“What’s Up With UAPs?” Exploring the Government’s Interest in UFOs with Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson

Unidentified aerial phenomena, commonly referred to as UFOs, have captured the imagination of people around the world for decades. These sightings of strange objects in the sky have prompted many to speculate about the possibility of extraterrestrial life, sparking widespread interest and fascination. However, as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson explains in a recent Youtube video, the government’s interest in investigating these phenomena is not based solely on their potential connection to alien life.

According to Tyson, the government’s interest in investigating UFOs is largely motivated by concerns over safety and security. If there is something flying in the sky that cannot be identified, it is important to determine whether it poses a threat to individuals, the economy, or national security. As such, it is reasonable to allocate resources towards identifying and investigating these phenomena.

Despite the common association between UFOs and aliens, Tyson cautions against jumping to conclusions about the nature of these phenomena. As a scientist, Tyson encourages a skeptical, evidence-based approach to studying and investigating the unknown. While it may be tempting to attribute unexplained sightings to alien life, it is important to maintain a rational perspective and consider alternative explanations.

Furthermore, Tyson notes that the prevalence of technology such as smartphones means that any potential alien invasion would likely be reported and documented quickly. With millions of people around the world carrying smartphones capable of recording and sharing videos, it is unlikely that any significant event would go unnoticed or unreported.

In summary, while UFOs and their potential connection to alien life continue to capture the public’s imagination, the government’s interest in investigating these phenomena is primarily motivated by concerns over safety and security. Rather than making extraordinary claims without evidence, it is important to approach these sightings with a scientific mindset, embracing the unknown and seeking to understand the phenomena through rational investigation.

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28-02-2023 om 14:23 geschreven door peter  

Neil Savage

Credit: Neil Webb

When Rohit Bhattacharya began his PhD in computer science, his aim was to build a tool that could help physicians to identify people with cancer who would respond well to immunotherapy. This form of treatment helps the body’s immune system to fight tumours, and works best against malignant growths that produce proteins that immune cells can bind to. Bhattacharya’s idea was to create neural networks that could profile the genetics of both the tumour and a person’s immune system, and then predict which people would be likely to benefit from treatment.

But he discovered that his algorithms weren’t up to the task. He could identify patterns of genes that correlated to immune response, but that wasn’t sufficient¹. “I couldn’t say that this specific pattern of binding, or this specific expression of genes, is a causal determinant in the patient’s response to immunotherapy,” he explains.

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Bhattacharya was stymied by the age-old dictum that correlation does not equal causation — a fundamental stumbling block in artificial intelligence (AI). Computers can be trained to spot patterns in data, even patterns that are so subtle that humans might miss them. And computers can use those patterns to make predictions — for instance, that a spot on a lung X-ray indicates a tumour². But when it comes to cause and effect, machines are typically at a loss. They lack a common-sense understanding of how the world works that people have just from living in it. AI programs trained to spot disease in a lung X-ray, for example, have sometimes gone astray by zeroing in on the markings used to label the right-hand side of the image³. It is obvious, to a person at least, that there is no causal relationship between the style and placement of the letter ‘R’ on an X-ray and signs of lung disease. But without that understanding, any differences in how such markings are drawn or positioned could be enough to steer a machine down the wrong path.

For computers to perform any sort of decision making, they will need an understanding of causality, says Murat Kocaoglu, an electrical engineer at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. “Anything beyond prediction requires some sort of causal understanding,” he says. “If you want to plan something, if you want to find the best policy, you need some sort of causal reasoning module.”

Incorporating models of cause and effect into machine-learning algorithms could also help mobile autonomous machines to make decisions about how they navigate the world. “If you’re a robot, you want to know what will happen when you take a step here with this angle or that angle, or if you push an object,” Kocaoglu says.

In Bhattacharya’s case, it was possible that some of the genes that the system was highlighting were responsible for a better response to the treatment. But a lack of understanding of causality meant that it was also possible that the treatment was affecting the gene expression — or that another, hidden factor was influencing both. The potential solution to this problem lies in something known as causal inference — a formal, mathematical way to ascertain whether one variable affects another.

Causal inference has long been used by economists and epidemiologists to test their ideas about causation. The 2021 Nobel prize in economic sciences went to three researchers who used causal inference to ask questions such as whether a higher minimum wage leads to lower employment, or what effect an extra year of schooling has on future income. Now, Bhattacharya is among a growing number of computer scientists who are working to meld causality with AI to give machines the ability to tackle such questions, helping them to make better decisions, learn more efficiently and adapt to change.

A notion of cause and effect helps to guide humans through the world. “Having a causal model of the world, even an imperfect one — because that’s what we have — allows us to make more robust decisions and predictions,” says Yoshua Bengio, a computer scientist who directs Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, a collaboration between four universities in Montreal, Canada. Humans’ grasp of causality supports attributes such as imagination and regret; giving computers a similar ability could transform their capabilities.

Climbing the ladder

The headline successes of AI over the past decade — such as winning against people at various competitive games, identifying the content of images and, in the past few years, generating text and pictures in response to written prompts — have been powered by deep learning. By studying reams of data, such systems learn how one thing correlates with another. These learnt associations can then be put to use. But this is just the first rung on the ladder towards a loftier goal: something that Judea Pearl, a computer scientist and director of the Cognitive Systems Laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles, refers to as “deep understanding”.

In 2011, Pearl won the A.M. Turing Award, often referred to as the Nobel prize for computer science, for his work developing a calculus to allow probabilistic and causal reasoning. He describes a three-level hierarchy of reasoning⁴. The base level is ‘seeing’, or the ability to make associations between things. Today’s AI systems are extremely good at this. Pearl refers to the next level as ‘doing’ — making a change to something and noting what happens. This is where causality comes into play.

A computer can develop a causal model by examining interventions: how changes in one variable affect another. Instead of creating one statistical model of the relationship between variables, as in current AI, the computer makes many. In each one, the relationship between the variables stays the same, but the values of one or several of the variables are altered. That alteration might lead to a new outcome. All of this can be evaluated using the mathematics of probability and statistics. “The way I think about it is, causal inference is just about mathematizing how humans make decisions,” Bhattacharya says.

Bengio, who won the A.M. Turing Award in 2018 for his work on deep learning, and his students have trained a neural network to generate causal graphs⁵ — a way of depicting causal relationships. At their simplest, if one variable causes another variable, it can be shown with an arrow running from one to the other. If the direction of causality is reversed, so too is the arrow. And if the two are unrelated, there will be no arrow linking them. Bengio’s neural network is designed to randomly generate one of these graphs, and then check how compatible it is with a given set of data. Graphs that fit the data better are more likely to be accurate, so the neural network learns to generate more graphs similar to those, searching for one that fits the data best.

This approach is akin to how people work something out: people generate possible causal relationships, and assume that the ones that best fit an observation are closest to the truth. Watching a glass shatter when it is dropped it onto concrete, for instance, might lead a person to think that the impact on a hard surface causes the glass to break. Dropping other objects onto concrete, or knocking a glass onto a soft carpet, from a variety of heights, enables a person to refine their model of the relationship and better predict the outcome of future fumbles.

Face the changes

A key benefit of causal reasoning is that it could make AI more able to deal with changing circumstances. Existing AI systems that base their predictions only on associations in data are acutely vulnerable to any changes in how those variables are related. When the statistical distribution of learnt relationships changes — whether owing to the passage of time, human actions or another external factor — the AI will become less accurate.

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For instance, Bengio could train a self-driving car on his local roads in Montreal, and the AI might become good at operating the vehicle safely. But export that same system to London, and it would immediately break for a simple reason: cars are driven on the right in Canada and on the left in the United Kingdom, so some of the relationships the AI had learnt would be backwards. He could retrain the AI from scratch using data from London, but that would take time, and would mean that the software would no longer work in Montreal, because its new model would replace the old one.

A causal model, on the other hand, allows the system to learn about many possible relationships. “Instead of having just one set of relationships between all the things you could observe, you have an infinite number,” Bengio says. “You have a model that accounts for what could happen under any change to one of the variables in the environment.”

Humans operate with such a causal model, and can therefore quickly adapt to changes. A Canadian driver could fly to London and, after taking a few moments to adjust, could drive perfectly well on the left side of the road. The UK Highway Code means that, unlike in Canada, right turns involve crossing traffic, but it has no effect on what happens when the driver turns the wheel or how the tyres interact with the road. “Everything we know about the world is essentially the same,” Bengio says. Causal modelling enables a system to identify the effects of an intervention and account for it in its existing understanding of the world, rather than having to relearn everything from scratch.

This ability to grapple with changes without scrapping everything we know also allows humans to make sense of situations that aren’t real, such as fantasy movies. “Our brain is able to project ourselves into an invented environment in which some things have changed,” Bengio says. “The laws of physics are different, or there are monsters, but the rest is the same.”

Counter to fact

The capacity for imagination is at the top of Pearl’s hierarchy of causal reasoning. The key here, Bhattacharya says, is speculating about the outcomes of actions not taken.

Bhattacharya likes to explain such counterfactuals to his students by reading them ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost. In this poem, the narrator talks of having to choose between two paths through the woods, and expresses regret that they can’t know where the other road leads. “He’s imagining what his life would look like if he walks down one path versus another,” Bhattacharya says. That is what computer scientists would like to replicate with machines capable of causal inference: the ability to ask ‘what if’ questions.

Imagining whether an outcome would have been better or worse if we’d taken a different action is an important way that humans learn. Bhattacharya says it would be useful to imbue AI with a similar capacity for what is known as ‘counterfactual regret’. The machine could run scenarios on the basis of choices it didn’t make and quantify whether it would have been better off making a different one. Some scientists have already used counterfactual regret to help a computer improve its poker playing⁶.

The ability to imagine different scenarios could also help to overcome some of the limitations of existing AI, such as the difficulty of reacting to rare events. By definition, Bengio says, rare events show up only sparsely, if at all, in the data that a system is trained on, so the AI can’t learn about them. A person driving a car can imagine an occurrence they’ve never seen, such as a small plane landing on the road, and use their understanding of how things work to devise potential strategies to deal with that specific eventuality. A self-driving car without the capability for causal reasoning, however, could at best default to a generic response for an object in the road. By using counterfactuals to learn rules for how things work, cars could be better prepared for rare events. Working from causal rules rather than a list of previous examples ultimately makes the system more versatile.

Using causality to program imagination into a computer could even lead to the creation of an automated scientist. During a 2021 online summit sponsored by Microsoft Research, Pearl suggested that such a system could generate a hypothesis, pick the best observation to test that hypothesis and then decide what experiment would provide that observation.

Right now, however, this remains a way off. The theory and basic mathematics of causal inference are well established, but the methods for AI to realize interventions and counterfactuals are still at an early stage. “This is still very fundamental research,” Bengio says. “We’re at the stage of figuring out the algorithms in a very basic way.” Once researchers have grasped these fundamentals, algorithms will then need to be optimized to run efficiently. It is uncertain how long this will all take. “I feel like we have all the conceptual tools to solve this problem and it’s just a matter of a few years, but usually it takes more time than you expect,” Bengio says. “It might take decades instead.”

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Bhattacharya thinks that researchers should take a leaf from machine learning, the rapid proliferation of which was in part because of programmers developing open-source software that gives others access to the basic tools for writing algorithms. Equivalent tools for causal inference could have a similar effect. “There’s been a lot of exciting developments in recent years,” Bhattacharya says, including some open-source packages from tech giant Microsoft and from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He and his colleagues also developed an open-source causal module they call Ananke. But these software packages remain a work in progress.

Bhattacharya would also like to see the concept of causal inference introduced at earlier stages of computer education. Right now, he says, the topic is taught mainly at the graduate level, whereas machine learning is common in undergraduate training. “Causal reasoning is fundamental enough that I hope to see it introduced in some simplified form at the high-school level as well,” he says.

If these researchers are successful at building causality into computing, it could bring AI to a whole new level of sophistication. Robots could navigate their way through the world more easily. Self-driving cars could become more reliable. Programs for evaluating the activity of genes could lead to new understanding of biological mechanisms, which in turn could allow the development of new and better drugs. “That could transform medicine,” Bengio says.

Even something such as ChatGPT, the popular natural-language generator that produces text that reads as though it could have been written by a human, could benefit from incorporating causality. Right now, the algorithm betrays itself by producing clearly written prose that contradicts itself and goes against what we know to be true about the world. With causality, ChatGPT could build a coherent plan for what it was trying to say, and ensure that it was consistent with facts as we know them.

When he was asked whether that would put writers out of business, Bengio says that could take some time. “But how about you lose your job in ten years, but you’re saved from cancer and Alzheimer’s,” he says. “That’s a good deal.”

• doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00577-1

• This article is part of Nature Outlook: Robotics and artificial intelligence, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

References

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5. Deleu, T. et al. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.13903 (2022).

6. Brown, N., Lerer, A., Gross, S. & Sandholm, T. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.00164 (2019).

Download references

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28-02-2023 om 00:36 geschreven door peter  

BY ANTON POZDNYAKOV

“The Universe Breakers”: Six Galaxies That are Too Big, Too Early

New images from JWST show six galaxies at a time when the Universe was only 3% of its current age, 500-700 million years after the Big Bang. They should be baby galaxies, but they contain 100 times more stellar mass than astronomers were expecting to see soon after the beginning of the Universe. If true, this calls the current thinking of galaxy formation into question or challenges most models of cosmology.

• More about the “impossible” galaxies.

A 500-Meter-Long Asteroid Flew Past Earth and Astronomers Were Watching

An asteroid the size of the Empire State Building flew past Earth on Feb. 3rd, coming within 1.8 million km of our planet. For context, that’s about five times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Astronomers turned the Goldstone Solar System Radar dish on the space rock, mapping its surface. The asteroid, called 2011 AG5, is one of the most elongated objects ever seen, with a length-to-width ratio of 10:3. It’ll have another close flyby in 2040 when it comes within three times the Earth-Moon distance.

Source of Dark Energy

A new paper was released suggesting that there might be a link between dark energy and the growth of supermassive black holes. Researchers speculate that, in fact, black holes can be the source of dark energy. If true (which we yet need to prove) this can be ground-breaking.

To shed more light on the research here’s an in-depth interview with Dr Chris Pearson from STFC RAL Space, who is a co-author of the paper.

• More about black holes and dark energy.

New Spacecraft Can See Into the Permanently Shadowed Craters on the Moon

The permanently shadowed craters at the Moon’s south pole are exciting because they contain vast reserves of water ice that future human explorers could use. But studying these craters is difficult because they’re in shadow and have no direct illumination falling inside them. NASA’s new ShadowCam instrument is at the Moon, flying with Korea’s Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter. ShadowCam can see in such low light that it can reveal incredible details in these shadowed craters as if they were lit in sunlight.

• More about ShadowCam.-

ESA’s Early Warning System for Asteroids

ESA is considering their own mission to search for potentially dangerous asteroids. The spacecraft will be called NEOMIR and it will go to the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange point. This way it will be able to see incoming space rocks that will otherwise be missed because of the Sun blinding the telescopes. NEOMIR will also operate in the infrared, which will make its task even easier.

• More about NEOMIR.

Don’t Miss Out On Space News

If you want to get a curated selection of the most important space and astronomy news every week, subscribe to our Weekly Email Newsletter and get magazine-size ad-free news directly from Fraser Cain.

If you prefer the news to be videoed at you, check out our Space Bites playlist on our YouTube channel

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27-02-2023 om 22:48 geschreven door peter  

Lights Over Luke AFB Near Glendale, Arizona Feb 1, 2023, UFO Sighting News. Warning The Military That Aliens Are Still #1 Most Powerful On Earth.

Date of sighting: Feb 1, 2023

Location of sighting: Glendale, Arizona, USA

 

They eyewitness was really on top of it when he caught a fleet of glowing spheres over Luke AFB a few days ago. The UFOs glowed powerfully and each was almost the same size as the one next to it. UFOs are often seen investigating the USAF military bases, even known at to shut down nuclear missiles in silos, forcing the military to remove them entirely since they could never repair them (Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota). Ellsworth was my personal base I worked at in the USAF (Scott Waring) and its also where I had a sighting of a fleet of over 25 spheres the size of 747s back in 1990 abouts, when I worked on B1 Lancer Bombers. There is another aliens interaction with guards at Ellsworth, but this is about Luke AFB, so for a later time. Aliens have a high interest in US military, to both predict, control and warn the Governments of the world of their own alien power being still #1 on Earth.

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan 

Eyewitness states: 

Started off with 3 Lights then I initially saw them they slowly faded in then 5 other lights fade into sight then faded out the same way they appeared.

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

27-02-2023 om 20:29 geschreven door peter  

Mexican president photographed a Maya elf in a tree, releasing it on Twitter, UFO Sighting News.

The president of Mexico has posted a photo on Twitter of a strange tree climbing, hiding creature that resembles a human with a hoodie. The photo resembles some ancient mayan gods carved in stone, but he said it reusables a woodland elf. Maybe, maybe not, but its odd, and he  himself recored this strange alien creature. Yes I said alien. I believe it to be an alien species watching the president, recording him, because he will do something very important, very soon. Similar sightings occurred to US president Ronald Reagan, who saw twice a UFO while flying his private plane as Governor of California. Also US president Jimmy Carter said he came out of the building and saw from a distance a glowing light in the sky, watching him. It was such a profound experience that President Carter went home and wrote it all down in a diary. So yeah, presidents are on the top of the list for aliens to observer, record, and even visit. In 1957 US president Eisenhower met with an alien from Venus Captain Val Valient Thor, so says the US delegated priest in charge of meeting all foreign VIPs at the US presidents side. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan 

Negative focused view above. 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

27-02-2023 om 20:27 geschreven door peter  

The remote village of Hessdalen, Norway may well be the scene of the longest continuously recorded UFO activity in the world. For more than forty years, people have observed -- and scientists have recorded -- highly unusual and so far inexplicable phenomena there. 

Especially high activity of Hessdalen lights took place from December 1981 until the summer of 1984 when lights were observed 15–20 times per week. Since then, the activity has decreased and now the lights are observed some 10–20 times per year. 

Some researchers believe that that bubbles of ionized gas are created when sulphurous fumes from the River Hesja react with the humid air of the valley. The geology also forms electromagnetic field lines in the valley, which could explain why for example orbs of light move around, but that has not been proven and it doesn't explain all the other unknown objects appearing over Hessdalen from which some of these objects appear to have involved craft under intelligent control, others have not. 

Now, Dr. Erling Strand has studied the Hessdalen mystery since the beginning and speaks with Richard Dolan about what he knows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmdBWCB1n8s

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

27-02-2023 om 18:25 geschreven door peter  

Unexplained UFO Sighting in Glendale, Arizona – Witness Reports Mysterious Appearance and Disappearance of Lights on February 1, 2023

On February 1, 2023, a mysterious sighting of unidentified flying objects occurred in Glendale, Arizona. According to a witness report, the sighting started with three lights that slowly faded into view. Then, five additional lights appeared and also slowly faded out of sight, leaving observers puzzled and intrigued.

The witness report describes the UFO sighting as a slow and deliberate appearance and disappearance of the lights. This raises questions about what type of technology was used to create such an effect. Were the lights under the control of a human operator, or was this something beyond our current understanding of technology?

Glendale, Arizona is not a stranger to UFO sightings, as there have been numerous reports of similar events in the past. In fact, Arizona is considered to be one of the top places in the United States for UFO sightings, with some of the most famous sightings taking place in Phoenix in 1997.

• Two round bright UFO that didn’t move - San Diego, CA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWD_4T8C42Q

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

27-02-2023 om 17:10 geschreven door peter  

27-02-2023 om 01:58 geschreven door peter  

Wat waren de twee heldere lichtpuntjes aan de hemel afgelopen nacht?

Gisterenavond en afgelopen nacht kon je naast de maan nog twee andere, heldere puntjes opmerken aan de hemel. Op Twitter zijn er verschillende foto’s terug te vinden van dit fenomeen. Wetenschapsjournalist Martijn Peters bracht al snel helderheid. “De planeten Venus en Jupiter zijn nu prachtig zichtbaar boven de westelijke horizon”, klonk het op Twitter en Facebook.

 Bron: Twitter

KIJK.

• Twee heldere lichtpuntjes waren zichtbaar aan de hemel. Dat waren de planeten Venus en Jupiter

De planeten Venus en Jupiter zijn naast de zon en de maan de twee helderste objecten aan de hemel. Op dit moment zijn de twee planeten op weg naar een conjunctie of dichte samenstand, die vindt plaats op 1 en 2 maart. “Venus is de helderste van de twee. De volgende dagen zullen de planeten mekaar verder naderen”, aldus Martijn op Facebook.

Bij een conjunctie of dichte samenstand lijkt het, vanaf de Aarde bekeken, alsof de twee planeten met elkaar zullen botsen, maar niet is minder waar. In werkelijkheid staan de planeten zo’n 700 miljoen kilometer uit elkaar.

Een conjunctie of dichte samenstand komt wel vaker voor, telkens zijn de planeten dan ‘s avonds en ‘s nachts te zien boven onze westelijke horizon. En dat was gisterenavond en vorige nacht dus het geval. Dat blijkt uit verschillende foto’s die Twitter-gebruikers de wereld in stuurden.

LEES OOK:

• Kijk vannacht even omhoog: zie Mars van zijn beste kant én verduisterd door de maan

• James Webb-telescoop werd een jaar geleden gelanceerd: een overzicht van de waanzinnige beelden

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

27-02-2023 om 00:56 geschreven door peter  

The Planet That Shouldn’t Exist

“The host star, TOI-5205, is just about four times the size of Jupiter, yet it has somehow managed to form a Jupiter-sized planet, which is quite surprising!” exclaimed Dr. Shubham Kanodia, who is a postdoctoral fellow in the Carnegie Earth & Planets Lab and an expert in red dwarf stars, and lead author of the study. Dr. Shubham recently discussed the discovery in an in-depth blog post, as well. Using food as an analogy, Jupiter orbiting our Sun is equivalent to a pea orbiting a grapefruit, whereas TOI-5205b orbiting its parent star would be equivalent to a pea orbiting a lemon.

The general theory of planetary formation begins with a massive, rotating disk of gas and dust encircling young stars, with gas planets initially being formed from rocky material comprising approximately 10 Earth masses. Over time, this material forms the core of the giant planet which then accumulates large amounts of gas from the disk to produce the massive gas giants we observe today. As it turns out, the confirmation of TOI-5205b could throw this theory into disarray.

“TOI-5205b’s existence stretches what we know about the disks in which these planets are born,” explained Dr. Kanodia. “In the beginning, if there isn’t enough rocky material in the disk to form the initial core, then one cannot form a gas giant planet.  And at the end, if the disk evaporates away before the massive core is formed, then one cannot form a gas giant planet.  And yet TOI-5205b formed despite these guardrails. Based on our nominal current understanding of planet formation, TOI-5205b should not exist; it is a ‘forbidden’ planet.”

The discovery was initially made using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which uses the transit detection method for locating exoplanets, and the data indicated that TOI-5205b blocks approximately 7% of its parent star’s light, making TOI-5205b one of the largest transits ever recorded for a confirmed exoplanet in orbit around a main-sequence star.

To confirm the TESS data, follow-up observations were made from an international collaboration of instruments and observatories. These include the Habitable-zone Planet Finder, the ARCTIC camera on the 3.5-m Apache Point Observatory, the NN-Explore Exoplanet Stellar Speckle Imager, the 0.6-m Red Buttes Observatory, and the Three-hundred MilliMeter Telescope.

Given the very large transit that TOI-5205b produced, the researchers demonstrated that this could make this exoplanet an ideal candidate for future atmospheric observations using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which could help scientists better understand the secrets behind its formation and evolution, as well. This is because JWST has already been successful in observing exoplanet atmospheres in incredible detail, as it recently demonstrated with exoplanet, WASP-39b.

What fascinating new discoveries will scientists make about exoplanets in the coming years and decades, and how much will these discoveries continue to push our knowledge of planetary formation and evolution? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

27-02-2023 om 00:32 geschreven door peter  

UFO Caught On NASA Sun Image Recored Turning, 100% Intelligently Controlled UFO Sighting News.

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

27-02-2023 om 00:14 geschreven door peter  

Pulsating Orb Over El Paso, Texas Feb 25, 2023, UFO Sighting News. Video.

Date of sighting: Feb 25, 2023

Location of sighting: El Paso, Texas, USA

 

Wow, this one was recorded over Texas a few days ago. The eyewitness saw it coming from over the mountains and then all about for 15+ minutes. From the colors, I would say this one has a real friendly and happy glow about it. The orb knew it was being watched and didn't want to cause any fear. Oh, and yes, orbs can change colors, saw a softball size UFO up close 2 meters from me here in Taiwan and it was like cloudy liquid silver, colors moving slowly within it, but 50 meters away it was white as a star. Orbs change colors at will, they can also read your mind, your thoughts and if you call them to you with a kind and open heart, I promise, you will see one. But they are sneaky, the one I saw so close, it came behind my camera. As I said, it could read my thoughts and knew where to come safely. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan 

Eyewitness states: 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

27-02-2023 om 00:07 geschreven door peter  

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 26-02-2023

Ancient Aliens: Great Flood DESTROYS Lost Iraqi Civilization (Season 19)

Did civilization exist 12,000 years ago? See more in this scene from Season 19, Episode 3, "Mystery of the Lost Civilization."

RELATED VIDEOS

A 10 Million Year Old Find Rewrite Human History!

I often talk about the fact that archeological finds can rewrite our history, and this time the find was not long in coming. In Germany, archaeologists discovered a unique object that was checked in a variety of ways in order to 100% clarify its age. And they were amazed that it was about 10 million years old! It has the power to completely rewrite our history! I will talk about this find and others in this video.

00:00 ► Intro

00:23 ► Silver Scrolls of Ketef Hinnom

00:59 ► Acambaro figurines

01:41 ► The oldest buildings in the UAE found

03:28 ► Mangazeya

04:34 ► Madaba map

05:27 ► An unusual dinosaurs feature

06:53 ► 10 million year old tooth

07:25 ► One of the oldest Buddhist temples in the world

09:02 ► Peruvian "sea monster"

10:45 ► Humanity nearly died out 70,000 years ago

12:36 ► The oldest family tree in the world7

14:24 ► Ancient tombs and sarcophagus found under Notre Dame

A unique find of archaeologists that amazed the whole world. It has the power to rewrite the history of mankind. To learn more about it and see the most ancient buildings of the United Arab Emirates, the oldest Buddhist temple, the Peruvian "sea monster" and the world's oldest family tree, then you should watch this video to the end! Hi Friend. You are on the KirTop channel.

The UnXplained: "Unearthly Image" Hidden in Utah Desert (Season 4)

Over 200 monoliths have mysteriously appeared around the world. See more in this scene from Season 4, Episode 22, "Mysterious Monoliths."

Have Aliens Found Us? More Oumuamua Like Technology Interstellar Spacecrafts Now in Our Solar System

Have Aliens Found Us? More Oumuamua Like Technology Interstellar Spacecrafts Now in Our Solar System. A strange Cosmic object was flying past our planet and no one had the slightest clue 5 days later the interstellar object was on its way out of the solar system when Robert Warwick an astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa spotted it. It was from the moment of its discovery a weird object, weird orbit, weird speed, and weird properties, the strange object was called Oumuamua, the first known Interstellar object to visit the solar system but here is the thing astronomers had only 11 days to observe the odd visitor.

China’s New H-20 Stealth Bomber is Worse Than You Think

This new aircraft could change the balance of power in the world. Currently the United States is the only nation to operate a strategic stealth bomber fleet like the B-2. This new Chinese stealth bomber is the type of aircraft that is sent to destroy an entire enemy airfield or soften up defenses for an invasion. The H-20 would have major ramifications for a possible invasion of Taiwan if it is able to evade their air defense systems.

19 Events That Will Happen Before 2050 Compilation

19) Colonization of Mars No, we’re not talking about an upcoming sci-fi blockbuster – the colonization of Mars is a real possibility in the foreseeable future.

18) Technological singularity The technological singularity is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial super-intelligence will trigger rampant technological growth, resulting in unimaginable changes to human civilization.

17) Nuclear fusion In nuclear physics, nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles - neutrons or protons. Fusion was accomplished in 1951 with the Greenhouse Item nuclear test, while nuclear fusion on a large scale in an explosion was first carried out on November 1, 1952, in the Ivy Mike hydrogen bomb test.

16) Interstellar exploration Until recently, interstellar travel was nothing more than a theoretical possibility. However, the exploration of other star systems may become reality sooner than you think

15) Ice-free Arctic The loss of Arctic sea ice is one of the clearest signs of human-caused climate change and so far the Arctic Ocean has melted to its lowest extent ever recorded since satellites began measuring it in 1979

14) 99942 Apophis asteroid threat Before global warming brings humanity on the verge of extinction, a giant rock from outer space might wipe us all out

13) Chocolate extinction Bad news for all of you chocolate lovers out there: your favorite food may actually become extinct in a few decades

12) Antibiotics stop working According to a major 2016 UK study, urgent action is needed to control the use of antibiotics before they stop working and leave a number of major conditions untreatable

11) Technological singularity The technological singularity is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial super-intelligence will trigger rampant technological growth, resulting in unimaginable changes to human civilization

10) New countries Situations and circumstances keep changing, but conflicts rarely end. Unfortunately, in most cases, it is war that ultimately leads to the division of borders and fights for independence have been ongoing for a long time in many parts of the world. Countries and Land Masses At first, this one may sound a bit...abstract. After all, don't we already have a LOT of countries on this Earth of ours?

9) A New Pandemic? We're sure that this one terrifies you to a certain level, but if 2020 proved anything to us, it's that you don't know what to expect until it happens

8) Brand New Medicines If you were to look at medicine as it was in the 1920s and see where they are in the year 2020, you'll see such a rapid scale improvement it would see ludicrous that people survived during the times without this medicine.

7) Sci-Fi Tech Don't go overboard on this one, we're not saying that hovercars and jetpacks are going to be commonplace in our world in the year 2050, however, certain pieces of sci-fi tech are likely to come around by 2050.

6) Green Planet? This one is honestly a bit more wishful thinking than anything else but it could happen should the right forces come into play.

5) Y2K Part 2? If you recall the year 1999, you might remember a gigantic fear that was going on called the Y2K Bug.

4) True Virtual Reality Heading back to sci-fi tech, let's single out another desired object that might just happen by 2050: true virtual reality.

3) A.I. Everywhere Judgment Day is inevitable, and yes, we're quoting Terminator.

2) Super-Automation Here's a darker element of growing technology that we're already facing right now. The more that technology grows, the more that humans can be replaced by automated machines.

1) The Unthinkable When it comes to predicting the future...there's always a risk. Because in truth, you have NO idea what's going to happen in the next however many days or months or years or decades

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

26-02-2023 om 22:38 geschreven door peter  

On January 24, 2023 what seems to be a metallic UFO has been spotted while hovering above the Arizona desert. the UFO is accompanied by another object visible in the distance. 

Isn't it strange that these kinds of unknown objects can fly through US airspace at low altitudes seemingly undisturbed and are not intercepted and brought down like the Chinese hot air balloon and the other three unknown objects? 

Wouldn't it make sense that these types of objects would also be intercepted and shot down by the US Airforce as happened with the Chinese balloon and the other three unknown objects? 

Since the many UFOs and UAPs are left alone, not only does it say a lot about the knowledge the Pentagon and the US government have about these UFOs and UAPs to make the decision not to shoot down these objects, but it also says a lot about the shooting down of the other objects, likely indicating that these actions were carried out as part of a secret agenda behind the scenes, that may not be known to the US government, to archive a particular target in the near future.

  

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

26-02-2023 om 18:43 geschreven door peter  

Where Are The Aliens? The Search For Extraterrestrial Life

For more than four decades, scientists have been on a mission to find techno-signatures – signals coming from distant alien civilizations. Despite the search, no convincing evidence has been found for biology beyond Earth. But, considering the vastness of the universe, it is estimated that our galaxy, the Milky Way, which contains about 400 billion stars, is likely to have life beyond our planet.

The Fermi paradox remains unresolved, which states that if intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, then why haven’t we seen any evidence of it? Some scientists have attempted to estimate the number of technologically advanced species in the universe through the Drake Equation, which has seven terms that need to be answered to get an estimate. While this equation has been useful, a slightly different approach has been suggested by Adam Frank from the University of Rochester. Rather than estimating how many civilizations are out there to communicate with today, they estimate how many civilizations have been out there since the beginning of the universe.

The first term of the Drake Equation is the rate of star formation, which we now know is about one star forming per year. The next two terms we’ve recently nailed down are the fraction of stars that have planets and the number of habitable zone planets – planets in the right place for life to form. For every five stars, one of them has a planet in the right place for life to form.

• Bodies Of Alien Creatures Were Found In The Basement Of Old House

While we have made a lot of progress in the last 20 years, the question remains, where are the aliens? The answer to this question could lie in the search for technological signatures of other civilizations. Several international scientific projects are devoted to searching for evidence of life beyond Earth, from biomolecular detection to exoplanet atmospheres and biomarker detection.

In 2017, an object hurtled through the solar system. Although most astronomers believe it was a natural phenomenon, some believe it was the result of advanced technology developed by an alien civilization. NASA has funded a mission concept known as the Extrasolar object Interceptor.

The search for alien life has progressed a long way. According to a study published in the planetary science journal Planetary Science Journal earlier this month, NASA’s James Webb telescope can detect consistent passive technosigns. One of the most common characteristics of industry on Earth is atmospheric pollution. If this type of pollution is found in an exoplanet’s atmosphere, it could provide evidence of alien technology.

Watch 

• Where Are The Aliens? The Search For Extraterrestrial Life from Science Time

Civilizations need only be older than ours to have technology that we are incapable of understanding. If we were to meet life from a planet that had no contact with Earth, it would likely be shocking to us. Other planets have different histories of cooking their soup of chemicals and making life out of it. Most stars are different than the sun, which may explain why interstellar tourist agencies never advertise Earth as a desired tourist destination, as all we can offer them is green grass vacation sites illuminated by visible light.

In conclusion, the search for aliens has been ongoing for several decades, and we have made significant progress in our understanding of the universe. The quest to find intelligent extraterrestrial life may still be ongoing, but we continue to make discoveries that bring us closer to the answer.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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

26-02-2023 om 18:15 geschreven door peter  

Ancient Aliens: Origins of Humanity

Over the past couple of years, the number of reports of extraterrestrial beings being spotted in different parts of the world has increased. These sightings put a question mark over the possibility of alien life. While some believe that the notion of alien life is just science fiction, other believers think that there’s more to it.

One of the most interesting aspects about the UFO phenomenon is the idea that extraterrestrial beings may have been visiting Earth for thousands of years. In ancient cultures, there have been numerous stories about encounters with beings in the sky. These stories provide a glimpse into the beliefs of our ancestors.

In ancient Egyptian literature, the gods were referred to as individuals who came from the sky and taught people how to build structures such as pyramids. In the Bible, there are also references to extraterrestrial beings and chariots of fire. The Mahabharata, which is a part of the Hindu epicurean literature, talks about the gods’ use of flying machines known as “Vimas,” which were capable of moving across different dimensions.

• Pictures Mainstream Archaeology Does Not Want You To See

The increasing number of reports about extraterrestrial beings has raised various questions about the nature of our existence. Some believe that these beings could have helped us develop our ancestors by providing us with the necessary tools and knowledge to build advanced civilizations. Others think that they might have left us with advanced technology that governments around the world have been keeping secret.

Although the idea of ancient aliens has been around for a long time, the mainstream scientific community has started to take it seriously in the last couple of years. In 2017, the U.S. Defense Department released footage of an alleged alien encounter, which caught the public’s attention.

Despite the lack of evidence supporting the existence of alien life, the discovery of new planets outside our solar system has raised the possibility that other civilizations could also exist. Some believe that the conditions in the universe are so similar that intelligent life could easily evolve.

Despite the various cover-ups and mysterious nature of alien life, the evidence supporting the notion of alien existence continues to grow. As we continue to search for new planets outside of Earth, it’s possible that we will find more proof of alien life. However, it’s not yet clear if we will ever encounter these beings.

Although it may seem extraterrestrial life is already a distant idea for some people, the evidence suggests there could be more to it than we currently know. We must not lose sight of the fact that these beings have been a part of our culture and history. As the universe continues to expand, we can only look for answers to the many alien-related questions.

Watch FULL documentary movie about Origins of Humanity

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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

26-02-2023 om 17:56 geschreven door peter  

{ https://scientias.nl/ }

26-02-2023 om 01:41 geschreven door peter  

'Mars' interior is not behaving,' active mantle plume reveals

26-02-2023 om 01:01 geschreven door peter  

26-02-2023 om 00:47 geschreven door peter  

Op een koude februaridag in 2021 lichtte een ruimtesteen de nachtelijke hemel op in Alberta, Canada. De vuurbal liet de wetenschap schudden op zijn grondvesten.

De ruimtesteen kwam namelijk vanuit de Oortwolk aansuizen en was opgebouwd uit rotsachtig materiaal. Tot op heden werd verondersteld dat objecten uit deze immense wolk aan de rand van ons zonnestelsel alleen uit verschillende soorten ijs, zoals waterijs, methaan, ethaan, koolstofmonoxide of waterstofcyanide konden bestaan.

On Feb. 22, YouTuber Mieszko Paradis caught a glimpse of a meteor as it flew through the sky over Edmonton.

(Video credit: Mieszko Paradis/YouTube)

De Oortwolk bestaat uit vele miljarden komeetachtige objecten rondom ons zonnestelsel. De Nederlandse astronoom Jan Hendrik Oort bedacht deze hypothese in 1950. Volgens Oort is er een stabiele wolk waar zo nu en dan een komeet vandaan komt die richting de aarde gaat, met een omlooptijd van duizenden jaren, zoals de bekende komeet Hale-Bopp. Dichterbij de aarde zijn er de Kuipergordel en de scattered disk, twee schijven vol puin buiten de baan van Neptunus. Hier komen periodieke kometen met een omlooptijd van minder dan tweehonderd jaar vandaan, zoals de komeet Halley. Materiaal uit deze meer dichtbijgelegen verzameling ruimtepuin bestaat vaker uit gesteente.

Mysterieuze Oortwolk
Passerende sterren, die mogelijk ook een eigen Oortwolk in hun buitenste schil hebben, duwen de ijzige reizigers uit ‘onze’ Oortwolk soms richting de zon, is de veronderstelling. We kunnen deze kometen dan waarnemen als lange lichtgevende slierten, omdat het ijzige materiaal verdampt en kleur afgeeft. Wetenschappers hebben nog geen objecten in de Oortwolk direct waargenomen, maar alles wat tot nu toe onze kant op is geslingerd, leek gemaakt van ijs. Tot de ontdekking van vorig jaar dus. En dat zet ons begrip van het ontstaan van ons zonnestelsel op z’n kop. Er zouden alleen ijzige objecten moeten bestaan in deze buitenste regionen, in de theorieën is geen plaats voor rotsachtig materiaal.

De astronomie kan echter niet om de rotsachtige meteoroïde heen, die als een oogverblindende vuurbal door de lucht boven centraal Alberta vloog. Vele professionele en amateurastronomen legden de immense vuurbal vast op de gevoelige plaat en analyseerden de data en het beeldmateriaal. Een team van de University of Western Ontario concludeerde dat alle tekenen erop wijzen dat de oorsprong van de ruimtesteen recht in het midden van de Oortwolk ligt.

Bom onder ontstaanstheorieën
“Deze ontdekking dwingt ons na te denken over een geheel ander model van de vorming van het zonnestelsel, een model dat het idee ondersteunt dat aanzienlijke hoeveelheden rotsachtig materiaal samen met ijzige objecten rondvliegen in de Oortwolk”, zegt expert in de meteoorfysica Denis Vida. “De conclusies uit ons onderzoek stroken niet met de meest gangbare modellen waarin de vorming van het zonnestelsel wordt beschreven. Dit is een complete gamechanger.”

De superscherpe Global Fireball Observatory (GFO)-camera’s van de University of Alberta kregen de rotsachtige meteoroïde van ongeveer 2 kilo, ter grootte van een grapefruit, in het vizier en hebben het laatste stukje van zijn reis door het zonnestelsel en door de aardse dampkring vastgelegd. Het team kon zo berekenen dat de ruimterots zich in een baan bewoog die normaal gesproken alleen wordt afgelegd door ijsklompen uit de Oortwolk.

“In zeventig jaar van regelmatige vuurbalwaarnemingen is dit een van de meest bijzondere ooit geregistreerd. Het is geweldig hoe de GFO, die vijf jaar geleden is opgestart en zo het bereik enorm vergrootte, het voor elkaar heeft gekregen om wetenschappelijke experts van over de hele wereld bij elkaar te brengen”, zegt hoofdonderzoeker van de GFO Hadrien Devillepoix. “We kunnen hierdoor meer kostbare meteorieten vinden en bestuderen, maar misschien nog wel belangrijker: het lukt ons nu om deze zeldzame gebeurtenissen rechtstreeks te volgen en de gegevens op te slaan die zo essentieel zijn voor het begrijpen van ons zonnestelsel.”

Rotsvast bewijs
Waarom denkt men nu dat de vuurbal van Alberta van steen was gemaakt en niet van ijs? De ruimteklomp drong veel dieper de atmosfeer binnen dan ijzige objecten die in het verleden in vergelijkbare banen richting het aardoppervlak vlogen. Hij brak op exact dezelfde manier in stukken als een vuurbal, die in rotsachtige delen uit elkaar valt. Dit bewijst dat dit stuk ruimtepuin van steen is gemaakt en niet van ijs.

“We willen erachter komen hoe deze rotsachtige meteoroïde daar aan de rand van ons zonnestelsel is terechtgekomen, omdat we onze eigen oorsprong willen begrijpen. Hoe beter we de omstandigheden begrijpen waarin het zonnestelsel werd gevormd, hoe beter we snappen wat nodig was voor het ontstaan van leven op aarde”, legt Vida uit. “We willen een zo nauwkeurig mogelijk beeld schetsen van deze vroege momenten van het zonnestelsel, die zo cruciaal waren voor alles wat er daarna gebeurde.”

{ https://scientias.nl/ }

26-02-2023 om 00:31 geschreven door peter