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
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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 Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
22-08-2016
Blue UFO Shoots Around Sky Over Maine, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Blue UFO Shoots Around Sky Over Maine, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: July 4, 2016 Location of sighting: Maine, USA Here is an interesting report from MUFON talked about by Open Minds. UFOs are actually common during July 4 in America, because aliens wish to observe humans and their rituals...4th of July fireworks are one of them. So if there is a large group of people around, look up at the sky and you might be surprised. Scott C. Waring www.ufosightingsdaily.com
Norman Bergrun - Ringmakers of Saturn - CLIP/NOTES, Video, UFO Sighting News
Norman Bergrun - Ringmakers of Saturn - CLIP/NOTES, Video, UFO Sighting News
Date of interview: Unknown Source:http://podcast.sjrdesign.net/files/070_RingmakersOfSaturn.pdf Here is a great interview with Norman Bergun who work in a top secret area inside the US government and has personally witnessed seeing photos directly from NASA that had UFO near Saturn that make the rings around Saturn. He says he has personally seen an increase of alien ship activity among the rings of Saturn over his career. Something has to be done. Scott C. Waring www.ufosightingsdaily.com
In popular culture, the term UFO–or unidentified flying object–refers to a suspected alien spacecraft, although its definition encompasses any unexplained aerial phenomena. UFO sightings have been reported throughout recorded history and in various parts of the world, raising questions about life on other planets and whether extraterrestrials have visited Earth. They became a major subject of interest–and the inspiration behind numerous films and books–following the development of rocketry after World War II.
FLYING SAUCERS
The first well-known UFO sighting occurred in 1947, when businessman Kenneth Arnold claimed to see a group of nine high-speed objects near Mount Rainier in Washington while flying his small plane. Arnold estimated the speed of the crescent-shaped objects as several thousand miles per hour and said they moved “like saucers skipping on water.” In the newspaper report that followed, it was mistakenly stated that the objects were saucer-shaped, hence the term flying saucer.
Sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena increased, and in 1948 the U.S. Air Force began an investigation of these reports called Project Sign. The initial opinion of those involved with the project was that the UFOs were most likely sophisticated Soviet aircraft, although some researchers suggested that they might be spacecraft from other worlds, the so-called extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH). Within a year, Project Sign was succeeded by Project Grudge, which in 1952 was itself replaced by the longest-lived of the official inquiries into UFOs, Project Blue Book, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. From 1952 to 1969 Project Blue Book compiled reports of more than 12,000 sightings or events, each of which was ultimately classified as (1) “identified” with a known astronomical, atmospheric, or artificial (human-caused) phenomenon or (2) “unidentified.” The latter category, approximately 6 percent of the total, included cases for which there was insufficient information to make an identification with a known phenomenon.
THE ROBERTSON PANEL AND THE CONDON REPORT
An American obsession with the UFO phenomenon was under way. In the hot summer of 1952 a provocative series of radar and visual sightings occurred near National Airport in Washington, D.C. Although these events were attributed to temperature inversions in the air over the city, not everyone was convinced by this explanation. Meanwhile, the number of UFO reports had climbed to a record high. This led the Central Intelligence Agency to prompt the U.S. government to establish an expert panel of scientists to investigate the phenomena. The panel was headed by H.P. Robertson, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and included other physicists, an astronomer, and a rocket engineer. The Robertson Panel met for three days in 1953 and interviewed military officers and the head of Project Blue Book. They also reviewed films and photographs of UFOs. Their conclusions were that (1) 90 percent of the sightings could be easily attributed to astronomical and meteorologic phenomena (e.g., bright planets and stars, meteors, auroras, ion clouds) or to such earthly objects as aircraft, balloons, birds, and searchlights, (2) there was no obvious security threat, and (3) there was no evidence to support the ETH. Parts of the panel’s report were kept classified until 1979, and this long period of secrecy helped fuel suspicions of a government cover-up.
A second committee was set up in 1966 at the request of the Air Force to review the most interesting material gathered by Project Blue Book. Two years later this committee, which made a detailed study of 59 UFO sightings, released its results as Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects—also known as the Condon Report, named for Edward U. Condon, the physicist who headed the investigation. The Condon Report was reviewed by a special committee of the National Academy of Sciences. A total of 37 scientists wrote chapters or parts of chapters for the report, which covered investigations of the 59 UFO sightings in detail. Like the Robertson Panel, the committee concluded that there was no evidence of anything other than commonplace phenomena in the reports and that UFOs did not warrant further investigation. This, together with a decline in sighting activity, led to the dismantling of Project Blue Book in 1969.
OTHER INVESTIGATIONS OF UFOS
Despite the failure of the ETH to make headway with the expert committees, a few scientists and engineers, most notably J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who had been involved with projects Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book, concluded that a small fraction of the most-reliable UFO reports gave definite indications for the presence of extraterrestrial visitors. Hynek founded the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), which continues to investigate the phenomenon.
Aside from Project Blue Book, the only other official and fairly complete records of UFO sightings were kept in Canada, where they were transferred in 1968 from the Canadian Department of National Defense to the Canadian National Research Council. The Canadian records comprised about 750 sightings. Less-complete records have been maintained in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, and Greece. In the United States, CUFOS and the Mutual UFO Network in Bellvue, Colo., continue to log sightings reported by the public.
In the Soviet Union, sightings of UFOs were often prompted by tests of secret military rockets. In order to obscure the true nature of the tests, the government sometimes encouraged the public’s belief that these rockets might be extraterrestrial craft but eventually decided that the descriptions themselves might give away too much information. UFO sightings in China have been similarly provoked by military activity that is unknown to the public.
POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS FOR UFO SIGHTINGS AND ALIEN ABDUCTIONS
UFO reports have varied widely in reliability, as judged by the number of witnesses, whether the witnesses were independent of each other, the observing conditions (e.g., fog, haze, type of illumination), and the direction of sighting. Typically, witnesses who take the trouble to report a sighting consider the object to be of extraterrestrial origin or possibly a military craft but certainly under intelligent control. This inference is usually based on what is perceived as formation flying by sets of objects, unnatural—often sudden—motions, the lack of sound, changes in brightness or colour, and strange shapes.
That the unaided eye plays tricks is well known. A bright light, such as the planet Venus, often appears to move. Astronomical objects can also be disconcerting to drivers, as they seem to “follow” the car. Visual impressions of distance and speed of UFOs are also highly unreliable because they are based on an assumed size and are often made against a blank sky with no background object (clouds, mountains, etc.) to set a maximum distance. Reflections from windows and eyeglasses produce superimposed views, and complex optical systems, such as camera lenses, can turn point sources of light into apparently saucer-shaped phenomena. Such optical illusions and the psychological desire to interpret images are known to account for many visual UFO reports, and at least some sightings are known to be hoaxes. Radar sightings, while in certain respects more reliable, fail to discriminate between artificial objects and meteor trails, ionized gas, rain, or thermal discontinuities in the atmosphere.
“Contact events,” such as abductions, are often associated with UFOs because they are ascribed to extraterrestrial visitors. However, the credibility of the ETH as an explanation for abductions is disputed by most psychologists who have investigated this phenomenon. They suggest that a common experience known as “sleep paralysis” may be the culprit, as this causes sleepers to experience a temporary immobility and a belief that they are being watched.
From strange lights in the sky to mysterious aircraft, explore Europe's unreported and unexplained UFO history.Details about UFOs UFO documentary A US pilot vanishes at the height of the Cold War, UFOs are sighted over Germany, and a series of unexplained events shock a Sicilian village.A US pilot vanishes at the height of the Cold War, UFOs are sighted over Germany, and a series of unexplained events shock a Sicilian village.
Ovnis na Europa UFOs in Europe ( Untold Stories ) episode Episódio 6 sicilia italia guerra fria russia raf inglaterra england binbrook 1970 alemanha germany oldenburg 1952 portugal national geographic channel canal ufo ovni et alien extraterrestre eupen belgium sweden belgica suecia france frança Belgian wave triangulo triangle Soderhamn Trans-en-ProvenceA US pilot vanishes at the height of the Cold War, UFOs are sighted over Germany, and a series of unexplained events shock a Sicilian village.A US pilot vanishes at the height of the Cold War, UFOs are sighted over Germany, and a series of unexplained events shock a Sicilian village.
Ovnis na Europa UFOs in Europe ( Untold Stories ) episode Episódio 6 sicilia italia guerra fria russia raf inglaterra england binbrook 1970 alemanha germany oldenburg 1952 portugal national geographic channel canal ufo ovni et alien extraterrestre eupen belgium sweden belgica suecia france frança Belgian wave triangulo triangle Soderhamn Trans-en-ProvenceHere you will find some of the Best Documentary Films. You can watch top class Documentaries from National Geographic Documentaries , BBC Documentaries , Al Jazeera English Documentaries, Discovery Channel Documentaries & much much more.A pilot glimpses a flying saucer, hundreds of UFOs are captured on film in Norway, and the UK’s first criminal investigation into a UFO assault.Details about UFOs UFO documentary From strange lights in the sky to mysterious aircraft, explore Europe's unreported and unexplained UFO history.
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21-08-2016
This New Equation Could Unite The Two Biggest Theories in Physics
This New Equation Could Unite The Two Biggest Theories in Physics
Dave Jaeger
IN BRIEF
In a recent paper, a Stanford theoretical physicist develops a new equation, one which indicates that the key to finally connecting general relativity and quantum mechanics is found in bizarre spacetime tunnels called wormholes.
One of the most stubborn problems in physics today is the fact that our two best theories to explain the Universe – general relativity and quantum mechanics – function perfectly well on their own, but as soon as you try to combine them, the maths just doesn’t work out.
But a Stanford theoretical physicist has just come up with a new equation that suggests the key to finally connecting the two could be found in bizarre spacetime tunnels called wormholes.
The equation is deceptively simple: ER = EPR.
It’s not made up of numerical values, but instead represents the names of some key players in theoretical physics.
On the left side of the equation, the ER stands for Einstein and Nathan Rosen,and refers to a 1935 paper they wrote together describing wormholes, known technically as Einstein-Rosen bridges.
On the right side of the equation, EPR stands for Einstein, Rosen and Boris Podolsky, who co-wrote another paper that year describing quantum entanglement.
Back in 2013, physicist Leonard Susskind from Stanford University and Juan Maldacena from the Institute for Advance Study at Princeton suggested that the two papers could be describing pretty much the same thing – something that no one else in the field had previously considered, including Einstein himself.
Now Susskind is back to discuss the implications if he’s in fact right.
But first, let’s look at the individual parts of this equation.
First implied by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, wormholes are like tunnels between two places in the Universe.
In theory, if you fell in one side of a wormhole, you’d appear on the other side almost instantaneously, even if it happened to be on the exact opposite side of the Universe.
Quantum entanglement, on the other hand, describes the way that two particles can interact in such a way that they become inexorably linked, and essentially ‘share’ an existence.
This means that whatever happens to one particle will directly and instantaneously affect the other – even if it’s light-years away.
Okay, now let’s combine the two.
In his new paper, Susskind proposes a scenario where hypothetical Alice and Bob each take a bunch of entangled particles – Alice takes one member of each pair, and Bob takes the other, and they fly off in opposite directions of the Universe in their hypothetical hypersonic jets.
Once in their separate positions, Alice and Bob smash their particles together with such great force, they create two separate black holes.
The result, says Susskind, is two entangled black holes on opposite sides of the Universe, linked in the middle by a giant wormhole.
“If ER = EPR is right, a wormhole will link those black holes; entanglement, therefore, can be described using the geometry of wormholes,” says Tom Siegfried over at Science News.
“Even more remarkable … is the possibility that two entangled subatomic particles alone are themselves somehow connected by a sort of quantum wormhole,” Siegfried adds.
“Since wormholes are contortions of spacetime geometry – described by Einstein’s gravitational equations – identifying them with quantum entanglement would forge a link between gravity and quantum mechanics.”
Is Susskind right? It’s impossible to say just yet, because while he’s published his paper on pre-press website arXiv.org to be openly scrutinised by his peers, it’s yet to go through the formal peer-review process.
But, as Siegfried reports, Susskind isn’t the only one going down this path. Earlier this year, a team of Caltech physicists came up with a similar hypothesis when they attempted to show how changes in quantum states can be linked to curves in spacetime geometry.
In a blog post describing the hypothesis, one of the team, Sean M. Carroll, says the most natural relationship between energy and spacetime curvature in this scenario is given by Einstein’s equation for general relativity.
“The claim, in its most dramatic-sounding form, is that gravity (spacetime curvature caused by energy/momentum) isn’t hard to obtain in quantum mechanics – it’s automatic! Or at least, the most natural thing to expect,” he says.
We’ll have to wait and see if ER = EPR or something closely related bears out, but it’s certainly food for thought, and Susskind for one thinks he’s on to something here.
“To me it seems obvious that if ER = EPR is true, it is a very big deal, and it must affect the foundations and interpretation of quantum mechanics,” he writes, adding that if he’s right, “quantum mechanics and gravity are far more tightly related than we (or at least I) had ever imagined”.
Polish astronomers have been able to document fully a white dwarf go from sleeping to erupting in a regular nova.
UNEXPECTED DISCOVERIES
Watching stars go nova or supernova is of particular interest to astronomers. Its an understandable interest that any astronomically large explosion would attract. So you may assume that the steps and the stages stars would go through during one would be well documented. Well, not so much.
What’s amazing was that the astronomers weren’t looking for novas—OGLE is a long-term surveying project that uses microlensing to search for dark matter.
Instead, in 2003, they stumbled on V1213 Cen, or Nova Centauri 2009, a white dwarf star in a cataclysmic variable star system.
DOCUMENTING EVOLUTION
These kinds of star systems are composed of a white dwarf and a low-mass star. Its a binary sort of system, with the distance between them no larger than the Earth-Moon distance. This closeness, coupled with the intense gravity of a white dwarf, means that said white dwarf is actively leeching material from the low-mass star into a disk around the dwarf.
V1213 Cen is an example of a slow version of this process, called “mass theft.” Since it is slow, the material becomes unstable and erupts in small “dwarf novas”. These dwarf novas push material, primarily hydrogen, into the surface of the white dwarf.
Thus, the white dwarf becomes larger until it reaches a certain mass, at which point it erupts into a classic nova. After this, there are several centuries of high-rate mass transfer, then a millennia-long hibernation period, until it ultimately awakes to start the cycle all over again.
Observation of V1213 Cen have yielded the first ever pictures of a single such system evolving from pre to post nova, confirming the model astronomers posited.
Tesla’s Anti-Gravity Research in Use in Dozens of Secretive Military Projects
Tesla’s Anti-Gravity Research in Use in Dozens of Secretive Military Projects
Doctor Richard Boylan, and numerous others have already let the cat out of the bag when it comes to anti-gravity space flight, so why do Boeing and Lockheed, two of America’s largest military industrial contractors, and the recipient of trillions in tax payer ‘black budget’ dollars still hide that they are operating at least 12 anti-gravity aerospace platforms?
It seems that Boeing hides this advanced aerospace technology because it would prove what many free energy enthusiasts have said about Nikola Tesla – that he discovered anti-gravity, and learned how to utilize it as an abundant, if not free, energy source.
Objects can even be levitated easily with anti-gravity, and its numerous applications are just beginning to be understood by the public at large.
The late genius and inventor even explained the fact prior to his death. William R. Lynewrites inOccult Ether Physics (Creatopia Productions), that a lecture Tesla prepared for the Institute of Immigrant Welfare (May. 12, 1938), dealt with his Dynamic Theory of Gravity.
Tesla said in his lecture that he had developed, “one of two far-reaching discoveries, which I worked out in all details in the years 1893 and 1894.”
Indeed, Tesla held a patent in 1928, for a flying machine which resembled both a helicopter and an airplane and is thought to have run with the benefit of anti-gravity.
Boeing has loosely revealed that they have already developed this technology in a veiled admittance that “it is working on experimental anti-gravity projects that could overturn a century of conventional aerospace propulsion technology.”
And Ben Rich, once the CEO of Lockheed Martin, admitted on his deathbed that “aliens were real,” and the “US military already travels to the stars,” explaining where this technology could have been sourced, aside from terrestrial beings like Tesla.
This means that for more than 130 years we have been kept in the dark about a known free energy source so that the powers-that-be can profit from our ignorance.
Every time you see a ‘rocket ship’ go up in space, it is essentially no different from the false flagattempts orchestrated by six media companies controlling the media to alter your perception of reality.
So Where Did All that Research Go?
Theodore C. Loder, PhD, posits in one paper that since the 1950’s (known to some as the brain drain era) almost all research into anti-gravity seems to have disappeared.
None other than Professor Hermann Oberth, considered by some to be one of the fathers of the space age (and who later worked in the US with Wernher von Braun, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and NASA), stated the following in 1954:[3]
“It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are space ships from another solar system.”
Perhaps of more interest to our present discussion on the secrets Boeing and Lockheed have kept, Oberth states:
“They are flying by the means of artificial fields of gravity... They produce high-tension electric charges in order to push the air out of their paths, so it does not start glowing, and strong magnetic fields to influence the ionized air at higher altitudes. First, this would explain their luminosity... Secondly, it would explain the noiselessness of UFO flight.”
Indeed, you can see the crumbs of government contractor’s special operatives at work when you look into the work of John Hutchison.
He discovered, “highly-anomalous electromagnetic effect which causes the jellification of metals, spontaneous levitation of common substances, and other effects,” which echo Tesla’s findings. These strange effects were later dubbed the Hutchison effect.
As is usually the case when silencing the curious, a Vancouver businessman, George Hathaway heard of the Hutchison effect around 1980, and hired an engineer from Boeing Aerospace to work with the Canadian government to form a company that would promote technology developed from the effect.
They called this company Pharos’ Technology. You likely haven’t heard of what they have created since then.
12 Special Aerospace Platforms Incorporating Anti-Gravity Technology
“At this time, I am aware of the existence of 12 kinds of special-technology advanced aerospace platforms [mil-speak for craft], all incorporating antigravity technology in some form. “These 12 are: the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber, the F-22 Raptor advanced stealth fighter, and its successor, the F-35 Lightning II advanced stealth fighter; the Aurora, Lockheed-Martin’s X-33A, the Lockheed X-22A two-man antigravity disc fighter, Boeing and Airbus Industries’ Nautilus, the TR3-A Pumpkinseed, the TR3-B Triangle , Northrop’s “Great Pumpkin” disc, Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical’s XH-75D Shark antigravity helicopter, and the Northrop Quantum Teleportation Disc.”
Since at least 1956, the press has been trying to manage public awareness by staying hush-hush about anti-gravity research, or discounting those who attempted to show that it was real.
However, a trade press magazine, the Aviation Report, made numerous references to anti-gravity projects, and listed many of the companies pursuing research into anti-gravity technologies.
Quotes from the Aviation Report listed in the Aviation Studies (International) Ltd. report[8] are suggestive of what was truly going on at Boeing, Lockheed and other agencies despite what the public was being told.
What Anti-Gravity Means to the World at Large
Anti-gravity, first and foremost would make petrol-guzzling cars, crumbling electric grids, and other outdated and dirty fuels a total waste of time.
Anti-gravity, as Nikola Tesla made clear, would make space flight to other heavenly bodies as simple as driving your car to a nearby city, today.
It would also turn Einstein’s E=MC2 theory on its head, and it also suggests, as Tesla explained, that the ether is given to us to use responsibly by a life-giving creative force.
In short, everything we need is already out there, in abundant supply. We just need to tap into it and free these technologies from the grip of the military industrial complex.
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Kitezh: the Mythical Invisible City of Russia Could Have Been Real
Kitezh: the Mythical Invisible City of Russia Could Have Been Real
Kitezh is a mythical city of Russia which was once dubbed “the invisible city.” New evidence suggests it could have been more than just a myth.
In past months, the fans of the Tomb Raider franchise received a nice surprise in the form of the latest sequel of this action video game. In the plot of the game Lara Croft, the famous adventure character, ventures into the wilds of Siberia in search of immortality. The key to all her questions lies in the mythical city of Kitezh. Chased by numerous villains, she goes through the unimaginable trouble to reach the invisible city. Is there more to this story than the fiction of a video game plot?
According to rising body of evidence, Kitezh was once a mighty city on the shore of the lake Svetloyar, but it was flooded. For centuries, this city has survived as myth. In 2011, archaeologists found remains of everyday objects, and they believe that they belong to the people who lived in a mystical city of Kitezh.
Tale of Kitezh
The first written documents that mention the Russian Atlantis date back to 1780s and the Old Believers. In 1666, the Old Believers refused to accept the reforms the Orthodox Church adopted and therefore, they separated. In the early 13th century, the Grand Prince of Vladimir, Prince Georgy, founded the city of Little Kitzeh (Maly Kitezh) on the bank of the Volga River in the Voskresensky District of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast in central Russia. Today, the city of Little Kitezh carries the name Krasny Kholm, and the settlement Prince Georgy had founded still survives despite all the destruction and wars that plagued it through the centuries. After a while, the Prince discovered a beautiful place on a lake Svetloyar which was further upstream and wanted to make another city on that spot.
Little Kitezh by Ivan Bilibin
This Bolshoy Kitezh or Big Kitezh was considered holy by all its inhabitants because of the large number of monasteries and churches the Prince had built. The origin of the city’s name is the cause of depute between researchers. Some think that the name came from the royal residence Kideksha while others think that it meant ‘obscure‘. The circle-shaped city has made the Russian people proud, and its location was kept secret. Some folk tales even say that the city was visible only to those who were pure of heart. As history has proved on so many occasions, times of peace and prosperity don’t last long.
Russian history is filled with difficulties caused by the Mongol invasions. One such invasion started in 1238 AD and was led by the mighty Batu Khan, the founder of the Golden Horde. The army Batu Khan brought with him was so powerful that they surrounded and besieged the city of Vladimir. After hearing a story about the mighty city of Kitezh, Khan became obsessed with it and determined to destroy it.
After a fierce battle, the Mongol army captured the Little Kitezh and made the Prince Georgy retreat to Kitezh. Even after the defeat, the hopes of saving the Prince’s city were high because Batu Khan didn’t know the location of the city. All of the prisoners were tortured in an attempt to get the information about the secret path that led to the lake Svetloyar. One of the men revealed the information because he couldn’t take the torture anymore.
It is certain that the Golden Hord reached the city and that great Prince died in the battle while trying to protect the Bolshoy Kitezh. Accounts how the events unraveled are very different and most of them come from the folk stories that kept the memory of this holy city alive.
One popular story explains the events that took place once Batu Khan and his Golden Horde reached the lake Svetloyar. They surrounded the city, but to their amazement, they didn’t see the army defending the city. There were no walls or anything else that could protect the city from certain death.
The Invisible Town of Kitezh (1913) by Konstantin Gorbatov
The only thing the Mongol conquerors could see was thousands of city’s inhabitants praying to God. Encouraged by the lack of opposing army, they initiated the attack, but at that moment, fountains of water sprouted from the soil. This caused havoc among the Mongols who managed to retreat to the nearby forest. From there, they watched the city descend into the lake, disappearing from the face of the Earth forever. The mystical flooding of Kitezh became the source of many myths and folk tales that were passed from one generation to another.
In these stories, the city was called ‘The Invisible City‘ that would only reveal itself to those who were pure and had sincere faith in God. On some occasions, people have reported they heard voices from the lake that sang the hymns. Also, those with faith in God could see the lights of the processions that people who still live in the Russian Atlantis hold.
In the second decade of the 21st century, the archaeologists inspired by these legends started looking for evidence that would prove if the city of Bolshoy Kitezh ever existed.
In 2011, the team of researchers found the traces of ancient settlements in the area around the Svetloyar Lake. In addition, they unearthed fragments of traditional Russian pottery. One of the most important discoveries they’ve made so far was that the hill in which the remains of the settlement were found is prone to landslides. This could prove that the people who lived in Russian Atlantis met much less glorious destiny than the one depicted in the myths and folktales of the Russian people. The landslide could have submerged the city, but at this point, the scientific community awaits further findings from the team that is working on this site.
It is less important what actually happened with Prince Georgy’s city than the fact that his city gave the strength to many people that went through the difficult periods of their life. The power of a myth is not in the facts but in the reassurance that impossible things happen if you are righteous.
Venusachtige exoplaneet heeft mogelijk zuurstof in de atmosfeer
Venusachtige exoplaneet heeft mogelijk zuurstof in de atmosfeer
Tim Kraaijvanger
Het is geen pretje om op de exoplaneet GJ 1132b te wonen. Mogelijk is het er net zo warm als in je oven, namelijk zo’n 230 graden Celsius. Wel vermoeden astronomen dat er zuurstof in de atmosfeer aanwezig is.
Astronoom Laura Schaefer en haar collega’s van het Harvard-Smithsonian Center voor Astrofysica bogen zich over een pittige vraag: hoe heeft de atmosfeer van GJ 1132b zich in de loop ter tijd ontwikkeld?
Waarschijnlijk was de atmosfeer ooit rijk aan water. Omdat de afstand tussen de exoplaneet en de moederster slechts enkele miljoenen kilometers is, vangt GJ 1132b veel ultraviolet licht. Hierdoor vallen watermoleculen uit elkaar in waterstof en zuurstof. Deze elementen zijn licht, waardoor de exoplaneet ze ooit gaat verliezen. Toch is er een verschil. Waterstof is namelijk lichter dan zuurstof en zal dus sneller verdwijnen uit de atmosfeer. Dit betekent dat zuurstof blijft hangen.
Gesmolten magmazee Als er zuurstof wordt gevonden in de atmosfeer van deze hete wereld, dan is dat geen teken dat er leven aanwezig is of dat het er leefbaar is. “Het is juist het tegenovergestelde”, zegt Schaefer. Aangezien waterdamp een broeikasgas is, is er sprake van een op hol geslagen broeikaseffect op de exoplaneet. Het oppervlak van GJ 1132b kan miljoenen jaren een gesmolten magmazee blijven.
Deze grote magmazee absorbeert mogelijk een klein deel van de zuurstof in de atmosfeer, maar het gaat hier om slechts tien procent. De overige negentig procent verdwijnt ooit de ruimte in.
Even snuffelen Als er zuurstof in de atmosfeer van GJ 1132b aanwezig is, dan kan dit in de nabije toekomst ontdekt worden. Nieuwe supertelescopen – zoals de James Webb telescoop – zijn in staat om te snuffelen aan de atmosferen van verre werelden. “Wellicht ontdekken we hier voor het eerst zuurstof op een aardachtige exoplaneet buiten de zonnestelsel”, concludeert medeauteur Robin Wordsworth.
Ze zijn er in overvloed: complottheorieën. Het bekendste is misschien wel de theorie dat de maanlanding nep was, maar er zijn er nog veel meer. Zo is er een complottheorie die stelt dat de dood van John F. Kennedy geregisseerd werd door de Amerikaanse geheime diensten. En recenter werd beweerd dat Osama Bin Laden niet door de VS werd gedood, maar al jaren daarvoor een natuurlijke dood stierf (een alternatieve theorie stelt overigens dat hij nog in leven is). En ook omtrent de verdwijning van MH370 doen zich wilde theorieën de ronde.
Eigenlijk zou je wel kunnen stellen dat elke gebeurtenis van wereldbelang tegenwoordig vergezeld gaat door een complottheorie die de gebeurtenis heel anders verklaart. Maar hoe ontstaan zulke theorieën en waarom geloven mensen erin? Moraalwetenschapper Brecht Decoene vertelt er in het boekje ‘Achterdocht tussen feit en fictie‘ alles over.
Hij gunt ons een kijkje in het brein van de complotdenker en benadrukt dat we complottheorieën, hoe belachelijk ze ook klinken, zeker niet moeten onderschatten. Hun invloed kan namelijk verstrekkend zijn. Een schrijnend voorbeeld daarvan is Anders Breivik die in 2011 77 mensen ombracht in Oslo en op het eiland Utøya. Hij was sterk van overtuigd, zo stelt Decoene, van een samenzwering door moslims om Europa te veroveren. “Breivik wilde de Westerse beschaving redden en achtte het daartoe noodzakelijk om diegenen die dit complot zouden kunnen faciliteren met geweld af te stoppen.” Niet elke complotdenker zal naar de wapens grijpen, sterker nog: veel complotdenkers wijzen geweld resoluut af. Maar de geschiedenis leert ons dat complottheorieën aan de basis kunnen liggen van “geweld tegen onschuldigen, de vergoelijking en rationalisering daarvan”.
Dat complottheorieën tegenwoordig vrijelijk over het internet verspreid worden, lijkt dan ook zorgwekkend. Het vraagt van ons om feit en fictie van elkaar te scheiden en op een goeie manier met de rondzwervende theorieën om te gaan. Maar hoe doe je dat? Ook daarvoor biedt Decoene de nodige handvaten in zijn boek.
Complottheorieën zijn fascinerend. En dat is het boek ‘Achterdocht tussen feit en fictie‘ ook. Het boekje is kort en bondig, nuchter en bijzonder relevant in een tijd waar complottheorieën aan de lopende band worden gegenereerd.
Science fiction movies frequently make it seem as though hostile extraterrestrials might be able to sneak through Earth’s atmosphere, emerge from the clouds without warning, and start wrecking shit. But is it really possible that spaceships could suddenly appear out of the vast blackness of space unnoticed by the myriad instruments on the ground? Depending on the aliens’ level of technological sophistication, one can argue that almost anything is possible. Humans have pointed a lot of sensors skyward, but it’s not clear they would really give us a proper heads up before our extraterrestrial guests arrive.
It sort of depends on exactly what we’re looking for. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, better known as SETI, has been fruitless so far, but we keep investing and more and more money towards projects aimed at answering whether or not we’re alone in the universe. That investigation basically revolves around detecting various signals that point to the existence of technologically advanced extraterrestrials. And that also means the instruments we can use to observe space let us see farther into the universe than ever before. How far exactly? Douglas Vakoch tells Inverse that the answer has more to do with defining “see” than with arriving at a specific number.
A SETI researcher and the president of METI International, Vakoch divides the tools used to do SETI research into two groups: optical, and radio. Optical instruments, which look for lasers or other light patterns that suggest the presence of intelligent aliens, can make decent observations up to about 1,000 light-years away. “Beyond 1,000 light-years, however, it can get more difficult,” Vakoch says. Those instruments include the Boquete Optical SETI Observatory in Panama, and the Owl Observatory in Michigan.
Radio instruments, on the other hand, make a lot more sense for investigating signs of extraterrestrial life. For one, we can listen in on radio waves moving through space from about 10,000 light-years and beyond. Radio waves are also a pretty specific sign of a technologically advanced civilization while a star system may be expressing a strange laser-based signal in the distance, that might also just be an unexplained natural phenomenon (as we’re sort of learning when it comes to Tabbys Star.
Of course, as Vakoch emphasizes, our abilities to listen in on the universe dwindles as the distance increases. Aliens broadcasting themselves 10,000 light-years away will likely avoid detection.
But then again, SETI is a two-way street. When asked whether we currently have a maximum limit from which we can detect alien life, Seth Shostak, the director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute, says, “It depends on how much money the aliens have to invest in their own technology.” He’s referring to the fact that intelligent lifeforms might possess technologies that allow them to broadcast their existence to us from farther away and offset the limits of our own instruments.
“In theory, there’s no limit,” he adds.
It’s important to remember that SETI investigations don’t just watch the universe in all direction in hopes we’ll stumble on something. Scientists focus our instruments on certain regions of space that are most promising — i.e. the exoplanets or star systems that possess the best chances for developing habitable environments.
“We start close to home,” says Vakoch, “and look at sun-like stars. As we move the investigation farther out, we start to hone in on stars or star regions that might be useful. For example, a current trend in the SETI community is the study of red dwarf stars, which were historically ignored. The beauty of red dwarfs is that they last a long time,” says Vakoch, sustaining planetary systems that have a much longer chance of developing habitable traits. Red dwarfs make up about 80 to 90 percent of the stars in our own neighborhood within the Milky Way galaxy.”
There’s another big factor to consider. SETI research focuses on finding aliens thatwant to be found — or at the very least, are not actively trying to hide from human detection. If a hostile fleet of extraterrestrial warships were stationed somewhere in the galaxy or was en route to the solar system, they could very well possess a number of highly advanced technologies that could shroud their presence. Space itself is incredibly big anyways — humans don’t have eyes and ears scanning all parts of the universe around us.
Aliens might be able to slip into orbit, but if they were traveling in anything truly large it might be quite difficult for them to do so without severely disrupting our orbital equipment or even taking out a geosynchronous satellite. Still, that’s not an impossible feat.
“If they’re sufficiently intelligent,” says Vakoch, “there’s no reason to think they couldn’t be anywhere.”
It’s been twenty long years since the War of 1996 and the world is slowly rebuilding from the intergalactic pummeling it received from an alien mothership and its 36 City Destroyers. In that time, mankind has applied alien technology to not only weaponry and vehicles, but to appliances as well, creating bladeless fans and touchscreen smartphones. The man tasked with building it all: Jeff Goldblum.
This is the premise of Independence Day: Resurgence — well, part of it anyway — which comes out Friday. In the trailer, president Elizabeth Lanford announces that “we have found the technology to build a stronger and safer Earth” but after a few bwaahh bwaahhs the audience realizes that might not be totally true. What we’ve found is alien technology better than our own. And we’ve reverse engineered it.
The idea that humans would build their own technology from the leftovers of aliens isn’t just something that sprang from the minds of Resurgencescreenwriters Roland Emmerich, Dean Devlin, and Carter Blanchard. Humans have longed assumed advanced technologies (a relative term if ever there was one) were the products of some sort of intergalactic intervention. These conspiracy theories break down into three basic types.
1. Aliens as the Source of All Technology
The Antikythera mechanism was discovered in 1901.
The 1984 conspiracy bestseller Chariot of the Gods popularized (with “hard scientific facts!”) the idea that ancient civilization landmarks like the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge, and the Nazca lines in Peru were actually alien-built structures and landing sites. This line of semi-reasoning proved popular because these spots are hard to understand products of ancient engineer. They are not the only ones. The Antikythera mechanism, a device believed to be an astronomical clock, was built by ancient Greeks. Naturally, people have theorized that it was actually created by an advanced (but apparently not too advanced) alien species.
Considered by scientists as the most technologically sophisticated artifact to exist from antiquity, accredited researchers believe the purpose of the device was to tell the user when lunar and solar eclipses would occur and to track the timing of the Olympic games. The authors behind theancientaliens.com don’t buy it:
“While many experts try to offer explanations for how this device could have been conceived, designed, and built, all of their concepts fail the tests of logic. There is only one possible explanation. Beings with advanced knowledge of astronomical bodies, mathematics, and precision engineering tools created the device or gave the knowledge for its creation to someone during the first century B.C.”
To which the researchers behind the Antikythera Mechanism Research Projectworking with the mechanism say: “No, by the same argument that it is not evidence of time travel. It fits within a long tradition of astronomical, mechanical, or general scientific development.”
2. Aliens as the Source of New Materials
Once you dive into the world of alien conspiracy theories, a name that comes up again and again is Philip Schneider. Known as a UFO whistleblower, Schneider claimed to be a geologist and structural engineer once employed by the United States government. Before his death under mysterious circumstances in 1996, Schneider embarked on a series of lectures around America to discuss what he claimed to be the longstanding relationship between the U.S. government and aliens. The point of the relationship? Exchanging new tech.
In this undated video, Schneider is giving one of these lectures. At about three minutes in, he says that he is going to explain “different alien metals that have been produced both in the confines of this planet and in outer-space and are now used in all stealth aircraft.”
Schnieder says that the metal is made of two elements: niobium, which is on theperiodic table, and marinite — an alien element. This metal, he says, comes from alien technology.
Robert Lazarus, who told the media in 1989 that he had been part of a secret military operation that worked on alien technology also claimed he had encountered an alien material: Element 115. Lazarus claimed that this substance allowed aliens to amplify gravity waves, allowing them to fly their spacecrafts. Related: No record of Lazarus’ employment has been found and CalTech and MIT, which he claims to have attended, do not have any record of his admission.
3. Aliens as the Source of Modern Inventions
This category is the broadest and the most frequently cited: The idea that we’re surrounded by technology that was manufactured from alien tech. Sometimes people say this is stuff that we’ve mistakenly interpreted as normal (like circuit boards and microchips and other times this refers to tech that has been kept from the public.
In 2002 British hacker Gary McKinnon was arrested by the United Kingdom’s national high-tech crime unit after allegedly conducting an extensive search into the computer networks of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Department of Defense, and NASA. He told the BBC in 2006 that he was looking for evidence of suppressed alien technology— and found it. Here’s an excerpt of that conversation:
SK: Did you find what you were looking for?
GM: Yes.
SK: Tell us about it.
GM: There was a group called the Disclosure Project. They published a book which had 400 expert witnesses ranging from civilian air traffic controllers, through military radar operators, right up to the chaps who were responsible for whether or not to launch nuclear missiles.
They are some very credible, relied upon people, all saying yes, there is UFO technology, there’s anti-gravity, there’s free energy, and it’s extra-terrestrial in origin, and we’ve captured spacecraft and reverse-engineered it.
McKinnon also claimed that he came across NASA communication in which photographic experts said that they “regularly airbrushed out images of UFOs” from images taken from high-resolution satellites. McKinnon’s claims are in line with those of Lazarus who, before he decided to step away from the alien conspiracy game, said that the U.S. military relied upon alien technology to built their own crafts.
4. The Technologies Aliens Wouldn’t Give Us
In 2013 Canadian ex-Minister of Defense Paul Hellyer told Russia Today that not only is much of the technology we use alien-based, but that they would give usmore technology if we weren’t such assholes. If humankind “would go about it peacefully” they would share the splendor of their tech: Dropping the atom bomb, apparently, was a big sign to extraterrestrials that we’re too sketchy to handle any more gifts.
One piece of tech believers think aliens are holding back from us: Clean energy. Scientists have thrown out the idea that the star KIC 8462853 is surrounded by a Dyson sphere — a hypothetical megastructure that can capture a star’s power output.
The inverse of the aliens-holding-back-tech theory is that they haven’t visited us — but if they did, they would be such super-environmentalists that they would want to destroy us immediately. I’m not sure which idea is more comforting.
Pointing out intellectually redemptive attributes inside of a ham-handed, worn-out science fictions clichés can sort of seem like saying you’re really watching pornography to analyze the super-interesting dialogue. So, with common alien invasion stories – often replete with gratuitous scenes of destruction – it’s particularly difficult to find the deeper stuff. And because so many invasion stories are embedded with a somewhat xenophobic premise, what good can come out of alien invasion stories? Other than critiquing alien invasions inside of alien invasions (like in District 9), can an alien invasion actually be seen as a “good” thing? Can extraterrestrial invaders actually teach us a lesson?
The easiest example of aliens landing, and basically telling us what to do with our dumb Earthling lives, comes from Star Trek. While it’s not established immediately in the original 60’s show, by 1996’s Star Trek: First Contact, we learn that the peaceful, tolerant version of Earth was born out of the Vulcans landing on Earth, and saying hello. The Trek series Enterprise then depicted the ways in which the Vulcans more or less ran the Earth’s government, shared technology, and kind of bossed the military — Starfleet — around.
While all of this makes for some fun philosophical speeches on the show about how pushy and manipulative the Vulcans are, the larger positive and err …prosperous … impacts become obvious. Crime on Earth is gone, everyone is getting along, the economy is getting better, etc. All thanks to the Vulcans puppeteering our government!
In Star Trek, there is also an innumerable selection of other alien species who could have dropped in on us first, all of which would have either been a super bad influence on humanity (the Klingons) or destroyed the Earth entirely (the Borg.) In Trek’s evil alternate dimension – “the mirror universe” – it’s also established that the reason a corrupt and ruthless Empire rises in place of the goody toe-shoes Federation is all down to the moment where humans murder the “invading” Vulcans instead of shaking their hands. True, in all timelines, the Vulcans come in peace, so perhaps they’re not technically invaders. Still, in the “good” version of Star Trek’s future, the reason everything is so peachy is because we essentially let extraterrestrials tell us how to run our society better. Might not be a lasers and saucers invasion, but an ideological one for sure.
Though not technically aliens, this idea of cold, ultra-rational, emotionless beings dictating the peaceful survival of the human race has a precedent in the final section of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot. Here, in a section entitled “The Evitable Conflict,” humankind is being subtly controlled (and saved) by robot influence. Obviously, this fact is kept from the majority of the human population, for the same reason the Vulcans only later revealed they’d had spies living among the human race for like a century before they formally decided to “land” with their spaceships. In Star Trek, the far future humans adopt this same form of spying, which at several points, makes the human crews of Starfleet ships the “aliens,” walking among indigenous populations, subtly judging what they do and don’t like about these various cultures.
Arthur C. Clarke’s famous novel Childhood’s End also depicts parental alien invaders in the form of Overlords, who, unlike the Vulcans in Star Trek, aren’t subtle at all about telling us what they’re up to. I mean, the name “Overlords,” is a pretty dead giveaway as to what they’re up to.
At the risk of reducing a wonderful and multilayered novel to a few basic themes; one of the more predominant points here is that while a certain amount of peace and stability occurs on Earth thanks to the Overlords being in charge, there’s also cultural, artistic, and general creative stagnation among humankind. With a title like Childhood’s End you can probably see where this is going: eventually a new generation of human beings evolve with abilities (like telepathy) that kind of challenge what the Overlords want.
Still, Clarke weaves a more complicated idea of alien invaders here: the fear human beings have of alien invaders isn’t a reaction to being conquered, but a kind of precognitive awareness of what intellectual fallout results from beingtaken care of on a global scale. In this way, the positive aspects of the alien invasion aren’t so much “good” as a fact of life. At some point this kind of thing was always going to happen, and the evolutionary leap human beings make as a result of this invasion is inevitable.
A manipulated, and wholly staged alien invasion forms one of the various premises of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel The Sirens of Titan. Here, we get a full-on invasion from Mars complete with flying saucers! But here’s the rub: though the saucers come from Mars, they are crewed by human beings, all brain-washed and remote-controlled.
Though it is entirely different in tone than Childhood’s End, Vonnegut’s ultimate aim with the Martian invasion in The Sirens of Titan is to demonstrate just how mercilessly human beings would slaughter “creatures from another planet.” This has the roundabout effect on humankind and allows William Niles Rumfoord to establish the Church of the God of the Utterly Indifferent. The ultimate goal here was to show humankind that an alien invasion actually brought out their worst tendencies and the people they killed, were in fact, people they brainwashed. Vonnegut’s fake Martian invasion then succeeds at being both a literal invasion and a critique of the idea of invasions simultaneously.
If more conventional pop-cultural invasions – like Independence Day – are a reflection of reality, then the evil aliens have sort of taken over a long time ago; otherwise these kinds of films wouldn’t keep coming out. But we haven’t learned anything from this variety of aliens, yet. The ultimate and wholly unlikely twist ofIndependence Day: Resurgence would offer the humans some kind of potential advancement from all this senseless obliteration. But, unless those tentacles can figure out how to form the “live long and prosper” hand sign, or telepathically chide us about our faults, any deeper lessons from the new Independence Day are about as likely as having a relationship epiphany while watching a porno movie.
The premise for the original Independence Day was fairly simple. Aliens in huge laser frisbees attack the largest cities on Earth, working their way down to smaller towns as they attempt to eliminate mankind. This is a simple, easy-to-understand premise for a film but it is a really fucking stupid strategy. Like any other battle, the battle for Earth would be determined by one side’s ability to outmaneuver the other. Given that, why the hell weren’t the aliens targeting communications equipment or the electrical grid?
This was apparently not a group of deep space traveling geniuses.
Clever aliens — and aliens capable of locating intelligent life in a very big universe would likely be pretty smart — wouldn’t target humanity in general. They’d focus on infrastructure. The best bet to bringing about humanity’s end destroying the large physical structures and networks necessary for ensuring the survival and safety of humans and delivering essential services. The perfect targets would be remote, vulnerable, and vitally important. Unfortunately for us humans, they would also be myriad.
Here’s what smart aliens would actually attack in America.
Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, Arizona
PHOENIX - OCTOBER 19: The Palo Verde Nuclear generating plant, the nation's largest nuclear power plant, is seen October 19, 2005 in Phoenix, Arizona. The Arizona Public Service Co was forced to shut down Units 2 and 3 on October 11 when the company could not prove to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the cooling system in the units would operate correctly in case of an emergency. Units 2 and 3 of the plant are expected to be back online and at full capacity by the end of the week. Unit 1 had previously been shut down for maintenance. (Photo by Jeff Topping/Getty Images)
This power plant sits about 45 miles west of Phoenix, Arizona close to the town of Tonopah (population of a little less than 3,000). It’s the largest power plant in the United States, capable of an average electrical power production of over 29,000 gigawatts per hour. The 4,000-acre facility produces 35 percent of the electrical power that powers much of Arizona (hey Phoenix!) and Los Angeles and San Diego (as well as other communities in Southern California). In short, a lot of people rely on this power plant to power their homes and businesses. An alien force, however, could pretty easily launch a strike and take it offline without too much trouble. It’s in the middle of the wide-open desert, after all.
And, to boot, a nuclear meltdown would be a pretty gnarly side effect, especially if winds managed to blow the nuclear fallout towards population centers.
Satellites in Geosynchronous Orbit
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lifts off with Thales Alenia Space's TurkmenÄlem52E/MonacoSat satellite to a geosynchronous transfer orbit
In this instance, actually, it would be wiser to not strike at the surface at all but to fire up at major communication satellites. In GEO, a satellite will appear stationary at the same point in the sky at all times — at least to observers on the ground — which means it would conceivably possible to take out some hardware with a laser gun. The thing that renders objects in GEO vulnerable is also the thing that makes them work: pseudo-static positioning is optimal for commotions instruments since an antenna on the ground does not need to move in order to retain communication. Most of our critical communications equipment is tied to these satellites.
Humans currently have no way of really protecting satellites in GEO. So if I were an alien bent on eliminating our species, I would make GEO a pretty great place for orbital target practice.
Houston’s Water Supply
A view of the Houston skyline at dusk,
Water is life. And making sure our major metropolitan areas have enough water to drink and use for other day-to-day activities is vital to our society. Different communities have different sources for getting water, but some are more vulnerable than others. In the fourth biggest city in the United States, Houston, residents get their water from a mix of underground wells and surface.
Unfortunately, that water infrastructure is crumbling fast. Basic structures like pipes and mains are prone to breaking naturally. All an alien force would have to do is apply a little bit more strain to the existing technology and watch the whole thing fall apart. Before you know it, over two million people are scrambling to find fresh water in one of the hottest and driest states in the nation.
Interstate 5 Through the Central Valley, California
Vehicles drive by a 134-foot-high electronic sign displaying a temperature of 110 degrees Fahrenheit on July 23, 2014 in Baker, California.
California’s Central Valley farms grow a lot of food. And I mean, a lot of foods. The state is responsible for 99 percent of artichokes, 99 percent of walnuts, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, 95 percent of garlic — and so forth. And most of this farmland is, obviously, located in a sparsely populated section of the state.
If aliens wanted to decimate not just food yields for California, but for the rest of the country, they would need to look no further than the Central Valley and begin attacking and scorching the crops located in this region. The effects would devastate the United States’ food production and in all likelihood force us to resort to other means to keep populations well-fed.
Ships in the Florida Strait
A container ship moves past the United States Coast Guard Cutter William Flores.
Transportation by the high seas is still the most cost-effective way to ship goods back and forth between places. The Florida Strait remains one of these key locations that allows ships to pass from the Atlantic Ocean into the Gulf of Mexico and access the Caribbean and Central and South American countries.
As you can imagine, there’s a lot of oil that moves through this transportation hub. While the Florida Strait is not an isolated place, it’s certainly far and wide enough that a rag-tag group of extraterrestrials would just need to create a steady stream of attacks to significantly affect the transport of vital resources.
The Mississippi River Levee System
New Orleans is ringed by hundred of miles of levees to protect against flooding.
Humans aren’t the best at deciding on safe places to build communities. Coastlines are a great example. It used to be essential to be next to a waterway, no matter the disadvantages when it came to flooding and storms. These days, with increased water elevations and more frequent supercell storms, being next to the coast is a liability — yet we continue to stick around and just board things up with levees and dykes, imagining they’ll last forever.
A smart alien force would know this. Just take the 3,500-mile levee system around the Mississippi River that protects 4 million people from devastation via flood. If a hostile invasion wanted to wreak havoc, all it would need to do is impact the levees at key areas during a major storm event and watch the waters do the rest.
Photos via Getty Images / Jeff Topping, Getty Images / NASA, Getty Images / Scott Halleran, Getty Images / Ethan Miller, Getty Images / Joe Raedle, Getty Images / Mario Tama
Are black holes truly black? A new laboratory experiment points toward "no."
Using a simulated black hole made from soundwaves, scientists have observed a phenomenon known as Hawking radiation: a faint energy emission that, in theory, is created right at the edge of a black hole's event horizon, or the point beyond which even light cannot escape.
If Hawking radiation comes from astrophysical black holes (not just those created in a lab), it would mean these objects are not entirely dark. It could also help scientists solve a paradox posed by black holes, and perhaps shed light on one of the most significant problems facing modern physics. [The Strangest Black Holes in the Universe]
Jeff Steinhauer, an experimental physicist at the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology in Israel, and lead author on the new study, told Space.com.
According to Steinhauer, earlier calculations bycosmologist Stephen Hawking (who came up with the theory that bears his name) combined the theories of quantum physics and gravity. The current experiment tests those calculations, providing the first strong evidence that they are correct, Steinhauer said.
"A black hole is a testing ground for the laws of physics," Steinhauer said.
Swimming against the current
There's a tricky concept in physics that says that pairs of particles constantly blink into existence throughout space. One is a particle of normal matter and the other is its exact opposite, or antiparticle, so the two annihilate one another, and there's no change to the universe's energy balance sheet. These are called virtual particles. When this happens near the edge, orevent horizon, of a black hole, the particles can avoid complete destruction; one can fall inside while the other escapes.
But observing such interactions in nature has remained difficult, the Hawking radiation around a black hole (if it exists) is so faint that it can't be seen from Earth around known black holes (most of which are very far away). In addition to the distance, the Hawking radiation is likely overwhelmed by radiation from other sources, Steinhauer said.
"It makes it seemingly almost impossible to see this very slight radiation coming from the black hole," he said.
The same problem applies in a laboratory, where any heat can create background radiation that overwhelms the lab-produced Hawking radiation. To eliminate that problem, Steinhauer's experiment ran at less than a billionth of a degree above absolute zero.
In the analogue black hole, a line of cold rubidium atoms stream from a laser to create a form of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. The cold gas flows faster than the speed of sound in one direction, so that a sound wave trying to go against the flow can't manage to move forward. In this respect, the slower moving sound wave is like a particle trying to escape from a black hole.
"It's like trying to swim against the river," Steinhauer said. "If the river is going faster than you can swim, you go backwards, even though you feel like you're going forward."
The upstream attempt is analogous to light in a black hole trying to escape, he said. Sound waves trying to move forward instead fall backward. If two virtual particles were created near the edge of the event horizon, one particle could be consumed by the black hole (the fast-moving stream), while the other escapes, avoiding destruction. The escaping particles are called Hawking radiation.
A method of creating a black hole using sound waves was proposed in 1981, and since then scientists have struggled to simulate Hawking radiation in the lab. Two years ago, Steinhauer performed an experiment that measured Hawking radiation after something was deliberately crashed into the event horizon of the analogue black hole. This new experiment took more of a wait-and-see stance, waiting for the particle-antiparticle pair to appear without external stimulation, more like what happens in the depths of space.
Just as Hawking theorized, the simulated black hole spit out the predicted particles, a sign of Hawking radiation.
"What I saw suggests that a real black hole might emit something," Steinhauer said.
The new finding also has larger implications for the field of physics, he said. One of the biggest mysteries in physics is why Einstein's theory of gravity (which describes large-scale interactions in the universe) doesn't seem to be compatible with quantum mechanics (which describes very small-scale interactions).
"Combining gravity with quantum physics is one of the main goals of physics today," Steinhauer said. "Hawking made the first steps toward that."
The simulated black hole tested Hawking's equations.
"His calculations predicted there should be light from a black hole," Steinhauer said. "It turns out his calculations were correct."
Solving a paradox?
One intriguing result of the artificial black hole involved insight into theinformation paradox. According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, everything that crosses the event horizon of a black hole is consumed, including information. As the escaping particle steals energy from a black hole, the massive object can shrink over time, eventually evaporating into nothing. Of course, this assumes it has stopped consuming nearby materialand thus isn't putting on new weight. Theoretically, a black hole can shrink into nothing, taking with it the information carried by or about the particles it consumed.
"Information has vanished," he said. "It's like it goes into the black hole and disappears."
Since quantum mechanics suggests that information can't be lost, that raises a paradox.
According to Hawking's calculations, the surviving particles contain no useful information about how the black hole formed and what it consumed, suggesting that information vanished with the black hole itself.
Steinhauer's black hole revealed that the higher energy particle pairs remained entangled, even after one was swallowed by the event horizon. Entangled particles are able to share information instantaneously, even when they are separated by great distances, a phenomenon sometimes described as "spooky action at a distance."
"Some of the solutions to this [paradox] probably rely on entanglement," Steinhauer said.
Scientists not associated with the research who were interviewed by Nature News and Physics World both said that while the experiment appears to have measured Hawking radiation, it does not necessarily prove that Hawking radiation exists around black holes in space.
The research was published online in the journal Nature Physics.
This Martian Landscape Looks Like the American Desert
This Martian Landscape Looks Like the American Desert
By Calla Cofield, Space.com Staff Writer
Murray Buttes, a series of sandstone features on the surface of Mars, was imaged by the Curiosity Rover on Aug. 5, 2016.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
A panoramic view from the surface of Mars shows brown and copper-colored plateaus and buttes, reminiscent of desert regions in the southwest United States.
NASA's Curiosity Rover took this panorama on Aug. 5, the fourth anniversary of its nail-biting landing on the Red Planet. The view is comprised of more than 130 images taken by the rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam), according to a statement from NASA.
The flat region in the foreground of the image is known as the Murray formation, while the collection of buttes a little further ahead is informally known as Murray Buttes. The region was named after planetary scientist Bruce Murray, a former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who passed away in 2013. (The Curiosity mission is managed by JPL).
The buttes are eroded sandstone formations that sit on top of lower Mount Sharp (the distant bump on the left-side of the image is upper Mount Sharp). The formations are now covered in a layer of rock that keeps them fairly well preserved, the statement said. Curiosity studied the softer layer of sandstone, called the Stimson formation, earlier this year. The flat Murray formation, formed from "lakebed mud deposits," according to the statement.
NASA's Curiosity rover — the centerpiece of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission — landed on Mars Aug. 5. How much do you know about Curiosity and its mission?
For a sense of scale, the wide plateau to the left of Curiosity's robotic arm is about 300 feet (90 meters) from the rover. The mesa is about 50 feet (15 meters) tall, while the horizontal ridge that runs horizontal across the top is about 200 feet (60 meters) long. To see the rover's location when this image was taken, check out this aerial map of its route.
Curiosity's primary mission goal was to study the surface of Mars and look for signs that it may have once been hospitable to life. In its extended mission, the rover is looking for clues as to how this portion of lower Mount Sharp evolved from a (possibly) hospitable water environment to its current, inhospitable condition.
In 1981, the Voyager 2 space probe took intriguing images of Saturn’s rings as it passed by the giant planet on its way to Uranus.
The images showed what looked like ghostly “spokes” moving on the rings, much like the spokes of a bicycle wheel as it turns. After some head-scratching, scientists realized that the Saturnian spokes most likely were tiny specks of dust moving around the rings due to electric and magnetic forces. These forces result from electrically charged gases known as plasma.
Even though you might not realize it based on our daily experiences, researchers think that 99 percent of the matter in our universe is in a plasma state. Many processes that occur in the universe are due in part to the presence of plasma.
Here on Earth, industry uses techniques that involve manipulating these ionized gases for microchip production, as well as for welding materials such as aluminum. Research facilities study plasma in hope of hitting on an efficient nuclear fusion process for energy production. In all these instances micron-size dust is present – which can be a good or a bad thing, depending.
The presence of dust in plasma makes it tricky to study them in a laboratory setting. Here at Baylor University’s Center for Astrophysics, Space Physics and Engineering Research (CASPER), we’ve built a sophisticated experimental facility to investigate these dusty plasma systems. We hope to answer fundamental questions related to dust-plasma interactions both on Earth and in space, in the process advancing our understanding of physics and astrophysics. Our investigations will allow us to untangle issues like the role of dust buildup in super-high-speed crashes in space, the formation of planets, and even areas belonging to life sciences, such as double-helix molecular interaction.
Solid swimmers in an electrical sea
Dusty plasma, also called complex plasma, contains small, solid particles distributed throughout the ionized gas. These particles can have the shape of a sphere, a rod or an irregular “pancake.” The reason dusty plasma are very interesting, and even technologically valuable, comes down to the fact that the dust particles themselves can become electrically charged.
We can think of dust particles as swimmers in a sea of electrons and ions – negative and positive charges, respectively. Electrons are so tiny compared to the dust that they easily stick to the particles' surfaces. When that happens, a dust particle will become negatively charged.
Because like charges repel each other, that bit of dust will now feel a push from other negatively charged dust particles. Likewise, that same negatively charged dust particle will feel a pull by the positive ions in the plasma, because charges of opposite signs attract each other. The net result is that dust particles will be pushed and pulled in many different directions, making them move in complex and fascinating ways.
Dusty plasma ‘in the wild’
One place to find dusty plasma is in Earth’s atmosphere, where they’re generated when meteoroids enter the atmosphere’s upper layers at speeds of several kilometers per second. Researchers study them with specialized radars that can detect the ball of plasma that forms around the meteroids as they heat up due to friction with the air.
Photo taken by astronauts of noctilucent clouds in Earth’s atmosphere above the midnight sun (above the blue layer).
Credit: NASA
At high geographic latitudes (between 50° and 70° north and south of the equator) an intriguing phenomenon occurs. Clouds made of tiny ice crystals and dust appear at an altitude of about 80 kilometers during the summer months. Known as noctilucent clouds, they are too thin to be visible in daylight, but they glow before sunrise or after sunset when the sun is below the horizon.
The clouds' icy dust particles are thought to play a role in the chemical composition of the atmosphere at those altitudes. In particular, their presence may be related to depletion of sodium and potassium. And since noctilucent clouds reside in an ionized region of the atmosphere (specifically, the lower ionosphere), their icy dust particles become electrically charged by electrons. These conditions give rise to a variety of electromagnetic phenomenaresearchers are actively investigating.
Artist’s concept of a comet, with solar wind blowing back the coma into a tail.
Credit: NASA, CC BY-ND
Farther from home, but still within our planetary neighborhood, comets can put on an amazing showthanks to dusty plasma effects. As a comet approaches the sun, the sun’s heat transforms part of the comet’s ice into vapor. This vapor, which contains many tiny dust grains, engulfs the comet nucleus to form a “coma.” The solar wind, which is a plasma made mostly of electrons and protons, pushes the cometary coma away from the sun and forms the spectacular tail with which we are familiar.
Even farther from us still, at distances of hundreds of light-years, dust particles embedded in huge, donut-shaped gas clouds move in orbits around young stars. These disks, known as protoplanetary disks, arewhere planets are formed. Portions of protoplanetary disks may be electrically charged and perhaps threaded by magnetic fields. The dust grains that have been detected in many of these disks are small enough to soak up plasma electrons, and it’s likely that grain charging affects how easily grains can grow to form planet precursors.
Illustration of a star surrounded by a protoplanetary disk.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, CC BY-ND
Astronomers detect these dusty plasma in space by capturing the light dust particles re-emit after being illuminated by stars. It requires extremely sophisticated instruments, such as the Hubble Space Telescope. From these observations, one can infer things like the dust size and chemical composition.
Dusty plasma in the lab
From a long distance, we can obtain only a limited amount of information about natural dusty plasma. By carrying out controlled experiments in laboratories, we can learn more about dusty plasma properties. For example, by directly manipulating the amount of ionization, we can control the arrangement of the dust particles. In contrast, at this time it is generally not possible to infer the precise arrangement of dust particles in space from telescopic observations.
To experimentally study dusty plasma, a lab must be capable of producing, confining and manipulating an ionized gas – that is, one that contains electrically charged particles. This is possible here at Baylor’s CASPER, where we use advanced instrumentation to investigate the behavior of dusty plasma. For example, we use an instrument called an inductively driven plasma generator – basically a wind tunnel containing electrically charged gases – to study a plasma’s interaction with lunar dust.
We’re also interested in what happens in the plasma when very fast dust particles collide with different targets. Understanding more about these collisions could help with designing better protection for spacecraft from micrometeorite impacts.
CASPER is one of a very few experimental facilities in the world that has three operating complex plasma cells – the chambers into which different gases can be injected to be ionized. Two are Gaseous Electronics Conference radio-frequency reference cells, a standardized plasma-producing chamber. The third is a custom-built device designed here that allows for the formation of much larger complex plasma systems than normally possible. The laboratory within which these cells reside was built from the ground up specifically for them. It’s a highly stable environment with regard to temperature and vibration, making it possible to produce extremely low-noise systems.
A typical experimental setup for studying dust structures in plasma.
Credit: Truell W. Hyde, Jie Kong and Lorin S. Matthews
A typical experiment looks like this: a glass box can be placed between two electrodes to create an electric potential that will confine the dust-plasma system. The dust particles, which are made of melamine formaldehyde and have a diameter of less than 9 micrometers (about a thousandth of a centimeter in size), are introduced into the box through a dust shaker. Once the system power is turned on, the electric forces will change the arrangement of the dust particles, which will form linear or helical chains, depending on the amount of power used. Images of the dust structures can be captured by telescopic cameras.
Top and side views of different dust structures formed in a Gaseous Electronics Conference radio-frequency reference cell.
Credit: Truell W. Hyde, Jie Kong and Lorin S. Matthews
These experiments open a window into the way the universe works, whether we are looking for improved efficiency of industrial processes or trying to understand how our solar system formed.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Space.com.
Een opname die nu ongeveer viraal lijkt te gaan, laat een vreemd wezen zien van ongeveer drie meter hoog in een woestijn in Portugal.
Op een gegeven moment verdwijnt het achter een bosje en komt niet meer tevoorschijn.
Natuurlijk zijn er regelmatig allerlei grappenmakers die de meest waanzinnige dingen verzinnen om maar aandacht te krijgen en dus is voorzichtigheid altijd geboden.
Wanneer er dan een video-opname publiek wordt van een alien ergens in een Portugese woestijn, is er een gerede kans dat je te maken hebt met een nepopname en zijn commentaren te verwachten zoals de volgende:
“Het is Donald Trump” en “dit is net zo betrouwbaar als de pornosite die mij verzekert dat er talloze vrouwen in de buurt smachtend op mij zitten te wachten”.
Scott Waring echter, van Ufo Sightings Daily, is ervan overtuigd dat we hier wel degelijk met een buitenaards iemand te maken hebben.
Het ziet er in ieder geval zo uit.
Scott zegt dat de buitenaardsen zo ver gevorderd zijn met alles dat ze zelfs in staat zijn om onze gedachten te lezen. Zo zegt hij dat de buitenaardse in dit geval weet dat hij wordt gadegeslagen en dat hij daarom achter het bosje kroop. Niet om zich als zodanig te verbergen, maar wel om zichzelf naar een andere plek te “beamen”.
Volgens Waring is het heel goed mogelijk dat deze buitenaardsen een basis hebben op vier tot vijf kilometer onder de grond.
Dat ook hier sprake zou zijn van een lift die onder de grond gaat zoals destijds het geval in Italië in een zaak die bekendstaat als de Friendship zaak, waarover dadelijk meer.
Nu eerst de opname in de Portugese woestijn:
In een eerder artikel schreven wij over die Friendship zaak in Italië onder andere het volgende:
In Italië vond in de vijftiger en zeventiger jaren contact plaats tussen mensen en buitenaardsen.
Het contact begon in 1960 nadat Gaspare de Lama in het blad Settimana afbeeldingen had gezien van drie vliegende objecten die boven de kust van Pescara in Italië waren verschenen. Hij schreef de redactie een brief waarin hij zijn hoop uitsprak dat de wezens naar de Aarde waren gekomen om de mens te helpen. Enige dagen later werd hij gebeld om een afspraak te maken.
Teleportatie
De eerste ontmoeting vond plaats door middel van teleportatie. Filmrolletjes materialiseerden in de lucht en vielen op de grond. Deze videoboodschappen bevatten meestal een groet of een aanwijzing.
Bruno Ghibaudi van Settimana vroeg Gaspare een kleine radio aan te schaffen. Hij plaatste het apparaat op de tafel waarna er een blauwe vlam van een halve meter uit kwam. Soms spraken Sigir of andere leden van de buitenaardse groep door de radio.
Op een dag liet Bruno weten dat ‘ze een cadeau voor hem hadden’ en Gaspare mocht een locatie uitkiezen. Hij koos voor een plaats bij Milaan alwaar ze een video en foto’s maakten van een vliegende schotel.
De buitenaardsen spraken niet alleen via de radio maar konden ook zien wie in de kamer aanwezig waren en waar de betrokkenen aan dachten. Ze wisten het dialect van de aanwezige personen exact te imiteren. Soms zei afgezant Dimpietro tegen Gaspare dat hij aan iets anders moest denken omdat zijn gedachten negatief waren.
Sigir, Dimpietro, Gallarate en anderen van de buitenaardse groep, die door de getuigen W56 werd genoemd, brachten veel wijsheid over. In het begin twijfelen mensen, want anders zouden ze te naïef zijn. Op de lange termijn vertrouw je op jezelf omdat je vibraties leert onderscheiden.
Vertrouwen
Wanneer je twijfelt kun je eindeloos vragen blijven stellen, maar vertrouwen komt spontaan. De buitenaardsen brachten dit gevoel over. Je kunt geloof achterwege laten, maar vertrouwen is belangrijk. Je kunt niet in God geloven, je kunt enkel ‘liefde’ zijn.
De afgezanten van W56, ongeveer drie meter lang, hadden een bepaalde hoeveelheid liefdesenergie nodig om te overleven. Ze kregen dit echter niet van de groep omdat de leden niet met elkaar in harmonie waren. Gaspare zegt dat ze nog steeds op Aarde zijn.
De spirituele boodschap van de buitenaardse afgezanten was dat een betere wereld geen utopie is, maar reeds bestaat. De afgezanten waren hier het levende bewijs van.
Gaspare heeft het gevoel dat zijn groep gefaald heeft omdat de leden er niet in slaagden liefdesenergie over te brengen aan de buitenaardsen. Een liefde die ze onderling gedeeld zouden moeten hebben om deze vervolgens uit te stralen naar de afgezanten toe.
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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 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
