The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
27-04-2020
Plate tectonics may have started 400 million years earlier than we thought
Plate tectonics may have started 400 million years earlier than we thought
Minerals suggest large blocks of Earth’s crust moved around as early as 3.2 billion years ago
As early as 3.2 billion years ago, a portion of Earth's crust (seen this artist’s interpretation) moved relatively quickly across the planet's surface, a hallmark of modern plate tectonics.
Modern plate tectonics may have gotten under way as early as 3.2 billion years ago, about 400 million years earlier than scientists thought. That, in turn, suggests that the movement of large pieces of Earth’s crust could have played a role in making the planet more hospitable to life.
Geologist Alec Brenner of Harvard University and his colleagues measured the magnetic orientations of iron-bearing minerals in the Honeyeater Basalt, a layer of rock that formed between 3.19 billion and 3.18 billion years ago. The basalt is part of the East Pilbara Craton, an ancient bit of continent in Western Australia that includes rocks as old as 3.5 billion years.
This craton, the researchers found, was on the move between 3.35 billion and 3.18 billion years ago, drifting around the planet at a rate of at least 2.5 centimeters per year. That’s a speed comparable to modern plate motions, the team reports April 22 in Science Advances.
The basalt layer, which burbled up as lava and hardened during the journey, contains iron-bearing minerals that can act as tiny signposts pointing the way toward Earth’s magnetic poles. While the lava was still molten, the minerals rotated, orienting themselves to align with either the north or south magnetic pole. By tracking the changes in orientation within the lava as more basalt formed during the journey, the researchers were able to determine how quickly the craton was moving.
Scientists have long used such preserved magnetic signposts to reconstruct plate motions, retracing the steps of drifting bits of continent. But the constant grinding and shifting of Earth’s tectonic plates over the last few billion years have reworked Earth’s surface many times over, leaving few outcrops that are older than 3 billion years.
The Honeyeater Basalt, however, is a rare site, both ancient and relatively unworked by metamorphism, the heat and pressure from which could have altered the minerals and reset their magnetic orientation. The team examined 235 samples of the basalt using an instrument called a quantum diamond microscope that can detect traces of magnetism at the micrometer scale. From these analyses, the researchers created a high-resolution map of magnetic orientations within the rock.
Based on the map, the team estimates that about 3.2 billion years ago, the East Pilbara Craton was at a latitude of about 45°, but whether north or south isn’t certain, Brenner said April 21 in a video news conference. That’s because researchers aren’t sure whether Earth’s magnetic poles at the time were in their current orientation or reversed. Either way, this bit of ancient crust moved in a gradual, steady motion — a hallmark of modern plate tectonics, the researchers say. Today, the craton is located at about 21° S, just north of the Tropic of Capricorn.
Plate tectonics is generally thought to have become a well-established global process on Earth no earlier than around 2.8 billion years ago. Before that, Earth’s interior was considered to be too hot for cold, rigid plates to form at the surface, or for deep subduction to occur, in which one crustal plate dives beneath another.
An earlier start to plate tectonics would have implications for the evolution of life on Earth, Brenner told reporters. Whether the process was in operation when the first single-celled organisms emerged, currently thought to be at least 3.45 billion years ago, isn’t clear, he said (SN: 10/17/18).
But it is clear that plate tectonics is currently closely tied to the biosphere, he added. It promotes chemical reactions between once-buried rocks and the atmosphere that can modulate the planet’s climate over millions to billions of years. “So if [plate tectonics] happened on the early Earth, these processes were likely playing a part in the evolution of life,” Brenner said.
Active, modern-style plate tectonics is the most likely explanation for the data, the researchers say. But they acknowledge other possible explanations can’t yet be ruled out, including an early, episodic, fit-and-start style of plate tectonics.
Some researchers have proposed that, during the Archean Eon that lasted from about 4 billion to about 2.5 billion years ago, there was a proto-plate tectonics process in which bits of crust moved in fits and starts as the planet began to cool after its formation (SN: 4/9/12). Sediment eroded from Earth’s earliest continents may also have helped grease the wheels, setting the stage for modern plate tectonics (SN: 6/5/19).
The researchers’ data could support episodic rather than gradual plate motion, perhaps as a precursor to modern plate tectonics, says Michael Brown, a geologist at the University of Maryland in College Park. Those data suggest that after its initial burst of speed, the Honeyeater Basalt’s progress slowed considerably, from 2.5 centimeters per year to 0.37 centimeters per year, he says.
It’s still unclear how similar proto-plate tectonics may have been to the modern process. “We know too little to answer this question with confidence,” says geophysicist Stephan Sobolev of the University of Potsdam in Germany. Sobolev has suggested previously that, for about a billion years during the Archean, plate tectonics occurred regionally: Plates could have been broken apart by large meteorite impacts or powerful plumes rising from the mantle, generating regional cells in which ancient continents formed and small blocks of crust subducted.
Such a regional cell may have formed the East Pilbara Craton in Australia, Sobolev suggests. But for that bit of ancient continent to have traveled so far so quickly, he says, “large-scale subduction must have been involved” — a surprising possibility for early Earth’s history.
If you’ve ever been caught in a heavy downpour without an umbrella, hood or awning to duck under, you know that the force of heavy, sometimes wind-driven drops can be painful … especially when the showers last for a long time. But can they carry enough power to trigger a volcano? That’s the premise of a new study which proposes that an extreme and extended heavy rain period triggered the 2018 extreme eruption of Kīlauea in Hawaii, burying a portion of the Big Island with a four-month-long flow of lava. Is it time for weather reporters to start giving “chance of volcano” forecasts?
“The May 2018 rift intrusion and eruption of Kīlauea Volcano, Hawai‘i, represented one of its most extraordinary eruptive sequences in at least 200 years, yet the trigger mechanism remains elusive.”
Kīlauea
Kīlauea is one of Hawaii’s most active volcanoes and has actually been in a period the eruption on , entered an extraordinary new phase on May 3, 2018, throwing incandescent lava nearly two hundred feet in the air and spewing lava over 13 square miles across the well-populated east coast of Hawaii’s Big Island. The unprecedented eruption, which destroyed hundreds of homes, involved the collapse of the summit caldera before it ceased four months later in September 2018. Kīlauea is heavily monitored and has been under especially close scrutiny since 1983 when the latest activities began.
“An eruption happens when the pressure in the magma chamber is high enough to break the surrounding rock and the magma travels to the surface. This pressurization causes inflation of the ground by tens of centimeters. As we did not see any significant inflation in the year prior to the eruption we started to think about alternative explanations.”
In their new study, published in the journal Nature, UM Rosenstiel School scientists Jamie Farquharson and Falk Amelung describe how they were surprised by the extreme May 2018 eruption which launched lava two hundred feet in the air, covering over 13 square miles and destroying hundreds of homes, before the summit caldera collapsed and it quit erupting in September 2018. With the usual warning signs missing, Farquharson and Amelung went looking for others and noticed a sustained period of rain right before it. Could the rain have penetrated the volcano’s edifice and changed the pressure, causing the ground to crack enough to allow an eruption?
“Here we show that immediately before and during the eruption, infiltration of rainfall into Kīlauea Volcano’s subsurface increased pore pressure at depths of 1 to 3 kilometres by 0.1 to 1 kilopascals, to its highest pressure in almost 50 years. We propose that weakening and mechanical failure of the edifice was driven by changes in pore pressure within the rift zone, prompting opportunistic dyke intrusion and ultimately facilitating the eruption.”
Kīlauea
Going back through meteorological records in the Kilauea area, they found that “magmatic intrusions and recorded eruptions are almost twice as likely to occur during the wettest parts of the year. Based on that, the team plans to investigate other volcanoes and their rainfall patterns, giving people living in the area another thing to worry about during heavy downpours – something an umbrella won’t help. And it gets worse, as Farquharson describes in a press release.
“It has been shown that the melting of ice caps in Iceland led to changes of volcanic productivity. As ongoing climate change is predicted to bring about changes in rainfall patterns, we expect that this may similarly influence patterns of volcanic activity.”
Climate change contributing to volcanic activity? Is it time to do something about it or move farther away from Yellowstone?
Linda Moulton Howe: Could We Really Be Living in a Computer Simulated Universe?
Linda Moulton Howe: Could We Really Be Living in a Computer Simulated Universe?
Could We Really Be Living in a Computer Simulated Universe? Presented by Linda Moulton Howe Filmed by Conscious Life Expo, LA
Most of us would have likely remembered a strange or weird incident in their lives, be it incredibly rare coincidences we occasionally experience or the moment we notice a ‘jump in the Matrix’. Could the world we know really be run by some kind of computer?
Neo is a cubicle worker sidelining as a computer hacker when he learns he’s nothing more than a data point in the Matrix, a malevolent cyber-force controlling all life on Earth. Soon Neo is recruited by a covert rebel organization to take back his life and all of humanity.
Is Bill Gates Responsible For The Coronavirus Being Spread? UFO Sighting News. #Health
Is Bill Gates Responsible For The Coronavirus Being Spread? UFO Sighting News. #Health
Hey everyone, let me take a break from UFO and aliens today and talk about something that in plaguing the world...coronavirus. I first became concerned that something was not right on March 13th, 2020 when Bill Gates stepped down from Microsoft...his baby. This was the very week that American news began to panic as the coronavirus began infecting large numbers of Americans. Nothing but an apocalypse could pull this man away from his child...Microsoft. I didn't understand at the time...but I began to link the patterns between Bill and coronavirus. I feel the evidence points to Bill Gates stepping down because he feel responsible for this virus. I did some investigating and Bill Gates owns a laboratory, controlled and owned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Back in 2000 his foundation became the worlds biggest foundation in the world holding over 46.8 billion dollars in assets...including some laboratories. His laboratory has a patent on coronavirus...the very virus circulating around the world population at this very moment. I believe that the virus came out of this laboratory and into the hands of the Chinese. How? One of three possibilities:
It was stolen by an Chinese scientist working for Gates and taken to or shipped to China.
It was sent by Gates to China to have others work on it to help create a map and possible cures for future epidemics.
The virus was created by China in Wuhan...and they followed Bill Gates exact steps and process he lays out in his highly detailed lectures in 2015 at John Hopkins. Bill says how dangerous of a weapon that coronavirus could be...and maybe China wanted to harness its power.
So...you see, Bill Gates himself is responsible for this coronavirus that is killing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. Although he stepped up back in 2015 to warn the world...in one way or another...he instead caused it to take place. And I leave with a quote by Bill Gates; "To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks." Watch his lectures below...and decide for yourself. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Bill Gates Talks Coronavirus on TED April 2015.
Bill Gates Tells You His Worst Fear...Says 50% Chance of Epidemic In His Lifetime.
Millions Could Die From Bio-Terrorism, Gates Feb 2017
Southern Africa may have hosted a hominid transition 2 million years ago
Southern Africa may have hosted a hominid transition 2 million years ago
Cave excavation yields braincases from both Homo erectus and Paranthropus robustus
Two hominid fossils unearthed in a South African cave, including this Homo erectus braincase, point to a major evolutionary shift that occurred around 2 million years ago.
Members of three different hominid lines clustered at the bottom of Africa around 2 million years ago, signaling an evolutionary swing propelled by the spread of a highly successful, humanlike species, new fossil discoveries suggest. It’s unclear, though, if the three ancient populations inhabited the region at precisely the same time.
Excavations at Drimolen, a set of caves in South Africa, uncovered two fossil braincases, one from Homo erectus and the other from Paranthropus robustus, say paleoanthropologist Andy Herries of La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, and his colleagues. Both finds date to between 2.04 million and 1.95 million years ago, the scientists report in the April 3 Science.
The H. erectus fossil comes from a child who displayed a long, low braincase typical of adults from that species. The P. robustus braincase is that of an adult.
Researchers previously determined that two Australopithecus species, A. africanus and A. sediba (SN: 7/25/13), inhabited nearby parts of South Africa approximately 2 million years ago.
Taken together, these discoveries indicate that a major transition in hominid evolution occurred in southern Africa between around 2.1 million and 1.9 million years ago, Herries’ team says. During that stretch, climate and habitat fluctuations drove Australopithecus species to extinction. H. erectus and P. robustus weathered those ecological challenges, possibly outcompeting Australopithecus for limited resources, the researchers speculate.
It’s unclear whether members of the three hominid lines ever encountered each other during that transition period.
Excavators at South Africa’s Drimolen site, shown with some of the animal bones they have found, have recovered roughly 2-million-year-old fossils of two hominid species, Homo erectus and Paranthropus robustus.A. HERRIES
“These spectacular discoveries confirm what some of us have expected for some time, that three genera of [hominids] coexisted in southern Africa,” says paleoanthropologist Darryl de Ruiter of Texas A&M University in College Station, who was not involved in the research.
Earlier work at several other South African cave sites had suggested that H. erectus, P. robustus and A. sediba all dated to nearly 2 million years ago. But many fossils from the first two species are fragmentary, and precise dating of cave sediments that held those finds has proven difficult.
Herries’ team dated the fossil braincases at Drimolen using two techniques for calculating the time since sediments formed just below and above where the specimens were found. Evidence of previously dated reversals of Earth’s magnetic field in Drimolen sediment helped to confirm age estimates for the fossils.
The South African H. erectus fossils may be slightly older than those of A. sediba, but a controversial proposal that A. sediba was an ancestor of the Homo genus remains in play, de Ruiter says. Researchers don’t know how much earlier than 2 million years ago A. sediba originated or how far it ranged beyond its one known fossil site in South Africa. Even so, some other researchers consider A. sediba a dead-end species and regard East Africa as the best bet for where Homo originated.
Unearthing an H. erectus fossil dating to around 2 million years ago in South Africa considerably expands that species’ range at an early stage of its evolution, says paleoanthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. H. erectus fossils in western Asia date to about 1.8 million years ago (SN: 10/17/13). And H. erectus may have made 2.1-million-year-old stone tools in China (SN: 7/11/18).
“It’s possible that this child from Drimolen is the earliest-known representative of the first global [hominid] species,” says Hawks, who did not participate in the new study.
H. erectus’ last known appearance was as late as 108,000 years ago on an Indonesian island, meaning it survived about 2 million years (SN: 12/18/19).
The H. erectus fossil found at Drimolen “marks the beginning of the most successful species of Homo ever known — present company included,” writes paleoanthropologist Susan Antón of New York University in a commentary published with the new Science report.
Big gods came after the rise of civilisations, not before, finds study using huge historical database
Big gods came after the rise of civilisations, not before, finds study using huge historical database
When you think of religion, you probably think of a god who rewards the good and punishes the wicked. But the idea of morally concerned gods is by no means universal. Social scientists have long known that small-scale traditional societies – the kind missionaries used to dismiss as “pagan” – envisaged a spirit world that cared little about the morality of human behaviour. Their concern was less about whether humans behaved nicely towards one another and more about whether they carried out their obligations to the spirits and displayed suitable deference to them.
What came first – all-seeing Gods or complex societies? God the Father and Angel, Guercino Giovan Francesco Barbieri via Wikimedia Commons
Nevertheless, the world religions we know today, and their myriad variants, either demand belief in all-seeing punitive deities or at least postulate some kind of broader mechanism – such as karma – for rewarding the virtuous and punishing the wicked. In recent years, researchers have debated how and why these moralising religions came into being.
Now, thanks to our massive new database of world history, known as Seshat (named after the Egyptian goddess of record keeping), we’re starting to get some answers.
Eye in the sky
One popular theory has argued that moralising gods were necessary for the rise of large-scale societies. Small societies, so the argument goes, were like fish bowls. It was almost impossible to engage in antisocial behaviour without being caught and punished – whether by acts of collective violence, retaliation or long-term reputational damage and risk of ostracism. But as societies grew larger and interactions between relative strangers became more commonplace, would-be transgressors could hope to evade detection under the cloak of anonymity. For cooperation to be possible under such conditions, some system of surveillance was required.
What better than to come up with a supernatural “eye in the sky” – a god who can see inside people’s minds and issue punishments and rewards accordingly. Believing in such a god might make people think twice about stealing or reneging on deals, even in relatively anonymous interactions. Maybe it would also increase trust among traders. If you believe that I believe in an omniscient moralising deity, you might be more likely to do business with me, than somebody whose religiosity is unknown to you. Simply wearing insignia such as body markings or jewellery alluding to belief in such a god might have helped ambitious people prosper and garner popularity as society grew larger and more complex.
Nevertheless, early efforts to investigate the link between religion and morality provided mixed results. And while supernatural punishment appears to have preceded the rise of chiefdoms among Pacific Island peoples, in Eurasia studies suggested that social complexity emerged first and moralising gods followed. These regional studies, however, were limited in scope and used quite crude measures of both moralising religion and of social complexity.
Sifting through history
Seshat is changing all that. Efforts to build the database began nearly a decade ago, attracting contributions from more than 100 scholars at a cost of millions of pounds. The database uses a sample of the world’s historical societies, going back in a continuous time series up to 10,000 years before the present, to analyse hundreds of variables relating to social complexity, religion, warfare, agriculture and other features of human culture and society that vary over time and space. Now that the database is finally ready for analysis, we are poised to test a long list of theories about global history.
One of the earliest questions we’re testing is whether morally concerned deities drove the rise of complex societies. We analysed data on 414 societies from 30 world regions, using 51 measures of social complexity and four measures of supernatural enforcement of moral norms to get to the bottom of the matter. New research we’ve just published in the journal Nature reveals that moralising gods come later than many people thought, well after the sharpest rises in social complexity in world history. In other words, gods who care about whether we are good or bad did not drive the initial rise of civilisations – but came later.
As part of our research we created a map of where big gods appeared around the world. In the map below, the size of the circle represents the size of the society: bigger circles represent larger and more complex societies. The numbers in the circle represent the number of thousand years ago we find the first evidence of belief in moralising gods. For example, Emperor Ashoka adopted Buddhism 2,300 years ago after he had already established a large and complex South Asian empire known as the Mauryan Empire.
The global distribution and timing of beliefs in moralising gods shows that big gods appear in big societies.Whitehouse, Francois Savage et al. Nature., Author provided
Our statistical analysis showed that beliefs in supernatural punishment tend to appear only when societies make the transition from simple to complex, around the time when the overall population exceed about a million individuals.
Social complexity tends to increase more rapidly before the appearance of moralising gods, not after.Whitehouse, Francois Savage et al. Nature., Author provided
We are now looking to other factors that may have driven the rise of the first large civilisation. For example, Seshat data suggests that daily or weekly collective rituals – the equivalent of today’s Sunday services or Friday prayers – appear early in the rise of social complexity and we’re looking further at their impact.
If the original function of moralising gods in world history was to hold together fragile, ethnically diverse coalitions, what might declining belief in such deities mean for the future of societies today? Could modern secularisation, for example, contribute to the unravelling of efforts to cooperate regionally – such as the European Union? If beliefs in big gods decline, what will that mean for cooperation across ethnic groups in the face of migration, warfare, or the spread of xenophobia? Can the functions of moralising gods simply be replaced by other forms of surveillance?
Even if Seshat cannot provide easy answers to all these questions, it could provide a more reliable way of estimating the probabilities of different futures.
Tom Horn exposes the untold news of the Biblical Wormwood
Tom Horn exposes the untold news of the Biblical Wormwood
Arriving in 2029. Tom Horn exposes the untold news of Biblical Wormwood! Is the Wormwood star from Revelation 8 already headed toward Earth?
Are NASA and high-level government officials aware of an asteroid that is on a collision course with our planet?
Traditional interpretation claims that Wormwood will be an asteroid. In 2029 the large asteroid called Apophis is projected to visit Earth.
Now respected author Tom Horn blazes a trail through the many questions NASA is reluctant to even talk about.
He believes Wormwood is the asteroid Apophis - How the threat of Wormwood could create world-wide revival - Why NASA funded a Deep Space Armageddon Asteroid telescope?
Tom Horn doesn’t answer the question of what Biblical Wormwood will actually be. But we do know exactly when this large asteroid Apophis is coming.
The year 2029 is coming soon enough, and Horn’s research will give you plenty to think about!
Scientists in Myanmar have discovered six new types of coronavirus in bats. While the viruses are part of the same family as the SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2), the six new types are not closely genetically related to SARS-Cov-2, SARS, or MERS.
The new types of coronavirus were identified when researchers were studying bats in Myanmar for a government-funded program that’s called PREDICT. The program is used to find infectious diseases that could possibly be transferred from animals to humans. They analyzed hundreds of samples of saliva and feces (also called guano which is used to make fertilizer) from 464 bats and at least 11 different species between the years 2016 and 2018. The samples came from bats living in three different locations around Myanmar where humans often get into close contact with them.
Map of bat capture sites in Myanmar between 2016 and 2018.
In their study (which can be read in full here), the researchers wrote in part, “Two of these sites also featured popular cave systems where people were routinely exposed to bats through guano harvesting, religious practices and ecotourism.”
The genetic sequences of the hundreds of samples were compared with the genomes of coronaviruses that have already been identified. The new types of the virus were identified in three species of bats: the Greater Asiatic yellow house bat (Scotophilus heathii) which PREDICT-CoV-90 was identified; the wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bat (Chaerephon plicatus) which was host to PREDICT-CoV-47 and -82; and Horsfield’s leaf-nosed bat (Hipposideros larvatus) which contained PREDICT-CoV-92, -93 and -96.
Bats have been named as the most likely source of the COVID-19 transmission to humans and it’s been predicted that thousands more types of coronavirus that have yet to be discovered could be living in them.
But don’t panic just yet, as more research needs to be done in order to understand fully how – or if – these new types of coronavirus could be transferred to other species and how/if they could affect the health of humans. Suzan Murray, who is the director of the Smithsonian’s Global Health Program as well as the co-author of the study, said, “Many coronaviruses may not pose a risk to people, but when we identify these diseases early on in animals, at the source, we have a valuable opportunity to investigate the potential threat,” adding, “Vigilant surveillance, research and education are the best tools we have to prevent pandemics before they occur.”
Marc Valitutto, who is a former wildlife veterinarian with the Smithsonian’s Global Health Program and the lead author of the study, weighed in by stating, “Worldwide, humans are interacting with wildlife with increasing frequency, so the more we understand about these viruses in animals — what allows them to mutate and how they spread to other species –– the better we can reduce their pandemic potential.”
In other bat news, the United States has recommended that all testing of bats be suspended in order to prevent coronavirus from spreading to North American species and ultimately causing another wave of the virus to hit the public.
In a statement, a Fish and Wildlife spokesperson told the Washington Post, “We know that many mammals are susceptible to infection by a diversity of coronaviruses,” adding, “What is not known is whether the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has the potential to infect, or cause illness in, North American wildlife, including bats.”
There have already been several reports of humans passing the virus on to animals, specifically cats and dogs, as well as a Malayan tiger that was more than likely infected by an asymptomatic worker at the Bronx Zoo. And since bats in the United States have been suffering through white-nose syndrome since 2006 – which has killed over 5.5 million bats – researchers have to be careful not to infect them with coronavirus as they may be more susceptible to catching it.
2020 – When Worlds Collide: could a global pandemic and a comet share a similar fate?
2020 – When Worlds Collide: could a global pandemic and a comet share a similar fate?
The new Comet ATLAS may disintegrate more quickly than expected. Could the new coronavirus do the same? Trying to following the various projections of paths the coronavirus pandemic may take may seem as complicated as suddenly trying to become a NASA-worthy astrophysicist during your down time while sheltering at home. And the universe being the mysterious wonder it is, it turns out tracking astronomy and COVID-19 may share a deeper connection than you knew before. As of Sunday, April 5, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) predicts that 81,766 people will die of COVID-19 in the U.S. between now and August 4, 2020. This is a welcome decrease from the prediction of 93,531 deaths they’d estimated during the previous week, a sign, they say, that social distancing measures seem to be working to flatten the curve.
If this trend in coronavirus cases, deaths, and recoveries continues, the worst of COVID-19 is expected to rock the U.S. in mid-April, peaking on April 16, then tapering off throughout the month of May. Somewhat mystically, the trajectory of this pandemic aligns with the path currently being traveled by Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS), more commonly known as Comet ATLAS, Comet ATLAS was first discovered by astronomers using the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) in Hawaii on December 28, 2019.
While it’s not yet visible to the naked eye, and no one can say for sure it ever will be, astronomy enthusiasts have been able to spot it and capture some (literally) stellar images using medium-sized telescopes under dark skies. Initial predictions showed the comet coming closest to the Earth on May 23 and closest to the sun on May 31. Should it continue on this path, it might be bright enough to be visible to the unaided human eye on or around May 1, right as COVID-19 should be (pleasepleaseplease) fading into oblivion.
One redditor shared a 7-year-old article titled “Sun-Grazing Comets as Triggers For Electromagnetic Armageddon” in the subreddit named r/conspiracytheories. Everything is intensifying rapidly,” one user commented. “California is having earthquakes. Utah had one. Now there’s a comet that is going to be as bright as the moon. Earlier this year we had the massive wildfires. Locust plague is sweeping Africa and the Middle East. Of course, can’t forget to mention the pandemic (which we don’t know the true numbers/severity of), and war looming on the horizon. “One of the big red flags for me is celebrities suddenly being diagnosed, politicians faking getting tested, and a couple hundred CEOs resigning just this year alone. They must know that something devastating is coming.”
But just as we hope will be the case with the coronavirus pandemic, scientists observing the comet say it may be disintegrating and could disappear more quickly than previously expected.
MEDICIJN GEVONDEN DAT HET NIEUWE CORONAVIRUS BINNEN 48 UUR UITSCHAKELT
MEDICIJN GEVONDEN DAT HET NIEUWE CORONAVIRUS BINNEN 48 UUR UITSCHAKELT
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Het medicijn – dat nu gebruikt wordt om parasieten te bestrijden – lijkt in ieder geval in het laboratorium veelbelovend.
Tot die conclusie komen onderzoekers van Monash University nadat ze het middel in het laboratorium loslieten op cellen die met het virus geïnfecteerd waren. De experimenten wijzen uit dat het middel het virus binnen 48 uur kan doden. “We ontdekten dat een enkele dosis in 48 uur tijd in feite al het virale RNA verwijderde en dat er zelfs na 24 uur al sprake was van een significante afname van het virus,” aldus onderzoeker Kylie Wagstaff.
Meer onderzoek Of dit dan de behandeling is waar talloze patiënten wereldwijd naar smachten? Die conclusie zul je Wagstaff nog niet zo snel horen trekken. Het is namelijk belangrijk om je te realiseren dat deze resultaten enkel in het laboratorium geboekt zijn. Of het middel in vivo – oftewel in het menselijk lichaam – hetzelfde resultaat heeft, is nog onduidelijk. “We moeten nu uitzoeken of de dosis waarin je het aan mensen kunt toedienen, effectief is. Dat is de volgende stap.”
Over ivermectine Wagstaff en collega’s bogen zich al snel nadat het nieuwe coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 tot een pandemie uitgroeide, over het betreffende geneesmiddel: ivermectine. Het medicijn wordt nu ingezet om parasieten te bestrijden. Zo krijgen mensen het bijvoorbeeld voorgeschreven bij worminfecties. Maar eerdere studies hebben al uitgewezen dat het in vitro – oftewel buiten het lichaam, in kweekculturen in het lab – ook wel raad weet met een breed scala aan virussen, waaronder zika en het influenzavirus. En dat bracht Wagstaff en collega’s op het idee om het middel ook los te laten op het nieuwe coronavirus.
Hoe werkt het? Het levert in ieder geval in het laboratorium veelbelovende resultaten op. Hoe het middel in de petrischaaltjes van Wagstaff en collega’s precies afrekent met het virus is niet onderzocht. Maar de wetenschappers hebben daar – afgaand op wat ze het middel eerder met andere virussen hebben zien doen – wel ideeën over. Ons immuunsysteem maakt normaliter korte metten met lichaamsvreemde stoffen, zoals virussen. Om toch cellen te kunnen infecteren, onderdrukt het nieuwe coronavirus die immuunrespons, waardoor onze cellen er minder goed in slagen om het virus op te ruimen. En ivermectine lijkt er kort gezegd voor te zorgen dat het virus er niet meer in slaagt om onze cellen ervan te weerhouden het virus op te ruimen.
Vervolgonderzoek Als uit vervolgonderzoek blijkt dat het middel ook in het menselijk lichaam wel raad weet met SARS-CoV-2 dan kan het in theorie snel gaan. Omdat ivermectine al een bestaand en dus goedgekeurd en veilig bevonden medicijn is, kan het in principe snel worden ingezet om geïnfecteerde patiënten te behandelen. Zover is het echter nog niet, zo blijven Wagstaff en collega’s benadrukken. Eerst moet er in het laboratorium nog meer onderzoek worden gedaan en dan pas kan er na worden gedacht over klinisch onderzoek, waarbij het middel op mensen wordt getest. En om dat alles mogelijk te maken, is heel dringend geld nodig.
Malariamedicijn Op dit moment is er geen effectieve behandeling voor mensen die met SARS-CoV-2 besmet zijn geraakt. Artsen behandelen momenteel dan ook noodgedwongen de symptomen. Onderzoekers wereldwijd werken hard om daar verandering in te brengen. Zij kijken daarbij – vanwege de urgente vraag naar een behandeling – het liefst naar bestaande medicijnen. Zo werd eerder al geopperd dat een bestaand malariamedicijn kon helpen in de behandeling tegen COVID-19. Maar wetenschappelijke studies naar de effectiviteit van het middel leveren tot op heden uiteenlopende resultaten op. Er is tot op heden dus geen hard bewijs dat dit geneesmiddel het verschil kan maken.
Dat een effectieve behandeling tegen COVID-19 hard nodig is, staat buiten kijf. Wereldwijd is het virus inmiddels bij meer dan 1,2 miljoen mensen officieel vastgesteld. En bijna 70.000 mensen zijn aan de gevolgen van het virus overleden. Lang leek China – het land waarin het virus voor het eerst opdook – het hardst te zijn getroffen, maar inmiddels tellen de VS, Spanje, Italië, Duitsland en Frankrijk meer officiële besmettingen dan China. In Nederland zijn meer dan 17.000 besmettingen bevestigd en 1766 mensen zijn aan de gevolgen van het virus overleden. Maatregelen bedoeld om de verspreiding van het virus af te remmen, lijken ondertussen hun vruchten af te werpen. Onduidelijk is nog hoelang die maatregelen – of in ieder geval een deel ervan – in stand moeten worden gehouden om het virus echt onder controle te houden. Deskundigen sluiten niet uit dat onze samenleving er zeker nog 12 tot 18 maanden anders uit zal zien dan in pre-COVID-19-tijden.
Cryptic Snake-Like Structure in Peru Spotted by Google Earth User
Cryptic Snake-Like Structure in Peru Spotted by Google Earth User
Southern Peru is famous for UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site the Nazca Lines, which represent a group of giant and ancient geoglyphs. However, something even more mysterious and unexplainable have now been spotted close to the site by one curious Google Earth user.
Some cryptic shapes and patterns were spotted by Google Earth enthusiast 30-40 kilometres North East from the famous Nazca Lines in Peru. The user published a video of his mysterious discovery on YouTube, and the image immediately attracted thousands of views in just several days, with observers rushing to express their astonishment with the finding.
The patterns spotted by the Google Earth admirer included strange “football pitch”-sized circles in a deserted mountain ridge nearby Uchumarca, as well as a cryptic snake-like structure, which he described as a “serpent”. He also noted in the video that it was difficult to understand whether the pattern was occurring naturally or was a human-designed structure.
“The ‘serpent’ just really jumped right out at me”, the Google Earth user wrote on YouTube after his video was published. “It's either a very large natural formation or a manmade artificial site like the serpent mound in Ohio. Other than that - I got nothin'. Very interesting”.
“Very cool find my friend. Definitely looks like a petrified serpant to me”, one of the video viewers commented on the finding.
“Yo that snake was so eye popping, it def looks man made but the scale of it, im amazed by it”, another YouTuber added.
Despite a flow of comments and speculations about what could have caused such exotic shapes in one of the highest elevations in the area, the truth behind the origin of giant patterns still remains a mystery.
The Nazca Lines, which lie close to the analysed site, are a group of geoglyphs which are believed to be created around 2000 years ago. They are located in southern Peru and are designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
What The Heck Is This Long, Hypnotic Stringy Thing Floating in The Ocean?
What The Heck Is This Long, Hypnotic Stringy Thing Floating in The Ocean?
TESSA KOUMOUNDOUROS
New footage has revealed a trailing ribbon of conjoined tentacled clones sweeping the ocean off the coast of Australia. Known in some regions as the "long stringy stingy thingy", siphonophores blur the line between organ and organism. They somehow manage to be both at once.
"The whole thing looks like one animal, but it's many thousands of individuals which form an entity on a higher level," marine biologist Stefan Siebert of Brown University told Wired.
The Ningaloo Canyons Expedition, a team of international researchers from institutes including Western Australia Museum, Schmidt Ocean Institute and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, recently came across one of these spectacular deep sea aliens.
They were exploring a little-studied but biologically rich part of the ocean off the coast of Western Australia, using ROVs and sonar. The creature was spied on the way back up:
"Everyone was blown away when it came into view," biologists Nerida Wilson and Lisa Kirkendale from the Western Australian Museum told ScienceAlert. "There was a lot of excitement. People came pouring into the control room from all over the ship. Siphonophores are commonly seen but this one was both large and unusual-looking.
"Although the ROV pilots made an estimate of its length, it has yet to be formally measured. However, it does appear to be longer than any other animal on the planet," they added.
The outer ring was estimated to be around 47 metres long (154 feet). The whole giant thing is composed of tiny individuals called zooids. They clone themselves thousands of times into one of several flavours - some with stinging tentacles and even red lures to attract food, others specialised for reproduction or movement. Each individual acts like an organ in the larger siphonophore body.
Biologist Rebecca Helm from the University of North Carolina Asheville describes the feeding clones on Twitter:
Some of the clones specialize in catching prey. Their slender bodies hang with a single long tentacle dangling like a hook-studded fishing line. Like the frilled tentacles of another siphonophore pictured below... (pic: @SchmidtOceanhttps://bit.ly/2JLKWmS)
The siphonophore in the video "appears to have assumed a planar feeding posture, which makes it look a bit like a spiral UFO," Wilson and Kirkendale explain.
In a colony this massive, there would have to be at least millions of these conjoined organ-individuals working together, to sift the pelagial depths for food. They share their spoils with each other by passing nutrients along a stem they're all connected to - a vertical branch which also serves as a passageway for nerve signals.
Helm believes there are many millions of these siphonophores floating out there in the ocean, along with other strange creatures they interact with - such as this sea slug (Cephalopyge trematoides) that finds them tasty:
The sea slugs, called Cephalopyge, grab onto siphonophore clones using their tiny snail food and slowly eat them while hanging off the colony like an ornament! Pic by: https://lindaiphotography.com/black-water-mollusks/ …
Another memeber of the entourage is this bizarre barreleye fish (Macropinna microstoma). It has a fluid-filled head shield thought to allow them to sneak into stinging tentacled zooids and steal their food.
It's a soothing glimpse of the strange ocean depths that siphonophores call home. And you can check out even more amazing weirdos from the Ningaloo Canyons in the video below.
With so much incredible life hidden away in our planet's oceans, who even needs aliens?
For a long time, calling someone a “Neanderthal” was considered an insult to their intelligence. No long. A news study has turned it around and now calling someone a Neanderthal is a compliment … to their libido! Is humanity the by-product of Neanderthals doing more than just walking erect?
“A new study supports this notion, finding that people in Eurasia today have genetic material linked to Neanderthals from the Altai mountains in modern-day Siberia.”
That may not seem like a big deal since scientists have found Neanderthal DNA in the human genome, but that was in Eurasians and the Neanderthals were linked to remains found in the Vindija cave in Croatia. Omer Gokcumen, a University of Buffalo biologist, reveals in a new study published in the journal Genetics that his team of researchers had found Neanderthal DNA in Eurasians that traces back instead to the Altai mountains in what is now Siberia. How did this happen … scientifically speaking, of course?
“The picture in my mind now is we have all these archaic hominin populations in Europe, in Asia, in Siberia, in Africa. For one reason or another, the ancestors of modern humans in Africa start expanding in population, and as they expand their range, they meet with these other hominins and absorb their DNA, if you will.”
“Absorbed their DNA.” That a scientifically nice way of saying they had sex that resulted in babies. However, the phrasing of Gokcumen’s revelation raises an interesting question: were the ancestors of modern humans really horny or were the Neanderthals? Conversely, were the early humans really sexy or were the Neanderthals? Or was prehistoric Eurasia just one big free-love orgy between homo sapiens and Neanderthals … and what about the Denisovans?
“The story is not as neat as it was before. Every single ancient genome that is sequenced seems to create a completely new perspective in our understanding of human evolution, and every new genome that’s sequenced in the future may completely change the story again.”
The research concludes that each interbreeding population was different. The amount of “absorbing of DNA” varied based on geography and time period. Were the early Neanderthals sexier? Did the later ones feel these invading humans were taking advantage of them? More research is obviously necessary and it’s a foregone conclusion that more Neanderthal-human ‘absorbing’ will be found.
Perhaps the answer to all of these questions will boil down to finding out which one paid for dinner.
Antarctica scientists find bizarre creature 3,500m under ice: ‘Like nothing seen before'
Antarctica scientists find bizarre creature 3,500m under ice: ‘Like nothing seen before'
ANTARCTICA scientists made a stunning discovery 3,500 metres below the ice, leading one to state they had "never seen anything like this before," a documentary revealed.
Expedition Antarctica took to the waters for a 50-day journey across the Southern Ocean and beyond the icy continent earlier this year. On board New Zealand’s research vessel RV Tangaroa, an international team used state-of-the-art technology to scan the seabed. The Aegis imaging system allowed scientists to capture fascinated images like nothing seen before.
While the mission is still ongoing, “The Secrets of Antarctica” documentary was released on YouTube in July revealing the amazing finds to date.
The narrator explained: “Having braved ice storms, broken equipment and rough seas for almost two months, the team braces itself for the most high-pressured assignment of them all.
“They will delve 3,500 metres into the abyssal plain, a depth almost as high as the Swiss Alps.
“It will endure 300 times more pressure than we experience every day.
Antarctica scientists were stunned by the creature
(Image: YOUTUBE)
The expedition traveled through the Southern Ocean
(Image: YOUTUBE)
I have never seen anything like this before
Kareen Schnabel
“Suddenly the abyssal plain reveals itself, it looks barren, like the surface of Mars, but a closer look reveals life that no one has ever witnessed in Antarctica at all.”
However, the scientists could not leave it there.
They wanted a closer look at some of the marine life and so sent down a fishing net.
The narrator added: “The team take the opportunity to trawl the bottom, having set up more than 5,000 of cable into the sea.
“The beam trawl finally comes aboard at 2:00am and, after six hours of waiting, the team gets its reward.
He said last month: “This is why I came to Antarctica, to see things like this.”
Dr Stewart held the creature up to the camera.
He then exclaimed: “I have to look at such features as the shape of the teeth, the jaws, the shape of the gill rakers, as well as counts of the vertebrae [to determine what it is].
“Now I have no idea what species this is.
“The colour pattern on the fins is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
Discovery a new species is usually a reason for celebration, especially in the ocean, where up to a million species live and two-thirds of them may still be undiscovered. Nevertheless, the expansion of microplastics in the water in recent years has changed things a bit.
Credit Newcastle University
A group of researchers from Newcastle University discovered a new species of a marine creature, a type of crustacean called an amphipod. Their glee was short-lived, however, as they quickly found plastic in its body, showing the large scale of plastic pollution across the globe.
The crustacean was found in the Marina Trench at a depth of roughly 6,000 meters (20,000 feet). But even animals that live in such extreme and ostensibly remote areas of the world are affected by plastic pollution.
Inside the body of the previously unknown amphipod, the researchers found little pieces of plastic debris, called microplastics. The material was identified as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) — a kind of plastic used broadly, in both drink and food packaging.
Consequently, the team at Newcastle decided to call the species Eurythenes plasticus, to forever remind the world about the grim state of the global environment from the effects of pollution. Urgent action needs to be taken to “stop the deluge of plastic waste into our oceans,” said lead author Alan Jamieson in a statement.
“We have new species turning up that are already contaminated and so we have missed the window to understand these species in a natural environment,” said Jamieson to Newsweek. “This discovery exemplifies the extent of the plastic problem. Species in remote and extreme marine environments are suffering as a result of human activity.”
Plastic waste is now found throughout all the world’s oceans. A 2015 study showed that roughly 8 million tons of plastic enter the ocean every single year. Once there, it begins to break down into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually becoming microplastics — that are subsequently eaten by animals.
Microplastics appeared in nature at the same time as plastics, more than 50 years ago. As the world is producing more and more plastic, the number of microplastics continues to grow dramatically. Researchers from several countries are working to understand their distribution and impacts.
The finding by the Newcastle researchers and the decision to name the species linked to plastics was welcomed by environmental organizations. It was a “bold and necessary move,” said the Vice President of Conservation at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Lauren Spurrier.
“There can be no disputing the ubiquitous presence of plastics in our environment and its impact on nature,” she said to Newsweek, via a statement. “We now are seeing even more devastating impacts of plastic pollution; in that it is infecting species science is only just now discovering.”
Antarctica Was a Lush Rainforest 90M Years Ago, Scientists Discover
Antarctica Was a Lush Rainforest 90M Years Ago, Scientists Discover
An ancient sediment core revealed a shocking discovery: pollen and spores, indicating a long-lost rainforest that was shrouded in perpetual darkness for months at a time.
Antarctica is the most remote and barren continent on Earth; a land where only the hardiest creatures can survive the punishing year-round conditions. But dial the clock back by 90 million years to the age of dinosaurs, and this icy landscape transforms into a lush temperate rainforest that somehow braved months of perpetual darkness.
The story of this ancient Antarctic rainforest is written in sediment buried 25 meters under the seafloor off Pine Island Glacier, according to a study published on Wednesday in Nature. The fossils preserved in an ultra-rare core represent the first glimpse of Cretaceous ecosystems at latitudes this far south, just 500 miles from the South Pole.
“It is definitely the southernmost Cretaceous evidence ever recovered on the planet,” said lead author Johann Klages, a geologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, in a call. “We were the first ones to ever drill there in that environment.”
Klages and his colleagues obtained the core during a 2017 expedition of the research vessel Polarstern, but the extraction process was not easy. The specialized drilling machine used to penetrate the seafloor required several days to pull out each new core, and all it seemed to be reaching was quartzitic sandstone layers bereft of fossils.
THE MEBO SEABED DRILLING SYSTEM ON RV POLARSTERN.
IMAGE: JP KLAGES, AWI
Meanwhile, ice sheets from the nearby island began advancing toward the sample site, threatening to slice the cord between the drill and the vessel. Before evacuating the area to prevent the loss of expensive equipment, Klages and his colleagues decided to take one last three-meter core.
Unlike the light-colored sandstone, this core was dark, suggesting it was rich in organic materials. “We immediately saw that something special was going on,” recalled Klages. “We saw these amazing, pristine, complete, dense networks of fossil roots in the core connected down to the core base.”
“If you go to the forest in front of your house, or somewhere, and you drill a hole, you would get something very similar,” he said. “It was full of pollen and spores and really diverse assemblages.”
Over the past three years, the team has meticulously examined the core and unraveled incredible new details about the rainforest that once blanketed Antarctica. The pristine condition of these plant fossils demonstrates that this was a swampy ecosystem of conifer trees that may have looked like the rainforests of modern New Zealand.
Based on comparisons with similar Cretaceous biomes found much farther north, dinosaurs may well have roamed through this biodiverse Antarctic landscape. “It’s very likely that there were insects and dinosaurs and all of that there too,” Klages said, “but we can’t say for sure because we did not find anything like that. We only can say a lot of stuff about the paleobotany that we found in the core.”
Remarkably, these forests were located at a southern latitude of 82°, which means they would have been plunged into total darkness for about four months of each year. Modern rainforests rely on perpetual sunlight to survive, but this bygone ecosystem had to switch to another source of energy for the long, black winter.
ARTIST CONCEPT OF ANCIENT RAINFOREST.
IMAGE: ALFRED-WEGENER-INSTITUT/J. MCKAY
That fuel may have been supplied by extraordinarily high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which could have staved the forests over until the return of the Sun. In fact, the discovery of this rainforest strongly suggests that CO2 levels in this era were higher than previously assumed, perhaps reaching 1,680 parts per million (ppm). For reference, our current CO2 levels are just above 400 ppm, though they are rapidly rising due to human activity.
These high CO2 levels imply that Cretaceous Earth was warmer than expected, and that no ice cover existed at the South Pole. Klages and his colleagues estimate that the mean annual temperature in the rainforest was about 12°C, with summer temperatures averaging around 19°C.
“It really was that warm,” Klages said. “That amazed us, of course, but also the climate modelers because no one expected such extreme values very close to the South Pole."
"We are quite confident now in saying that there was no ice present, that Antarctica was completely vegetated, and that we had very high CO2 concentrations.”
The research offers a rare chance to imagine this strange Antarctic forestland, but it also contains lessons for our modern warming world. For instance, Klages and his colleagues modelled what would happen if the current version of Earth had the same CO2 levels, and found that our planet’s polar ice cover reflects too much sunlight to result in the same high global temperatures.
“The presence of an ice sheet makes a huge difference, even if you have very high CO2 concentrations,” Klages said. “That is really important for us to know, and to think about how we can better preserve ice sheets.”
“We need to look into these extreme climates that happened on the planet already, because they show us what a greenhouse climate looks like,” he concluded. “We are definitely in an interesting time because if we continue what we’re doing right now, then it could lead into something that we can’t control anymore.”
For most of us around the world, our way of life has significantly changed in the last few weeks. Although America is only recently being confronted with the global reality that is the current coronavirus pandemic, with more than 82,000 U.S. citizens infected it now has more confirmed cases than Italy, and even China, where the outbreak first emerged.
“As the number of known cases reached into the hundreds, then the thousands, then the tens of thousands, life across the country has changed in swift, profound ways,” the New York Times reports alongside an updated map with numbers of infections per county across the country.
As the evolving coronavirus situation continues to keep us on edge, many industry leaders in virology, health care, technology, and the intelligence community say they were aware that such a pandemic was not only possible but that it was just a matter of time.
Business magnate and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has been talking about the threat of future pandemics for years. Back in 2015, as concerns about the possible outbreak of Ebola were still fresh on our minds, he was looking ahead at the possibility that a future outbreak could indeed be far worse.
Bill Gates meeting U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis
(public domain).
“As awful as this epidemic has been, the next one could be much worse,” Gates wrote about a TEDx talk he gave in 2015. “The world is simply not prepared to deal with a disease—an especially virulent flu, for example—that infects large numbers of people very quickly. Of all the things that could kill 10 million people or more, by far the most likely is an epidemic.”
It was recently reported that Gates also advised President Trump on pandemic preparedness two years ago, saying that “The president was kind enough to spend time with me, and one of the issues I brought up is this opportunity to build new tools that would help us deal with a pandemic.”
Gates isn’t the only person who had been expressing such concerns.
In his recent book Flu Hunter: Unlocking the secrets of a virus, Virologist Robert G. Webster, an authority on avian flu, said in December that the next pandemic was “just a matter of time.”
Webster’s thoughts on such an imminent threat are prescient, to say the least:
“It is sobering to realise that, after nearly 100 years of studying the 1918 influenza, we still do not know precisely why the virus was such a killer; nor are we significantly better prepared to deal with a repeat event.
“Nature will eventually again challenge mankind with an equivalent of the 1918 influenza virus. We need to be prepared.”
A particularly sobering view was offered byJeremy Konyndyk, former director of the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance under USAID, in a Politico article from 2017, where he noted that every U.S. President since Ronald Reagan has faced a similar health crisis:
“A major new global health crisis is a question of when, not if. Every president dating back at least to Ronald Reagan has dealt with major and unexpected outbreaks—HIV/AIDS, SARS, bird flu, Ebola, Zika. In recent years the world has been fortunate that these outbreaks have been either highly contagious (the 2009 H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic infected up to 200 million people), or highly fatal (the H5N1 “bird flu” strain had a fatality rate of up to 60 percent)—but not both at once.”
However, it was what Konyndyk had to say about a future pandemic that was particularly sobering.
“At some point a highly fatal, highly contagious virus will emerge,” Konyndyk said, “like the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’ pandemic, which infected one third of the world’s population and killed between 50 and 100 million people.”
“We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease,” a 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment stated, “that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.”
The potential threat of such a virus has been an item of speculation and future forecasts for far longer than just the last decade, as other recentMUarticles have suggested. Many have even pointed out that in a 2008 book, the late psychic Sylvia Browne wrote that “In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments.”
It cannot be denied that Browne made such a prediction, although some take issue with the accuracy of the forecast, as Benjamin Radford recently noted:
Covid-19 is not “a severe pneumonia-like illness” (though it can in some cases lead to pneumonia)… Browne also says the disease she’s describing “resists all known treatments.” This does not describe Covid-19; in fact, doctors know how to treat the disease—it’s essentially the same for influenza or other similar respiratory infections.
However, the more fundamental takeaway here is that it didn’t require any psychic powers to see the threat potential of a future virus outbreak the likes of COVID-19. Experts from multiple areas of government and industry had warned us about it. Now that these concerns have become a reality, it is time to take action, and realize that things could certainly get worse before they get better.
Nonetheless, as with past pandemics like the 1918 Spanish Flu, it is also important to know that we, as humans, will get through this. We always do, and we should never underestimate human resilience in the face of a threat, no matter how bad things may be capable of getting. That, too, is important to remember in trying times like these.
Many people may not realize it, but far above our heads, out in space in orbit around our planet away from where the eye can see is a giant junkyard. There, clogging our orbit is all manner of debris, including nonfunctional spacecraft, abandoned launch vehicle stages, mission-related debris, spent rocket stages, derelict satellites, and a hodgepodge of millions and millions of pieces of miscellaneous junk we have discarded into space. It spreads out in a vast sea of garbage which, although luckily invisible to us on the ground, creates a hazard for spacecraft and satellites. Yet, according to some wild stories, there is more than just garbage up there spinning about our planet past where the eye can see, and one of the strangest of these is a supposed broken alien spaceship complete with entombed alien bodies orbiting the earth.
In 1979, the Soviet astrophysicist Sergei Boshich came forward with the spectacular claim that he had found evidence of what he called a crippled alien spacecraft that had broken up into pieces and was hovering in orbit. By his estimates, he had thus far managed to track 10 pieces of wreckage from the spacecraft, several of which he estimated as being around 100 feet in length. Boshich said he had calculated the trajectories of the debris and come to the conclusion that they had scattered from some sort of space explosion on December 18, 1955, and even more bizarre was that it was his assertion that this mysterious derelict craft was likely now a tomb containing the bodies of the ship’s occupants. It sounds like the rantings of a conspiracy nutcase, but there were allegedly others who backed up these findings, including one Soviet astrophysicist and science fiction writer Aleksandr Kazantsev, who would say “Its size would suggest several floors, possibly five. We believe that alien bodies will still be on board.”
The scientists were quick to rule out the possibility that it could be space junk originating from Earth, as the purported explosion predated the first human object in space, which would have been the Sputnik 1 launched in 1957. They also denied that it could be a meteor, as it was maintaining a steady orbit rather than the falling of a meteor. According to Boshich and his team of scientists, all evidence pointed to an alien craft that had blown up in space, and one Moscow physicist, Dr Vladimir Azhazha, would say:
Meteors do not have orbits. They plummet aimlessly, hurtling erratically through space. And they do not explode spontaneously. All the evidence we have gathered over the past decade points to one thing — a crippled alien craft. It must hold secrets we have not even dreamed of. A rescue mission should be launched. The vessel, or what is left of it, should be reassembled here on Earth. The benefits to mankind could be stupendous.
Apparently the discovery generated interest from the Americans as well, and according to the story there was some degree of cooperation among them to come up with a plan to salvage the crippled spacecraft and possibly even board it. One problem was that the Soviets were being very secretive with the information they had, which generated skepticism from Britishscientists. One British scientist would say:
There are more than 4,000 pieces of wreckage orbiting the Earth. Each has a catalogue number to identify it. We would like to know the catalogue number of this wreck. It is possible to date wreckage after a considerable number of observations. Like the Americans, we would be interested to look at this if the Russians make the information available.
Quite interesting is what was pointed out in a 1969 article in the magazine Icarus, in which astronomer John Bagby claimed to have found 10 moonlets in orbit around the earth, which he had calculated had spread from a single source on the date December 18, 1955, the same day as was claimed by Boshich 10 years later. The story of what had gone on to be called “The Boshich Wreckage” was printed in various news sources at the time, and generated a fair amount of speculation and conspiracies. One was that, although there was no official confirmation that an actual salvage mission had actually been launched, the Americans and Soviets had secretly gone and done it. Another theory was that this was all a smokescreen put out by the Soviets to cause misinformation in the Cold War of the period, a total fabrication quite possibly based on the article in Icarus.
Of course there is also the possibility that the whole story is a big sham to begin with. Although the discovery was printed in a wide variety of publications, it all originated with an article in the British tabloid newspaper Reveille, which is in many ways sort of like The National Enquirer and not known for being a particularly trustworthy news source. It furthermore seems that there is no real confirmation that any of this ever happened at all, and so rather than some conspiracy maybe it was all just made up by some bored newspaper writer. What is going on with this all? Was it ever really real in any sense, and if so, how? Was this some conspiracy launched by the Russians to mess with the United States, a real crashed UFO floating around in space, a cover-up, or just an entertaining yarn? Whatever it may be, it is certainly a curious little account, and one wonders just what became of this all in the end.
A special thanks to Steve Baxter for the cover artwork on this article.
Soon The Pale Green Horse of The Four Horsemen Will Arrive
Soon The Pale Green Horse of The Four Horsemen Will Arrive
The Four Horsemen are figures in Christian theology, appearing in the New Testament's final book, Revelation, an apocalypse written by John of Patmos, as well as in the Old Testament's prophetic Book of Zechariah, and in the Book of Ezekiel, where they are named as punishments from God.
In John's revelation:
The first horseman is on a white horse, carrying a bow, and given a crown, riding forward as a figure of Conques perhaps invoking Pestilence, Deadly Epidemic.
The second carries a sword and rides a red horse and is the creator of War.
The third is a food merchant riding upon a black horse, symbolizing Famine.
The fourth and final horse is pale green, and upon it rides Death accompanied by Hades. They were given authority over a quarter of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and plague, and by means of the beasts of the earth.
With the current corona (covid 19) virus, the fight against this invisible enemy, despite the attempts to stop the invisible enemy the rider on the red horse slays a great number of people.
Next the rider on the black horse arrives, with the world under lockdown and a looming recession, resulting in high unemployment and bankruptcy of many factories and stores which may lead to a shortage of food supplies ultimately resulting in anarchy then Death accompanied by Hades arrive upon the pale green horse.
Navy Seal Whistleblower! Inside Intel - New Project Camelot Interview!
Navy Seal Whistleblower! Inside Intel - New Project Camelot Interview!
Robert has a fascinating life story that brought him face to face with the Committee of 300, the ET Controllers and more. He was a Navy Seal who ended up working for Bush Sr. and John McCain and has traveled in some very dark circles.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
Druk op onderstaande knop om je bestand , jouw artikel naar mij te verzenden. INDIEN HET DE MOEITE WAARD IS, PLAATS IK HET OP DE BLOG ONDER DIVERSEN MET JOUW NAAM...
Druk op onderstaande knop om een berichtje achter te laten in mijn gastenboek
Alvast bedankt voor al jouw bezoekjes en jouw reacties. Nog een prettige dag verder!!!
Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
(1).jpg)
