Unveiling Antarctica’s Alien Secrets: Government Cover-Ups and Hidden Civilizations

The icy expanse of Antarctica has long been a subject of mystery and intrigue. Among the most captivating and controversial theories is the existence of an alien base beneath its frozen surface. This idea has fueled the imagination of UFO enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists alike, with stories that suggest not only the presence of extraterrestrial beings but also secretive government cover-ups. This article delves into these fascinating claims, exploring the potential truths behind the legends and the implications they hold.

Project Stargate: Psychic Spies and Extraterrestrial Encounters

In 1978, the CIA launched a covert operation known as Project Stargate. The project aimed to employ psychic spies to gather intelligence on Soviet activities during the Cold War. Using a technique called remote viewing, these psychics purportedly had the ability to perceive locations and events from afar using only the power of their minds. One notable psychic, Patrick Price, claimed to have seen an alien base inside Mount Hayes in Alaska. He described a facility where extraterrestrials and military personnel worked together using advanced technology. Shortly after revealing his findings to the CIA, Price mysteriously died, leading to speculation about a potential cover-up by the government or even retaliation by the aliens he had described.

Admiral Richard Byrd’s Mysterious Antarctic Expedition

In 1945, Admiral Richard Byrd, a renowned US Naval officer and explorer, led Operation Highjump, the largest expedition to Antarctica. This mission included a massive deployment of 13 ships, 23 aircraft, and over 4,500 military personnel. One of its primary objectives was to locate potential Nazi military bases. However, according to a diary found by Byrd’s son after his death, the expedition uncovered something far more extraordinary.

Byrd’s diary recounts an incredible journey to the Earth’s center through an entrance at the South Pole. Inside, he described a temperate world, lush and green, reminiscent of the Amazon rainforest. The most astonishing discovery was a crystalline city inhabited by advanced beings. These beings, piloting disc-shaped craft, allegedly took control of Byrd’s aircraft and guided them to their city. There, Byrd met a leader referred to as “the Master,” who expressed disappointment with humanity’s use of nuclear weapons during World War II and concern for the planet’s future. Despite this, the aliens caused no harm to Byrd and his team, allowing them to return to the surface unharmed. Upon their return, Byrd was instructed by military officials to keep these findings secret to prevent mass panic.

Implications of Hidden Alien Civilizations

The claims made by Byrd and the implications of Project Stargate present a fascinating, if not unsettling, narrative. If Byrd’s account is to be believed, it suggests the existence of a hidden, technologically advanced civilization beneath Antarctica. This could potentially explain numerous UFO sightings near nuclear sites and military bases, as these beings might be monitoring humanity’s use of such dangerous technology.

The idea of an alien base under Antarctica also raises questions about the broader implications for our understanding of Earth’s history and the potential existence of other hidden civilizations. Could these beings be responsible for ancient myths and legends of gods and advanced beings from below the earth?

VIDEO:

• Antarctica’s Hidden Aliens: What the Government Doesn’t Want You to Know

• https://youtu.be/VLyyK6aHtx0

The theories surrounding an alien base beneath Antarctica are undeniably intriguing, blending elements of historical exploration, government secrecy, and extraterrestrial life. While there is no concrete evidence to confirm these claims, the stories of Project Stargate and Admiral Byrd‘s expedition continue to captivate and inspire those who seek to uncover the unknown. Whether viewed as mere conspiracy theories or potential truths waiting to be discovered, these tales remind us of the vast, uncharted mysteries that our world still holds.

As we continue to explore and understand our planet, the possibility of discovering hidden civilizations, whether alien or ancient human, remains an exciting frontier. Until then, the icy expanse of Antarctica will keep its secrets, waiting for the day they might be revealed.

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

31-05-2024 om 19:58 geschreven door peter  

The breakthrough relied on the combination of annual growth ring measurements with the measurable spike in cosmogenic radiocarbon that occurred during the 5259 BC event. This allowed them to establish a chronological reference point for producing accurate dates for the historic settlement, which now may significantly aid archaeological dating at other sites in Southeast Europe.

Additionally, the team behind the new findings says their methods could mark a new standard for dating ancient sites through such processes.

AN EXTREME COSMIC EVENT IN ANCIENT TIMES

In 2022, researchers discovered a pair of extreme solar energetic particle (SEP) events by employing carbon isotope measurements in ancient tree rings dated to 7176 and 5259 BC. Each of the events yielded an increase in 14C of about 2%, a relatively small percentage, albeit one indicating events of far greater magnitude than all similar events previously observed.

Such occurrences happen periodically during eruptive events such as flares and coronal mass ejections, the most recent of which bombarded the planet with cosmogenic radiation beginning on May 10, 2024, producing visible aurorae in parts of the world where such colorful light displays are rarely seen.

Since the observational record is too short to provide an accurate estimation of the frequency of extremely rare SEP events, scientists look for the presence of radionuclides like 10Be, 14C, and 36Cl, all of which can be produced when cosmic rays strike Earth’s atmosphere—to help them reconstruct a clearer picture of past solar activity and highly energetic events like the one that occurred in 5259 BC.

STORIES TOLD IN TREE RINGS

Dendrochronology, the process of using annual growth discernible in tree rings to help date events from the past, is useful for more than just determining things like when extreme solar events have occurred: archaeologists also use it to help them reveal the ages of ancient artifacts and archaeological features that include tombs and settlements.

Above: Cross-section of a California Coast Redwood tree felled in 1934, with rings labeled to indicate several historical events that occurred between 1215 to 1620 AD

(Credit: Larry McElhiney/CC 2.5)

Now, a team from the University of Bern, led by the Institute of Archaeological Sciences, was successfully able to produce dates for the ancient site of Dispilio in northern Greece, using evidence of high-energy particles revealed in timber discovered at the site.

Previous attempts to date the site had proven difficult for a variety of reasons, which include the fact that while tree-ring data extending further back than 12,500 years is readily attainable in many parts of Europe, the same is rarely true for the Mediterranean, according to Andrej Maczkowski, lead author of a study outlining the University of Bern team’s findings.

In fact, there are only a handful of regions around the world where the presence of continuous tree-ring chronologies allows dating accuracy down to the year, such as parts of the American Southwest and northern Alpine foothills and parts of the British Isles. Because of this, dendrochronological dating methods have traditionally been limited.

MIYAKE EVENTS: A PARADIGM SHIFT IN DATING THE PAST

That is, until 2012, when a breakthrough made by Japanese physicist Fusa Miyake revealed that cosmic rays originating from solar flares resulted in spikes in radionuclides, specifically the presence of 14C content found in tree rings.

Now known as Miyake events, dendrochronological data related to these occurrences offer researchers a powerful tool in the form of global anchor points for dating under conditions where annual growth ring chronologies are normally absent. Scientists have now charted Miyake events as far back as 12,350 BC.

“Miyake’s discovery was a paradigm shift,” said Albert Hafner, a University of Bern Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology and senior author of the team’s new study.

Now, Hafner and his colleagues say the area has become “the first region to benefit from this paradigm shift, allowing for absolute dating independent of a consistent calendar.” This is a significant point given that the Balkans are home to many of Europe’s earliest settlements, many of which existed along ancient lakes and other bodies of water around or just after 6000 BC. These thriving ancient communities played a key role in the spread of agriculture throughout the rest of the continent during the ensuing thousands of years.

PRECISION DATING OF AN ANCIENT GREEK SETTLEMENT

In their recent research, the Bern team was able to define a growth ring chronology spanning more than 300 years that ends in 5140 BC, which they achieved by analyzing 787 timber samples collected at Dispilio. With knowledge of the Miyake event that occurred in 5259 BC, the team was able to determine very precise dating that aligned with existing global tree-ring chronologies.

Above: An assemblage of adornments and other artifacts dating to the Neolithic period, recovered during excavations at Dispilio

(Credit: Dispilio Excavation Archive).

Of key significance, the Bern team’s research greatly advances our understanding of prehistoric timelines, offering crucial information for archaeologists and historians about the spread of early farming communities throughout Europe.

“We expect other regional chronologies to rapidly link to the ‘Dispilio Chronology,’” Maczkowski said, “paving the way for a comprehensive dendrochronology for the southern Balkans.”

Maczkowski, Hafner, and the team’s new paper, “Absolute dating of the European Neolithic using the 5259 BC rapid 14C excursion,” was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

• Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. He can be reached by email at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow his work at micahhanks.com and on X: @MicahHanks.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/space/ }

31-05-2024 om 01:16 geschreven door peter  

New Data Reveals How Galaxies Grew in the Early Universe

These new galaxies in the early universe were still hungrily gobbling up nearby gas.

BY KIONA SMITH

 

University of Copenhagen astrophysicist Kasper Heintz and his colleagues published their work in the journal Science.

THE EPOCH OF REIONIZATION IS GONNA BE LIT

JWST’s instruments helpfully split the light from the distant galaxies into the individual wavelengths that make it up. The spectrum of light coming from an object, like a galaxy, is like a fingerprint of the chemicals that form it, because each chemical compound absorbs, emits, and reflects its own very specific wavelengths of light. Around the three distant galaxies, Heintz and his colleagues noticed that something seemed to be absorbing the same wavelengths of light as cold hydrogen gas – and lots of it.

“These galaxies are like sparkling islands in a sea of otherwise neutral, opaque gas,” says Heintz in a recent statement.

Hydrogen gas, when it’s cold and not electrically-charged (or ionized), absorbs light but doesn’t emit it. This neutral gas filled the early universe, making it impossible for light to travel very far, until a few hundred million years after the Big Bang: a period called the Cosmic Dark Ages.

It took powerful blasts of radiation from the first stars in the first galaxies to strip away electrons from all those hydrogen atoms, creating ionized gas (also called plasma) which is translucent instead of opaque. The Epoch of Reionization had begun – and the three galaxies in Heintz and his colleagues’ recent study are just starting to light it up.

BRAND NEW GALAXIES, SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED

Somewhere between 13.2 billion and 13.4 billion years ago — when the light that just reached JWST started its long journey across space — these three early galaxies were still in the process of assembling themselves from the surrounding gas.

“[The data] suggests that we are seeing the assembly of neutral hydrogen into galaxies,” says University of Copenhagen astrophysicist Darach Watson, a coauthor of the recent study, in a statement. And that’s a stage of galaxy formation that astronomers haven’t seen before, especially in the very early universe.

The galaxies, in their infancy, are still surrounded by a cloud of cold, dark, neutral hydrogen gas — the same stuff that caused the Cosmic Dark Ages. Most of that gas will be heated up as it falls into the galaxies, pulled in by their inexorable gravity. And then it will slowly cool, forming lumps like congealed oatmeal, and some of those lumps will be so heavy that they collapse on themselves to form new stars.

Right now (or as we see them right now, which actually happened billions of years ago), what stars these early galaxies contain are mostly young and newly-formed.

“The fact that we are seeing large gas reservoirs also suggests that the galaxies have not had enough time to form most of their stars yet.” But they’ll get there, most likely.

The data reveals not only a previously unseen moment in a galaxy’s life, but also a glimpse of what the early universe was like before the expansion of space pulled everything farther apart, turning most galaxies into lonely beacons, or at most isolated clusters of lights, in the void.

“We’re moving away from a picture of galaxies as isolated ecosystems,” says University of Copenhagen astrophysicist Simone Nielsen in a recent statement. “At this stage in the history of the universe, galaxies are all intimately connected to the intergalactic medium with its filaments and structures of pristine gas.”

In the very early universe, no galaxy was an island (yet).

 { https://www.inverse.com/ }

31-05-2024 om 00:20 geschreven door peter  

By Shanna Hogan

Sarah2/Shutterstock

As related in a 1950 book called "Behind the Flying Saucers," the tale features two men who pulled a couple of dead alien corpses from the wreckage and stored them in a freezer until the army picked them up. Another version has the spacecraft crashing miles away, in Cave Creek or Paradise Valley.

"What’s amazing and significant is that there were two UFO crashes, one in Roswell and one in Phoenix, within fairly close proximity, that occurred in the same year," Willes says. "As far as the dam being built over the crash site, that’s a possibility, but I don’t see why the government wouldn't just remove the wreckage and there wouldn't be anything left but desert landscape."

A 1945 U.S. government Phoenix Sectional Chart showing Marana Army Air Field and Marana Auxiliary Army Airfield No. 2, No. 4, No. 5

Chris Kennedy/Public domain

A screengrab of camcorder footage of the V-shaped formation of lights that appeared over the Valley on March 13, 1997.

Screen Grab

5. The Phoenix Lights (1997)

As most Arizonans know, the otherworldly event that elevated Phoenix's prominence in the annals of UFO lore was the Phoenix Lights — one of the largest mass UFO sightings of all time.

On March 13, 1997, a string of glowing orbs hovered over Paradise Valley skies. For three hours the huge, V-shaped formation passed silently over a 300-mile corridor from the Nevada line through Phoenix to the northern edge of Tucson.

The lights were witnessed by thousands and photographed by hundreds, who had been watching the skies that night to catch a glimpse of a passing comet.

"Much has happened since the historic and still-unexplained March 13, 1997, mass sighting, propelling the Phoenix Lights into the international limelight as the most witnessed, most documented, and most important mass anomalous aerial events in modern history,” she tells New Times. 

Jeff Willes says the Phoenix Lights was impossible for the government to conceal. 

"The Phoenix Lights is Arizona's biggest UFO story," he says. "Thousands of witnesses saw this V-shaped object that flew all across the state. There still hasn’t been a UFO sighting like that in UFO history."

    - (This article originally appeared in 2016 and has been updated.)

30-05-2024 om 22:13 geschreven door peter  

UFO Sighting Caught On Video In New York During Blue Angels Show Has People Stumped

BY DOUGLAS CHARLES

It is not unusual for pilots to report seeing UFOs. In fact, they probably see more UFOs than the average person because, well, they are thousands of feet up in the sky.

What is more unusual is for people on the ground watching pilots fly their aircraft to spot a UFO in the same sky at the very same time.

Then again, how often does the average person spend looking at the sky in a given day. Surely, it is much less than they do when they are at an air show. So someone spotting a UFO at an event like that makes some sense.

It happened in 2023 when a UFO appeared to join the Royal Air Force (RAF) Red Arrows and was caught on camera.

It also happened in 2022 during Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee parade while nine fighter jets flew in formation over the festivities.

And now it has happened again in 2024.

While the Navy’s Blue Angels were performing a demonstration during an air show on Long Island over Memorial Day weekend, a UFO appeared to zoom past a Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet while it was flying over Jones Beach.

Of course, it was caught on video, but just for a split second. Even slowing down the video shows how incredibly quick this UFO was when compared to the speed of the fighter jet.

According to a report filed with the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), here’s what the witness saw.

“Weekend of Bethpage Airshow – was looking for anything in the sky,” they wrote. “From stated location above, looking very high in the sky – approximately 36,500 to 41,000 ft high. Looking Westward from my location, tracking it going North by Northwest, by eye.

“Held at arms length, UAP was about the size of a slightly less than a pea, but greater than a grain of rice. Going very fast for a craft that high. No trails seen. Vividly tracked it visually for about 9 seconds. Then, saw it take an immediate and distinct 90 degree turn downward to about 18,000 feet within two to maybe 3 seconds. Distinctly able to follow it visually to that level when it simply disappeared.

{ https://brobible.com/ }

30-05-2024 om 21:44 geschreven door peter  

Een Japanse robot loste een Rubiks kubus op in minder dan een seconde: de video is te snel

Door Janine

Het Guinness Book of World Records is altijd een soort boek geweest van menselijke en dierlijke prestaties. Van het meest ongelofelijke tot het meest bijzondere, een vermelding in het Guinness World Records betekent dat je ergens de beste in bent. Het is echter niet altijd een levend wezen dat een record vestigt. Onlangs verdiende een robot een ereplaats onder de wereldrecords door een Rubiks kubus op te lossen in minder dan een seconde. Laten we eens kijken hoe hij dat deed.

Mensen, machines en Rubiks kubus: een genadeloze vergelijking

Unsplash

Dat Guinness World Records ruimte maakt voor prestaties betreft Rubiks Kubus is niets nieuws. In 2023 en daarvoor, in 2018, wisten twee mannen in iets meer dan drie seconden een Rubiks kubus op te lossen, waarmee ze in beide gevallen een wereldrecord vestigden. De laatste is van Max Park, een 21-jarige man die de 3x3x3-kubus in slechts 3,13 seconden in zijn oorspronkelijke staat terugbracht.

Dit is een buitengewone en ongekende prestatie, maar wel een die Park heeft bevestigd als een van de specialisten van Rubuks kubus. In 2020 had Netflix zelfs al de documentaire “The Speed Cubers” aan hem gewijd, oftewel de mensen die gespecialiseerd zijn in het razendsnel oplossen van Rubiks kubussen. Dit zijn verhalen over een toewijding en vaardigheid die geen grenzen kent. Zo niet die van het menselijk lichaam.

Robot lost de Rubiks kubus in minder dan een seconde op

guinnessworldrecords/Instagram

Max Park vertegenwoordigt daarom het toppunt van menselijk vermogen bij het oplossen van een Rubiks kubus, een niveau dat echter niet door machines kan worden bereikt. Een team van ingenieurs van Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, een Japans bedrijf, heeft namelijk een robot ontwikkeld die de Rubiks kubus kan oplossen. Dit is niet de eerste poging, maar op dit moment is het wel de poging die een nooit eerder vertoond record heeft gevestigd.

De robot ontwikkeld door het Component Production Engineering Center van MEC slaagde erin de 3x3x3 Rubiks kubus in minder dan een seconde op te lossen, om precies te zijn in 0,305 seconden. Dit is zo'n snelle tijd dat het menselijk oog deze niet eens kan volgen, tenzij gebruik wordt gemaakt van slow motion. Deze prestatie wordt bevestigd door het profiel van Guinness World Records zelf, dat de video in slow motion publiceerde.

Het geheim achter het Guinness van de robot

Het recordbrekende robotproject werd geleid door ingenieur Tokui, geïnspireerd door de vele online video's van robots die een Rubiks kubus probeerden. Tokui was ervan overtuigd dat zijn team een beter resultaat kon bereiken en ging meteen aan de slag, maar hij realiseerde zich al snel voor welke uitdagingen hij stond. Niet alleen het ontwerp van de robot om de Rubiks kubus op te lossen zorgde voor problemen, maar ook de Rubiks kubus zelf. Het mechanisme in de puzzel kan namelijk gemakkelijk vastlopen of zelfs leiden tot het breken ervan. Het oplossen van een Rubiks kubus in minder dan een seconde vereist snelheid, maar ook een grote vloeiendheid in de bewegingen van de machine en de puzzel.

Na een mislukte eerste poging slaagde het ingenieursteam erin om de robot te perfectioneren voor een tweede poging, die de klok stopte op 0,305 seconden. Een wereldrecord dat het vorige record dat was gevestigd als onderdeel van The Rubik's Contraption overtrof. Misschien is de tijd wel rijp voor een Guinness Book of Robots, en niet alleen een Guinness World Record.

{ https://www.curioctopus.nl/ }

30-05-2024 om 21:24 geschreven door peter  

Retired Colonel Karl Nell: Aliens Exist and Interact with Humans

In a recent and highly provocative declaration, Retired U.S. Army Colonel Karl Nell stated that not only do extraterrestrials exist, but they have also been interacting with humanity. Nell, who formerly directed the Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) task force, made these claims during a speech at the SALT conference in New York City on May 21st. His bold assertions have sparked significant interest and debate, particularly as they come from someone with his extensive military and intelligence background.

Extraordinary Claims from a High-Ranking Officer

Colonel Nell’s extensive career includes roles in the U.S. Army Space Command, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Bell Labs, among others. His high-level security clearances and positions within the defense sector lend considerable weight to his statements. During his speech, Nell emphatically stated, “Non-human intelligence exists. Non-human intelligence has been interacting with humanity. This interaction is not new and it’s been ongoing.” He also asserted that there are unelected officials within the government who are aware of these interactions.

Acknowledging the Critics

Ross Coulthart, the host of the event, addressed the skepticism that often surrounds such claims. Critics frequently ask, “Where’s the evidence?” Coulthart acknowledged that while Nell’s statements might not introduce new information, the way he presented them—with clear resolve and preparedness—was compelling. Coulthart pointed out that Nell’s statements align with those made by other notable figures in the UAP community, including Lou Elizondo, David Grusch, and Chris Mellon.

The Challenge of Secrecy

A significant portion of the controversy stems from the classified nature of the information. Nell and others in similar positions are bound by national security oaths and top-secret clearances, limiting what they can publicly disclose. Coulthart emphasized that these individuals, whom he describes as patriots, are constrained by their commitments to national security, which complicates the public’s demand for evidence.

Historical Context and New Legislation

Nell’s involvement in significant intelligence operations, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency’s foreign material program, adds another layer of credibility to his claims. This program, which deals with the retrieval and analysis of foreign technology, is rumored to involve collaboration with international allies, further indicating the potential global implications of these interactions.

Moreover, the discussion touched on recent legislative efforts, such as the Schumer Amendment, aimed at increasing transparency around UAPs. Although the amendment faced setbacks, it underscores the ongoing efforts within Congress to address the issue. Senator Chuck Schumer and others have voiced their frustration over the government’s reluctance to share UAP information with the public and Congress, highlighting a bipartisan desire for greater transparency.

The Path Forward

Coulthart and Nell both stressed the importance of continued advocacy for disclosure. They believe that pressure from informed and engaged citizens can compel Congress to act. Nell outlined six potential reasons for the government’s reluctance to disclose information, including national security concerns, societal disruption, and the potential for technological and strategic advantages.

However, Nell also presented strong arguments for disclosure, emphasizing the moral right of the public to know the truth and the potential benefits of scientific collaboration. He suggested that a controlled, measured disclosure could help advance humanity’s understanding of advanced technologies while maintaining national security.

VIDEO:

• Senior US military officer: ‘Zero doubt’ of alien life on earth | Reality Check

• https://youtu.be/FFV4mSzFBcU

Colonel Karl Nell’s statements at the SALT conference have reignited the debate on UAPs and the existence of extraterrestrial life. His authoritative voice, combined with his extensive experience in military and intelligence roles, adds significant weight to the conversation. While the challenge of secrecy remains a significant barrier, ongoing legislative efforts and public advocacy could pave the way for greater transparency and understanding of this profound issue.

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

30-05-2024 om 20:46 geschreven door peter  

Webb-telescoop legt melkwegstelsel vast van 290 miljoen jaar na oerknal

Wetenschappers hebben, met behulp van de James Webb-ruimtetelescoop (JWST), een melkwegstelsel gevonden dat "slechts" 290 miljoen jaar na de oerknal bestond. Dat meldt het Europese ruimtevaartagentschap ESA, dat spreekt van een record, donderdag.

De afgelopen twee jaar hebben wetenschappers de telescoop gebruikt om de zogenaamde Cosmic Dawn, of kosmische dageraad, te onderzoeken, de periode in de eerste paar honderd miljoen jaar na de oerknal waarin de eerste sterrenstelsels ontstonden. "Die sterrenstelsels geven vitaal inzicht in de manieren waarop het gas, de sterren en de zwarte gaten veranderden toen het heelal nog heel jong was", aldus ESA.

In oktober 2023 en januari 2024 gebruikte een internationaal team van astronomen de ruimtetelescoop om sterrenstelsels te observeren als onderdeel van het JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) programma. Het gaat om een observatieprogramma dat zich, gebruikmakend van Webb's NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph), focust op een heel klein deel van de hemel en die focus behoudt voor langere tijd. Het resultaat zijn zogenaamde deep field-beelden van verafgelegen hemellichamen.

"Wetenschappers hebben op die manier een melkwegstelsel ontdekt dat slechts 290 miljoen jaar na de oerknal werd waargenomen", zo klinkt het.

De Webb-telescoop, de opvolger van de beroemde ruimtetelescoop Hubble, is ontwikkeld door de Verenigde Staten, Europa en Canada. Hij werd in 2021 gelanceerd.

Ter info: de oerknal, of Big Bang, zou zo'n 13,7 miljard jaar geleden hebben plaatsgevonden.

{ https://www.msn.com/nl-be/feed?ocid=msedgntp&pc=acts }

30-05-2024 om 20:31 geschreven door peter  

Story by Andrea Vacchiano

Wisconsin historians recently announced the discovery of at least 11 ancient canoes in a Badger State lake – including one boat that dates back to 2500 BC.

The findings were announced in a press release by the Wisconsin Historical Society on May 23. The canoes were found in Lake Mendota, which is located outside of Madison.

The Wisconsin Historical Society explained that two ancient canoes were found in a cache in the lake in 2021 and 2022. Since then, historians have found at least 11 other ancient canoes, along what they believe was an ancient shoreline that became submerged over time. 

Not all the canoes will be removed from the lake due to their fragility. In an interview with Fox News Digital on Wednesday, State Archaeologist for the Wisconsin Historical Society Dr. Amy Rosebrough explained the significance of the discovery.

• WOMAN OUT FOR A WALK STUMBLES UPON ONCE-IN-A-DECADE DISCOVERY

The discovery of ancient canoes was announced in a press release by the Wisconsin Historical Society last week.

Fox News© Wisconsin Historical Society

"The Indigenous peoples of Wisconsin and the wider United States fished, traveled, and traded extensively on inland lakes and streams, and until now we have not had a clear look at the canoes used in the Great Lakes region," she explained.

"To put it in modern terms, it’s like trying to understand life in the Midwest without ever seeing a real pickup truck in person. Canoes allowed people to fish in deeper lakes, to transport goods over hundreds of miles, and to travel to far-away places. "

Rosebrough added that they believe an ancient village site is located under the waters, although it has not been found yet. Divers have found stone tools in the water, and experts believe that the lake is filled with other hidden sites.

"Lake Mendota is a hard lake to work in, however," Rosebrough admitted. "There is a limited window of visibility for diving missions, and we are exploring non-destructive remote sensing techniques that might help this summer."

• MICHIGAN RESEARCHERS DISCOVER EERIE 1909 SHIPWRECK AT BOTTOM OF LAKE SUPERIOR

Archaeologists discovered the ancient canoes in the murky waters of Lake Mendota.

Fox News© Fox News

"Even without finding the village, the discovery of these canoes and the tools found within the first canoe that was found, human-worked stone tools called net sinkers, reminds us that people have lived and worked alongside the lake for thousands of years."

Radiocarbon dating found that the oldest canoe dates back to 2500 B.C., which would mean it was built around the time Stonehenge was constructed. The canoe was constructed more than 1,700 years before Ancient Rome was first settled and 2,500 years before the birth of Jesus Christ.

All the canoes varied in age, with the youngest one dating back to 1250 AD. The archaeologist explained that the canoes "may have been intentionally cached in the water during the winter months, a standard practice to keep canoes safe from freezing and warping."

All the canoes varied in age. Not all will be removed from the lake due to their fragility.

Fox News© Fox News

"Either this practice of storing canoes for winter was carried out in roughly the same spot over generations – perhaps because of a living area nearby – or we are only seeing a window into a much larger site that might span much of the lakeshore," she described.

Rosebrough added that, though the Great Lakes dwarf Lake Mendota, the south central Wisconsin lake is small but mighty when it comes to archaeological potential.

Archaeologists conduced carbon dating to determine age of canoes.

Fox News© Fox News

"The Great Lakes oftentimes receive more funding for maritime archaeology but smaller bodies of water like Lake Mendota have their own distinct histories and stories to tell us about the people who lived here hundreds and thousands of years ago," she said. "We are proud to work in partnership with Native Nations in Wisconsin to discover all we can about Tee Waksikhominak and to share these stories now and in the future at the new Wisconsin History Center set to open in early 2027."

• For more Lifestyle articles, visit www.foxnews.com/lifestyle.
• Original article source: Prehistoric discovery in US lake leaves experts in shock and awe

{ https://www.msn.com/en-us/feed?ocid=nl_article_link }

30-05-2024 om 13:00 geschreven door peter  

The Meteor’s Appearance

To most observers, the meteor over Portugal and Spain looked blue-green and very bright. Those colors are created as various elements in the meteor get heated up by friction with our atmosphere. That vaporizes them and we see the “fiery” aspect light up the sky. If it was a piece of a comet, then the colors also indicate the materials it contained. Most comets contain water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, and methane ice. Other comet “stuff” consists of silica dust, carbon, various metals, and organic molecules. The metals, in particular, could show spectacular colors as they heat up and vaporize.

It’s not known which comet supplied the chunk that broke up and vaporized that night. Earth’s orbit crosses the orbit of several different comets. As they travel through space, particularly as they get close to the Sun, comets shed pieces of themselves. That cometary debris stays in the original orbit around the Sun. Occasionally, Earth’s orbit intersects that cometary path. Its particles particles eventually end up in our atmosphere. The best-known path creates the Orionid Meteor Shower and we can thank Comet Halley for that show from late September to mid-November.

Surveys to Detect an Incoming Space Rock

As planetary scientists learn more about the near-Earth environment and its population of asteroids and other space debris, they’ve formed observation groups within NASA and ESA. There’s a network of ground-based observers and facilities that watch the sky each night, looking for incoming impactors. Most of the time, their search is limited to objects larger than the Portugal/Spain object. In addition, satellites such as MeteoSat can pick up these intruders. MeteoSat was launched by ESA to monitor weather conditions and detect lightning strikes. The instrument has four cameras covering Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and parts of South America. Each can capture up to a thousand images per second, allowing the satellite to monitor lightning continuously from space.

ESA’s Planetary Defence Office is in charge of monitoring the positions and approaches of near-Earth objects that could pose a threat to any portion of our planet. It does regular observing campaigns to search for bits of asteroids and comets. NASA operates the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) to do similar searches for possibly dangerous rocks. The Near-Earth objects it’s most concerned about are asteroids and comets with orbits that bring them to within 195 million kilometers of the Sun. Their orbits can move through our planet’s neighborhood. Most of these small bodies are asteroids as small as a few meters wide to nearly 40 kilometers across.

The office uses data from observatories around the world—both professional and amateur. Much of this data comes from larger facilities, including Pan-STARRS, the Catalina Sky Survey, and NASA’s NEOWISE mission. In addition, there’s a significant program of planetary radar measurements that contribute data to the NEO observations effort. All of these skywatching campaigns contribute to increased awareness and predictions of near-Earth objects that could pose a threat to our planet.

For More Information

• Fireball Witnessed by Weather Satellite
• Asteroid Watch
• ESA Planetary Defence Office

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

30-05-2024 om 00:41 geschreven door peter  

“Euclid is a unique, ground-breaking mission, and these are the first datasets to be made public – it’s an important milestone,” says Valeria Pettorino, ESA’s Euclid Project Scientist. “The images and associated science findings are impressively diverse in terms of the objects and distances observed. They include a variety of science applications, and yet represent a mere 24 hours of observations. They give just a hint of what Euclid can do. We are looking forward to six more years of data to come!”

The leading image is the most stunning and perhaps the most relatable. It shows Messier 78, aka NGC 2068. It’s a reflection nebula and star-forming region contained in the vast Orion B molecular cloud complex. Euclid used its infrared capabilities to see through the dust that shrouds the star-formation region. It’s given us our most detailed look at the filaments of gas and dust that give the region its ghostly appearance.

Euclid can detect objects that are just a few times more massive than Jupiter, an impressive feat. In its M78 image, it found over 300,000 objects in that mass range.

One of Euclid’s objectives is to study dark matter and how it’s distributed in the Universe. It uses gravitational lensing to probe dark matter, and its image of the Abell 2390 galaxy cluster exhibits the tell-tale curved arcs of light coming from distant background objects created by gravitational lensing. The image also shows more than 50,000 galaxies.

Most of the stars currently forming in the Universe are forming in spiral galaxies. Euclid captured this image of NGC 6744 as an archetype of that galaxy type. The telescope’s wide-angle lens and depth of field capture the entire galaxy and also small details. It shows lanes of dust that emerge as spurs on the spiral arms.

With this image, astronomers can map individual stars and the gas that feeds their formation. They can also identify globular clusters and new dwarf galaxies. Euclid already found one new dwarf galaxy astronomers have never seen before, which is impressive for a galaxy that’s already been studied so intently.

Euclid also imaged another galaxy cluster, Abell 2764. This cluster contains hundreds of galaxies within a halo of dark matter. Euclid’s impressive wide-field view comes into play in this image. Not only does it show Abell 2764 in the image’s upper right, but it also shows other clusters that are even more distant, multiple background galaxies, and interacting galaxies with their streams of stars.

The image highlights one of Euclid’s other capabilities. The foreground star is in our own galaxy, and when viewed with a telescope, its diffuse light creates a halo that obscures distant objects behind it. Euclid was built to minimize that diffuse halo effect. The disturbance from the star’s diffuse light is minimal, meaning Euclid can see distant background objects near the star’s line of sight.

The final of the five new images is of galaxies in the Dorado Group. Euclid’s image shows signs of galaxies merging. The Dorado Group is a relatively young group, and many of its member galaxies are still forming stars. The image helps astronomers study how galaxies form and evolve inside halos of dark matter.

A zoomed-in image shows more detail of the main pair of galaxies in the image. Euclid’s unique large field-of-view and high spatial resolution means that for the first time, astronomers can use the same instrument and observations to deeply study tiny objects the size of star clusters, intermediate objects like the central regions of galaxies, and larger features like tidal tails in one large region of the sky.

Prior to Euclid, astronomers had to use small chunks of data to painstakingly catalogue globular clusters around galaxies. But Euclid’s wide images capture far more data in a single image, simplifying the task. Globular clusters provide important clues to how galaxies evolve over time.

Euclid’s mission is only starting. The telescope’s images so far have no equivalent, and there’s much more to come. Euclid hasn’t even begun its main survey yet. That survey will comprise both a wide survey covering about 15,000 square degrees of the sky and a deep survey covering about 50 square degrees.

“It’s no exaggeration to say that the results we’re seeing from Euclid are unprecedented,” says ESA Director of Science, Prof. Carole Mundell. “Euclid’s first images, published in November, clearly illustrated the telescope’s vast potential to explore the dark Universe, and this second batch is no different.”

“The beauty of Euclid is that it covers large regions of the sky in great detail and depth, and can capture a wide range of different objects all in the same image – from faint to bright, from distant to nearby, from the most massive of galaxy clusters to small planets,” said Mundell. “We get both a very detailed and very wide view all at once. This amazing versatility has resulted in numerous new science results that, when combined with the results from Euclid’s surveying over the coming years, will significantly alter our understanding of the Universe.”

• The scientific papers released with these images are available here.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

30-05-2024 om 00:24 geschreven door peter  

Mystery Fireball Seen Breaking Up in Sky Over Southern Russia: Video

By Isabel van Brugen

A mysterious fireball was spotted breaking up in the sky over southern Russia on Wednesday, videos shared by locals show.

Footage showing the unknown flying object was shared on social media by residents from several regions, including Stavropol Krai, the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, Krasnodar Krai, and the Republic of Kalmykia. Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported that some residents believed it was a falling meteorite or comet, while others said they thought they had seen a satellite or an "enemy object."

The videos showed the fireball breaking up into multiple parts as it moved slowly across the night sky. Newsweek has not independently verified the footage.

This comes weeks after social media users reported seeing mysterious spiral UFO sightings across the United States and Europe. Interest in unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) peaked last year after several experts testified before a Congress committee in July 2023 that they could pose a threat to national security. A Gallup poll conducted in 2021 found that 41 percent of Americans believe alien spacecraft have visited Earth, up eight points from 33 percent in 2019.

RIA Novosti reported, citing amateur astronomers, that the sighting could have been space debris burning at low speed.

The Telegram channel of the observational astronomy project, AstroAlert, said the burning object was likely a SpaceX Starlink satellite.

"The culprit of today's sky show has been found! This is most likely STARLINK-2653," the channel said, sharing a map purportedly showing its flight path.

"On this map, its final flight path is the lower orbit turning from white to green and then to the red line, going through the center of the Sahara Desert, the Mediterranean Sea, Turkey, the Black Sea, Sochi and further over the northern Caspian Sea."

"15 minutes before combustion (at 17:35 UT or 20:35 Moscow time), the spacecraft flew over the western coast of Africa near a point with coordinates 0° longitude and 0° latitude," the channel said.

Newsweek reached out to SpaceX for comment by email.

Russia this week announced that it had kickstarted the first stage of testing tactical nuclear weapons in the region. Personnel of the Southern Military District had started training and completing combat tasks with "special ammunition" for Iskander missile systems, the Russian defense ministry said in a statement.

There is no suggestion that the fireball spotted on Wednesday is linked to the tactical tests. Newsweek has reached out to Russia's Foreign Ministry for comment via email.

"The personnel of the aviation units of the Russian Aerospace Forces involved in the exercise practice are equipping aviation weapons with special warheads, including the Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, and flying into designated patrol areas," the statement said.

{  https://www.newsweek.com/ }

29-05-2024 om 22:14 geschreven door peter  

• https://youtu.be/jlxjsGrsyNw

An expert has come to the defense of a Las Vegas family who claim they came face to face with eight-foot-tall aliens.

The Kenmores have insisted for over a year that two gangly, green-gray creatures crash-landed on their property last summer.

They now have the backing of Scott Roder, a veteran in the field of crime scene reconstruction who has worked on high-profile cases like the Oscar Pistorius murder trial.

‘It’s there. It’s absolutely there,’ Roder said during an appearance on the Extraterrestrial Reality Podcast with host Jim Quirk.

He was speaking about footage captured by Angel Kenmore that was purported to show the otherworldly visitors in the hours between April 30 and May 1, 2023. 

The Kenmore family insist that two gangly, green-gray aliens were spotted in their backyard last summer – and have now garnered the support of an expert

Scott Roder, a veteran in the field of crime scene reconstruction, analyzed the footage and claims to have spotted two extraterrestrial beings

‘At this particular time, with what we’ve seen here, is proof of a couple of things,’ Roder said. ‘That these entities… are real. They’re there. This is not fake. This is not a fraud.’

In addition to singling out what he believes to be a ‘creature,’ Roder pointed to 30 frames of video showing a ‘head’ surrounded by ‘smoke,’ which he described as ‘some sort of cloaking device,’ peeking over the fence.

During an appearance on NewsNation’s ‘Banfield’ earlier this month, Roder insisted that the footage was genuine.

‘We tried to debunk it to see if there was something that was added to the video. All of our results came back as it was authentic,’ he said.

Roder used motion tracking software to locate what he described as the head of one of the creatures.

‘We believe it’s attached to a body,’ he explained. ‘And the motion of that head from right to left is consistent with the motion that we see between the slats of the fence.’

Angel Kenmore, who captured the infamous video, has sat for numerous interviews since speaking out about what he saw.

In April, he detailed paranormal happenings inside the family home, including Bible pages turning on their own and a cross floating upside down.

During an appearance on the Extraterrestrial Reality Podcast, Roder pointed to 30 frames of video showing a ‘head’ surrounded by ‘smoke,’ described as ‘some sort of cloaking device’

The video was captured by Angel Kenmore last year and featured in a viral YouTube video where the teen recounted the purported alien sighting

Angel first came into the public eye due to a viral YouTube video that was uploaded on June 8 of last year and has since racked up more than 1 million views.

‘This is not a conspiracy theory,’ Angel began by saying. ‘I am not making this story up for clout or fame.’

The then-16-year-old explained how he and his brother heard something falling from the sky before observing a flash of light.

Unbeknownst to him, this greenish glow was also captured on police bodycam and footage from a neighbor’s Ring camera.

Kenmore said he and his brother then felt the impact of something hitting the ground, followed by a loud bang.

Angel said they were then hit with a shockwave, likening the sensation to ‘an out of body experience’. 

He said the entire backyard was blurry when he tried to look at the fallen object, and he heard ‘thousands of footsteps’ all around him before the blurriness subsided.

The teen said he could make out a tall, very thin creature standing between eight and 10 feet tall. Panicking, he called Bobby to the backyard, who told him to go inside.

Later, Angel and Joshua went to retrieve Angel’s toolkit when Joshua instructed him to ‘look behind the forklift.’

Angel said he froze as soon as he saw the creature, describing it as ‘the same experience as having sleep paralysis.’

The creature sported ‘weird-looking feet and a big face and eyes and you could see a big mouth. I could hear his loud deep breathing and see his stomach move.’

Moments earlier, a flash of light was spotted cresting across the night sky before a loud bang sounded

Angel said a police officer pointed at a perfect circle that had been etched into the ground upon arriving to check out the scene

Angel fled to the house and called 911. ‘There’s like an eight-foot person… and it has big eyes and it’s looking at us,’ he told the operator. ‘I swear to God, it’s not a joke.’

When police arrived, Angel was surprised to hear that one of the officers had spotted the streak of light an hour earlier.

‘I’m not gonna B.S. you guys,’ the cop told the bewildered family. ‘One of my partners said they saw something fall out of the sky too.’

The police then followed the family into the backyard. Angel said an officer pointed at a perfect circle that had been etched into the ground.

With bodycams rolling, officers flagged down cars to glean more information.

‘This might sound like a really dumb question, but did you guys see anything fall out of the sky?’ one cop asked a passing driver.

He added that police usually wouldn’t take such a call seriously but were intrigued because one of their own had seen it.

However, other experts have refuted the family’s claims. Mick West, a writer who specializes in debunking false conspiracy theories, was brought on Inside Edition to give his take on the mysterious incident.

According to West, an alternate explanation could be a raccoon sitting atop the fence – explaining the big eyes – or perhaps even a coyote.

Another theory suggests that a meteor may have caused the streak of light and resounding impact.

The American Meteor Society confirmed 21 reported sightings of the strange glow across California, Nevada and Utah. 

{ https://expressdigest.com/ }

29-05-2024 om 21:50 geschreven door peter  

Las Vegas UFO Crash Is Real, Claims Man Worked For NYPD: 10-Foot Alien Terrified 

Another historic extraterrestrial event has happened in the United States that will be debated in the UFO community until the truth comes out. On May 1, 2023, an object in the sky was noticed by several people in eastern California, Nevada, and Utah, which was later reported to be crashed including the alleged sighting of peculiar creatures in a residential backyard.

The incident shares similarities with other extraordinary cases from around the world, involving crashes, encounters with strange beings, and puzzling elements that defy explanation. Such stories can be easily called hoaxes, as happened with the  Las Vegas crash. But independent investigative journalist and former police officer Doug Poppa shed light on his involvement in the case and provided additional information about the crash incident, according to which it is not a hoax.

Crash Incident

Both the police and news investigators took the incident seriously from the outset. Just before midnight on April 30, 2023, numerous skywatchers across multiple Western States observed a bright fireball streaking across the heavens. Around the same time, a police officer captured footage of the colorful object on his body  camera, and a nearby ring  camera recorded an unusual sound resembling a crash.

On May 1, 2023,  Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department received a distressing call from a terrified family. In a ranch-style home close to the crash site, a family, consisting of two brothers and their father, was engaged in vehicle repairs in their yard. Suddenly, they caught sight of a sparkling object hurtling toward the ground, followed by what they described as a shockwave.

Witness Account

One of the witnesses, a 16-year-old teenager named “Angel,” reported that the area where the object landed appeared obscured and blurry, almost as if concealed by an unknown form of camouflage. Their curiosity led them to peer into the yard, where they were confronted by a sight that prompted them to urgently contact emergency services. They described the creatures as large, measuring between 9 and 10 feet tall, with notable features such as big eyes and shiny, non-human mouths. Angel emphasized their alien-like appearance, unable to find adequate words to describe them.

Angel presents video evidence from police body  cameras and a nearby ring  camera, providing glimpses of the incident. The footage, albeit blurry, captures the intensity of the event and supports Angel’s account. He highlights specific moments in the videos where the creature is barely discernible but clearly present, further validating his claims.

Describing the creature in detail, Angel recollects its tall and slender frame, sporting a gray-greenish hue. When he locked eyes with it, his body froze, reminiscent of sleep paralysis experiences. The creature had distinctive features, including peculiar feet, a large face with eyes, and a sizeable mouth. Angel recalls the creature’s loud, deep breathing, which resonated with his entire being.

Overcoming the temporary paralysis, Angel sprinted toward the safety of his house, urgently dialing 911 to report the unearthly encounter. The 911 call records his distress and desperation, as he tries to convey the presence of two enormous, non-human entities in his backyard. Meanwhile, a cacophony of footsteps and whispered voices echoed in the background, further amplifying the sense of unease.

 Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (Metro Police) initially contemplated sending a crisis intervention team to assist the shaken witness. However, upon receiving further information from other officers, they treated the incident seriously. Two officers arrived at the scene 38 minutes after the distress call, exercising caution and even managing nervous laughter.

The officers ventured into the backyard, discovering a perfectly formed circular impression on the ground, mysterious aftermath of the encounter.

Several days later, two Metro sergeants returned to the location to conduct follow-up inquiries. The family also claimed to have observed individuals in suits and sunglasses driving a government-plated car slowly past their house. However, Nellis and Creech, nearby military installations, denied any involvement or interest in the incident.

As the officers conducted their investigation, one of them expressed his own astonishment, stating that his partner had witnessed a similar light falling from the sky. This newfound validation encouraged the officers to take the situation seriously, engaging in further inquiries and canvassing the neighborhood for additional witness accounts.

Remarkably, before departing, one officer advised Angel that if he ever encountered the creatures again, he should refrain from contacting the police and instead protect himself by any means necessary. This chilling advice underscores the gravity of the situation and the officers’ own apprehension.

With the police’s departure, Angel and his family retreated indoors, seeking solace in prayer. However, their respite was abruptly shattered when an unnerving, human-like scream pierced the night from the backyard. The harrowing experience left the family shaken, questioning the nature of the events that unfolded before them.

Las Vegas Story is Not Hoax

Doug Poppa has been closely following the story of the mysterious object falling from the sky and the subsequent claims of encounters with aliens in a  Las Vegas backyard. He was the first person to interview the family involved in the incident. Poppa conducted an interview with the family who made the initial call to the police, and they informed him that the law enforcement authorities installed surveillance  cameras outside their home to protect them from UFO enthusiasts.

Note: 

Poppa is an independent investigative journalist. He has authored more than 160 articles on the 2017  Las Vegas Massacre that were published by the Baltimore Post-Examiner. He is a former NYPD Auxiliary Police Officer, U.S. Army Military Police veteran, and former law enforcement officer. In 1986, he was the LCSO Criminal Investigator of the Year. He served 18 years in the  Las Vegas hotel-casino industry as an investigator and Director of Security and Surveillance and worked for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

While Poppa remains somewhat skeptical about the incident, he acknowledges that the family appears to be credible. In his tweet, he sarcastically questioned the Las Vegas Metro Police Department’s disbelief in the video  camera surveillance system he recorded at the residence, emphasizing the extensive measures taken by the Technical and Surveillance Squad.

Read also:

• Man Worked In Antarctica Saw Powerful Machines To Contact Alien Crafts In Deep Space
• Ex-Pentagon David Grusch Claims We Are Definitely In Contact With Aliens & They’ve Hurt Humans
• Ex-CIA Officer Encountered With Reptilian Alien; Says Reptilian Race Walking Among Us
• Whitley Strieber’s Alien Abduction & Stranger Who Told Him ‘Mankind Is Trapped

According to local TV channel 8 News Now, an officer’s  camera captured the object at around 11:50 PM local time, following a report from a resident about a non-human presence on their property. In an audio recording obtained by the TV channel, the homeowner described an eight-foot figure and another entity with big eyes inside their house, emphasizing that the beings were still present.

Poppa expressed his surprise at the police installing expensive video equipment to respond to a UFO report, stating that it is unusual for law enforcement to take such measures in such cases. His doubts and observations contribute to the ongoing intrigue surrounding the incident, raising questions about the authenticity and nature of the reported encounters.

During one of the interviews, Doug Poppa observed a peculiar occurrence. While interviewing Angel, the teenager who recorded YouTube videos about the incident, there was a mysterious female voice on the phone with Angel, instructing him to obtain Doug Poppa’s license plate. This strange interaction added an intriguing element to the investigation.

In an interview with News Nation on June 15, 2023, Poppa confirms that he recently spoke with the family and shared his experience with them. He mentions that Angel has been facing intense scrutiny and backlash on social media. The family, being Hispanic, has also received threats and derogatory comments. Poppa expresses his disappointment and highlights the need for respect and understanding.

Poppa emphasizes that three members of the family, including Angel, his brother, and their father, witnessed the strange creatures. He points out that during his interactions with the family, their accounts remained consistent, which he finds significant in assessing their credibility. As an experienced investigator with 40 years of experience, Doug Poppa made efforts to gauge the authenticity of their claims but found no reason to doubt their story.

Regarding evidence, Doug Poppa mentions that Angel posted a video on his YouTube channel, but many people have criticized and analyzed it extensively. He notes that the Baltimore Post-Examiner was the first to publish a photo of the impression left in the soil, which Angel captured on the night of the incident. Additionally, Poppa obtained a photograph from Angel showing two sergeants from the  Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department who allegedly returned to speak with the family a few days after the initial incident.

Doug Poppa also discusses the installation of surveillance  cameras on the family’s roof. These  cameras were reportedly installed by the  Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s Homeland Security division for the family’s protection. However, Poppa finds it peculiar that the cameras had been removed a few days before he returned to the residence on May 27th.

Poppa highlights the ongoing investigation and the need for further verification of certain aspects, such as the location of the ring  camera mentioned in social media posts. He expresses his commitment to continuing his investigation into the incident and implies that there is more to uncover.

To be noted: According to NASA’s planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson, the green fireball observed in  Las Vegas last month was most likely a bright meteor less than a meter in size and not a UFO that fell in anyone’s backyard. Johnson clarified that the object was high in the atmosphere and hundreds of miles away from  Las Vegas when it was spotted, so nothing from the meteor landed in anyone’s backyard. He explained that NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) captures reports for objects estimated to exceed 1 meter in size based on the observed energy released. Therefore, smaller objects like the green fireball may not be included in NASA’s records. (Source)

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

29-05-2024 om 21:32 geschreven door peter  

Pour one out for NASA’s large flying laboratory, an old and hardworking DC-8 aircraft that the space and aeronautics agency just retired. The plane came into the world in 1969, the same year that NASA astronauts first walked on the moon during the Apollo era. The agency converted it to be a flying lab after buying the aircraft from Alitalia in 1985 and started using it for missions in 1987, during the space shuttle era. Its final resting place is at Idaho State University, where it will serve as a ground-based training aircraft for mechanics.

But life, and science, keep cruising onward: The plane’s successor is an even bigger aircraft, a modern Boeing 777 that will become NASA’s next flying laboratory. It’s due to start conducting science flights late next year.

“The DC-8 is a special plane,” says Nicki Reid, the aircraft’s operations engineer. “It’s accomplished a lot in its life.” That may be an understatement. There are big shoes to fill to replace what NASA has dubbed “the largest flying science laboratory in the world.”

NASA’S JACK OF ALL TRADES

NASA’s retiring DC-8 carried out many different types of scientific research while airborne. It could fly for as long as 10 or even 12 hours, although Reid says a standard mission would last between six and 10 hours. The flying lab, she says, could hold dozens of instruments — the exact equipment could change based on the mission — and as many as 55 people.

Those instruments were surprisingly versatile. One of the most straightforward things the plane studied was the air it was flying through. Its most recent mission had it measuring air quality in Asia, for example, and it also trailed a Boeing 737 to study its contrails.

It also had a key role in larger scale science. Historically, and probably most famously, it played a key role in studying the recovery of the hole in the ozone layer, a problem that the United Nations said in 2023 was thankfully moving in the right direction after the global ban on ozone-depleting substances. Turning from atmosphere to the ground, from 2009 to 2019, the aircraft studied the thickness of ice in Antarctica as part of a mission called Operation IceBridge.

The plane also acted as a test bed for satellite instruments before they were launched into space. And after they were, it could check to see if they were staying in working order, validating how satellite instruments were doing once they were in space by flying under the satellite’s path, and taking its own measurements, thus allowing researchers to compare those with what the satellite saw.

Using an aircraft to carry out research allows scientists to get an important viewpoint. “We go out and do things on aircraft that we can’t do with satellites or ground-based measurement,” says Amin Nehrir, a research scientist with NASA. We “look at processes in the atmosphere and the surface that are on short-enough time scales that we can’t see them from space — because from space, we sample them once a day, or maybe once every 16 days — and from the ground, we only have one data point in one location. And so the aircraft allows us to bridge these spatial and temporal scales.”

Nehrir highlights one particular instrument on the aircraft: an ozone lidar called DIAL, which employs lasers to measure what’s going on with the air outside the plane. It “was integral to finding the ozone hole,” he says.

TIME FOR RETIREMENT

Operating an old plane like the DC-8 — a four-engine type of passenger aircraft that Delta Air Lines, for example, flew between 1959 and 1989 — came with a cost. “It was getting hard to maintain,” says Reid. “We had to buy our tires custom-made, we had to buy brakes custom-made, and those get expensive when you’re a customer of one.”

Besides that, on board the DC-8, the climate situation wasn’t exactly perfectly temperature controlled. “It’s rarely a pleasant flight,” Reid says. And it was loud, too. “We took out a lot of the insulation, so that we could have access to a lot of the wiring running through the walls, so we can hear the engine noise quite a bit,” she says. Noise-canceling headphones with a built-in communications system helped with that issue.

The old-school nature of the aircraft compels Carrie Worth, a NASA Gulfstream pilot who has also flown the DC-8, to compare it to a “dump truck with wings.” That’s because it was a very hands-on aircraft to fly and had little automation, the equivalent of an older car that requires you to manually roll up or down the windows instead of pushing a button.

WHAT’S NEXT

The new aircraft is a Boeing 777 that, like the DC-8, used to be a passenger airliner. A widebody plane with two engines built in 2003, this 777 was owned by Japan Airlines before NASA bought it. Right now, the aircraft is having work done on it in Louisiana.

Its mission, says Glenn Jamison, who directs the Research Services Directorate at NASA, will be “understanding our Earth.”

As a successor to the DC-8, the new aircraft “brings a significant increase in the capacity,” Jamison says. “It also brings a significant increase in reach and endurance.” That means it can go farther and stay in the air for longer — as long as 18 hours.

This is one factor that’s important for doing science. “How long can you stay over an area and take measurements that are not broken by having to return to base?” says Jamison. That’s why an aircraft that can stay in the air for a long time is useful for scientists. It is being designed to be able to carry some 100 researchers, he says. And students may be able to fly on it someday, through a program called SARP.

NASA does have other research aircraft at its disposal, such as Gulfstream jets, a P-3 Orion, and two ER-2s, which are similar to the Air Force’s U-2 aircraft and can soar as high as 70,000 feet.

But the DC-8’s end of life comes, as The New York Times reports, as a trio of important NASA satellites — Terra, Aqua, and Aura — are nearing the end of their lifetimes, too. Satellites and research aircraft work well together, because the aircraft can essentially check the satellite’s work.

“The aircraft will never be able to pick up the slack from a satellite — because the satellite is 24/7, it’s global,” says Nehrir. When NASA loses satellites, he says, another aspect that gets lost is the way the plane works with them. “We typically go do these science investigations within the context of the satellite measurements — so we place the aircraft under the satellite, so that we can understand how to better interpret the satellite measurements, how to calibrate and validate them, and so we lose that component once the satellites turn off.”

In regard to the sunsetting of the three satellites, a NASA representative says that other existing instruments, such as SAGE on the International Space Station and a Canadian instrument on a Swedish satellite, can study the atmosphere and that they’re also looking into a proposal called STRIVE. Among other tasks, STRIVE would focus on studying the state of the ozone layer.

Whatever the future may hold, there’s no doubt that one 55-year-old DC-8 has done its part for science as the little flying laboratory that could.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

29-05-2024 om 21:07 geschreven door peter  

The 1957 RB-47 UFO Encounter: Unraveling a Secret Signal

In 1957, an extraordinary UFO encounter involving a U.S. Air Force RB-47 aircraft provided a compelling case of an unidentified flying object being detected through advanced electronic intelligence (ELINT) equipment. This incident, combining visual confirmation, radar detection, and ELINT data, remains one of the most fascinating and well-documented UFO encounters in history.

The RB-47 Aircraft

The RB-47, a modified version of the B-47 bomber, was equipped with sophisticated ELINT equipment. This six-engine turbojet-powered strategic bomber was primarily designed for reconnaissance missions during the Cold War. The RB-47H variant, involved in this encounter, was specifically adapted for electronic intelligence gathering, carrying a crew of six, including three electronic warfare officers.

The Encounter

On July 17, 1957, an RB-47 took off from Forbes Air Force Base in Kansas for a training mission over the Gulf of Mexico. As the aircraft returned from the Gulf, it detected an unusual radar signal. Frank McClure, the operator at the number two ELINT monitor, noticed an airborne radar signal at 2.8 gigahertz, a frequency typically associated with ground-based radar.

Unusual Signal Behavior

McClure initially thought his equipment was malfunctioning, but the signal exhibited behavior that no ground-based radar could replicate. The signal moved around the aircraft, which was flying at 500 miles per hour, indicating it was emanating from an airborne source. This unexpected movement led McClure to realize that the signal was from an unidentified object following the RB-47.

Visual and Radar Confirmation

At around 4:10 a.m. CST, the pilot, Lieutenant Chase, and co-pilot James McCoy observed a luminous object moving at high speed across their flight path. The object appeared as a bright light, sometimes white and other times red. Concurrently, the ELINT equipment detected the same signal, confirming the presence of the unidentified object.

As the RB-47 flew over Louisiana and Texas, the crew continued to detect the signal and visually observe the object. Ground radar stations, including one in Duncanville, Texas, also tracked the object. The synchronized detection by ground radar, airborne radar, and ELINT equipment provided strong evidence of the object’s existence and capabilities.

Extraordinary Maneuvers

The UFO demonstrated extraordinary flight capabilities, such as abrupt stops, rapid altitude changes, and the ability to evade pursuit. At one point, the object dropped 15,000 feet in altitude and disappeared from radar, only to reappear moments later. These maneuvers were beyond the capabilities of known aircraft at the time, further deepening the mystery.

Investigation and Analysis

Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force’s official UFO investigation program, and other agencies investigated the RB-47 encounter. However, they could not provide a satisfactory explanation. The encounter was classified as “unknown,” and crucial ELINT data reportedly disappeared during the investigation process, adding to the intrigue.

Significance of the Encounter

The RB-47 UFO encounter stands out due to the convergence of multiple forms of evidence: visual sightings by experienced military personnel, radar detection by both the aircraft and ground stations, and ELINT data. This combination of evidence from credible sources makes the RB-47 encounter a pivotal case in UFO research.

The incident underscores the potential existence of advanced, unidentified aerial technology and highlights the importance of thorough documentation and investigation. As UFO phenomena continue to capture public and scientific interest, the RB-47 case serves as a critical reference point for understanding and exploring these mysterious events.

VIDEO:

• https://youtu.be/LU6ozS9caGI

The 1957 RB-47 UFO encounter remains a remarkable and enigmatic event in the history of UFO sightings. With its combination of visual, radar, and ELINT evidence, it provides a compelling case for further investigation into the phenomena of unidentified flying objects. The encounter challenges our understanding of aerial technology and continues to intrigue researchers and enthusiasts alike, emphasizing the need for openness and scientific inquiry in unraveling the mysteries of the skies.

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

29-05-2024 om 20:47 geschreven door peter  

Arizona Man Filmed Huge Solid UFO In Phoenix Lights: MIB Took Video & Man Vanished

On the night of March 13, 1997, the people of the United States witnessed one of the largest and best-known UFO sightings in history. The UAP phenomenon was observed in the skies over the southwestern states of Arizona and Nevada and the Mexican state of Sonora. According to a Rocky Mountain Poll conducted at the time, as well as the commotion that ensued, around 10% of Arizonans claimed to have witnessed the incident that is now known as “The  Phoenix Lights.”

One of the eyewitnesses named Richard Curtis from Arizona, claiming to have solid evidence of the incident, contacted local Councilwoman Frances Barwood. He vanished following an encounter with  MIB and a media revelation.

Frances Barwood, a member of the city council, opened an investigation into the incident. Since the military and local authorities had already managed to claim that the lights seen by the eyewitnesses were only flares, her coworkers thought her behavior was ludicrous.

Barwood received a call from Richard Curtis a few months later. He said right away that he had extremely detailed footage of the  Phoenix Lights despite being an injured former soldier. He claimed that had personally captured them using high-quality equipment.

“He said you could see the shape. He said you could see how big it was in comparison to the surrounding buildings and everything. He described that the lights were gaseous. He was so excited that he had gotten all this on video,” Barwood recalled him telling her. Additionally, Curtis admitted to Barwood that he had no idea who else to call and that he trusted her.

Since the majority of the  Phoenix Lights video footage up until this point had been merely specks of light on a dark background, Barwood was intrigued by this message. Curtis agreed to provide copies of the footage to Barwood’s office after she urged him to do so. However, days passed, and she did not receive films either by mail or by courier. “I thought he made this up. He didn’t have video, you know, all this stuff,” she said.

A week later, Curtis telephoned Barwood at her house and inquired about her thoughts on the films. Barwood informed him that she had not received them and expressed her amazement. Curtis continued by telling her that following their phone call, two men from her workplace stopped up at his home. The two “similar-looking” individuals were fully covered in black (three-piece black suits, black shoes, black hats, black suitcases, etc.). The men were not dressed in jackets or other gear, even though it was fairly chilly outside. It struck Curtis as weird.

He asked the men if they were from Barwood’s office and they confirmed it. Then they inquired about the  Phoenix Lights videos, specifically to find out if Curtis had copied them. They responded that they would make copies for him themselves when he said he had not been able to. Curtis then handed them his videos and the two men left his house in a black sedan.

Barwood informed Curtis that she had no men in her office and that all of her staff were female. “I had no idea who these guys were. It sounds so bizarre. Nothing made sense to me,” Barwood recalled thinking. All of this infuriated Richard Curtis, who concluded that the authorities had misled him. In an interview with  Phoenix TV, he discussed everything that had happened, including the “Men in Black” visit and that they took his videos.

Read also:

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And shortly after that, when Barwood tried to call Curtis, she discovered that he was not answering. When she got to his apartment, he was not there, but the neighbors informed her that Curtis had supposedly taken a faulty medication and had been transported by ambulance to the hospital. There were no records of Curtis ever being admitted to any Phoenix-area hospitals when Barwood started looking for him there.

Barwood made the decision to have her phone lines checked by a professional when she questioned how the odd men even knew about the tapes. He visited her house and conducted his tests there. After that, he went outdoors. “He wouldn’t come back in the house. He came to the backdoor and said, “No, I’m not coming in. Yes, your phone is tapped, it’s a government tap,” she said.

Since the military and authorities insisted that the  Phoenix Lights were nothing more than flares, Barwood was astounded to learn that someone in the US government had tapped her phones. Richard Curtis vanished without a trace.

It became a worldwide sensation throughout the course of the subsequent months. It was “the second biggest case in UFOlogy after  Roswell,” according to the late Art Bell, host of the syndicated paranormal radio program Coast to Coast AM.

The bizarre light show, according to skeptics, was caused by man-made aircraft from Glendale’s Luke Air Force Base or other neighboring military installations conducting training drills. The  Phoenix Lights, according to UFOlogists, were not of this world.

Below you can find a transcript from a FOX10 NEWS ( Phoenix Lights) reported by Jim Schnabel: (Source)

Voiceover: Months after this (March 13) sighting there are many questions regarding the strange lights over Phoenix. Is this a solid craft, or merely lights in an empty sky? What could be the conclusive evidence is now mysteriously missing. Richard Curtis claims his home video is proof that this sighting was a huge flying craft. And he claims his video shows a solid object in the sky passing over his home.

Curtis: I saw the bottom part (of the craft) as it went over  Phoenix, because the lights lit the bottom of it, and it partially blocked out the clouds and the stars. : voiceover: Curtis called city councilwoman Frances Emma Barwood, wanting to show her the footage. : (on screen: cut to a headshot of Barwood)

Barwood: He said he had it on two videotapes, and would I like them, so I said, “Of course I would.”, and could he give me copies of them. He said he would. I told him how to get them to my office and to mark them ‘personal and confidential’.

Voiceover: But before Curtis could send copies to Barwood, he’s paid a visit by two mysterious men in black. : Curtis:(voiced over  MIB reenactments) They were dressed in black suits, with black hats and sunglasses. They asked me if I had tapes for councilwoman Barwood, and I said “Yah, they’re laying right here”. They said, “We’ve stopped by to pick them up.” So I said, “Great!” and just handed (the original tapes) to them.

Barwood: I didn’t get them, and I have no idea who these two men were since I have just females working in my office. It’s absolutely puzzling to me.

Voiceover: Did the tapes ever exist, and if so were they proof of more than “lights” in the sky? And who were these mysterious  Men in Black who allegedly took them?

Curtis (voiced over): I think someone listened in on that phone call and wanted those tapes.

Barwood (voiced over): I can’t explain it. It’s just eerie. Voiceover: The mystery continues.

• Source: Encounter: UFO, Season 1, Episode 5, Episode aired Sep 21, 2021

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

29-05-2024 om 01:31 geschreven door peter  

Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

NASA and its space aviation partners are in the midst of a major problem. Their newest human-rated spacecraft, Boeing’s Starliner, is in the middle of a string of issues. The latest? A second helium leak. While it might seem easy to place full blame on Boeing, in reality, rocketry is, put simply, extremely difficult.

Boeing and SpaceX received contracts a decade ago to build out the space agency’s Commercial Crew Program. This would see astronauts launch into space from American soil for the first time since the Space Shuttle retired. In the interim, NASA paid Russia tens of millions of dollars to purchase individual seats on their Soyuz spacecraft. This mostly wrapped up when SpaceX’s Crew Dragon aced its summer 2020 astronaut debut flight.

Boeing’s Starliner is meant to join the Crew Dragon as a go-to transportation vehicle, but its been delayed longer than expected. Earlier this month, it was moments from flying Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Station. But two hours before the targeted launch window, officials from the company that supplied the rocket, United Launch Alliance, recommended standing down. The initial problem was a liquid oxygen valve. That was swiftly addressed. But as teams reviewed the crew capsule, they detected a helium leak. That, too, was quickly fixed. But a new, unrelated, helium leak has now emerged.

Helium is important because it allows the spacecraft thrusters to fire, and isn’t combustible or toxic, according to NASA.

NASA will conduct a flight readiness review probably next week, the space agency reported on Thursday. The new target launch date is June 1.

PUTTING THE DELAY INTO PERSPECTIVE

Delays stemming from mechanical issues are not uncommon.

Even tried and tested launch vehicles, like the SpaceX reusable Falcon fleet, have experienced ongoing issues like corrosion from salt water.

When the SpaceX Crew Dragon was at the same stage as the Boeing Starliner is now, with a successful uncrewed docking at the orbiting laboratory under its belt, and in the midst of preparations for sending its first astronauts into space, the Crew Dragon literally blew up.

As CBS News reported in 2019, teams were just about to fire up its “fault-tolerant propulsion” engines, which would bring the crew capsule away from the rocket in less than eight seconds in case of an emergency during liftoff. But just before beginning this test of its launch escape system, there was an anomaly. Beachgoers witnessed reddish-orange smoke rising after the incident. Crew Dragon didn’t fly its first astronauts, for the Demo-2 mission, until a year later.

Artemis I, NASA’s most-recent foray around the Moon with a human-rated spacecraft, is another example of this liminal space.

The premier mission of the Artemis program established that the Orion capsule could successfully swing out past the Moon, farther than any such spacecraft has flown before, and land back on Earth, coming in faster and hotter than Apollo astronauts ever did. But the first trip with astronauts, Artemis II, has been delayed by a year due to an issue with the heat shield. Charred material unexpectedly came off the capsule during descent, posing a potential risk to the integrity of the spacecraft if it happened to be entering a different orientation than its entry in late 2022.

In the grand scheme of spaceflight history, delays tend to fade from memory. What people remember is the awe of a successful trip, and the sad moments when they’ve failed. Space is undeniably hard.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

29-05-2024 om 00:37 geschreven door peter  

((Credit: Raytheon)

The program “will accelerate the ability to provide fire-control in support of global detection, warning, and precision tracking of advanced missile threats, including hypersonic missile systems,” according to a draft solicitation released by the SDA last fall. “The F2 system will demonstrate advanced missile defense capability by incorporating fire control-quality sensors into a prototype constellation,” the solicitation adds.

This week, it was revealed that the first request for proposals for the experimental satellites is set to be released on June 18, according to SDA Director Derek Tournear, who spoke with reporters on May 24. The proposal request was first reported by Breaking Defense.

According to its current timelines, the SDA plans to solicit proposals for contractors to develop and manage the ground system backbone for the FOO Fighter program. This initiative marks a significant step toward advancing the U.S.’s satellite-based missile defense capabilities.

Tournear explained on Friday that a pre-RFP announcement had been posted on the SAM.gov website, detailing the SDA’s solicitation for an integrator to develop and manage the ground system for the FOO Fighter program.

The first solicitation, called the “Advanced Fire Control Ground Integration,” is looking for contractors to lay the groundwork for the program through the establishment of a developmental operations center (DOC) at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.

The development of the system’s DOC will include the construction of ground entry points for data downlinks, cloud hosting for computing, and providing the IT resources that will support the FOO Fighter program during its initial stages, as well as later providing support for other fire control demonstrations.

This will be followed by a second solicitation, the “Advanced Fire Control Mission Integration” (AFCMI), later this summer. This solicitation will secure a contractor to oversee ground-based operations for the management of incoming data from the FOO Fighter and future demonstrations, helping to propel the program toward eventual use with military operators.

Originally, the SDA had envisioned hiring a sole contractor to oversee all of the program’s demonstration satellites under the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) Futures Program (PFP). This included the T1DES (Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System) project and the T2DES (Transport Layer Tranche 2).

Following additional feedback from industry stakeholders, an additional draft solicitation was issued last month, prompting SDA to take a slightly different approach.

The April 30 solicitation announced an award “using Other Transaction Authority (OTA) with a total potential value of approximately $414 million to build eight satellites, for launch in first quarter fiscal year 2027,” revealing that the fixed-price agreement had been awarded to California-based Millennium Space Systems, Inc.

“The FOO Fighter program will provide an operational demonstration of fire control efforts separate from, but complementary to, our missile warning/missile tracking and missile defense efforts already underway in the tranches,” Tournear said, accompanying the solicitation’s release.

“We look forward to working with Millennium, a new teammate in the expanding marketplace of performers innovating to deliver the PWSA for the warfighter,” Tournear said.

Tournear told reporters on Friday that feedback from the industry made it evident that the previous solicitation had been confusing due to the level of complication it involved, likely making it very difficult for any prospective contractor to execute. It was, therefore, impractical for SDA to depend on a single contractor to manage the full range of technologies the FOO Fighter program will require.

Tournear said the new ground system for fire control must be operational before the FOO Fighter satellites are launched. Current estimates aim to have them in orbit by the first quarter of fiscal 2027.

“The contracts will start in the first week of December 2024, and then everything will be in place by the summer of 2026,” Tournear said last week, emphasizing that SDA plans to have the infrastructure for the program’s operation ready well ahead of the satellite launch.

The program’s unique title is more than just a random designator. The name appears to be rather obviously derived from a nickname given to phenomena encountered by Allied pilots flying over Europe during the Second World War who, as early as March 1942, began reporting sightings of unusual lights that reportedly paced their aircraft.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/space/ }

28-05-2024 om 23:10 geschreven door peter  

Cornell University

Someday, she hopes that the vials of well-tended microbes, tiny samples of hot lava, and thousands of lines of computer code in her labs will help astronomers recognize the chemical signs of life in the atmosphere of a distant planet.

In her recent book, Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos, Kaltenegger describes the result as a “light fingerprint” for life (and one of its telltale features is a combination of oxygen and methane).

Inverse talked with Kaltenegger about exoplanets, aliens, and how science mixes caution with optimism.

Kaltenegger: I started thinking about how to do this in 1999 or 2000, and I really started modeling it around 2004. People were finding the first planets in the habitable zone, but it was with the wobble technique, so we didn't really know their mass; they could still be gas balls or rocks. It took about a decade until 2013, until we found the first Kepler planets in the habitable zone that were small enough to be rocky.

It was a long stretch where there were still some hints that those planets would exist, like from radial velocity measurements, but we just were unsure.

I think when we found that first exoplanet around another star, it was an educated guess that there should be other ones. But the one problem we had was the timeline; that the work would be needed at some point seemed like a logical conclusion, but the problem was, was it going to be within my lifetime? There were people telling me that this was way too far advanced, that this is something nobody would need in our lifetimes. And I usually fall back to this idea that I have on science, that you're basically putting these stepping stones into place. Even if it might not be you who actually can do the observations, the ideas that we put together can vibrate through time.

I usually fall back to this idea that I have on science, that you're basically putting these stepping stones into place. Even if it might not be you who actually can do the observations, the ideas that we put together can vibrate through time.

Your book describes one lab full of colorful microbe colonies in vials, and another where you actually make lava by melting powdered rock samples. That sounds like so much fun! What is your normal work day like?

I work a lot on my computer. What I do most of the time is actually putting these pieces together and putting it into this atmospheric model to figure out how these signs of life would appear to a telescope. I do get to go to the biology lab, to the Earth and atmospheric lab, and to the lava lab.

But I have people who actually have those as their specific things, because otherwise I could get going and forget to feed the bacteria. I could see myself forgetting something critical. In our team, we have a person who trained in microbiology who's growing most of these biota, so that's a big step forward from me killing half of the biota when I tried this. And then we have somebody else whose specific expertise is lava, that actually knows how to handle molten rock. I have to say in my head 'Don't touch it, it's molten rock.'

Your tone in the book is very hopeful. How optimistic are you that we’ll detect life on another planet during your career?

We have billions and billions of possibilities out there, so I think the numbers are forever in our favor. The question is how to spot it, and this is what we are learning.

It requires these databases of signatures, like biopigments, that you could see as mixtures of gases in an atmosphere. It requires you to understand your data well, and to understand the star well. Where we are right now is learning how to take the star's signal out to figure out what's going on with the small planets, and the TRAPPIST-1 system is the one that we've started with. It's really hard to do even with the biggest telescope we have.

We have billions and billions of possibilities out there, so I think the numbers are forever in our favor. The question is how to spot it, and this is what we are learning.

One of the first questions that I asked myself is if you looked at the Earth through time, how long could you have spotted life? Because that was a completely open question. Just in terms of how long Earth's atmosphere has had unique signatures of life, it's about half the planet's lifetime, so 2 billion years. If we assume that the evolution of a planet is the same everywhere, time-wise, then I think we have a great chance to find signs of life. If the evolution of life to do photosynthesis and produce oxygen is faster, then we have a higher chance. If it's slower, then it's going to become more tricky to identify it. But being that generation and the group of people who figure out what this probability is, is actually a fascinating journey.

So how optimistic am I? The bigger surprise to me would be if we find nothing. If life is everywhere it can be, and it developed to leave unique signs, then we have a shot with the JWST in the next 5 to 10 years.

Speaking of TRAPPIST-1, some of the first round of observations with JWST have been pretty discouraging; it looks like the innermost TRAPPIST-1 planets may not have much in the way of atmospheres. What does this mean for the odds of life on rocky worlds in the habitable zones of red dwarf stars?

The problem is that if you make a certain assumption for the model of the star, and you apply it to your data, you get a solution. Then you come to the second observation, and we figure out the star is actually completely different than we thought it was. The problem is that results in error bars that are very big, and those big error bars do not preclude us from saying either way if there's an atmosphere enough, so I'm not worried yet. Once we have beaten down the error bars from the star, if we still don't find anything, then it can exclude things like a Martian atmosphere. But we're not there yet.

Currently, what [the JWST data] means is that we can exclude a 'substantial atmosphere,' but the Earth doesn't have a 'substantial atmosphere.' We never expected the TRAPPIST systems to have 10 or 100 bars of hydrogen and CO2, because they're too small, so it's not really surprising, what we've found.

Let's assume that that we find there is no atmosphere on any of the TRAPPIST-1 planets. That actually doesn't mean that the next M star over will also have planets with no atmosphere. TRAPPIST-1 is of the smallest systems, extremely active, and very tightly packed. In science, we have to be very careful not to take one example and extrapolate it to everything else.

Once you find an exoplanet atmosphere with a mix of chemicals that looks like a fingerprint of life, how do you decide when to make the ‘we found aliens’ claim?

The scientific community generally agrees on something called three sigma detection. When you run the model, and it does machine learning and lots of super cool things to figure out what's in the atmosphere [of an exoplanet], if that signal doesn't hit the three times higher than the noise, a lot of times [those signals] are artifacts. And so we've already seen this when we have the first hints that there could be dimethyl sulfide [in a planet’s atmosphere] — that is like a 1.2 sigma, so not anywhere near this threshold yet.

And then I think what needs to happen is that the data needs to be scrutinized by way more than one team. Because you never know; there could be an error in your model, or there could be something you program differently that gives you better results than other teams.

If two independent teams find a confirmation, then the next step is you put all the criticism you can out there: What else could it be? Like exotic geophysics or photochemistry. That's what I do with the light fingerprints, to say [when a planet] might look like it has life, but it doesn't — under what circumstances do we have to be very careful? It's not to say that I'm not excited every time someboday says 'Oh, this could be life.' But it's like the methane on Mars; I wish for it to be life, but if I have 99 or 100 explanations that don't require life, then as a scientist, I do have to say, 'I wish it were life, but it seems like that it's not.'

The more the planet becomes not Earth-like, the more cautious we have to be with our interpretation of the results.

Your book describes a lot of really strange, interesting planets — some you’ve simulated in your lab, and some you’ve actually studied telescope data from. Of all of them, which do you think would make the most interesting science fiction story?

So, when we found Kepler 62 e and f, the two first Kepler words: Just the vision that this would be a water world, that when you dive in, there would be ice on the bottom of this ocean, which because of the pressure, would be warm ice. There would be waves that would never break.

The other one that I'd love to see a sci-fi novel about is that giant planet we found around the white dwarf. We can only wonder, when the star exploded, did they go underground and shelter through the explosion of the star? Did they have any idea if they could survive this? You know that the white dwarf, even over billions of years, would get colder, so they would actually have to do climate change – create as much CO2 as humanly possible. And so I think that would be a super cool sci-fi plot, where your planet or moon is a spaceship that goes to the exploded planet of a star, and that's where you have to survive.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

28-05-2024 om 21:31 geschreven door peter