The concept of the Yuga Cycle or the Great Year was known to most ancient cultures, and, as per this framework, we have devolved from an erstwhile Golden Age of illumination, harmony and abundance to the current age of greed and lies, discord and scarcity. The fundamental factor that differentiates a higher age from a lower one is the state of man’s consciousness. In a Golden Age, consciousness is so elevated and purified, that we can easily comprehend the mysteries of creation, and of our place in the wider scheme of things, and, thus, we are able to lead long lives in a state of joy, balance and harmony. Since the environment reflects our state of consciousness, there is fertility and abundance in the higher ages and a lack of diseases and natural disasters. But as we devolve along the descending arc of the Yuga Cycle or Great Year, we move from soul consciousness to ego consciousness, accompanied by a degradation in our physical size and the external environment, which gradually leads to a burgeoning of violence, misery and discontent in society.   

What is really striking is that all of these claims are now being borne out by scientific findings from different disciplines. It turns out that, over the past 12,000 years of the descending arc of the Yuga Cycle, humans have shrunk in size by at least 10%, along with a corresponding decline in bone strength and athleticism. This has been accompanied by a 10% to 17% reduction in our cranial volume over the same period, which has not only diminished the average intellect but reduced our memory and atrophied our sense of judgment and morality, along with a host of subtle mental abilities such as foresight, telepathy etc. And to add to these surprising statistics, it turns out that, towards the end of the last Ice Age, there was no food scarcity or diseases, but as time went on, food sources became scarce, many kinds of diseases became endemic, and incidences of violent deaths increased substantially. 

Everything that the ancients said about the Yuga Cycle or Great Year is now turning out to be facts, but why aren’t these statistics being discussed on mainstream media outlets? It’s because they run counter to the Darwinian myth of gradual evolution by natural selection that has been literally shoved down our throats and turned into an incontrovertible dogma. Very few scientists, academics or media channels will dare to question Darwinism, for fear of getting ridiculed, denied funds or promotions, or even hounded out of their profession. Do not question the science, is the current science. This, unfortunately, is the insidious manner in which things work in the Kali Yuga, the darkest age of human history. 

In my book, Yuga Shift, I have presented what I believe is the original Yuga Cycle framework. It is of the same duration as the precessional cycle of the earth, i.e. 25,800 years, and comprises an ascending cycle of consciousness and a descending cycle of consciousness, which are separated by two extended periods of transition that the Greeks called Kataklysmos (meaning “Deluge”) or the “great winter” of the Great Year, and Ekpyrosis (meaning “Conflagration”) or the “great summer” of the Great Year.

It is the period of Ekpyrosis that we are heading towards, as the Kali Yuga and the entire descending cycle of consciousness come to an end in 2025.

A Day and Night of Brahma

One of the thoughts that come to mind when we think about the Yuga Cycle or the Cycle of the Ages is that, does it continue indefinitely, without any beginning or end, or is it part of an even larger cycle of time. 

As per the ancient Vedic texts, there is an even longer cycle of time called the “Day and Night of Brahma”, which extends for a whopping 25.8 million years! It consists of a “Day of Brahma” which extends for a thousand Yuga half-cycles of 12,900 years each, adding up to 12.9 million years. A “Day of Brahma” is followed by a “Night of Brahma” of equal duration. This cycle has been described in a number of texts.

As per the Vishnu Purana, at the beginning of a “Day of Brahma”, the world is created from unmanifested matter by Brahma, who is the pure, eternal, formless, consciousness, seated at the navel of the world. At the end of a “Day of Brahma”, the entire creation is destroyed and turns into a mighty, formless ocean. This is followed by a “Night of Brahma” when no life forms exist. The creative process begins once again at the beginning of the next “Day of Brahma”.

“At the end of this day (i.e. “Day of Brahma”) a dissolution of the universe occurs, when all the three worlds, earth, and the regions of space, are consumed with fire…When the-three worlds are but one mighty ocean, Brahma…satiate with the demolition of the universe, sleeps upon his serpent-bed…for a night of equal duration with his day (i.e. Night of Brahma); at the close of which he creates anew.”[1] 

In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna provides a specific value for the duration of the “Day and Night of Brahma”. 

“Those who understand the cosmic laws know that the Day of Brahma ends after a thousand Yugas and the Night of Brahma ends after a thousand Yugas. When the Day of Brahma dawns, forms are brought forth from the Unmanifest; when the Night of Brahma comes, these forms merge in the Formless again. This multitude of beings is created and destroyed again and again in the succeeding days and nights of Brahma.”[2]

It should be remembered here that, when the Sanskrit texts talk of the Yuga Cycle, they mean the Yuga half-cycle, which goes from Satya Yuga -> Treta Yuga -> Dwapara Yuga -> Kali Yuga, including the periods of transition between them. A 1000 Yuga half-cycles is equivalent to 500 complete Yuga Cycles of 25,800 years each, which works out to 12.9 million years.

A “Day of Brahma”, therefore, extends for 12.9 million years, during which time we experience a long sequence of 500 complete Yuga Cycles, and the earth is bustling with life and civilization. It is followed by a “Night of Brahma” of equal duration of 12.9 million years, when all life is snuffed out, and the entire world exits as a giant, formless, lifeless ocean. Thus, the “Day and Night of Brahma” is a grand cosmic cycle of creation and dissolution spanning over of 25.8 million years.

It is easy to see that the time period between two successive dissolution events in this cycle is 25.8 million years, which can be rounded off to 26 million years. Now, if a dissolution of life on a cosmic scale occurs every 26 million years, shouldn’t this fact be reflected in the fossil records of our planet? 

Amazingly enough, this is exactly what has been indicated by recent paleontological evidence: every 26 million years there is a mass extinction of species on the earth!

Mass Extinction Cycle

Around 67 million years ago, the earth looked like a very different place. Enormous dinosaurs stalked the landscape, while massive avian reptiles patrolled the skies. But, then, something catastrophic happened, which changed things almost overnight. Nearly 66 million years ago the earth went through a period of rapid death, called a mass extinction, when more than 75% of all animal and plant species became extinct. Scientists now have evidence that the die-off was caused when an asteroid, about 10 kilometers in diameter, struck the earth at a speed of about 20 km/sec and created the 200-km wide Chicxulub Crater in southeastern Mexico, releasing a billion times more energy than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima.

The impact generated hot winds and shock waves, and ejected a gigantic jet of molten material, several times hotter than the surface of the sun, which set fire to everything within a thousand miles. Measurements of the layer of ash and soot that eventually coated the Earth indicate that fires consumed about seventy percent of the world’s forests. The collision triggered powerful earthquakes and spawned mega tsunamis, hundreds of feet tall. A model of the impact event developed by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory shows,

“The dust and soot from the impact and the conflagrations prevented all sunlight from reaching the planet’s surface for months. Photosynthesis all but stopped, killing most of the plant life... After the fires died down, Earth plunged into a period of cold, perhaps even a deep freeze. Earth’s two essential food chains, in the sea and on land, collapsed. About seventy-five percent of all species went extinct. More than 99.9999 percent of all living organisms on Earth died, and the carbon cycle came to a halt.”[3]

It is to be noted here that the impact event at the K-T boundary effectively killed off all the living organisms on our planet, even though the species die-off is estimated at roughly 75%. This is because some of the species that existed at that time, re-appeared in the fossil records at a later date, and therefore, is not considered to have gone extinct. 

The fiery cataclysm that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs is in perfect alignment with the description of the dissolution event that occurs at the end of a “Day of Brahma” when all life forms on the earth are destroyed, and, as the Vishnu Purana states, “all the three worlds, earth, and the regions of space are consumed with fire”. Admittedly, the ancient Vedic sages knew a thing or two about the true history of our planet.

Moreover, this is not the only mass extinction event that has occurred on our planet in the past. There are many more, and, quite surprisingly, they occur in a cyclical manner every 26 million years!

In 1984, paleontologists David Raup and Jack Sepkoski of the University of Chicago identified a 26-million-year periodicity in extinction rates over the past 250 million years.[4] As part of a broad study of the distribution of marine life through geologic time, Sepkoski had prepared a listing of about a quarter of a million species of sea-dwelling creatures, both extinct and current, noting the point in time where they appeared and became extinct. The study was confined to marine organisms since the chances of finding fossils are much higher under the sea. The oceans are areas of net sedimentation, whereas land is an area of net erosion. 

David Raup, a senior colleague at the University of Chicago, suggested to Sepkoski that he examine the list for any evidence of a pattern in the timing of the mass extinctions. Sepkoski decided to concentrate on the last 250 million years of geologic time and throw out animals whose exact timing of appearance and disappearance were debated. He was left with about 500 of his original 3,500 marine families (250,000 species). Sepkoski put the data through a computer program and was surprised to find that life forms on Earth disappeared in great numbers every 26 million years. Both of them checked for errors and confirmed the pattern; life seemed to disappear drastically exactly every 26 million years. In their seminal paper, Raup and Sepkoski wrote:

“The temporal distribution of the major extinctions over the past 250 million years has been investigated statistically using various forms of time series analysis. The analyzed record is based on variation in extinction intensity for fossil families of marine vertebrates, invertebrates, and protozoans, and contains 12 extinction events. The 12 events show a statistically significant periodicity (P <0.01) with a mean interval between events of 26 million years. Two of the events coincide with extinctions that have been previously linked to meteorite impacts (terminal Cretaceous and late Eocene). Although the causes of the periodicity are unknown, it is possible that they are related to extraterrestrial forces (solar, solar system, or galactic.)”

The mass extinction events are not selective at all, in the way Darwin had proposed. As per Darwinism, the evolutionary process is gradual, and life forms evolve slowly through a process of natural selection, in which the inferior life forms are eliminated since they are less suited to the struggle for existence. However, in case of a mass extinction, there is no way of knowing beforehand which species will survive the extinction event and which will die out. The process is entirely random. In a paper titled, “The Role of Extinction in Evolution” (1982), David Raup wrote,

“The largest mass extinctions produce major restructuring of the biosphere wherein some successful groups are eliminated, allowing previously minor groups to expand and diversify…There is little evidence that extinction is selective in the positive sense argued by Darwin. It has generally been impossible to predict, before the fact, which species will be victims of an extinction event.”[5]

The 26-million-year extinction cycle has, since then, been validated by a number of independent studies. In 2010, Adrian Melott and Richard Bambach identified a 27 Myr periodicity in the extinction data, extending over the past 500 million years. They wrote,

“We examined periodicities in extinction over the last 500 million years, and concluded that a signal detected by Raup & Sepkoski (1984) was present in better resolved, more extensive current data, over a longer time period than they had originally claimed, and at a higher level of significance. The claimed period grew from 26 to 27 Myr, and is also now observed to extend over the entire 500 million years interval rather than just the last 250 million years, due to revisions in the geological timescale since the 1980s.”[6]

Mass Extinctions and Impact Craters

It has become quite obvious over time that the primary triggers for the mass extinctions are impact events. In 1980, the father-son duo of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez and his son, the geologist Walter Alvarez, had inferred that the sudden extinction of dinosaurs at the K-T (Cretaceous–Tertiary) boundary, nearly 66 million years ago, was due to the impact of a large asteroid or comet. 

Luis and Walter Alvarez had noticed that sedimentary layers all over the world at the K-T boundary contain a concentration of iridium many times greater than normal. Iridium is extremely rare in the Earth's crust but is abundant in chondritic meteorites and asteroids. Moreover, the isotopic ratio of iridium in asteroids is similar to that seen in the K–T boundary layer. Based on this, the Alvarez team suggested that the iridium spike at the K-T boundary was of extraterrestrial origin and had settled out of a global dust cloud triggered by the impact of an asteroid, at least 10 km in diameter.

While Alvarez’s theory was initially rejected by most paleontologists, the subsequent discovery and dating of the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico validated their findings and silenced the dissenters.

Since then, other scientists have found that the estimated ages of a number of impact craters coincide with the mass extinction events.

In the mid-1980s, cratering specialist Richard Grieve ran his list of well-dated impact craters through the computer at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and identified a crater periodicity of nearly 30 million years. Around the same time, Walter Alvarez and Richard Muller at UC Berkeley identified a 28 million-year cycle using a somewhat different set of craters. 

In 2015, Michael Rampino and his student Ken Caldeira studied more impact craters with improved crater-age data, and “found that craters and extinctions both seem to occur with the same 26 million-year cycle”.[7] Crater formation rate peaks close to the time of an extinction event, and some of the largest impact craters were formed during an extinction event. Clearly, the 26 million-year extinction cycle is a significant geological signal, which some scientists call the “geological heartbeat” of our planet. 

It is nothing short of astonishing that, such precise information about the 26-million-year mass extinction cycle has been specified in the Vedic texts. Of course, a couple of questions still need to be clarified. The Vedic doctrine claims that the earth remains entirely devoid of all life forms for the entire 12.9-million-year duration of the “Night of Brahma” that follows the extinction event. Do have any scientific evidence in support of this? As it turns out, there is. And more studies are arriving at the same conclusion.

The Night of Brahma

In May 2012, an article in Nature Geoscience written by Dr. Zhong-Qiang Chen of the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan and Professor Michael Benton of the University of Bristol stated that it took nearly 10 million years for life forms to appear after the end-Permian mass extinction event 250 million years ago, which had wiped out nearly 90% of all living species.[8]

As per the scientists, two factors could have delayed the appearance of new life forms: 1) the sheer intensity of the crisis, and 2) the continuing grim conditions on earth after the first wave of extinction.[9] Professor Michael Benton wrote that “in this most devastating case, life did recover, after many millions of years, and new groups emerged. The event had re-set evolution.”[10]

Another study conducted in 2019 found that it takes at least ten million years before the diversity of a species achieves a similar level to that seen before the mass extinction event.[11] Dr. Lowery and Dr. Fraass studied foram fossils for a time period covering roughly 20 million years, from the end of the Cretaceous mass extinction (66 million years ago) and extending through the ensuing recovery, to determine how long it took these minibeasts to recover their species diversity. Dr. Lowery and Dr. Fraass concluded that it took at least ten million years for foram species diversity to recover.[12]

These studies confirm that, in general, it takes around 10 million years or more for life forms to emerge and global biodiversity to recover, after a mass extinction event. This confirms what Vedic sages said about the “Night of Brahma” being a time when the earth is devoid of life forms.

The other question that was on my mind is this: As per the Vedic doctrine, life forms arise very quickly after a “Night of Brahma” ends, and the next “Day of Brahma” begins. Now, does this really happen? Do we see a sudden emergence of life forms after a mass extinction event, or do they appear gradually through a process of natural selection extending over millions of years, as Darwin had proposed?

Punctuated Equilibrium

Darwin’s theory that new species arise by the slow and steady transformation of entire populations is not reflected in the fossil records. If this were true, then a continuous sequence of “intermediate forms”, showing incremental changes on the way to a new species, should have been found in the rock strata. Unfortunately, intermediate forms connecting species have never been identified. The absence of “missing links” had also concerned Darwin, who attributed it to the imperfections of the geological record. In the Origin of Species, Darwin wrote, 

“Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.”[13]

“The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record will rightly reject my whole theory. ”[14]

In 1972, Harvard University paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge wrote their seminal paper titled, “Punctuated Equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism”, in which they argued that the fossil record is not imperfect, as claimed by Darwinists. The many breaks in the fossil records are real, and they express how evolution occurs. The absence of transitional forms implies that evolution does not occur by the slow and gradual transformation of a species.   

“Under the influence of phyletic gradualism, the rarity of transitional series remains as our persistent bugbear…Many breaks in the fossil record are real; they express the way in which evolution occurs, not the fragments of an imperfect record. The sharp break in a local column accurately records what happened in that area through time.”[15]

“Although phyletic gradualism prevails as a picture for the origin of new species in paleontology, very few classic examples purport to document it. A few authors have offered a simple a literal interpretation of this situation: in-situ, gradual, progressive evolutionary change is a rare phenomenon. But we usually explain the paucity of cases by a nearly ritualized invocation of the inadequacy of the fossil record.”[16]

Gould and Eldredge proposed the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium to explain what is really happening in the fossil records. They said that the fossil records show long periods of stasis or equilibrium, extending for millions of years, during which time there is little or no evolutionary change, which are punctuated by rapid, episodic periods of speciation, occurring within the space of a few thousand years.

Gould provided further clarification in his article titled, “Evolution’s Erratic Pace (1977)”, in which he wrote that, in any local area, “a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and fully formed”[17]. Once a species appears, it undergoes very little or no evolutionary change for millions of years. Most species, “appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.”[18]

Gould berated the paleontological community for being so heavily influenced by Darwin’s theory of gradual evolution, that they did not notice the obvious patterns in the fossil records.

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology…Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.”[19]

Gould was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. He wrote 300 popular essays in the Natural History magazine, for both specialists and non-specialists. In April 2000, the US Library of Congress named him a “Living Legend”. Throughout his career, Gould insisted that the gradualistic models of evolution are simply not reflected in the fossil records, and there is a strong tendency within the scientific community to restrict their thinking within certain belief systems.

In the essay, “Darwin's Untimely Burial” (1976), Gould gave vent to his frustration when he wrote, “I am a strong advocate of the general argument that “truth” as preached by scientists often turns out to be no more than prejudice inspired by prevailing social and political beliefs.”[20]

In “The Return of Hopeful Monsters” (1977), he wrote that, “all paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.” Then, in the essay titled, “Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?” (1980), Gould reiterated the obvious flaws in the Darwinian model of evolution: 

“The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.”[21]

The truth is that when we go purely by the fossil records – leaving aside all theories and speculations - what we see are rapid bursts of speciation and not the long-drawn-out gradual accumulation of small variations. 

Gould’s Harvard colleague, Niles Eldredge, estimated that the rapid periods of evolutionary change, “took something between 5,000 and 50,000 years—a mere blink of an eye geologically speaking.”[22]

It is equally fascinating that this estimate is very close to the value mentioned in the Surya Siddhanta, which is the oldest astronomical treatise of India. The text states: “One hundred times four hundred and seventy-four years passed while the All-Wise was employed in creating the animate and inanimate creation, plants, stars, gods, demons and the rest.”[23] This means the entire creative process (possibly at the beginning of the current Day of Brahma) took 47,400 years, which falls in the range of values found by Eldredge i.e. between 5000 – 50,000 years.

Oscillations in Morphology

Once speciation is completed, every species remains amazingly stable for millions of years. That does not mean that they do not change at all. In his study of Devonian trilobites, which lived between 380-375 million years ago, Eldredge had found that, once a new species appeared, they persisted for millions of years with very little morphological change. 

“There were some oscillations in morphology, so species weren’t completely invariant, but the net sum of any changes usually tended to cancel out, leading to no net change.”[24]

Gould, by the way, had also found very similar patterns in his studies that focused on fossil land snails from the genus Poecilozonites that lived a few hundred thousand years ago during the Pleistocene.[25]

I was amazed to know of these findings because this is precisely what I had discovered in course of my explorations into the Yuga Cycle. In Yuga Shift, I had proposed, based on ample data points, that, both human cranial volume as well as physical size fluctuates in a sinusoidal manner over a 25,800-year precession cycle, without a net increase or decrease in any direction. I had also written that this oscillation must have been going on over the past 2 million-odd years of human evolution.

And now it turns out that the “oscillations in morphology” occur not only in case of humans, but is a characteristic feature of the entire animal kingdom! All species increase and decrease in size and cranial capacity in a sinusoidal manner over the entire “Day of Brahma” of 12.9 million years, spanning 500 complete Yuga Cycles! This is why the Ice Age megafauna were so much bigger than the animals of today. It’s a recurring pattern of nature.

Every assertion of the Vedic texts with respect to the “Day and Night of Brahma” has now been detected in the fossil records. It is not an approximate correlation, but an almost exact match. Let me recapitulate the important connections:

1. The fossil records show that a mass extinction of species occurs every 26 million years, while the Vedic texts claim that all life on the earth is extinguished at the end of a “Day of Brahma”, every 26 million years. 

2. The fossil records show that it takes 10 million years or more for new life forms to emerge and for global biodiversity to recover, after a mass extinction event. The Vedic texts claim that the earth remains in a lifeless state during the “Night of Brahma”, which extends for 13 million years after an extinction event. 

3. The fossil records show that new species appear in rapid, episodic bursts, in a fully formed state. The rapid speciation events are completed within 5,000 - 50,000 years. The Vedic texts claim that new life forms arise on the earth as soon as a new “Day of Brahma” dawns, and it takes nearly 47,400 years for all living entities to be created.

The fossil records are in perfect alignment with every element of the doctrine of the “Day and Night of Brahma”. This is yet another indication of the profound knowledge of the vast time cycles that our ancestors had possessed, and they passed them down to us in simple verses, although, sometimes they also employed metaphors and symbolic imageries to drive home the point and aid in memorization.

For instance, the events that occur in the course of a “Day and Night of Brahma” have also been metaphorically described as the “breathing in and out of Brahma”. When Brahma breathes out, life forms get dispersed across the cosmos, and when he breathes in, life forms return to the source and the cosmos becomes lifeless. In Yuga Shift, I have proposed that the unmanifested, creative principle, that the Vedic sages called Brahma, refers to the central black hole of the Milky Way galaxy, which, as most scientists agree, acts as the central engine of our galaxy. 

When does the current Day of Brahma end?

In case you are wondering when the current “Day of Brahma” will come to a cataclysmic end, you can rest easy, for it is still a very long way off. The last mass extinction event was the “Middle Miocene Disruption” which occurred around 14.8 Mya (Million years ago). This means that the current “Day of Brahma” started 12.9 Myr later, at around 1.9 Mya. 

Not surprisingly, the earliest fossil remains of the genus Homo (to which our own species Homo sapiens belongs) started appearing around the same time. The oldest hominin fossils are those of Homo habilis, dated to around 1.9 Mya. H. habilis cranial volume fluctuated between 500 cc – 800 cc over the course of its presence in the fossil records till around 1.5 Mya. The bipedal, erect walking, Homo erectus appears in the fossil records from 1.7 Mya till around 250,000 years ago. H. erectus shows a fluctuation in cranial volume between 850 – 1200 cc.

Since the current “Day of Brahma” started around 1.9 Mya, the next cosmic dissolution event is nearly 11.4 million years away. So we can safely take it off our calendar for now. It is not cosmic dissolution that should worry us, but the impending transition out of the Kali Yuga in 2025, which is likely to be very turbulent. 

There is no doubt that our ancestors had a very sophisticated understanding of the vast cycles of time that regulate life and civilization on our planet. Unfortunately, this wisdom was gradually forgotten, as we devolved along the descending arc of the Yuga Cycle. The scientific advances of the past couple of centuries are now helping us to uncover the true significance of these ancient doctrines. However, in general, the attitude of scientists and academics towards the ancient cultures continues to remain dismissive. The problem is that, once we become indoctrinated with a specific belief system since childhood, it becomes extremely difficult to dislodge it, even with the aid of voluminous amounts of scientific data. Unless we adopt an attitude of respect towards the ancient civilizations, we will continue to remain oblivious to the grand stores of wisdom that have been encoded into their sacred texts, symbols and magnificent archaeological monuments.

References

[1] The Vishnu Purana 1.3, tr. by Horace Hayman Wilson, 1840, https://sacred-texts.com/hin/vp/vp037.htm
[2] The Bhagavad Gita 8.17-8.20 tr. Eknath Easwaran, Penguin Books, 1996.
[3] Douglas Preston, The Day the Dinosaurs Died, The New Yorker, 29 March 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died
[4] Raup and Sepkoski, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 81(1984): 801-805 
[5] D M Raup, “The role of extinction in evolution”, PNAS 91 (1994): 6758-6763.
[6] Adrian L. Melott and Richard K. Bambach, "DO PERIODICITIES IN EXTINCTION—WITH POSSIBLE ASTRONOMICAL CONNECTIONS—SURVIVE A REVISION OF THE GEOLOGICAL TIMESCALE?",  The Astrophysical Journal, 2013, Volume 773, Number 1
[7] Michael R. Rampino, "Dark matter’s shadowy effect on Earth", Astronomy.com July 31, 2019, https://astronomy.com/magazine/2019/07/dark-matters--shadowy-effect--on-earth
[8] Zhong-Qiang Chen, Michael J. Benton, “The timing and pattern of biotic recovery following the end-Permian mass extinction” Nature Geoscience, 2012, DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1475
[9] University of Bristol, “It took Earth ten million years to recover from greatest mass extinction” ScienceDaily, 27 May 2012, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120527153810.htm
[10] Ibid
[11] Christopher M. Lowery and Andrew J. Fraass, “Morphospace expansion paces taxonomic diversification after end Cretaceous mass extinction”, Nature Ecology & Evolution, 9 April 2019, DOI:10.1038/s41559-019-0835-0
[12] GrrlScientist, “Appearance Of New Species After Mass Extinction Has Evolutionary 'Speed Limit'”, Forbes Apr 13, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2019/04/13/appearance-of-new-species-after-mass-extinction-has-evolutionary-speed-limit/?sh=7a3c6dfa525b
[13] Charles Darwin, Origin of Species (1859) 280
[14] Charles Darwin, Origin of Species (1859) 342
[15] Gould, S. J. and Eldredge, N., “Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism” Models in paleobiology ed. Schopf, TJM Freeman (San Francisco: Cooper & Co, 1972) pp. 82-115
[16] Ibid
[17] Ibid
[18] Gould, S.J, "Evolution's Erratic Pace", Natural History 86 (1977): 14
[19] Gould, S. J., 1977, “Evolution’s erratic pace” Natural History, 86(1977):14
[20] Stephen Jay Gould, "Darwin's Untimely Burial," Natural History 85 (1976): 24-30
[21] Gould, S. J , “Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?” Paleobiology 6 (1980):119–130.
[22] Eldredge, N. The Early “Evolution” of “Punctuated Equilibria”. Evo Edu Outreach 1, 107–113 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12052-008-0032-0
[23] Surya-Siddhanta: A text-book of Hindu astronomy, trans. Ebenezer Burgess, Phanindralal Gangooly (Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 1989) chapter 1, p 13.
[24] "Punctuated equilibrium and stasis", Digital Atlas of Ancient Life, Paleontological Research Institution, https://www.digitalatlasofancientlife.org/learn/evolution/punctuated-equilibrium-and-stasis/
[25] "Punctuated equilibrium and stasis", Digital Atlas of Ancient Life, Paleontological Research Institution, https://www.digitalatlasofancientlife.org/learn/evolution/punctuated-equilibrium-and-stasis/

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• READ MORE: Dinosaur hunter finds proof T.Rex's COUSIN roamed East Sussex

By WILIAM HUNTER

Just a few hundred metres from the roaring traffic of the M40, scientists have uncovered a very different kind of road.

Around 166 million years ago Britain's 'dinosaur highway' was teaming with lumbering giants and fierce predators making their way across the country. 

Researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham have uncovered a huge expanse of quarry floor filled with hundreds of different dinosaur footprints.

Scientists found five of the UK's most extensive dinosaur trackways, with the longest measuring 150m in length.

Four of these belong to long-necked herbivores - most likely Cetiosaurus, an 18-metre-long cousin of the Diplodocus.

The fifth track was made by a passing Megalosaurus, a ferocious nine-metre-long predator which stalked the boggy lagoons of Britain during the Middle Jurassic period.

These uniquely well-preserved tracks reveal some stunning insights into the lives of the long-extinct giants, even recording the moment two dinosaurs crossed paths.

And researchers say it is 'very likely' that there are still more tracks to be found.

Scientists have uncovered Britain's 'dinosaur highway' where giant herbivores and fierce predators would have passed 166 million years ago

In the Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire, palaeontologists have found more than 200 dinosaur footprints in five distinct sets of tracks 

The tracks were found in the Jurassic limestone of the Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire.

Originally buried under clay, these new tracks were first spotted by quarry worker Gary Johnson when he felt 'unusual bumps' while stripping back the clay to reach the quarry floor.

Realising the significance of the find, experts were contacted and a full-scale excavation of the site began.

During June last year, more than 100 scientists and volunteers carefully uncovered over 200 fossilised footprints.

In addition to making casts of the prints for further study, the researchers also took more than 20,000 photographs to create a complete 3D model of the site.

This discovery connects to earlier finds made in the area in 1997 when a previous limestone quarry uncovered more than 40 tracks from sauropods and theropods, a group of bipedal dinosaurs including the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

However, the site was buried before the widespread use of digital cameras and drones so no 3D models of the tracks could be made.

That means this latest discovery is an especially valuable insight into a vibrant prehistoric ecosystem.

Four of the trackways belong to a long-necked sauropod, most likely the 18-metre-long Cetiosaurus (right). The last remaining set belonged to a Megalosaurus (left), a ferocious predator which grew up to nine metres in length 

The trackways extend up to 150 metres along the quarry bed and were discovered when a worker noticed 'unusual bumps' in the limestone 

Around 166 million years ago, before this layer of limestone formed, this part of Oxfordshire was a warm, shallow lagoon above a thick bed of mud.

Dr Duncan Murdock, a palaeontologist from Oxford University, told MailOnline: 'As the feet of the giant animals, some up to 10 tonnes, went into the mud they left behind both an impression of the foot and a rim of displaced mud around the print.

'The surface was then flooded and buried with a more clay-rich mud, preserving the footprints. Over time, and further burial, these sediments turned into rock.'

That thick mud has preserved such incredible levels of detail that scientists can see how the mud was deformed as the dinosaurs' feet squelched in and out.

'Unlike fossil bones, finds like these tell us about the behaviour of extinct animals,' says Dr Murdock.

'The size, shape and position of the footprints can tell us how these dinosaurs moved, their size and speed.'

Each three-toed Megalosaurus track is around 65cm in length and 2.7m apart.

Based on those measurements, scientists estimate that this ancient predator would have been ambling along at around three miles per hour (five kmph) - roughly the same as a human's walking speed.

By looking at the size and distribution of the footprints, scientists are able to work out how the dinosaurs moved and how fast they were going at the time 

The Megalosaurus (left) produced footprints that are 65cm in length and was likely moving at around three miles per hour (five kmph). The sauropod produced huge 90cm footprints (right) and is believed to have been moving at a similar speed to human walking pace 

At one point in the track, palaeontologists even discovered a point where a Megalosaurus and sauropod crossed paths.

Based on the disturbances in the mud, the scientists believe that the sauropod passed through first, followed by the Megalosaurus sometime later.

Dr Murdock says: 'Where trackways cross we get a glimpse of the potential interactions between different species like the carnivorous Megalosaurus and the giant herbivorous sauropods.'

And as exciting as these discoveries already are, experts say there could still be more to find.

Professor Kirsty Edgar, a micropalaeontologist from the University of Birmingham, told MailOnline that it is 'very very likely' that more tracks will be found.

She says: 'When the animal walks over a surface and leaves an impression in soft sediment so [tracks are] most commonly found around river, lake lagoon margins or coastal environments more generally.'

Additionally, the Dewars Farm quarry is still actively extracting layers of rock above the trackway surface which means there may be more discoveries to come as the Jurassic limestone is exposed.

Smiths Bletchington, the quarry's operators, are working with Natural England to explore options to preserve the site for the future.

RELATED VIDEO

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

03-01-2025 om 16:23 geschreven door peter  

Britse arbeider ontdekt “snelweg van dinosauriërs”: 200 pootafdrukken in klei, grootste vindplek in Groot-Brittannië

Toen arbeider Gary Johnson met zijn graafmachine de klei wegschoof, had hij nooit kunnen bedenken dat hij de grootste vindplek van dinosaurussporen ooit in Groot-Brittannië zou ontdekken. “Ik stuiterde over wat hobbels”, zegt hij over de enorme vondst in Oxfordshire, in het zuidoosten van Engeland. “Het was onwezenlijk.”

Bron: Belga, AD.nl

“Onwezenlijk”, dat is slechts één van de woorden die langskomen wanneer het gaat over deze unieke ontdekking in het Britse Oxfordshire. Afgelopen zomer werden daar in een groeve in totaal bijna 200 pootafdrukken van dinosaurussen ontdekt, één spoor is maar liefst 150 meter lang. Het is de grootste site die ooit in Groot-Brittannië is ontdekt, melden de universiteiten van Oxford en Birmingham.

Lees ook

• 

  Zeldzaam fossiel van zeekrokodil, meer dan 10 miljoen jaar oud, aangetroffen in Peru

Indrukwekkend

De indrukwekkende sporen die vijf dinosaurussen 166 miljoen jaar geleden achterlieten, worden op 8 januari onthuld in de uitzending ‘Digging for Britain’ op BBC Two. Het langste spoor dat een van de dieren trok, strekt zich over 150 meter uit in de steengroeve Dewars Farm, een ware "snelweg voor dinosaurussen" waar herbivoren en carnivoren elkaar kruisten in het Midden-Jura. Mogelijk zijn de sporen nog langer als de onderzoekers de grond verder afgraven.

Vier afdrukken werden achtergelaten door sauropoden, plantenetende dinosaurussen met een lange hals. De dieren werden tot 18 meter lang en hun pootafdrukken lijken op die van een olifant, maar veel groter. Het vijfde voetspoor komt waarschijnlijk van een megalosaurus, het grootste roofdier in het Jura-tijdperk in Engeland, die op twee poten liep en waarvan de drie klauwen duidelijk te zien zijn.

Heel zeldzaam

“Heel zelden worden zoveel afdrukken op dezelfde plaats gevonden en worden zulke uitgestrekte sporen ontdekt", zei Emma Nicholls, een paleontologe gespecialiseerd in gewervelde dieren van de universiteit van Oxford. Mogelijk gaat het volgens haar om een van 's werelds grootste sites met pootafdrukken.

Arbeider met graafmachine

Gary Johnson, de arbeider die voor het bedrijf Smiths Bletchington met een laadschop aan het werk was in de groeve, ontdekte de afdrukken. “Plots reed ik over een bobbel”, vertelt hij aan de BBC. “En drie meter later weer een bobbel, en toen drie meter verderop, weer één.”

Jonhson wist van een vindplek in de buurt. Daar waren in de jaren 90 van de vorige eeuw dinosaurussporen gevonden en hij had dus het idee dat de bobbels weleens modder zou kunnen zijn dat door de zware voetstappen van de dieren aan de randen omhoog was gekomen. “Ik besefte dat ik misschien wel de eerste was die de voetafdrukken te zien kreeg, het was onwezenlijk.’’ De dagen daarna namen een honderdtal mensen deel aan opgravingen waarop de twee universiteiten toezagen.

Ontstaan

De site was vroeger een lagune van warm water. De wetenschappers weten niet precies hoe de sporen bewaard zijn gebleven. "Mogelijk kwamen sedimenten door een storm op de pootafdrukken terecht, waardoor ze stolden", zei Richard Butler, paleobioloog van de universiteit van Birmingham.

De onderzoekers maakten meer dan 20.000 digitale foto’s en de groeve werd ook uitvoerig door drones gefotografeerd om 3D-modellen te maken en de uitzonderlijke vondst te conserveren.

LEES OOK.

• Nieuwe dinosaurus met reusachtige hoorns vernoemd naar Noorse god Loki

• Wetenschappers ontdekken dat dinosaurussen ook al last hadden van luchtweginfecties

• Indrukwekkende vondst: reusachtige nieuwe dinosaurus opgegraven in Spanje

• Bedrijf wil uitgestorven dodo weer tot leven wekken en past daarom natuurlijke habitat Mauritius aan

• 300 jaar uitgestorven vogel is terug van weggeweest: wetenschappers leren beest migreren met vliegtuig

UK's biggest ever dinosaur footprint site discovered | BBC News

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

03-01-2025 om 16:06 geschreven door peter  

The team considered what an interstellar probe might find if it landed on an exoplanet and began looking for signs of life. How might such a mission recognize life that evolved in a biosphere different from what exists here on Earth? Assuming physical and chemical pre-conditions are required for life to emerge, the odds would likely be much greater. However, the issue becomes far more complex when one looks beyond evolutionary biology and astrobiology to consider synthetic biology and bioengineering.

According to Solé and his team, all of these considerations (taken together) come down to one question: can scientists predict what possible living forms of organization exist beyond what we know from Earth’s biosphere? Between not knowing what to look for and the challenge of synthetic biology, said Solé, this presents a major challenge for astrobiologists:

“The big issue is the detection of biosignatures. Detecting exoplanet atmospheres with the proper resolution is becoming a reality and will improve over the following decades. But how do we define a solid criterion to say that a measured chemical composition is connected to life? 

“[Synthetic biology] will be a parallel thread in this adventure. Synthetic life can provide profound clues on what to expect and how likely it is under given conditions. To us, synthetic biology is a powerful way to interrogate nature about the possible.”

To investigate these fundamental questions, the team considered case studies from thermodynamics, computation, genetics, cellular development, brain science, ecology, and evolution. They also consider previous research attempting to model evolution based on convergent evolution (different species independently evolve similar traits or behaviors), natural selection, and the limits imposed by a biosphere. From this, said Solé, they identified certain requirements that all lifeforms exhibit:

“We have looked at the most fundamental level: the logic of life across sales, given several informational, physical, and chemical boundaries that seem to be inescapable. Cells as fundamental units, for example, seem to be an expected attractor in terms of structure: vesicles and micelles are automatically formed and allow for the emergence of discrete units.”

The authors also point to historical examples where people predicted some complex features of life that biologists later confirmed. A major example is Erwin Schrödinger’s 1944 book What is Life? in which he predicted that genetic material is an aperiodic crystal—a non-repeating structure that still has a precise arrangement—that encodes information that guides the development of an organism. This proposal inspired James Watson and Francis Crick to conduct research that would lead them to discover the structure of DNA in 1953.

However, said Solé, there is also the work of John von Neumann that was years ahead of the molecular biology revolution. He and his team refer to von Neumann’s “universal constructor” concept, a model for a self-replicating machine based on the logic of cellular life and reproduction. “Life could, in principle, adopt very diverse configurations, but we claim that all life forms will share some inevitable features, such as linear information polymers or the presence of parasites,” Solé summarized.

In the meantime, he added, much needs to be done before astrobiology can confidently predict what forms life could take in our Universe:

“We propose a set of case studies that cover a broad range of life complexity properties. This provides a well-defined road map to developing the fundamentals. In some cases, such as the inevitability of parasites, the observation is enormously strong, and we have some intuitions about why this happens, but not yet a theoretical argument that is universal. Developing and proving these ideas will require novel connections among diverse fields, from computation and synthetic biology to ecology and evolution.”

The team’s paper, “Fundamental constraints to the logic of living systems,” appeared in Interface Focus (a Royal Society publication).

Further Reading: 

• Santa Fe Institute, 
• Interface Focus

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

03-01-2025 om 15:40 geschreven door peter  

Mars is often considered to be the planet most similar to the Earth. Earth however, is capable of supporting life, Mars on the other hand could not. There was once a time when it was warmer and wetter and could support life. Exploring life on Earth shows us that bacteria known as extremophiles can live in the most harsh conditions on Earth, it may just be possible that there are places on Mars that could also support these hardy forms of life. A new paper explores that possibility by studying the most extreme Earth-based bacteria that could survive under ground on Mars. 

Mars, often referred to as the “Red Planet” because of its reddish appearance. It’s the fourth planet from the Sun orbiting at an average distance of 228 million kilometres. It has a thin atmosphere, made up mostly of carbon dioxide with surface temperatures from about -125°C to 20°C. Mars has some fascinating geological features including the largest volcano in the solar system; Olympus Mons, and a vast canyon system; Valles Marineris. Unlike Earth, Mars has two moons Phobos and Deimos which are thought to be captured asteroids. 

The atmosphere of Mars is thin and, whilst carbon dioxide is the main component, there is also methane in small amounts, around 0.00003% of the whole. It’s origins in the Martian atmosphere are not fully understood and it may be that it is there as a result of biological processes such as the metabolism of microbes. It could also be there due to geological processes such as volcanic eruptions. The presence of methane has also excited researchers who have been exploring whether Mars could in anyway support more extreme forms of primitive life. 

In a paper recently authored by Butturini A from the University of Barcelona and team, they explore the Martian environment and its suitability to support extremophiles known as methanogens (from the Methanobacteriaceae family.) These primitive forms of bacteria are found in some of the most inhospitable regions of Earth. They have been found thriving in the hot groundwater of Lidy Hot Springs in Idaho, and are based upon methane biology. It raises an interesting possibility that areas of Mars could provide a habitat for them. 

The conditions on the surface of Mars are well understood. With high energy radiation from cosmic rays and solar radiation, along with dry and cold conditions and a high temperature differential between day and night, the surface is not conducive to any known forms of life. Look a little deeper however and the conditions seem a little more favourable. Lower levels on Mars however may be more habitable than the surface. A few metres underground and the surface material offers protection from the incoming radiation. Temperatures lower down would be higher and less variable too giving the possibility that liquid water may be present. It has already been seen that subsurface water has in some areas of Mars found its way to the surface only to evaporate when met with the surface conditions. With the presence of salt too the subsurface water can be present as liquid at a lower temperature. 

The team conclude that methanogens seem to be thriving in hostile environments on Earth which are analogous to some areas of Mars. They identify the southern area of Acidalia Planitia as somewhere to search due to the high levels of radiogenic heat producing elements which suggest subsurface water may be present. It raises the interesting possibility that, theoretically at least, primitive life could exist on Mars, even today, we just need to find it!

Source:  

• Potential habitability of present-day Mars subsurface for terrestrial-like methanogens

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

03-01-2025 om 15:15 geschreven door peter  

• READ MORE: Military witness says UFO made wildlife go 'completely silent'

By MATTHEW PHELAN SENIOR SCIENCE REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

While official reports of eerie drone-like UFOs dropped over the holidays, New Jersey residents are still coming forward with bizarre encounters.

Two witnesses in Manalapan Township, for example, videotaped a bus-sized, 25- to 50-foot-long black triangle UFO that they saw 'pull off a high g [force] maneuver over a residential area' just days before Christmas.

The sighting, which lasted at least one minute, ended with the object zooming 'in the general direction of McGuire [Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst]' — matching a persistent pattern of 'drone' UFO incursions over US bases in recent years.

Another New Jersey skywatcher recorded what they described as a classic 'flying saucer' with an 'aura or haze around object' just three miles off the coast of Atlantic City.

And still more Garden State witnesses now say they saw as many as 20 to 30 drones just this Wednesday night, which 'kind of hovered and all looked like miniature aircraft,' in an account posted to Facebook. 'Very disconcerting for sure,' one witness said.

Some experts attribute the drop in official reports to law enforcement to expanded drone flight bans by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) across the tristate area.

But others, including former chief of the FBI's counter-drone unit Rob D'Amico, believe most of the sightings were errors and 'hysteria' to begin with, suggesting that the decline might be nothing more than a case of the 'mystery drone' fever breaking. 

'I truly think that 90 percent of these sightings are manned aircraft,' D'Amico said. 'People have never looked up in the sky before to notice how crowded it is.'

Two witnesses in Manalapan, NJ, photographed a 25-50 foot-long black triangle UFO that they saw 'pull off a high g [force] maneuver over a residential area' just days before Christmas

'When you look at them and the landing lights and the navigation lights and how they fly,' D'Amico argued in an interview with NJ Spotlight, 'they are manned aircraft.'

But local eyewitnesses are unconvinced by the past and present federal investigators dismissive assertions, with many acknowledging that the strange craft do resemble traditional aircraft.

Rich V. reported seeing a large drone buzzing over his in-laws' house in Somerset this Christmas.

He shared the details with DailyMail.com, saying it was flying lower than the average airplane and was the size of a private jet. 

'It went over homes so there was a reference point to see how low it was,' Rich said. 

'2 additional large drones flew over shortly after I left which I did not see first hand, but was told to expect it by my in-law in law enforcement,' he told DailyMail.com of the event, which occurred during a Christmas visit just last week.

Somerset sits about 30 miles south of Newark airport where tons of planes fly in and out from all parts of the world. 

But, as Rich took pains to emphasize, 'we checked the Flight Radar and there was no plane in the sky where we were at, which was Bound Brook NJ.' 

His account of odd behavior by somewhat conventional-looking objects echoes the account from this past Wednesday night by a driver, Richie Sougstad, who spotted roughly 20-30 drones on his commute home through northern New Jersey.

Sougstad described the drones as being stationary except for two. 

'One was moving slowly about 20 mph, another one just kinda shot up into the atmosphere and disappeared from sight,' he shared online.

But the remaining two dozen or so, he explained, 'looked like mini airplanes but they were definitely bigger than my pick up truck.' 

'Crazy part to me was just how they hovered like a helicopter but just silently,' he said.

On December 21, 2024 at around 7:10pm in Atlantic City, one witness told NUFORC that they documented 'a strange flying saucer' that 'appeared to shake and change shape, but always returning to its original disc shape' (still image from the witnesses video submission above)

The two Manalapan witnesses who saw a 25-50 foot 'black triangle' UFO from little more than 400 yards above them along County Route 527 described the craft as 'silent' despite flying so 'quickly' that they initially thought it was a jet (above their second photo to NUFORC)

Experts have said that many of the drone sightings were actually manned aircraft as seen in this image

Tales of more exotic-looking drones or UFOs spotted in recent weeks over New Jersey, as reported to the nonprofit National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), have also curiously kept to these same 'bus-sized' dimensions. 

The two Manalapan witnesses who saw a 25-50 foot 'black triangle' UFO from little more than 400 yards above them described the craft as 'silent' despite flying so 'quickly' that they initially thought it was a jet.

'Took a screenshot from the vid and you can just make out a dark triangle angled around each of its 3 lights,' one of the two anonymous NUFORC witnesses reported.

The witness said that a friend claimed the sightings might have been a TR-3B: the legendary and still unconfirmed 'Black Manta' anti-gravity spy plane, alleged to have been made by US defense contractor Northrop in the early 1990s.

The black triangle, the said, was spotted above County Route 527 on December 18, 2024 at around 7:30pm ET.

Three days later, on December 21 at around 7:10pm in Atlantic City, one witness told NUFORC that they documented 'a strange flying saucer' that 'appeared to shake and change shape, but always returning to its original disc shape.'

Shortly after this flying disk left, the witness said it was followed in apparent pursuit by a 'red/pink light' the size of basketball that flew past 'at high speed, flashing randomly and leaving a reddish trail in the sky.' 

But the witness was only able to submit video of the first UFO to NUFORC. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

03-01-2025 om 01:14 geschreven door peter  

Researcher Says Aliens May Be Using Star Systems as Spaceships

Nathan Falde

Astronomers have observed stars that are accelerating through space at a shockingly rapid pace. Normally this is assumed to relate to gravitational forces in some way, or to the natural emissions of the stars that might be causing them to move at unusually fast rates.

But one researcher has a different idea about why some stars or star systems seem to be moving more rapidly than normally, presumably dragging their planets along with them as they go. According to Clement Vidal, a philosopher from Vrije University Brussels in Belgium who has an interest in astronomy, these traveling solar systems may have been converted into fast-moving “spaceships” by advanced alien civilizations looking to explore other areas of the Milky Way galaxy.

The Solar System as UFO

Assuming for a moment they developed the technology to actually accomplish such a thing, an alien civilization might have various motivations for propelling their entire solar system through space.

“Two universal evolutionary motivations will make interstellar travel a necessity to any long-lived civilization: survival and reproduction,” Vidal wrote in a non-peer-reviewed paper about his concept published through Cornell University.

Such a civilization might want to escape the vicinity of a nearby supernova that threatens their star system’s existence. Or they might be running out of resources on their home planet, and decide to move to another part of their galaxy where resources might be plentiful. Or they could simply be explorers driven by curiosity or a sense of adventure. They might even be forced to take such action as a response to attacks from other alien civilizations.

Rather than constructing ships that would carry just a few of them through space as astronauts, these aliens could take everyone along for the ride, with their solar system traveling through space on the ultimate voyage of discovery. While the journey to another solar system in a different part of the galaxy would be a long one, since the entire civilization was taking the trip together the passing of the time wouldn’t really be noticed.

Binary star system R Aquarii, located 700 light-years from Earth.

(European Southern Observatory/CC BY 2.0).

This is an astonishing proposal, but it is based on an idea that has been around for a long time. The idea of creating a “stellar engine” (a star that could be used to power space travel) was first conceived of by science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon in 1937, and the concept has always been considered sound—impractical perhaps, but not totally out of the realm of possibility.

• Human Genes May Have the Answer As To Whether Aliens Exist
• Ancient Egyptian North Star Eclipsed By Astronomical Discovery

In his theoretical study, Vidal proposes that binary star systems would make the best candidates to be converted into spaceships. The particular types of binary systems he identifies are known as spidar pulsars and redback pulsars, and each consists of a star that is smaller than our sun revolving around a dense neutron star with a powerful gravitational field.

In such systems the neutron stars create an enormous amount of energy. They do this through the combination of their rapid rotation (rapidly spinning stars are known as pulsars) and the gravitational forces they generate, the latter of which causes high-powered ejections of materials from their partner stars.

It is these forces, Vidal says, that could be controlled or redirected by an advanced alien civilization to actually propel an entire star system through space at a high rate of speed. The idea would be to take control of the pattern of ejections by the neutron’s companion star, and to point them in a specific direction. This would essentially turn that star into a massive rocket, propelling the solar system and all of its inhabitants toward the region of space they would like to explore. Making changes of direction in the material ejection patterns would allow the alien engineers to steer their moving solar systems, giving them total control over their final destination.

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An alien civilization would have to be enormously advanced to have developed the technology necessary to manipulate stellar forces. But if they were, converting their entire solar system into a spaceship could be feasible and logical, Vidal argues, and in such a circumstance there would be no shortage of reasons why such a civilization might want to put this idea into practice.

Let the Investigation Begin!

It would be easy to dismiss an idea like this as 100-percent speculation, rooted in science fiction more than science reality. But it is an idea that can be investigated, which is really all that Clement Vidal is recommending that astronomers do.

In fact scientists have already looked closely at the anomalous movements of hypervelocity stars, strange objects that were apparently ejected from the center of the Milky Way after passing too close to a black hole. Astronomers have identified and analyzed 16 hypervelocity stars so far, but as Vidal readily admits none of them show movement patterns that would suggest they are under intelligent control.

Vidal is convinced, however, that binary star systems with the neutron star-small companion star arrangement would make the best stellar engines, because of their unique gravitational dynamics. In fact, he has already identified two candidates that match the characteristics of the solar systems he wants investigated. These are a “black widow” pulsar designated PSR J0610-2100, and a "redback" pulsar known as PSR J2043+1711. Both of these binary star systems are accelerating, and as of now there is no good explanation for that.

Illustration of star flying through space pulling planet along with it.

(Pickpik).

And just last year, Vidal notes, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory spotted five more binary pulsar systems like these in the Omega Centauri globular cluster, a grouping of 10 million stars that are about 17,000 light-years from earth. Vidal’s idea is that the movement patterns of all of these binary star systems should be closely analyzed, to see if they show any signs of speeding up or slowing down, changing direction, moving faster than predicted, and so on.

“I see the highlighted spider stellar engine candidates and predictions as promising starting points and clues that require further attention, observation, modeling, and follow-up,” he wrote.

Should such evidence be observed, it would of course not prove these solar systems were being driven across the galaxy by aliens. But if any of them are, perhaps one day thousands of years in the future they will decide to park in orbit for awhile around our sun and stop in for a visit. Should this ever happen, the result would be the largest and most spectacular mass UFO sighting in world history, followed up by actual alien contact.

• Top image: Illustration of binary pair of giant starts, accompanied by multiple planets.
• Source: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva M. ZamaniCC BY-SA 4.0.

By Nathan Falde

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{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena }

02-01-2025 om 22:31 geschreven door peter  

U.S. Experts Testify Before Congress on Secret UFO Programs

 Gary Manners

In a rare joint hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," members of the U.S. Congress recently convened to explore whether the government is hiding information about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), also known as UFOs.

The hearing, led by the House Oversight Committee’s cybersecurity, IT, and innovation subcommittees, came as public and political pressure mounts for the government to address the increasing reports of unexplained aerial objects. While the Pentagon has consistently found no evidence of alien technology in UAPs, new witness testimonies point to a deeply classified and potentially wide-ranging investigation into these phenomena, reports NPR.

Explosive Testimonies from Four Key Experts

Four experts provided written and oral testimonies at Wednesday’s hearing, each stressing the need for greater transparency. Journalist Michael Shellenberger, author Luis Elizondo, former NASA administrator Michael Gold, and retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet offered distinct insights and called for an end to secrecy around the U.S. government’s UAP investigations.

Michael Shellenberger presented a 214-page document chronicling UAP incidents from 1947 to 2023 and cited sources alleging that the Department of Defense operates a covert project, code-named “Immaculate Constellation,” dedicated to tracking and studying UAPs. Shellenberger argued that secretive programs like this could erode public trust and demanded transparency legislation from Congress to provide clarity on UAPs.

Luis Elizondo, former head of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, asserted that some UAPs are not of human origin and that governments worldwide are engaged in a high-stakes arms race to reverse-engineer these technologies. In his written testimony he writes:

"Let me be clear: UAP are real. … Advanced technologies not made by our Government — or any other government — are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe. Furthermore, the U.S. is in possession of UAP technologies, as are some of our adversaries."

When asked directly by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) if the U.S. is running secret crash retrieval programs designed to reverse-engineer alien craft, Elizondo responded, "Yes."

• The Rendlesham Forest UFO Sightings: An Unresolved Enquiry
• The Ancient History of UFOs and the Oppenheimer-Einstein Report

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) introduction speech at the hearing.

(YouTube screenshot)

Retired Admiral Tim Gallaudet recounted his personal experience with UAPs, referencing the “Go Fast” video, a 2015 Navy recording showing a fast-moving, unidentified object that displayed "flight characteristics unlike anything in our arsenal." He further alleged that the video file mysteriously vanished from Navy accounts soon after it was shared.

Michael Gold, a former associate administrator at NASA, emphasized the need to normalize scientific inquiry around UAPs, lamenting the stigma attached to discussing such phenomena. He called for NASA to receive dedicated funding to develop new tools for examining UAPs, which could lead to groundbreaking discoveries.

The Daily Mail comments:

“It's hard to imagine four people this different passionately agreeing on something as controversial and career-jeopardizing as a massive, government cover-up on UFOs — and yet they do.”

• ‘Clearest Photo Ever’ of a Huge UFO, Advanced Military Tech, Or Just A Rock In Water?
• CIA Document Dump Reveals 70 Years Of US Government UFO Info

“Immaculate Constellation”: A Secret Program with Far-Reaching Implications?

Shellenberger’s testimony revealed that “Immaculate Constellation” allegedly utilizes advanced tools to capture high-quality imagery of UAPs and even coordinates with fighter jets like the F-22 to intercept these objects.

According to Shellenberger, a whistleblower report alleges that an F-22 was once surrounded by a group of UAPs that boxed in the jet, suggesting an organized response from the unidentified objects.

The entire report on 'Immaculate Constellation' - the allegedly illegal 'Unacknowledged Special Access Program' (USAP) about UFOs that was leaked to Shellenberger — has now been posted online. Shellenberger told his followers on X that the hearing's co-lead, Rep Nancy Mace, was responsible for the decision to release this eleven-page document [PDF], reports the Daily Mail.

Shellenberger underscored the dangers of secrecy surrounding such incidents and argued that UAP transparency aligns with both national security interests and bipartisan values.

Congressional Pressure and the Push for UAP Transparency

Lawmakers, led by Rep. Nancy Mace, pressed for answers on secret UAP programs and crash retrieval efforts. Mace and other committee members questioned witnesses on the origins of these objects, asking if private companies, adversarial nations, or nonhuman intelligences were responsible. Elizondo hinted at a multifaceted answer, suggesting that some technologies might originate from private entities, while others could stem from extraterrestrial sources.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) also questioned Elizondo about the Defense Department’s handling of UAP data, underscoring concerns about a possible cover-up. Moskowitz drew a parallel to “Fight Club,” referencing its code of silence and secrecy, saying, "You can’t talk about Fight Club if there’s no Fight Club.” quotes NRP.

Elizondo affirmed that a substantial portion of UAP information remains classified and argued for controlled declassification to allow more robust scientific inquiry and public awareness.

Shifting Public and Institutional Attitudes Towards UAPs

The recent hearing reflects a growing shift within U.S. agencies and public institutions towards serious consideration of UAPs. In 2022, the Pentagon established the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to centralize UAP reporting from the military and FAA. The creation of AARO follows historical efforts to study UAPs, including Project Blue Book, a 1947–1969 Air Force project that collected over 12,000 reports, many of which were later explained by conventional means, though 701 incidents remained unexplained.

With agencies such as NASA now directly addressing UAPs, the stigma surrounding the study of unexplained phenomena is slowly diminishing. Gold argued that government agencies require dedicated tools to properly study UAPs, moving beyond the limited use of cellphone videos and fighter jet gun cameras. He and other witnesses emphasized that more funding and open scientific research would help establish whether UAPs have terrestrial or extraterrestrial origins.

A Call for Greater Accountability

The hearing concluded with an appeal for accountability from the witnesses, who reiterated that the secrecy surrounding UAPs could be detrimental to national security, public trust, and scientific progress. Elizondo warned that if UAPs represent foreign adversarial technology, it would mark an intelligence oversight “eclipsing that of 9/11 by an order of magnitude.”

Public pressure and bipartisan support for transparency legislation on UAPs continue to grow. As Congress seeks answers, the recent testimonies have raised new questions about the nature of UAPs, whether they stem from human or extraterrestrial origins, and the true scope of the U.S. government’s investigations into these mysterious phenomena.

• Top image: Mr Shellenberger holds up the whistleblower report at the UAP Congressional Hearing.   
• Source: YouTube Screenshot

By Gary Manners

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena }

02-01-2025 om 22:10 geschreven door peter  

Unexplained Mysteries: Ancient Alien Theories Debunked or Proven?

Aleksa Vučković

Is there life beyond the stars? This is one of those questions that have existed for centuries, and intrigued societies and great thinkers from the dawn of civilization. “Surely there is someone else out there in the distance,” they thought, and spoke in hushed tones about the mysteries that they could not explain. And so, generation by generation, century by century, the myths of the aliens remained, until a quite peculiar theory was born - the theory of the ancient aliens. Its adherents claim that extraterrestrial beings do exist, and that they visited our planet at the dawn of mankind, influencing its development and creating many ancient relics whose provenance cannot be explained today. These enduring mysteries are a dividing wedge between the scientific world and those who believe in something beyond the stars. But at the end of the day, is there truth to these beliefs?

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Ancient Aliens or Ancient Artisans?

The theory of ancient aliens remains quite popular, even in our modern age when we think we have answers for many things around us. Ancient alien theorists claim that there is ample evidence of extraterrestrial visitations, scattered throughout human history. They point out mysterious artifacts, stunning architectural wonders, and traditional myths that - in their view - cannot be explained by the capabilities of ancient societies and civilizations.

But there are many who oppose these ideas, always siding with mainstream society, urging people to observe things from an empirical point of view - if there isn’t sufficient evidence to support it, the theory should be disregarded.

And then there are those who go to the extremes, claiming that we are a freak of nature, and are the only living beings in the universe, and that the places beyond the stars are simply barren.

And so the war of views continues. It has been going on for many decades now. The ancient aliens theory and the concept of extraterrestrials visiting ancient peoples gained major popularity in the 1960s and 1970s. Controversial authors such as Erich von Däniken popularized the idea during this decade. Däniken’s best-selling book, “Chariots of the Gods?”, published in 1968, became a major hit and the theory quickly gained many adherents. The author proposed that many of the world’s best-known wonders are linked to extraterrestrial visitations, such as the enormous Naza Lines in Peru, the Great Pyramids in Egypt, the Stonehenge in England, and many others. Without direct proof that they were built by humans - and without an explanation how they would do it in the first place - Däniken quickly pinned them on the aliens.

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Von Däniken suggests that the Nazca lines (200 BC– 700 AD) in Peru could be "landing strips" for alien spacecraft. 

(CC BY-SA 2.5 es)

Following the release of this book, the ancient alien theory gained momentum. Further books, such as “Gods from Outer Space” and “The Gods Were Astronauts”, as well as a number of documentaries, movies, and popular series all gave their own distinct views on these theories. In time, the theory incorporated claims that not only great structures were alien-made, but also religions, mythologies, and many innovations in history. And most of all, the theory posits that the Gods of ancient civilizations were actually alien beings, misinterpreted as deities by the primitive humans. And so came to be the theory of ancient aliens.

But can it be proven?

Is There Evidence of Ancient Aliens?

Those who staunchly believe that our distant ancestors came face-to-face with beings from outer space often point to what they consider compelling evidence that this is, in fact, true. However, this evidence is often based on the interpretation of texts, ancient artifacts, and major architectural feats. One evidence that they offer is the collection of Nazca Lines in Peru. These enormous geoglyphs, situated in the deserts of southern Peru, can only be seen from a great height. Those believing in ancient aliens claim that these lines were created as “landing strips” or messages for extraterrestrial visitors, exactly because they can only be seen from the air. Could the ancient Nazca people have observed spacecraft high above them, leaving these drawings as a message?

And, of course, the unexplained architectural marvels are always offered as clear evidence of alien visitation. For example, the site of Puma Punku in Bolivia is always mentioned. It is made of enormous stone blocks, some of which weigh well over 100 tons, all of which were carved with incredible precision and fitted precisely without the use of mortar. How was such precision achieved? These theorists say that the stones could not be carved like that, not without the use of very advanced machinery and technology, which could have only arrived from beyond the stars.

Puma Punku Stone Blocks – Bolivia. 

(Adwo /Adobe Stock)

Without a doubt, the myths of the Anunnaki are the most frequently offered evidence of extraterrestrial ancients. These ancient Sumerian texts speak of the so-called Anunnaki, a group of deities described as arriving on Earth to create humanity. Ancient alien theorists propose that this is the unopposable evidence that extraterrestrials genetically engineered humans for their own purposes and pushed forward the formation of the world’s first civilizations.

Akkadian cylinder seal dating to circa 2300 BC depicting the deities Inanna, Utu, and Enki, three members of the Anunnaki.

(Public Domain)

The same goes for the Great Pyramids of Giza, which are usually the first to pop-up in talks of ancient aliens. The sheer size, perfect alignment with the cardinal directions, and incredible precision with which it was made and aligned with the celestial bodies, could have only been achieved with extraterrestrial assistance.

Science v. Belief: Who Wins?

The ancient alien theory became a proper trend in the recent years, but even so modern science continues to adamantly discredit it, unconvinced. Most scholars simply dismiss these claims, pointing out that they were built upon misinterpretation of evidence, misunderstanding, and underestimating our ancestors. A key counter argument to these theories is simply human ingenuity and ability. Archaeologists have long pointed out that our ancestors were not as primitive or clueless as we might think, and when presented with ample time and workforce, they could have achieved some truly stunning achievements. Are we simply underestimating them?

Many engineers and archaeologists stepped forward and demonstrated the construction techniques that were used to build many ancient structures, such as Stonehenge or megaliths. They all agree that such structures were well within the capabilities of ancient societies. Even though they used rudimentary materials and tools, they were still capable of organizing a massive workforce for their projects and coming up with innovative methods that would make their work easier and feasible.

Sunrise at Stonehenge on the summer solstice, 21 June 2005.

(Andrew Dunn, 2 /CC BY 2.0)

Scholars also try to provide a logical interpretation and explanation of the texts and myths that are commonly seen as connected to aliens. For example, they argue that many of the ancient religious and mythical texts are symbolic or metaphorical, and not literal descriptions of events. And many of the similarities that are shared amongst ancient cultures, such as their ideas, myths, beliefs, gods, and art, are not necessarily explained by extraterrestrial meddling. Instead, we can safely conclude that they were spread through cultural diffusion, through migration, trade, and conquest. There is also the independent invention of the same thing - in completely different cultures. This explains the appearance of pyramids in many ancient civilizations: this is a common architectural form that advanced cultures could have “invented” without anyone’s intervention.

Skepticism and Inquiry

To those who teeter at the edge, not knowing what to believe at the end of the day, it is crucial to offer advice. Sure, the idea of ancient alien visitors and superior high-tech innovations in the neolithic is definitely captivating. But it should still be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. After all, such extraordinary claims require equally extraordinary evidence. However, much of the evidence that ancient alien theorists provide is rooted in speculation, conjecture, assumption, or free interpretation. And it always ends on the note that our ancestors were simply incapable of achieving any great feats, even when presented with ample time and many laborers.

But it is important to note that science bases everything on evidence - and truth is its only driving force. Repeatedly it has proven many things from our history and given explanations for many things that we previously had no knowledge on. From the secrets of the universe to the relics of our past, science seemingly pierced every mystery. But some evidence simply does not exist, even in the scientific world. And that is the evidence that extraterrestrials exist, and that they visited planet Earth in the past.

In the ongoing clash between the scientific world and the adherents of the ancient alien theory, the former always urges the latter to view our ancestors in a different light. To give credit where credit is due, and to understand that ancient humans were great thinkers, and observed the nature around them in a logical and innovative way, which allowed them to come up with many great inventions and creations. The Baghdad battery, the Antikythera mechanism, the hydraulics, navigation, sailing - the list of ancient achievements is never-ending, and the idea of extraterrestrial involvement is completely unnecessary in any of them. That is simply because those that came before us were not so feeble after all.

Antikythera mechanism. 

(CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Masters of Past and Future Earth

“If we want to set out on the arduous search for the truth, we must all summon up the courage to leave the lines along which we have thought until now and as the first step begin to doubt everything that we previously accepted as correct and true. Can we still afford to close our eyes and stop up our ears because new ideas are supposed to be heretical and absurd?”

― Erich von Däniken, Chariots of The Gods

When there is something which we cannot explain, we cannot understand, or cannot comprehend at all, we often reach for the stars to find the answers, as if all the truth of the world lies in that distant space. And yet, the answers never come - only speculation, only daydreams, and only imagination. The scientific world fires back with its factual data, the sheer evidence, and the unearthed, tangible history. In it, there are never extraterrestrials. There are only the achievements of mankind, fueled by natural knowledge gathered for hundreds of thousands of years before the emergence of the first civilizations.

Yet even so, there are those things from history that not even science can confirm or explain. There are those creations that defy all sense of reason and logic, leaving us neither amongst the stars nor on the hard ground - but somewhere in between. Where, then, do we search for answers, if not in the great beyond?

• Top image: AI image of a flying saucer coming out from clouds on pyramids.
• Source: JackBoiler/Adobe Stock

By Aleksa Vučković

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena }

02-01-2025 om 21:49 geschreven door peter  

10-year Mystery of ‘Alien’ Sounds from Deepest Ocean Trench Solved

Ten years ago scientists detected odd and mysterious noises coming from inside the planet’s deepest ocean trench, the Mariana Trench. The sounds were identified as “biotwangs” and were comprised of deep moaning or grumbling noises followed by a series of high-pitched metallic-sounding pings. Despite the almost mechanical nature of the sound, scientists were certain that it must be the call of some species of animal (most likely a large whale). That theory has now been confirmed.

With the help of an artificial intelligence identification system developed by Google, experts affiliated with the United States government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have discovered that the strange sounds were made by Bryde’s whales. This species of baleen whale is seldom spotted in the wild, but these gigantic creatures (they can grow to up to 55 feet or 17 meters long) possess the ability to swim to extreme depths.

Artificial Intelligence Reveals the Secret Lives of Bryde’s Whales

The odd biotwangs were recorded in 2014 by scientists using underwater vehicles to complete an acoustic survey of the Mariana Trench, which can be found in the northwestern Pacific Ocean running diagonally of the coast of Japan. This huge underwater landform covers more than 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) of seafloor, reaching a maximum depth of 6.8 miles (10.9 kilometers).

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SRTM bathymetry map shows the depth of the Mariana trench region, off the coast of Japan and Insonesia.

(astrobob/CC BY-SA 4.0)

In an article published in Frontiers in Marine Science, the researchers involved in this new study explain how they used the AI system to sort through more than 200,000 hours of undersea audio recordings, looking specifically for whale sounds. These recordings were made by NOAA hydrophones mounted in the region surrounding the Mariana Islands, which are located above the massive trench that shares their name.

The AI system was trained to detect the distinctive signals of eight species of whale, including Bryde’s whales, whose sounds had been recorded while they were swimming near the Mariana Islands a few years ago.

Scientists already knew there was a strong similarity between the sounds heard coming from the Mariana Trench and the calls emitted by the Bryde’s whales spotted near the adjacent islands. And in a 2016 study they’d detected certain markers in the 2014 recordings that proved they must have come from some type of baleen whale.  But this wasn’t enough to conclusively prove a link. More evidence was needed, and this is what the undersea NOAA recordings provided.

Given the voluminous nature of the recordings collected by NOAA, it would have been impossible for humans to sort through them looking for specific sounds linked to one animal species. But the high-powered AI system created by Google was able to track the migratory movements of Bryde’s whales across the region, separating out its distinctive calls and connecting them to the underwater locations where they were recorded as they swam by. It did this using a unique process that converted the biotwangs and related sounds into images known as spectrograms, which a machine learning algorithm was then able to differentiate from other recorded noises.

Throughout their travels one group of Bryde’s whales in particular continued to emit the biotwang sounds that could now be identified as the same ones detected in the Mariana Trench in 2014. With so many matches sorted out of recordings, the source of the mysterious trench sounds could no longer be debated, despite its highly extraordinary qualities.

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Bryde’s whale breaching the ocean surface off the coast of Brazil.

(Zejulio/CC BY-SA 4.0)

“Your average person would not think that it was made by an animal – they would think it was some ship or the [US] Navy,” study lead author Ann Allen from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in an interview with New Scientist. 

Intriguingly, these distinctive whale calls were not found in recordings that covered Bryde’s whale migration paths in other parts of the Pacific. It was only the Bryde’s whales living in the vicinity of the Mariana Trench that were recorded making these sounds, as they completed their migrations across that underwater region of the globe.

This means the strange biotwang belongs to what is essentially a local dialect, highlighting the intelligence and creativity of this elusive baleen whale species.

"It's possible that they use the biotwang as a contact call, a sort of 'Marco Polo' of the ocean," Allen told  Popular Science.  "But we need more information before we can say for sure."

Whale Migrations May Be Threatened by Climate Change

One surprising finding of the new research is that there was a sudden increase in the frequency of the biotwang noises in 2016. At this time there was a rise in ocean temperatures in the northwest Pacific caused by an El Niño event, which led to increased migration of Bryde’s whales into the area.

The Mariana Trench is located in a part of the ocean where a moving boundary separates warm water from cool water, and Bryde’s whale migrations seem to be tied to the movements of that boundary (warmer waters means an increase in the population of plankton and other creatures these huge whales consume). The boundary actually has a name, which is the transition zone chlorophyll front.

“As climate change advances, we expect more frequent and more extreme El Niño and La Niña events, and we expect this transition zone chlorophyll front to go further north and be more variable,” Allen said.

“This means that the whales may have to travel further and work a lot harder to find their food, which can impact the health of the population.”

It is intriguing to speculate whether the whales themselves will recognize that underwater conditions are changing as climate change progresses. They obviously wouldn’t know what was responsible for the changes, but given their great intelligence it seems possible that they understand that something significant was going on.

• Top image: Deep sea fish, the type imagined to be found in the Mariana Trench. 
• Source: superjoseph/Adobe Stock

By Nathan Falde

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena }

02-01-2025 om 21:28 geschreven door peter  

What are the chances of four iconic landmarks being struck by lightning on the same day?  

On December 31, 2024, an extraordinary series of lightning strikes hit four major landmarks: the U.S. Capitol Building and the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., along with the Empire State Building and One World Trade Center in New York City. 

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

02-01-2025 om 21:07 geschreven door peter  

Why do rich, bored people report more UFO sightings?

Study shows that UFO sightings are more common in wealthy areas and everywhere during economic downturns.

UFO: Are UFO sightings for the rich and bored?

Photo by Lucas Pezeta via Pexels

By Zachy Hennessey

With global interest in UFOs at an all-time high, particularly in the United States where mysterious drone sightings have been driving everyone crazy, two Israeli researchers have uncovered fascinating patterns in who reports these mysterious sightings — and when. 

Their study, published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, reveals that UFO reports might tell us less about what’s in the sky and more about what’s happening on the ground, particularly in our bank accounts.

Ohad Raveh from Hebrew University and Nathan Goldstein from Bar-Ilan University were trying to solve an interesting puzzle: How can we measure what the public is paying attention to in different places and at different times? This is important for understanding the economy, but it’s difficult to measure.

They looked at years of data cataloguing recorded sightings of UFOs — or as they refer to them, UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena). 

Their assumption was that when people report seeing something strange in the sky, they’re clearly paying attention to their surroundings. The researchers thought this could be a useful way to measure public attention.

“ We set out to understand what the association is between attention given to the sky and attention given to the economy,” explains Raveh.

Two contradictory findings?

The researchers analyzed thousands of reports from the National UFO Reporting Center in the United States and discovered that more wealthy areas consistently report more UFO sightings than less wealthy regions.

Raveh and Goldstein initially believed that this phenomenon could be explained by understanding attention as a hierarchical system: you give attention to the most pressing issues before you worry about other things.

“Once you give attention to the fundamental things, then you may give attention to things that are more luxurious,” Raveh elaborates. “Attention to the economy is a fundamental thing, because in the end that’s what brings food to your table. But once you attend to that, then you have more time on your hands to start looking at the sky.”

So, because people who are more financially secure can let their minds (and eyes) wander from their budgets, they’re more likely to see UAPs, right?

However, that theory runs into some turbulence when considering the second pattern they uncovered during their research: Across the board, both poor and wealthy areas saw an increase in UFO sightings during economic downturns – a pattern that caught the researchers by surprise.

“ We thought that the two types of attention would be substitutable. Because attention is a limited resource, and if you give attention to, say, the sky, that would be at the expense of other types of attention that you can give to other factors like the economy,” says Raveh. “But apparently it doesn’t work like that.”

To summarize: Wealthy areas generally report more UFOs than poor areas, but when any area hits hard economic times, UFO reports increase. 

It’s all about attention

This apparent contradiction makes sense when you realize UFO reports are really measuring how much attention people are paying to their surroundings.

Wealthy people generally have more free time and mental space to notice unusual things in the sky. But during economic downturns, people everywhere have more time on their hands (often due to job losses or reduced work hours) and thus spot more UFOs.

This interpretation is supported by what the researchers saw during Covid lockdowns: When people were forcibly given more free time (even if they weren’t necessarily experiencing economic hardship), UFO sightings increased.

Overall, the research findings serve as strong evidence that UFO/UAP sightings serve as a reliable indicator of public attention patterns, which opens new possibilities for understanding how public attention influences economic outcomes.

Only one question remains, though — have the researchers seen any UFOs themselves?

“ I wish!” jokes Raveh. “Actually, since we started to work, I’ve tried to give more attention to the skies. But I haven’t seen anything, unfortunately. I hope they visit Israel sometime.”

{ https://www.israel21c.org/ }

02-01-2025 om 20:44 geschreven door peter  

Scientists SOLVE the mystery of 'alien' signal received from outer space

• READ MORE:  Dark energy mystery is finally SOLVED by radical new theory 

By WILIAM HUNTER

Scientists have finally discovered the mysterious origins of an 'alien' signal received from outer space.

In 2022, a radio telescope detected a burst of energy coming from a galaxy about 200 million light-years from Earth.

Although the burst only lasted milliseconds, it contained enough energy to outshine entire galaxies and was theorised to have been a signal from an advanced alien civilisation. 

Now, scientists from MIT have discovered that this 'fast radio burst' (FRB) originated from a small area extremely close to a rotating neutron star, the ultra-dense remains of a dead sun.

The researchers argue that the burst must have come from the layer of powerful magnetic fields surrounding the star known as the magnetosphere.

Although thousands of FRBs have been detected, this is the first time that astronomers have been able to pin down the origin of one of these mysterious signals.

Co-author Professor Kiyoshi Masui says: 'Around these highly magnetic neutron stars, also known as magnetars, atoms can't exist — they would just get torn apart by the magnetic fields.

'The exciting thing here is, we find that the energy stored in those magnetic fields, close to the source, is twisting and reconfiguring such that it can be released as radio waves that we can see halfway across the universe.'

Scientists have revealed the origin of a mysterious 'fast radio burst' signal (illustrated) which arrived from space in 2022. Although the signal only lasted two milliseconds it briefly outshone some galaxies 

Neutron stars are formed when a star about seven to 19 times the size of our sun explodes in a violent supernova, leaving behind a dense core of compressed matter.

Although they are only a few miles wide, these alien stars contain up to twice as much matter as the sun.

These stellar cores are so dense that a sugar cube-sized chunk of neutron star material would weigh one billion tonnes on Earth - making them the densest objects we can directly observe.

Surrounding these strange worlds are violent magnetic fields which can be trillions of times stronger than those surrounding the Earth.

Since the first FRB was spotted in 2007, researchers have detected thousands of these brief but intense bursts everywhere from our own galaxy to 8 billion light-years away.

Although these bursts don't contain enough energy to be dangerous, they have presented scientists with a perplexing mystery.  

Some scientists have suggested that these could be created by the powerful magnetic fields surrounding distant neutron stars - but not all astronomers agree.

Lead researcher Dr Kenzie Nimmo says: 'In these environments of neutron stars, the magnetic fields are really at the limits of what the universe can produce.

Researchers believe this powerful signal originated from within the magnetic fields surrounding a neutron star, the ultra-dense remains of a dead star. As this burst passed through gases in another galaxy it split into multiple paths (illustrated) causing the signal to flicker in brightness

The signal was detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (pictured). By looking at how the signal flickered, researchers calculated that it must have emerged from a region no larger than 10,000 km (6,200 miles) across 

'There's been a lot of debate about whether this bright radio emission could even escape from that extreme plasma.'

Some models suggest that the bursts of energy are formed in the turbulent magnetosphere while others argue that they originate from much farther out as part of a shockwave coming from the star itself.

In their study, published in Nature, the researchers focused on a radio pulse spotted in 2022 by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME).

Using four large radio receivers shaped like half pipes, scientists detected a two-millisecond pulse which was named FRB 20221022A.

Based on the highly polarised light that the FRB produced, the researchers worked out that its source is very likely to be rotating - something that has been seen in fast-spinning neutron stars called pulsars.

But to figure out exactly where FRB 20221022A originated, Dr Nimmo and her co-authors looked at a property called 'scintillation'.

If you see a star in the night sky from Earth, it appears to twinkle or 'scintillate' because the light from the star is filtered through gasses in the atmosphere.

Yet this effect doesn't just affect stargazers since light from any small, bright source will be bent as it passes through an obstruction like the gasses surrounding a galaxy.

The researchers argue that the burst would have come from the magnetic fields within hundreds of thousands of kilometres of a neutron star. This is the first evidence that a neutron star's magnetosphere (illustrated) is capable of releasing a fast radio burst.

The smaller and farther away the source of light is the more it scintillates, which is why planets like Jupiter and Mars don't appear to twinkle when you see them.

If the FRB originated from a shockwave tens of millions of kilometres from the neutron star the area of origin would be so large that researchers wouldn't expect to see any scintillation at all.

But when Dr Nimmo and her colleagues analysed the energy from FRB 20221022A they saw that the mysterious flash was twinkling like a star in the sky. 

Dr Nimmo says: 'This means that the FRB is probably within hundreds of thousands of kilometres from the source.'

By identifying the gas cloud that the flash must have passed through, the researchers were able to zoom in on its origin within unprecedented accuracy.

Although the FRB emerged from a galaxy more than ten times the distance to our nearest neighbouring galaxy, the researchers found that its source was an area just 10,000km (6,200 miles) wide.

For comparison, that is equivalent to the distance from Edinburgh to Cape Town, South Africa.

Professor Masui says: 'Zooming in to a 10,000-kilometer region, from a distance of 200 million light years, is like being able to measure the width of a DNA helix, which is about 2 nanometers wide, on the surface of the moon.'

FAST RADIO BURSTS ARE BRIEF RADIO EMISSIONS FROM SPACE WHOSE ORIGIN IS UNKNOWN

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are radio emissions that appear temporarily and randomly, making them not only hard to find, but also hard to study.

The mystery stems from the fact it is not known what could produce such a short and sharp burst.

This has led some to speculate they could be anything from stars colliding to artificially created messages.

Scientists searching for fast radio bursts (FRBs) that some believe may be signals sent from aliens may be happening every second. The blue points in this artist's impression of the filamentary structure of galaxies are signals from FRBs

The first FRB was spotted, or rather 'heard' by radio telescopes, back in 2001 but wasn't discovered until 2007 when scientists were analysing archival data.

But it was so temporary and seemingly random that it took years for astronomers to agree it wasn't a glitch in one of the telescope's instruments. 

Researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics point out that FRBs can be used to study the structure and evolution of the universe whether or not their origin is fully understood.

A large population of faraway FRBs could act as probes of material across gigantic distances. 

This intervening material blurs the signal from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the left over radiation from the Big Bang. 

A careful study of this intervening material should give an improved understanding of basic cosmic constituents, such as the relative amounts of ordinary matter, dark matter and dark energy, which affect how rapidly the universe is expanding.

FRBs can also be used to trace what broke down the 'fog' of hydrogen atoms that pervaded the early universe into free electrons and protons, when temperatures cooled down after the Big Bang. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

02-01-2025 om 18:34 geschreven door peter  

Mars from 2020.

Credit: Andrew Symes

The atmosphere of Mars is thin and made up mostly of carbon dioxide (about 95%.) There are traces of nitrogen, argon, and oxygen too. This sparse atmosphere is only about 1% the density of Earth’s and is unable to support human life without significant technological aid. Despite its thinness, the Martian atmosphere is active, and one of its most fascinating phenomena is the occurrence of dust devils. These swirling columns of dust and air are similar to tornadoes on Earth.

Dust devils are created when the surface heats up and causes warm air to rise rapidly, drawing in dust particles into a rotating column. They can range in size from small, harmless whirlwinds to massive, kilometer-wide spirals that can last for hours. Dust devils on Mars are important for scientists because they help to redistribute dust across the planet’s surface, driving its weather patterns and even the Martian climate. 

A fascinating phenomenon but a friend and foe to machines on the surface of the red planet; they can both deposit and clear particles of dust from solar panels and other instruments. The swirling nature of these vortex weather events can lift up the fine dust particles, carry them across the Martian surface and over time, they can accumulate on surfaces. When depositing on solar panels, the effect can reduce the efficiency by blocking sunlight, and reduce power output. Their strong winds though can act as cleaners by scrubbing the panels clean. 

An image recently released by NASA JPL shows dust devils tracking across the surface of Mars. Teams of astronomers are studying their fading tracks to calculate the rate of deposition of dust over time. Gaining a better ujnderstanding of this helps to safeguard future space misssions. 

Source : 

• The Art of Dust Devils

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

02-01-2025 om 18:05 geschreven door peter  

This idea is supported by the fact that there is a correlation between the spectral category of TNOs and their orbital types. For example, cold classical TNOs with orbits at the outer edge of the planetary disk are mostly cliff-type TNOs.

The team was also able to connect TNOs to another type of planetoid known as centaurs, which orbit the Sun between Jupiter and Saturn. While the spectra of centaurs differ significantly from those of TNOs, there are enough similar features to identify many centaurs as part of a particular TNO type. The centaur Thereus matches the bowl-type category, for example. On the other hand, some centaurs, such as Okyrhoe don’t fall into any TNO category. This supports the idea that many centaur planetoids were TNOs that migrated inward over time, while others are likely comets that became centaurs after a close approach with Jupiter or Saturn.

In the future, the team would like to gather even more detailed spectra of TNOs. This could tell us the specific histories of each TNO category and how they connect to the early evolution of our solar system.

Reference: 

• Pinilla-Alonso, Noemí, et al. “A JWST/DiSCo-TNOs portrait of the primordial Solar System through its trans-Neptunian objects.” Nature Astronomy (2024): 1-15.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

02-01-2025 om 17:41 geschreven door peter  

Dark energy is central to our modern understanding of cosmology. In the standard model, dark energy is what drives the expansion of the Universe. In general relativity, it’s described by a cosmological constant, making dark energy part of the structure of space and time. But as we’ve gathered more observational evidence, there are a few problems with our model. For one, the rate of cosmic expansion we observe depends on the observational method we use, known as the Hubble tension problem. For another, while we assume dark energy is uniform throughout the cosmos, there are some hints suggesting that might not be true. Now a new study argues we’ve got the whole thing wrong. Dark energy, the authors argue, doesn’t exist.

Let’s start with what we know. When we look out across the billions of light-years of cosmic space, we see that matter is clumped into galaxies, and those galaxies are groups into clusters so that the Universe has clumps of matter separated by great voids. On a small scale, this means that the distribution of matter is uneven. But as we go to larger scales, say a billion light-years or so, the average distribution of matter evens out. On a large scale, the cosmos is homogeneous and not biased in a particular direction. This means we can broadly describe the Universe as the same everywhere. This is known as the principle of homogeneity. By applying this principle to cosmic expansion, we can model the Universe by the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker (FLRW) metric, where dark energy is a cosmological constant.

Opponents of the standard model argue that the principle can’t be applied to cosmic expansion. Some even argue that the basic principles of general relativity can’t be applied on cosmic scales. In one such model, known as the Timescape model, it’s argued that dark energy would violate the principle of equivalence. Since the principle equates inertial energy and gravitational energy, there is no way to distinguish cosmic expansion as a real effect. Furthermore, since we know that gravitational fields affect the rate of time, the Timescape model argues that the Universe can’t be homogeneous in time. Basically, the model argues that within the gravitational well of a galactic cluster, clocks would run more slowly than they would within the vast empty cosmic voids. Over the billions of years of cosmic history, this difference would build up, creating a variance of time throughout the Universe. It is this time divergence that would give the appearance of cosmic expansion.

In this latest study, the authors use the Pantheon+ dataset of Type Ia supernovae to see if it better fits the standard cosmological model or the Timescape model. The main difference between the two models is that cosmic expansion must be uniform in the standard model, while in the Timescape model, cosmic expansion can’t be uniform. What the team found was that while the Pantheon+ supports both models, the data is a slightly better fit to the Timescape model. In other words, the best fit of the data suggests that dark energy is an illusion, but the fit is not strong enough to disprove the standard model.

If future observations continue to support the Timescape model, it would revolutionize our understanding of the Universe. But there are reasons to be cautious. To begin with, the Timescape model is only one of many proposed alternatives to the standard model, which this study doesn’t address. The Timescape model also has some internal issues of its own that would need to be resolved to become the new cosmological model. But it is clear now that we can’t ignore the fact that the standard model may be wrong. We are entering an exciting period of astronomy where our knowledge of the Universe will increase significantly in the near future.

Reference: 

• Seifert, Antonia, et al. “Supernovae evidence for foundational change to cosmological models.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters 537.1 (2025): L55-L60.

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What is Dark Energy?

Final Supernova Results Dark Energy Survey's Groundbreaking Insights!

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02-01-2025 om 17:20 geschreven door peter  

This location has advantages and disadvantages – the Moon’s disk is much smaller than the Earth’s, so LUMIO could capture the entire hemisphere and watch for any impacts on the lunar surface. It’s important to note that most of the impacts would indeed be on the surface itself, since the lunar atmosphere is negligible in terms of providing energy for a micrometeoroid to burn up before impact. That is why the Moon is pockmarked with so many craters.

LUMIO CubeSat operative orbit.

Credits: ASI/LUMIO Collaboration

Overview of LUMIO mission.

Credits: LUMIO collaboration

LUMIO mission upgraded roadmap. Last week the European Space Agency approved the next stage of the Lunar Meteoroid Impacts Observer (LUMIO) CubeSat mission, which means it could be ready for launch as early as 2027.

Credits: ASI/LUMIO Collaboration

Also, while it’s commonly referred to as the “dark side” of the Moon, the far side is lit up half the time – and fully lit when we down on the planet experience a “new Moon.” But, when it is dark on the lunar surface, it is genuinely dark – there aren’t any lights that could be misconstrued as an asteroid strike. The L2 point has the added advantage of not suffering from “Earthshine” – reflected light from Earth that could diminish the effectiveness of the LUMIO-cam when trying to detect faint light streaks.

Difficulties abound with the placement, though, including a lack of a direct line of communication and the necessity of an automated navigation and control system. Since the Moon is literally between the CubeSat and any ground receiver that could send commands or receive data, it must be bounced off a relay satellite in order to do so.

LUMIO will also capture a large amount of data, not all of which will be useful. Since the flashes it’s looking for are very fast, LUMIO-Cam will capture about 15 frames per second. Then, onboard processing will use an algorithm to sort through the image to see if there are any flashes visible in it. Those interesting images will then be the ones sent back to Earth. 

Estimates put the number of micrometeoroids striking the Moon’s surface at as high as 23,000 times per year for micrometeoroids as small as 30 grams. Even if LUMIO only watches half of that area, it will observe impacts multiple times every day. Each is a little look into the types of debris that still exist in our local part of the solar system and maybe into what asteroids and comets they were initially a part of.

There’s a good chance the LUMIO team will be able to capture that data as well – the mission was accepted as a finalist to ESA’s Lunar CubeSat for Exploration (LUCE) SYSNOVA Competition and is currently planned for launch in 2027. Once it reaches its stable orbit, expect to see some brilliant flashes on the Lunar surface popping up new reports regularly.

Learn More:

• ESA – LUMIO – New CubeSat Illuminating Lunar Impacts
• Topputo et al. – LUMIO: A CubeSat at Earth-Moon L2
• UT – Astronomers are Working to Put a Radio Telescope on the Far Side of the Moon by 2025
• UT – Finally, an Explanation for the Moon’s Radically Different Hemispheres

Lead Image:

• Depiction of LUMIO’s orbital path to the L2 Earth-Moon point.
  Credit – ESA

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

02-01-2025 om 16:22 geschreven door peter  

Unveiling the 1997 Alien Interview: A Remote Viewing Investigation

The 1997 “Alien Interview” video, purportedly depicting a live extraterrestrial being held by the U.S. government, has intrigued and divided audiences for decades. Skeptics dismiss it as a hoax, while others see it as compelling evidence of non-human intelligence. A recent remote viewing project sought to shed light on this enigmatic footage by analyzing its authenticity and origins through the disciplined methodology of remote viewing. This article explores the findings and their implications.

The Remote Viewing Process

Remote viewing (RV) is a structured technique where trained individuals describe or gather information about a target that is inaccessible to their senses. In this project, four remote viewers, guided by a project manager, were tasked blindly—without any prior knowledge of the target—to investigate the context and authenticity of the “Alien Interview” video. Their objective was to describe the environment, participants, and events surrounding the creation of the video, avoiding any cultural or speculative biases.

Initial Findings

The remote viewers independently provided strikingly consistent data. Each described:

• An extraterrestrial presence: All viewers perceived a non-human entity, which they described as frail, tan or brown in color, with large eyes and a wrinkled, leathery appearance akin to elephant skin. The being was perceived as intelligent and mission-oriented but in distress.
• Medical distress: The entity was described as being in poor health, with respiratory or circulatory issues. Viewers noted a sense of despair and resignation from the being, consistent with its apparent state in the video.
• A military environment: The session data depicted a sterile, controlled facility staffed by humans in military attire. The viewers identified a mixture of humans and non-human beings present, with some human participants described as anxious or fearful.

The Alien’s Origins and Purpose

One of the most intriguing findings was the perception of the extraterrestrial’s mission. The being was described as reconnaissance-oriented, indifferent to humanity’s well-being, and possibly a scout or surveyor. Additionally, remote viewers noted the presence of a secondary, more authoritative non-human figure—a detail that may point to hierarchical relationships among extraterrestrial entities.

Uncovering the Context

Beyond the immediate filming, viewers explored the broader context of the event. They identified:

• A crash retrieval: The sessions revealed details of a craft’s controlled descent, leading to the being’s apprehension. This craft was described as advanced, sentient, and capable of camouflaging itself.
• Advanced communication techniques: The alien’s communication was perceived as telepathic or using thought projection. Some viewers noted the involvement of telepathic monks, reportedly acting as intermediaries during the interactions.
• Historical connections: The viewers’ data hinted at ongoing government programs for extraterrestrial contact and reverse engineering of alien technology, aligning with longstanding rumors in UFO circles.

Validating the Data

The remote viewing sessions were cross-referenced with known details about the “Alien Interview” video and associated lore. Several corroborations emerged:

1. Physical Descriptions: The entity’s appearance, as described by viewers, matched the being shown in the video.
2. Environmental Details: Descriptions of a sterile, dimly lit facility and military presence align with the video’s setting.
3. Historical Parallels: References to telepathic communication and military handling of extraterrestrials resonate with accounts from whistleblowers and alleged leaked documents.

Skepticism and Limitations

While the results are compelling, they must be treated as experimental. Remote viewing cannot conclusively prove or disprove the video’s authenticity. Skeptics argue that the perceived data could stem from subconscious biases or imaginative extrapolation. Nevertheless, the consistency across viewers adds weight to the findings, suggesting a deeper reality behind the imagery.

Broader Implications

The “Alien Interview” video, regardless of its veracity, serves as a focal point for exploring humanity’s potential interactions with extraterrestrial intelligence. The remote viewing project reinforces the possibility that such events, whether real or fabricated, reflect deep-seated cultural and existential questions about our place in the universe.

VIDEO:

The remote viewing investigation into the 1997 “Alien Interview” offers a fascinating glimpse into the potential truth behind one of the most debated pieces of UFO evidence. While definitive conclusions remain elusive, the data adds depth to the ongoing discussion about extraterrestrial life and government secrecy. As the search for answers continues, the interplay of science, speculation, and spirituality will undoubtedly shape our understanding of these profound mysteries.

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

02-01-2025 om 15:48 geschreven door peter  

(Pexels)

In an email to The Debrief, Dr. Raveh explained what motivated he and Goldstein to explore the potential connection between UAP sightings and economic conditions.

“As a social scientist fascinated by the UAP phenomenon, I was disappointed by the grave scarcity of studies that examine the social aspects of it,” Dr. Raveh explained, “especially as official reports (by NASA and others) confirm that about 95-98 percent of UAP sightings have conventional explanations, thus suggesting that patterns of UAP sightings are rooted in human and social behavior.

“This inspired undertaking a deeper examination, pursuing an unconventional hypothesis which ties sky viewing to economic attention,” Raveh said.

Key Findings on UAP Sightings

The researchers analyzed data from The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), which spans over 20 years and is tracked across the United States. Raveh and Goldstein discovered that UAP sightings tend to occur more frequently in wealthier areas, but also tend to increase during economic downturns and decrease during periods of economic stability in those same regions.

This, they say, suggests that interest in unusual events like UAPs fluctuates based on broader societal conditions, especially during times of uncertainty.

“The counter-cyclicality on its own may point at various behaviors, ranging from, say, mental breakdowns, to extended leisure time; i.e., when unemployment rises, for example, the extent of UAP sightings increase because people may have more time on their hands, or otherwise they may be affected by the mental stress involved with unemployment,” Raveh explains.

“The key point, however, is that the patterns of UAP sightings are not only counter-cyclical, but they also exhibit a positive correlation with wealth cross-sectionally; i.e., at any given point in time, the extent of UAP sightings tend to be higher in wealthier regions, going against a mentally-related hypothesis,” he added.

“This opposite correlation across the two dimensions (cross-sectional and temporal) is rather consistent with patterns observed using traditional measures of economic attention, and hence supports an attention-related interpretation,” Raveh said.

When asked why NUFORC data was used for this study rather than other UAP databases, Raveh said the NUFORC data “is one of the two major reporting centers of UFO sightings in the U.S., reporting the details of sightings across the U.S. for decades; in addition, as noted in the paper, it is also the source that the FAA recommends reporting to when observing an unexplained phenomenon in the sky, strengthening its validity.”

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

01-01-2025 om 21:32 geschreven door peter