Inferno planets & the Goldilocks zone: Here are Kepler’s most awesome discoveries (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

 

An illustration of the Kepler planet hunter ©NASA

As NASA’s first ever designated planet hunter flies towards retirement and deep space, it’s been revealed that Kepler helped find more than 2,600 planets. So what are the multi-million dollar spacecraft’s greatest achievements?

Undoubtedly, the sheer number of exoplanets and alien worlds uncovered by the space telescope is the statistic that immediately deserves plaudits. But delve deeper and the detail of Kepler’s work is jaw dropping. NASA astrophysics director Paul Hertz says the craft has brought humans one step closer to finding life outside Earth. High praise indeed.

NASA Kepler and K2

✔@NASAKepler

With today’s announcement of the retirement of the @NASAKepler space telescope, we’re officially passing the planet-hunting torch to @NASA_TESS, which will search 200,000 of the brightest near the for new worlds! Learn more about the mission: http://nasa.gov/tess 

2:14 AM - Oct 31, 2018

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Launched in 2009, Kepler’s mission was actually born in the early 80s as scientists began to turn their attention to finding planets with similar characteristics to home. Here are just some of the cool discoveries made possible due to the intergalactic telescope.

Kepler hot jupiters

Months after launch, Kepler found five extrasolar planets known as hot jupiters. The giant gas infernos became known as Kepler-4b, -5b, -6b, -7b and -8. Temperatures on these celestial objects were found to reach above 2,000 degrees fahrenheit.

View image on Twitter

NASA Kepler and K2

✔@NASAKepler

A new study finds clouds on distant "hot Jupiters" made of manganese sulfide and silicate.

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/cloudy-nights-sunny-days-on-distant-hot-jupiters …

6:09 PM - Oct 18, 2016

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The Habitable Zone

The Kepler space observatory gave scientists testing the concept of the Circumstellar Habitable Zone (CHZ) an eye in the sky and more ways to analyse their theory. Sometimes known as the ‘Goldilocks zone’, the habitable zone is the distance between a planet and its nearest star. It’s basically the threshold of temperature that would give water the best possible chance to pool.

NASA Kepler and K2

✔@NASAKepler

Memorial Day weekend is almost here ... and the chance to take a virtual trip 492 light years away to Kepler-186f, and Earth-size planet orbiting a small, red star. https://go.nasa.gov/2J3jrqn 

11:52 PM - May 25, 2018

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Among the planets thought to provide the best possible chances of life are Kepler-62f – which NASA’s telescope found in 2014. The exoplanet orbits a cool red dwarf star about 580 light years away.

Alien megastructure debunk

As well as hunting down places for humans to possibly move to, Kepler also kept an eye on the intricacies of light travelling through space. One of its most intriguing observations was the dimming of a mysterious entity known as Tabby’s Star. Curiously speculated to be an ‘alien megastructure’, Kepler helped uncover the truth: the dimming was caused by clouds of dust.

Earth-sized inferno planet

©NASA

Kepler’s vast catalogue of findings make it almost impossible to list every one. However, a major milestone for the NASA mission came in 2013 when Kepler found its first earth-sized rocky planet. The exoplanet, named Kepler-78b, is close to 20 percent larger than Earth, with a molten rock surface. With an orbit pattern of just 8.5 hours, the fiery planet speeds around its nearest star.

‘Twin’ solar system

In one of its final acts, the Kepler telescope was able to confirm the location of a planetary system similar to our own. Dubbed the Kepler 90 solar system, NASA’s craft successfully tracked down eight planets in the zone situated approximately 2,544 light years from Earth.

{  https://www.rt.com/news/ }

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UFO sighting: ‘Alien spaceship’ shot down over Scotland

ALIEN hunters were on high alert when a UFO was supposedly shot down over Scotland in a video which is currently doing the rounds on social media.

Conspiracy theorists believed they hit the jackpot when a video emerged of something strange circling in the night sky over Kippen, Scotland.

The bizarre footage, which was shot on September 1, shows something floating around in the sky with a strange material seemingly leaking from it.

This prompted conspiracy theorists to believe that it was a UFO which had been shot down.

{ https://www.express.co.uk/news }

Photo: NASA/Chris Gunn

Ryan F. Mandelbaum

For nearly 20 years, NASA has been planning and constructing a telescope unlike any ever built before: the James Webb Space Telescope. It will change the way scientists see the most distant galaxies and intensify the hunt for extraterrestrial life; it will answer outstanding questions about the birth and death of stars and planets. It is the future of astronomy—but it’s causing trouble. JWST’s high price and decade of delays could stymie the development of future telescopes, impacting the course of astronomy for the next 30 years.

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

Image: Northrop Grumman

{ https://gizmodo.com/ }

{ http://www.openminds.tv/ }

Enhanced Satellite Image Of Antarctica Pyramid

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

The Humans of Kepler: How NASA's Planet-Hunting Telescope Changed Astronomy (And Us) Forever

A decade ago, we thought our solar system was special; today, we know it's no such thing. That revolution is thanks to the work of NASA's Kepler space telescope, which has officially reached the end of its mission.

Since Kepler's launch in 2009, scientists have spotted a total of 2,681 confirmed planets orbiting other suns within the data gathered by the instrument. Another 2,899 potential Kepler planets are still being vetted by scientists.

Bill Borucki, who first dreamed up the Kepler mission and was its principal investigator until his retirement from NASA in 2015, knows many of those thousands of planets as individuals. Take, for example, Kepler-22b, which he calls one of the most interesting planets in the batch. [Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets]

"It's a planet in between the size of the Earth and Neptune, unlike any planet in our solar system; it's a planet that may very well be a water world, a world covered in an ocean, and it's in the habitable zone," Borucki said during a news conference held yesterday (Oct. 30) to mark the end of Kepler's in-space work. "It might very well have an atmosphere on a water planet that could lead to life, so it's an extremely interesting planet. It's one of my favorites."

But he's not just excited about individual worlds — the Kepler mission has identified plenty of solar systems as well, where it has spotted multiple planets orbiting one star. He's excited for what we may one day learn about the Kepler-444 system in particular, he said.

"These are small, rocky planets, and they were formed around a star that's some six and a half billion years older than our star, than our own planetary system," Borucki said. "If life has been developing over six and a half billion years before Earth was formed, there may be some very interesting lifeforms for us to find as we search these early planets."

But while Borucki is fascinated by planets that could potentially host life, he's also struck by the sheer diversity of the more than 600 solar systems Kepler has studied. Take, for example, the existence of hot Jupiters — gas giants tucked so close to their stars that they orbit in a matter of days, completely unlike our own Jupiter strolling around the sun over the course of nearly 12 Earth years.

Discoveries like these have forced scientists to stop assuming that our solar system is like those all around us, added Padi Boyd, the project scientist for Kepler's successor mission, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. 

"Kepler kind of just cracked that out of being the typical expectation," Boyd said during the news conference. "Putting our own solar system into that greater context, I think is a really interesting portrait of the galaxy — our solar system is not typical. Maybe no solar system is typical; maybe they're all very different."

That wealth of solar systems has warmed the hearts of the sci-fi fans on the mission as well. For Kepler's project system engineer at NASA Ames, Charlie Sobeck, the mission has turned the type of universe he grew up with while watching "Star Trek" into reality. "I had no trouble believing that there were planets out there of all different kinds, so I had to wonder, why did it affect me so much when Kepler showed that there were lots of planets out there everywhere?" he said during the news conference.

"There's just a big difference between believing and knowing," Sobeck said. "It hit me like a sledgehammer in the chest when Kepler showed us that there really, really are planets out there of all different kinds."

• Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels.
• Follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook.
• Original article on Space.com.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

This illustration depicts NASA's exoplanet hunter, the Kepler space telescope. The agency announced on Oct. 30, 2018, that Kepler has run out of fuel and is being retired within its current and safe orbit, away from Earth. Kepler leaves a legacy of more than 2,600 exoplanet discoveries.

Credits: NASA/Wendy Stenzel

After nine years in deep space collecting data that indicate our sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets – more planets even than stars – NASA’s Kepler space telescope has run out of fuel needed for further science operations. NASA has decided to retire the spacecraft within its current, safe orbit, away from Earth. Kepler leaves a legacy of more than 2,600 planet discoveries from outside our solar system, many of which could be promising places for life.

"As NASA's first planet-hunting mission, Kepler has wildly exceeded all our expectations and paved the way for our exploration and search for life in the solar system and beyond," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "Not only did it show us how many planets could be out there, it sparked an entirely new and robust field of research that has taken the science community by storm. Its discoveries have shed a new light on our place in the universe, and illuminated the tantalizing mysteries and possibilities among the stars.” 

Kepler has opened our eyes to the diversity of planets that exist in our galaxy. The most recent analysis of Kepler’s discoveries concludes that 20 to 50 percent of the stars visible in the night sky are likely to have small, possibly rocky, planets similar in size to Earth, and located within the habitable zone of their parent stars. That means they’re located at distances from their parent stars where liquid water – a vital ingredient to life as we know it – might pool on the planet surface.

The most common size of planet Kepler found doesn’t exist in our solar system – a world between the size of Earth and Neptune – and we have much to learn about these planets. Kepler also found nature often produces jam-packed planetary systems, in some cases with so many planets orbiting close to their parent stars that our own inner solar system looks sparse by comparison.

"When we started conceiving this mission 35 years ago we didn't know of a single planet outside our solar system," said the Kepler mission's founding principal investigator, William Borucki, now retired from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. "Now that we know planets are everywhere, Kepler has set us on a new course that's full of promise for future generations to explore our galaxy."

Launched on March 6, 2009, the Kepler space telescope combined cutting-edge techniques in measuring stellar brightness with the largest digital camera outfitted for outer space observations at that time. Originally positioned to stare continuously at 150,000 stars in one star-studded patch of the sky in the constellation Cygnus, Kepler took the first survey of planets in our galaxy and became the agency's first mission to detect Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of their stars.

"The Kepler mission was based on a very innovative design. It was an extremely clever approach to doing this kind of science," said Leslie Livesay, director for astronomy and physics at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who served as Kepler project manager during mission development. "There were definitely challenges, but Kepler had an extremely talented team of scientists and engineers who overcame them.”

Four years into the mission, after the primary mission objectives had been met, mechanical failures temporarily halted observations. The mission team was able to devise a fix, switching the spacecraft’s field of view roughly every three months. This enabled an extended mission for the spacecraft, dubbed K2, which lasted as long as the first mission and bumped Kepler's count of surveyed stars up to more than 500,000.

The observation of so many stars has allowed scientists to better understand stellar behaviors and properties, which is critical information in studying the planets that orbit them. New research into stars with Kepler data also is furthering other areas of astronomy, such as the history of our Milky Way galaxy and the beginning stages of exploding stars called supernovae that are used to study how fast the universe is expanding. The data from the extended mission were also made available to the public and science community immediately, allowing discoveries to be made at an incredible pace and setting a high bar for other missions. Scientists are expected to spend a decade or more in search of new discoveries in the treasure trove of data Kepler provided.

"We know the spacecraft's retirement isn't the end of Kepler's discoveries," said Jessie Dotson, Kepler's project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. "I'm excited about the diverse discoveries that are yet to come from our data and how future missions will build upon Kepler's results."

Before retiring the spacecraft, scientists pushed Kepler to its full potential, successfully completing multiple observation campaigns and downloading valuable science data even after initial warnings of low fuel. The latest data, from Campaign 19, will complement the data from NASA’s newest planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, launched in April. TESS builds on Kepler's foundation with fresh batches of data in its search of planets orbiting some 200,000 of the brightest and nearest stars to the Earth, worlds that can later be explored for signs of life by missions, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colorado, operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

For the Kepler press kit, which includes multimedia, timelines and top science results, visit:

• https://www.nasa.gov/kepler/presskit

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit:

• https://www.nasa.gov/kepler

{ https://www.nasa.gov/ }

Astronomers image plasma flares on the bleeding edge of Milky Way’s supermassive black hole

BY TIBI PUIU

Scientists have known for a long time that at the very heart of the Milky Way lies a supermassive black hole, about four million times more massive than the Sun. As its name suggests, we can’t image a black hole directly, but cutting-edge telescopes can tease out the infrared light emitted by interstellar gas as it swirls into the black hole. Now, an international team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics reported evidence of knots of gas that appear to orbit the galactic center. This remarkable observation is the closest look yet at our galactic supermassive black hole and, at the same time, offers new opportunities to test the laws of physics.

The point of no return

To image things in the vicinity of Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, researchers looked to the GRAVITY project. Using a special technique called interferometry, four eight-meter-wide telescopes at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile were combined to produce images that only a hypothetical telescope as large as entire countries could produce. By the same technique, in the future, a ‘planet-sized’ instrument called the Event Horizon Telescope hopes to produce an actual image of a black hole.

The new observations measured the brightness and position of infrared flares in the vicinity of Sagittarius A*. These flares actually trace a tiny circle in the night’s sky, the researchers found, moving clockwise.

Yepun telescope, part of the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) Very Large Telescope.

Credit: ESO.

These kinds of outbursts had been detected before. However, this was the first time that astronomers precisely measured the flares’ positions and motions before they dissipated. Each flare moved at about 30% light speed in a 45-minute orbit around what we can only suppose is a black hole.

Earlier this year, the same team measured the relativistic distortion of light from a star, S2, during its closest approach to Sagittarius A*.

These hot spots might be produced by shock waves in magnetic fields, much as solar flares erupt from the sun. Due to the immense gravitational forces present in the vicinity of the black hole, space-time itself is twisted into something resembling a lens, which causes these hot spots, circling at 30% the speed of light, to flash beacons of light across the cosmos. And by further studying these flares, researchers hope to tease out the black hole’s spin or rotation.

All of this, of course, assuming Einstein’s general theory of relativity is correct, which implies that the orbits of objects around a black hole are determined solely by the black hole’s mass and spin. If not, then the theory might need some refinement to accommodate for any observed inconsistencies.

Researchers reported their findings in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

UFO SHOCK: Did ‘alien spaceship’ CRASH LAND over Paris? Video sparks wild theories

A STRANGE UFO has been seen hovering over the skies of Paris with some wildly claiming it was an alien craft performing a crash landing.

Is NASA hiding evidence of aliens on Mars? Photo of ‘smoke plume’ sparks conspiracy FRENZY

NASA has been accused of hiding evidence of alien life on Mars after astronomers photographed what appears to be a giant plume of smoke on the Red Planet.

In June 1984, American Psychology magazine posed a question to its readers: “Do you believe in UFOs?” 50% of respondents said yes. A decade earlier, only 40% of respondents to the same question in a Roper Poll had replied in the affirmative. While it is impossible to accurately account for this apparent 10% increase in belief, it seems reasonable to speculate that Hollywood played a significant role. Spielberg’s iconic UFO movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind had been released to huge acclaim and box-office success in 1977. Inspired by the research of UFOlogists like J. Allen Hynek and fuelled by Spielberg’s own life-long obsession with flying saucers, Close Encounters was the most ufological movie ever made, and it treated its subject matter with respect and gravity. More importantly, and in stark contrast to the majority of Hollywood’s alien-themed output in the past, Spielberg’s film dared to present aliens as creatures of benevolence and wonder—not as invaders, but as saviours. Spielberg struck gold again with the alien saviour concept in 1982 with his blockbusting E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, which rapidly became the most successful film of all time and spawned numerous movies in the same vein throughout the 1980s.

Spielberg’s ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ (1977).

Two months after the June 1984 American Psychologymagazine reader poll revealed that fully half the country believed in UFOs, the closing ceremony of the Olympic games in Los Angeles demonstrated just how deeply UFOs and aliens had become ingrained into the American psyche—and the extent to which they had become inseparable from cinema.

The highlight of the Olympic closing ceremony that year was the staged landing of a giant flying saucer and the subsequent emergence from within of a space alien (friendly, of course) who then officially declared the games closed. In an awesome spectacle clearly inspired by the final scenes of Spielberg’s Close Encounters, the Olympic saucer communicated with the awestruck crowd below through a series of elaborate light shows, the orchestral music swelled to a crescendo, and the UFO descended to rapturous applause. It was a sight both bizarre and magnificent to behold.

Bizarrely, the event has since become the subject of conspiratorial musings in the UFO community. For years, UFO buffs have speculated that the Olympic UFO of 1984 was not a prop suspended by a helicopter, but a real flying saucer—either manmade or alien—owned by the US government and flaunted on the world stage for all to see. This idea can be traced back to Bill Cooper, author of Behold a Pale Horse, which, since its publication in 1991, has become a sort-of bible for conspiracy theorists.

In an undated interview from the early-1990s, Cooper remarks of the Olympic UFO:

“Well, it wasn’t held by a helicopter. There’s no helicopter up there holding this thing. They tell you that, but it’s not true. Can you imagine the liability that they would have if they were carrying this thing suspended on a cable underneath a helicopter over the heads of hundreds-of-thousands of people?”

Cooper then states his belief that “there was no helicopter, there was no cable,” and that the UFO was “operating under its own power.”

In his 1991 book, Cooper contended that the US government had, for decades, been working covertly with alien intelligences and that it had in its possession highly advanced technologies, including flying saucers, both manmade and extraterrestrial. He also believed that the powers that be were planning on exploiting the alien presence by staging a false flag alien invasion in order to usher in martial law and establish a one-world government. Cooper died in a shootout with sheriff’s deputies at his home in Eagar, Arizona in 2001 following charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and endangerment stemming from disputes with local residents. Many in the conspiracy community today are convinced that Cooper’s death was orchestrated by the New World Order because his work was too close to the truth.

In light of his well-established position that the global elite were planning a false flag ET invasion, Cooper’s statements about the Olympic UFO being real led many of his followers to believe that the 1984 Olympic closing ceremony was a test of public reaction to an alien landing, and a rudimentary dry-run for a spectacular and devastating false-flag event that was thought to be in the pipeline.

If you’re one of the people who believe Cooper about the Olympic UFO, prepare to be disappointed (or, perhaps, relieved).

It’s been known for years by anyone who has ever taken a few moments to do some digging (which apparently excludes most UFO conspiracy theorists) that the 1984 Olympic UFO was actually the work of the celebrated Disney ‘Imagineer’ Bob Gurr, who is credited with designing most of the original attractions at Disneyland.

“An audible gasp swept the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum… Was it real? Some of the 92,000 onlookers certainly thought so. Millions of worldwide TV viewers stared in amazement….was this really happening? Or just more of what the entertainment capital of the world does for everyday life.”

Gurr then goes on to answer his own question as he recounts the origins of the project and how it all came together. Originally, the ceremony was to be produced by Disney, but, when the entertainment giant was unable to furnish a budget on time, the reins were handed over to David L. Wolper (producer of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory). Tommy Walker, who had been Director of Entertainment at Disneyland, was enlisted as Director of Ceremonies. It was Walker who suggested that a flying saucer be featured as the highlight of the 1984 ceremony, and it was Walker and Wolper who enlisted the services of Bob Gurr has head designer on the contract, which was won and carried out by Plainview of Hollywood.

Snapshots of the “UFO landing” at the 1984 Olympics closing ceremony.

The task was to create a flying saucer 50 foot in diameter fitted with hundreds of special lights. With only two months to go before the August 12, 1984 show night, the work began. “The wild contraption I envisioned got drawn up and built at a furious pace,” writes Gurr in his article, noting that the saucer had to carry a lot of equipment and also needed to be light enough to be carried by a Bell 314 big-lift Helicopter:

“So I made an outer ring of welded aluminium truss sections all pulled together by cables to a center triangular frame. This was inspired by the extremely light construction of the 1930s Hindenburg Zeppelin. The saucer looked like a slice out of the Hindenburg turned sideways.”

According to Gurr, the center frame of the saucer carried a 90 KVA 208 3 phase gas turbine generator, and, for its spectacular light display, the saucer used three-hundred-and-sixty 600 watt Ray Lites, a Pichel Industries 7K Xenon searchlight, plus “a whole bunch more lighting gizmos totalling 432 items using 238,200 watts… but not all at once!” The wiring alone stretched 1.5 miles. The total ready-to-fly weight was 3,689 pounds.

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during the 1984 Olympics.

Finally, after just five weeks of work, and only nine days before the show, the Olympic flying saucer was assembled and ready to fly. And fly it did—into the imaginations of the millions who watched it live, including Bill Cooper, and, in turn, numerous online conspiracy theorists who became convinced that the global elite had, that sticky August night in 1984, given us a tangible glimpse of their hidden world. The reality—that a handful of talented and determined individuals had grafted hard and fast to create a Hollywood illusion—is far less exciting than the conspiracy, but impressive nonetheless.

“But wait, what about the alien?” you may ask. The one who made his entrance in the stadium that night and greeted humanity. Shockingly, he too was of this Earth. Inside that alien costume was George Bell, a former basketball player with the Harlem Wizards and Harlem Globetrotters and, at 7 feet 8 inches, the former tallest man in the United States.

So, move on people, nothing to see here. Except, maybe, just maybe, the whole Olympic acclimation theory shouldn’t be thrown out with the rubber alien. The original contract was, of course, intended for Disney, and, ultimately, it was Disney’s chief Imagineer who realised the vision. This provides at least some food for thought in the context of Disney’s long and intriguing history with the UFO subject, which involves at least one instance of the entertainment giant working with officialdom allegedly for purpose of testing public reaction to alien reality. If you don’t already know the full story behind this, get comfy, put on your tinfoil hat, and discover The Inside Story of Disney’s Mythic UFO Documentary and Conference…

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

What if UFOs are trying to be seen? What if they’re desperate to be noticed? What if they’re alien long-haul truckers stuck here with a broken mothership and the only barrier between them and the their space-homes and space-children is an inability to work a can of WD40? Maybe all they’re after are some reading lessons. They’re flying around up there, going “hey look, look at me! help!” and we’re so thick-headed we shrug and say “I dunno bro, looks like a balloon.” What other reason could there be for some of the stunts these guys pull?

Take the case of this video. It purports to show a group of small UFOs “escorting” a large UFO through the skies over the Hague. If you don’t know, the Hague is the governmental seat of the Netherlands, one of the cities used for UN meetings, and home to the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice (among many other fancy and important institutes of geopolitics). Imagine being so desperate for attention that you and your friends drive to the International Court of Justice—which sounds like an allegory for committing war crimes but, I assure you, it’s just a cheap joke.

Maybe the aliens would get more attention if their ships had a little more style?

If this footage is real then they clearly want our attention, but that’s a dubious claim at best. It’s a stronger case than some UFO videos (like when it’s obviously window glare or the videographer clearly hasn’t accepted that drones exist), but that’s not saying much.

The video shows a group of seemingly black objects flying at matched speed and in what looks like a sort of formation. One of the objects stands out as much larger than the rest, and does appear escorted by the smaller ones. Appeared is the operative word here. Perspective is a heck of a thing, and what we’re likely seeing is an object that’s closer to the camera than the others.

One person in the comments section suggested that it was a group of bats. Bats are normally known for twitchy aerial acrobatics, but some bats can soar. The Hague does have a thriving population of bats, as does the rest of the Netherlands. But whatever the video shows soar smooth, stable and effortless at a high altitude. They don’t really look like bats. Why not birds? The shapes are very dark and the larger one does seem more like a singular shape than it does a bird with wings and a tail but, once again, perspective is a heck of a thing.

This might be falling into that same old thick-headed trap, justifying the alien field trip to the International Court of Justice. After all, it is an unusual looking group of flying objects and, without the credentials or evidence to really make a judgement call here, it could be named a group of unidentified flying objects. It’s a safe bet that the unidentified part would be solved by better video quality.The next time aliens leave a crop circle for us it’ll probably be lined with HD cameras and zoom lenses.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Sprawled out over approximately 350,000 square miles of the African countries of Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa is a vast expanse of arid, sandy savanna wilderness known as the Kalahari Desert. The word “Kalahari” comes from the local Tswana word Kgala, meaning “the great thirst”, or Kgalagadi, meaning “a waterless place,” and the Kalahari Desert certainly looks the part, with immense swaths of land that look like something from some inhospitable alien planet, all twisted scrub, gnarled dead trees and contorted rocks, and shifting red sands devoid of any source of water. This is for the most part a forbidding moonscape of a place, and it was long a domain that may as well have been on another world for outsiders, yet in 1885 one of the first Westerners to ever set foot within these badlands ventured out into an uncharted area of the Kalahari Desert and would lay eyes upon a great mystery that still remains unexplained.

The expedition was carried out by a American explorer and entertainer from New York by the name of William Leonard Hunt, who in his native land made a living performing death defying stunts such as tightrope walks over the Niagara Falls, as well as exhibiting African bushmen like a human zoo, and usually went by his alias Guillermo Farini or “The Great Farini.” In February of 1885, he set out from Cape Town South Africa, along with a contingent of fellow adventurers, some native guides, and his son, Lulu. The goal of the trip was not particularly noble, they were not there to map out a new realm of the planet or catalogue its new plants, animals, and people, but rather they were there to get rich by seeking out diamonds, which Farini had heard the region was brimming with. The adventurers penetrated out into an area of the desert never before seen by the outside world, and when they returned they did so with quite the tale to tell.

The Kalahari Desert

Upon his return to civilization, Farini immediately went about compiling a report of his findings, which he presented to the Berlin Geographical Society in 1885 and the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain in 1886, shortly after followed by a book on what he had seen and experienced out in those sun scorched wilds, titled Through the Kalahari Desert. One of the main events of these reports and the book was an account of coming across the ruins of some what looked to have been a once great city out there half-buried in the blood reds sands, and which he estimated to have been thousands of years old. Farini would write of this enigmatic lost city:

We camped at the foot of the mountain – near a rocky ridge, which looked like a Chinese wall after an earthquake – it was the ruins of a huge structure, sometimes sanded in. We carefully inspected the ruins almost a mile long, they were a pile of huge hewn stones, and Here and there, the traces of cement were clearly visible between them … In general, the wall had the shape of a semicircle, inside of which, approximately forty feet apart, were piles of masonry in the shape of an oval or a blunt ellly The height of a foot and a half … As all of them were to some extent sanded, we ordered all our people to dig out the largest of them (and this work clearly did not suit them) and found that the sand had protected the junction from destruction.

Excavations took almost the whole day, which caused a lot of indignation in Jan. He could not understand why it was necessary to dig out the old stones, for him this activity seemed a waste of time … We began to dig up sand in the middle of the semicircle and discovered the footwall of the twentieth wide, lined with large stones. The top layer was composed of oblong stones placed at right angles to the bottom layer. This bridge was crossed by another one, forming as it were a Maltese cross. Apparently, in the center of it was once some altar, a column or a monument, as evidenced by the preserved foundation – dilapidated masonry. My son tried to find some hieroglyphics or inscriptions, but did not find anything. Then he took a few photographs and sketches. Let the people who know better than me judge them by when and by whom this city was built.

In general, the ancient city was described as being quite extensive and immense, and Farini would speculate that some great catastrophe had wiped it and its people out, whoever they may have been. Considering that there was not known to have ever been any great civilization to have ever inhabited that region, and that it seemed to match stories the bushman of the area had long told of lost cities hiding out in the sands, the account grew a great amount of interest at the time, and the allure of some ancient lost people hidden away within the remote Kalahari proved to be romantic and irresistible.

A sketch of the Lost City

Fueled by the reports, the sketches, and the photographic evidence provided by Farini, there have been numerous follow-up expeditions to try and find the Lost City of the Kalahari, and to date there have been about 30 such expeditions launched over the years, none which have managed to find anything quite so spectacular as what Farini described, and some have come back doubtful of the truth of the story. One such prominent expedition was launched in 1964 by a professor named A. J. Clement, who followed what he believed to have been Farini’s original route and came across a very odd rock formation out in the desert that he believed was the very same one Farini had encountered and which could have been mistaken for something manmade, but which he concluded was merely an anomalous natural formation, most likely caused by the erosion of a particular type of igneous rock called dolerite. Indeed, Clement expressed doubt that the region could have ever supported such a legendary city at all, and would say of the Lost City of the Kalahari:

The climatological history of the Kalahari does not appear to have undergone any marked change for several thousand years, and it is obvious that no settlement of the size indicated by Farini could exist without perennial rivers or lakes in the vicinity. And, suitable conditions for the establishment of a city cannot have existed along any of the river courses for tens of thousands of years. Furthermore, if the age of the Lost City is assessed in relation to Zimbabwe and the ancient ruins of Persia, it is impossible to conceive of any in the Kalahari having been built more than 15,000 years ago.

Like all legends, that of the Lost City will be a long time a-dying, and doubtless there will still be some who are disinclined to let the matter rest in spite of all the contrary evidence. And possibly this is just as well, for there is something rather sad about the destruction of a legend.

Clement was right in the sense that there are many who have not let the legend die, and are still convinced the legendary city really does exist, with expeditions continuing all the way up the present and using new technology to help them. One recent search was carried out in 2013 by a crowd-sourced research project using Google Maps, called the Marcahuasi Project, which found anomalies in the desert that could be indicative of walls of the lost city, but it is still unknown if the images are of an ancient city, more recent abandoned irrigation circles for crops formed by the native tribes, or merely a natural formation.

Farini’s expedition in the Kalahari

Even more recently still was an expedition in 2016 by the Travel Channel series Destination Unknown, headed by explorer and host Josh Gates and equipped with state of the art technology such as aerial scans and radar. They managed to find some unusual rock formations that resemble walls and ruins, but again it is unknown if they are artificial or if they were really what Farini wrote of. One of the problems with locating the Lost City is that the area is just so remote and inhospitable, and this coupled with its sheer size makes it a formidable task to try and locate these alleged ancient ruins among the endless sands and desert scrub. Not helping matters is that Farini did not give very detailed descriptions of the actual location, and this is further exacerbated by the fact that the ruins are supposedly half buried. One member of one of the many expeditions that have tried and failed to find the city once lamented:

It’s all very vague. When you see this desert, you will understand that you can wander among the sand dunes for months and not even come close to the places where the lost city is located.

The Lost City of the Kalahari described by Farini has gone on to become a legendary, almost mythical place in the same realm as places like Atlantis, and there have been many theories as to its existence. Some think it is a real place, perhaps a city once built and abandoned by its creators due to a great drought or even that of a thriving lost civilization. Others, like Clement, think it is likely just misidentified natural rock formations. Still others point to Farini’s showman background, and claim that the whole report, the sketches, and even the photographs were likely faked, that it was all a big hoax. Considering that Farini is the only one to have documented the city in any appreciable way, and the vast stretches of harsh terrain involved, if there really is a city out there then it is very possible that it will remain buried and hidden, as it has for thousands of years and just might for thousands more yet to come.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Mystery of 'alien' fast radio bursts deepens as study suggests they don't transmit at low frequencies, making them invisible to many telescopes

• Fast radio bursts are flashes of energy from unknown sources in deep space
• Researchers pointed two telescope arrays at same spot in the sky for same time
• But, while one detected several fast radio bursts, the other one didn't see any
• Findings suggest these signals do not emit at low frequencies, researchers say

By CHEYENNE MACDONALD FOR DAILYMAIL.COM 

A pair of Australian radio telescopes pointed at the same spot in the sky have revealed new clues on the nature of mysterious signals known as fast radio bursts.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are extremely bright flashes of energy from unknown sources in deep space, and last only about a millisecond.

While the Australian SKA Pathfinder detected several such signals during its search, the Murchison Widefield Array observing the same region did not.

Scientists say the discovery is significant, suggesting fast radio bursts may only come across at higher frequencies.

Scroll down for video 

A pair of Australian radio telescopes pointed at the same spot in the sky have revealed new clues on the nature of mysterious signals known as fast radio bursts. The ASKAP managed to detect several fast radio bursts during its observation (artist's impression)

The researchers published the findings in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The Curtin University-led Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) searches at lower frequencies than CSIRO’s Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP), the team notes.

‘When ASKAP sees these extremely bright events and the MWA doesn’t, that tells us something really unexpected is going on; either fast radio burst sources don’t emit at low frequencies, or the signals are blocked on their way to Earth,’ said lead author Dr Marcin Sokolowski.

The two telescopes in the Western Australian desert were pointed at the same area of the sky at the same time.

The ASKAP managed to detect several fast radio bursts during its observation. None of the FRBs, however, were detected at lower frequencies by MWA.

‘Fast radio bursts are unpredictable, so to catch them when both telescopes are looking in the same direction isn’t easy,’ said co-author Dr Ramesh Bhat.

‘It took many months of ASKAP and the MWA co-tracking the same area of sky, ensuring the best overlap of their views possible, to give us the chance at catching some of these enigmatic bursts.

‘The challenge was in making it all happen automatically, but it really paid off.’

While the Australian SKA Pathfinder detected several such signals during its search, the Murchison Widefield Array observing the same region did not

WHAT ARE FAST RADIO BURSTS AND WHY DO WE STUDY THEM?

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. 

The latest findings put us another step closer to understanding the nature of fast radio bursts, which have perplexed astronomers since their discovery more than a decade ago.

‘It’s really thrilling to have a clue about the origins of these incredible bursts of energy from outside our galaxy,’ Dr Macquart said.

‘The MWA adds an important piece of the puzzle and it was only made possible with this “technological tango” between the two telescopes.

‘It’s an exciting development because it unites the two teams and it brings home the advantage of having the two telescopes at the same time.

‘Future coordination between the teams will also benefit other areas of astronomy, as complementary views from the two telescopes can provide a more complete picture of a situation.’

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Mystery of fast radio bursts deepens as new study finds they're invisible to many telescopes

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Utah Artifacts Links Lady of Elche As An Anunnaki Queen, Video, UFO Sighting News.

One of the most enigmatic feminine faces of the history of humanity, is without a doubt the one of the Lady of Elche, that dates of the Iberian culture. And although his clothing reflects his high lineage, his identity is unknown. But the enigmas are gradually being cleared and the new hypotheses of the origin of this figure are at least surprising. Does the Lady of Ancient Sumeria come? Or, maybe it was an Anunnaki queen?

A medal found in Utah (in 1966 USA), which has a lady engraved identical to that of Elche, (since the Lady of Elche has the same ritual ear-rings and necklaces), would reveal the connection of both relics, despite the vast distances between Elche and Utah.

Also the earmuffs were representative of Atlantis. In Bolivia (Peru) and in the Andes they have always been a trail of Atlantis, which had a capital on Lake Titicaca, a lake that is in the mountains and with Anunnaki remains. There are legends in the area of ​​Venus men who visited the earth and had that type of earmuffs.

Very interesting link from the medal to the statue...sounds like the mystery only deepens. 

Scott C. Waring

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

UFO news: Shock claim BLACK TRIANGLE spacecraft recorded over Ohio is ‘proof of aliens'

A BIZARRE triangular UFO photographed over Perrysville, Ohio, is genuine proof of alien spacecraft entering Earth’s atmosphere, conspiracy theorists have claimed.

Pieces Of A “UFO” Fell From The Sky And Landed In Remote Cambodian Village

Residents of a small, remote Cambodian village were woken up to quite an unusual – and somewhat dangerous – surprise last week when pieces of metal were seen raining from the sky. At the time of publication, officials are still stumped as to what could be the cause, leading some to believe extraterrestrial forces could be behind the incident.

In a statement sent to IFLScience, residents of Preah Vihear Province said they heard a loud sound around 6am local time. They ran outside to find dozens of pieces of aluminum weighing more than 40 kilograms (88 pounds) striking homes and causing damage across a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) radius. Fortunately, nobody was injured.

''I heard a big noise in the morning. I was shocked and thought something bad had happened," said villager Sok Nol. “When I went to look there was one big piece in a field and other smaller pieces around. We thought an airplane had crashed but there was no big engine.”

Residents collected the wreckage and reported it to police, who were unable to identify where it came from. Yin Chamnan, police chief of Preah Vihear, confirmed that rubble had been recovered in the village, continuing that regional police have not been able to pinpoint where the pieces came from. The case will now be handed over to a team of specialists.

''We have found more than 17 fallen fragments of aluminum and rubber. But, we are continuing the search and are collecting further information from the people at the scene,” he said.

It has some thinking something out-of-this-world could be responsible.

''Now I think that it has come from space and landed in our village. It's confusing because nobody knows what it is,” said Nol.

Chamnan, however, has a different explanation: ''Maybe these fragments are parts of a drone that someone flew. The parts were not relatively big,” he said.

Villages say they awoke to the sounds of metal dropping around 6 a.m. local time on October 25. Viral Press

It's estimated the fragments weighed around 40 kilograms (88 pounds).

Viral Press

The fallen fragments damaged buildings over a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) radius. Fortunately, nobody was injured.

Viral Press

{ https://www.iflscience.com/ }

The moment Hull resident 'saw UFO' while sat in the hot tub

With Halloween coming up here's the most recent UFO sightings

By Anna Riley

The UFO that was reportedly sighted in Hull 

(Image: The British Earth and Aerial Mysteries Society)

With Halloween just around the corner, people can be more attuned to the supernatural around this time of year.

As well as ghosts and witches knocking on your doorstep, UFOs could also be flying over your roof.

Sightings of potential alien activity have been investigated by Mecca Bingo who have analysed all UFO sightings in the UK since 2007.

According to their data, there have been four sightings in Hull in the April, May, June and July of 2013, but nothing has been reported since.

A witness in Hull at the time said: "Whilst sat in the hot tub on a Saturday night, my husband and I noticed a dark triangle shape craft glide past us that was 100% silent.

READ MORE

• Meet the Hull family who have had their Christmas lights up for nearly a MONTH

"The silence of this aircraft grabbed me most as there were no lights.

"There were lines running down either side of the triangle, and my husband said the end had scallop edges."

Watch: "Alien Autopsy Roswell UFO Crash 1947 Original footagedocumentary

So this Halloween keep an eye out for saucers in the sky, as well as the usual spooky sights.

The Mecca Bingo survey also identified the top five superstitions we believe will bring us luck:

• Finding a penny (32%)
• Finding a four leaf clover (31%)
• Crossing your fingers (19%)
• Black cat crossing your path (18%) }
• Wishing on a shooting star (18%)

{ https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/ }

{ https://nationalufocenter.com/ }

Filer’s Files #43 – 2018 How to Communicate with ET - PART II

{ https://nationalufocenter.com/ }

R.I.P. Kepler

NASA announced Tuesday that Kepler, an orbital telescope that’s been spotting and analyzing distant planets for the past nine years, has run out of fuel and will no longer carry out scientific research.

Since it launched in March 2009, the telescope identified over 2,600 planets outside of our solar system, and found that as much as half of the stars visible from Earth could be surrounded by small, rocky, Earth-like planets.

Running On Fumes

Back in July, it became clear that the Kepler Space Telescope was running low on fuel — NASA has since been planning a replacement to take over the iconic satellite’s ongoing search for exoplanets.

A Legacy

Though Kepler will no longer collect any more data, there’s still plenty of images for NASA and other scientists to examine.

Just like biologists continue to discover new species by examining the samples already found in museum collections, the data already gathered by Kepler could keep astronomers busy for years to come.

READ MORE: NASA Retires Kepler Space Telescope, Passes Planet-Hunting Torch [NASA]

More on Kepler: The Kepler Space Telescope is About to run out of Fuel

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1. The electrostatic environments of the giant planets
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3. The importance of stupidity in scientific research.
   Martin A Schwartz,Semantic Scholar

{ https://futurism.com/ }

'Tunnel to the underworld’: Strange subterranean passages found beneath ancient Mexican pyramid

© INAH / Mauricio Marat

The 15-meter-wide (50 ft) chamber, located around 8 meters (26 ft) under the surface is believed to have been used for sacred funerary rituals. An additional tunnel leading to the Plaza of the Moon was also discovered, opening at the southern end.

via GIPHY

“These large offering (ritual) complexes are the sacred core of the city of Teotihuacán,” archaeologist Verónica Ortega from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Mexico said in a press release.

“All people considered it the mecca of civilisation, so what is found inside can help unravel the relationships this ancient metropolis had with other regions of Mesoamerica,” Ortega added.

• READ MORE: Ancient Mayan discovery: 7,000yo skeleton unearthed in Mexican cave (PHOTOS)

© Instituto de Geofísica de la UNAM

© INAH / Mauricio Marat

Researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and the Institute of Geophysics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) discovered the passageways using an imaging technique called electrical resistivity tomography in the summer of 2017, but the findings have only just been announced.

At its peak, the city of Teotihuacan, 40 km northeast of modern-day Mexico City, was once home to 125,000 inhabitants. The population carried out human sacrifices to honor the gods, earn a bountiful harvest and good fortune in war. Further excavations at the site have yet to be announced, but researchers are optimistic they will turn up more exciting discoveries.

© Instituto de Geofísica de la UNAM

“In the excavations carried out in the tunnels under the main body of the pyramid, at the end of the 1980s, archaeologists Ruben Cabrera and Saburo Sugiyama found skeletons with deformed crania... along with various obsidian objects, so there’s a good possibility of making similar finds in this newly discovered tunnel,” Ortega said.

{ https://www.rt.com/news/ }

Russia successfully tested key component of revolutionary deep-space "Ion Drive Engine"

{https://www.disclose.tv/ }

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

Coronal Mass Ejections from the Sun Pose a Big Threat to Earth

BY MIHAI ANDREI

One of the biggest threats to Earth is nuclear war. Another of the biggest existential threats actually comes from our own sun.

A depiction of a coronal mass ejection, with Earth to scale.

Image credits: NASA / Goddard.

As a result of its magnetic poles reversing position, the sun goes through 11-year solar cycles in activity, appearance and other physical phenomena that have been observed for centuries. It is during these seasonal cycles that solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) occur. These CMEs spew massive amounts of X-rays, charged particles, and magnetized plasma across the solar system.

According to research scientist Dean Pesnell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, we are entering a cyclical period when there are few if any sunspots and subsequent solar flares. However, the Sun’s activity should soon be on the rise again, as long as the Sun does not enter a “grand” minimum solar period.

During such periods, sunspot and solar flare activity diminish for days at a time. The date of the minimum solar period is calculated by taking the average of sunspot activity over 12 months. As a result, identifying the precise date of the minimum solar period usually happens six months after it takes place.

CMEs Can Interfere with Electronic Communication and Navigation Equipment

There are three classifications of CMEs based on the intensity of their emitted x-rays — C-class, M-class and X-class, the highest intensity category. To put this in perspective, one X2 CME on September 6, 2017, caused widespread blackouts and the loss of all electronic communications for up to an hour on the sunlit side of Earth. It also affected navigation equipment for as much as an hour afterward.

This event may not seem significant at first. However, earlier in the final days of October 2003, now known as the “Halloween Events,” there were extreme solar storms and flares so powerful that current detectors were oversaturated. The most powerful CME of that solar storm was classified as an X45. The effects were severe:

• Sweden lost all electrical power for over an hour.
• Several of NASA’s observation satellites failed temporarily or had to be disabled.
• Japan’s ADEOS-II satellite was destroyed.
• The U.S. global positioning satellite system was severely interrupted.

An X45 extreme coronal mass ejection has not struck Earth since 1859. During what is known as the Carrington Event, telegraph equipment in the affected area burned up as the result of this CME.

NASA analysts have examined this CME event and estimated that if it occurred today, the damage would be as high as $2 trillion in the first year alone. Full recovery could take between four and 10 years.

An ejection in a different wavelength.

Image credits: NASA.

Monitoring for Solar Flares and CMEs

Currently, most of our solar flare warnings come from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), whose mission was recently extended to this December. However, SOHO was primarily designed to study the sun, not to report on solar flares and CMEs. It does only this as a secondary function.

The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), launched in October 2006, is another NASA solar observation mission. Two nearly identical observatories, STEREO A and STEREO B — one ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind — trace the flow of energy and matter from the sun to Earth. This enables stereoscopic imaging of the sun and solar phenomena such as CMEs.

The STEREO mission has revealed the 3D structure of CMEs. Violent eruptions of matter from the sun can disrupt satellites and power grids, and studying these eruptions helps to understand why they happen.

However, in 2015, contact was lost for several months when the STEREO B spacecraft passed behind the sun. Later analysis of the telemetry concluded that the spacecraft was in an uncontrolled spin too rapid to be corrected. On October 11, 2016, recovery attempts ended.

STEREO A still is operational and collecting data from the sun. However, it is not collecting CME data.

CME Warning Equipment Could Be Stationed at Lagrange Points

There are five points between celestial bodies such as the Earth and the sun, called Lagrange (L) points, where the orbital angular momentum and gravitational forces all balance. That allows objects to be parked there indefinitely. Positioning warning spacecraft at some of these five Lagrange points would optimize the time between CME detection and when the CME would reach the Earth.

• L1 lies about one million miles from Earth. L1 is currently occupied by the Deep Space Climate Observatory and has an uninterrupted view of the Sun.
• L2 also lies a million miles from Earth, but in the opposite direction of the sun. At this point, a spacecraft can get a clear view of deep space. NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) is currently at this spot, measuring the cosmic background radiation left over from the Big Bang. The James Webb Space Telescope will move into this region later in 2018.
• The third Lagrange point, L3, lies behind the sun and opposite Earth’s orbit. For now, science has not found a use for this spot mostly due to cost concerns. The complete configuration is depicted below:

L1, L2, and L3 are all unstable points with precarious equilibrium. Spacecraft must make continual slight adjustments to maintain their positions at these points in space.

L4 and L5, however, are stable, “like a ball in a large bowl,” according to the European Space Agency (ESA). They provide a unique view of streams of charged material heading toward Earth, which allows scientists to better measure the speed of the coronal mass ejections headed toward Earth.

Currently, spacecraft parked at L1 offer only a four- to six-hour warning of a CME. A warning spacecraft parked at L4 or L5 could provide as much as 15 to 17 hours of warning.  However, power-grid operators need at least one full day’s warning to prepare for a Carrington-type coronal mass ejection.

The ESA plans to launch a satellite to L5 in 2023 at the cost of almost half a billion dollars.

The bottom line is that within two years, we will have no operational systems in space watching for coronal mass ejections headed for Earth.

CMEs Are Capable of Widespread Damage

The destruction from a massive Carrington-type CME would be widespread, starting with all satellites in Earth orbit. Various GPS satellites would likely be destroyed or disabled for an unknown period of time.

Also, all navigation systems would be adversely affected. Such a CME could easily inject a trillion-watt current into electrical grids, effectively frying them.

We saw a sample of this damage in 1989 when eastern Canada’s power grid was knocked offline. All airborne aircraft would be at risk from radiation and electronic surges. Also, the International Space Station could be at risk depending on its position at the time of impact. Sewage treatment plants, air conditioning units in buildings and homes, gas station pumps, and media transmissions would all be knocked offline for an undetermined amount of time.

A Carrington-type event today would plunge the affected part of the world into a brief dark era, possibly causing public panic. No one has estimated how many people might come down with radiation poisoning or even die from such a CME impact.

As a result, it behooves the U.S. government, NASA and the ESA to reprioritize their near-term programs to ensure that a solar flare detection system is in place and operational at L5 as soon as possible. After all, $500 million dollars is pocket change compared to $2-plus trillion in estimated damage.

About the Author

Dr. Stephen Schwalbe is an associate professor at American Military University. He is also an adjunct professor at Columbia College.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

Parker solar probe comes closer to the sun than any other man-made spacecraft

 BY TIBI PUIU

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has beaten a decades-old record for making the closet approach to the sun by of any man-made spacecraft.

Illustration of NASA”s Parker Solar Probe.

Credit: NASA.

The previous record for the closest solar approach was set by the German-American Helios 2 spacecraft in April 1976. On 29 October 2018, at exactly 1:04 pm EDT (17:04 GMT), Parker moved closer than 42.73 million kilometers (26.55 million miles) from the Sun’s surface.

Parker is set to break other records soon, such as the top heliocentric and geocentric speeds. In 1976, the same Helios 2 set the record for heliocentric speed (relative to the sun) at 246,960 kilometers per hour (153,454 miles per hour). Parker is expected to beat this record on 29 October at about 10:54 pm EDT.

What’s more, the probe — tasked with studying the inner workings of the sun — is expected to reach a staggering top speed of 692,017 km/h (430,000 mph) during its final pass around the sun, shattering any previous record for geocentric speed (relative to Earth). It won’t be until 2025 until this happens, however.

“Parker Solar Probe has been one of our most challenging missions to date,” said Omar Baez, Nasa’a launch director, when the probe first launched in August 2018. “I’m very proud of the team that worked to make this happen. We at Nasa and the Launch Services Program are thrilled to be part of this mission.”

The influence of solar activity on Earth and other worlds is known as space weather, but there are many mysterious aspects of it that are still unknown to scientists. This is what Parker is for.

For its mission, Parker carries a range of instruments that can study the sun both remotely and in situ (directly) — the kind of observations that might unravel some of the sun’s most well-kept secrets.

Of course, NASA has several specific questions it wants Parker to answer. One of them has to do with the mystery of the acceleration of solar wind — the constant ejection of magnetized material from the sun. Somewhere, somehow, this solar wind is accelerated to supersonic speeds.

Parker will fly straight through the corona — the sun’s atmosphere that extends millions of kilometers into outer space. The corona is scorching hot, reaching temperatures in the range of millions of degrees Celsius. However, the sun’s surface has a temperature of only about 6,000 degrees Celsius. This makes no sense at first glance: how is it possible that the surface of the sun is so cold compared to its atmosphere? Well, scientists hope that Parker might come up with an answer to this counter-intuitive conundrum.

During its closest flyby, slated for June 2025, Parker will be only 6.1 million kilometers (3.8 million miles) from the sun’s surface, where temperatures can reach millions of degrees Celsius. Meanwhile, Parker will complete 24 perihelions, looping between Venus and the Sun.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

Kepler, de telescoop die minstens 2.600 nieuwe werelden ontdekte, is niet meer - HLN.be

Bron: AP, Space

Het Kepler Space Observatory cirkelde tien jaar lang net zoals de aarde in een baan rond de zon en speurde met zijn telescoop het heelal af op zoek naar andere exoplaneten (planeten die draaien rond andere sterren dan onze zon). 

Lees ook

NASA geeft nieuwe wending aan speurtocht naar buitenaards leven

Sinds enkele maanden kampte de satelliet, die zijn verwachte levensduur al ruim overschreden had, met een nijpend brandstoftekort. De voorbije weken werd het steeds moeilijker om de telescoop op sterren te richten en mogelijke exoplaneten te identificeren. Nu komt er helemaal geen reactie meer. Kepler bevindt zich momenteel op zo’n 150 miljoen kilometer van de aarde en zal zich in een stabiele baan om de zon blijven bewegen.

Ontdekkingen

Kepler speurde bijna tien jaar lang het heelal af op zoek naar dipjes in de helderheid van sterren: dat kan wijzen op het bestaan van een planeet die eromheen cirkelt. “Het was alsof je probeerde een vlo te detecteren die over de koplamp van een auto kroop terwijl de auto 160 kilometer verderop stond”, zegt NASA-wetenschapper William Boruki, die aan het hoofd stond van het eerste Kepler-wetenschapsteam.

De Keplertelescoop ontdekte meer dan 2.600 planeten buiten ons zonnestelsel en daarnaast nog zo’n 2.900 potentiële kandidaat-exoplaneten, waarvan de data nog verder moet onderzocht worden. Zo onthulde de satelliet het bestaan van rotsachtige planeten ongeveer zo groot als de aarde, waar leven mogelijk zou kunnen zijn. Kepler stootte ook op enkele superaardes: planeten die groter zijn dan de aarde, maar kleiner dan planeet Neptunus. Vorig jaar slaagde de satelliet er zelfs in om een zonnestelsel met acht planeten te identificeren, net zoals het onze.

“Het heeft ons begrip van onze plek in de kosmos compleet veranderd”, zegt Paul Hertz, directeur astrofysica bij NASA. “Voor we Kepler lanceerden, wisten we niet of planeten vaak voorkwamen of zeldzaam waren in onze Melkweg. Maar dankzij Kepler en zijn wetenschappelijke missie weten we nu dat planeten in onze Melkweg vaker voorkomen dan sterren.”

Opvolger

De Keplertelescoop concentreerde zich op sterren die duizenden lichtjaren van ons verwijderd zijn en toonde volgens NASA dat er statistisch gezien minstens één planeet rond elke ster in de Melkweg cirkelt.

In april werd de TESS-ruimtetelescoop gelanceerd: deze opvolger van Kepler concentreert zich op sterren dichter bij huis en identificeerde al enkele mogelijke planeten.

{ https://www.hln.be/  - HLN.be}

“Dit is het einde”: 80 jaar geleden veroorzaakte hoorspel over aliens massahysterie, zou E.T. vandaag ook paniek zaaien?- HLN.be

Bron: Live Science

Op 30 oktober 1938 onderbrak een acteur de radio-uitzending met enkele verontrustende nieuwsberichten. Hij sprak met een dringende toon over “drie explosies” en “lichtflitsen” die afkomstig zouden zijn van marsmannetjes en hun ruimtevaartuig. De acteur voerde ook enkele getuigen op –althans dat leek zo want in feite waren het ook gewoon acteurs- die het drama dat zich afspeelde, omschreven. Daarbij werden termen zoals “UFO’s” en “vreemde wezentjes” in de mond genomen. Een hittestraal zou daarbij al tientallen mensen gedood hebben. Paniek.

Hoewel het programma doorspekt was met theatrale elementen, geloofden veel mensen dat het allemaal echt was. Krantenkoppen verschenen daags nadien en kopten: “Duizenden luisteraars renden weg van hun huizen in New Jersey en New York, velen met handdoeken over het gezicht als bescherming tegen de giftige gassen”. Latere studies suggereren evenwel dat de paniek veel minder groot was dan de nieuwsberichten destijds deden vermoeden.

Lees ook

Geen aliens?... Misschien zochten we nog niet genoeg!

Minst waarschijnlijke scenario 

Ruimtewetenschappers geloofden toen overigens ook al niet in een mogelijke invasie van marsmannetjes. Ze waren zich er van bewust dat de planeet niet in staat is om een beschaving van intelligente buitenaardse wezens te herbergen. “Tegen het einde van de jaren ’30 wisten we dat er weinig zuurstof was. Bovendien vonden we geen vloeibaar water”, aldus Seth Shostak, senior astronoom aan het SETI-instituut (search for extraterrestrial intelligence).

Sterker nog, de gewelddadige aflevering die Welles beschrijft en liet opvoeren tijdens de radio-uitzending, is verreweg het minst waarschijnlijke scenario voor een eerste ontmoeting tussen buitenaards leven en de mens. De wezentjes zouden immers niet alleen bestaan, maar ook op de hoogte zijn van de mens én in het bezit van technisch geavanceerde wapens.

Buitenaardse wezens afluisteren

SETI scant dagelijks het luchtruim op radiosignalen die geproduceerd worden door vormen van intelligent leven. En hoewel er waarschijnlijk veel minder intelligent leven in het universum is dan microbieel leven, zouden intelligente buitenaardse wezens hun aanwezigheid mogelijk over veel grotere afstanden kunnen uitzenden.

“Microben kunnen zuurstof in de atmosfeer maken, maar intelligent leven kan gigantische lasers of radiozenders maken, dus je kan ze, als ze bestaan, misschien wel vanop grotere afstand horen,” aldus Shostak. En natuurlijk vereist het vinden van buitenaardse signalen het eigenlijke bestaan van zo’n buitenaards leven, maar volgens Shostak is het slechts een kwestie van tijd.

Massahysterie of fascinatie?

Een soortgelijke aankondiging –als toepasselijk mopje voor Halloween- over ongewenst bezoek van buitenaards leven zou volgens Michael Wall, auteur van “Out There” (een wetenschappelijke gids over buitenaards leven), vandaag de dag eerder fascinatie dan angst opwekken. “Met al het nieuws over exoplaneten zijn mensen er klaar voor”, zegt hij.

Een eerste ontmoeting met E.T. zou dus een stuk minder beangstigend zijn dan de aliens die “War of The Worlds” aankondigde. Na de uitzending beweerde Orson Welles dat hij geen idee had dat zijn wezens met tentakels en vuurwapens zo serieus genomen zouden worden. Hij verontschuldigde zich: “Het was een schokkende ervaring om te beseffen dat ik zo’n wijdverspreide terreur had veroorzaakt.” 

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Army Remote Viewer Peers Into The Origins of Humanity To Find Out If Humans Were Created

 Published By Arjun Walia

IN BRIEF

• The Facts:

  Joseph Mcmoneagle, one of the most successful Army-trained remote viewers, peered into the past to look into the possible origins of human history. He saw that we were created by intelligent beings in what he called a 'laboratory.'

• Reflect On:

  Why is the mainstream story of human history still limited to Darwin's Theory of Evolution? Why have so many discoveries, like giants, and life on other planets, been completely concealed and brushed off as a conspiracy theory?

The true origins of human history remain a mystery, but that’s not what mainstream academia would have us believe. Since Darwin, human evolution and ‘the survival of the fittest’ has been pushed on the population as some sort of scientific truth, despite the fact that it remains a theory with multiple loopholes and ‘missing links.’ If you question it, in some circumstances, you are almost considered a nut.

This continues to happen in many different fields of knowledge; when you question beliefs that have been ingrained for so long you get a harsh response, and in some cases, you’re liable to be fined, put in jail or at the very least you receive tremendous amounts of hate and censorship.  What we don’t hear about is the fact that there are several hundred scientists, if not several thousand, who have spoken up against the scientific validity of the theory of evolution.  I recently wrote an article about more than 500 scientists coming together to reject Darwin’s theory of evolution and explain why it’s not really valid at all.

Our DNA Originated Somewhere Else

Even one of the founding fathers of DNA, Francis Crick, believed that human DNA must have originated from somewhere else in the galaxy, whereby “organisms were deliberately transmitted to earth by intelligent beings on another planet.” You can read more about that here. I also recently wrote about a paper that was publishedby 33 scientists in the Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology Journal suggesting that the flourishing life during the Cambrian era (Cambrian Explosion) originated from the stars.

“With the rapidly increasing number of exoplanets that have been discovered in the habitable zones of long-lived red dwarf stars (Gillon et al., 2016), the prospects for genetic exchanges between life-bearing Earth-like planets cannot be ignored. ” (The study)

There is a great little blurb from Cosmos Magazine, one of the few outlets who is talking about the study.

Serious inquiry into the origins of human history are not encouraged in the mainstream. Yet as we dig a little on what’s being done, there is a lot to find out, with new theories and discoveries that seem to be popping up every single year.  Modern day education is hardly keeping up with this, and in fact continues to promulgate old theories and notions that have long been disproven. As a result, nobody beyond ardent self-motivated researchers are learning about new developments or have any knowledge of these viewpoints.

Opening Our Minds

The suppression of the discoveries of giant humanoid skeletons falls directly into this category, though the secrecy that wraps up the Smithsonian is a topic for another article. Suffice it to say that successful cover-ups of information are possible in part due to the phenomenon of ‘cognitive dissonance’, which speaks to the extreme discomfort that a piece of information that disrupts the worldview you grew up with can have on you. Many of us have and do experience this, including myself. In today’s day and age, it’s important to practice overcoming the discomfort to keep an open mind.

Consider entertaining new ideas without necessarily accepting them, just give them a chance to swirl in your mind a bit. With new information constantly emerging at a rapid pace in all fields, an open mind is what serves us best. If we stay closed and refuse to even look at or acknowledge evidence that contradicts what we believe, we will never advance towards actual truth, and simply be caught up in an agnostic state while never really getting to the bottom of the questions that are naturally on our mind.

The StarGate Program

The StarGate program was co-founded by Russell Targ (watch his banned TED talk about ESP here), Hal Puthoff, who is now a member of the ‘To The Stars Academy’ with Tom Delonge, and other notable names who have worked on Deep Black Budget programs within the U.S. government. They are currently spearheading an effort to let the American public know that UFOs are real and that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that, as Louis Elizondo says, “we are not alone, whatever that means.”

The StarGate program investigated parapsychological phenomenon like remote viewing, telepathy, telekinesis, and clairvoyance. The program yielded high statistically significant results and was used multiple times for intelligence gathering purposes. A lot of interesting information came out of the literature that was declassified in 1995 after the program ran for more than two decades.

It was a complete mystery why the program was shut down: remote viewing, for example, which is the ability to describe the physical characteristics at a given location irrespective of distance, was found to be repeatable, even more than findings in the hard sciences, with a success rate of over 80 percent. Remote viewing was how the rings around Jupiter were actually discovered by Ingo Swann before NASA was able to measure them. You can read more about that here.

To summarize, over the years, the back-and-forth criticism of protocols, refinement of methods and successful replication of this type of remote viewing in independent laboratories has yielded considerable scientific evidence for the reality of the [remote viewing] phenomenon. Adding to the strength of these results was the discovery that a growing number of individuals could be found to demonstrate high-quality remote viewing, often to their own surprise. . . . The development of this capability at SRI has evolved to the point where visiting CIA personnel with no previous exposure to such concepts have performed well under controlled laboratory conditions.” (source)

The Breadth Of Remote Viewing

There are examples in the literature, from remote viewers looking at classified Russian technology during the cold-war era, locating a lost spy plane in Africa and the prediction of future events. Yes, along with remote viewing comes the ability to view into the past, and view into the future. Obviously, this gets tricky, especially if we look at quantum physics, which works in tandem with parapsychology. In quantum physics, experiments have also shown how what happened in the past can change the future, and what happens in the future can change the past, on a quantum scale. You can read more about that here.

There were multiple people working within the Remote Viewing Program, which was conducted at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in conjunction with multiple intelligence agencies, and one of them was Joseph Mcmoneagle. Many of these people, after decades in the program, continued on with their research and experimentation long after the program was declassified. Joseph was one of the most successful Army-trained remote viewers, and one of the original members of project Stargate. He was actually awarded the Legion of Merit for “producing crucial and vital intelligence unavailable from any other source” to the intelligence community.

The Origins Of Humanity

In 1983, McMoneagle worked with Robert A. Monroe, founder of the Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia, which provided basic out-of-body orientation for many of the military remote viewers. There, he conducted a session seeking to discover the origin of humanity. As the late great author and researcher Jim Marrs points out in his best selling book Our Occulted History points out:

During the 129-minute session, he described a shoreline on what appeared to him to be a primitive Earth. He later estimated a time of about thirty million to fifty million years after the time of the dinosaurs. Cavorting on this shoreline was a large family of protohumans-hairy animals about four feet in height, walking upright and possessing eyes exhibiting a spark of intelligence despite a somewhat smaller cranial capacity. Two things surprised McMoneagle in this session. These creatures appeared to be aware of his psychic presence, and they did not originate at that location.

McMoneagle described his experience in his 1998 book, The Ultimate Time Machine:

This particular species of animal is put…specifically in that barrier place…called the meeting of the land and the sea…I also get the impression that they’re…ah…they were put there. They mysteriously appeared. They are not descended from an earlier species, they were put there (by a) seed ship…no, that’s not right. Keep wanting to say ship, but it’s not a ship. I keep seeing a…myself…I keep seeing…oh, hell, for lack of a better word, let’s call it a laboratory, where they are actually inventing these creatures. They are actually constructing animals from genes. Why would they be doing that? Can we do this yet…here and now? Like cutting up genes and then pasting them back together. You know, sort of like splicing plants…or grafting them, one to another…Interesting, it’s like they are building eggs by injecting stuff into them with a mixture of DNA or gene parts of pieces.

He described these creatures as delicate-looking aquiline-featured humanoids, unclothed, in possession of a prehensile tail and large “doe-like” eyes. They seemed to be using some sort of light that McMoneagle had a hard time describing, but eventually described it as a “grow light.”

Marrs got the impression that it was like someone tending to a garden, and planting seeds, but “there isn’t any concern about the seeds after they are planted…It’s simply like…well…put these seeds here and on to better and bigger business. No concern about backtracking and checking on the condition of the seeds. They can live or die, survive or perish.” The session ended with him moving closer in time and perceiving these beings growing in size and ability, eventually becoming herding humans.

The surveillance of and interference with humanity is documented in the lore of almost all civilizations that have roamed the planet. Although some have called this mere ‘interpretation,’ it reminds me of people referring to the confirmation of spiritual and metaphysical realms as a result of quantum physics. It is simply labelled as an interpretation due to the fact that it upsets so many belief systems and long-held preconceived ideas.

The Takeaway

The story of human history has a lot of holes. From the UFO extraterrestrial phenomena to the discovery of strange skeletal remains, to the rejection of Darwinism all the way to the existence of intelligence ancient civilizations like Atlantis, and others that thrived possibly millions of years ago, we are like, as author Graham Hancock coined, a species with amnesia. But perhaps we are starting to remember. Perhaps our only two explanations are incorrect, or perhaps they’re both correct, combined with other factors. The point is, what we’ve been told is not true, and the recognition of that fact will lead us on the path towards true discovery, and away from the concealment and manipulation of information and truth.

I’m not saying this is how humans are created, perhaps it is just some sort of glimpse into something much bigger that took place billions of years ago?

{ https://www.collective-evolution.com/ }

A triangular UFO that photographs show resembled a flying stingray was seen recently in Ohio near the site of a famous encounter 45 years ago between a UFO and a military helicopter – an encounter the military acknowledged but has never resolved. Have the aliens returned? Why was there no encounter this time? Or is it one of ours?

“It looked just like a sting ray and was all black. I have the original 2 photos of the craft as well as zoomed screen shots which show the craft in very plain view.”

This report comes from the site UFOStalker.com (includes five photos) which covers sightings on MUFON. The witness saw the UFO on September 3rd, 2018, and admitted that he was taking photos of a drill site with his father and neither heard nor saw anything unusual. However, they spotted the UFO in two photos taken no more than two seconds apart. Even under magnification, they admitted being unable to tell if the UFO was ascending or descending, but figured, because of the location of the pointy end, it was heading towards the Mansfield Lahm Air National Guard Base in the nearby city of Mansfield where the 179th Airlift Wing (179 AW) unit is stationed.

That’s where the story gets interesting. He claims the father showed the photo to “10-15 airmen from the wing” and none would admit to knowing what it is nor were any aware of unusual base activity on September 3rd. However, Perrysville is also the location of another report of a triangular UFO in 2016. Also, the witness claims that the photo becomes “distorted” when it is forwarded via email.

Then there’s the famous incident over Mansfield on October 6, 1973, when an Army Reserve helicopter with four crew members returning to Cleveland “encountered a near midair collision with an unidentified flying object” and filed an official signed report to their superiors. It has become known as the “Coyne/Helicopter” incident because the commander of the chopper was Major Larry Coyne, who retold the story numerous times.

“We were flying along at about 2,500 feet when the crew chief on the helicopter observed a red light on the east horizon. He then informed me that the light was closing on the helicopter — that it was coming at us on a collision course. I looked to the right and observed that the object became bigger and the light became brighter, and I began to descend the helicopter toward the ground, to get out of the collision course path. We were descending and this object was like a missile locked onto the helicopter, only it came at us on a perpendicular angle, to hit us almost broadside. It looked like we were going to collide with it and we braced for impact, and then I heard the crewmen in the back say, ‘Look up!’ and I observed this craft stopped directly in front of us — stopped — it was hovering, right over the helicopter! It was a bright green light. And all of the red night lights that we utilize for night navigation were dissolved in this green light — the whole cabin turned green. It hit all of us directly in the face. We assumed it was a high-performance fighter, but when it stopped directly in front of us, then all four of us realized that was no high-performance aircraft. This craft, from the angle that we saw it, was cigar-shaped. It had no wings, no vertical or horizontal stabilizer, was approximately 60 feet long, 15-20 feet in height.”

Coyne stated that the craft took off at an estimated speed of 1000 knots (1150 mph). There were eyewitnesses on the ground who also saw the helicopter and the UFO and made detailed drawings of the craft. Coyne described the incident to a United Nations conference set up by Grenada in 1978 and to numerous UFO investigators and has been described as a credible witness, making this a credible event.

So, the Mansfield, Ohio, area has another unexplained UFO incident. While the shapes are dissimilar, the proximity to an air base is not, lending credence to them being secret military aircraft sightings that the military is not interested in revealing, even to its own personnel. Also, the “cigar shape” was a common UFO descriptor in the UFO-crazy 70’s while the “triangle” is popular today, matching the description of the rumored TR-3B. Forty-five years later, the question still remains … is the military becoming more open about UFOs or is it (or some other foreign military) responsible for the sightings?

If you live in the Mansfield area, have your phone ready and keep looking!

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

History is filled with all manner of mysteries that continue to perplex us well into modern times, and in many ways it almost seems as if there is just as much that we don’t know as that which we do. Among some of the oddities that tend to emerge from the depths of history are various artifacts and objects that defy easy classification and manage to confuse and compel. Such strange items might simply puzzle us, while others threaten to change history as we know it, but all are elusive oddities we struggle to understand. From out of place artifacts that should not exist, to strange objects that defy understanding, to just plain weird discoveries, here is a selection of strange historical oddities that have been found over the years.

Many such strange discoveries take the form of ancient artifacts that have turned up in places where they have no business being. In 1933, an archeological dig headed by archaeologist José García Payón in Mexico’s Toluca Valley, just 43 miles from Mexico City, came across a rather strange find among the many pre and post-Columbian artifacts uncovered at the site. The area was determined to have been a grave site, and as such had many grave offerings left by long forgotten visitors, such as various objects made of gold, copper, turquoise, rock crystal, jet, bone, shell and pottery, all dated to between 1476 and 1510 AD, but there amongst them was found a small terra cotta head that did not fit any of the known designs for the people of that region. Indeed, it was to prove far stranger.

When the head was examined, it was immediately apparent that it was very old, and that it had a distinctive style very similar to artifacts found in ancient Rome, which didn’t seem to make any sense at all, as this was a pre-Columbian grave site in Mexico. Later carbon dating done on the head itself put its origins at somewhere between around the 9th and 13th century AD , making it far older than the site it was found at, and generating theories that it was evidence of some sort of contact between the ancient Romans and the Mesoamericans. For his part, Payón himself sort of swept the strange find under the carpet, not publishing anything on the finding until 1960. In later years what has come to be known as the Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca head has been further discussed and analyzed, and in 2001 it was examined by the archeologist Romeo H. Hristov, of the University of New Mexico. Hristov came to the conclusion that it actually dated to the 2nd century AD, and that due to its age and the distinctive hairstyle and beard of the head that it must have been a Roman artifact that had been brought to the region in pre-Columbian times, an assertion that would be shared by Bernard Andreae, a director emeritus of the German Institute of Archaeology in Rome, Italy, who would write:

[the head] is without any doubt Roman, and the lab analysis has confirmed that it is ancient. The stylistic examination tells us more precisely that it is a Roman work from around the II century A.D., and the hairstyle and the shape of the beard present the typical traits of the Severian emperors period [193-235 A.D.], exactly in the ‘fashion’ of the epoch.

The Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca head

The origins of the mysterious head and how it would up in Mexico have continued to be discussed and debated, and there have been many other ideas on the matter. For some it was simply an artifact brought over by early European explorers or even Vikings in pre-Columbian times, although how it ended up at the Mexican grave site is unclear. It could have also been brought over at some point by traders from Asia, such as China or India, where it somehow managed to venture out to that site. It could even have somehow drifted to Mexico from some far away Roman shipwreck or could just be a complete hoax that was planted at the site as a prank. For now the mysteries swirl, but one thing for sure is that an ancient Roman terra cotta head is certainly a strange thing to turn up outside of Mexico City.

Almost as strange was a discovery made in 1954, when an amateur archeologist by the name of Guy Mellgren stumbled across something decidedly while exploring in the state of Maine, in the United States. Mellgren had been poking around at the site of what was once a Native American settlement at Naskeag Point on Penobscot Bay in Brooklin, Maine, when he found a treasure trove of old Native artifacts, but as he sifted through his find he came across what appeared to be an ancient silver coin, which seemed jarringly out of place there amongst the Native relics. Unsure of what he had found, Mellgren brought the coin to specialists and things would get even weirder still.

Experts who examined the highly corroded coin at first thought it to be a 12th century British penny, and it was subsequently sorted of filed away with the other relics, but in 1978 the coin was re-examined and found to in fact be a very old Norwegian coin, dating all the way back to the reign of Olaf Kyrre, who was King of Norway between the years of 1067 to 1093 AD. This has been confirmed by other experts and is not really in dispute, but what is less clear is how it ended up in a Native American settlement that dates to 1180 to 1235. Although Norse Vikings from settlements in Greenland are known to have reached areas of Newfoundland long before Columbus arrived on these shores, how would a Viking coin find its way to Maine in pre-Columbian America, far south of where Vikings were ever thought to have ventured? Theories have ranged from that the Vikings did travel south, where they made contact with the Natives of the region, which would rewrite history as we know it, or that Natives from further north traded the coin with other tribes, after which it made its way to Maine being passed along. What makes it all even more baffling is that among the 30,000 artifacts found at the site this one coin is the only thing at all that is of Norse origin. Of course there is also the idea that the coin was a hoax, but in the end the “Goddard Coin,” also called the “Maine Penny” remains a curious unsolved mystery.

The Maine Penny

Other much larger out of place artifacts have been found on occasion, and a good example would be a gigantic, 80-ton boulder found on a hillside at Hidden Mountain, in Los Lunas, New Mexico in 1933. In this year a Frank Hibben, an archaeologist from the University of New Mexico, was led to the monolithic stone by a local guide, who claimed it had first been found in the 1880s. Upon this enormous slab of solid rock was a flattened area upon which was inscribed a passage written in ancient Hebrew, which is odd considering the inscription was estimated as being anywhere between 500 to 2,000 years old, putting it well out of the time frame for ancient Paleo Hebrew to have any business being in North America.

Experts that have examined what has come to be known as the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone believe it may have been used as an ancient Samaritan mezuzah, which were boulders placed at synagogues and other important places and etched with passages from the Decalogue, but this still doesn’t explain why or how it ended up all the way over in New Mexico up to 2,000 years ago. While there has been much talk that it is evidence of pre-Columbian visitation by Semitic explorers, there is also much criticism that it is likely a hoax, either by settlers in the 1800s or perhaps even carried out by Hibben himself to support his own fringe theories on Pre-Clovis migration to North America. Archaeologist Kenneth Feder is among the skeptics, and has flat out denied the authenticity of the stone, saying:

There are no pre-Columbian ancient Hebrew settlements, no sites containing the everyday detritus of a band of ancient Hebrews, nothing that even a cursory knowledge of how the archaeological record forms would demand there would be. From an archaeological standpoint, that’s plainly impossible.

The Los Lunas boulder

However, the stone has still managed to be widely discussed and debated, and it is far from solved. It is hard to study, as its immense size make it unable to be moved to a museum, vandals have destroyed portions of the inscription, and there has never been a consensus on where this mysterious boulder came from or why it holds ancient Hebrew. Is this monstrous boulder with its enigmatic markings evidence of the pre-Columbian presence of Hebrew speaking settlers in the New World, or is it all fake? Who knows?

Some odd historical objects are not necessarily out of place, but still manage to remain confounding and anomalous all the same. In 1929, German theologian Gustav Adolf Deissmann was cataloging items at the vast library of the Topkapı Palace, in Istanbul, Turkey, when he came across an old, dusty bundled up wad of seemingly discarded gazelle skin parchment. It would have seemed like just basically garbage at the time, but when the parchment was unfurled it would prove to hold within it quite an amazing discovery indeed.

There upon the parchment was a portion of an intricate map, unlike anything Deissmann had ever seen, and when it was analyzed by experts it was found to have been made by the Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis in 1513 AD. Although only a third of the map was intact, the rest missing, it was found that this was not just any ordinary old map, as it seemed to be part of an actual map of the world, and it was shockingly accurate for its time. Here was a map that correctly outlined such far flung lands as Europe, Africa, Caribbean islands, and even South America, islands such as the Azores and Canary Islands, and Japan, as well as uncharted areas such as Nova Scotia, the coast of Antarctica, and the Andes Mountains, at a time when many of these places had not even been discovered yet and all with impressive accuracy that should have been impossible at the time. Indeed, some experts have even said that it simply could not have been done with anything less than satellite imagery, and this is a map drawn up in 1513.

The Piri Reis map

No one could figure out how this could have been done, but there were hints in that the map listed some of its sources, including numerous other Arab and Indian maps, and even mentioning a long lost and nearly mythical map supposedly compiled by Christopher Columbus, which is thought to have been the first map of the world that he is speculated to have made while in the West Indies. This map has never been found, but it is strongly believed that somehow Piri Reis had seen it and used it together with around 20 other maps to craft his own, although none of the source maps mentioned, nor the missing portions of the map, have ever been located. To this day the stunning accuracy of the Piri Reis Map remains a baffling anomaly. How did he get this information? How was he able to map out places not even known to have been discovered at the time? What would the lost portions reveal? We may never know.

Some historical anomalies are rather numerous, yet still manage to baffle as no one is really sure what they are. Throughout many portions of what was once the Roman Empire there have been found over 100 small bronze objects measuring around 2 to 5 inches across and with a unique shape of 12 flat pentagonal faces with holes and knobs upon them. While many examples of these artifacts have been found, and they are most certainly Roman in origin, the problem is no one has the slightest idea of what they were used for. There are no known written records or design plans for them, and these “dodecahedrons” have been speculated as being everything from navigational tools, to zodiac instruments, to astronomy tools, knitting instruments, calendars, candlestick holders or even children’s toys. Your guess is as good as anyone’s, and although there are many of these objects and they seem to have been rather common they will likely nevertheless remain an impenetrable mystery.

A Roman dodecahedron

Not all enigmatic historical objects are so old, and there have been a few such oddities in more recent times as well. In 1968 a building in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States was being renovated when a wall was torn down to reveal hiding behind it a brand new looking World War I era motorcycle with a distinctive design no one had ever seen before. It had a unique engine design not seen in any other motorcycle of the time, an innovative and one-of-a-kind brake system, had specially made parts not found in any other motorcycle then or since, and overall it was far more advanced than anything else of its era. It also still ran smoothly and seemed none the worse for wear after decades hidden away forgotten behind a wall. Most oddly of all, the one-of-a-kind bike had the word “Traub” written upon it, its meaning just as cryptic as anything else about it.

When the first owners of the building were tracked down they were able to shed a bit of light on the mystery, saying that their son had stolen the motorcycle and hidden it behind the wall before leaving to fight overseas during the war, but this did little to explain where it came from in the first place or who built it. The mysterious motorcycle has since become part of the collection of the Wheels Through Time Museum, and to this day there has not been found any other example of this bike and its design, nor any other parts for it, no one knows who made it, and it remains a cipher.

The Traub Motorcycle

Even more recently was an unusual find made in 2014 by rangers at the Great Basin National Park, in Nevada. As they were patrolling a rather remote area of the park they found a tree in the middle of nowhere that had leaning against it a very old looking rifle, just neatly propped up and abandoned out there in the wilderness. It was soon found that the rifle was an antique Model 1873 Winchester rifle that had been manufactured between the years of 1873 and 1919, and which would have been considered a valuable heirloom. It was also in very good condition, and even now no one can figure out why anyone would just leave this old-fashioned antique weapon out there against that tree. Was it left there by some pioneer, gold prospector, or hunter from the 19th century? Was it put out there by a gun collector for reasons we will never know? Was it left behind by a time traveler? Who knows? The gun sits in a museum with no known owner.

Here we have looked at just a sampling of odd and unusual historical objects that have managed to evade understanding either by being out of place, coming out of nowhere, or being just plain weird. It is interesting to think that for as much as we think we like to know about history and for as much progress we have made in chronicling it there can still be these oddities that pop up from time to time to challenge our perceptions and serve as frustrating riddles we may never solve. It certainly seems that history is far from fully illuminated, and hiding out there in the nooks, crannies, and shadows are plenty of anomalies that manage to stay obscured in the mists of time, teasing us from the recesses of past eras.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Amazing UFO video filmed over Albufeira, Portugal

Here’s one really interesting footage that was filmed over Albufeira in Portugal. This was recorded on 13th August 2017 but it was just published online now,

Witness report:

Two big balls flying by with different speeds

I was walking the dog, and when I looked back to call him, I saw this two big balls flying by. They have different speed. It was really weird… I stopped the video to take a picture. It’s not so good one…
I thought immediately it was an UFO, I am near the Faro Airport and know exactly how are the planes and helicopters.
When I get home I showed the video to everyone and everyone says it was really very weird. I tried to get some answers online in portuguese, and nobody could explain anything, or others didn’t even respond my emails.
Someone gave me this website to report it, but I didn’t do it for a long long time, just because I don’t understand some of this questionary.
Recorded with Samsung Galaxy S5

Author (source: MUFON)

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

Famous 86-mile UFO Hot Pursuit Still Defies Air Force Explanation

Two Portage County, Ohio sheriff deputies spotted an abandoned vehicle along a road near Ravenna at 5 am on April 17, 1966. Deputy Dale Spaur got out of his car while Wilbur “Barney” Neff remained his.

Deputy Spaur heard a strange humming noise, and when he turned around, he saw a giant unidentified flying object. The UFO reportedly rose from behind the trees and hovered over them as the ground drenched in bright light.

An 86-mile chase then followed at speeds of over 100 mph from Ohio to Pennsylvania that took the deputies and a few more on a harrowing ride.

The bizarre trek ended in Conway, Pennsylvania but for law enforcement officers involved, it would last for the rest of their lives.

The close encounter marks the fourth instalment of The Parajournal, The Times video series by award-winning videographer Gwen Titley.

The dispatcher initially instructed to shoot the object but Sgt. Henry Shoenfelt told Spaur and Neff to stand down, wondering if the two have found a government weather balloon.

Police Chief Gerald Buchert, who was on patrol in nearby Mantua, heard the call of the deputies about lights in the sky. He immediately went home to get his camera. He snapped photos of what he described as two table saucers put together.

As the UFO zipped away toward the east, Spaur and Neff gave chase.

Spaur said that the UFO looked like the head of a flashlight from the ground. He estimated the object to be approximately 40 feet wide and 20 feet tall.

He later would say to reporters that the lines of the object were very distinct and it looked like somebody had control over it as it was not just floating around. It could manoeuvre, he added.

Spaur said the chase slowed down near Rochester as cars got tangled up in a mess of bridges.

When Spaur came out from under the bridge, the UFO came down and waited for them as if it knew these two cars were following.

As Spaur and Neff got too close to the object, it would speed up. The two did not able to follow it as they were now low on gas and their tires were balding. They decided to pull into an Atlantic service station where Conway Patrolman Frank Panzanella met them.

By 6:15 am, Spaur noticed three fighter jets chasing the aircraft. He then alerted the dispatch about it. The officers could pick up chatter on their police radios from the pilots.

The object hovered then shot straight out of sight.

Unfortunately, Buchert’s photos were severely fogged and had processing defects. It proved nothing.

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

Originally Published on Readers Digest

{ https://www.rd.com/ }

Then WHY hasn't NASA been shut-down?

{https://www.disclose.tv/ }

Merrylin Cryptid Museum: Proof for the Existence of Mythical Beings or Elaborate Hoaxes?

Alien sighting: Strange laser beams spotted being ‘shot out of Saturn’

ALIEN hunters have been put on red alert after a pair of ‘laser beams’ appeared to shoot from the ringed-giant Saturn.

Pootafdrukken van 310 miljoen jaar oud in Grand Canyon ontdekt: mysterieus wezen liep niet recht vooruit, maar diagonaal - HLN.be

Bron: National Geographic

 Stephen Rowland

DIEREN Voordat het een van de grootste toeristische trekpleisters in Amerika werd, liepen er uiteenlopende wezens door de Grand Canyon. Zo zijn de oudste pootafdrukken afkomstig van een primitief dier dat 310 miljoen jaar geleden op vier poten door de kloof dwaalde. Diagonaal.

De restanten werden onlangs teruggevonden, nadat het gesteente rondom afgebrokkelde. Normaal vervagen zulke voetafdrukken als deze, maar door een gelukkig toeval verhardden de afdrukken van dit dier tot zandsteen, waardoor paleontologen zich over een nieuw vraagstuk kunnen buigen. De sporen zijn immers bijzonder eigenaardig door hun vreemde oriëntatie. Elke pootafdruk is in een hoek van veertig graden ten opzichte van de looprichting in het zand getekend. Daardoor lijkt het wel alsof het dier niet recht vooruit, maar diagonaal ging.

Hoe dan ook gaat het om een bijzondere vondst volgens Stephen Rowland, paleontoloog van de University of Nevada in Las Vegas. Het zijn immers afdrukken van 310 miljoen jaar geleden. Maar de mysterieuze gang van de duinenloper roept toch wat vragen op. Zo hebben paleontologen geen enkel idee over welke diersoort het zou gaan.

 Stephen Rowland  Het dier liep met een diagonale tred.

Lees ook

Fossielen die bestempeld werden als “oudste bewijs van leven op aarde” zouden wel eens gewoon stenen kunnen zijn

Reptielen met harde huid 

Rond die tijd was er in ieder geval voor het eerst sprake van reptielen die op zoogdieren begonnen te lijken. Ze waren niet langer afhankelijk van water voor hun voortplanting en hadden een harde huid die hen beschermde tegen uitdroging.

Schots soortgenootje
Eerder zijn er in Schotland al eens soortgelijke pootafdrukken gevonden. Die zouden afkomstig zijn van een soortgelijk, maar geëvolueerd reptiel dat er 229 miljoen jaar geleden leefde. De eigenaar van de afdrukken in de Grand Canyon kan daardoor wel eens de voorloper zijn van een soortgenootje dat later in Schotland voorkwam.

Voor zulke besluiten zullen onderzoekers jammer genoeg op zoek moeten gaan naar meer details. Een skelet en tanden zouden bijvoorbeeld al helpen. Ook over de tred van het dier kan men geen uitspraak doen zonder verdere aanwijzingen. Het dier kon ook gewoon diagonaal zijn gegaan omdat het bergafwaarts liep en zo probeerde om niet uit te schuiven.  

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Zonnesonde Parker verbreekt record: nooit eerder kwam een ruimtevaartuig zo dicht bij de zon - HLN.be

Bron: Belga

Op 12 augustus werd de sonde gelanceerd. Sindsdien is hij op volle snelheid onderweg naar de zon. Parker heeft maandag de zon benaderd tot op 42,73 miljoen kilometer: een record. Het vorige record was in handen van de Duits-Amerikaanse ruimtesonde Helios 2. Die kwam in 1976 tot op 43,43 miljoen kilometer van de zon. 

Lees ook

NASA-zonnesonde die zaterdag ruimte in gaat, heeft Belgisch tintje

“De sonde werd 78 dagen geleden gelanceerd en we zijn al dichter bij onze ster gekomen dan ooit tevoren”, zegt projectleider Andy Driesman. Intussen zet Parker zijn weg naar de zon verder: in 2024 moet de sonde zich op iets minder dan 7 miljoen kilometer van de zon bevinden.

1.217 graden Celsius

Het ruimtevaartuig kost 1,5 miljard dollar. Die kosten zijn deels te verklaren door het zeer dikke zonneschild: Parker zal te maken krijgen met de bijzonder hoge temperaturen binnen de corona, de atmosfeer rond de zon. Tijdens de missie, die zeven jaar duurt, zal de sonde 24 banen rond de zon afleggen en daar temperaturen tot 1.217 graden Celsius tegenkomen. Op topsnelheid bereikt de sonde snelheden tot 690.000 kilometer/uur.

Belgisch

De missie heeft ook een Belgisch kantje. Zo ontwikkelde het ruimtevaartcentrum van de universiteit van Luik een van de vier instrumenten aan boord, de WISPR of Wide-Field Imager For Solar Probe Plus. Het gaat om twee telescopen die opnames maken van de corona en de zonnewind.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

ENORM OBJECT ONTDEKT OP JUPITER ( VIDEO )

Wanneer je op reis gaat in de ruimte vertrekkend vanaf de zon, dan komt er na Mars, de enorme planeet Jupiter. 

Een planeet die 1321 keer groter is dan de aarde, met talloze manen en waar veel meer dingen gebeuren dan wij denken. 

Er is weer eens iets merkwaardigs verschenen op een door NASA vrijgegeven foto. Het betreft hier een opname van de planeet Jupiter en daar, aan de rand van de planeet, is iets merkwaardigs te ontdekken.

Volgens Scott Waring bestaat er geen enkele twijfel over dat we hier te maken hebben met een door buitenaardsen neergezette constructie op het oppervlak van Jupiter. Je ziet het gebouw als het ware uitsteken boven de wolkenlaag waarmee Jupiter is omringd en Waring zegt dat die bewolking bewust door buitenaardsen is gemaakt om de aanwezige beschavingen aan het oppervlak van de planeet te verbergen.

Wat ze daar volgens hem doen is een soort variatie van het cloaken (verbergen) van hun ruimteschepen door het maken van een wolk. Er kan tijdelijk iets misgegaan zijn, waardoor het cloaking mechanisme even niet goed werkte en dit gebouw zichtbaar werd. 

Wanneer je de grootte van het object vergelijkt met de planeet en dan bedenkt dat Jupiter 1321 keer groter is dan de aarde, dan moet ook dit gebouw enorm groot zijn.

Het is niet de eerste keer dat de planeet Jupiter in het nieuws komt dit jaar voor wat betreft buitenaards leven. Dat wil zeggen, niet de planeet zelf, maar wel één van haar vele manen.

Formeel breken wetenschappers zich het hoofd over een maan die hoort bij de enorme planeet Jupiter. Deze maan, Ganymedes, is de grootste in ons zonnestelsel en is tevens iets heel anders dan men ons wil doen geloven. 

In het midden van de jaren negentig werd er veel gesproken over een man met de naam Alex Collier. Deze man kwam met heel interessante informatie omtrent ons zonnestelsel en vooral ook buitenaards leven.

Hij verkreeg al deze kennis omdat hij als kind al was ontvoerd door buitenaardsen en dat hij als gevolg daarvan in contact staat met iemand van het sterrenstelsel Andromeda. 

Eén van de dingen waar hij over vertelde tijdens zijn presentatie was één van de manen van de planeet Jupiter, Ganymedes genaamd. 

Het is niet zomaar een maan, maar de grootste maan in ons zonnestelsel. 

Ganymedes is de grootste maan van Jupiter en tevens de grootste maan van ons hele zonnestelsel. Ze is groter dan de planeet Mercurius, maar heeft slechts half zoveel massa als die planeet. Ganymedes is ongeveer anderhalf keer zo groot als de Maan van de Aarde, twee keer zo groot als de dwergplaneet Pluto en heeft drie vierde van de omvang van Mars.[1] Aan de hand van het aantal kraters per vierkante kilometer wordt geschat dat de maan 3,5 tot 3 miljard jaar oud is, wat vergelijkbaar is met onze Maan. 

En net zoals er vaak wordt gezegd dat onze maan een kunstmatige satelliet is, zo is dat volgens Collier ook het geval met Ganymedes. Het is een centrale hub voor veel buitenaards verkeer en volgens Collier was er water, zuurstof en een atmosfeer op Ganymedes. 

In de tijd was er echter geen manier om te kunnen controleren of dat hetgeen Collier vertelde ook daadwerkelijk klopte. 

Maar, sinds die tijd zijn er meer en meer opnames gemaakt door satellieten en ruimtetelescopen van deze bijzondere maan en lijken een aantal zaken de theorie van Collier te ondersteunen. 

Eén van die dingen is een soort aurora op Ganymedes, die alleen maar veroorzaakt kan worden door een magnetisch veld, wat er weer op wijst dat Ganymedes inderdaad over water beschikt, heel veel water en zelfs meer dan al onze zeeën en oceanen bij elkaar.

Daarnaast zijn er andere bijzondere ontdekkingen gedaan op Ganymedes zoals te zien op de volgende afbeelding. Iets dat lijkt op een enorme donker getinte koepel, waarop zelfs de reflectie van het zonlicht is te zien.

Bovenstaande is wederom afkomstig van de man die de Men in Black op zijn dak heeft, de bekende Tyler van Secureteam en hij denkt dat net zoals met de planeet Venus waar we eerder over schreven, dat Ganymedes veel belangrijker is dan men ons wil doen geloven en dat ook in het geval van deze maan er alles aan wordt gedaan om de aandacht af te leiden. 

{ http://niburu.co/ }

The search for extraterrestrial life has been a dominant theme of both science fiction and astronomy for decades now. “Are we alone?” remains one of the burning questions of humanity, one that, depressingly, we may never answer. Aliens may be extinct, hiding from us, trapped by their own planets’ immense gravity, or maybe they don’t exist in the first place.

Wouldn’t that be the biggest bummer of all? In order to avoid the horrible realization that we may be the only living things stinking up the cosmos, one Netherlands-based company plans to take matters into their own hands by breeding bona fide extraterrestrials all on their own – extraterrestrial humans, that is.

SpaceLife Origin hails themselves as the world’s first “bio-tech & mission development company,” meaning their interests lie in developing both specialized medical equipment and then sending that equipment to space. According to their website, the company’s ultimate goal is to “make embryo conception in space feasible by 2021 and enable real human birth in space by 2024.”

Like many other tech visionaries, SpaceLife Origin Founder and CEO Kees Mulder says that his company wants to enable humanity to break the chains holding us onto this dying planet and secure a future among the stars:

If humanity wants to become a multi-planetary species, we also need to learn how to reproduce in space. SpaceLife Origin is thrilled to announce its Missions Program to enable sustainable life beyond earth. A world’s first and truly unique critical step in the future of mankind. We believe that any space company, agency or nation with ambitions for colonization of other planets will benefit from partnering with us for the successful execution and completion of their own plans.

SpaceLife Origin has three missions currently in development. The first, Mission Ark, is scheduled to launch in 2020 and will send special capsules into space containing human “Seeds-of-Life” cells to act as an interstellar insurance policy for all of humankind. The second mission, Mission Lotus, will launch a “Space-Embryo-Incubator” in 2021 and see human embryos form in low-Earth orbit before returning to Earth for in-utero fertilization and terrestrial birth.

What would aliens do with they human ‘seeds of life’ if they ever recovered it from one of these probes?

Finally, Mission Cradle is planned for 2024 and will see the world’s first extraterrestrial human born – if all goes according to SpaceLife Origin’s plan. The Mission Cradle mission proposes sending a pregnant woman into space for 24-36 hours to “give birth at 250 miles above Earth, accompanied by a trained, world-class medical team” aboard a space station. No word yet on how they plan to keep an extremely pregnant woman calm and healthy throughout a launch into space – not exactly the most stress-free environment.

While giving in birth in space makes for one heck of a story, a successful extraterrestrial birth would also lend hope to the dream of someday sending colonies of humans on multi-generational voyages to strange and distant new homes out among the stars. Could it happen in our lifetime?

You May Also Like

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Pterodactyl UFO Over Perrysville, Ohio Throws Shadow On Clouds, Sept 3, 2018, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Sept 3, 2018

Location of sighting: Perrysville, Ohio, USA

Source: MUFON #95976

 

This is a report from MUFON that just came in yesterday. The person was looking at the photos when they got home an noticed a triangular UFO in excellent detail in one photo. The UFO is also throwing a shadow onto the cloud below...which is 100% amazing, because this means that UFO was freaking huge! I'm talking several times bigger than a 747. This UFO must have been cloaked because something that big would normally stand out like a sour thumb. So I say the digital eye caught this because it is more precise of an instrument than our flawed eye which misses out on a lot of the spectrum. The object also resembles a Pterodactyl...a flying dinosaur. Because its throwing a huge shadow on the cloud, that means this was giant in size, ruling out remote control planes, drones, kites, balloons...this one is a true mystery. 

Scott C. Waring

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

ISS astronauts return to Earth amid US-Russia tensions

by Dana Rysmukhamedova

Two American astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut returned to Earth on Thursday wrapping up a six-month mission at the International Space Station as tensions between Washington and Moscow threaten a rare area of cooperation.

National flags of Russia and the US.

Image: Reuters

NASA astronauts Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold and Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos touched down on steppe land southeast of the Kazakh town of Dzhezkazgan at the expected time of 1145 GMT.

The landing came with Russian and US officials investigating the appearance of a mysterious hole in a Russian space craft docked at the orbiting station.

Detected in August, the hole caused an air leak on the ISS but was quickly sealed up.

This week the outspoken chief of the Russian space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, said investigators believed the small hole had been made deliberately and was not a manufacturing defect.

The official, who was placed under US sanctions over the Ukraine crisis in 2014, also bemoaned "problems" in the Russian space agency's cooperation with NASA that he attributed to interference from unnamed American officials.

Last month the Russian daily Kommersant reported that an investigation had probed the possibility that US astronauts deliberately drilled the hole in order to get a sick colleague sent back home—something Russian officials later denied.

ISS commander Feustel has called the suggestion that the crew was somehow involved "embarrassing" and NASA on Wednesday expressed doubts over the theory that the hole was the result of sabotage.

The US space agency said that ruling out defects "does not necessarily mean the hole was created intentionally or with mal-intent."

ISS astronauts are planning a spacewalk in November to gather more information on the hole.

The ISS is one of the few areas of tight Russia-US cooperation that had until now remained unaffected by the slump in ties, including after Washington's sanctions against Russia over Ukraine and other crises.

Earlier the ISS hosted the usual emotional goodbyes as the returning trio left Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, NASA's Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos' Sergey Prokopyev waiting for the next three-person crew's arrival.

The next launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is scheduled for next Thursday.

'Glory days in hot sun'

The crew was all smiles on return to Earth, with Artemyev first out of the descent module and shown tucking into a fruit and vegetable feast that included a giant cantaloupe melon in footage broadcast by Roscosmos.

He also wrote "spasibo" (thank you) and signed his name on the craft in chalk.

Feustel, 53, invoked Hollywood comedy actor Jack Black's character Nacho Libre as he tweeted farewell to life on the space station.

"I have had my 'glory days in the hot sun' and now it's time to come home," he wrote late Wednesday in a tweet that included a photo of the sun taken from the ISS.

While he was on his third mission in space, 47-year-old Artemyev and 54-year-old Arnold had previously only served on one mission each.

Their journey that began with a blastoff from Baikonur in March was particularly poignant for Arnold, who during his debut mission in 2009 helped build the space station he has now spent 197 days living in.

While aboard the ISS, Arnold, who has a teaching background, gave lessons on space that Sharon Christa McAuliffe—one of seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Challenger accident in 1986—had originally been supposed to teach.

In a NASA video, Arnold revealed that fellow educator McAuliffe's death in an explosion just over a minute after the challenger crew blasted off was one of the things that prompted him to take up teaching.

"To me and for our nation it was really important (those lessons) weren't lost," he said. Explore further: NASA skeptical on sabotage theory after mystery ISS leak

{ https://phys.org/ }