise up through the clouds (though it did not increase it elevation for the first 8-9 minutes of the sighting). There were two other people who were also doing the same hike, and came and started to talk with me about the thing that we were looking at in the sky. They were as confounded as me. We all witnessed this sighing, and I have a video of about 3 minutes long that I took on my smart phone.
NASA spots massive outburst from our very own black hole
NASA spots massive outburst from our very own black hole
Its root cause still undetermined, a huge X-ray flare from the Milky Way's center has made NASA scientists sit up and take notice.
The X-ray flare from Sagittarius A* is the largest ever observed coming from the supermassive black hole.
NASA/CXC/Stanford/I.Zhuravleva et al.
As you might know, the Milky Way Galaxy, in which we are all floating, has a black hole with a mass 4.5 million times bigger than that of our sun at its very center. So, when NASA says a documented occurrence in that vast pit of darkness "raises questions about the behavior of this giant black hole and its surrounding environment," I get a little nervous.
Fortunately, the observation they're talking about is little cause for alarm. What happened is that back in September of 2013, the Chandra X-Ray space observatory recorded an X-ray flare from the center of the Milky Way's black hole (a vortex known as Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*) that was 400 times brighter than the energy usually emitted from the area. You can see the flare in the image above. NASA is presenting this documentation at the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, slated in Seattle this week.
What caused the outburst from the usually quiet region of our galaxy? NASA has two theories.
First is that an asteroid wandered too close to the black hole and got ripped apart by the hole's extreme gravitational force. Before the asteroid crossed over the hole's event horizon (or point of no return), the debris it produced got superheated and released the X-rays.
"If an asteroid was torn apart, it would go around the black hole for a couple of hours -- like water circling an open drain -- before falling in," said researcher Fred Baganoff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a statement. "That's just how long we saw the brightest X-ray flare last, so that is an intriguing clue for us to consider."
The second theory about the burst is that the lines of magnetic energy contained in the gas flowing into Sgr A* got tangled and released the X-rays. NASA says that the pattern observed is similar to those found in such types of flares observed from our sun.
But mostly, the space agency really isn't quite sure what caused the outburst.
"The bottom line is the jury is still out on what's causing these giant flares from Sgr A*," said researcher Gabriele Ponti of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany. "Such rare and extreme events give us a unique chance to use a mere trickle of infalling matter to understand the physics of one of the most bizarre objects in our galaxy."
08-01-2015 om 22:07
geschreven door peter
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UFOs: As The British UFO Research Association Celebrates Half A Century, Here Are 10 Reasons To Believe In Aliens (PICTURES)
UFOs: As The British UFO Research Association Celebrates Half A Century, Here Are 10 Reasons To Believe In Aliens (PICTURES)
This weekend Britain’s oldest UFO group turns 50.
With thousands of files that pre-date Ministry of Defence records, (indeed its oldest files go back to the Victorian era) The British UFO Research Association (BUFORA) celebrates half a century with a two-day conference in London.
A regular contributor to magazines, TV and radio shows, the group is currently supporting an investigation into Sweden's Ghost Rockets phenomena.
Since 1946, around 2,000 UFOs have been seen in the skies above Sweden, with a number reportedly crashing into lakes.
The head of UK Air Traffic Control admits the skies above Britain are visited by one UFO a month
In August a team set out in an ambitious attempt to find one of the objects, the results of which will be revealed exclusively by speaker Clas Svahn at the conference.
Chairman Matt Lyons explains: “We are non-cultist and are not lead by belief systems, not advocating an extra-terrestrial polarised view, nor are we at the highly sceptical end of the spectrum.
“One of the few groups to run an accredited training course, our team of researchers and investigators are led by witness testimony and not the personal or group beliefs."
We want to believe. And here are ten reasons why.
1. July saw the 65th anniversary of the now infamous Roswell incident. The military initially revealed a flying disk had been captured, but changed their story overnight, claiming the craft was actually a weather balloon. Rumours abound to this day that the occupants of the craft were captured and the military engaged in a cover-up.
“It was a craft that clearly did not come from this planet, it crashed and I don’t doubt for a second that the use of the word ‘remains’ and ‘cadavers’ was exactly what people were talking about.”
Former American President Dwight D Eisenhower 'had three secret meetings with aliens'
5. Whether or not you believe the stories of people who say they’ve been spirited out of their cars on lonely country roads or drawn into alien crafts while they’ve been sleeping, these tales are told by enough people to make us think carefully about the phenomenon.
Photographer Steven Hirsch’s project Little Sticky Legs sees images of alien abductees and their own drawings of their experiences.
6. Crop circles continue to dazzle and baffle us. The mystery appeared to be solved when several high-profile cases revealed that the designs were the work of artists and mischief-makers with barrels, planks of wood and a plenty of spare time. Yet not all could be explained.
In recent years crop circle artists have pushed the boundaries of ingenuity, boasting ever-more complex patterns and shapes. Some crop circle designs now feature up to 2,000 shapes, while analysis by mathematicians shown that they can be built on deep patterns and structures that are otherwise invisible to the eye.
While spoilsports, sorry scientists claim to have cracked the case once more, suggesting artists are now relying on the Global Positioning System, lasers and even microwaves to create their patterns, we’re holding onto the hope that aliens are just really, really creative.
A Wiltshire crop circle
7. Former American President Dwight D Eisenhower had three secret meetings with aliens from another planet, a former US government consultant has claimed.
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High-Tech Airships Could Be NASA's Next Challenge
High-Tech Airships Could Be NASA's Next Challenge
By Kelly Dickerson, Staff Writer
This artist's conception of a high-altitude airship is one of many possible models that could come from an airship design challenge. CREDIT: Mike Hughes (Eagre Interactive)/Keck Institute for Space Studies
One of NASA's new citizen science endeavors could involve high-tech, record-breaking airships designed to aid scientific research projects.
NASA has proposed a challenge that calls for airship designs that can fly higher and longer than existing airships. At the moment, no airship — blimp-like devices — can maintain an altitude of 65,000 feet (20 kilometers) for more than 8 hours. Weather balloons can soar to that height, but the balloons are difficult to control and vulnerable to winds.
Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in California think airships could aid them in research on astronomy and climate change and even be more capable than weather balloons. An airship could carry telescopes into the stratosphere to observe stars and other celestial bodies. Right now for example scientists are working on an airship that could survey the skies of Venus. Airships could also provide valuable insight into weather patterns.[10 Most Amazing Flying Machines Ever]
"You would be able to follow weather patterns, even get above a hurricane," Jason Rhodes, an astrophysicist at JPL who is leading the proposed challenge, said in a statement. "A satellite can't do that because its orbit can't be changed."
The proposed challenge would include two tiers. The first tier would call for designs for an airship that can lift 44 pounds (20 kilograms) and hover at 65,000 ft. for at least 20 hours. The second tier designs would need to be a little more complex. Those airships would have to support 440 lbs (200 kg) at the same height but for at least 200 hours.
Familiar blimps that hover around sports games are just one example of an airship. By definition an airship must be lighter than air and able to navigate through the air under its own power. NASA officials say there could be between $2 million and $3 million in prize money available for the competition.
While studies have shown that there is significant interest in using airships for scientific experiments, airships could also have important industry applications. Telecommunication companies could use them to deliver wireless access to remote areas. Military personnel could use them for surveillance operations and missile defense warning.
The proposed 20-20-20 Airship Challenge would become part of NASA's Centennial Challenges program that offers prizes to citizen-designed tech that solves research problems that are of interest to NASA. NASA will first gauge public interest in the airship competition before officially launching it.
One of eight new planets spied in distant solar systems has usurped the title of "most Earth-like alien world", astronomers have said.
All eight were picked out by Nasa's Kepler space telescope, taking its tally of such "exoplanets" past 1,000.
But only three sit safely within the "habitable zone" of their host star - and one in particular is rocky, like Earth, as well as only slightly warmer.
The three potentially habitable planets join Kepler's"hall of fame", which now boasts eight fascinating planetary prospects.
And researchers say the most Earth-like of the new arrivals, known as Kepler 438b, is probably even more similar to our home than Kepler 186f - which previously looked to be our most likely twin.
At 12% larger than Earth, the new claimant is bigger than 186f but it is closer to our temperature, probably receiving just 40% more heat from its sun than we do from ours.
So if we could stand on the surface of 438b it may well be warmer than here, according to Dr Doug Caldwell from the Seti (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute in California.
"And it's around a cooler [red dwarf] star... so your sky would look redder than ours does to us," Dr Caldwell said.
With the three new arrivals, Kepler's 'hall of fame' expands to eight small, habitable-zone exoplanets
That first-person encounter, however, is unlikely - both because the planet is 475 light-years away and because we still have essentially no idea what it's made of.
Images from the Kepler telescope, which trails behind the Earth and peers far into the distance as we orbit our own sun, are used to identify far-off planets by observing "transits".
This refers to the dimming of a star's light when a planet passes in front of it.
A large team of researchers then uses additional data from Earth-bound telescopes to further explore these unfamiliar solar systems.
They try to calculate how big the planets are, and how closely they orbit their host stars.
Not everything that causes such a dimming eventually turns out to be a planet, however.
At the same time as the eight confirmed new exoplanets were announced by a 26-strong team spanning Nasa and multiple US institutions, the Kepler mission's own scientists released another tranche of more than 500 "candidate" planets.
"With further observation, some of these candidates may turn out not to be planets," said Kepler science officer, Fergal Mullally.
"Or as we understand their properties better, they may move around in, or even outside, the habitable zone."
'Star Trek' scenario
Even once scientists have anointed a candidate as a confirmed exoplanet, the question of whether or not it is "Earth-like" is a fraught one, with fuzzy boundaries.
The size of the habitable, or "Goldilocks" zone, where a planet is far enough from its sun to hold water but not so distant that it freezes, depends on how confident scientists want to be with their guess-work.
According to Dr Cardwell, just three of the eight new exoplanets can be confidently placed in that zone - and only two of those are probably rocky like the Earth.
More detailed description is very difficult.
An artist's view of Kepler 186f, which experts say has now been pipped as "most Earth-like" known exoplanet
"From the Kepler measurements and the other measurements we made, we don't know if these planets have oceans with fish and continents with trees," Dr Caldwell told BBC News.
"All we know is their size and the energy they're receiving from their star.
"So we can say: Well, they're of a size that they're likely to be rocky, and the energy they're getting is comparable to what the Earth is getting.
"As we fill in these gaps in our solar system that we don't have, we learn more about what it means to be Earth-like, in some sense."
Speaking at a related event at the conference, Prof Debra Fischer from Yale University said she remembered a time before the first exoplanet was discovered, more than two decades ago.
"I remember astronomers before that point being very worried," she said.
"We really had to step back and say: Maybe the Star Trek picture is wrong. That filled me with despair."
Prof Fischer said that sensitive telescopes like Kepler had ushered in an era of "amazing and impressive work".
"We're talking about a planet - and we can only see its star with a powerful telescope.
"And we can draw graphs and sketch its composition and have serious scientific discussions. This is incredible."
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Daily 2 Cents: Glowing UFO 'Taking Off' -- Revere / Adams Time Capsule Opened -- Unusual Metal Recovered from Ancient Greek Shipwreck
Daily 2 Cents: Glowing UFO 'Taking Off' -- Revere / Adams Time Capsule Opened -- Unusual Metal Recovered from Ancient Greek Shipwreck
Glowing UFO 'Taking Off'
This glowing light was seen 'taking off' from a mountain in Mexico.
First thoughts were that it might be a helicopter, or perhaps even a large drone but both of those seem a little odd considering it is quite literally, a ball of light.
Time Capsule Placed By Paul Revere And Samuel Adams Opened
BOSTON (AP)— Early residents of Boston valued a robust press as much as their history and currency if the contents of a time capsule dating back to the years just after the Revolutionary War are any guide.
When conservators at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston gingerly removed items from the box Tuesday, they found five tightly folded newspapers, a medal depicting George Washington, a silver plaque, two dozen coins, including one dating to 1655, and the seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
While some of the coins appeared corroded, other items were in good condition and fingerprints could be seen on the silver plaque.
The capsule was embedded in a cornerstone of the Massachusetts Statehouse when construction began in 1795. It was placed there by Revolutionary era luminaries including Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, governor of Massachusetts at the time.
The contents were shifted to what was believed to be a copper box in 1855 and placed back into the foundation of Statehouse. The box remained there until it was rediscovered last year during an ongoing water filtration project at the building. The box was actually brass, according to conservators.
The oldest coin in the box was a 1652 "Pine Tree Schilling," made at a time when the colony didn't have royal authority to create its own currency. Pine trees were a valuable commodity at the time. The trees were used as ship masts.
Michael Comeau, executive director of the Massachusetts Archives and Commonwealth Museum, said he has seen the coins offered for as much at $75,000, although given the context of this particular coin and the association with Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, the value would likely be much higher.
The newspapers were folded in such a way that the names of the publications weren't always visible, but one might have been a copy of the Boston Evening Traveller — a newspaper operation that was eventually absorbed into the current Boston Herald.
A portion of one of the papers that was visible showed a listing of the arrivals of whalers from various ports to Boston. Conservators didn't try to unfold the papers.
Pam Hatchfield, the head of objects conservation for the museum, removed each item using a slew of tools including her grandfather's dental tool. Hatchfield said the paper in the box was in "amazingly good condition."
Massachusetts state Secretary William Galvin said he expects the items will be on display at the museum for a period of time, but that eventually they will again be returned to the foundation to be discovered by a future generation of Bay State residents.
Galvin said he didn't know if modern items might be added to the foundation.
Comeau said the objects in the box are a bridge back in time.
Unusual Metal Recovered from Ancient Greek Shipwreck
GELA, SICILY—Thirty-nine ingots of cast metal have been recovered from a ship that sank 2,600 years ago off the southern coast of Sicily. “The wreck dates to the first half of the sixth century. It was found about 1,000 feet from Gela’s coast at a depth of ten feet,” Sicily’s superintendent of the Sea Office told Discovery News. The metal is being called orichalcum, a legendary metal that the fourth-century B.C. Greek philosopher Plato attributed to the mythical island of Atlantis. “Nothing similar has ever been found. We knew orichalcum from ancient texts and a few ornamental objects,” Tusa added. Analysis of the metal shows that it is an alloy made of copper, zinc, and small percentages of nickel, lead, and iron. The ingots were most likely destined for workshops in Gela. “It will provide us with precious information on Sicily’s most ancient economic history,” Tusa said of the shipwreck’s precious cargo. - Archaeology
In an unthinkable homicide case, a Florida teen and her younger sister have been charged in the shooting death of their older brother.
"Anytime you come on scene with something this horrific, where you have juveniles or children involved, it's pretty unsettling, even to seasoned law enforcement and deputies," Columbia County Sheriff Mark Hunter said at a Tuesday press conference.
The siblings, identified as Misty "Ariel" Renee Kornegay, 15, and Nicole Kornegay, 11, both face charges of premeditated murder. The girl's parents, Keith Kornegay, 37 and Misty Kornegay, 33, are facing charges of child neglect, police said.
According to Columbia County Sheriff's spokesman Murray Smith, the investigation into the case began Monday night. Police in White Springs, a small town 70 miles northwest of Jacksonville, learned that the girls had run away from home and were spotted at a nearby Dollar General store.
When approached by police, the sisters "informed [an officer] of a shooting at their residence," Smith said.
Sheriff's office deputies were dispatched to the Kornegay's White Springs home, whereupon they found the body of the girl's 16-year-old brother, Damien Kornegay, sprawled out on the living room floor. He had been shot one time and was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
"Based on the preliminary investigation, it is believed that earlier in the evening the 15-year-old sister of the deceased retrieved a handgun from their parents' bedroom and used it to shoot her brother," said Smith.
Nicole Kornegay's role in the shooting remains unclear. Smith would only say that she "assisted her 15-year-old sister" in the commission of the crime.
The Huffington Post normally does not identify minors charged in connection with a crime, but both girls have been widely identified in news coverage, and their names have been released by the sheriff's office.
Bayoubuzz.com reported Ariel Kornegay told police that her brother beat her up the day of the shooting. Authorities have yet to officially comment on a possible motive.
According to News4jax.com, police had been called to the Kornegay residence in 2010, in regard to a report of "inappropriate behavior" that had allegedly involved Damien and Ariel Kornegay. Details of that alleged incident remain unclear and no charges were filed, the news station reported.
Keith and Misty Kornegay's 3-year-old child, who was found alone in the home upon the discovery of Damien's body, has been placed in the custody of the Florida Department of Children and Families.
The children's parents were reportedly out of town at the time of the shooting. The neglect charges were filed against them for "failing to properly supervise the children," Smith said.
Ariel and Nicole Kornegay are being held without bond in the Columbia County Detention Facility. Both girls are expected to make their first court appearance sometime Wednesday.
"This is a very unusual event for us here in the community -- very tragic," Sheriff Hunter said. - THP
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
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