Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
31-05-2019
What do Aliens Look Like? The Clue is in Evolution
Still from James Cameron dir. Avatar (2009)
What do Aliens Look Like? The Clue is in Evolution
…when animals first diversified some 542m or more years ago in the Cambrian “explosion”, there may have been an even greater diversity of fundamental body plans. Consider the five-eyed and trunked Opabina in the image above, or the stalked and almost flower-like Dinomischus alongside our own distant relative, the chordate Pikaia.
Speculating about what aliens look like has kept children, film producers and scientists amused for decades. If they exist, will extra terrestrials turn out to look similar to us, or might they take a form beyond our wildest imaginings? The answer to this question really depends on how we think evolution works at the deepest level.
Hollywood has given us its fair share of humanoid aliens over the years. Initially this was through necessity, as special effects required someone to clamber into a rubber suit. Ironically, now that CGI makes anything possible, aliens sometimes look even more human in order to help the cinema goer make an emotional connection with them – such as in James Cameron’s Avatar.
At present, the only life forms we can study are here on Earth. These had a single origin around 3.5 billion years ago, but this common ancestor gave rise to perhaps 20m living species of animals alone. These have bodies organised according to about 30 different body plans in major groups called phyla.
The five-eyed fossil Opabinia could have given rise to five-eyed animals today. Nobu Tamura/wikimedia, CC BY-SA
But when animals first diversified some 542m or more years ago in the Cambrian “explosion”, there may have been an even greater diversity of fundamental body plans. Consider the five-eyed and trunked Opabina in the image above, or the stalked and almost flower-like Dinomischus alongside our own distant relative, the chordate Pikaia.
Rerunning the Tape of Life
In a famous thought experiment, biologist Stephen Jay Gould asked what might happen if we were to rewind the “tape of life” and rerun it. Gould argued for the importance of chance in evolution: change one small thing early on, and the consequences magnify through time. In the version of history we know, Pikaia(imaged below) or something very like it survived and ultimately gave rise to fishes, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and ultimately ourselves. But what if it had perished? Might some other group have given rise to intelligent beings, and might you now be reading this with five eyes rather than the customary two? If our own origins on Earth really turned on such fine hinges, why should aliens – evolving on different planets – even remotely resemble us?
Pikaia – an early chordate, the group to which humans belong. Nobu Tamura/wikimedia, CC BY-SA
The answer, according to evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris, lies in the phenomenon of evolutionary convergence: the process by which distantly related animals come to closely resemble each other. For example, the similar streamlined shape of dolphins, tuna fish and the extinct ichthyosaurs all evolved independently in response to the same selective pressures for moving efficiently through water at speed.
But what aspects of alien biology might we expect? Carbon-based biochemistry is likely given that carbon forms stable backbone chains, and makes stable but readily breakable bonds with other elements. Other elements, notably silicon and sulphur, make less stable bonds at Earth-like temperatures. Water or some other solvent also seems necessary. For evolution to occur there needs to be some mechanism for storing and replicating information with moderate fidelity, such as DNA, RNA or some analogue. Although the first cells appeared on Earth quite early, multicellular animals took nearly 3 billion more years to evolve. So it may well be that life on other planets could get stuck at the single-celled stage.
On an Earth-like planet it is also likely that radiation from the alien sun or suns would be used in biochemical pathways as a source of energy. For moderately large multicellular primary producers, harnessing light efficiently probably necessitates a light gathering system of leaves and branches. Similar shapes and habits have evolved convergently on Earth, so we might expect “plants” with broadly familiar forms on Earth-like planets.
With few exceptions, animals either eat the primary producers or each other, and there are only so many ways of doing this. Pursuing food often necessitates moving with the mouth first, so the animal has a head and tail end. Teeth and probably jaws evolve to hold and tackle food items. Moving against a hard surface requires specialised structures (such as cilia, a muscular foot or legs) at the interface, so that there is a back and front side. Typically, this also imparts bilateral (left/right) symmetry: indeed, most animals belong to a “super-group” called the Bilateria.
Why not Giant Intelligent “Insects”?
But what about the large brained and intelligent creatures that might be capable of crossing interstellar distances? Insects are by far the most species rich group on Earth: why shouldn’t aliens look more like them? Unfortunately, having your skeleton on the outside makes growth difficult, and entails periodic shedding and regrowth. On Earth-like planets, all but relatively small terrestrial animals with external skeletons would collapse under their own weight during moulting, and some critical size may be necessary for suitably complex brains.
The giant weta: one of the largest insects. New Zealand Department of Conservation, CC BY-SA
Relatively large brains, some degree of tool use and problem-solving abilities appear to be correlated on Earth, and have evolved multiple times: in apes, whales, dolphins, dogs, parrots, crows and octopuses. However, the apes have developed tool use to a vastly greater degree. This is at least partly the result of walking on two legs, which frees up the front limbs, and because of the dexterity of our fingers (which may also be a key to the origins of written language).
Ultimately, the jury is out on the extent to which intelligent aliens – if they exist – would resemble us. It may or may not be significant that humans have just two eyes and ears (just enough for stereo vision and hearing), and just two legs (reduced from the initially more stable four). Many other organs also come in pairs as a consequence of our evolutionarily deep-seated – and perhaps inevitable – bilateral symmetry. Still other elements of our body plan are probably nothing more than chance. The fact that we have hands and feet with five digits is a consequence of the fixation on five in our early tetrapod ancestors – close relatives experimented with seven or eight.
Indeed, most species have been subject to an accidental “locking down” during development – making body plans become stereotyped and inflexible with evolutionary time. Untangling the functional from the accidental is one of the big outstanding challenges in evolutionary biology – and may help us better understand how alien lifeforms could differ from us.
The main way we now search for intelligent life in space is by listening for radio or gamma transmissions. These efforts are increasingly being concentrated on star systems with Earth-like planets, as these are believed to be the most likely to harbour life. After all, it is easier to search for “life as we know it” than life as we don’t.
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Multiple F/A-18 Pilots Reported alleged UFO sightings using new RADAR technology
Multiple F/A-18 Pilots Reported alleged UFO sightings using new RADAR technology
Multiple Fighter jet pilots from the United States Navy have reported alleged unidentified flying objects while operating their aircraft mid-air.
Five U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet crewmen have recounted a number of incredibly strange encounters with unidentified flying objects off the East Coast of the United States. Two of the pilots went on the record.
Experienced lieutenants Ryan Graves and Danny Accoin, as well as three other anonymous squadron pilots, who fly F/A-18 Super Hornet jets, told The New York Times they first noticed the objects in 2014.
Lt Graves and Lt Accoin were part of the VFA-11 ‘Red Rippers’ squadron at the time of the alleged incidents.
The pilots’ accounts also point to a major sensor upgrade on their aircraft that made the presence of these crafts even detectable at all.
In the vision of one incident recorded by Lt Graves’ squadron while performing training manoeuvres between Virginia and Florida off the Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, the silhouette of a strangely-elongated object was caught in one of the jets’ cameras.
The pilots recorded the shapes flying over the ocean at high speed, suddenly stopping and rotating mid-air.
“These things would be out there all day,” Lt Graves told The New York Times.
“These things would be out there all day… Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”
The persistence of these crafts was in no way the strangest thing about them. Beyond being able to drop tens of thousands of feet in a matter of a second or two and possessing flight characteristics that are unobtainable with known technology, the unannounced visitors looked like nothing else on the planet.
Lt Graves and his team reported the sightings to the US Department of Defence’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program run from the Pentagon, however, they were only ever described as “a striking series of incidents”.
Those incidents led to the pilots questioning whether the objects were part of a classified US Government drone program unbeknown to military personnel.
Here is a famous ‘gimbal video’ was supposedly recorded on one of the Red Rippers’ training missions:
According to Graves, Naval Aviators really began noticing the objects in their training areas after Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars were integrated into fighter jets
Before the mid-2000s, Navy tactical fighter aircraft were equipped with mechanically scanned array (MSA) pulse doppler radar systems of varying capabilities and power outputs. F/A-18AC/D Hornets were largely equipped with the AN/APG-73 radar.
AN/APG-65 radar installed in an F/A-18 Hornet.
But as the production of the Super Hornet, the AN/APG-79 Active Electronically Scanned Array radar was installed in place of the AN/APG-73.
Super Hornet with the AN/APG-79 RADAR
The AESA equipped fighters can see farther, better understand what was being detected, and have a hugely enhanced ability to see detect objects flying low over surface clutter. Even small or low observable (stealthy), or slow-moving targets, or those that attempt to hide in the ‘doppler notch’ of a threatening fighter’s radar by flying perpendicular to it, have a tougher time eluding detection and engagement when facing opposition fighters packing AESA radar sets.
The New YorkTimes writes:
The pilots began noticing the objects after their 1980s-era radar was upgraded to a more advanced system. As one fighter jet after another got the new radar, pilots began picking up the objects, but ignoring what they thought were false radar tracks.
“People have seen strange stuff in military aircraft for decades,” Lieutenant Graves said. “We’re doing this very complex mission, to go from 30,000 feet, diving down. It would be a pretty big deal to have something up there.”
But he said the objects persisted, showing up at 30,000 feet, 20,000 feet, even sea level. They could accelerate, slow down and then hit hypersonic speeds.
Lieutenant Accoin said he interacted twice with the objects. The first time, after picking up the object on his radar, he set his plane to merge with it, flying 1,000 feet below it. He said he should have been able to see it with his helmet camera, but could not, even though his radar told him it was there.
A few days later, Lieutenant Accoin said a training missile on his jet locked on the object and his infrared camera picked it up as well. “I knew I had it, I knew it was not a false hit,” he said. But still, “I could not pick it up visually.”
At this point the pilots said they speculated that the objects were part of some classified and extremely advanced drone program.
But then pilots began seeing the objects. In late 2014, Lieutenant Graves said he was back at base in Virginia Beach when he encountered a squadron mate just back from a mission “with a look of shock on his face.”
He said he was stunned to hear the pilot’s words. “I almost hit one of those things,” the pilot told Lieutenant Graves.
What was strange, the pilots said, was that the video showed objects accelerating to hypersonic speed, making sudden stops and instantaneous turns — something beyond the physical limits of a human crew.
Asked what they thought the objects were, the pilots refused to speculate.
The Theodore Roosevelt carrier left the US, deployed to the Persian Gulf in 2015 to form part of the fight against Islamic State. The pilots have since said the alleged sightings have stopped since their departure.
As twisted magnetic fields snap and realign, they fling particles across space at speeds approaching the speed of light. This process is called magnetic reconnection.
Light-speed travel is a staple of science fiction in space. No "Star Wars" movie seems complete until the Millennium Falcon (or a rival ship) uses its hyperdrive. And many "Star Trek" fans enjoy talking about the relative star-system-jumping speeds of the USS Enterprise, against the speeds of other Federation ships.
But in real life, physics gets in the way. Einstein's theory of special relativityessentially puts a speed limit on cosmic travel; as far as we can tell, nothing goes faster than the speed of light. Worse, any object that has mass tends to get more and more massive — dragging down the object's velocity — as it approaches light speed. So as far as we know, only small particles can get anywhere near the speed of light.
The sun is a wacky environment to study physics, because it is so extreme compared to Earth. It's also a real-life laboratory showing how nuclear reactions happen. It also is an example of an environment with electromagnetic fields — which, as NASA points out, is the same force that stops magnets from falling off your fridge.
Magnetic fields and electric fields work together to accelerate particles with an electric charge. This charge allows electromagnetic fields to push particles along — sometimes at speeds approaching the speed of light.
We can even simulate this process on Earth. Huge particle accelerators (like at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or at the European Organization for Nuclear Research's Large Hadron Collider) create pulsed electromagnetic fields. These fields accelerate charged particles close to the speed of light. Next, scientists often crash these particles together to see what particles and energy are released.
In fractions of a second after these collisions, we can quickly observe elementary particles that were around in the first few seconds after the universe was formed. (That event, called the Big Bang, happened about 13.8 billion years ago.)
2. Magnetic explosions
The sun is also host to phenomena called solar flares. Dancing above the sun's surface is a tangle of magnetic fields. At times, these fields intersect and snap, sending plumes of solar material off the surface — and, sometimes, charged particles along with it.
"When the tension between the crossed lines becomes too great, the lines explosively snap and realign in a process known as magnetic reconnection," NASA officials said in the statement. "The rapid change in a region's magnetic field creates electric fields, which causes all the attendant charged particles to be flung away at high speeds."
Particles streaming off the sun may accelerate close to the speed of light, thrown from the sun thanks to magnetic reconnection. One example of such objects is the solar wind, the constant stream of charged particles the sun emits into the solar system. (There may be other factors speeding these particles as well, such as wave-particle interactions — which is explained in the next section of this article.)
Magnetic reconnection also likely happens at large planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn. Closer to home, NASA studies magnetic reconnection near Earth using the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, which measures our planet's magnetic field using four spacecraft. The results may be useful to better understand how particles accelerate all over the universe, NASA officials said.
3. Wave-particle interactions
Particles can also careen at high speeds when electromagnetic waves collide; that phenomenon is more technically called wave-particle interactions.
"When electromagnetic waves collide, their fields can become compressed. Charged particles bouncing back and forth between the waves can gain energy similar to a ball bouncing between two merging walls," NASA officials said.
These interactions take place all over the universe. Near Earth, NASA missions such as the Van Allen probes are watching wave-particle interactions to better predict particle movements — and protect electronics on satellites. That's because high-speed particles can damage these delicate spacecraft parts.
Supernovas, or star explosions, may also play a role in more far-away interactions. Researchers have theorized that after a star explodes, it creates a blast wave — a shell of hot, dense compressed gas — that zooms away from the stellar core at high speed. These bubbles are full of charged particles and magnetic fields, creating a likely environment for wave-particle interactions. This process may eject high-energy cosmic rays — which consist of particles — at velocities close to the speed of light.
The former leader of the U.S. government's top-secret UFO program has stories to tell, and he is sharing some of them for the first time in a new documentary.
Intelligence officer Luis Elizondo served as the former director of the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), an initiative launched in 2007 to study reports of UFO encounters. Elizondo departed the agency in 2017; that year, he spoke with reporters at The New York Times, confirming the existence of the shadowy agency and describing its mission.
Now, Elizondo is pulling back the curtain on his tenure with the AATIP, which he left because of a lackluster official response to the agency's findings, and their unwillingness to address potential risks from UFOs, according to the new show "Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation," premiering May 31 on the History Channel at 10 p.m ET/9 p.m. CT.
No, there isn't a big reveal that UFOs were alien spacecraft all along. But delving into long-hidden accounts of UFO investigations will hopefully encourage people — and authorities — to overcome long-standing stigmas and talk more openly about these mysterious aircraft, some of which may pose a bigger threat than we realize, Elizondo told Live Science.
In 2014 and 2015, pilots with the U.S. Navy reported multiple UFO sightings during training maneuvers.
UFOs have perplexed and fascinated people for decades; they also pose a unique challenge to federal agents trying to determine if they represent a threat to national security. Before AATIP, the U.S. Air Force had launched Project Blue Book, which investigated more than 12,000 purported UFO sightings from 1952 to 1969.
During Elizondo's tenure at AATIP, observers reported UFOs flying at hypersonic speeds — more than five times the speed of sound. Yet there were none of the signatures that usually accompany aircraft flying at such fantastic speeds, such as sonic booms, he said.
The UFOs were also unexpectedly mobile, traveling so fast that they would have experienced gravitational forces, or G-forces, that far exceed the limits of endurance for both humans and aircraft. The F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft, one of the most maneuverable in the U.S.'s arsenal, reaches its limit at around 16 to 18 G's, while the human body can withstand about 9 G's "for a very short time" before a person would start to black out, Elizondo said.
"These things that we were observing were pulling 400 to 500 G's," he said. "They don't have engines or even wings, and they are able to seemingly defy the natural effects of Earth's gravitational pull."
Some of the UFO sightings reported to AATIP were eventually resolved, as aerial drones or test firings of new types of missiles that were spotted from an unusual angle. But while many astonishing UFOs still defied explanation, there simply isn't enough evidence to suggest they belonged to extraterrestrials, Elizondo added.
However, another possibility is even more unsettling than the prospect of an alien invasion: that a foreign adversary had secretly developed technologies that are "strategic game-changers," unlike anything ever seen before, he said. Addressing that potential threat is a necessary step that government officials — even those that supported AATIP — don't take seriously enough, according to Elizondo.
What's more, the entrenched secrecy shrouding official UFO investigations only reinforces the association of UFOs with "tinfoil hats and ridiculous stories."
"We trust the American people to know that North Korea has nuclear warheads pointed at Los Angeles, yet we don't trust them with the knowledge that there's something in our skies and we don't know what it is? That seems counterproductive to me," Elizondo said.
Editor's Note:This story was updated with the correction that Luis Elizondo left the Pentagon in 2017, not 2011.
WEIRD FLASHES KEEP APPEARING ON THE MOON AND SCIENTISTS DON’T KNOW WHY
WEIRD FLASHES KEEP APPEARING ON THE MOON AND SCIENTISTS DON’T KNOW WHY
NASA/JPL/VICTOR TANGERMANN
VICTOR TANGERMANN
Strange Flashes
Several times a week, short bursts of light appear on the surface of the Moon — and so far, scientists have only been able to guess as to why. But a team of German astronomers have a new theory, and it could provide crucial information for humans who want to settle the Moon.
“Seismic activities were also observed on the moon,” said Hakan Kayal, professor of space technology at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Germany in a statement. “When the surface moves, gases that reflect sunlight could escape from the interior of the moon. This would explain the luminous phenomena, some of which last for hours.”
Scanning The Skies
The strange flashes were actually first observed in the 1950s, but have received little attention from the world of science. But the team of JMU wants to change that with their newly built lunar telescope in southern Spain that started scanning the night sky in April.
Two cameras watch for the strange flashes at night. If both see the same flash, they take a series of photos and videos. But the software for their new telescope still needs a bit of work. Kayal and his team are planning to upgrade it with a neural network that can filter out false positives like birds and airplanes.
Street View
Understanding the phenomenon could be paramount to keep human settlers on the Moon safe.
“Anyone who wants to build a lunar base at some point must of course be familiar with the local conditions,” said Kayal.
These false-color frames extracted from the original black and white video show the explosion in progress. At its peak, the flash was as bright as a 4th magnitude star.
NASA's lunar monitoring program has detected hundreds of meteoroid impacts. The brightest, detected on March 17, 2013, in Mare Imbrium, is marked by the red square.
An artists impression of a lunar explosion – caused by the impact of a meteorite.
In 1974, the late Stephen Hawking argued in a now-famous study that besides mass and spin, black holes can be characterized by a unique temperature. He also claimed that black holes don’t just devour matter, but also emit radiation. Researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology have set out to test this theory by creating a black hole analog in the lab. The results agreed with Hawking’s predictions, giving more credence to the theory.
Credit: Pixabay.
A black hole is defined as a region of spacetime whose extremely strong gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping. This essentially means that we can’t see a black hole directly — although this year astronomers captured a picture of a black hole’s event horizon (the swirling, bright boundary of the black hole). Scientists are confident that black holes exist, judging from their theoretical calculations and observations of X-rays emitted by swirling disks of gas around the black hole. The motions of nearby stars can also infer the presence of a black hole. In fact, most galaxies — the Milky Way included — are thought to be held together by the gravity of supermassive black holes (with masses millions of times that of the sun), which lie at the galactic center.
But if everything gets sucked into a black hole, never to return, what happens to the information that these objects used to hold? According to the laws of quantum mechanics, matter cannot simply disappear without leaving behind information of its previous state. So, on the one hand, we have physics that says information is never truly lost, nor is it truly copied, while on the other hand, we know that an object that gets too close, and crosses the black hole’s event horizon, it can never escape.
This is known as the black hole information paradox — and Stephen Hawking had been trying to crack it for decades. His investigations eventually led him to develop the Hawking radiation theory, in which the physicist argued that not all matter falls into a black hole. In some cases, when entangled pairs of particles are attracted into a black hole, only one of them would fall in, while the other escaped. Hawking named these escaping particles Hawking radiation, theorizing that its nature should be thermal radiation whose temperature would depend on the size of the black hole.
Testing such a theory is virtually impossible because we currently lack the technology required to measure the radiation from a real black hole. Which is why a team of researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology had to come up with a creative solution. For their new study, the authors made a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) — the fifth form of matter where familiar physics fades away, and quantum phenomena start to take over, even at a macroscopic scale. BEC matter almost stops behaving as particles and starts behaving more like waves. In a BEC you can observe “waves of atoms”, moving synchronized with each other just like water drops in an ocean wave.
The experimental setup for the black hole analog.
Credit: Jeff Steinhauer.
To make BEC, the Israeli researchers trapped 8,000 rubidium atoms in a focused laser beam, chilling matter to only a billionth of a degree above absolute zero. A second laser fired on one side of the BEC made it denser on that side. According to the researchers, this led to a transition that moves at a constant speed through the condensate from the denser area (outside of the black hole) to the less dense area (analogous to the inside of the black hole). This is where it gets a bit tricky: the researchers say that sound waves traveling through the denser region move faster than this transitional flow, allowing sound to move in either direction. However, in the less dense region, sound waves can only travel away from the sharp transition — in other words, further into the black hole analog.
Light can either move away or into a black hole (and never escape) and in this experiment, light was replaced by sound. In experiments, researchers forced one of a pair of phonons (like photons for sound) to fall into the flow of rubidium atoms, while the other was allowed to escape. When the researchers measured both phonons, they recorded an average temperature of .035 billionths of a Kelvin, which agrees with Hawking’s predictions.
These findings in no way prove Hawking’s theory — that would require technology that doesn’t currently exist. However, the study published in Natureshows that Hawking was definitely on to something.
Russia recently launched the world’s longest submarine called Belgorod. This special submarine is one of Russia’s most secret weapon carriers, which has been designed for carrying out different kind of missions.
The Belgorod is officially known as Project-09852 and is equipped to carry out underwater spy missions and to launch Poseidon nuclear torpedoes. It is neither an attack submarine nor a ballistic missile sub, but it will be a mothership to other undersea vessels.
Here are some of its incredible features:
It is 184-meter (604 feet) long, double the size of a normal submarine.
14,700-ton Belgorod is a nuclear-powered submarine.
Belgorod can dive to around 1,700 feet and it is guided by artificial intelligence.
Submarine is capable of carrying six thermonuclear warheads
It will be the carrier of rescue deep-water and autonomous underwater drones.
These drones are capable of carrying nuclear warheads weighing up to two megatons and their operational depth is over 3,000 feet.
These Poseidon drones can hit coastal targets 6,000 miles away
The Poseidon can target coastal areas with a heavy nuclear weapon, causing a devastating tsunami wave.
Did 2 F15s Intercept Contagion Spraying HighSpeed Craft? Event Now Confirmed!
Did 2 F15s Intercept Contagion Spraying High Speed Craft? Event Now Confirmed!
Did a craft get taken down that was carrying Ebola? I do not know but the creator of this video seems to think so. Sorry about his Caps below in the description. It would take me forever to go thru it. What do you think about this channel and his story? Thank you. J.P.
5*30*19~UPDATE(!)DID 2 F15s INTERCEPT CONTAGION-SPRAYING HIGH SPEED CRAFT(?!)EVENT NOW CONFIRMED(!)
Night after night, Helena Adelina would wake up unable to move and convinced that something evil was in her room, clawing at her inert body or whispering in her ear.
Sometimes she would see a shadowy figure lurking in the darkness next to her. Other times she would sense or hear his presence.
‘He was a slim, tall figure but with no features, like a silhouette,’ says Helena, 24. ‘My sense was that he was terrifying, an ancient being, very dark and pure evil.
Frozen in fear: Elise Robson in new film the Nightmare, which explores the phenomenon of 'sleep paralysis'
‘Sometimes I would wake and not see him but hear his voice in my ear talking about destruction, war and death. Sometimes he would grab me around the ankles and drag me under the covers. I would be fighting it and be struggling to breathe.’
These were no ordinary dreams. Every time Helena felt that she was fully awake but utterly unable to move and gripped by an ungodly and suffocating fear.
And it wasn’t always a man.
‘Sometimes a woman would enter the scene, laughing and cackling,’ she recalls. ‘She would keep slapping me around the face and laughing and finding it very amusing. And there would be a serious ringing in my ears. When I came out of it my ears would be ringing very badly.
‘At the time it was happening it felt like it was going on for ever; how long it went on for I don’t know.’
It’s difficult for those who have never had a night-time ‘visitation’ or waking nightmare to imagine the pure horror of the experience. For Helena, a film student in London at the time, they got so bad she dreaded falling asleep.
Helena’s trauma is far from rare. She is one of tens of thousands of Britons who experience severe ‘sleep paralysis’; a terrifying medical condition that leaves sufferers frozen in the disturbing world that lies between sleeping and waking and which is the focus of a new documentary, The Nightmare.
In its classic form, sufferers wake up frightened, unable to move and convinced someone, or something, malevolent is close by. Often they see a shadowy man or a witch-like figure. Some sense the presence of an evil spirit in the room or feel something oppressive lying on their chest.
It may sound unlikely if you have never experienced it, but the phenomenon has been recorded in almost every culture throughout history and is almost certainly responsible for most of the myths of spirits, demons and ghosts that prey upon the sleeping.
Academics have linked it to the origin of the vampire; a hypnotic figure that visits entranced women at night, and the ‘incubus’, the medieval spirit which assaults women as they sleep.
Sometimes she would see a shadowy figure lurking in the darkness next to her. Other times she would sense or hear his presence
Sleep paralysis is the focus of a new documentary, The Nightmare (pictured, the film's poster), which is in cinemas now
T he condition probably explains the German folk stories of the ‘mare’, a goblin that rides on the chests of people while they sleep, and the Newfoundland Old Hag, a woman who sits on a sleeper’s chest to suffocate them.
The Japanese tell of the ghosts of children who sit on the chests of sleepers, while in St Lucia, sleepers are visited by the ‘kokma’ — the spirit of an unbaptised baby which throttles its victims in bed.
Sleep paralysis could even account for tales of alien abductions. Professor Chris French, psychologist at Goldsmiths, University of London, and one of the UK’s leading experts in sleep paralysis, believes about 30 per cent of the population experience the phenomenon at least once, while five per cent have more frequent episodes.
‘It is a very common experience but typically people haven’t heard of it,’ he says.
‘I have people calling me about it and often they have the same story; they’ve been suffering and never told anyone because others would think they were crazy. In the whistles and bells version, people get a strong sense of a presence and they may also get hallucinations. They may see dark shadows and lights and monstrous figures, or footsteps and mechanical sounds or voices.
‘They may feel as if they are being dragged out of bed. It is absolutely terrifying. There is also intense fear. It doesn’t have a dream-like quality; it feels incredibly real.’
The sufferer’s eyes are open during this state, so to an onlooker they seem fully awake, although they cannot move.
Tens of thousands of Britons experience severe ‘sleep paralysis’; a terrifying medical condition that leaves sufferers frozen in the disturbing world that lies between sleeping and waking
After a time, which can feel interminable for those afflicted, the ability to move returns, which may be a gradual or sudden process.
Thankfully, few are affected as badly as Helena, who began to be afflicted in her first year at university. ‘I started to dread falling asleep and began to suffer from insomnia,’ she says.
‘It had a knock-on effect on my mental health but I didn’t tell anyone how much of a state I was in.’
For a phenomenon so common, few people seem to know about it. After talking to Prof French and Helena, I asked friends and relatives if they had experienced anything similar. A remarkably high number said yes.
One friend recalled how she woke up in bed when living in China to see a man with pointed teeth eating her feet. The vision was vivid and unlike any dream. ‘Even thinking about it now makes my heart skip a beat,’ she said.
Another recalled lying in her boarding school bed, frozen to the spot as a bearded dwarf walked across the dormitory in the dead of night. To this day, she vividly recalls the figure’s terrifying red eyes.
Another told me how she regularly wakes up convinced that a shadowy man is trying to get into her bedroom at night yet she is unable to scream or shout. She finally gets control of her body, gasping and petrified.
Scientists have only a rough idea of what causes sleep paralysis and why some suffer more than others. During a normal night’s sleep you go through 90-minute cycles and within each you go through different stages of sleep,’ says Prof French.
‘One of these is REM, or rapid eye movement, sleep. This is the phase typically associated with vivid dreams and, during REM sleep, it is normal for your muscles to be paralysed to stop you acting out your dreams.’
People are most likely to recall their dreams when they wake during REM sleep. Normally, as our bodies come out of REM sleep, we gain control over our muscles before we wake, but with sleep paralysis something goes wrong. The conscious mind wakes up but the body doesn’t, and in this halfway house between sleeping and waking, images and hallucinations from dreams break into reality.
In its classic form, sufferers wake up frightened, unable to move and convinced someone, or something, malevolent is close by
The imagery or sensations vary but almost all suffer intense fear, whether or not they see or sense demons, witches or evil spirits.
That suggests to Prof French that fear is not the brain’s reaction to scary hallucinations but is an integral part of sleep paralysis, caused by unusual activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for fear.
It’s possible the visions of shadow-men and hags are concocted by the confused brain to justify why it is experiencing so much terror for no apparent cause. If you are unlucky enough to suffer from these waking nightmares, what can you do?
A ccording to Prof French, getting into good sleeping patterns helps. Avoid alcohol, caffeine and eating too close to bedtime, go to bed at the same time each night and avoid sleeping on your back — all of which can lead to disturbed sleep.
If you sleep with a partner, encourage them to wake you if you seem distressed.
‘Even learning that there is such a thing as sleep paralysis can help you appreciate that you are not crazy, and that it is not ghosts or demons, so you are not lying awake worried that it may happen,’ he says.
Some people have even learned to accept it and enjoy the experience, just as they would a horror film, but they are, it must be said, an extreme minority. Most sufferers find the experience ghastly.
Helena Adelina, a film-maker who has made short films and animations about her experiences and now lives with her parents in Somerset, says the episodes have become less frequent and she is no longer frightened about going to sleep.
‘I experience it every now and then, but it has not been as terrifying,’ she says. ‘It’s usually when I am overtired or stressed, but it’s had knock-on effects. I still have a bit of a phobia about the dark and I have to have a nightlight.’
Kimberly Rackley is a gifted psychic anda very good friend of mine. She has had a lifetime of paranormal experiences, including multiple, terrifying encounters with the Men in Black. In terms of her early MIB encounters, Kim said in an interview I did with her: “Since I was a teenager I’ve always had the same dream and then, of course, I didn’t know what they were. Two Men in Black would come through my bedroom window and take me away to a place that’s underground. They would sit me in a chair, with this green light that comes down over the chair. If I would reach out with my arm, it would electrocute me. It would send energy up my arm. Then, I would find myself back in bed again. I had that dream since I was probably fifteen. This was when I was living in Florida. Then, after that, they went away. Not until I was probably, I think, thirty-two was when they started to come back. From being a teenager to now, this has probably happened about fifteen or sixteen times.”
Kim adds: “They are always in black and they are very tall – probably six-five. There’s no structure to the face; no cheekbones; none. I could see where the face should be, but it would look melted, like putty. That’s what their faces always remind me of: Silly Putty; white Silly Putty. There are no eyes. And, you could see where there would be an outline of a nose and a mouth, but there’s nothing actually there. If you put a stocking over your face – like a bank-robber – it would look exactly like that. That’s just how they look. When I see them, it’s like their skin is not skin. The face moves, like a vibration, like a frequency. So, it’s like they appear solid, but they’re not solid at all; they’re an energy.”
She had far more to say: “When you’re dreaming, everyone automatically goes to the astral plane; but most people aren’t even aware of that. On the astral plane there are different levels. Some people call them different degrees: different degrees of Heaven, different degrees of Hell, and different degrees of the astral plane. Any other entities from another realm can open doors to our astral plane, when we are sleeping. So, with the right frequency, you can get on the astral plane. It doesn’t matter if you’re a being from Heaven or Hell, they can all access the astral plane. So, I think some of those dimensional beings have the frequency codes to access the astral plane and that’s how they meet their agenda with people who are dreaming. That’s how they get into my dreams – the guys in black.
“Every person has what you could call an imprint. It’s a frequency. Everyone has a soul imprint which identifies them specifically. So do angels. And so do demons. But, once they have your imprint, it’s like an ID code. Once they have it they can find you. Anywhere. People told me that when I moved to Texas from Florida in 2016, the dark stuff would stop, because they wouldn’t be able to find me. But, they still found me. That’s really when I began realizing that the whole soul imprint thingis probably true.”
It was in late June 2016 when Kim had one of her most terrifying encounters. On June 22, Kim told me: “Had an experience last night / morning. A little drained this morning. Freaked me out. I was awoken by what seemed like thousands of voices that were excited and upset. I sometimes hear the astral plane at night but this was crazy. I need to make it stop so I lift into astral and all these entities are everywhere in agitated state. I ask what’s wrong and they all circle me and then this being, very tall and slender, in a black suit but with a long coat comes straight for me. The entities circling me close in tighter. They are trying to protect me. But he pushes them away with a flick of his hand and I’m suddenly back in my body. There, in my room, was the man. He had the same non-aura energy, like MIB. He pointed at me and the place in my wrist where the previous MIBs always try to place a chip in me started burning. Then I passed out. I feel electric inside, like I’m going to jump out of my skin and I’m nauseated. Kind of frightened. I look like death” (Ibid.).
Later on, Kim got back to me and wrote: “If you feel like death warmed-over then you most definitely look like death warmed-over as I discovered this morning when I ungraciously made my way to the bathroom. You would feel and look the same if you experienced the more than unnerving events I had. Yours truly is still trembling, not quite certain if it is from the panic of the frightening encounter or the electrical jolt received. Being a medium I am not fearful of the supernatural or unearthly, but there is one thing that has filled me with terror since I was a child and that is the MIB. I’ve told the story of my repetitive MIB encounters before but it needs repeating because I believe it is significant to the most recent encounter.”
More from Kim: “From the time I was eight and witnessed a glowing figure slightly similar to a grey walking down the hallway of my home, I have been subject to frequent MIB visits. These visits are always from the same two men, mostly in my dream state until I began realizing my abilities as a medium and then the visits would occur in meditation or altered states of consciousness. Never before this newest encounter has one been a physical encounter. The two men come to me, usually appearing through my bedroom window. My normal MIB’s resemble ninja’s or soldiers, always in black skin-tight clothing or fatigue uniforms, and always with the aura of intense panic. They will point at me and say ‘No, Kya, not yet.’ I have no idea why they call me Kya. Is it too much to hope for that they have me confused with someone else? I also have no inkling of what ‘not yet’ signifies. They then pull up a holographic ball where they show me that I will be taken away and put in this metal room, underground. The room has one single chair and surrounding me is a bluish force field. Sounds like a science fiction movie, right? Then they point at my right wrist, and a chip appears under my skin. They vanish, leaving me always in full panic mode.
“I know you are wondering about the chip. I have yet to discover its purpose but each occasion that they place the chip, I immediately remove it. Alien or dimensional implants are more common than you might imagine and can be detected when you are in the theta state. These implants have an etheric vibration which means they can be removed etherically as well. This newest encounter was much different than the above so let me get on with the story. I was awoken around 4:00 a.m. to a thousand voices in my head. It is quite common for me to hear the astral plane but this was like a war going on. I know I have to stop the voices before I end up on Zany Street with men in white coats chasing me. I lift up to the astral where I find the entities in an agitated and anxious state. Curiously they are all gathered in a very close proximity to each other.”
The story continues: “I ask what is wrong and the entities immediately circle me. I am not afraid as I have been to the astral many times and have friends here. Suddenly, a very tall man comes from the mist. He is in a black suit and wearing a long coat. The man is whitish-gray, bald, and no facial hair; yeah, not even an eyelash. I’m filled with immediate panic because I see no aura or residual of life force energy. The same non-energy I see with the MIB. However, there was an electrical charge around him which is something I always see around the MIB of my past encounters. The entities attempt to tighten the circle around me but the being in black swipes them away with a flick of his hand. I fall back into my body, sit up and to my horror the being is standing in my room. He raises his arm, palm out and I am jolted with a shot of intense energy. I pass out.
“When I awaken, it all comes flooding back to me. My body feels as if I am going to jump out of my skin and I am nauseated. I realize that the astral voices may have been attempting to warn me and certainly they were trying to protect me. This indicates that whatever the MIB are, even the astral plane is aware and afraid of them. Could it be that my recent talk with [you] on this very subject have triggered this encounter? I believe the MIB have every account of who attempts to reveal them. I’m always left with sheer panic and more questions after an encounter with the MIB. The panic I experience however, won’t stop me from seeking the truth nor will it stop me from being who I am or doing what I do.”
Kim’s most recent experience reads as follows: “The encounter happened when I was at the Free Comic Book Day in Folsom, California on June 12, 2017. I was staying with a friend; it was the first night I was there and I went to be about ten-thirty; I was so tired. Usually, I wake up about every forty-five minutes or so; it’s just how I sleep. But, that night, I slept for four hours straight, and then I just suddenly woke up, because I felt something pulling at me; something was tugging at me in the bed. I sit up and on the right side of the bed and there are two of the men. They had that pasty skin; the Silly Putty again; the bank-robber-stocking look. And they pointed at me and said: ‘It’s time to come.’ I was like: ‘I don’t think so!’ So, I went to turn around to the front of the bed, to psychically try to make them go away. To push light at them. And, the next thing I know, literally my feet were pulled out from under me. I was dragged off the bed to the door of the bedroom. Then, they were gone; it was over. I don’t remember anything after that until the morning.”
As Kim’s extensive, decades-long encounters with the Men in Black demonstrate, there is nothing positive about the MIB. They are among the most disturbing of all entities that lurk in the realm of Ufology.
One of the often-cited explanations for alleged UFO sightings is ball lightning, a rare natural phenomenon which remains somewhat of an unsolved mystery despite centuries of reports and several attempts by scientists to explain it. The unexplained electrical phenomenon appears as luminous orbs ranging from pea-sized to several meters across that can last up to several seconds. Reports of ball lightning are often connected to thunderstorms, but not always. There are numerous reports of ball lightning floating straight through walls, dancing around ship masts, traveling down electrical lines, or even inside submarines.
It’s generally accepted that ball lightning is some unknown type of electrical discharge that can form under certain specific circumstances, but its true nature remains somewhat of a mystery. The latest scientific study to take a stab at the ball lightning phenomenon was published this month in Optik, a scientific journal devoted to the research of optics, light, and electrons. In this current research, Vladimir Torchigin from the Russian Academy of Sciences claims that ball lightning isn’t lightning at all, but instead a “bubble of light” trapped inside a thin sphere of air.
As it turns out, whenever any particle absorbs and emits electromagnetic radiation, it ‘jiggles’ slightly from the force. This latest research claims that whenever traditional lightning strikes, it can cause air molecules to jiggle in just the right way to trap photons in a rotating pressurized sphere of air if just the right conditions are met. According to the study, the “intensity of the rotating light is more than a billion times greater than that of the light propagating in a straight line,” leading to ball lightning’s incredible luminosity.
Torchigin seems pretty confident that he’s finally solved the ball lightning mystery, writing that “we have shown that the behavior of a light bubble and ball lightning are the same, and there are no mysteries in the behavior of ball lightning. The question of the nature of ball lightning resolved.” Has the mystery actually been solved?
Whether or not it has, I’m all for this research – think about it: if we can learn the mechanism by which ball lightning is created, we could theoretically find ways to create it for ourselves. Remember that weird story about Russia’s secret “dome of light” weapon? Sounds pretty familiar. Could we harness these “bubbles of light” to create our own ball lightning?
You’d have to be living on another planet not to have heard one of the biggest news stories in recent times: After years of denial, it turns out that the US government has a secret program, researching and investigating UFOs.
The conspiracy theorists were right all along.
The story broke in December 2017 and generated unprecedented mainstream media coverage of the UFO phenomenon, which continues to this day, as the story continues to unfold. This coverage includes The Post’s new docu-series “The Basement Office,” which delves into this story as part of a wider investigation of the UFO mystery.
The Pentagon’s secret UFO program was called AATIP — Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The title cleverly blurred the lines between next-generation aviation threats and the phenomena they were really studying. Maybe as an unintended consequence, but perhaps by design, the cryptic title also kept the program hidden from the numerous people who make Freedom of Information Act requests about “UFOs.” AATIP was set up in 2007, largely on the initiative of the then-Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. When AATIP’s existence was revealed, Reid tweeted: “The truth is out there. Seriously.”
Related revelations and developments came thick and fast. Details were released of multiple events where UFOs have been tracked on radar and chased by military jets, including a November 2004 incident where the USS Nimitz carrier strike group was buzzed by multiple UFOs. Videos of three of these spectacular midair encounters have been made public, though many more have yet to be released. The Senate Armed Services Committee investigated the USS Nimitz incident last year and interviewed some of the pilots and radar operators. Also last year, the Defense Intelligence Agency briefed Congress on AATIP’s work.
In a Jan. 9, 2018, letter to John McCain — copied to other senior congressional figures and to key committees — the DIA disclosed that they had researched anti-gravity, warp drives, wormholes and other theoretical physics concepts needed for interstellar travel, as part of an effort to understand what they termed “foreign advanced aerospace weapon threats.” It raised the question “How foreign is foreign?” — did they mean Russia, China, or somewhere considerably farther afield?
In April of this year, the Navy announced they would issue new guidance to pilots who encountered UFOs, following a recent upsurge in “incursions” by “unidentified aircraft.” Then, just last week, The Post secured a stunning admission from the DOD that AATIP investigated “unidentified aerial phenomena” — a phrase they had previously been very careful to avoid. This bombshell revelation was the final proof that this had never been about Russian or Chinese aircraft, missiles and drones. Unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) is the accepted government, military and intelligence community term for what the public calls UFOs.
When I worked on this issue for the UK’s Ministry of Defence, we used “UAP” in our internal policy discussions, thus avoiding the pop-culture baggage that came with the term “UFO” and reframing the discussion as a defense and national security issue. That’s how those of us who have looked at the phenomenon from within government view it.
UFOs have finally come out of the fringe and into the mainstream. Multiple stories have appeared in major media outlets. There is congressional interest. Pilots, radar operators and intelligence officers involved in these encounters and investigations are going on the record, calling for action. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that there’s a bigger picture here. The pace of events is picking up, and we seem to be building up to something. Something is happening. Something new. Something big.
Nick Pope worked for the UK Ministry of Defence for 21 years. From 1991 to 1994, he was posted to a division where his duties included researching and investigating unidentified aerial phenomena.
Between 2014 and 2015, seasoned pilots in the U.S. Navy experienced a number of harrowing encounters with UFOs during training missions in the U.S. While pilots were mid-flight, their aircraft cameras and radar detected seemingly impossible objects flying at hypersonic speeds at altitudes up to 30,00 feet (9,144 meters); these mysterious UFOs did so with no visible means of propulsion, The New York Times reported on May 26.
However, none of the pilots suggest that these perplexing UFOs represent an extraterrestrial invasion, according to The Times, which previously wrote about Navy pilots encountering UFOs in 2004.
In total, six pilots who were stationed on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt between 2014 and 2015 told The Times about spotting UFOs during flights along the southeastern coast of the U.S., extending from Virginia to Florida. [7 Things Most Often Mistaken for UFOs]
Two of the pilots who spoke with The Times about the inexplicable sightings share their stories in the new History Channel documentary series "Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation," premiering May 31.
Video of two aerial encounters appears in the series, showing clips of UFOs: one tiny white speck and one large, dark blob. These UFOs later came to be known respectively as "Go Fast" and "Gimbal."
The objects had "no distinct wing, no distinct tail, no distinct exhaust plume," Lt. Danny Accoin, one of the Navy pilots who reported UFO sightings beginning in 2014, said in the documentary.
"It seemed like they were aware of our presence, because they would actively move around us," Lt. Accoin said.
According to Lt. Accoin, when a strange reading shows up on radar for the first time, it's possible to interpret it as a false alarm, "but then when you start to get multiple sensors reading the exact same thing, and then you get to see a display, that solidifies it for me.".
Accoin told The Times he encountered UFOs twice, during flights that were a few days apart. He also said that though tracking equipment, radar and infrared cameras on his aircraft detected UFOs both times, he was unable to capture them on his helmet camera.
Lt. Ryan Graves, an F-18 pilot, said in the documentary that a squadron of UFOs followed his Navy strike group up and down the eastern coast of the U.S. for months. And in March, 2015, after the Roosevelt was deployed to the Arabian Gulf, Graves said the UFOs reappeared.
"We did have issues with them when we went out to the Middle East," Lt. Graves said.
Pilots who spotted the UFOs speculated among themselves that the unnerving objects may have belonged to a highly classified drone program using unknown technology, and they did not consider them to be extraterrestrial in origin, The Times reported. T
Lt. Graves and others are speaking out now because what they saw raised concerns for them about their comrades and national security, Christopher Mellon, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, told the History Channel.
In 2015, following this spate of UFO sightings, the U.S. Navy issued official guidelines for personnel to report and investigate aerial objects, according to The Times. Those Navy protocols were updated earlier this year; all data will be classified information and will not be made available to the general public, Live Science previously reported.
"Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation" airs on the History Channel on May 31 at 10 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT.
At a joint press conference in Tokyo May 27 with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, President Donald Trump mentioned cooperation in space exploration as one outcome of their meetings during the president’s visit to the country.
"I am pleased to confirm that Prime Minister Abe and I have agreed to dramatically expand our nations’ cooperation in human space exploration," Trump said. "Japan will join our mission to send U.S. astronauts to space. We'll be going to the moon. We'll be going to Mars very soon. It's very exciting."
A NASA chart released in March, prior to the announcement NASA would speed up its human lunar landing to 2024, identifies potential contributions by international partners, including the Japanese space agency JAXA.
Neither Trump nor Abe elaborated on the nature of that agreement, which was not released. A fact sheet released by the State Department May 27 noted that the two "agreed on the importance of a sustained human presence on and around the moon."
"Building on its International Space Station (ISS) experience, Japanese astronauts will strive to join American astronauts on the moon and destinations beyond," the State Department fact sheet noted.
A cooperative agreement of some kind between the United States and Japan was expected to be signed during Trump's visit. Japan, a major partner on the ISS, had shown an interest in participating in aspects of NASA's renewed push to return to the moon, including contributing modules to the Gateway facility NASA plans to develop in lunar orbit to support human lunar landings.
"It's a great pleasure to collaborate with NASA in that endeavor," Hiroshi Yamakawa, president of the Japanese space agency JAXA, said in a video released by NASA May 28 about international cooperation on the development of the Gateway and its overall lunar plans.
In a May 28 tweet, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said he was “very excited” about the agreement announced by Trump and Abe. “Japan and [JAXA] are critical partners in our efforts to go forward to the Moon and on to Mars!”
With NASA accelerating its plans to return humans to the lunar surface by 2024, versus the 2028 date in its previous plans, major roles for international partners will mostly be deferred to the second phase, which will focus on establishing a sustainable human presence on and around the moon after the 2024 landing. That would include contributions such as Gateway modules, which could give contributing countries slots on later lander missions in much the same way ISS partners get crew slots on space station missions.
"Accelerating the landing date to 2024 makes it harder for us to incorporate our international partners early," acknowledged Ken Bowersox, deputy associate administrator for human exploration and operations at NASA, during a May 28 meeting of a NASA Advisory Council committee. "We're still looking at working with our international partners. A lot of their elements were going to come after 2024 anyway."
However, he added that if international partners can accelerate their contributions, "they're welcome to participate in the early phases."
It's unclear if this agreement with have any effect on other aspects of U.S.-Japan space activities, government or commercial, but companies welcome the agreement in any event. An example is Japanese company ispace, which is developing commercial lunar landers and is part of a team led by American company Draper that won one of nine Commercial Lunar Payload Services agreements from NASA last November to transport research payloads to the lunar surface.
"We are thrilled to learn that the U.S. and Japan will deepen its strong relationship in space exploration through a focused effort on lunar exploration," Takeshi Hakamada, founder and chief executive of ispace, said in a statement to SpaceNews. "Alongside our American partner, Draper, ispace is well prepared and eager to support this new endeavor between the U.S. and Japan."
Wetenschappers hebben een planeet ontdekt, die ruim drie keer zo groot is als de Aarde. Niet alleen de grootte van het gevaarte is opmerkelijk, maar ook de locatie. Astronomen ontdekten het hemellichaam immers in de zogenaamde Neptunuswoestijn van de ruimte, een plaats waarvan gedacht werd dat er geen planeet in kon bestaan. Vandaar krijgt de planeet nu de titel: ‘de verboden planeet’.
De verboden planeet is drie keer groter dan onze planeet. Opmerkelijk natuurlijk, maar het hemellichaam is wel nog altijd twintig procent kleiner dan Neptunus. De temperatuur kan oplopen tot maar liefst 1.000 graden Celsius, wat dan weer bijzonder is. De verboden planeet is immers warmer dan Mercurius.
Neptunuswoestijn met NGTS-4b
NGTS-4b, het klinkt wat minder poëtisch dan “verboden planeet”, maar onder die naam beschrijven wetenschappers de eerste exoplaneet die in de Neptunuswoestijn is ontdekt. In die regio naast een ster kunnen normaal geen planeten bestaan. De straling is daar immers zo sterk dat al het gas rond de planeet meteen zou verdampen en er enkel nog een steenachtige kern overblijft. Maar deze planeet kon die gasachtige atmosfeer wel degelijk behouden, wat het zo uniek maakt.
De hamvraag is dan ook duidelijk, zo schrijft wetenschapper Richard West, de auteur van de studie rond de verboden planeet. “Hoe komt het dat de planeet kon overleven?” Daar zijn verschillende pistes voor. Ofwel is de verboden planeet daar “net” gearriveerd in het laatste miljoen jaar, ofwel is de atmosfeer van die planeet zo groot dat ze nog steeds aan het verdampen is.
Ontdekt vanuit woestijn
De planeet werd ontdekt in een woestijn, maar ook vanuit een woestijn. Een internationaal team van astronomen plaatste NGTS – het Next-Generation Transit Survey Telescopes-system – immers in de Atacamawoestijn in Chili. Die telescopen kijken naar vlekjes tegen de achtergrond van de zon. Als een vlek beweegt op meerdere beelden dan kan er sprake zijn van een planeet.
De “verboden planeet” is nooit eerder ontdekt omdat die in verhouding relatief klein is. “De meeste telescopen zien immers enkel vlekken die één procent van het licht van de zon “dimmen”. Maar de NGTS-4b blokkeert maar 0,2 procent van de zon. Dat maakt deze vondst zo uniek”, concludeert West. Zijn team blijft nu zoeken, om te kijken of de Neptunuswoestijn mogelijk minder “droog” is dan verwacht.
Curiosity’s drilling instrument has gathered two samples from a Martian soil unit geologists called the “clay-bearing” unit. Worthy of its name, the unit turned out to contain a substantial amount of clay — a mineral typically formed in the presence of water.
The rover snapped this selfie after gathering the samples. To the lower-left of the rover are its two recent drill holes, at targets called “Aberlady” and “Kilmarie.”
Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
Although the Curiosity Rover was expected to run for two years, it’s still providing valuable information now, seven years after its landing in 2012. The rover is currently located on the side of lower Mount Sharp, in an area that drew the attention of NASA scientists even before Curiosity landed on Mars because it seemed to contain quite a lot of clay. Prosaically, they called it the “clay-bearing unit“.
However, prosaic or not, the name was very accurate. Curiosity harvested two small drills in the area, using its CheMin instrument (Chemistry and Mineralogy) to confirm that the unit has the highest amounts of clay minerals ever found on Mars.
This animation shows the initial proposed route for NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mount Sharp on Mars. The annotated version of the map labels different regions that scientists working with the rover would like to explore in the coming years.
This strongly suggests that this area on Mount Sharp contained significant amounts of water. Clays typically form over long periods of time, through a process of weathering and accumulation of diluted solvents. Judging by the appearance and chemistry of this clay (which also includes very small amounts of hematite, an iron oxide that was abundant in the vicinity of the clay-bearing unit), it seems that these rocks formed as layers of mud in ancient lakes.
It’s not the first time Curiosity has found traces of ancient water on Mars. Time and time again, the rover has confirmed that water once flowed on Mars, sparking a heated debate about the possibility of microbial life on the Red Planet. Unfortunately, Curiosity is not well-equipped to look for signs of life so for now, that will remain a matter of speculation.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover imaged these drifting clouds on May 17, 2019,
Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
After the analysis, the rover took a well-deserved rest, taking advantage of the moment using its black-and-white Navigation Cameras (Navcams) to snap images of drifting Martian clouds. NASA believes these are likely water-ice clouds — so Curiosity is not only finding water beneath the ground — it’s also finding it in the sky.
A recently discovered gaseous planet called NGTS-4B – or better known as the “Forbidden Planet” – is almost the same size as Neptune (20% smaller than Neptune and three times the size of Earth) and is around 920 light years away from Earth. There’s one major problem with this planet: it shouldn’t exist.
Located in a region of space called the “celestial desert”, the planet has a surface temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius (or 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit). With a temperature that hot, the atmosphere on the planet should have evaporated since it’s so close to its star. But incredibly it still exists and it orbits around its star every 1.3 days.
(Not NGTS-4B)
It’s also the first exoplanet to have been discovered in the Neptunian Desert, which is an area close a star where no Neptune-size planets have ever been located. Being that close to its star, the planet’s gaseous atmosphere should be completely evaporated; leaving it with nothing more than a rocky core, but NGTS-4B still contains its gassy atmosphere.
It was first discovered when telescopes that were run by the University of Warwick noticed the planet when it passed in front of its star as the brightness of the star dimmed by 0.2 percent. Researchers are baffled as to why the planet remains in existence being so close to its star. They do, however, have some theories, such as the planet ended up in its current position within the last million or so years; or that the planet was once much bigger than it currently is and it’s continuously getting smaller as the atmosphere is evaporating.
(Not NGTS-4B)
Dr. Richard West, who works in the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick, said, “This planet must be tough – it is right in the zone where we expected Neptune-sized planets could not survive,” adding, “It is truly remarkable that we found a transiting planet via a star dimming by less than 0.2 percent – this has never been done before by telescopes on the ground, and it was great to find after working on this project for a year.”
This incredible discovery has researchers looking for more possible Neptune-sized planets surviving so close to their host star. “We are now scouring out data to see if we can see any more planets in the Neptune Desert – perhaps the desert is greener than was once thought,” West stated
HIDDEN DEPTHS Pluto sports pimple-like peaks and jagged cracks across its surface, especially to the west of heart-shaped Sputnik Planitia. Some of those cracks could be cryovolcanoes that spewed liquid water onto the surface.
Z.L. DOYLE/SWRI/JHU-APL/NASA
Red ice found on Pluto suggests the dwarf planet recently spewed fountains of water into space. And it hints at complex — and possibly organic — chemistry in Pluto’s salty subsurface sea, researchers report May 29 in Science Advances.
“This was a huge surprise to all of us about Pluto,” says planetary scientist Dale Cruikshank of the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “It means there are lots of surprises waiting to be uncovered in that part of the solar system.”
Cruikshank and colleagues analyzed the wavelengths of light, which can act as signatures of chemical compounds, in images of Pluto’s surface taken when the New Horizons spacecraft flew past the dwarf planet in July 2015 (SN: 12/26/15, p. 16). Those images previously had revealed a variety of ices overlaying a bedrock of water ice, which at Pluto’s frigid temperatures is so hard that it can sculpt mountains.
In the new analysis, the researchers found signs of ammonia where that water ice was exposed. Ammonia is a fragile molecule that can be broken down by ultraviolet sunlight and cosmic rays in just 400,000 to a billion years. “If you find it at all, it suggests that it has been put there fairly recently,” Cruikshank says. “There is really no limit [to how recently], as far as I can see in the geology.”
The ammonia-rich water ice is clustered around a large crack in the dwarf planet’s surface called Virgil Fossa, west of Pluto’s large heart-shaped feature. That crack is probably a fissure, from which liquid water once erupted in a cryovolcano, the team reports.
Watery window
The jagged red crack called Virgil Fossa, shown in this 2015 image (left) cutting across the surface of Pluto, could represent a volcano that violently sprayed ammonia and organic-rich water recently. In the colored image (right), the red, yellow, orange and purple pixels correspond to higher concentrations of ammonia in water ice.
C.M. DALLE ORE ET AL/SCIENCE ADVANCES 2019
Previous observations had suggested Pluto could hide a watery ocean beneath its icy crust (SN Online: 9/23/16). But “there’s a big difference between seeing evidence of liquid ocean from various surface features, and seeing parts of the ocean, the liquid, actually come out onto the surface,” says planetary scientist Steven Desch of Arizona State University in Tempe, who was not involved in the new discovery.
Seeing evidence for a cryovolcano on Pluto is vindicating, Desch says. “We have thought for a long time that these [small, icy] planets, Pluto included, should have cryovolcanic activity,” he says. “It’s kind of a mystery why we don’t see more indications of it.”
Ammonia is an excellent antifreeze that can lower water’s freezing point by 100 degrees Celsius, Desch says. If Pluto’s subsurface ocean contains ammonia, that could explain how the water remains liquid so far from the sun.
Some scientists are still waiting for more evidence of cryovolcanism, though. "I’d love to believe this,” says Marc Neveu, an astrobiologist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who was not involved in the study. “But the images are still a little bit too blurry to really make this a slam dunk." Barring getting better pictures, scientists could use a combination of New Horizons data and laboratory studies to analyze the ammonia and organics in the mix to figure out how those molecules might have formed in a space environment.
Evidence suggests Pluto’s eruption, or eruptions — the researchers can’t tell if it was a one-time event or not — spread ammoniated ice as far as 200 kilometers from the fissure, Cruikshank says. That means the eruption would have shot water at about 300 meters per second up into the atmosphere, where it froze midair before falling back to the surface across a wide swath.
“It would have been a violent thing,” Cruikshank says, not unlike his experience standing 50 meters from an erupting geyser in Yellowstone National Park one winter. “I was completely coated with frozen ice.”
The ice observations on Pluto revealed another surprise: a red material that Cruikshank’s team thinks represents complex organic material. The team had seen organic molecules on Pluto before and thought the molecules were formed on the surface or in the atmosphere. This is the first suggestion that the subsurface ocean could contain organic molecules, too.
Irradiating ice rich in ammonia and organics in the lab can create molecules that are important to life, including the nucleobases that make up DNA and RNA, Cruikshank and colleagues noted in the journal Astrobiology in March. That doesn’t necessarily mean life got a start on Pluto, but it could mean that the chemical precursors to life can happen in surprisingly inhospitable environments.
"It’s telling you pretty much that you don’t need to be around a star for interesting things to happen,” the NASA astrobiologist Neveu says. “If it happens deep inside Pluto, in the dark, with a very cold surface ... this prebiotic, prelife chemistry can happen anywhere."
For years – or perhaps even for centuries – the Men in Blackhave been elusive, fear-inducing figures who hover with disturbing regularity upon the enigmatic fringes of the UFO subject. They nurture and weave their very own unique brand of terror and intimidation. Like true specters from the outer edge, the MIB appear from the murky darkness, and roam the countryside provoking paranoia and fear in their notorious wake, before returning to that same shrouded realm from which they originally oozed. Very often traveling in groups of three, this definitive trinity of evil seemingly appears and disappears at will. They are very often seen driving 1950s-style black Cadillac’s. Particularly strange is the fact that most of the witnesses say that the cars of the Men in Black vanish almost impossibly quickly. It’s almost as if the vehicles of the MIB are beamed aboard UFOs. Maybe, that’s not too far from the truth.
As bizarre as it might sound, there are a number of reports on record of black cars (A) entering and exiting UFOs late at night; and (B) of apparent aliens exiting UFOs and getting in cars. Yep, I know: it’s really weird. Back in 2009, longtime Ufologist Tim Beckley shared just such a story with me. Tim said: “I remember one incident where I was lecturing and a gentleman – a professor at the college where I was lecturing – came up to me and told this story about how he was driving outside of a town in Michigan. It was rather late at night, and he saw these lights in the woods. He pulled over, and there was no other traffic coming in either direction, but there was already another car parked at the edge of the road.”
Tim continued: “He described seeing some sort of ship in the distance – a UFO. A group of human-like aliens got out of the UFO, walked to the car – which was a Cadillac, or something like that. He watched them and could see they looked human. They just got in the car and drove off. But then, a couple of weeks later, he sees one of the same guys in a supermarket. These reports sound farfetched, but there’s so many of them of what seem to be aliens being able to move among us.”
Moving on, there’s the very odd tale of a man named Michael Wilcox. On the night of March 6, 1961, Wilcox had an encounter of the creepy car kind. At the time, Wilcox was living in South Miami, Florida. His home backed onto an eight-acre tomato field. At around 10:15 P.M., Wilcox saw to his amazement, through the window of his living-room, a huge object hanging low in the night sky. He described it as looking “like a Navy blimp.” He added that, “…but it was larger than any blimp I had ever seen.” Wilcox raced outside and watched with amazement as a large doorway on the craft slowly began to open. When the doorway was open to its fullest, three small, circular objects exited the craft and shot away into the darkness. But, that was only the start of things. Matters were about to get really strange.
According to Wilcox, one-by-one three black-colored Ford Galaxie cars were lowered from the UFO to the ground by “a hydraulic”-like elevator. Yes, you did read that right! When the three cars were safely on the ground, a rectangular-shaped object exited the UFO and landed in the field, adjacent to the cars. Then, something amazing happened, as Wilcox noted: Four groups of four people walked out of that same rectangular-shaped craft “and entered each car.” Wilcox looked on dumbfounded, as the cars – one after another – raced out of the field and onto the nearby road! He quickly lost sight of them as they hit South Miami’s 136th Street. The amazing encounter was over.
There’s absolutely no doubt at all that cases like the ones I have detailed above are not just controversial but way beyond controversial. Nevertheless, such accounts – of mysterious cars, of MIB, and of vanishing vehicles abound. Here’s one example and here’s another. Given that I’ve written four books on the MIB and one on the Women in Black, maybe my next book should be titled Cars in Black…
One of my home state’s most well-known unexplained phenomena was caught on camera recently by a group of researchers from Appalachian State University. The team has two cameras set up in the mountains near Morganton, North Carolina trained on Brown Mountain. For over a century, witnesses have reported strange orbs or streaks of light darting among the hills of the Pisgah National Forest around Brown Mountain, but scientists have yet to produce a definitive explanation for the phenomenon. Will we ever solve the mystery of the Brown Mountain Lights?
The Brown Mountain Lights have been covered by North Carolina newspapers for decades, and one of the earliest accounts of the Brown Mountain Lights was published in the Charlotte Daily Observer in 1913. This most recent documented took place earlier this year when one of the cameras set up by an Appalachian State research team caught a few unidentified lights on camera. See the footage for yourself.
A picture of the lights from 1962.
While the video certainly shows a few ambiguous streaks of light, it sure does look a lot like the “rod” phenomenon which occurs when cameras capture insects flying faster than their frame rate. The result is that tiny insects can appear like massive flying rods, which themselves have been the source of several studies and paranormal claims. The fact that they are caused by flying insects is still disputed by some.
Were these alleged Brown Mountain Lights merely insects? Even the video’s author notes that they are “likely lightning bugs but it’s winter.” The video was taken months before lightning bug season in North Carolina, but that doesn’t mean another insect couldn’t have reflected light from traffic in the distance. In his YouTube description of the footage, Appalachian State astronomer Dr. Daniel Caton claims the lights were captured on two different cameras, but that the second camera’s footage is unusable “due to camera quitting after a storm.” It’s always the camera, isn’t it?
Brown Mountain
While many simple explanations for the Brown Mountain Lights have been put forward over the years, they are still considered a mysterious phenomenon and are somewhat rare. A few friends of mine claim to have seen them inadvertently while camping, but then there are those who have looked for them for years and have never witnessed the lights. Still, reports and studies of other similar unexplained Earth lights around the world lend legitimacy to reports of the Brown Mountain Lights.
In Norway’s Hessdalen valley for instance, witnesses have for decades reported strange orbs of light of various colors that appear both by day and night. Possible explanations include piezoelectric discharge due to underground conductive crystals rubbing together, some unknown type of chemical combustion which can occur under extremely specific conditions, or even by ionization of air and dust caused by deposits of radioactive elements underground.
Unexplained illumination photographed over Table Rock, North Carolina
(image by Bill Fox).
What could be causing these strange, seemingly natural Earth lights? Are they indeed a natural phenomenon? It’ll take a lot more than one blurry YouTube video to get to the bottom of this mystery.
One of the most distinguishable human features is our upright mode of locomotion, which is unique among mammals. Scientists have proposed many ideas that might explain the circumstances that enabled our species to evolve as bipeds. Perhaps the most ‘out there’ theory proposed thus far comes from astronomers at the University of Kansas who claim that human bipedalism might have been triggered by giant cosmic explosions. But before you laugh, read on because, wild as it may sound, this theory has some interesting evidence backing it up.
Some time ago, scientists reported that ancient seabeds contain a layer of iron-60 isotopes. These rare isotopes cannot be made on Earth, which means their origin must be extraterrestrial, most likely the result of a supernova — a transient astronomical event that occurs during the last stellar evolutionary stages of massive star’s life. Because iron-60 has a known half-life, it is relatively easy to accurately date when the supernovae’s cosmic rays reached our planet.
Scientists traced the isotopic signatures to two major events: one 6.5 to 8.7 million years ago (300 light-years away from Earth) and the second 1.7 to 3.2 million years ago (163 light-years). That’s around the time ofHomo habilis, the upright human ancestor nicknamed “handyman” because of their ability to master stone tool technology.
Based on this information, Adrian Melott and colleagues at the University of Kansas hypothesized what kind of changes these cosmic rays might have caused on Earth. One of the first things that should have happened was a dramatic increase in the rate of ionization of the lower atmosphere.
Ionization is the process by which an atom or molecule acquires a negative or positive charge by gaining or losing electrons. In this case, the cosmic rays knocked off electrons from molecules in the atmosphere. According to Melott, the supernova events would have increased ionization in the atmosphere by 50-fold. With so many free electrons in the atmosphere, cloud-to-ground lightning would have been much easier to occur, increasing the odds of forest fires.
“The bottom mile or so of atmosphere gets affected in ways it normally never does,” Melott said. “When high-energy cosmic rays hit atoms and molecules in the atmosphere, they knock electrons out of them — so these electrons are running around loose instead of bound to atoms. Ordinarily, in the lightning process, there’s a buildup of voltage between clouds or the clouds and the ground — but current can’t flow because not enough electrons are around to carry it. So, it has to build up high voltage before electrons start moving. Once they’re moving, electrons knock more electrons out of more atoms, and it builds to a lightning bolt. But with this ionization, that process can get started a lot more easily, so there would be a lot more lightning bolts.”
In time, savannas replaced torched forests in northeast Africa. Now, walking was far more advantageous for our ancestors than climbing trees. The upsurge in global wildfires is supported by the discovery of carbon deposits found in soils that correspond with the timing of the cosmic-ray bombardment.
“It is thought there was already some tendency for hominins to walk on two legs, even before this event,” said Melott, professorof physics & astronomy at the University of Kansas. “But they were mainly adapted for climbing around in trees. After this conversion to savanna, they would much more often have to walk from one tree to another across the grassland, and so they become better at walking upright. They could see over the tops of grass and watch for predators. It’s thought this conversion to savanna contributed to bipedalism as it became more and more dominant in human ancestors.”
That’s quite a great deal of speculation but the evidence suggests that such a scenario might have been possible — however improbable as it may sound. What about something like happening in the future? Slim chance, say the researchers who point to the fact that the nearest supernova candidate is now 652 light-years away from Earth. Instead, Melott says we should be cautious about a more immediate threat — solar flares.
“Betelgeuse is too far away to have effects anywhere near this strong,” Melott said. “So, don’t worry about this. Worry about solar proton events. That’s the danger for us with our technology — a solar flare that knocks out electrical power. Just imagine months without electricity.”
Pluto’s volcanoes appear to have spewed out ammonia-rich watery fountains into space, hinting at a complex (and quite possibly, organic) chemistry of Pluto’s subsurface sea.
“This was a huge surprise to all of us about Pluto,” says planetary scientist Dale Cruikshank of the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “It means there are lots of surprises waiting to be uncovered in that part of the solar system.”
Pluto just got a lot more interesting.
Image credits: Z.L. Doyle/SWRI/JHU-APL/NASA.
Before the New Horizons mission, our understanding of Pluto was very limited. The interplanetary space probe whooshed by the planetoid, offering an unprecedented view of Pluto’s surface and that of its satellites, showing that the entire planetary system is much more complex than previously anticipated. This sparked a renewed interest for studying Pluto — and data from New Horizons keeps coming in.
Now, a new analysis of spectral images obtained with the New Horizons spacecraft indicates the presence of ammonia on Pluto’s surface. These spectral data (essentially different wavelengths of light) can reveal the chemical signature of different substances. Cruikshank and his colleagues analyzed the images and found a variety of ice on top of a bedrock of water ice — Pluto’s surface temperature is about minus 390 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 270 degrees Celsius), which is cold enough to form mountains from water ice. It’s not this water that was surprising — researchers have suspected for a while that Pluto’s dense core surrounded by a mantle of water ice, and they’ve also known that Pluto’s surface hosts mountains of water ice.
Instead, it’s the ammonia that was surprising.
Ammonia isn’t able to survive for a long time on the surface of a body like Pluto. Without an atmosphere to protect it, ammonia is destroyed with relative ease, in as many as 400,000 years (which, at a planetary scale, is the blink of an eye). So the presence of ammonia suggests that Pluto has a young or renewed surface.
“If you find it at all, it suggests that it has been put there fairly recently,” Cruikshank says. “There is really no limit [to how recently], as far as I can see in the geology.”
A section of Virgil Fossae. Arrows point to topographic features that are muted in form by an apparent mantling by material ejected in a cryovolcanic event within the fossa main channel. Below, the same region shown with water ice distribution: darker shade of blue indicates greater concentration. It’s stunning that we can see features on Pluto in such detail.
Image credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins University, Southwest Research Institute
This isn’t the only possibility though. Ammonia might also survive in a more durable chemical form such as a hydrated or an ammoniated salt, which are much more resilient. However, the location of the newly-discovered ammonia signatures is also intriguing: it appears to be clustered around a geological feature called Virgil Fossae — essentially a large ditch-like feature, probably a fissure associated with ice volcanism (also called cryovolcanism).
Ammonia is also an excellent antifreeze, researchers write. In sufficient quantities, ammonia can lower water’s freezing point by 100 degrees Celsius. If Pluto’s subsurface mantle ocean contains ammonia, that would help explain how the water remains liquid despite sub-freezing temperatures. A recent study also shed more light on Pluto’s liquid water, suggesting that it is kept in place by a thin layer of gas.
The observations revealed another surprise: a red material that Cruikshank’s team thinks represents complex organic material. This is consistent with the existence of ammonia molecules and could suggest that Pluto’s ocean also has organic molecules. This was not confirmed, and even if this is the case, it doesn’t mean that Pluto can host life — it merely suggests that the chemical precursors to life can emerge even in such inhospitable places.
Distribution of red-tinted water ice exhibiting the spectral signature of ammonia in Virgil Fossae and surrounding terrain. (B) is an image illustrating the uniquely bright red coloring of Virgil Fossa, while (C) showcases the geographical distribution of water ice and ammonia.
Image credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins University, Southwest Research Institute.
Not everyone is convinced, however.
Marc Neveu, an astrobiologist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who was not involved in the study, says that the quality of these images is not sufficient to draw a definite conclusion. Also, without a direct chemical analysis, it’s very difficult to assess the exact chemistry of Pluto’s surface.
Also, there’s no indication so far as to whether this was a singular eruption or a regular phenomenon. Ammoniated ice was spread as far as 200 kilometers from the fissure, but this could have been produced by a singular eruption. If this was the case, the eruption would have shot water at speeds of over 300 meters per second (1080 km/h), with the water freezing midair before falling down around Virgil Fossae.
At any rate, the Virgil Fossae complex is part of a tectonic system, which seems to include some form of cryovolcanism. Researchers make a good case for supporting this idea, suggesting that these eruptions also bring ammonia from Pluto’s mantle up to the surface. While the case isn’t settled yet, it’s yet another indication of how intriguing Pluto’s geology really is.
University of WarwickWetenschappers ontdekten een exoplaneet in de ‘Neptunuswoestijn’.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEET Wetenschappers hebben een planeet ontdekt die maar liefst drie keer groter is dan onze planeet. Merkwaardig: de planeet werd ontdekt in de zogenoemde ‘Neptunuswoestijn’, een plek waarvan de astronomen dachten dat het onmogelijk was. De unieke vondst kreeg bijgevolg de naam ‘verboden planeet’. Dat staat te lezen in het wetenschappelijke vakblad ‘Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society’.
De ‘verboden planeet’ is ook bekend als NGTS-4b. Deze exoplaneet is drie keer groter dan onze planeet en ongeveer twintig procent kleiner dan Neptunus. De temperatuur kan er oplopen tot maar liefst 1000 graden Celsius, dat is zelfs warmer dan de planeet Mercurius.
Het is de eerste exoplaneet die werd gevonden in de ‘Neptunuswoestijn’. “Dit is een zone vlak bij de ster, waar normaal geen planeten van de grootte van Neptunus te vinden zijn”, zo verduidelijkt onderzoeker Richard West van de Universiteit van Warwick. De straling is er namelijk zo sterk dat al het gas rond zo’n planeet onmiddellijk verdampt, waarna er enkel nog een steenachtige kern aanwezig is. Opvallend genoeg kan de ‘verboden planeet’ toch een gasachtige atmosfeer behouden.
Verklaringen
Hoe kan de NGTS-4B overleven in de ‘Neptunuswoestijn’, zo luidt de hamvraag van de onderzoekers. Het wetenschappelijke team geeft enkele mogelijke verklaringen. Het is mogelijk dat de planeet slechts recent - in de laatste miljoen jaar - in de ‘Neptunuswoestijn’ arriveerde. Een tweede optie is dat de planeet erg groot was en dat de atmosfeer op dit moment nog steeds aan het verdampen is.
De ‘verboden planeet’ werd gevonden met behulp van het Next-Generation Transit Survey Telescopes-systeem (NGTS). De telescopen staan opgesteld in de Atacamawoestijn in Chili, waar onderzoekers kijken naar vlekjes tegen de achtergrond van de zon. Als een vlekje beweegt over verschillende foto’s, wijst dat erop dat het een planeet(achtige) is. NGTS-4b is zo klein dat andere telescopen deze planeet waarschijnlijk niet hadden opgespoord.
“We zijn nu aan het bekijken of er zich nog meer planeten in de Neptunuswoestijn bevinden,” zegt West. “Misschien is die woestijn wel groener dan we dachten.”
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Paging Agent Mulder: UFO Hunter Spies New Underground Base Near Area 51 (VIDEO)
Paging Agent Mulder: UFO Hunter Spies New Underground Base Near Area 51 (VIDEO)
The conspiracy buff also directed his attention toward the two fields located near the suspected underground facility, speculating that these crops might be part of some genetic research programme.
While the US Air Force facility known as Area 51 has already become the staple of conspiracy theories regarding extraterrestrial spacecraft and alien lifeforms, famous UFO hunter Scott C. Waring now claims that a new underground installation is being constructed in the vicinity.
According to Waring, who had apparently stumbled upon this discovery while studying satellite maps, the new facility is located 55 miles to the north-east of Area 51's perimeter.
He also took note of two fields located near the base, speculating that these crops may be "grown for genetic research".
"They are altering the genetics of the plants for unknown reason. This worries me…because if they are doing genetic research…then why do they need an underground base to do the research? Unless of course it includes other research that could endanger the public", Waring pondered.
One YouTuber, however, claimed that Waring’s discovery is merely “an artwork allegedly being made by a single artist” who has been given continuous grants to build these mounds for years.
In response, Waring argued that no artist would be allowed to do their art inside Area 51, dubbing this sort of explanation as an “expert way to cover it up, by leaving calling it something different”.
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UFO-jager spot nieuwe ondergrondse basis bij Area 51. Bekijk de beelden
UFO-jager spot nieuwe ondergrondse basis bij Area 51. Bekijk de beelden
In de buurt van Area 51 zou een ondergrondse installatie worden gebouwd. Dat zegt althans UFO-jager Scott C. Waring, meldt het Russische persbureau Sputnik.
Waring deed de ontdekking toen hij satellietfoto’s aan het bestuderen was. De nieuwe installatie bevindt zich naar verluidt op zo’n 88 kilometer ten noordoosten van Area 51.
Hij ontdekte ook twee velden nabij de basis en speculeerde dat daar mogelijk gewassen geteeld worden voor ‘genetisch onderzoek’.
Gevaar
“Ze passen het DNA van de planten om onbekende redenen aan,” zei hij. “Dit maakt me bezorgd.”
“Als ze genetisch onderzoek doen, waarom hebben ze dan een ondergrondse basis nodig voor hun onderzoek?” vroeg hij.
Tenzij het natuurlijk gaat om onderzoek dat een gevaar zou kunnen vormen voor de volksgezondheid, aldus Waring.
Toegang
Volgens één iemand waren de velden een ‘kunstwerk gemaakt door één enkele kunstenaar’.
Waring reageerde dat geen enkele kunstenaar ooit toegang zal krijgen tot Area 51 om daar kunstwerken te maken.
What is under the ice of Antarctica? Many mysterious reports have been coming out of Antarctica in the last couple of years, centred around a strange “anomalies” recently detected on the perpetually frozen Continent.
Something extraordinary, must be going on down for all these world leaders visiting the place. One things for sure, the strangeness surrounding Antarctica seems to be about more than protecting the penguins..
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We Went to the Moon but We Found Things There That Can't Be Explained
We Went to the Moon but We Found Things There That Can't Be Explained
There’s a lot of evidence around that there are alien bases on the far side of the Moon. Even some unretouched fresh NASA photos show some items that don’t look exactly like rocks.
There is more to the moon than it just being a satellite of the Earth. Mike Bara has done a lot of research concerning ancient civilizations on the moon.
What Bara has done here is greatly expand on the already extensive amount of discussion about non-naturally-occurring structures photographed on the Lunar surface.
There are certain areas in the world that are prone to earthquakes. California, Japan, and other regions sitting on fault lines all run the risk of these geological upheavals, and the people who live in these areas are well aware of it, living in a constant haze of fear in the back of their minds that one may strike at any moment. Yet there have been other areas of the world that do not face such anxiety, where earthquakes should really be one of the least of their worries, but despite this there have been anomalous quakes that have come and gone on to become baffling mysteries. Such is the case of a series of earthquakes that hit the Midwest region of the United States in the 19th century, which were not only odd that they happened at all, but also rather weird in that they are some of the most powerful quakes the country, and indeed the world, has ever seen.
The morning of December 16, 1811 probably started much as any other day in the central Mississippi Valley of the United States, yet at approximately 2:15 AM the entire region was jolted and viciously rocked by a powerful tremor which would later be determined to have originated at an epicenter in northeast Arkansas. Considering that this was the Midwest of the United States, probably the last thing that was on anyone’s mind was that they would be struck by an earthquake, and not only was it unusual, but it was exceptionally potent, measuring a magnitude of 7.5 to 7.9, causing massive damage, and felt as far away as New York City, Boston, Ohio, Massachusetts, Montreal, and Washington D.C. Even more terrifying still was that this was just the beginning, with a 7.4 magnitude aftershock striking later that same day, and unfortunately more was to come.
Over the next few months the region would be hit by more earthquakes measuring between magnitude 7 and 8, as well as countless aftershocks, until by March of 1812 the region had been terrorized by thousands of powerful temblors. Two of the earthquakes after the initial one were just as intense as the first, if not more so, such as a magnitude 7.8 quake on January 23, 1812, and the third major quake on February 7, 1812, which was estimated as being as much as a massive magnitude 8.8, all interspersed by countless aftershocks that all caused havoc, capsized boats, leveled forests, and even reshaped the landscape by forming islands, new waterfalls, massive sand boils, geysers, numerous deep fissures said to have even swallowed people alive, and creating Reelfoot Lake. What would go on to become the New Madrid Earthquakes, named after the Mississippi River town of New Madrid, would be felt to some degree over an area of around 1 million square miles fanning out from the central Midwest, and making it all even more frightening were some of the odd phenomena surrounding them.
A commonly reported phenomenon during the quakes was the presence of a loud roaring noise, like thunder or explosions, which was reported by countless locals and which made it all the more ominous. There were also reported the presence of dark clouds in the sky and a sort of foul smelling smog that descended upon the land to make breathing difficult and obscure vision, as well as the smell of sulphur and mysterious flashes of light in the sky, likely the result of a phenomenon known as seismoluminescence. Also rather unusual is that there were reports from boatmen of the Mississippi River actually flowing in the opposite direction at the time of the original quake and for up to several hours after. One rather frightening report of all of this mayhem was given by an eyewitness who illustrated the chaos:
On the 16th of December, 1811, about two o’clock, a.m., we were visited by a violent shock of an earthquake, accompanied by a very awful noise resembling loud but distant thunder, but more hoarse and vibrating, which was followed in a few minutes by the complete saturation of the atmosphere, with sulphurious vapor, causing total darkness. The screams of the affrighted inhabitants running to and fro, not knowing where to go, or what to do—the cries of the fowls and beasts of every species—the cracking of trees falling, and the roaring of the Mississippi— the current of which was retrograde for a few minutes, owing as is supposed, to an irruption in its bed— formed a scene truly horrible.
It must have seemed like the ends of days, and of course considering all of these strange phenomena and the fact that the Midwest region had never experienced anything like this before, there were immediately dire omens about what it all meant. Many highly religious people believed it to be a sign from God, and stated that many of the details could be found in Bible scripture. Native tribes of the area also had their theories that it was tied to their angry great spirits, and it did not go unnoticed that a comet not seen since the time of Ramses II in Egypt had arrived in the previous months and was at its brightest during the earthquakes, making it believed to have been some sort of portent to disaster.
Although the sparsely inhabited nature of the region at the time meant that the death toll was kept to a minimum, the New Madrid earthquakes were, and still are, considered to be the most powerful and most prolonged earthquakes to hit the United States east of the Rocky Mountains in recorded history, which is quite odd and surprising for an area of the United States not known for its earthquakes, and which does not lie on the edge of any of the earth’s 15 tectonic plates. Despite all of the more supernatural explanations that have popped up in the wake of the quakes, there is likely a more scientific explanation, but it is poorly understood, made even more difficult because the region has had so few earthquakes in its history as a basis of comparison.
What is now called the New Madrid Seismic Zone is a bit of an anomaly to say the least. In most cases, earthquakes occur along the edges of Earth’s tectonic plates, where friction between two of the plates sliding against or pushing or pulling each other causes the tremors, but that is not the case for the New Madrid earthquakes since they originated practically right in the center of one of these plates. There have been all manner of hypotheses for why this zone should cause these powerful quakes, such as that it is the result of magma pushing up from beneath the earth, a weakened crust in the area, the result of the release of stress at the surface from the retreat of glaciers, local changes to the mantle flow, and others.
One of the most popular recent theories is that the quakes were caused by a spider web of fissures underground called the Reelfoot Rift, formed 700 million and 540 million years ago when the ancient supercontinent of Rodinia broke apart and split, creating a system of fissures and weakened, fractures crust deep in the earth that is possibly prone to earthquakes, although not in the traditional sense. Despite all of these theories, no one is still really sure why these powerful quakes should hit the region, and research is ongoing. One seismologist at the University of Memphis in Tennessee, Christine Powell, has said of it all:
Here, in the center of a plate, we don’t have a theory that we can attribute the earthquakes to. So in order to understand why they’re occurring, you have to think outside the box.
Whatever the reasons for the New Madrid Earthquakes may be, it was certainly not a one-time freak occurrence. Ever since these earthquakes the region has been consistently hit with numerous temblors, to the tune of about 4,000 mild to moderate quakes since 1974, and it is thought that there is a 25 to 45% chance of a magnitude 6 or greater earthquake in the area within the next 50 years, which would be devastating to the now highly populated area. In the end we are left with quite the geological mystery. How is it that not only was there a strong series of earthquakes, but also some of the most relentless and intense the country has ever seen, right out in the middle of nowhere where no earthquake should have been in the first place? It is tetament to the fact that there are still mysteries of our planet we do not fully understand, and until we do we can only wait and see if there will be another repeat of that 1811 catastrophe.
Anyone who has spent any time surfing the Internet has at one time or another seen a picture (cute or otherwise) of a meerkat suddenly standing up when it hears something. There was a time in history when this was not the case and some brave or confused meerkat probably accidentally discovered the maneuver and its benefits. Most people assume the same thing happened with the first ancient human who carefully leaned against a tree or cave wall and fell forward while moving his or her legs in order to stay upright. According to a new study, this assumption is wrong. A new paper uses geology to propose that there was a supernova bombing Earth with cosmic energy a few million years ago that caused constant worldwide lightning strikes which burned down the forests of trees out ancestors were hanging out in and forced them to the grassy ground where they learned how to stand and run from the fires and lightning. Plausible? Could this have caused the first upright meerkat brigade too?
“The observation is that there’s a lot more charcoal and soot in the world starting a few million years ago. It’s all over the place, and nobody has any explanation for why it would have happened all over the world in different climate zones. This could be an explanation.”
Professor Adrian L. Melott of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kansas co-authored the paper, “From Cosmic Explosions to Terrestrial Fires?” published this week in the Journal of Geology. He explains in a press releasehow he and co-author Brian Thomas of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Washburn University in Kansas built their theory on some known facts. For example, it is accepted that a layer of iron-60 deposits lining the world’s sea beds came from a very near supernovae explosion only about 163 light years away during the overlap of the Pliocene Epoch and Ice Age. That roughly coincides with the appearance of Lucy, owner of the earliest bipedal hominin species (Australopithecus afarensis) fossils ever found. Why is the iron-60 significant?
“We contend it would increase the ionization of the lower atmosphere by 50-fold. Usually, you don’t get lower-atmosphere ionization because cosmic rays don’t penetrate that far, but the more energetic ones from supernovae come right down to the surface — so there would be a lot of electrons being knocked out of the atmosphere.”
Electrons in motion is the cause of lightning bolts, but this 50-fold increase means there were a LOT of lightning bolts as a result of this atmospheric ionization and they were striking all around the world, resulting in massive fires that forced Lucy and her relatives to jump/climb/fall to the ground. Lucy died from the fall but we’re living proof that some of her kin didn’t and they eventually got tired of bloody knees and palms.
“After this conversion to savanna, they would much more often have to walk from one tree to another across the grassland, and so they become better at walking upright. They could see over the tops of grass and watch for predators. It’s thought this conversion to savanna contributed to bipedalism as it became more and more dominant in human ancestors.”
This definitely sounds plausible. Unfortunately, it causes modern humans to wonder if this catastrophic supernova-caused cosmic bombardment could happen again … perhaps from Betelgeuse, which is only 652 light years from Earth. Fortunately, Melott says that’s not likely. Unfortunately, he thinks we have bigger things to be concerned with.
“Worry about solar proton events. That’s the danger for us with our technology — a solar flare that knocks out electrical power. Just imagine months without electricity.”
The NASA New Horizon team has finally published the first study of the data it gathered on Ultima Thule, the strange, distant binary object consisting of two conjoined pancake-shaped lobes which resemble a half-melted snowman. Ultima Thule lies four billion miles away from Earth in the Kuiper belt, the ring of rocky and icy asteroids just past Neptune. NASA’s New Horizon spacecraft has been studying Ultima Thule since late 2018, and the mission marks the first ever study of a planetesimal, a half-formed object leftover from the era of planetary formation.
Ultima Thule gets its name from a Latin term which refers to the most distant place beyond the borders of the known world – but unfortunately that same term was used by the Nazis to refer to the mythical homeland of the Aryan race in all of that weird Nazi mythology. Whoops. Despite the somewhat controversial name, the object offers astronomers the chance to study a truly unique and mysterious object right here in our own Solar System, just a few billion miles away. We’re practically neighbors!
Ultima Thule
Ultima Thule is about 22 miles long and has two distinctly differently shaped lobes, or bodies, joined at a central ‘neck.’ Just how the two objects came to be conjoined in such a way is a mystery, but it likely happened as many other planetesimals were crashing together on their way to becoming a planet. For some reason, these two bodies didn’t make the final cut and were likely ejected from that burgeoning planet’s gravity and left adrift in the cold blackness of space some time in the cosmic past.
“We’re looking into the well-preserved remnants of the ancient past,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator and rock star astronomer Alan Stern in a press release. “There is no doubt that the discoveries made about Ultima Thule are going to advance theories of solar system formation.”
Composite image of Ultima Thule
In their new publication in Science, the New Horizons team disclosed some of their initial findings about Ultima Thule and discussed the features they are continuing to study. Already, they have discovered that Ultima Thule is a rocky, reddish object lined with hills, pits, and craters and the reddish color is believed to come from methanol, water ice, and organic molecules on Ultima Thule’s surface, a rare discovery if confirmed. NASA will continue its flyby of Ultima Thule until 2020.
According to one version of the panspermia hypothesis, organic molecules hitching rides on objects like Ultima Thule could be the ‘seed’ which spreads life throughout the universe. Could the molecules lurking on Ultima Thule hold the keys to life itself? All it takes a few nuggets of carbon, a few chunks of hydrogen, throw some oxygen in there, mix in a pinch of nitrogen, add calcium and phosphorus to taste, crash it all into a volatile oxygen-rich planet, wait a few billion years and boom: Big Macs, Facebook, and Boeing 737s. The universe is a weird place.
Where will Ultima Thule ultimately end up? Will their reality TV be as miserable as ours?
An interesting story has been making the rounds about an alleged never-before-detected underground base near Area 51picked up on a Zoom.Earth satellite map. It’s Area 51 so it certainly is a plausible idea. Even more interesting was the rapid rebuttal by another website which revealed what this huge expanse of puzzling ground surface actually is – a giant art project! Really!
“I found something in Area 51 that appears to be a newly-built underground base. But why would the US government need another underground base there? I’m not using Google Maps, because they block out a lot of stuff. Look at this facility, it is really quite incredible.”
This analysis is part of the audio presented by Scott Waring on a YouTube video associated with his revamped ET Data Basesite (formerly Ufo Sightings Daily). Always controversial for his far-fetched assurances that the photos he posts are actual alien bases, actual alien spacecrafts, actual aliens and the like, the site is entertaining for both his vivid imagination and the occasional tidbit of reality. We have both here with his proposal that this surface anomaly located 55 miles to the north-east of Area 51’s official perimeter is some sort of underground base under construction that, in order to make this idea plausible, is on “private government land.” (Zoom.Earth image) (Google Earth image)
It’s not a base.
But the actual explanation for the anomaly is even better, more imaginative … and real.
“As long as you’re going to make a sculpture, why not make one that competes with a 747, or the Empire State Building, or the Golden Gate Bridge.” – Michael Heizer
If you’re going to think big, artist Michael Heizer would be a great role model. He’s a pioneer of a contemporary form known as Land Art in which he makes massive surface sculptures using earth-moving equipment. Are you figuring this out yet? A few YouTube commenters and Tyler Rogoway at The Drivepointed out that the image in the Zoom.Earth photo is ‘City’ – a project Heizer has been working on since 1972.
“City comprises five phases, each consisting of a number of structures referred to as complexes, and in total measuring approximately a 1/4 mile in width and a 1-1/2 miles in length.”
As described on Heizer’s website,City was inspired in part by Native American traditions of mound-building and the ancient cities of Central and South America. Located in Garden Valley in Nevada’s Lincoln County – the same county where Area 51 resides — it was initially self-funded but is now getting money from multiple foundations and is scheduled to be completed in 2020.
Area 51 looks nothing like art
If you’re looking for a conspiracy associated with City, here’s the closest you’ll get. Garden Valley has long been attractive to the federal government as a location for rail lines connecting secret missile silos or the proposed Yucca Mountain Repository for nuclear waste – acquisitions of land which would have prompted Heizer to put an end to City. However, in 2014, then U.S. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada (of the Pentagon UFO study fame) introduced the “Garden Valley Withdrawal Act” to preserve the land around City. In 2015, a group of top American museums joined together to urge preservation of the area and in that same year, the area became part of the newly-created Basin and Range National Monument, thus protecting it from development – federal, military, alien or otherwise.
Was Harry Reid protecting City or possibly hiding something else? Scott?
The Makhonjwa Mountains in eastern South Africa may end up being one of the most significant locations in the history of our planet. Scientists this week announced the discovery of organic molecules found deep in the Earth inside volcanic sediment from over 3.3 billion years ago. While primordial organic matter is exciting in it’s own right, the origin of this organic matter is what makes it unique. As it turns out, this organic matter comes from outer freakin’ space. Will one of these discoveries one day confirm the panspermia hypothesis?
The panspermia hypothesis posits that life is spread throughout the universe on space dust, meteors, asteroids, comets, and other traveling celestial bodies. According to this hypothesis, life was introduced to Earth after one of these life-bearing objects crashed into the surface of the planet or exploded in the atmosphere like a biological piñata. There is some archaeological and scientific evidence to confirm those theories, with recent discoveries even suggesting cosmic radiation was the ‘spark’ that brought Earth’s organic compounds to life. Now, these latest volcanic rocks dug up in South Africa seem to confirm that panspermia is indeed a possibility by proving that extraterrestrial organic matter indeed came to Earth from space at some point in our past.
“This is the very first time that we have found actual evidence for extraterrestrial carbon in terrestrial rocks,” says astrobiologist Frances Westall from the CNRS Centre for Molecular Biophysics in France. “The organic matter from the carbon-rich meteorites must have been raining down at quite a high rate.”
A study of the organic matter has been published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta for other scientists to review. According to the study, the extraterrestrial compounds likely fell to Earth as part of a micrometeorite swarm which exploded in the atmosphere and mixed with volatile volcanic ash. If confirmed, this discovery may prove to be some of the first evidence we have so-called “soft panspermia” or “molecular panspermia” theories which argue that rather than full-on lifeforms landing on Earth aboard comets, perhaps merely the chemical building blocks landed here and eventually began the reactions that led to abiogenesis.
There are several variations of the panspermia theory, the most popular being lithopanspermia – the theory that organic molecules or organisms embedded into meteorites crashed into Earth and seeded life.
Did life come to Earth from space? Could 3.3 billion year-old volcanic dust contain evidence which might answer that question? Like most scientific discoveries, it could be years before the full ramifications of this recent find are known.
The much anticipated six-part series, “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation” airs on History Channel on May 31st. A joint venture between A&E and UFO mogul Tom DeLonge’s To the Stars, the show promises to blow the doors wide open on the government’s recent examination of the UFO phenomenon. Having the opportunity to see the first episode early, I was also able to sit down with Anthony Lappé, the program’s showrunner and executive producer, to talk about some of the ‘behind the scenes’ moments which led to the creation of this project. Please note that this review DOES contain ‘Spoilers.’
The show opens with the audience meeting a former Pentagon staffer and intelligence agent, Luis Elizondo, who left his position in US intelligence to pursue the UFO enigma full time. We learn more about some of his background, as well as the now famous Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP. We also learn about “the team,” the small collection of experts put together by Tom DeLonge and To the Stars Academy. This group is comprised of Steve Justice, Chris Mellon, and Hal Puthoff. Leading this band is Luis Elizondo and DeLonge himself.
Lappé explained that this team is what really makes the show compelling. He stated,
“What we really try to do with this show was to turn the UFO genre on its head. We almost never say the word ‘alien’ in in the show. We’re really just trying to look at it from a really hard journalistic point of view…And that’s one of the key things that we really try to understand, and that is what’s so fascinating. We have these guys who are from the inside, helping us, guiding us, and introducing us to more people on the inside. I think people, when they see the series, are really going to have a much better understanding of what’s going on inside the military and our government. It’s very complicated. I’ve reported on the military intelligence world many times before, and what people don’t realize is there is no such thing as the US government. There are seventeen intelligence agencies. Everyone has different agendas and information, and especially information like this, it is highly siloed…”
Tom DeLonge
(image: courtesy A&E/Andrew Cagle)
The episode provides a brief explanation of how DeLonge began contacting these individuals but does not go into much detail as to how some of these connections were made. After leaving Blink 182, DeLonge plunges himself into the UFO world full time and begins to form bonds with some very important people. We are left to wonder how he did it, but as George Knapp states in the episode, “he used shoe leather,” made phone calls and knocked on doors. A little awkwardly, the episode poses the question as to whether DeLonge is a pawn in a bigger government intelligence game, and Knapp states that he is not. That entire conversation felt a little forced, but it clearly is meant to address some of DeLonge’s critics and their belief that the musician is another Paul Bennewitz. The episode touches upon the Wikileaks hack where DeLonge’s e-mails to former White House staffer John Podesta became public, Chris Mellon’s work as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, a little about Area 51 and Politico’s Bryan Bender just generally being a cool guy with whom I would like to go for beers with. Maybe he can come to my next UFO-themed viewing party? Open invitation Bryan.
The bulk of the episode, however, deals with the recounting of a specific UFO event, known as the 2004 Nimitz Tic-Tac incident. Luis Elizondo travels to meet with two key witnesses regarding the encounter, retired Navy pilot Commander David Fravor and the (kinda) anonymous female pilot who was Fravor’s wingman during the incident. I won’t go over all the details of the event, and you can read more about it here, but in November of 2004, the USS Nimitz battle group encountered a series of strange unidentified flying objects that resembled forty-foot Tic-Tacs. It is undoubtedly one of the most interesting modern UFO cases to grace the discourse, and the source of the “Flir Video” which was taken by one of the F-18 Super Hornets in the air that day, and features an odd object accelerating quickly off to the left. A retired Top Gun pilot and aviation expert, as well as a retired commercial pilot with 35 years’ experience, turned consultant assess the footage in the episode. Only a week ago, new claims have surfaced full length uncut and higher quality versions of the videos featured in the episode, the “Flir Video” included, not only exist but are in the possession of private citizens.
USS Nimitz
Lappé expressed that the show has a clear objective,
“There is no doubt that this is a real phenomenon. What is it? That is still a gigantic question mark. But I think you won’t be able to watch this series of six episodes and walk away saying this is some weather phenomenon or even an American military test. I think we really put that to bed…”
I asked Lappé about how his personal opinion of the UFO phenomenon has changed as a result of producing this program. He explained,
“It’s definitely changed my life. This is a topic that I had a sort of a mild curiosity about especially when the New York Times article came out…but I never really had any direct evidence to make me believe…but this process of working on it, and it really has less to do with Luis Elizondo and Chris Mellon than it has to do with people like that female wingman pilot…and other pilots that we met. I mean, when you’re sitting in a room with these people who are so credible and have dedicated their lives to serving their country and keeping us safe. And they’re freaked out by it. You can’t help but get freaked out. It definitely changed my life. It really opened my eyes to what’s going on. On a personal level, I had nightmares in the first few months of working on this and meeting these pilots.”
Compared to other UFO documentary programs, this show is definitely one of the better ones. It does not go into the dark and nebulous ideological pit of extraterrestrials or interdimensional beings, at least in the first episode. It spends its time primarily on the cases themselves and doesn’t rely on the alien trope. While hardcore UFO researchers will find nothing startling or new in the first episode, members of the general public will find it quite compelling. We can only hope that this show will provide some more content that has never been seen before by both the public and the UFO research community. With that being said, I know I plan to keep watching.
Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation airs on May 31st on History Channel.
Potential risk of Taurid meteor swarm - 'Harbinger?'- Rogue Fireball near-missed Coast of Australia!
Potential risk of Taurid meteor swarm - 'Harbinger?'- Rogue Fireball near-missed Coast of Australia!
A new study from Western University posits proof to the possibility that an oncoming swarm of meteors – likened to the Loch Ness Monster and Big Foot by some extraterrestrial experts – may indeed pose an existential risk for Earth and its inhabitants this summer. (That's us.)
When considering catalysts for catastrophic collision, there are two main sources Near Earth Objects (NEOs) like asteroids and meteoroids and interlopers from the outer solar system, which are typically comets.
The Taurid swarm is a third potential source of risk that changes the probabilities of possible catastrophic impacts.
An almost catastrophic impact happened last week in Australia when a rogue meteorite has near-missed the coast of Australia, striking the Great Australian Bight with the force of a nuclear bomb.
According to Express.co.uk the incredible meteor lit up the night skies as it passed over the south coast of Australia on Tuesday, May 21.
According to NASA’s Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), the meteor entered the atmosphere at 11.5km per second or 25,724mph.
The meteor then partially broke up and crash landed in the waters of the Great Australian Bight bay some 186 miles (300km) west-southwest of Mount Gambier. Before this happened, however, the fireball released enough energy in the sky to equal a “small nuclear bomb”.
NASA said that the meteor entered the atmosphere with the force of 1.6 kilotons or 1,600 tonnes of TNT, it’s in the range of a small nuclear weapon but because it exploded at an altitude of 31.5 km it didn’t do any damage.
The Moon's Ryder Crater Pyramid And Triangular Spacecraft, UFO Sighting News.
The Moon's Ryder Crater Pyramid And Triangular Spacecraft, UFO Sighting News.
This is a post by the late great Streetcap1, a friend of mine that became famous on my site and then died mysteriously after doing an intervene with a beautiful Russian news caster that had also been trying to contact me. I wanted him against it, but he let them into his house. A few months later...the family notified me that he had passed of a sudden and unexpected heart attack. She...tried contacting me again for a sixth time a few days ago. It gave me shivers. Its been 11 months since he passed and I have to say the UFO community is feeling it. Scott C. Waring Streetcap1 states:
I am convinced that at one time the Moon had an Intelligent Civilization. Something happened to wipe out that Society. Some evidence remains as a testimony to these people who were perhaps destroyed by some awful disaster. SC1.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
UFOs Caught In Slow Motion Over Arizona Mountains, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFOs Caught In Slow Motion Over Arizona Mountains, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: April 16, 2019 Location of sighting: Estrella Mountains, Arizona, USA Here is a video by Youtuber UFOmania. He got a report sent into him of a UFO shooting in front of a low mountain ridge in Arizona. The disk is very flat and long. Its not a perfect circle, but more like a diamond shape. The original poster of the video, Preach Zona says says its a slowed down video showing two UFOs coming down out of the sky over Arizona. Both videos below. UFOmania has a great close up of it. Scott C. Waring
Two UFOs Cloaked In Clouds During Sunset In Spain, May 29, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Two UFOs Cloaked In Clouds During Sunset In Spain, May 29, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 29, 2019
Location of sighting:Puerto Veneciam, Spain
These two UFO cloud photos were sent into me today by email. The eyewitness said that the shape of the cloud appears to be two disks, one big and one small in front of it. That they hovered over the area very slowly for about half an hour during sunset.
He's right, if you look closely you can see a smaller cloud ring attached to the larger one. Its very possible that this is two UFOs that made a cloud around its and sunset lit it up like a roman candle blowing their cover.
You see alien are out there and they want to study us. Why? Most alien species are so old, so ancient that their past history at our level was long forgotten billions of years ago. You know how books confuse history even after a few decades...so imagine writing a history book about what happened a billion years ago at the birth of your people on the planet. Yeah...thats a bit hard. The study, they learn, and knowledge is move valuable to them than anything. So...they study us. Now the real question is...did they create us to study us? Are we all just an experiment?
Like most planets in our solar system, the Earth has its own magnetic field. Thanks to its largely molten iron core, our planet is in fact a bit like a bar magnet. It has a north and south magnetic pole, separate from the geographic poles, with a field connecting the two. This field protects our planet from radiation and is responsible for creating the northern and southern lights – spectacular events that are only visible near the magnetic poles.
However, with reports that the magnetic north pole has started moving swiftly at 50km (31 miles) per year – and may soon be over Siberia – it has long been unclear whether the northern lights will move too. Now a new study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, has come up with an answer.
Our planetary magnetic field has many advantages. For over 2,000 years, travellers have been able to use it to navigate across the globe. Some animals even seem to be able to find their way thanks to the magnetic field. But, more importantly than that, our geomagnetic field helps protect all life on Earth.
Earth’s magnetic field extends hundreds of thousands of kilometers out from the center of our planet – stretching right out into interplanetary space, forming what scientists call a “magnetosphere”. This magnetosphere helps to deflect solar radiation and cosmic rays, preventing the destruction of our atmosphere. This protective magnetic bubble isn’t perfect though, and some solar matter and energy can transfer into our magnetosphere. As it is then funneled into the poles by the field, it results in the spectacular displays of the northern lights.
A wandering pole
Since Earth’s magnetic field is created by its moving, molten iron core, its poles aren’t stationary and they wander independently of one another. In fact, since its first formal discovery in 1831, the north magnetic pole has travelled over 1,240 miles (2,000 km) from the Boothia Peninsula in the far north of Canada to high in the Arctic Sea. This wandering has generally been quite slow, around 9km (6 mi) a year, allowing scientists to easily keep track of its position. But since the turn of the century, this speed has increased to 30 miles (50 km) a year. The south magnetic pole is also moving, though at a much slower rate (6-9 miles, or 10-15 km a year).
This rapid wandering of the north magnetic pole has caused some problems for scientists and navigators alike. Computer models of where the north magnetic pole might be in the future have become seriously outdated, making accurate compass-based navigation difficult. Although GPS does work, it can sometimes be unreliable in the polar regions. In fact, the pole is moving so quickly that scientists responsible for mapping the Earth’s magnetic field were recently forced to update their model much earlier than expected.
Will the aurora move?
The aurora generally form in an oval about the magnetic poles, and so if those poles move, it stands to reason that the aurora might too. With predictions suggesting that the north pole will soon be approaching northern Siberia, what effect might that have on the aurora?
The northern lights are currently mostly visible from northern Europe, Canada and the northern U.S. If, however, they shifted north, across the geographic pole, following the north magnetic pole, then that could well change. Instead, the northern lights would become more visible from Siberia and northern Russia and less visible from the much more densely populated U.S./Canadian border.
Fortunately, for those aurora hunters in the northern hemisphere, it seems as though this might not actually be the case. A recent study made a computer model of the aurora and the Earth’s magnetic poles based on data dating back to 1965. It showed that rather than following the magnetic poles, the aurora follows the “geomagnetic poles” instead. There’s only a small difference between these two types of poles – but it’s an important one.
Magnetic versus geomagnetic poles.
Image via Wikipedia.
The magnetic poles are the points on the Earth’s surface where a compass needle points downwards or upwards, vertically. They aren’t necessarily connected and drawing a line between these points, through the Earth, would not necessarily cross its center. Therefore, to make better models over time, scientists assume that the Earth is like a bar magnet at its center, creating poles that are exactly opposite each other – “antipodal”. This means that if we drew a line between these points, the line would cross directly through the Earth’s center. At the points where that line crosses the Earth’s surface, we have the geomagnetic poles.
Positions of the north magnetic pole (red) and the geomagnetic pole (blue) between 1900 and 2020.
The geomagnetic poles are a kind of reliable, averaged out version of the magnetic poles, which move erratically all the time. Because of that, it turns out they aren’t moving anywhere near as fast as the magnetic north pole is. And since the aurora seems to follow the more averaged version of the magnetic field, it means that the northern lights aren’t moving that fast either. It seems as though the aurora are staying where they are – at least for now.
We already know that the magnetic pole moves. Both poles have wandered ever since the Earth existed. In fact, the poles even flip over, with north becoming south and south becoming north. These magnetic reversals have occurred throughout history, every 450,000 years or so on average. The last reversal occurred 780,000 years ago meaning we could be due for a reversal soon.
So rest assured that a wandering pole, even a fast one, shouldn’t cause too many problems – except for those scientists whose job it is to model it.
Batman Existed in Mesoamerican Mythology and His Name Was Camazotz
Batman Existed in Mesoamerican Mythology and His Name Was Camazotz
As social media is abuzz with who might be cast in the next Batman movie, with concerns that some of the candidates might not be menacing enough to fill those big black boots, it might be time to look again at one of the bat figures that featured as an imposing power in Mesoamerican mythology – Camazotz.
Camazotz, (meaning ‘death bat’ in the Kʼiche’ Mayan language of Guatemala) originated deep in Mesoamerican mythology as a dangerous cave-dwelling bat creature. A cult following for the creature began amongst the Zapotec Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico and the figure was later adopted into the pantheon of the Maya Quiche tribe and the legends of the bat god were later recorded in Maya literature.
Bats are considered to be menacing creatures in many cultures. They are nocturnal and thus associated with the night, which is also often associated with death. Many common species also have a relatively bizarre appearance, which makes them all the more off-putting for humans. It doesn’t help that there is a species that actually sucks blood (the vampire bat, Desmodus Rotundus ).
In the Maya culture , the bat god Camazotz is linked to death. Camazotz is also the name of a monstrous creature which inhabited a cave called “the house of bats” in the Popol Vuh . Most scholars believe that Camazotz was inspired by the common vampire bat, but others have suggested that it was based on a giant vampire bat that (probably) went extinct sometime during the Pleistocene or Holocene periods.
In the Popol Vuh , an ancient Mayan mythological text, Zotzilaha was the name of a cave inhabited by the Camazotz, a monster with a roughly humanoid body, the head of a bat, and a nose that resembled a flint knife. The monster was said to attack victims by the neck and decapitate them. In the Popol Vuh , it is recorded that this creature decapitated the Maya hero Hunahpu. Camazotz is also one of the four animal demons responsible for wiping out mankind during the age of the first sun.
Bat-like demons and monsters are common in South America and Central America. Another example of such a story is the Chonchon in Peru and Chile, which is thought to be created when a sorcerer, known as a kaku, performs a magical rite causing his severed head to sprout giant ears and talons at death. The giant ears become wings.
This ubiquity of giant bat monster legends leads many archaeologists to propose that the monsters have a basis in encounters with a real animal - such as the vampire bat. The vampire bat is favored because of its historical association with bloodletting and sacrifice. It is, however, possible that the legends could be derived from a giant bat that was present during the Pleistocene or early Holocene – one which may still exist today.
In 1988, a fossil of a vampire bat was discovered in the Mongas province of Venezuela. The bat was larger than the modern vampire bat by 25% and was dubbed Desmodus Draculae . It is more popularly known as the giant vampire bat.
Sites containing examples of it have been found in the Yucatan, Belize, northern Brazil, and Venezuela. In 2000, a tooth from D. Draculae was found in Argentina - much farther south of the modern range of the Desmodus genus. It is difficult to date exactly when D. Draculae went extinct, or if it went extinct at all. All of the sites have been dated so far to between the Late Pleistocene and Late Holocene.
The latest age found for a D. Draculae site is 300 BP (circa 1650 AD). The latest age in central America is hard to ascertain, but it is probably either Late Pleistocene or Holocene. These dates make it very possible that D. Draculae coexisted with humans in South America and Central America, and humans could have come into contact with D. Draculae, though towards the Late Holocene they would have been vanishingly rare.
D. Draculae Sightings
In addition to this evidence, there have been mysterious sightings of giant bats or bat-like creatures. One of the earliest sightings dates to 1947 when J. Harrison claimed to have seen several large flying creatures which were described as giant bats (though some people also claimed that they were living pterosaurs).
In the early 1950s, a Brazilian couple claimed that they encountered a bat-like creature in the same valley that fossils of D. Draculae were discovered in Brazil. Another incident occurred in 1975 when an outbreak of animal mutilations hit Puerto Rico. A farmer said that he was repeatedly attack by two grey bird-like creatures. These creatures were also seen by others throughout the mutilation outbreak. Another sighting occurred in the mid-1970s in Texas, when a farmer asserted that he had encountered bald bat or pterosaur-like creatures with short beaks and gorilla-like faces. Three toed prints of this creature were also said to have been found.
The common vampire bat, D. Rotundus has an eight-inch (20.32 cm) wingspan. Since D. Draculae was 25% larger, it would have required more blood and probably would have attacked larger animals - and possibly even humans. It is undoubtable that an attack by a rare giant bat would give rise to legends of supernatural monsters.
Comparisons of the fossil skulls of Desmodus draculae (left) with the Common Vampire Bat, Desmodus rotundus .
(Illustrations by Jan Freedman , based on the Figures in Morgan et al. 1988)
Despite the tantalizing fossil evidence, and the strange stories about encounters with giant bats, there isn’t any indisputable evidence at the moment that D. Draculae was common enough to be encountered by ancient inhabitants of South America and Central America on a regular basis, or that the giant vampire bat is still alive today and could thus be the creature reported in giant bat sightings.
Nonetheless, the fact that the fossil evidence suggests that D. Draculae may have coexisted with humans for thousands of years in the Americas and the ubiquitous legends of bat-like monsters all over south and central America does make it a plausible connection.
Top image:Camazotz Maya style Batman suit created by Mexican designer Kimbal, Batman Exhabition, 2015. Source: Kimbal Design
On May 26, 2019, the New York Times published a story about five US Navy pilots reporting UFO sightings in 2014 and 2015 off the coast of Florida. The story cites their descriptions of unknown craft that could fly at hypersonic speeds and hover over the ocean. Their reports were handed off to the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program (AATIP).
The five Navy pilots were interviewed by the New York Times reporters about the UFO sightings that occurred while they were conducting training maneuvers off the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt before deployment to the Middle East. The Times reporters said that due to the 2014 and 2015 sightings, that the Navy upgraded its classified guidance for how pilots are to report UFOs, which now are officially referred to as Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAP).
A video was included of one of the UFO incidents where the pilots could be heard exclaiming: “Wow, what is that, man? Look at it fly!” The video had been released over a year earlier and was the subject of a March 12, 2018, Fox News interview with Luis Elizondo, the former Pentagon official, who headed AATIP from its 2007 up to 2017 when he retired in protest over the lack of support the program was receiving.
In the Times story, the pilots made clear that no known piloted aircraft could perform the UFO’s complex aerial maneuvers:
What was strange, the pilots said, was that the video showed objects accelerating to hypersonic speed, making sudden stops and instantaneous turns — something beyond the physical limits of a human crew.
They speculated that the UFOs might be part of a highly advanced drone program that raised several safety issues due to the possibility of a midair collision. They refused to speculate further about the UFO’s origins. Earlier in April 2019, the Navy issued new guidelines for reporting UFO sightings, and cited safety concerns as a factor for the need to improve the reporting process.
There are several important takeaways from this latest New York Times story that follows a December 16, 2017 story that analyzed similar sightings reported by Navy pilots back in 2004.
The first is that the US Navy is allowing its pilots to go on the public record about UFO sightings that have national security implications. This has effectively reversed a decades-long military policy dating back to 1954 called JANAP 146(C), which forbade military and civilian pilots discussing UFO sightings that were deemed to have national security implications. JANAP 146 referred to possible prosecution under Espionage Laws for unauthorized transmission of UFO sightings reported by military and civilian pilots that fell under the official reporting mechanism established by JANAP.
The second takeaway is that the Pentagon is allowing official military surveillance video to be leaked to the public about a phenomenon which on the surface appears unknown, at least to the pilots witnessing them. It is more than likely, however, that the phenomenon is very well known to the military hierarchy who have sanctioned the leaking of the videos, which it needs to be emphasized are official Navy videos whose unauthorized disclosure carries severe penalties as JANAP 146 makes clear.
Third, the fact that the New York Times has released the story is sending a clear signal to other mainstream media sources that it is OK to discuss UFO sightings and their national security implications. We can, therefore, expect many more mainstream media stories about UFOs/UAPs in the near future as evidenced by multiple news sources immediately reporting on the Times story.
What can be concluded about the mainstream media’s newfound enthusiasm to discuss pilot reports of UFO?
It’s important to emphasize that there is no way the Pentagon would reverse its decades-long policy (JANAP 146) unless it was convinced that it could adequately explain the national security implications of UFO sightings. It’s more than likely the video leaks and pilot interviews are part of an official disclosure process of advanced aerospace technologies that are well known to US military leaders.
The Pentagon is slowly educating the public about advanced technologies it has secretly developed. There is abundant and compelling evidence that both the USAF and US Navy have developed secret space programs that utilize the kind of advanced aerospace technologies witnessed by the Navy pilots in the 2014/2015 and 2004 incidents.
It is most likely, however, that the US Air Force’s arsenal of advanced aerospace technologies will be the first secret space program that is to be revealed given the abundance of evidence proving its existence as I have documented in the US Air Force Secret Space Program. While the Navy program focused on deep space operations, the Air Force focused on near Earth operations and its craft deployed technologies that will be easier to explain as human engineered.
It will help the unfolding UFO disclosure narrative greatly if US Navy pilots are bewildered by the advanced technologies they are witnessing, thereby pointing to such technologies belonging to another military service. This will deflect attention away from the Navy SSP to the Air Force’s SSP.
It’s becoming very clear that the Pentagon has decided to move forward with preparing the general public for future announcements of advanced aerospace technologies that have been secretly developed in highly classified programs. This will be used to explain the origins of many UFO sightings over the decades, including those witnessed by military pilots that were studied by AATIP. I for one, don’t believe all UFO sightings can be explained as terrestrially developed advanced technologies, but certainly a great many are.
The advanced aerospace technologies secretly developed by the Air Force, as I explain in the US Air Force Secret Space Program, will be gradually disclosed with the official launch of Space Force, which is part of a long term strategic plan to eventually disclose and merge all advanced aerospace technologies developed by different branches of the US military. In the meantime, to get more information about AATIP and multiple military pilot reports of UFOs since 2007, you can tune in this Friday to the official launch of the History Channel’s, “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation”.
US Navy orders laser cannon to be mounted on active warship within a year
US Navy orders laser cannon to be mounted on active warship within a year
A fully operational laser cannon is about to be fitted to a US destroyer. It will be the first time such a weapon will be carried by an active warship.
Jamie Seidel
It’s big. It’s bright. It’s dangerous. And it will go to sea on a front-line warship for the first time before 2021. The US Navy has announced it has ordered Lockheed Martin to fit a High Energy Laser Integrated Optical weapon with Surveillance (HELIOS) aboard a destroyer in its Pacific fleet.
The 60-kilowatt laser cannon is capable of burning holes in boats and melting vital components on drones. Ultimately, it’s hoped the defensive weapon will be able to sear incoming hypersonic missiles out of the sky.
The US Navy has placed a $US150 million order for two of the devices.
But Russia is already rolling out a similar system to defend its ground-based installations.
Artist’s rendering of Lockheed Martin’s HELIOS system.
Picture: Lockheed MartinSource:Supplied
ALL ABOARD
“We are going to burn the boats if you will and move forward with this technology,” Rear Admiral Ron Boxall told the 2019 Directed Energy Summit.
One laser cannon will be installed at the White Sands Missile Range for testing, Lockheed Martin says. The other will be installed upon a modern Flight IIA Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer.
“The HELIOS program is the first of its kind, and brings together laser weapon, long-range ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) and counter-UAS (Unmanned Aerial System) capabilities, dramatically increasing the situational awareness and layered defence options available to the US Navy,” says Lockheed Martin spokesman Michele Evans.
The challenge will be getting it to work in harmony with all the other sensors and weapons systems attached to the destroyer’s complex AEGIS computer network.
“The problem I have today is the integration of that system into my existing combat system. If I’m going to burn the boats, I’m going to replace something I have today with that system doing that mission with these weapons,” Admiral Boxall said.
“If I have this system that can kill and I have a system that can actually sense, then I have to make sure it integrates with the other things I have on my ship that can sense and kill, namely the Aegis weapon system.”
It’s not the first time the US Navy has sent a laser weapon to sea.
It did so with the USS Ponce, amphibious transport ship converted to test new technologies, in 2014. Named LaWS (Laser Weapon System), that experimental cannon had only one third the strength of the new device.
HELIOS, however, is hoped to meet a new generation of threats.
A group of Arleigh Burke Class Destroyers fire missiles during a training exercise. One of these ships will soon be fitted with the world's first operational laser cannon to go to sea.
Picture: US Navy Source:Supplied
BABY STEPS
It’s hoped HELIOS will be fast enough and strong enough to cripple swarms of armed speedboats, such as those used by Iran in the Persian Gulf.
It’s also hoped it will be accurate enough to counter swarms of cheap drones — whether through the raw power of its laser or its ability to ‘dazzle’ some sensors.
These capabilities are nothing new. Current generation automatic Phalanx gattling-guns and Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) systems do the same thing.
It’s just that it takes time to reload these defensive weapons, and only limited stocks of ammunition can be carried. A Phalanx can only fire for a total of 20 seconds before it is emptied. And RAM launchers only come with 21 missiles each.
What both RAM and Phalanx can do that the HELIOS can’t is shoot down attacking cruise missiles.
Nevertheless, facing a threat potentially involving hundreds of cheap drones and dozens of small attack boats, the US Navy finds the ability for HELIOS to be recharged any number of times by the ship’s own engines appealing.
And it hopes ongoing development of the laser will soon give it an antimissile capability.
A third, less defined, feature of HELIOS is an ability to provide long-range surveillance. This may involve the weapon’s new targeting system, or a digital scan mode for the laser itself.
Russia's Peresvet laser cannon unfolds from the back of a truck. It is believed to be an area-defence weapon, similar to the US Navy's HELIOS system.
Picture: Russian Ministry of Defence Source:Supplied
RUSSIA’S LASER CANNON
One of President Vladimir Putin’s six new ‘superweapons’ announced a year ago is now rolling out into active service.
It’s called Peresvet. It’s a truck-mounted laser cannon probably intended to defend an area from hostile drones and missiles.
Exactly what it is capable of is unknown.
But Moscow is hyping its new weapon, releasing a series of videos and reports on the advanced technology.
“Peresvet laser systems, based on new physical principles, entered combat service in [a] testing regime with the Russian armed forces,” the Russian Defence Ministry’s news service said in December.
In 2021, the USS Preble, a destroyer operating out of the Pearl Harbor naval base, will be equipped with the HELIOS, according to The Honolulu Star-Advertiser — and the weapon will become the Navy’s go-to system for disabling any inbound cruise missiles launched by China and Russia.
Infinite Ammo
Right now, the Navy uses a Gatling gun called the Phalanx to shoot down missiles or drones, per The Honolulu. With a new laser system, the Navy hopes to improve its anti-drone and anti-missile capabilities.
“We are making the decision to put the laser on our [destroyers],” Ronald Buxall, the Navy’s director of surface warfare, told Defense News. “It’s going to start with Preble in 2021, and when we do that, that will now be her close-in weapon that we now continue to upgrade.”
Room For Improvement
Lockheed Martin, the company that developed the laser weapon, demonstrated that a 10-kilowatt laser can destroy drones and 30 kilowatts is enough to disable a truck, according to the newspaper.
The HELIOS system that will be attached to the USS Preble can fire at 60 kilowatts, according to The Honolulu, and the Navy expects to upgrade it to 150 kilowatts of power.
Scientists have found a new way that future Mars explorers could potentially generate their own oxygen.
Mars is a long way from Earth, so being able to create breathable air on-site would save money and effort in having to haul oxygen all the way from our own planet.
A research team discovered this new oxygen-generating reaction by studying comets. Most of these small icy worlds originate in a distant area of the solar system known as the Oort Cloud, far beyond the orbit of Neptune. If a comet's orbit brings it close to the sun, heat begins pushing cometary ice off into space. This reaction produces long tails that can stretch for thousands of miles.
A team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena found a new way to explain how comets generate molecular oxygen, the two atoms of oxygen that come together to form breathable air.
One already-known method is through kinetic energy. A sublimating comet is a busy environment, where the solar wind (the constant stream of particles emanating from the sun) can push floating water molecules into the comet's surface at high speed. If there are oxygen-containing compounds on the surface, careening water molecules can rip oxygen atoms off and produce molecular oxygen.
Molecular oxygen can also be produced through carbon dioxide reactions, the team found. (Carbon dioxide contains a single carbon atom and two oxygen atoms.) Former Caltech postdoctoral fellow Yunxi Yao and current Caltech chemical engineering professor Konstantinos Giapis simulated this reaction by crashing carbon dioxide into gold foil. Since gold foil cannot be oxidized, by itself it should not produce any molecular oxygen. But when carbon dioxide careens into the foil at high speed, the gold surface emits molecular oxygen.
Diagram showing how carbon dioxide can be converted into molecular oxygen inside a reactor.
"This meant that both atoms of oxygen come from the same CO2 [carbon dioxide] molecule, effectively splitting it in an extraordinary manner," Caltech representatives said in a statement.
To better understand how carbon dioxide can break down into molecular oxygen, Caltech chemistry professor Tom Miller and postdoctoral fellow Philip Shushkov created a computer simulation.
One challenge in modeling the reaction is that the reacting molecules are very "excited," meaning they vibrate and rotate in a complex way, the researchers said.
"In general, excited molecules can lead to unusual chemistry, so we started with that," Miller said in the statement. "But, to our surprise, the excited state did not create molecular oxygen. Instead, the molecule decomposed into other products."
Rather, the scientists discovered that extremely "bent" carbon dioxide molecules — those with an unusual geometry — can be created without exciting the carbon dioxide. This in turn would produce oxygen.
When Yao and Giapis smashed the carbon dioxide molecules into gold foil, they electrically charged the individual carbon dioxide molecules and then accelerated them using an electric field. However, Giapis said the reaction could take place at a slower speed as well, which could account for why there is some oxygen floating high in the Martian atmosphere.
"You could throw a stone with enough velocity at some CO2 [carbon dioxide] and achieve the same thing," he said in the statement. "It would need to be traveling about as fast as a comet or asteroid travels through space."
Before, scientists thought that Mars' tiny concentration of atmospheric oxygen is probably generated after ultraviolet light from the sun hits carbon dioxide molecules in the Red Planet's air. Giapis theorizes, however, that Martian oxygen could also be generated when dust particles, accelerated to high speed in the atmosphere, crash into molecules of carbon dioxide.
The reactor Giapis used is very low-yield, generating only one or two oxygen molecules for every 100 carbon dioxide molecules careening through the accelerator. Giapis said, however, that perhaps his reactor could be modified one day to create breathable air for astronauts on Mars. And on Earth, the reactor may be useful to pull carbon dioxide (which is also a potent greenhouse gas, and the main driver of global warming) out of the atmosphere and convert it into oxygen.
"Is it a final device? No. Is it a device that can solve the problem with Mars? No," he said. "But it is a device that can do something that is very hard. We are doing some crazy things with this reactor."
A paper based on the research, led by Yao, was published last week in the journal Nature Communications.
By the way, NASA is about to give oxygen-generating tech a test run on Mars. A technology demonstrator called MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In situ resource utilization Experiment) will fly aboard the agency's 2020 Mars rover, which is scheduled to launch next summer and land on the Red Planet in February 2021. MOXIE will split atmospheric carbon dioxide electrochemically, and NASA wants to see if the method could be scaled up to help support people on the Red Planet.
A new computer model confirms that the warming Arctic produces strong winds and extreme weather in the northern hemisphere, where 90% of Earth’s population is living.
Clouds along a jet stream over Canada.
Image credits: NASA.
We often talk about climate change as if it’s a uniform thing, but the planetary average is not representative of all the places on Earth. Since 1901, the planet’s surface has warmed by 0.7–0.9° Celsius, but the Arctic area has warmed up almost twice as much, and Alaska and western Canada’s temperatures have risen by 3 to 4 °C.
At first glance, you might think that’s a good thing. After all, very few people live in the Arctic, and its ecosystem also isn’t particularly rich. However, what’s happening in the Arctic can have cascading effects on the rest of the planet. For instance, it means that snow and ice will melt at an accelerated pace, giving way to darker soil and water, which absorb even more solar energy and create a warming feedback loop. Melting ice also causes sea level rise, as well as the release of methane trapped in the Arctic permafrost. Also, a warming Arctic can mess up the global wind circulation, particularly something called the jet stream.
Jet streamsare fast flowing, narrow, meandering air currents, typically marking the boundary between the cold polar air and the warmer air mass to the south. For decades, researchers have tried to assess the impact that climate change has on the Arctic jet stream, and the cascading effects this impact will have on local weather in the northern hemisphere.
Depiction of the polar jet stream, can travel at speeds greater than 180 km/h (110 mph). Higher wind speeds colored in red.4 Image credits: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.
In recent years, wind data shows that these jet streams increasingly faltering. They are also changing course, being less often parallel on the Equator, and instead, sweeping across different areas of the northern hemisphere. This does not only cause strong winds locally, but also injects cold Arctic air into lower latitudes, as was the case with the extreme coldthat struck the Midwest of the USA in late January 2019. At the same time, a weakened jet stream can lead to prolonged heatwaves and drought, as was experienced in Europe in 2015 and 2018. In other words, although some politicians seem to have difficulties grasping this concept, climate change altering the jet stream can produce more extreme weather — both cold and warm.
However, while the general principle was clear, the observations did not exactly fit the existing climate models — until now. The breakthrough came when researchers incorporated ozone chemistry into their model using a new machine learning algorithm. When this was added to existing models, the results fit the observations perfectly.
“We’ve developed a machine learning algorithm that allows us to represent the ozone layer as an interactive element in the model, and in so doing, to reflect the interactions from the stratosphere and ozone layer,” says first author and atmospheric researcher Erik Romanowsky. “With the new model system we can now realistically reproduce the observed changes in the jet stream.”
The reason why ozone is important is that sea-ice retreat creates an area of ozone-amplified warming in the polar stratosphere. This warming is counterbalancing the frigid temperatures which act as the engine of the jet stream, essentially weakening these air currents.
In turn, this indicates that it’s not just the warming directly, but the loss of sea ice that’s causing changes in the jet stream.
“Our study shows that the changes in the jet stream are at least partly due to the loss of Arctic sea ice. If the ice cover continues to dwindle, we believe that both the frequency and intensity of the extreme weather events previously observed in the middle latitudes will increase,” says Prof Markus Rex, also an author of the study. “In addition, our findings confirm that the more frequently occurring cold phases in winter in the USA, Europe and Asia are by no means a contradiction to global warming; rather, they are a part of anthropogenic climate change.”
The study also represents an important technological achievement — the use of machine learning to substantially improve climate models and improve our understanding on the planet we live on.
Journal Reference: Romanowsky et al. The role of stratospheric ozone for Arctic-midlatitude linkages. Scientific Reports, 2019; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-43823-1
Mysterious gassy 'Forbidden Planet' discovered 920 light years from Earth shouldn't exist so close to its host star as its 1,832°F atmosphere should have burned away, experts say
Mysterious gassy 'Forbidden Planet' discovered 920 light years from Earth shouldn't exist so close to its host star as its 1,832°F atmosphere should have burned away, experts say
'Forbidden' is the moniker for the planet known formally as NGTs-4B
Is 3 times the size of Earth, 20 times the mass and found 920 light years away
Atmosphere is hotter than Mercury with temperatures exceeding 1,000°C
Found in a 'Neptunian Desert' which is a region around a star where Neptune-sized planets were thought not to exist
A gaseous planet roughly the size of Neptune which was recently discovered is being cited as an astrological anomaly because it shouldn't exist.
NGTS-4B, dubbed the 'Forbidden planet', was found in a region referred to as a celestial 'desert' 920 light years from Earth.
The planet has a surface temperature of 1,800°C and defies all previous research by existing so close to its star that its atmosphere should have evaporated.
This wasteland around a star caused by immense levels of radiation was thought to create a swath of space devoid of any gassy planets.
But 'Forbidden' has been spotted in the middle of this zone orbiting every 1.3 days around a star 920 light years away from Earth.
Scroll down for video
NGTS-4B, dubbed the 'Forbidden planet' (artist's impression, pictured), defies all previous research by existing close so close to its star that its atmosphere should have evaporated
The Neptunian planet, known formally as NGTs-4b, was found by telescopes run by the University of Warwick in an international collaboration of astronomers.
It is 20 per cent smaller than Neptune, about three times the size of Earth and has a surface temperature of more than 1,000°C (1.800°F) - hotter than Mercury.
Nick-named 'The Forbidden Planet' by researchers it orbits around the star in only 1.3 days and is the first exoplanet of its kind to have been found in the Neptunian Desert.
It was thought a large planet the size of NGTs-4b would not be sustainable this close to a host star as the immense radiation would cause the gases to evaporate and disappear, leaving just a rocky core behind.
Researchers at the University of Warwick are unsure why the planet defies logic and exists in its current location.
WHAT IS A 'NEPTUNIAN DESERT'?
The Neptunian Desert is the region close to stars where no Neptune-sized planets are found.
This area receives strong irradiation from the star, meaning the planets do not retain their gaseous atmosphere as they evaporate leaving just a rocky core.
However NGTS-4b still has its atmosphere of gas.
They speculate the planet either wandered to its current position recently - within the last million years or so - or it was previously even larger than its current girth and the atmosphere is still evaporating.
Experts discovered it when it orbited in front of the star and caused its brightness to dip by just 0.2 per cent.
Dr Richard West, from the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick comments: 'This planet must be tough - it is right in the zone where we expected Neptune-sized planets could not survive.
'It is truly remarkable that we found a transiting planet via a star dimming by less than 0.2 per cent - this has never been done before by telescopes on the ground, and it was great to find after working on this project for a year.
'We are now scouring out data to see if we can see any more planets in the Neptune Desert – perhaps the desert is greener than was once thought.'
WHAT IS NGTS-4B?
It is a planet with a mass 20 times that of Earth.
It is a large planet, with a radius 20 per cent smaller than Neptune - about three times the size of Earth.
Its atmosphere is around 1,000 degrees Celsius.
It orbits around the star in only 1.3 days.
NGTS-4 is about 920 light-years from Earth.
It exists in a so-called 'Neptunian Desert' - a region around a star where Neptune-sized planets were thought not to exist.
This unusual behaviour has led to its nickname of 'Forbidden'.
It was detected by telescopes run by the University of Warwick as it passed in front of its large star, dimming its brightness by just 0.2 per cent.
Astronomers have discovered a Neptune-like exoplanet in an area where it shouldn’t be able to hold its atmosphere together. Pictured: Neptune. Image via Pixabay.
The rogue exoplanet, which comes complete with its very own atmosphere, has been discovered by an international team of researchers, a collaborative effort that included members from the Universities of Warwick, Leicester, Cambridge, and the Queen’s University Belfast, together with Observatoire de Genève, DLR Berlin, and Universidad de Chile.
What’s strange about this planet is that, according to our understanding of astrophysics, it shouldn’t be able to exist on its current orbit — yet, it does. NGTS-4b, also nicknamed ‘The Forbidden Planet’ by its discoverers, is a Neptune-like exoplanet about three times the size of Earth. It orbits its star in what is known as the Neptunian Desert, an area where planets of its ilk cannot remain stable.
The Desert Wanderer
“This planet must be tough — it is right in the zone where we expected Neptune-sized planets could not survive,” says Dr. West, from the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick, first author of the study describing the findings.
“We are now scouring out data to see if we can see any more planets in the Neptune Desert — perhaps the desert is greener than was once thought.”
NGTS-4b has around 20 times the mass of Earth, and is about 4/5ths the size of Neptune. It’s also around 1000 degrees Celsius.
That temperature is the product of how close NGTS-4b orbits around its star — the two are so close that NGTS-4b does a full orbit around it in 1.3 days. To give you a rough comparison, the Earth takes 1 year to move around the Sun. This orbiting time increases proportionally with distance.
Because it’s so close to its host star, NGTS-4b falls into what is known as the Neptunian Desert, which is understandably quite unexpected for a Neptunian planet. This is a region close to stars where no Neptune-sized planets are found. It’s highly irradiated and swept by solar winds, meaning that any planets in this area are stripped of their atmosphere, leaving behind just a hot, rocky core (similar to Mercury). However, NGTS-4b still retains its atmosphere.
The rogue planet was identified through the NGTS (Next-Generation Transit Survey), a ground-based robotic search for exoplanets carried out at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in the heart of the Atacama Desert, Chile. When looking for new planets, astronomers hone their telescopes on a particular star and then wait for a dip in the light it’s putting out. These dips are caused by planets orbiting said star and blocking the light. Usually, only dips of 1% and more are picked up by ground-based searches, but the NGTS telescopes can pick up a dip of just 0.2% — as was the case for NGTS-4b.
“It is truly remarkable that we found a transiting planet via a star dimming by less than 0.2% — this has never been done before by telescopes on the ground, and it was great to find after working on this project for a year.”
Researchers believe the planet may have moved into the Neptunian Desert recently, in the last one million years, or it was very big and the atmosphere is still evaporating.
The paper “NGTS-4b: A sub-Neptune transiting in the desert” has been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Three different source videos bring da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to life.
Credit: Samsung.
Researchers used machine learning to create an amazing AI that can create eerie videos of people talking starting from a single frame — a picture or even a painting. The ‘talking head’ in the videos follows the motions of a source face (a real person), whose facial landmarks are applied to the facial data of the target face. As you can see in the presentation video below, the target face mimics the facial expressions and verbal cues of the source. This is how the authors brought Einstein, Salvador Dalí, and even Mona Lisa to life using only a photograph.
This sort of application of machine learning isn’t new. For some years, researchers have been working on algorithms that generate videos which swap faces. However, this kind of software required a lot of training data in video form (at least a couple of minutes of content) in order to generate a realistic moving face for the source. Other efforts rendered 3D faces from a single picture, but could not generate motion pictures.
Credit: Samsung
Computer engineers at Samsung’s AI Center in Moscow took it to the next level. Their artificial neural network is capable of generating a face that turns, speaks, and can make expressions starting from only a single image of a person’s face. The researchers call this technique “single-shot learning”. Of course, the end result looks plainly doctored, but the life-like quality increases dramatically when the algorithm is trained with more images or frames.
Credit: Samsung.
The authors also employed Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) — deep neural net architectures comprised of two nets, pitting one against the other. Basically, each model tries to outsmart the other by creating the appearance of something “real”. This competition promotes a higher level of realism.
If you pay close attention to the outputted faces, you’ll notice that they’re not perfect. There are artifacts and weird bugs that call out the fakeness. That being said this is surely some very impressive work. The next obvious step is making Mona Lisa move her lower body as well. In the future, she might dance for the first time in hundreds of years — or her weird AI avatar, at least.
The work was documented in the preprint server Arxiv.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a regular contributor to PostEverything.
The term “UFO” automatically triggers derision in most quarters of polite society. One of Christopher Buckley’s better satires, “Little Green Men,” is premised on a George F. Will-type pundit thinking that he has been abducted by aliens, with amusing results. UFOs have historically been associated with crackpot ideas like Big Foot or conspiracy theories involving crop circles.
The obvious reason for this is that the term “UFO” is usually assumed to be a synonym for “extraterrestrial life.” If you think about it, this is odd. UFO literally stands for “unidentified flying object.” A UFO is not necessarily an alien from another planet. It is simply a flying object that cannot be explained away through conventional means. Because UFOs are usually brought up only to crack jokes, however, they have been dismissed for decades.
One of the gutsiest working paper presentations I have witnessed was Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall presenting a draft version of “Sovereignty and the UFO.” In that paper, eventually published in the journal Political Theory, Wendt and Duvall argued that state sovereignty as we understand it is anthropocentric, or “constituted and organized by reference to human beings alone.” They argued that the real reason UFOs have been dismissed is because of the existential challenge that they pose for a worldview in which human beings are the most technologically advanced life-forms:
UFOs have never been systematically investigated by science or the state, because it is assumed to be known that none are extraterrestrial. Yet in fact this is not known, which makes the UFO taboo puzzling given the ET possibility.... The puzzle is explained by the functional imperatives of anthropocentric sovereignty, which cannot decide a UFO exception to anthropocentrism while preserving the ability to make such a decision. The UFO can be “known” only by not asking what it is.
When Wendt and Duvall made this argument, there were a lot of titters in the audience. I chuckled, too. Nonetheless, their paper makes a persuasive case that UFOs certainly exist, even if they are not necessarily ETs. For them, the key is that no official authority takes seriously the idea that UFOs can be extraterrestrials. As they note, “considerable work goes into ignoring UFOs, constituting them as objects only of ridicule and scorn.”
In recent years, however, there has been a subtle shift that poses some interesting questions for their argument. For one thing, discussion of actual UFOs has been the topic of some serious mainstream media coverage. There was the December 2017 New York Times story by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean about the Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which was tasked with cataloguing UFOs recorded by military pilots. DoD officials confirmed its existence. Though this story generated some justified skepticism, it represented the first time the U.S. government acknowledged the existence of such a program.
What we know — and don't know — about aliens and UFOs
The Post's Cleve R. Wootson Jr. explains why a recent admission from the government is like pouring kerosene on UFO conspiracy theories.(Video: Monica Akhtar/Photo: Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Then, there were the reports last November about Oumuamua, “a mysterious, cigar-shaped interstellar object [that] fell through our solar system at an extraordinary speed,” according to New York’s Eric Levits. Oumuamua’s shape and trajectory were unusual enough for some genuine astrophysicists to publish a paper suggesting the possibility that it was an artificial construction relying on a solar sail. Again, this prompted skeptical reactions, but even those skeptics could not completely rule out the possibility that extraterrestrial activity was involved.
The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast. Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes, but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.
“These things would be out there all day,” said Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who has been with the Navy for 10 years, and who reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress. “Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”....
No one in the Defense Department is saying that the objects were extraterrestrial, and experts emphasize that earthly explanations can generally be found for such incidents. Lieutenant Graves and four other Navy pilots, who said in interviews with The New York Times that they saw the objects in 2014 and 2015 in training maneuvers from Virginia to Florida off the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, make no assertions of their provenance.
The Times reporters broke new ground by getting pilots on record. What is interesting about this latest news cycle, however, is that DoD officials are not behaving as Wendt and Duvall would predict. Indeed, Politico’s Bryan Bender reported last month that, “The U.S. Navy is drafting new guidelines for pilots and other personnel to report encounters with ‘unidentified aircraft,’ a significant new step in creating a formal process to collect and analyze the unexplained sightings — and destigmatize them.” My Post colleague Deanna Paul followed up by reporting that “Luis Elizondo, a former senior intelligence officer, told The Post that the new Navy guidelines formalized the reporting process, facilitating data-driven analysis while removing the stigma from talking about UFOs, calling it ‘the single greatest decision the Navy has made in decades.’ ”
What appears to be happening is that official organs of the state are now acknowledging that UFOs exist, even if they are not literally using the term. They are doing so because enough pilots are reporting UFOs and near-air collisions so as to warrant better record-keeping. They are not saying that these UFOs are extraterrestrials, but they are trying to destigmatize the reporting of a UFO.
Still, the very fact that this step has been taken somewhat weakens the Wendt and Duvall thesis. This was always a two-step process: (a) Acknowledge that UFOs exist; and (b) Consider that the UFOs might be ETs.
In recent years, the U.S. national security bureaucracy has met the first criterion. What happens to our understanding of the universe if great powers meet that second one?
UFO’s bestaan en iedereen moet daar maar aan wennen. Deze professor houdt rekening met buitenaardse hypothese
UFO’s bestaan en iedereen moet daar maar aan wennen. Deze professor houdt rekening met buitenaardse hypothese
UFO’s zijn niet hetzelfde als buitenaards leven, maar we moeten wel rekening gaan houden met deze mogelijkheid, schrijft professor Daniel W. Drezner van de Tufts University voor de Washington Post.
Er wordt vaak een beetje lacherig gedaan als het gaat om UFO’s, maar Drezner stelt onomwonden: UFO’s bestaan en iedereen moet daar maar aan wennen.
Waarom werden UFO’s lange tijd afgedaan als onzin?
Bedreiging
Drezner verwijst naar een paper van Alexander Wendt en Raymond Duvall waarin wordt gesteld dat het bestaan van UFO’s een bedreiging vormt voor het wereldbeeld waarin mensen de meest geavanceerde levensvormen zijn.
Geen enkele officiële autoriteit neemt het idee dat UFO’s buitenaards kunnen zijn serieus, aldus het tweetal.
Sterker nog: kosten noch moeite werden gespaard om ervoor te zorgen dat het UFO-onderwerp wordt genegeerd en belachelijk gemaakt.
Voor het eerst
Professor Drezner merkt op dat hier de laatste jaren verandering in is gekomen. Eind 2017 onthulde de New York Times bijvoorbeeld dat het Pentagon jarenlang in het geheim onderzoek deed naar UFO’s.
Het was voor het eerst dat de Amerikaanse overheid het bestaan van zo’n programma erkende, aldus Drezner.
Afgelopen november kwam Oumuamua in beeld, een mysterieus, sigaarvormig interstellair object dat volgens sommige wetenschappers een buitenaardse ruimtesonde zou kunnen zijn.
Destigmatiseren
Verder neemt de Amerikaanse marine UFO’s serieus, nu steeds meer legerpiloten onverklaarbare objecten in het luchtruim waarnemen.
“Wat er lijkt te gebeuren is dat officiële agentschappen nu erkennen dat UFO’s bestaan, zelfs al gebruiken ze die term niet,” klinkt het.
“Dat doen ze omdat er genoeg piloten zijn die melding maken van UFO’s,” zegt Drezner. “Ze proberen het melden van UFO’s te destigmatiseren.”
Ik praatte met overleden mensen en heb meerdere UFO’s gezien. Robbie Williams doet boekje open
Foto: Jbanham91 Wikimedia Commons
Ik praatte met overleden mensen en heb meerdere UFO’s gezien. Robbie Williams doet boekje open
Robbie Williams onthult in een interview met The Sun dat hij als kind met overleden mensen praatte. Hij zei verder dat zijn grootste hit tot nu toe, ‘Angels’, gaat over echte engelen.
“Ik was drie, vier, vijf jaar oud en praatte met mensen die gestorven waren,” aldus de zanger. “Ik zag ook UFO’s. Eén kwam zelfs zo dichtbij dat ik er een tennisbal tegenaan kon gooien.”
Williams zei dat hij alles altijd spoken noemde, maar dat niet meer doet omdat hij niet precies weet wat het zijn.
UFO
Hij zei dat hij dingen heeft gezien die hij niet kan verklaren, en die zijn leven in belangrijke mate hebben beïnvloed.
“Het eerste nummer dat ik ooit schreef was ‘Angels’,” zei Williams. “En dat ging over engelen.”
Tijdens het schrijven van zijn nummer ‘Arizona’ in 2009 zag hij naar eigen zeggen een UFO.
Gouden bol
“Ik zat in mijn oude huis en we begonnen het nummer ‘Arizona’ te schrijven,” zei hij. “Dat gaat over een ontvoering door aliens.”
“Ik keek omhoog en zag plotseling een gouden bol in de lucht,” klonk het.
Williams staat bekend om zijn interesse in buitenaards leven. In 2008 dreigde hij nog zijn zangcarrière te beëindigen om fulltime ufoloog te worden.
WAAROM MOGEN PILOTEN NU VRIJUIT PRATEN OVER UFO'S? ( VIDEO )
WAAROM MOGEN PILOTEN NU VRIJUIT PRATEN OVER UFO'S? ( VIDEO )
Tot nog niet zo gek lang geleden hielden de meeste piloten, zowel burger als militaire, hun kaken stijf op elkaar als ze iets vreemds in de lucht zagen.
Nu verschijnt er een uitgebreide reportage in de New York Times waarin Amerikaanse marine piloten vertellen wat ze hebben gezien.
Het begint allemaal eind 2017 als er vanuit de Amerikaanse overheid een aantal video’s wordt vrijgegeven van Amerikaanse marine vliegtuigen die te maken krijgen met onbekende vliegende objecten.
Dat was toen revolutionair, ook al vond de gebeurtenis plaats in 2004, want nog nooit eerder was er in de verste verte ook maar iets bekendgemaakt door de overheid over onbekende niet geïdentificeerde vliegende objecten.
Velen vonden het gebeuren opwindend en eindelijk de eerste stap naar volledige Disclosure.
Anderen maanden tot grote voorzichtigheid en zagen in dat wat er gebeurde meer als een poging tot het langzaam maar zeker bekend gaan maken van de geheime ruimtevloot, zoals wij toen schreven:
Hoe dan ook, het proces van meer openheid over onbekende vliegende objecten zette zich voort en vorige maand schreven wij een artikel over hoe de Amerikaanse marine nu nieuwe procedures heeft ontwikkeld voor het melden van onbekende objecten door piloten.
Dit is alweer een stap in de goede richting en nu deze week verschijnt er een uitgebreid artikel in de New York Times, waarin een aantal marine piloten vertellen over de vrij recente ontmoetingen die ze hebben gehad met onbekende vliegende objecten.
Objecten die manoeuvres uitvoeren die door geen enkel menselijk vliegtuig mogelijk zouden zijn, zoals het versnellen in enkele seconden tot hypersonische snelheden en het maken van onmogelijke bochten.
Zelfs het verhaal over een aantal vliegers die bijna in botsing kwamen met een dergelijk object en hoe deze wel zichtbaar waren op de radar, maar niet met het blote oog. Dit wijst erop dat ze beschikken over een techniek die ze “cloaking” noemen, het onzichtbaar maken.
Het bovenstaande verhaal wordt verder besproken en toegelicht in onderstaande video van Tyler van Secureteam, door Paul Harmans voorzien van een Nederlandse ondertiteling (dank!).
Paul schrijft er het volgende bij:
Het Pentagon heeft niet zo lang geleden nieuwe regels opgesteld waarbinnen militaire piloten met hun UFO-waarneming uit de weg kunnen. Voorheen stond op het publiekelijk bekend maken door militaire piloten van een dergelijke waarneming 10 jaar gevangenisstraf of 10.000 dollar boete of beide! Geen wonder dat je van militaire piloten weinig of niets hoorde betreffende hun ervaringen met het UFO-fenomeen. Dat er duizenden burgerpiloten zijn die wel over hun UFO-waarneming praten (vraag vooral je krantje waarom zij daar nooit aandacht aan besteden!), geeft wel aan dat nagenoeg elke piloot tijdens zijn jarenlange carrière wel een vreemd object, of zelfs meerdere, in de lucht heeft waargenomen. En militaire piloten zullen daar veel intensiever mee geconfronteerd worden, omdat zij erop af worden gestuurd om poolshoogte te nemen en het object te dwingen te landen. Iets dat voor zover bekend nog nooit is gelukt. Wel bekend is dat het in de jaren '50 aan honderden piloten het leven heeft gekost, omdat de UFO zich verweerde door de militaire jet te laten neerstorten.
Nu met de nieuwe regels komen er meer militaire piloten naar buiten met hun waarneming. Het UFO-fenomeen is voornamelijk sinds vorig jaar en dit jaar in een wat beter daglicht komen te staan dankzij de onthulling dat het Pentagon al jaren onderzoek doet naar het fenomeen en het vrijgeven door het Pentagon van een aantal video's van militaire piloten die UFO's achtervolgen en waarbij de UFO duidelijk is te zien en de betreffende piloten hun verhaal mogen doen.
Sceptici blijven tegen beter weten in beweren dat het toch echt uitsluitend gaat om geheime techniek van de overheid en/of verbeelding en grappenmakerij. Maar waarom dergelijke techniek dan zonder medeweten van het leger en de marine opduikt tijdens hun oefeningen en de kans loopt neergeschoten te worden door notabene de eigen troepen, is een vraag die sceptici negeren. Ook het feit dat onderzoekers op het Pentagon toegeven in het duister te tasten omtrent de herkomst van de objecten en bedekt toegeven dat het beslist niet is uitgesloten dat het om een buitenaardse aanwezigheid gaat, dringt tot de harde kern van sceptici niet door, lees: ze willen dat niet weten, ze dienen een macht (de Deep State) die alle kennis en techniek die eventueel aan dit fenomeen valt te onttrekken voor zichzelf wil houden. Sceptici die stomweg geloven dat het Pentagon een miljoenenkostend en jarenlang onderzoeksprogramma opzet om onderzoek te doen naar de herkomst van hun eigen objecten die twee deuren verder in de gang zijn uitgedacht!? Onderzoeken naar het UFO-fenomeen die de Amerikaanse luchtmacht al in de jaren '40 begon en die tot op de dag van vandaag dus nog steeds bestaan, nu onder het beheer van het Pentagon. Overigens is het niet alleen de VS die dat onderzoek in het geheim doet, nagenoeg elke luchtmacht van ieder land doet het, ze willen allemaal een deel van de techniek en kennis bemachtigen.
Bedenk dat het hier beslist kan gaan om kennis en techniek die de hele wereld ten goede kan veranderen. Als UFO's van buitenaardse herkomst zijn, vliegen ze niet op stookolie die je niet verder dan halverwege de maan zal brengen omdat dan de tank al leeg is. Niet met een boordcomputer met daarop windows die al gecrasht is voordat je in een baan om de aarde zit. Niet met een TomTom die je meldt: 'indien mogelijk keren' als je de dampkring nog niet hebt verlaten en niet met een medicijnkistje gevuld met aspirine en pleisters. Ze vliegen dan op een exotische vorm van voortstuwing waarmee de op fossiele brandstoffen gebaseerde aardse wijze van voortbewegen subiet wordt weggevaagd als bekend wordt hoe hun aandrijving werkt. Windows en computers kunnen op de schroothoop als we weten hoe de bemanning van UFO's informatie verwerken. En TomToms die niet weten hoe je een bestemming op lichtjaren afstand moet vinden kunnen bij het grof vuil. Chemische medicijnen met uitsluitend bijwerkingen zullen door een vergevorderde beschaving allang vervangen zijn door een totaal andere vorm van genezen.
Alles waar de aardse Deep State jaarlijks triljoenen dollars aan verdient, staat op het spel als ze toegeven dat het UFO-fenomeen van buitenaardse herkomst is en onze wetenschap er daadwerkelijk serieus onderzoek naar gaat doen. Geen wonder dat de Deep State al sinds de jaren '40 van de vorige eeuw het fenomeen in de doofpot stopt en het bewust belachelijk heeft gemaakt zodat de meeste mensen er ver vandaan blijven, bang om ook uitgelachen te worden. En dat geldt ook voor de gevestigde media, die lopen al aan het handje van de Deep State, maar in het geval van UFO's durven journalisten daar sowieso niet serieus over te schrijven, bang om door collega's voor gek gezet te worden en bang om abonnees te verliezen die ook niet beter weten dan dat UFO's het terrein zijn van compleet van de pot gerukte idioten.
THIS IS NOT “NORMAL”: THERE HAVE BEEN MORE THAN 500 TORNADOES IN THE U.S. DURING THE LAST 30 DAYS
THIS IS NOT “NORMAL”: THERE HAVE BEEN MORE THAN 500 TORNADOES IN THE U.S. DURING THE LAST 30 DAYS
Since 1998, there has been an average of 279 tornadoes during the month of May. So the fact that we have had more than 500 over the last 30 days means that we are running way, way above normal…
The mainstream media has been using the term “uncharted territory” to describe the unusual tornado outbreaks that have been happening in the middle of the country, but I don’t think that truly captures the historic nature of what we are witnessing.
Over the last 30 days, there have been more than 500 tornadoes in the United States. That is not normal. In fact, Tuesday was the 12th day in a row when at least eight tornadoes were spawned, and that is a new all-time record. Community after community in the Midwest now looks like a “war zone”, and billions upon billions of dollars of damage has already been done. But this crisis is far from over, because forecasters are telling us that more powerful storms will roar through the middle of the country on Wednesday.
Since 1998, there has been an average of 279 tornadoes during the month of May. So the fact that we have had more than 500 over the last 30 days means that we are running way, way above normal…
In the last week alone, the authorities have linked tornadoes to at least seven deaths and scores of injuries. Federal government weather forecasters logged preliminary reports of more than 500 tornadoes in a 30-day period— a rare figure, if the reports are ultimately verified — after the start of the year proved mercifully quiet.
The barrage continued Tuesday night, as towns and cities across the Midwest took shelter from powerful storms. Tornadoes carved a line of devastation from eastern Kansas through Missouri, ripping trees and power lines in Lawrence, Kan., southwest of Kansas City, and pulverizing houses in nearby Linwood.
According to the National Weather Service, there were more than 50 tornadoesover Memorial Day weekend alone, and at this point there have been at least 8 tornadoes in the U.S. for 12 consecutive days…
Tuesday was the 12th consecutive day with at least eight tornado reports, breaking the record, according to Dr. Marsh. The storms have drawn their fuel from two sources: a high-pressure area that pulled the Gulf of Mexico’s warm, moist air into the central United States, where it combined with the effects of a trough trapped over the Rockies, which included strong winds.
The devastation that has been left behind by these storms has been immense. When Dayton assistant fire chief Nicholas Hosford appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America”, he told viewers that in his city there are “homes flattened, entire apartment complexes destroyed, businesses throughout our community where walls have collapsed”.
Countless numbers of Americans have had their lives completely turned upside down, and of course the Midwest has already been reeling from unprecedented flooding in recent months.
So far this year, much of the focus has been on the historic flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, but now severe flooding along the Arkansas River is threatening to break all-time records…
Heavy rainfall over the past few weeks is threatening all-time May records and swelling rivers to record levels in parts of Arkansas and Oklahoma.
The National Weather Service in Little Rock, Arkansas, didn’t mince words Sunday, expecting historic, record flooding along the Arkansas River from Toad Suck Reservoir northwest of Little Rock to the Oklahoma border that could have impacts lasting well into the summer.
In fact, USA Today is plainly stating that both states are “bracing for their worst-ever flooding”…
Oklahoma and Arkansas were bracing for their worst-ever flooding as a new wave of storms forecast to roll through the region threatened to further bloat the Arkansas River that already has reached record crests in some areas.
Forecasters reportedtornadoes, high winds, hail and heavy rain across the region on Monday, triggering evacuations and high-water rescues. The storms are the latest to rip through the Midwest over the past two weeks, leaving at least nine dead and a trail of damage from high winds and flooding.
Of course let us not forget what is happening along the Mississippi River either. The flooding has been called “the worst in over 90 years”, and in some parts of the river new records are already being set…
For example, In Vicksburg, Mississippi, the river went above flood stage on Feb. 17, and has remained in flood ever since. The weather service said this is the longest continuous stretch above flood stage since 1927.
In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the Mississippi first rose above flood stage in early January, and has been above that level ever since, the National Weather Service said. If this record-long stretch extends well into June, it would break the record from 1927, according to the Weather Channel.
And farther north, the Mississippi River at the Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois saw its longest stretch above major flood stage ever recorded, even surpassing that of 1927.
None of this is “normal”, and prior to the month of May we had already witnessed the wettest 12 months in all of U.S. history.
Unfortunately, more wet weather is on the way. According to the Weather Channel, another series of very powerful storms will rip through the middle of the country on Wednesday…
Strong to severe thunderstorms are expected through Tuesday night from Iowa to Oklahoma, which may produce areas of locally heavy rain and flash flooding. Some clusters of storms may persist into Wednesday morning in the Ozarks.
Then, another rash of thunderstorms with heavy rain is expected Wednesday and Wednesday night from North Texas into Oklahoma, Arkansas and southern Missouri that could only trigger more flash flooding and aggravate ongoing river flooding.
Weather patterns are going absolutely crazy, and we have never seen a year quite like this in modern American history.
So what is going to happen if weather patterns get even crazier and natural disasters just continue to become even more frequent and even more powerful?
You may want to start thinking about that, because that is exactly what many people believe is going to happen.
Alert! F-15 Eagles Splash Fast-Moving Craft 300 NM Off Florida
Alert! F-15 Eagles Splash Fast-Moving Craft 300 NM Off Florida
5*28*19~ALERT(!)F-15 EAGLES SPLASH FAST-MOVING CRAFT 300 NM OFF FLORIDA(!)
Been expecting a falsey, was this it? Most DEW weapons are invisible to the naked eye, did the satellites show anything? Wonder if the pilot was another ‘secret police’ member with an alternative I.D. Alaka05
The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is an American twin-engine, all-weather tactical fighter aircraft designed by McDonnell Douglas to gain and maintain air supremacy in all aspects of aerial combat. Following reviews of proposals, the United States Air Force selected McDonnell Douglas’ design in 1967 to meet the service’s need for a dedicated air superiority fighter.Wikipedia
Did it crash or did it “submerge” ? You Know low and slow and down under. What was the nature of the debris? Hmm, gotta wonder if it St. Louis should be checking its’ level 4&5 containment labs. Dana M.
After upgrading the radar systems on F/A-18 fighter jets, several Navy pilots operating from the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt began to see unidentified flying objects that appeared to defy the laws of physics.
Between 2014 and 2015, the strange objects – one of them spinning like a top as it traveled against the wind, appeared almost daily in the skies above the East Coast. The crafts had “no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes,“ and “could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds” according to the New York Times.
Lt. Ryan Graves
To be clear, these craft were reported in March of 2018 so this is not a new report, however the accounts of five pilots who witnessed them have never been published until now.
“These things would be out there all day” said Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who has been in the Navy for a decade. Graves reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress.
“Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”
In late 2014, a Super Hornet pilot had a near collision with one of the objects, and an official mishap report was filed. Some of the incidents were videotaped, including one taken by a plane’s camera in early 2015 that shows an object zooming over the ocean waves as pilots question what they are watching.
“Wow, what is that, man?” one exclaims. “Look at it fly!”
“There were a number of different reports,” said Navy spokesman Joseph Gradisher, who said that while some cases could have been commercial drones, in other cases “we don’t know who’s doing this, we don’t have enough data to track this. So the intent of the message to the fleet is to provide updated guidance on reporting procedures for suspected intrusions into our airspace.”
The sightings were reported to the recently acknowledged “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)” which analyzed the radar data, video footage and accounts from senior officers aboard the Roosevelt at the time.
According to military intelligence official Luis Elizondo, who ran the program until resigning in 2017, the sightings are “a striking series of incidents.”
The program, which began in 2007 and was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time, was officially shut down in 2012 when the money dried up, according to the Pentagon. But the Navy recently said it currently investigates military reports of U.F.O.s, and Mr. Elizondo and other participants say the program — parts of it remain classified — has continued in other forms. The program has also studied video that shows a whitish oval object described as a giant Tic Tac, about the size of a commercial plane, encountered by two Navy fighter jets off the coast of San Diego in 2004.
Lieutenant Graves is still at a loss to describe what he saw in the summer of 2014, when he and Lt. Danny Accoin – another Super Hornet pilot, were part of the “Red Rippers” VFA-11 squadron. Operating out of Oceana, VA, they were training for redeployment to the Persian Gulf.
Navy pilots from the VFA-11 “Red Rippers” squadron aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in 2015.
(Photo: Adam Ferguson for The New York Times)
Graves and Accoin spoke on the record to the Times, while three other pilots spoke on condition of anonymity.
It all began following an upgrade from their 1980s-era radars to Raytheon AN/ASQ-228 Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) pods – one of the most advanced imaging devices in use by the military which can locate and designate targets at distances over 40 miles.
One fighter pilot after another began picking up the objects, initially ignoring what they thought were false radar tracks.
“People have seen strange stuff in military aircraft for decades,” said Graves. “We’re doing this very complex mission, to go from 30,000 feet, diving down. It would be a pretty big deal to have something up there.”
Graves added that the objects were an ongoing phenomenon – showing up at 30,000 feet, 20,000 feet and even at sea level. The craft could “accelerate, slow down and then hit hypersonic speeds,” according to the report.
Lieutenant Accoin said that he had two encounters with the objects – the first of which he tried to intercept the craft’s course by flying 1,000 feet below it. And while he couldn’t see it with his helmet camera, his radar told him it was there. In the second encounter, Accoin says a training missile on his jet locked onto the craft, which his infrared camera picked up as well.
“I knew I had it, I knew it was not a false hit,” he said, adding “I could not pick it up visually.”
The pilots chalked it up to some sort of classified and extremely advanced drone program. Then they began to see them with their own eyes.
In late 2014, Lieutenant Graves said he was back at base in Virginia Beach when he encountered a squadron mate just back from a mission “with a look of shock on his face.”
He said he was stunned to hear the pilot’s words. “I almost hit one of those things,” the pilot told Lieutenant Graves.
The pilot and his wingman were flying in tandem about 100 feet apart over the Atlantic east of Virginia Beach when something flew between them, right past the cockpit. It looked to the pilot, Lieutenant Graves said, like a sphere encasing a cube.
After the near miss, Graves and the other interviewed pilots said the squadron were no longer convinced of the classified drone theory – as government officials would know fighter pilots were operating in the area and, they reasoned, would not operate them nearby.
“It turned from a potentially classified drone program to a safety issue,” said Graves, adding “It was going to be a matter of time before someone had a midair” collision.
What was strange, the pilots said, was that the video showed objects accelerating to hypersonic speed, making sudden stops and instantaneous turns — something beyond the physical limits of a human crew.
Asked what they thought the objects were, the pilots refused to speculate.
“We have helicopters that can hover,” Lieutenant Graves said. “We have aircraft that can fly at 30,000 feet and right at the surface.” But “combine all that in one vehicle of some type with no jet engine, no exhaust plume.”
In March of 2015, the Roosevelt departed the coast of Florida for the Persian Gulf to help fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, after which the incidents “tapered off,” according to the pilots.
Huge UFO Secret Discovered - There Are Alien Bases Under The Ocean
Huge UFO Secret Discovered - There Are Alien Bases Under The Ocean
They are living in our oceans. Numerous witnesses have observed hundreds of strange craft over the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California.
This marked the beginning of an ongoing massive wave of sightings. It involved the entire range of UFO phenomenon, including the most systerious, Unidentified Submersible Objects. You will hear many dramatic USO cases that have never been revealed before.
After years of researching the activity and interviewing hundreds of witnesses, Dennett has come to the startling conclusion that there is an undersea UFO base in the Santa Catalina Channel.
In this exciting presentation, he will reveal the incredible results of his investigation, including: –Firsthand cases of undersea USO activity in Southern California and around the world. –Photographs of UFOs and artwork based on eyewitness accounts.
Today’s article tells a strange story that began in 1952 with a man named Harold H. Fulton, who died in 1986. Back in fifty-two, Fulton was a sergeant in the Royal New Zealand Air Force and established the New Zealand-based Civilian Saucer Investigation. It was an organization dedicated to investigating the UFO phenomenon. The CSI proved to be an extremely successful venture for Fulton: in less than a year, he had more than five hundred subscribers to his journal, which went by the title of Flying Saucers. It wasn’t long after the revelations concerning Albert Bender’s torturous encounters with the Men in Black surfaced that Fulton contacted Bender. A lengthy period of correspondence between the two duly followed. Indeed, Fulton had established a connection with numerous UFO researchers in the United States, including Gray Barker, who, in 1962, published Albert Bender’s MIB-themed book, Flying Saucers and the Three Men.
The letters between Fulton and Bender (in my possession) make it very clear that Fulton was concerned that whatever it was that had got its grips into Bender was, by the summer of 1953, now doing exactly the same with him. Fulton told Bender (and MIB investigator/author Gray Barker, too) that on several occasions he experienced in his home the very same overpowering odor of sulfur-meets-rotten-eggs that Bender had talked about. Equally disturbing, Fulton began to see vague, shadowy, human-like figures out of his peripheral vision – and usually late at night, and always when he was engaged in his UFO research. They were wizened, goblin-like things that crept around Fulton’s home, in what amounted to almost a taunting fashion: they wanted to be seen, but not too closely. A bad sign that the Shadow People were on the move, perhaps?
Then, in August 1953, Fulton and his wife both experienced that overpowering odor together – and which filled their entire house. Only a couple of nights later, the pair was woken by the sounds of something pounding hard and violently on one of the walls of their home. And, just a couple of nights after that, Mrs. Fulton saw an orange-pink ball of light hovering near the door to their bedroom. It was a period of highly disturbing proportions and unsettling manifestations, all rolled into one. Fulton, however, was not the only New Zealand-based UFO investigator to find himself up to his neck in supernatural weirdness. There were others too. And their encounters were no less worrying.
Late one night in 1952, Fulton confided in Albert Bender that a researcher from Hamilton, New Zealand named John Stuart – author of UFO Warning – had a somewhat unsettling, recent experience that had severely messed with his nerves. Midnight was closing in when Stuart – at the time, fast asleep in bed – was jolted awake by the sound of the phone ringing. Of course, and quite naturally, the first thing to cross Stuart’s mind was that it was someone calling him with bad news. Well, in a very strange way, it was. But, not the kind of bad news that you might expect to receive in the early hours. The eerie and almost-robotic voice at the other end of the line warned Stuart to quit digging into the UFO mystery. Or be prepared to pay a very heavy price. The phone then went dead. Gray Barker later wrote that after the call, Stuart poured himself a stiff drink to calm his nerves. No doubt! Robert S. Ellwood, the author ofIslands of the Dawn: The Story of Alternative Spirituality in New Zealand, said of the mysterious voice that it was if “some kind of machine had learned to talk.” That, however, was not the only encounter of the sinister kind that Stuart found himself in.
In 1953, Stuart worked closely with a woman named Doreen Wilkinson, who shared Stuart’s passion for UFOs. There may have been other passions at work, too. Certainly, there were hushed rumors among New Zealand’s closely knit UFO research community that Stuart, a married man, and Doreen were far more than just good friends. They were rumors that both vehemently denied. Maybe, they denied those same rumors just a tad too vehemently. We’ll never now know.
What went unknown for a long time was that on a number of occasions in the early hours of the morning – which was typically when the pair did their research – Doreen seemed to take on a different personality. It was one of a sexual seductress. Stuart was, at first, of the opinion that this was due to the manipulative powers of aliens, who he believed may have been interested in the nature of human sexuality, and who were somehow actively controlling Doreen’s mind and body. Stuart soon came to think something very different, however: that Doreen was periodically under the possession of a literal demonic entity that was masquerading as an extraterrestrial – according to Harold Fulton, at least, who had picked up on various portions of the story and then passed them on to Albert Bender.
Things only got progressively worse: late one night a wild and diabolical, hair-covered humanoid creature manifested right inside Stuart’s home. The thing made a move on terrified Doreen – but then inexplicably vanished. Then, a couple of nights later, when she was alone, Doreen was reportedly assaulted by an invisible creature as she lay naked on her bed. There was, however, evidence that this was not just the product of the human mind: Doreen was covered in small, unexplained scratches. Perhaps not surprisingly, both John and Doreen walked away from Ufology. Maybe, even, they ran. After all, who could blame them for that?
Elon Musk did what Elon Musk does best this week and made headlines around the world. The entrepreneur and future supervillain launched a payload of 60 Starlink satellites this week to begin the ambitious goal of getting 12,000 of the tiny satellites into orbit. Once in place, the massive system of satellites will provide the world with ultra-high-speed internet. “Starlink will connect the globe with reliable and affordable high-speed broadband services,” SpaceX tweeted just before the launch That’s the plan, anyway.
As with all things SpaceX, there are sure to be some surprises and controversies with the Starlink plan. Musk intends Starlink broadband access to be affordable, so he’ll likely have to fight off his fair share of corporate sabotage as telecom giants see their future profitability fade into the wind like the exhaust from a SpaceX Falcon 9.
Musk can handle ’em. Dude put a freakin’ car in space.
Aside from competition, Musk will have to face the objections of the astronomical community who warn that filling the skies with thousands of satellites could have loads of unintended negative effects. Already, several astronomers have warned that Starlink satellites pose a threat to the search for extraterrestrial radio signals. Alan Duffy, an astronomer with the Royal Institution of Australia, says that a ring of 12,000 satellites would create so much radio interference as to make all radio telescopes useless:
A full constellation of Starlink satellites will likely mean the end of Earth-based microwave-radio telescopes able to scan the heavens for faint radio objects. The enormous benefits of global internet coverage will outweigh the cost to astronomers, but the loss of the radio sky is a cost to humanity as we lose our collective birthright to see the afterglow of the Big Bang or the glow of forming stars from Earth.
Astronomers are continuing to discover all sorts of mysterious radio sources in deep space, and some believe that there is a possibility these radio bursts could one day be the means through which we make first contact with an extraterrestrial species. Is removing that possibility worth affordable high-speed internet access worldwide ? It’s a truly tricky question.
Another astronomer caught a breathtaking video of the 60 Starlink satellites trailing across the night sky like a row of ducks crossing the street. Very bright ducks. Will the skies began to become increasingly filled with artificial objects? Who could have imagined that our roads would one day be lined with giant advertisements on 100-foot poles? A Japanese startup is already looking to create psychedelic artificial meteor showers by dropping rocks of different chemical compositions from space, and another Russian startup wants to put billboards in orbit. Is this what the skies of our cyberpunk future will look like? That is, if we can even see through the air pollution at all.
Turn off the TV tonight, go outside, and look at the stars for as long as you can. We may have to one day describe them to generations who have never known them.
Investigative Reporter And Producer Of History’s Unidentified: “Holy Shit! This Is Like, The Biggest Story In The Universe!”
Investigative Reporter And Producer Of History’s Unidentified: “Holy Shit! This Is Like, The Biggest Story In The Universe!”
Anthony Lappé is a New York-based showrunner, director and investigative journalist and was a producer on History Channel’s upcoming docu-series, “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.” He was a guest today on “Podcast UFO.” Watch/listen at the YouTube link above.
Below are my notes from the show. And if I thought it was important, I transcribed it. As you’ll see, most off it was important! And below that are my note from Lappé’s appearance on “Open Minds UFO Radio” with Alejandro Rojas.
Podcast UFO Notes…
“Unidentified” wasn’t AL’s brainchild.
He’s an independent filmmaker, and television producer.
History Channel had been talking to Lue Elizondo, Tom DeLonge and Chris Mellon for a little while after the New York Times article came out in December of 2017. Folks at History were just very excited about figuring out a way to do a show with them. And AL was brought on in the spring of last year. They had exclusive access to everything that TTSA were doing over this past year.
It has to have been the most fascinating, mind-blowing project I’ve ever worked on. It was absolutely incredible.
After working on the show, I definitely have many more questions than I have answers. We’re trying to reinvent the genre of UFO television. Other shows come in with a pre-conceived notion of what these things are. That they’re somehow extraterrestrial and they leave out countervailing information.
“Unidentified” takes a cold look at what these military witnesses are seeing. And that alone is gonna blow your mind.
He mentions the Navy’s new guidelines for pilots and others to report their UFO encounters. That Navy guideline is a tacit admission that what these pilots are seeing are not U.S. military. Once you rule out that it’s U.S. military, you’re really only left with only one plausible explanation: It’s either a foreign adversary or maybe an ally. But for anyone who knows anything about propulsion and recent advancements in aircraft and where the Russians and Chinese are, it’s very hard to square that circle.
What “Unidentified,” does is look at all this test cases and try to talk about them in a very investigative way and hear directly from the pilots, radar operators and others. And then let the viewers make up their own minds about what they could be.
Martin Willis: We’ve said many times on the show that if somebody tells you they know what these things are, run away. (I agree! ~Joe) MW says he thinks our government covers up this subject because they don’tknow what it is.
AL: I’ve reported on the government for many years. In particular, law enforcement and intelligence agencies. And people need to understand that there is no such thing as the U.S. government. Just in the intelligence world alone you have 17 different intelligence agencies.
He thinks that the Navy announcement shows us that they don’t have answers at hand. And that’s the significance of these two major pillars in the whole story of UFOs that have happened over the last year and a half. It began with the release of the three videos in 2017 and then the Navy announcement.
Regarding the Navy shift in policy towards UFOs…
“That’s a big thing that many of the pilots we talked to – and there’s many more pilots…One of the interesting things – when you watch our series – you’re gonna meet and see several pilots, including the pilots who were involved in the other two videos that were released by the DoD. And we’re gonna shed some new light on that incident or incidents. There’s many more pilots that I talked to who didn’t want to go on air, who confirmed their stories.
“One of the things that really struck me was David Fravor’s wingman pilot who spoke to us for the first time. She’s the female pilot that you see in the first episode. One of the things that she told us…and I can’t remember if this is in the episode. It might be in the following episode where we kind of circle back to her. One of the things she said to us is, ‘If I was alone, and was a single-seat pilot and I was just out on a patrol or something and I saw this? I probably wouldn’t have told anyone.’ The only reason they came back and said what had happened was because all four of them saw it. The two pilots and their weapons systems operators.
“That is the reason why this wingman pilot and David Fravor are coming forward..is because they want it to be okay to report this. This is an incident that happened in broad daylight. That’s the other thing that is a huge difference for me in the sort of veracity of these stories. These are pilots intercepting things in broad daylight. So many things can happen at night, whether that’s a weather inversion or reflections or all the other weird things that happen at night. But when you’re seeing things up close and personal during broad daylight on a perfectly clear day, over the Pacific. And it’s being confirmed by all these different pilots…
“And here’s the other thing that I’m gonna tell you that we do in this show. I don’t want to give too many spoilers away. But we find many civilian witnesses, in the same area where the Nimitz incident occurred, who tell of ongoing incidents. Very similar to the Nimitz incident.”
Martin Willis: It’s strange that there are reoccurring flaps and it makes you wonder why they’re in one area.
AL: Really good point and one of the topics that they get into on the show. “We clearly are seeing that there are, some sort of, what they calls hot spots, for these incidents that are happening in certain parts of the world. And I believe you see in Episode One, AATIP even created a map in 2009 that we reveal…that shows just a very small smattering of plot points on a global map where the military had reported seeing incidents. So that is one of the ensuing mysteries of this whole thing which is fascinating and we delve into that question. Probably raising more questions than we have answers.
“This show, I hope, will push the needle forward in this conversation. Because primarily, and obviously, this was a strategic decision by Elizondo but also us as filmmakers. Making the series was…by focusing on these military witnesses, several of which are active duty people who have everything to lose. When you’re an F-18 pilot, it’s very easy to be grounded. One slip up and you can basically lose your…have your driver’s license taken away…for lack of a better word.
“And these guys are the creme de la creme of the military. To be an F-18 pilot in the Navy, is a dream of thousands of pilots that go and…even just to be a C-130 pilot is a dream. But to be a fighter pilot in the Navy, flying an F-18, you’ve really reached the pinnacle. So to risk that by coming forward and talking about something that could potentially brand you as, you know, some kind of…puts you in some sort of psych eval situation, is just an incredibly brave thing for them to do.
“As I said, I talked to many more pilots than you see in the show, who spoke to me off the record, confirming the larger details of this other main incident that we look into. But those guys did not want to go on camera. And listen, I can’t blame them. If you worked all your life and you had a dream of becoming a fighter pilot and you wanna serve your country, it’s a very risky thing.
“So what is interesting now is the Navy is saying, ‘Hey, you don’t have to be afraid any more.’ What we’re hoping is, when our show goes on the air, we actually have, at the end of every episode, an email address for military witnesses to contact us because we want to continue this investigation. Because as I said, even though we have a ton of new, really fascinating information that you’re gonna see in this series, we’ve touched the tip of the iceberg. This is an ongoing situation. These events are happening all over the world. They’re happening all the time. They may be increasing. We don’t know that for sure. But there are people who say they are. It’s exciting and I think George Knapp said it best. He said, ‘It’s exciting and it’s a little scary.’
“We brought along Commander Fravor to meet another pilot from another incident. And you’ll see him, Lue Elizondo and this new pilot, that no one’s heard from before, talk about another incident. We wanted to bring Fravor along, both to help this pilot feel comfortable and knowing that Fravor’s career wasn’t harmed by coming out. And he still works in the private sector now but still as a respected person in the military community. But also what was fascinating was just to hear them talk about aeronautics and all the physics about what this guy saw. And compare and contrast the craft that he was seeing with what Fravor saw. And it was just absolutely fascinating. That’s in episode four.”
Did AL have an interest in this subject before he started working on the show? What does he think about the theories that these are our own, secret craft/technology?
You can hear his answers and the rest of the interview at the YouTube link I posted above at beginning of this blog post.
AL: The show is almost like a chronological, year in the life of Elizondo, Mellon and the guys at To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science. He started following them last spring.
He’s a filmmaker and investigative journalist and did an eight-part series on the history of the war on drugs for History Channel two years ago. The show dug deep into the CIA’s involvement in the drug trade. He’s done a lot of work around the intelligence world and the military.
He used to run a website called “Guerrilla News Network,” which focused on alternate news. They covered Steven Greer and “The Disclosure Project.” He’s always been really interested in the UFO subject but never took the time to dig deep.
Last year, while working for A+E Originals and after the guys at TTSA were signed to an exclusive deal with them, he met Chris Mellon and Luis Elizondo. And he was like, “Holy shit. This is like, the biggest story in the Universe.”
His first impression after hearing about the Pentagon’s UFO program was skepticism since he knows a lot about how the intelligence agencies work. He’s studied and reported on things like MK Ultra, Operation Paperclip and “the CIA’s involvement in all sorts of nefarious coups and operations and actually, what counter-intelligence is.” He was extremely skeptical and asked a lot of questions that a lot of people ask when confronted with this information. Questions like, “Isn’t this just some sort of advanced aircraft that we just don’t know about yet?” That was his first question and it began a dialogue with the guys at TTSA, who very patiently began to break down why they believe that’s not the answer.
Throughout the series, they’re asking the counterfactual questions: “Can this be explained by this? Or can this be explained by that?” They really tried to take an independent look at it and try to let people make up their own minds.
Elizondo and Mellon are vessels for the testimony of these military personnel. The challenge as a filmmaker comes because these guys still have security clearances and are still very connected with what’s going on inside the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. They’re not whistleblowers. “They’re both very cognizant out of loyalty and commitment to the government but also in terms of their own legal situation. They try very hard not to disclose any classified information.”
Alejandro Rojas asked AL if he was surprised to see these kind of credible people doing this kind of work and doing it publicly.
AL: “That was the first thing that attracted me to this project was who these guys were…what their backgrounds were. In particular, Chris Mellon’s background as a high ranking, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and his role on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He had visibility over these special access programs that even top generals didn’t have access to see. This was a guy, as Lue says, who knew all the secrets and who was famous internally as someone who also was very much into going to sites. Going to places like Area 51 at Groom Lake and going to other black sites and meeting with the people who are running these programs. He was a very hands on guy. And frankly, just like Lue Elizondo, much of what he did was highly classified. Their lives are definitely still shrouded in mystery in terms of what exactly they were doing and where they were deployed. All that stuff is still…these guys were guys who worked in the shadows.
“So, for them to come out, especially someone like Chris Mellon, who has his family legacy as we all know, and to be speaking so candidly and putting his reputation, both in sort of, you know, his social circles…his political circles and his family legacy circles…it’s a pretty big deal.”
AR: Have you come to the conclusion that there is a genuine mystery?
AL: “Yeah, I have. And it definitely was a process to get there. But as Chris calls it – run all the traps (explore all options ~Joe). As I’ve talked to other experts…there’s many more pilots – for instance, that I’ve talked to personally, off the record, than you see in the show…that I was able to talk to who weren’t comfortable coming on the air – who confirmed things about some of the other incidents that we look into.
“I generally believe that the U.S. Navy does not know what these things are. And that’s what’s so interesting about this new April 2019 announcement of the new guidelines and the policies that they’re putting in place for reporting unidentified craft. You don’t have to read between the lines to say that that is a tacit admission that…it’s not our own craft. So, you’re really only left with two possibilities…which is, it’s an adversary, or I guess it could be an ally, but that would be fairly strange. But you’re left with it could being some sort of terrestrial adversary. And for these guys, that’s almost even a scarier concept. If Russia, for instance, has the capability to fly hypersonic craft in and around our carrier strike groups, that’s just a very scary prospect. (bad audio here so quote may be off) If they could zip and nuke and drop it on the White House and disappear before they even open up the anti-ballistic guns from the lawn there…
“And then that’s where Steve Justice from Skunkworks comes in. I’ve had long, on the record conversations with him and off the record conversations with him about technology and about the evolution of technology and where we are today with propulsion systems. Things like the (X-43) Scramjet and other hypersonic jets that are being developed. And even though we are on the edge today of a new realm of hypersonic craft, all those craft are still using conventional…or somewhat conventional propulsion systems. They’ll have huge heat signatures, for instance, coming off of them. So, for Steve Justice, it just doesn’t add up that even an adversary working in secret could leapfrog us to that degree and have something that could do the things that these pilots are saying that they’re seeing.
“It’s not only the pilots. It’s also…we speak with radar operators as well. It is a genuine mystery. I think a big…one of the people that was extremely helpful in our investigation and who plays a big role in the show, as you see, is Bryan Bender, national security correspondent for Politico. He doesn’t get a lot of credit because his story ran the same day as the New York Times story did back in 2017. He was reporting things fully and really got deep into it. Spent a lot of time personally with Elizondo and Mellon. And he just has incredible contacts inside the Pentagon…inside the intelligence community…inside the technology community and weapons contractors. And he and I have become friends. And he’s been extremely helpful for me because he’s someone who’s just at a whole nother level in terms of just understanding what’s going on inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies. And he independently has come to the same conclusion that he believes that the Pentagon clearly does not know what’s going on with these craft. That there is a growing sense inside the Pentagon that it’s something that needs to be studied more.
“And that’s really the story that we show. The series has a pretty incredible arc to it. As I said, it really is like a linear, year in the life of these guys and begins shortly after the New York Times article comes out. And it ends… what was really incredible about the April 2019 Navy announcement – that they were going to be establishing new policies and guidelines for reporting UAPs and they’re going to be analyzing the data – is that we kind of have a front row seat to how that policy was established. I can’t really say what we see had a direct result because we don’t really know the sort of cause and effect. But, as you’ll see in the series, we, both Chris Mellon and Lue Elizondo, are both closely involved with what’s going on inside the Pentagon over the course of this last year. And they consider that Navy announcement to be a huge victory for sort of everything they’ve been doing behind the scenes. And we’re able to chronicle that.”
AR: “What impact do you hope this show has on the public?”
AL: “Thats a great question.
He goes on to say that they want the show to be super accessible to everyone.
You really get to know Elizondo as a person over the course of the series and learn the challenges and risks he faced for coming out publicly about this subject.
He hopes that people will watch the series and become intrigued and have their minds opened. He feels the strength of what they’ll show is the credibility of the military pilots and their encounters that are corroborated by their radar operators when they get back to their ship.
Reiterates what these pilots have to lose by coming forward and sharing these stories. They can be grounded for very small infractions.
AL: “For these guys and women to come forward to say things about what they’ve seen in the air and to talk about how they’re feeling like that the Navy really isn’t studying it and that they’re feeling that there’s a danger that’s not being addressed, is pretty dramatic. And that’s what you see in this series. You’re gonna see people who have everything to lose. They’ve worked their whole lives to reach where they are and they’re coming forward saying that they feel like there’s a potential threat here that needs to be addressed.”
As a journalist, AL is worried about when this airs. He’s nervous because it’s a tricky thing to be associated with and it could affect his reputation.
AL: “We’re on a precipice here. There’s definitely a change. There’s a change that’s going on inside Washington right now at the highest levels of power that you will see happen before your eyes and over the course of the six episodes of ‘Unidentified.’ You will see these guys working behind the scenes to change both policy but also just to open people’s minds about what’s going on.
“These things are being seen all over the world and they have been seen over the world at least for 70 years. So, to explain them by some simple, black budget, secret program is very difficult.”
Once again, here’s the link to the entire show. It’s a must listen:
Close encounters? SpaceX satellites spark Dutch UFO frenzy
Close encounters? SpaceX satellites spark Dutch UFO frenzy
A Dutch website set up to record UFO sightings was flooded early Saturday with reports after a "train of stars" was spotted crossing the Netherlands' skies, sparking fears of an alien invasion.
In this screengrab taken from a video shot by Marco Langbroek, a group of SpaceX Starlink satellites passes over Leiden, Netherlands on May 24, 2019
The row of satellites which are part of a plan by billionaire Elon Musk's firm to provide internet from space, glided across Dutch skies around 1:00 am (2300 GMT).
Shortly afterwards, Dutch website www.ufomeldpunt.nl was inundated with more than 150 sighting reports, with astonished spotters describing a "bizarre train of stars or lights moving across the skies at constant speed".
"There's a long line of lights. Faster than a plane. Huh?" one spotter reported, while another called it a "star caravan" and one saying "I have it on film".
One spotter simply texted: "WTF?"
"I didn't know what to make of it," an unnamed witness later told the NOS public broadcaster.
"Is it Russia attacking the US? Are they UFOs? Seriously, I didn't know," the witness said.
One of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets blasted off without incident from Cape Canaveral in Florida at around 0230 GMT on Friday.
An hour after liftoff, the rocket began to release the satellites at an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometres).
The satellites then had to separate and use their thrusters to take up their positions in a relatively low orbit of 340 miles (550 kilometres).
Each of the satellites weighs 227 kilograms (500 pounds) and was built in-house in Redmond, near Seattle.
Starlink will become operational once 800 satellites have been activated, which will require a dozen more launches.
One Dutchman who remained unfazed was satellite spotter Marco Langbroek, who knew what the mysterious lights were—and had his camera on hand.
"I cheered them on, the moment they appeared," he told the NOS.
This screengrab taken from the SpaceX webcast transmission on May 23, 2019, shows a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with 60 Starlink satelites lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
Are UFOs a Threat to National Security? This Ex-U.S. Official Thinks They Warrant Investigation
Are UFOs a Threat to National Security? This Ex-U.S. Official Thinks They Warrant Investigation
Chris Mellon believes the government should more aggressively gather intel on military UFO sightings, some of which were captured on video.
Photo illustration of a UFO.
(Credit: Gremlin/Getty Images)
Throughout his distinguished government career, Chris Mellon has been keenly focused on the prospect of unconventional national threats. Now he works with a civilian group called To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, trying to prod the U.S. defense and intelligence communities to investigate reports of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs—also known as UFOs) that maneuver in ways that have no known precedent.
He’s inspired, he says, by the growing number of such sightings in sensitive military contexts—reported by highly trained, highly credible witnesses and corroborated by some of the world’s most sophisticated technology, including several infrared videos shot from fighter jets. He doesn’t claim to know what these unusual crafts might be, nor does he assume they bring “aliens” from afar. To him, they signal a potential high-level strategic threat of unknown origin—one the nation would be foolish to ignore.
Chris Mellon (left) and Luis Elizondo of To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science.
Photo by Andrew Cagle
Mellon is uniquely qualified to assess such threats. Having served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, and later as Minority Staff Director of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he was heavily responsible for reviewing agencies and budgets involved in top-secret “black programs” related to things such as special operations and nuclear weapons. Mellon is now an integral part of the investigative team featured on HISTORY's “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.” We talked to him about what’s happening—and what he thinks should be done.
Why raise the alarm now about UFOs/AAVs?
What is really motivating me right now, what really has accelerated and solidified my interest, is the [2004] USS Nimitz case—when I learned of that and began to talk to the military personnel involved. We had multiple naval aviators [reporting] what they saw [wingless UFOs, with extraordinary capabilities] in broad daylight, over an extended period of time. It was corroborated by the most sophisticated air-defense sensor systems on earth, and on multiple platforms operated by multiple independent individuals. So when you start talking about that level of evidence, I think any reasonable person would have to say—this is real, and we should proceed accordingly.
Which means what? Intelligence gathering? Risk assessment?
From a national security standpoint of course, you’re paid to be paranoid, to think about risk. So you do inevitably wonder: Why are these things currently in these locations at these times? Have we been technologically leapfrogged? Could it be the Russians or Chinese—or someone else? And what else may be going on?
There are craft that are violating our airspace with unknown intentions and extraordinary capabilities. And until we get some answers to the questions about the technology involved and the capability, the intentions, we shouldn't rest easy.
I have lived through and survived intelligence failures, including the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, and the Iraq war. Some of those problems are manifest in the situation again today. And that's part of what concerns me—people are not paying attention or not engaging, and the data is extremely compelling. We don't want to have to relive mistakes we've seen in the past, like in Pearl Harbor, where radar blips were observed and nobody paid attention.
When the Nimitz pilots got back to the aircraft carrier, no one took their report seriously.
It was extraordinary that when the [Nimitz] pilots landed, that they were ridiculed. There was no interest expressed on the part of the intelligence personnel on board, in terms of documenting this, running this up the chain. It was the inverse of what you would normally expect. We spent $50 billion a year and have an intelligence apparatus, in large part to avert strategic surprise. And here we have a case where incredible technology is manifesting itself, intelligently controlled vehicles operating in and around the carrier battle group—and the system doesn't react. It shuts down. It tries to suppress the information.
I think a large part of the reason is because people have a hard time processing something so radical; there's no frame of reference for it.
There's a great deal of agitation on the part of our combat personnel who are encountering these objects—and understandably so. Their concerns are what we're trying to relay. We respect the uniform, we respect those personnel, and we're deeply concerned that the information they’re trying to provide is not being acted on.
If one of these craft bore a Russian insignia, do you think the response would be different?
One of the things that I've often pointed out—and I've never found anyone who disagreed with this—is that if any one of these objects had a Russian insignia on it, the entire system would be electrified and would spring into action.
Sixty years ago, the public was rightly agitated to learn that the Soviet Union had beaten us to space, had deployed the first man-made satellite in orbit. That capability and the momentum they were achieving with their space program understandably generated a lot of concern here in the context of the Cold War. I would hope that people, when they get this information, would react now as the public did then, which is to raise questions about what we are doing in response to that.
How has that question-raising gone for you inside the Beltway?
When you're talking to people about this issue in the Pentagon, you're going to draw blank stares. Even from very high-ranking officials, very, very few of them have any exposure to the actual underlying information and the empirical data. So there's a propensity for people to say, "Well if this were real, I'd know about it, because I'm well plugged in, I've got all these security clearances, and I get access to all this information."
Well, the fact is, the information has not been disseminated through normal channels.
Didn’t the U.S. government investigate UFOs during the Cold War?
In the 1940s, shortly after the war, the military began to encounter an increasing a number of UFOs, and the number of incidents spiked enormously. They recognized the need to try to understand the phenomenon, which resulted in series of investigations culminating in the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, a program that lasted until the late ’60s.
We know from documents that in New Mexico, the director of Air Force security was advocating a study of the phenomenon, because so many people in and around Los Alamos and other facilities where nuclear weapons were being tested, were observing these [anomalous] crafts: scientists, military pilots, civilian pilots, a wide range of individuals.
Ultimately, the government determined it needed to tamp down the public concern, in part because during the Cold War, this could create some kind of hysteria. The government concluded, behind the scenes, that it needed to discredit this phenomenon—not due to a lack of compelling information. It was actually the result of compelling information. When the Air Force undertook this study, they examined 12,000 cases. Of those, 700 were unexplained.
The first question all of us have asked when we've seen the information is: Could this possibly be one of our own programs, a highly classified U.S. test program?
I served in a capacity in which it was my job to conduct oversight of our black programs, and never saw anything of this kind on the books. Moreover, I was once actually specifically asked to determine whether we had a capability along these lines, in response to a query from the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Bobby Byrd.
I ran that all the way up the flagpole with the Air Force and others, and believe me, everyone respected Senator Byrd. No one was going to lie to him and risk his wrath. And the answer was, “Absolutely not. We don’t have a super-secret black triangle that can go at hypersonic speeds and all that sort of thing.”
Secondly, a technology like this is so radical, it can't just appear out of nowhere. There have to be facilities, there has to have been research and development, a prototype. We don't see any evidence of that anywhere.
Thirdly, these aircraft are being observed operating in and around carrier battle groups that are armed with air-to-air missiles and so forth. We never, to my knowledge, put at risk those personnel—or test personnel—by flying them in an uncoordinated manner against carrier battle groups. That's just not how we operate.
Chris Mellon (right) and Luis Elizondo of To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science.
Photo by Andrew Cagle
Talk about To the Stars Academy, where you work with Tom DeLonge and Luis Elizondo. What’s the mission?
They are not necessarily asserting that these are alien craft or anything of that kind. They are people like me who see this as an incredible mystery and enigma that that needs to be resolved.
We’re helping to change the climate, I think, and establish that there are reasonable level-headed, patriotic people who are willing to speak about this.
My goal, personally, in my role within the organization, is to help break down the bureaucratic walls that are preventing this information from reaching Congress and the American people. I'm not trying to drive any particular agenda. I want to ensure, if possible, that people who have responsibility for national security are informed and have the facts and the data.
Is anyone else exploring these questions?
One of the things that's really exciting to me is that we are one of only three efforts in the world that are [currently] in a position to potentially answer the profound, timeless question “Are we alone in the universe?”
Today, NASA is spending about $20 billion a year. A small portion of that is directed toward trying to uncover, identify exobiology—alien life. They're looking for microbial life on Mars, and they want to use the next generation of space telescopes to examine the atmospheres of different planets for molecules that would be consistent with life. Not necessarily intelligent life, just some kind of life. So that's a very slow-moving, wonderful program—exquisite science, but not likely to answer the question anytime soon.
There's a Russian billionaire who has self-funded a program listening for signals from space that might reveal alien communications. It's a very worthwhile effort. But so far they've had no success. We probably don't even know what to look for. We probably wouldn't recognize the signals. So it's a difficult proposition.
The third effort, that we're associated with, is trying to convince our government to use the capabilities it already has to understand the UFO phenomenon. And if we find out it's the Russians or Chinese or others, then we've done a great thing for the country and for national security.
What are those capabilities? What are you suggesting?
The U.S. government has an extraordinary network of sensors—from geosynchronous orbit 22,500 miles away to the depths of the ocean—and many places in between. And that fairly exquisitely sophisticated and calibrated sensor network is acquiring data that could help answer these questions that no one is even bothering to look at.
We've already paid for it. It’s just sitting there at a computer and no one is even interested enough to say, “Gee, during that period when this carrier battle group was engaging these unknown vehicles in the Pacific… What other signatures are we seeing in that area?” Nobody's analyzing it, no one's pulling it together.
So the first step is to convince the Congress, the executive branch, to simply use the apparatus the taxpayer has already bought and paid for to try to answer the question.
November 2004, 90 miles of the coast of Mexico near San Diego, California, the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group was conducting routine training and aerial defense exercises when unexplained events occurred. No one could have predicted what would soon confront the world's most advanced naval war ships and fighter jets. Aerial craft would appear that forever changed all those that encountered them.
The answers to the question of “what are they?” remains unanswered by the sailors and the US Gov. After years of cloaked secrecy the true story can finally be told. With multiple witnesses from the ships, their first hand testimony is impossible to deny. Our film features CGI re-creations as told by the sailors and naval aviators that witnessed them. Aside from the historical fictionalized dialog (no one recorded the radio conversations), the story itself is based on the facts of the case, including official US government docs, witness statements, news reports and official timelines. See www.thenimitzencounters.com for links to the official documents.
Some military personnel have requested their names be removed or remain anonymous, out of respect for their privacy we have changed names and details to protect their identity. All similarities to persons living or dead is unintentional. The producers have made every attempt to verify details and deny any liability for errors or omissions.
Long UFO Seen Over The Popes Vatican In Rome Italy, MUFON Report, UFO Sighting News.
Long UFO Seen Over The Popes Vatican In Rome Italy, MUFON Report, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting:12-6-2012, but reported today.
Source: MUFON #100676
This UFO was recorded over the Vatican in Rome, Italy back in 2012, but the report was just recently sent in. UFOs have been seen around the Vatican before, usually on live cam. Now why UFOs are so frequently seen around religious monuments is unknown, but we can easily assume that the aliens are doing research on us and our religious or non religious beliefs. People are often so confident and loyal to a religion that it may be a quality that aliens admire...loyalty.
Remember the UFO that came down over Dome of Rock temple in Jerusalem? It was seen by thousands of locals and tourists and captured on over 6 different videos. Probably more recorded it, but often people are too afraid if they upload a video of a UFO that government agents or MIB agents will harm them. That fear still controls some of the public, causing a a large amount of reports to go unreported.
Alien City Found In Crater In US Navy Clementine Moon Map, UFO Sighting News.
Alien City Found In Crater In US Navy Clementine Moon Map, UFO Sighting News.
Ok, well I have not looked at this site in many years because I could not access it from outside the USA. So I downloaded a VPN which makes my ip address appear to be in the USA. Now I can see it. So I made this quick video of this odd city structure that looks more like a winding intestine than anything else. There is no doubt in my mind that aliens use a combination of tech with biology to grow some of their larger structures and ships. Its a big time saver and aliens are known for being too lazy to do manual labor, but prefer a more think tank kind of job.
I found this face back in 2016, but the photo now needs a security clearance to view it. The URL now takes you to a white page marked only with the words...FORBIDDEN. This means when I found the face of Trump on Mars...it was real. Even NASA thought so and took it down. They fear the public may learn the truth...that aliens are taking over our world by becoming our leaders, benefiting all the while. Much how ancient aliens came down in Egypt and used human slaves to build the pyramids...but this time...they do it in a more advanced way. Why else would NASA forbid the public from viewing the Trump face on Mars? Scott C. Waring
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
UFO Shoots Over Buckley Michigan And Into Cloud, May 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Shoots Over Buckley Michigan And Into Cloud, May 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 25, 2019 Location of sighting: Buckley, Michigan, USA This UFO was recorded by Bill Hicks of Youtube. He recorded this white UFO as it was moving across the sky over Buckley, Michigan last week. The sky is bight blue with only a few clouds so this UFO really stands out. I believe it is darting from cloud to cloud to give it some cover. This white disk has no visible wings, contrails, lights, windows or anything that would denote it as a plane or rocket. Its moving much too slowly to be a meteor or space debris. So yes, I think it is a UFO. An alien craft being flown over Michigan. Mostly likely heading to an underwater alien base at the bottom of Lake Michigan itself. Thats right, aliens don't just buzz over our cities, they actually live in bases below us. How could the governments of the world allow aliens do have such bases? Because aliens don't need anyones permission. They were here long before us and will be here long after us. Scott C. Waring
Despite its proximity and influence on planet Earth, our understanding of the Moon – and the mechanism by which it formed – remains incomplete. The Moon is holding out on a number of mysteries that science hasn’t solved. In the past few years there has been a resurgence of interest in the Moon, perhaps due to the fact that we barely understand our cosmic neighbour.
It is fortuitous and timely that long time New Dawn contributor Louis Proud recently completed his book The Secret Influence of the Moon: Alien Origins and Occult Powers.
A writer and researcher specialising in paranormal and occult phenomena, Louis’ first book was Dark Intrusions: An Investigation into the Paranormal Nature of Sleep Paralysis Experiences.
The mysteries of the Moon go far beyond the scientific. To bring us the full picture, Louis has ventured into territory of a more fantastic and metaphysical nature. He delves into the entire gamut of long held theories – popular, esoteric and occult – including alien and hostile forces on the Moon, and its vampiric powers.
Louis Proud has been interviewed about his book by Jeffery Pritchett of the online radio show The Church of Mabus (www.churchofmabusradio.com), which covers high strangeness in the field of the paranormal.
JEFFERY PRITCHETT (JP): What inspired you to write your new book, The Secret Influence of the Moon: Alien Origins and Occult Powers?
LOUIS PROUD (LP): I’d been closely researching the Moon for a number of years, from both scientific and esoteric perspectives, and I wrote the book as an attempt to collate and compile this research. I’ve long been fascinated by the Moon and its mysteries. My interest in the Moon deepened significantly when, many years ago, I first became acquainted with the Spaceship Moon theory. The idea that the Moon is a part-natural, part-artificial world, as stated by this theory, piqued my imagination and made me question all of my preconceptions about the Moon. One of my objectives in writing the book was to see if the Spaceship Moon theory has validity in light of contemporary lunar discoveries. (The theory originated in 1970 and hasn’t been updated since that time.)
JP: Would you go into why you think the Moon may have alien origins?
LP: The Moon is an immensely strange object and highly unique within the solar system. Of the four terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), Earth and Mars are the only two that possess moons. Mars has two moons: Phobos and Deimos. These, however, are extremely small, whereas Earth’s moon is extremely large. In fact, it’s the largest moon in the solar system relative to the size of its host (Earth). Because of its large size, in addition to other factors, some astronomers think of the Moon as Earth’s twin planet rather than Earth’s satellite. This would make the Earth and the Moon a double-planet system rather than a planet-satellite system. The former model is the one I subscribe to.
Of course, just because the Moon is odd and unique doesn’t mean it has “alien origins.” In my book, I argue that the Moon has alien origins on account of its numerous artificial characteristics. There’s good evidence, for example, that the Moon is partially hollow. Since, to borrow a quote from Carl Sagan in relation to the moons of Mars, “a natural satellite cannot be a hollow object,” the only way to explain the Moon’s apparent hollowness is if some kind of alien intelligence modified it long ago, perhaps in order to transform it into a suitable habitat.
JP: Personally do you really think the Moon is home to alien life forms who seek to control humanity?
LP: Much compelling evidence suggests that the Moon is and has long been inhabited by an alien intelligence, one that is hostile, manipulative, and parasitic towards humanity. The precise nature of this intelligence remains unknown and perhaps unknowable. Whether it is physical, non-physical or somewhere in-between is difficult to say. Personally I believe we’re dealing with something that operates primarily on a non-physical level but can assume physical form when required.
What led me to this conclusion? First, a small percentage of reports of transient lunar phenomena (TLP) – short-lived lights, colours, and changes in appearance on the lunar surface – exhibit qualities suggestive of intelligence. Certainly not all of these reports can be explained in terms of natural phenomena. (By “natural phenomena” I am referring to such things as lunar outgassing and clouds of dust suspended above the lunar surface by means of electrostatic activity.)
Secondly, many lunar myths allude to the Moon being inhabited by an alien intelligence. For example, according to the Zulu shaman Credo Mutwa, Zulu lore states that the Moon is not only an artificially-hollowed out planetoid from outside the solar system, it is also the home of manipulative and meddling reptilian beings called the Chitauri (“children of the serpent”). The Chitauri are synonymous with the Nagas of Buddhist and Hindu mythology. The latter are described as a strong and handsome race of half-human, half-serpentine beings of semi-divine status. (Naga is Sanskrit for “serpent.”) Nagas are related to all things watery – lakes, rivers, seas, wells, and so forth. And indeed, there is an ancient and universal belief that the Moon is related to all things watery. (No doubt this belief originated in part from the simple recognition that the Moon governs the tides.)
Lastly, a number of occult teachings speak of the Moon in purely negative terms and even refer to it as the domain of sinister non-human beings who control and exploit humanity.
JP: What findings from NASA’s Apollo missions have they concealed?
LP: It’s clear that much was concealed from the public by NASA regarding what was discovered on the Moon during the Apollo program (and other programs). However, I’m inclined to believe that these suppressed discoveries were primarily geological in nature and relate to the lunar interior more than anything else. Of course, there are compelling rumours that the Apollo astronauts encountered UFO activity both within the vicinity of the Moon and on the lunar surface. A related rumour states that NASA discovered an extraterrestrial base on the far side of the Moon (the side that remains turned away from Earth) during Apollo 8 in 1968. Furthermore, anyone who’s read the work of Mike Bara and Richard Hoagland would be familiar with the theory that the surface of the Moon is littered with spectacular ancient structures in the way of glass domes and so forth. It is claimed these structures were photographed by NASA but that the photographs were either “tampered with” to remove evidence of the structures or never released to the public.
Let me explain what I mean by these suppressed discoveries being primarily geological in nature. During the Apollo program, the astronauts placed on the lunar surface a network of seismometers (devices that measure and record seismic activity), as part of an effort by NASA to better understand the Moon’s internal structure. By triggering artificial moonquakes – caused by dropping discarded lunar modules (LMs) and other heavy objects on the lunar surface – it was discovered the Moon “rings like a bell” for periods of over an hour. The Moon is, to quote one scientist, “an almost perfect medium for the propagation of seismic waves.” This discovery – plus additional evidence discussed in my book – suggests the Moon is partially hollow. Since the Moon’s apparent hollowness cannot be accounted for naturally, it must have been hollowed out artificially. NASA has long been interested in the Moon’s peculiar internal characteristics, yet has remained suspiciously quiet on these matters. (NASA claims that its entire lunar seismic network was shut down in late-1977, though this could well be untrue.)
JP: What are some of the many holes in the “Giant Impact” theory about the Moon’s origins and the evidence for a hollow, artificial Moon?
LP: By far the biggest mystery of the Moon is how it came into being. Prior to the Apollo program, there were three contending theories as to the origin of the Moon. Known as the three classic theories of lunar origin, they are the Fission theory, the Coaccretion theory, and the Capture theory. All three theories were well and truly disproven by the end of the Apollo program. This gave rise, in the mid-1970s, to the Giant Impact theory, which is the theory accepted by most scientists today. The theory states that around 4.5 billion years ago, when the Earth was very young, a Mars-sized planet struck the Earth, producing a cloud of debris that coalesced to form the Moon.
The Giant Impact theory has a number of major flaws. According to this theory, the Moon is supposed to have formed from a mixture of impactor material and earth material, with the percentage of impactor material far exceeding the percentage of earth material. The Moon and Earth should therefore possess dissimilar oxygen isotope ratios. An object’s oxygen isotope ratio, or signature, gives an indication of where it formed in the solar system. For example, the oxygen isotope signature of Mars is very different to that of Earth. Yet the Moon and Earth have practically identical oxygen isotope signatures. This suggests the impactor shared a similar orbit to the Earth, occupied that orbit for a very long time, yet somehow ended up striking the Earth – a most improbable scenario. To quote British geologist Ted Nield: “[I]t would be extremely unlikely that a wandering impactor would just happen to possess the exact same oxygen isotope profile as the object it hit.”
Another piece of evidence that puts the Giant Impact theory on very shaky ground is the recent discovery of traces of water in samples from the lunar interior. The samples were found to contain similar levels of water as the Earth’s upper mantle. And yet, according to the Giant Impact theory, the Moon formed at an extremely high temperature and thus ought to be completely deprived of volatiles such as water. How, then, do we explain the presence of water in lunar samples?
Now for the evidence of a hollow, artificial Moon. That the Moon is a hollow, partly-artificial object was first suggested by scientists Mikhail Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov, both members of the Soviet Academy of Scientists, in a paper published in July 1970 in the journal Sputnik titled “Is the Moon the Creation of Intelligence?” According to their Spaceship Moon theory, the Moon is a planetoid from outside the solar system that was transformed into a spaceship – hollowed out and fitted with machinery and given a strengthened “hull” – and then flown to Earth and “parked” in orbit.
While it’s true that the Spaceship Moon theory has numerous merits and helps to explain why the Moon appears to be hollow (and hence not wholly natural), it falls short by failing to account for the near identical oxygen isotope signatures between the Earth and Moon. In my book, I suggest that the Moon formed naturally alongside the Earth (as per the Coaccretion theory) but was later “hijacked” and artificially modified. I refer to this as the Hybrid Double Planet theory – “hybrid” because the Moon is a part-artificial, part-natural world and a “double planet” for reasons already explained.
JP: Could you go into some of your occult findings regarding the Moon?
LP: In my book I look at the Moon as it’s dealt with in the Qabalah, and I found this to be an extremely rich area of investigation. The Qabalah is a complex mystical tradition of Jewish origin and is considered the cornerstone of Western esotericism. Central to the Qabalah is the Tree of Life, a glyph that consists of ten spheres, called Sephiroth. Each Sephirah on the Tree of Life is ruled by a particular planet. The Sephirah Malkuth, for example, which corresponds to the physical plane, is ruled by Earth. The Sephirah ruled by the Moon is called Yesod and this corresponds to both the lower astral plane as well as to the etheric plane.
The etheric is a blueprinting for the physical world and is virtually synonymous with Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic fields, whereas the astral is the realm of emotions, of dreams, of illusions, and of spirits, demons, angels and other entities. The astral knows no bounds. It can be a place of beauty or one’s worst nightmare. The lower astral plane is the lowermost portion of the astral – the part of the astral “closest” to the physical realm – and is said to be inhabited by entities of a truly unpleasant and vampiric disposition. Mediums call them “lower astral entities” or “hungry ghosts” and say they feed off the negative emotions generated by human beings. Although my interest in the Qabalah is purely academic and there is much about it I fail to understand, I find it symbolically interesting that the Moon is related to the lower astral plane as well as to the etheric plane. Whether there truly exists a lower astral plane populated by malevolent, vampiric entities is perhaps beside the point.
JP: How do you interpret G.I. Gurdjieff’s teaching that “we are food for the Moon?”
LP: George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (1866?–1949) was a Greek-Armenian mystic, philosopher, and guru who rose to prominence in the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in the Russian-Armenia town of Alexandropol (now Gyumri). His career as a spiritual teacher began in 1912, when he moved to Moscow and started recruiting students. He later moved to France where, at a large country estate, he established an esoteric community of sorts called the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. Gurdjieff was something of an enigma and many of his teachings were complex and highly obscure. His teaching that “humanity is food for the Moon” was probably his most obscure teaching of all. Not being a student of Gurdjieff’s “system,” called the Fourth Way, it would be wrong of me to claim that I possess a deep understanding of what he meant by humanity being “food for the Moon.” I have nonetheless tried my best to decipher its meaning. In fact, my book features an entire chapter on Gurdjieff.
Gurdjieff taught that our so called normal waking consciousness is actually a form of hypnotic sleep, and that our lives are driven by external influences. We’re like boats cast adrift on the sea, being pushed around in whichever direction the wind happens to be blowing us. He actually referred to humans as machines. He said that humanity is controlled by “planetary influences,” of which the most immediate and dominant is the Moon. In accordance with the law “as above, so below,” planetary tension results in tension among people on Earth. Wars and similar events, then, are the result of planetary tension.
Gurdjieff further taught that all of the planets, including the Moon, are living beings that grow and develop, and like all living beings require sustenance. Because the Moon “feeds” on “organic life on Earth” – of which humanity is a part – “humanity is food for the Moon.” On one level, the teaching refers to humanity being part of a cosmic food chain of sorts, within which the Moon occupies a higher position than humanity. Yet, according to Gurdjeiff, it’s possible to emerge from the state of sleep that dominates our existence and to cease being food for the Moon. This involves freeing ourselves from the Moon’s influence by creating a second Moon – a permanent centre of gravity – within ourselves.
The unidentified flying objects look like white Tic Tacs, or spinning tops flying against the wind — and Navy pilots keep reporting their presence over U.S. airspace. In interviews with the New York Times, five more pilots have come forward describing their experiences with UFOs flying off the Eastern seaboard from Virginia to Florida between 2014 and 2015.
One ten-year veteran, Lieutenant Ryan Graves, claimed that he saw UFOs almost daily, and that the objects could reach hypersonic speeds and heights of up to 30,000 feet without any visible engine or plumes of infrared exhaust. Graves, who reported his experience to the Pentagon and Congress, said, “These things would be out there all day,” and that, “with the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”
In late 2014, a pilot of a Super Hornet reported a near-collision with a UFO when an object that looked like a “sphere encasing a cube” zipped between two fighter jets flying roughly 100 feet from each other. Another pilot, Lieutenant Danny Accoin, could identify a flying object’s presence on his radar, missile system, and infrared camera but was not able to actually see it in his helmet camera. “I knew I had it, I knew it was not a false hit,” Accoin said. But still, “I could not pick it up visually.”
As the Times reports, pilot sightings of UFOs have increased since “their 1980s-era radar was upgraded to a more advanced system. As one fighter jet after another got the new radar, pilots began picking up the objects, but ignoring what they thought were false radar tracks.”
What fascinated Lieutenant Graves about his interactions with the objects was their ability to stop rapidly, turn instantly, and immediately accelerate to hypersonic speed — maneuvers that would burden human pilots with unbearable G-forces. “Speed doesn’t kill you,” Graves said. “Stopping does. Or acceleration.”
Because the sightings occurred in airspace designated for fighter-jet training, the pilots concurred that the objects were not classified or commercial drones operating in the area. Still, none of the five — nor the Defense Department — would speculate as to the objects’ extraterrestrial nature. “We’re here to do a job, with excellence, not make up myths,” said Accoin.
The past few years have been something of a quiet golden age for UFO enthusiasts hoping to prove the validity of their interests. First, there was the Pentagon’s 2017 admission of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a short-lived, $22 million scrap of the Defense budget that would investigate reports of “unexplained aerial phenomena.” Then, in November 2018, scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics proposed a long-shot hypothesis about the cigar-shaped object Oumuamua, which passed through the solar system in 2017: It was a “solar sail,” gathering energy from the sun to accelerate through our galaxial neighborhood. (The technology isn’t all that complicated; humans have already developed it.)
And in April, the Navy announced it is “updating and formalizing the process” by which pilots report UFO sightings, as a means to destigmatize the sharing of information and treat the reports with a more data-driven approach. Luis Elizondo, a former senior intelligence officer, told the Washington Post that it was “the single greatest decision the Navy has made in decades.”
At this rate, the president’s Space Force might actually have something to do.
Neptune's largest moon Triton boasts an uncommon icy mixture of carbon monoxide and nitrogen, which could help astronomers better understand the conditions of other distant alien worlds.
Using the Gemini Observatory in Chili and the high-resolution spectrograph called IGRINS (Immersion Grating Infrared Spectrometer), a visiting instrumentfor Gemini, astronomers detected a distinct infrared signature on Triton, revealing a mixture of carbon monoxide and nitrogen frozen as solid ice. This finding helps explain seasonal atmospheric changes on Triton and how material is transported across the moon's surface via geysers, according to a statement.
Prior to detecting this unique signature on Triton, researchers first identified the specific wavelength of infrared light absorbed by an ice mixture of carbon monoxide and nitrogen molecules in the lab.
"While the icy spectral fingerprint we uncovered was entirely reasonable, especially as this combination of ices can be created in the lab, pinpointing this specific wavelength of infrared light on another world is unprecedented," Stephen Tegler, lead author of the study from Northern Arizona University's Astrophysical Materials Laboratory, said in the statement.
The icy mixture detected on Triton could help explain the moon's iconic geysers, which are the dark, windblown streaks first observed by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in the moon's south polar region. These distinct streaks are believed to be erupted material from an internal ocean, or an icy mixture that migrates around the surface in response to changing seasonal patterns of sunlight, according to the statement.
"Despite Triton's distance from the sun and the cold temperatures, the weak sunlight is enough to drive strong seasonal changes on Triton's surface and atmosphere," Henry Roe, deputy director of Gemini and a member of the research team, said in the statement. "This work demonstrates the power of combining laboratory studies with telescope observations to understand complex planetary processes in alien environments so different from what we encounter every day here on Earth."
In fact, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft found that carbon monoxide and nitrogen ices coexist on Pluto. However, the recent findings are the first evidence of these ices mixing, according to the statement.
Therefore, the study, which will be published in The Astronomical Journal, sheds light on the possible composition of ices and seasonal variations in the atmosphere on other distant worlds beyond Neptune.
Martian sand dunes are blowing in the wind — but slowly, and based on factors that don't affect sand movement here on Earth.
Scientists tracked the movement of nearly 500 individual dunes, all using data gathered by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. By studying the movement of all that sand, the researchers were able to compare the interaction between wind and sand on the Red Planet with the same interaction on Earth.
"On Mars, there simply is not enough wind energy to move a substantial amount of material around on the surface," lead author Matthew Chojnacki, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, said in a statement. "It might take two years on Mars to see the same movement you'd typically see in a season on Earth."
Chojnacki and his colleagues used images taken by HiRISE, a specialized camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that images the surface of Mars with incredibly detailed photographs. Those photographs include plenty of scenes of sand dunes rippling across the planet.
Scientists are particularly interested in the sand dunes because they represent areas where the surface is changing enough that the same material isn't getting constantly blasted by the harsh environment. "If you don't have sand moving around, that means the surface is just sitting there, getting bombarded by ultraviolet and gamma radiation that would destroy complex molecules and any ancient Martian biosignatures," Chojnacki said.
An animation based on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter data showing the movement of sand dunes on the Red Planet.
By selecting pairs of images that showed the same patch of ground years apart, the team was able to measure how fast each dune was moving. That analysis suggests that Martian sand dunes move at a fraction of the speed of those found on Earth — which makes sense given how much thinner an atmosphere the Red Planet boasts than Earth.
What was less predictable was that just a handful of spots would sport significantly faster sand movement: Syrtis Major, the Hellespontus mountainsand a region called the north polar ergs. The researchers think that the relatively fast sand movement here may be caused by dramatic changes in surface elevation and temperature that arise where different types of surface features neighbor each other. That's not a situation that prompts winds here on Earth.
A map of Mars shows the three regions where the team of scientists behind a new study found the most dramatic sand dune movement: Syrtis Major, along the Hellespontus mountains, and near the north pole's ice cap.
"Those are not factors you would find in terrestrial geology," Chojnacki said. "On Earth, the factors at work are different from Mars. For example, ground water near the surface or plants growing in the area retard dune sand movement."
The research is described in a paper published March 11 in the journal Geology.
There's a binary star system out there in the Milky Way, and it's acting very weird.
"AG Draconis," as astronomers call it, is made up of two stars: arelatively cool giant and a relatively hot white dwarf — the stellar corpse of a low- to medium-size star. They're 16,000 light-years away from Earth. (A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, meaning everything we see happening on these stars happened 16,000 years ago). And that distance makes them difficult to observe in detail. But we do know some things about them.
The two stars are probably interacting, with material flowing off the surface of the big, cool star and onto the surface of the small, hot star. And every once in a while, about once every nine to 15 years dating back to the 1890s, they become active — going through a period of several years where, once a year, they get much brighter in certain wavelengths that Earth's telescopes can detect. They're in an active period now, with flashes (or "outbursts" of energy) detected in April 2016, May 2017 and April 2018. (The 2016 outburst was a bit weird itself, having two peaks two weeks apart.) Researchers expect another outburst in April or May of this year, though it's too soon for any reports to have been published.
But there's something weird about this period of activity, as researchers reported in a paper uploaded May 10 to the preprint server arXiv, which has not yet been through peer review. [15 Amazing Images of Stars]
In the past, AG Draconis' active periods almost always followed a simple pattern: The first couple of outbursts are "cool," with the temperature of the white dwarf appearing to drop during each of its outbursts. Then, sometimes, the next set of outbursts are "hot," with the star's temperature rising. Cool outbursts tend to be much brighter than hot ones.
Researchers suspect that a cool outburst happens when the white dwarf starts to expand, its outermost, atmosphere-like region growing and cooling at the same time. That doesn't happen during hot outbursts, which are less well-understood.
But this current cycle is weird. Occurring just seven years after a minor outburst in 2008, it's been made up entirely of "hot" outbursts.
"Such behavior is considerably peculiar in [the] almost 130-year history of [the] observing of this object," the researchers wrote, offering no explanation for why it might be happening.
Why does any of this "outbursting" happen at all? No one knows for sure.
The researchers pointed to a paper from 2006 posted to arXiv that offers one popular explanation, derived from a different star system. As the white dwarf's gravity captures material from its giant twin, an "accretion disk" forms — made up of material circling the dwarf and waiting to fall onto its surface. But the disk is unstable, with the giant sometimes feeding more material into it and sometimes less.
Every once in a while, too much material falls onto the dwarf's surface and there's a spike in thermonuclear burning on the outside of the star, where there should be fairly little. That hellish blaze spits material out into the system, forming a brief, hot shell around the white dwarf. From Earth, this all looks like a slight tweak in the light across a few wavelengths.
"The future evolution of AG Dra[conis] is an open question," the researchers wrote. In 2019, they asked, "can we expect (finally) a major, cool or (again) minor, hot outburst?"
It's also possible, the researchers suggested, that this period of minor outbursts will simply end. That happened once before, during the relatively minor activity period of 1963 to 1966.
Long term, they said, this illustrates the importance of keeping a careful eye on stars like these, so that astronomers may one day crack the code of their behavior. It also demonstrates the difficulty of parsing events in solar systems light-years away.
NEW YORK TIMES: NAVY PILOTS BAFFLED BY UFO ENCOUNTERS
NEW YORK TIMES: NAVY PILOTS BAFFLED BY UFO ENCOUNTERS
COOLCATGAMESTUDIO VIA PIXABAY/VICTOR TANGERMANN
VICTOR TANGERMANN
Close Encounters
In an astonishing new story by The New York Times, Navy pilots detail their encounters with UFOs — “strange objects” that have “no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes,” but could reach “30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.”
“Wow, what is that, man?” an unnamed pilot said in a video recorded in early 2015 of what appears to be an object flying above the ocean. “Look at it fly!”
“Strange Stuff”
Two pilots spoke on the record to the Times, while three more gave details about their UFO encounters under condition of anonymity. The UFOs aren’t necessarily aliens — and are likely just unidentified terrestrial phenomena — but military officials aren’t sure what they are.
“People have seen strange stuff in military aircraft for decades,” Ryan Graves, a lieutenant and Navy pilot, told The Times. “We’re doing this very complex mission, to go from 30,000 feet, diving down. It would be a pretty big deal to have something up there.”
Unidentified Aircraft
The news comes after the U.S. Navy was found to be working on new guidelines for its personnel to report sightings and other encounters with “unidentified aircraft,” according to Politico — a sign that the Navy is taking UFO encounters more seriously.
The New York Times also uncovered a $22 million program in 2017 called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program — or “Black Money” — that investigated reports of UFOs from 2007 until 2012.
Navy Pilot In Near Miss With UFO Off Virginia Beach
Navy Pilot In Near Miss With UFO Off Virginia Beach
A spate of UFO encounters off the East Coast puzzles US Navy.
The New York Times has reported that a US Navy pilot has come forward to claim that his vehicle had a very close encounter with an unidentified flying object off Virginia Beach in 2014, and according to reports he is certainly not the only person to have had such an experience in recent years.
A Sphere Encasing A Cube
The pilot claimed that the object that he nearly collided with was a "sphere encasing a cube". Other descriptions of unidentified flying objects vary but it is clear that there is a pattern of strange activity in the skies over the East Coast of the United States with numerous pilots making reports to the Navy leadership. According to some of the pilots, these objects were remarkably designed with no visible engines or exhaust plumes. They had been seen at altitudes of 30,000 and observed traveling at hypersonic speeds. More than one of the pilots noted that the craft seemed to be performing maneuvers "beyond the physical limits of a human crew" such as turning instantaneously.
NYT Science@NYTScience
No one in the Defense Department is saying that the objects were extraterrestrial, and experts emphasize that earthly explanations can generally be found for such incidents. But the objects have gotten the attention of the Navy. https://nyti.ms/2I0QubS
‘Wow, What Is That?’ Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects
No one at the Pentagon is saying that the objects are extraterrestrial, but the Navy has issued new classified guidance for reporting unexplained aerial phenomena.
nytimes.com
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The US Navy has confirmed that they have received a number of reports about these bizarre crafts entering US air space in the past couple of years. “These kinds on incursions can be both a security risk and pose a safety hazard for both Navy and Air Force aviation, " said the official statement, "For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the USAF takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report."
Lieutenant Ryan Graves, one of the Navy pilots who has come forward to share his experience said that there were concerns among his squadron that this situation is becoming increasingly dangerous. He expressed his own worries that it was only a matter of time before a pilot had a mid-air collision with one of these bizarre crafts.
The Navy has explicitly denied that they think that the unidentified flying objects are extra-terrestrial in origin. The pilots who reported their encounters also shied away from this theory. One pilot said, "we’re here to do a job, with excellence, not make up myths."
"Wow! What is that, man?" One of the pilots is heard saying in the clip. "Look at that flying!"
A Massive City And Several Pyramid-Shaped Structures Found Beneath Lake Fuxian In China
A Massive City And Several Pyramid-Shaped Structures Found Beneath Lake Fuxian In China
Archeologists have recently discovered the remains of a group of large ancient buildings at the bottom of Fuxian Lake in Yunnan Province, China.
Also found were placed stones with carvings that can be classified as mysterious. These findings question previous assumptions by experts. According to Chinese newspaper outlets, recorded in historical documents was a city named Yuyuan. Yuyuan was founded in the Fuxian Lake demographic during the Western Han Dynasty from 206 BC to 24 AD. Yuyuan disappeared from the historical record during the Sui and Tang Dynasty from 589 AD to 907 AD. Urban legend claims the city sank to the bottom of Fuxian Lake.
An Ancient Undocumented City
These recent findings suggest otherwise since the remains of the buildings were made of stone. Yuyuan buildings were found to be mostly built with wood.
Through Sonar surveys, it was revealed that the architecture found at the bottom of Fuxian Lake covered around 2.4 square kilometers. This constitutes a large city that was never documented in history.
A Pyramid and Enigmatic Carvings
Also found at the bottom were the remains of a pyramid thought to be more complex than the famous Egyptian pyramids.
One of the many stones found has gathered some special attention. On the top right section of the stone is a small circle that was carved with seven radial lines surrounding it. This carving resembles the sun. A smaller circle is carved on the left side of the same stone, but with only four radial lines. These types of carvings are considered rare by experts and are estimated to be over 1,800 years old. No such similar carvings are known in that time frame.
Carvings found on one of the stones in the underwater ruins in Fuxian Lake
Also found on the stones were carvings resembling masks. These masks do not resemble masks that were made for humans based on the teeth marks.
Experts are stumped as to what these findings mean, as more research is needed.
EXCLUSIVE: Journalist Ralph Blumenthal talks New York Times latest UFO coverage
EXCLUSIVE: Journalist Ralph Blumenthal talks New York Times latest UFO coverage
(Scree shot)
When the New York Times published the piece titled “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program” on Dec. 16 2017 it was a paradigm shift in the way the public and mainstream press outlets presented stories on UFOs. Since that initial story by veteran journalists Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean a lot has happened in bringing this topic away from fringe. When the first Times article hit, we went behind the scenes of the story with Blumenthal when he discussed how they considered Luis Elizondo credible, and wanted to purse the story. Blumenthal was able to talk to Punk rock and UFOs again on the Times latest offering, and how editorial leadership sees these stories.
“The good news is the Times is receptive to this story,” Blumenthal said.” They have to be done in a New York Times way where everything is on the record. In this case we did, we were able to talk to several pilots without using names. Everyone else was on record. The Times takes the subject very seriously with its editing standards, which is why the stories have gotten such credible resonance. When people see it in the Times it’s not fake news, (and) it’s not speculation. We are very careful to stick to what we know, and lay out what we don’t know. The editing process is very rigorous, and it is not easy for reporters like us to get these stories through because we are held to a very high standard given the subject I would say properly so.”
The New York Times isn’t the only journalism giant taking this seriously all of a sudden. Politico, Washington Post, The Hill, New York Mag, and other large media companies are following suit with similar stories, which makes the journalists at the Times prideful from what started as the Pentagon UFO story to now.
“We love to see it lighting up the Internet,” Blumenthal said. “It is the most e-mailed , most watched and most everything’d story of the day. It is really dominating Times coverage, so it is a part of pride because we do think the subject is important, and we love to see people follow us since sometimes we need to follow other people, but in this case I think we have set the pace.”
Ralph Blumenthal is a 45-year veteran of the New York Times.
(Twitter)
With the new NYT story “‘Wow, What Is That?’ Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects” that dropped May 26, Blumenthal, Kean and Cooper return to feature two new witness testimonials from military officials with the biggest takeaway being that these baffling UFOs appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to 2015 off the East Coast. The article features quotes from Lt. Ryan Graves ( a 10-year Navy vet) who reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress, Lt. Danny Accoin and three others (who asked not to be named) spoke on record to the times on what they saw. Graves and Accoin are mentioned in the story to also appear on upcoming episodes of History’s “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation” ( read our spoiler free review of episode one here). The sightings reported here seem to mimic the descriptions of the 2004 Nimitz UAP case.
Some detractors of efforts of To The Stars, and these stories in general are quick to paint a picture as the release of the story is timed to collaborate with the debut episode of “Unidentified.”
“We knew the History Channel had put this series together, and we watched that and give them credit in the piece, and saw what they said in the series and went after them (witnesses) because obviously we weren’t going to take it from the TV; we wanted to conduct our own interview, so we did meet with Ryan Graves in New York, and Helene spoke with Danny Accoin over the phone,” Blumenthal said.” There are many places in the paper for shows to be reviewed and featured. This was not the purpose of this article. We wanted to establish the credibility of these witnesses on our own, and not part of any other effort, program or institution. It was not reliant on anybody but our own reporting.”
Blumenthal is aware of the infighting, division and skepticism among the UFO community, but ultimately believes this story is one “of the biggest of our time.”The effort from the journalists at the New York Times continues to be done by journalists only.
“We really try to keep out distance from To The Stars because we think it helps our credibility to be separate,” Blumenthal said.” They are doing what they are doing, and they’ve done some really interesting, important things, but we have to do what we do at the New York Times. To maintain our standards and credibility we have to do it our own way. We are doing it by our interviews the way we always do everything, and it keeps our reporting pure and obviously respected elsewhere. We aren’t taking anything from anybody; we are investigating ourselves.”
UFOs exist and everyone needs to adjust to that fact
UFOs exist and everyone needs to adjust to that fact
UFOs are not the same thing as extraterrestrial life. But we should start thinking about that possibility.
Footage from 2004 shows an encounter between a U.S. fighter jet and "anomalous aerial vehicles," which is military jargon for UFOs.(To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science)
The term “UFO” automatically triggers derision in most quarters of polite society. One of Christopher Buckley’s better satires,“Little Green Men,” is premised on a George F. Will-type pundit thinking that he has been abducted by aliens, with amusing results. UFOs have historically been associated with crackpot ideas like Big Foot or conspiracy theories involving crop circles.
The obvious reason for this is that the term “UFO” is usually assumed to be a synonym for “extraterrestrial life.” If you think about it, this is odd. UFO literally stands for “unidentified flying object.” A UFO is not necessarily an alien from another planet. It is simply a flying object that cannot be explained away through conventional means. Because UFOs are usually brought up only to crack jokes, however, they have been dismissed for decades.
One of the gutsiest working paper presentations I have witnessed was Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall presenting a draft version of “Sovereignty and the UFO.” In that paper, eventually published in the journal Political Theory, Wendt and Duvall argued that state sovereignty as we understand it is anthropocentric, or “constituted and organized by reference to human beings alone.” They argued that the real reason UFOs have been dismissed is because of the existential challenge that they pose for a worldview in which human beings are the most technologically advanced life-forms:
UFOs have never been systematically investigated by science or the state, because it is assumed to be known that none are extraterrestrial. Yet in fact this is not known, which makes the UFO taboo puzzling given the ET possibility.... The puzzle is explained by the functional imperatives of anthropocentric sovereignty, which cannot decide a UFO exception to anthropocentrism while preserving the ability to make such a decision. The UFO can be “known” only by not asking what it is.
When Wendt and Duvall made this argument, there were a lot of titters in the audience. I chuckled, too. Nonetheless, their paper makes a persuasive case that UFOs certainly exist, even if they are not necessarily ETs. For them, the key is that no official authority takes seriously the idea that UFOs can be extraterrestrials. As they note, “considerable work goes into ignoring UFOs, constituting them as objects only of ridicule and scorn.”
In recent years, however, there has been a subtle shift that poses some interesting questions for their argument. For one thing, discussion of actual UFOs has been the topic of some serious mainstream media coverage. There was the December 2017 New York Times story by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean about the Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which was tasked with cataloguing UFOs recorded by military pilots. DoD officials confirmed its existence. Though this story generated some justified skepticism, it represented the first time the U.S. government acknowledged the existence of such a program.
What we know — and don't know — about aliens and UFOs
The Post's Cleve R. Wootson Jr. explains why a recent admission from the government is like pouring kerosene on UFO conspiracy theories.(Video: Monica Akhtar/Photo: Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Then, there were the reports last November about Oumuamua, “a mysterious, cigar-shaped interstellar object [that] fell through our solar system at an extraordinary speed,” according to New York’s Eric Levits. Oumuamua’s shape and trajectory were unusual enough for some genuine astrophysicists to publish a paper suggesting the possibility that it was an artificial construction relying on a solar sail. Again, this prompted skeptical reactions, but even those skeptics could not completely rule out the possibility that extraterrestrial activity was involved.
The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast. Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes, but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.
“These things would be out there all day,” said Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who has been with the Navy for 10 years, and who reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress. “Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”....
No one in the Defense Department is saying that the objects were extraterrestrial, and experts emphasize that earthly explanations can generally be found for such incidents. Lieutenant Graves and four other Navy pilots, who said in interviews with The New York Times that they saw the objects in 2014 and 2015 in training maneuvers from Virginia to Florida off the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, make no assertions of their provenance.
The Times reporters broke new ground by getting pilots on record. What is interesting about this latest news cycle, however, is that DoD officials are not behaving as Wendt and Duvall would predict. Indeed, Politico’s Bryan Bender reported last month that, “The U.S. Navy is drafting new guidelines for pilots and other personnel to report encounters with ‘unidentified aircraft,’ a significant new step in creating a formal process to collect and analyze the unexplained sightings — and destigmatize them.” My Post colleague Deanna Paul followed up by reporting that “Luis Elizondo, a former senior intelligence officer, told The Post that the new Navy guidelines formalized the reporting process, facilitating data-driven analysis while removing the stigma from talking about UFOs, calling it ‘the single greatest decision the Navy has made in decades.’ ”
What appears to be happening is that official organs of the state are now acknowledging that UFOs exist, even if they are not literally using the term. They are doing so because enough pilots are reporting UFOs and near-air collisions so as to warrant better record-keeping. They are not saying that these UFOs are extraterrestrials, but they are trying to destigmatize the reporting of a UFO.
Still, the very fact that this step has been taken somewhat weakens the Wendt and Duvall thesis. This was always a two-step process: (a) Acknowledge that UFOs exist; and (b) Consider that the UFOs might be ETs.
In recent years, the U.S. national security bureaucracy has met the first criterion. What happens to our understanding of the universe if great powers meet that second one?
AFPHet Pentagon doet niet voldoende onderzoek naar de oorsprong van ufo's, vindt Christopher Mellon.
Ufo’s moeten serieus genomen worden. Daar pleit Christopher Mellon voor, die nog onder Clinton en Bush voor de Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst werkte. Mellon doet zijn beklag in een opiniestuk in de Washington Post naar aanleiding van het vrijgeven van nieuwe beelden met een mysterieus vliegend object boven de Atlantische Oceaan.
De clip duurt twee minuten en is sensationeel. Legerpiloten filmden een ufo vanuit een F-18 van de US Navy, die op een hoogte van 25.000 voet vloog. “What the fuck is dat ding?” roept een piloot. De video werd online gepost door de To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, een privaat onderzoeksbedrijf.
De vrijgegeven beelden werden in 2015 geschoten aan de Amerikaanse Oostkust. Hoe het onderzoekscentrum eraan geraakte, zei het niet. Maar iedereen zou ze kunnen opvragen. Vorig jaar werden twee gelijkaardige video’s openbaar gemaakt.
Volgens Christopher Mellon vormen de video’s “het bewijs voor het bestaan van vliegtuigen die ver boven alles staan waar de VS of haar bondgenoten over beschikken”. Mellon is adviseur bij de To the Stars Acacemy en werkte voor de geheime dienst onder Bill Clinton en George W. Bush. Hij vindt dat de overheid te weinig onderzoek doet naar dat soort bewijsmateriaal: “Als het een mysterie is waar die vliegtuigen vandaan komen, dan is de passiviteit van de overheid tegenover zulke bewijzen dat ook”.
Hij verwijt het leger en de overheid dat ze “dat soort incidenten beschouwen als geïsoleerde feiten en niet als onderdeel van een patroon dat op een ernstige manier aandacht en onderzoek vraagt”. Hij vergelijkt die houding in de Washington Post met de inspanningen van de CIA en de FBI tegen terrorisme vóór 9/11, toen beide diensten wel informatie hadden over de kapers maar die voor zich hielden en niet met elkaar deelden.
Mellon vraagt zich af of “Rusland of China technologisch haasje-over doen met de VS” dan wel dat de beelden “het bewijs kunnen zijn van een buitenaardse beschaving”. Hij schrijft dat Poetins recente gepoch over een Russische doorbraak in voortstuwingstechnieken misschien wel niet zomaar bluf is. Mellons besluit: “Helaas hebben we geen idee, omdat we zelfs geen antwoorden zoeken.”
US Department of DefenceIn 2004 werd een mysterieus vliegend object met een ongezien acceleratievermogen en zonder tekenen van voortstuwing gespot voor de kust van San Diego, zo maakte het Pentagon recent bekend.
WETENSCHAPEen ervaren piloot van de Amerikaanse Navy zag tijdens trainingen aan de oostkust van de VS tussen de zomer van 2014 en maart 2015 bijna dagelijks ufo’s vliegen. Daarover getuigt hij, samen met vier collega’s, in de New York Times. De “vreemde objecten” haalden hypersonische snelheden en bereikten hoogten tot meer dan 9 kilometer, “zonder zichtbare motor of uitlaatsporen”.
Luitenant Ryan Graves was tien jaar lang piloot van een F/A-18 Super Hornet bij de Navy. Hij lichtte het Pentagon en het Congres in over zijn ervaringen. “Die dingen bleven een hele dag in de lucht”, aldus Graves. “Een vliegtuig in de lucht houden kost bakken energie. Met de snelheden die wij zagen, is twaalf uur in de lucht elf uur langer dan we zouden verwachten.”
Navy-woordvoerder Josh Gradisher geeft aan de New York Times toe dat ze niet alle waarnemingen van Graves en zijn collega’s kunnen verklaren. Sommige vliegende objecten zouden commerciële drones kunnen zijn, voor andere “weten we niet wie erachter zit, hebben we niet genoeg gegevens om ze op te sporen”, legt Gradisher uit. Maar niemand beweert dat het daarom om aliens zou gaan.
AFP
De onthullingen komen er na de aankondiging in april van nieuwe, geheime richtlijnen om “onverklaarbare luchtfenomenen” te rapporteren, “als middel om het delen van informatie uit de stigmatisatiehoek te halen en de verslagen meer datagedreven aan te pakken”.
Piloten rapporteerden de waarnemingen aan hun oversten. Ze “speculeerden over geheime, extreem geavanceerde droneprogramma’s”, maar sloten dat weer uit omdat de waarnemingen op bekend militair oefenterrein tussen Virginia en Florida plaatsvonden.
Een van hen vertelde eind 2014 aan Graves dat hij “bijna botste met zo’n ding”. De ufo beschreef hij als iets dat leek op “een bol rond een kubus”. Het vliegende voorwerp manoeuvreerde zich tussen twee gevechtstoestellen die op amper 30 meter van elkaar vlogen. Luitenant Danny Accoin beweert dan weer dat hij een ufo op zijn radar, op zijn raketsysteem en op zijn infraroodcamera had, maar dat hij die toch niet kon waarnemen met zijn ogen.
REUTERS
Van sommige waarnemingen bestaan ook videobeelden. Daarop zijn volgens Graves en zijn collega’s “objecten te zien die optrekken tot een hypersonische snelheid, die plots halt houden en scherpe bochten maken - wat de fysieke beperkingen van een menselijke bemanning overstijgt”. Graves bedoelt dat menselijke piloten de G-krachten niet zou aankunnen. “Snelheid doodt je niet, halt houden wél, of accelereren.”
Sinds het radarsysteem van de gevechtsvliegtuigen, dat nog uit de jaren 80 stamde, geavanceerder werd, namen de ufo-waarnemingen van de piloten toe.
Geologists in France and Italy have spotted what appear to be organic molecules from outer space in 3.3-billion-year-old rocks in South Africa, according to a new study.
By now, we know that organic molecules, from methane to amino acids, exist in space, and perhaps some of these molecules were brought to our own planet via carbon-containing asteroids. Scientists studying ancient rock in South Africa seem to have uncovered evidence of the oldest examples yet of these extraterrestrial molecules.
A small range called the Makhonjwa Mountains or the Barberton Greenstone Belt sits in eastern South Africa and Swaziland, and contains a 7-to-20 metre thick deposit of 3.3-billion-year-old volcanic rock called the Josefdal Chert. Among layers of volcanic ash lie carbon-filled layers, deposited during times of lower volcanic activity, and the whole region appears to have been altered by the presence of water (like on a shorefront), according to the paper published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.
The researchers analysed a pair of postage stamp-sized samples gathered during field campaigns, sliced them into a few dozen pieces, and analysed them with electron microscopes, protons from a particle accelerator and continuous-wave electron paramagnetic resonance (cw-EPR). In essence, the researchers measured how the samples’ electrons responded to a slowly changing magnetic field. They found different kinds of signals in the slices – most of them corresponded with carbon signals found elsewhere on Earth but, for one slice, it looked more like the signal from carbon-containing meteorites.
It didn’t surprise the researchers to find extraterrestrial material in their sediments – as they do today, micrometeorites likely fell on ancient Earth, bringing organic carbon molecules. What did surprise them is that somehow, there was enough of these materials present in the area to still be detectable 3.3 billion years later. They proposed that maybe the layer they analysed formed after a meteor impact produced a layer of dust in the atmosphere that then settled beneath a layer of volcanic ash.
This is just one piece of evidence, and not a literal molecule that was deposited 3.3 billion years ago. But it’s still an important thing to know. New Scientist reports that finding layers of extraterrestrial organic carbon from asteroids might complicate efforts to find similar-looking biosignatures on other planets, like Mars, since the signature an asteroid deposited might look like the signature of life.
Research continues to show that our planet’s rocks preserve an incredible history – not just our own history, but the history of the entire solar system.
In het Makhonjwa-gebergte in Zuid-Afrika worden de oudste stenen ter wereld gevonden. Niet al deze stenen zijn van de aarde afkomstig.
Wetenschappers laten weten dat ze er sporen van organisch buitenaards materiaal hebben gevonden in 3,3 miljard jaar oud vulkanisch sediment.
“Het is voor het eerst dat we bewijs hebben gevonden voor buitenaards koolstof in aardse stenen,” reageerde astrobioloog Frances Westall van de Franse overheidsorganisatie voor wetenschappelijk onderzoek CNRS.
Uitzonderlijke kenmerken
De onderzoekers stuitten op een laag gesteente met uitzonderlijke kenmerken.
Het team van Westall ontdekte in het gebergte een twee millimeter dikke laag gesteente die twee soorten organisch buitenaards materiaal bleek te bevatten.
Het is nooit eerder voorgekomen dat wetenschappers in dit soort koolstofhoudende meteorieten organische bestanddelen hebben aangetroffen.
Andere planeten
Het gesteente bleek ook nanodeeltjes nikkel, chroom en ijzer te bevatten, iets wat je gewoonlijk niet aantreft in aardse rotsformaties.
We zouden dit soort organisch materiaal afkomstig uit meteorieten ook kunnen aantreffen op andere planeten, zo denken de onderzoekers.
'Lunar Pyramid' Spotted in NASA Image Sparks Speculation Aliens Were in Egypt
'Lunar Pyramid' Spotted in NASA Image Sparks Speculation Aliens Were in Egypt
The origin of the pyramids of Egypt has fired the human imagination for centuries, and it is often asked who the true pyramid builders were. Those who 'want to believe' now speculate that the answer can be found on our planet's only natural satellite.
Alien conspiracy theories are swirling after an E.T. enthusiast spotted traces of intelligent life on the Moon.
The 'discovery' was made by a YouTuber going by the handle Pacitto Dominique, who was apparently exploring old high-resolution photos of the Moon's surface taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
One of the photos shows what looks like a pyramid-shaped object sitting at the centre of a huge crater.
"It was a three sided pyramid with a single dark window going along one side," self-styled UFO expert Scott C. Warring wrote on his popular conspiracy theory website etdatabase.com.
"The question remains, is this definitive proof that the pyramids in Egypt were built by aliens from our moon? It seems so," he concluded.
While the origin of the object in question is yet unclear (it could be a simple boulder), this is not the first time the possible existence of pyramids on the Moon has had alien hunters in a frenzy.
An actual grainy photograph snapped by one of the Apollo 17 mission members in 1972, which shows a dark pyramidal structure in a light background, sparked claims several years ago that there has been a civilisation on the Moon.
However, considering the sequence of pictures in the mission's repository of images, it appears that the "pyramid sighting" was in fact a low-quality photo of the floor of the lunar rover.
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Piramidevormig object gespot op NASA-foto van de maan. Enig idee wat dit is?
Piramidevormig object gespot op NASA-foto van de maan. Enig idee wat dit is?
Een alien-jager denkt sporen van intelligent leven op de maan te hebben gevonden. Dat schrijft het Russische persbureau Sputnik.
De ontdekking is gedaan door een YouTube-gebruiker met de naam Pacitto Dominique, die oude foto’s van het maanoppervlak bestudeerde die zijn gemaakt door NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Op één van de foto’s is volgens hem een piramidevormig object te zien middenin een enorme krater.
Onduidelijk
“Het was een piramide met drie zijden en in één van die zijden een donkere opening,” schreef Scott C. Waring op zijn website Etdatabase.com.
Het is onduidelijk wat het object precies is. Het zou ook kunnen gaan om een grote steen, aldus het persbureau.
Vorig jaar claimde de Argentijn Marcelo Irazusta op Google Earth een piramideachtige structuur op het maanoppervlak te hebben ontdekt.
Onregelmatigheid
Hij stelde in een video op zijn YouTube-kanaal dat de onregelmatigheid niet op natuurlijke wijze kon zijn ontstaan.
Een jaar daarvoor zei UFO-jager Mark Sawalha een piramidevorm te hebben ontdekt in een maankrater op een foto van de NASA.
Vreemde objecten
“Je ziet op een foto van de Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter van de NASA in het midden van de krater Eudoxus een object dat eruitziet als een piramide,” zei hij.
Sawalha ontdekte eerder ook al vreemde objecten op de maan.
Alien Bases on the Moon, This Astronaut Savedthe Astonishing Evidence!
Alien Bases on the Moon, This Astronaut Saved the Astonishing Evidence!
He kept the evidence! A NASA image, AS11-41-6155, reveals what appears to be an alien base on the far side of the moon. The object appears to be on the moon’s surface and is well illuminated. It is symmetrical with a long shaft separated at each end by a small sphere with another in the center.
The spheres appear to be living quarters with connecting corridors. An important part of Johnston‘s duty was to provide photographic and preliminary analysis of the lunar samples to the contributing scientists from around the world. The photographic documentation was to document the lunar samples exact location and orientation insitu. In addition to the photos he provided copies of the lunar sample information catalogs to the scientists.
As such, he had in his office several sets of photographs taken by Apollo astronauts with their chest-mounted Hasselblad cameras. When the lunar sample distribution wound down, he was instructed by Bud Laskawa, his boss, to destroy what remained of the photo archive, but Johnston kept one set as a personal collection for a work portfolio.
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'These things would be out there all day': US Navy pilots say they saw UFOs that 'flew at hypersonic speeds at altitudes of 30,000ft over Virginia and Florida almost every day'
'These things would be out there all day': US Navy pilots say they saw UFOs that 'flew at hypersonic speeds at altitudes of 30,000ft over Virginia and Florida almost every day'
Several U.S. Navy aviators come forward to claim UFO sightings during training
They say objects were spotted over Eastern seaboard between 2014 and 2015
Pilots say objects flew at hypersonic speeds without leaving engine exhaust
They said that the UFOs were also able to stop quickly and turn suddenly
A number of pilots in the United States Navy reported seeing unidentified flying objects (UFOs) over American airspace between 2014 and 2015.
One of them, Lt. Ryan Graves, said he saw UFOs on an almost daily basis in the airspace off the Eastern seaboard between Florida and Virginia.
These UFOs would reach altitudes of up to 30,000ft and flew at hypersonic speeds without leaving any visible engine exhaust, Graves told The New York Times.
Graves said he reported what he witnessed to the Pentagon and Congress.
The Times story features video of two encounters Navy pilots allegedly had with UFOs.
The videos include visual radar and voice recordings by pilots who are amazed at what they see.
'What the [expletive] is that thing?' one pilot is heard saying as he is unable to positively identify an object in his radar
A number of pilots have reported seeing objects flying at altitudes of up to 30,000ft above the Eastern seaboard between 2014 and 2015
Pilots said that the flying objects were able to stop suddenly and turn quickly while reaching hypersonic speeds
‘These things would be out there all day,’ Graves said.
‘With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.’
Graves said the most unusual thing about these UFOs was their ability to stop suddenly, turn on a dime, and immediately accelerate to hypersonic speeds.
‘Speed doesn’t kill you,’ Graves said. ‘Stopping does. Or acceleration.’
In 2014, a pilot operating a Super Hornet fighter jet reported that he nearly collided with a UFO.
The pilot recalled that something which resembled a ‘sphere encasing a cube’ flew in between two fighter jets that were flying around 100ft apart from each other.
Another pilot, Lt. Danny Accoin, said he noticed a flying object on his radar, missile system, and infrared camera, but he wasn’t able to see it in his helmet.
‘I knew I had it, I knew it was not a false hit,’ Accoin said.
‘[But] I could not pick it up visually.’
The pilots began to notice more activity after their radar systems were upgraded, but most thought they were false radar tracks.
The UFOs were spotted in areas that were designated for fighter jet training, which makes it unlikely that these were commercial drones or other objects that are classified.
But none of the pilots or the Pentagon would speculate as to what they believed the objects were.
'We’re here to do a job, with excellence, not make up myths,' said Lt. Accoin.
The pilots' claims come a week after a Department of Defense spokesperson reportedly confirmed the Pentagon's interest in UFO's, citing the agency's investigation of 'unidentified aerial phenomena.'
According to a report from the New York Post, a representative confirmed that the U.S. government studied and investigated the occurrence of mysterious and unexplained aircraft as a part of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program that was made public in 2017.
Media commentator and former British defense official Nick Pope told the Post that the specific choice of words marks a major step in the way that the government talks about unidentified aircraft.
'This new admission makes it clear that they really did study what the public would call ‘UFOs,’ he told the Post.
'It also shows the British influence, because UAP was the term we used in the Ministry of Defence to get away from the pop culture baggage that came with the term ‘UFO.'
The shift in terminology comes just weeks after the U.S. Navy unveiled new guidelines on collecting information about UFO sightings.
As reported by Politico, the guidelines are designed to make it easier for sailors to report UFO sightings amid fears that mysterious unidentified flying objects could actually be 'extremely advanced Russian aircraft.'
The Navy has reported an uptick in the number of 'highly advanced aircraft' encroaching on its air space.
Last week, the Pentagon admitted it had studied 'unidentified aerial phenomena'
In 2017, former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo made headlines when he detailed the existence of the UFO-focused Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program - a $22million government operation that studied UFOs
Among the sightings were reports from pilots of two U.S. Navy Super Hornet fighters who spotted a UFO on a training mission
'There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years,' a spokesperson for the Navy said to Politico in April.
Throughout the last several years, the U.S. Government has shown an increasing willingness to acknowledge its investigation and interest of UFO's.
In 2017, former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo made headlines when he detailed the existence of the UFO-focused Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program - a $22million government operation that studied UFOs.
The secretive program sought to identify UFO sightings through U.S. surveillance and eyewitness reports and then 'ascertain and determine if that information is a potential threat to national security.'
Among the sightings were reports from pilots of two U.S. Navy Super Hornet fighters who spotted a UFO on a training mission.
The pilots reportedly spotted a mysterious vehicle, around 40ft long, oval-shaped and whitish, hovering erratically above the ground.
The craft 'had no plumes, wings or rotors,' but traveled at a mile per second. When pilots approached the object, it easily outran the military jets.
Elizondo resigned from his post in 2017 in protest over what he has termed excessive secrecy and internal opposition to the project.
Although the Pentagon officially stopped funding the project in 2012, reports from the New York Times suggest the program is still operating.
WHAT IS THE SECRET PENTAGON DEPARTMENT INVESTIGATION ON UFO ATTACKS?
UFO enthusiasts have argued for decades that the U.S. government has been covering up the existence of unidentified craft containing alien visitors.
The idea that a hush-hush government outfit was investigating sightings and other bizarre phenomena famously provided the basis for TV drama series The X-Files.
Now, it seems the cult series wasn't such a flight of fancy after all.
The shadowy Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program's existence was intentionally buried in the defense department's $600 billion (£448.76 bn) annual budget, as were its headquarters, deep within the labyrinthine Pentagon building.
Based on the fifth floor of C Ring, the secret department has spent years investigating reports of unidentified flying objects.
Although the Pentagon officially stopped funding the project in 2012, insiders told the New York Times it is still operating. And, more tantalizingly, intelligence experts who ran it, and politicians who backed it, insist its research has not been fruitless.
Having investigated myriad reports from U.S. servicemen of encounters between unknown objects and military planes, they are convinced that nothing in this world can explain them.
‘Wow, What Is That, Man?’ US Navy Pilot Ryan Graves Reports Seeing UFO Flying at Speeds Unsustainable for Human Making Sudden Stops and Instantaneous Turns
‘Wow, What Is That, Man?’ US Navy Pilot Ryan Graves Reports Seeing UFO Flying at Speeds Unsustainable for Human Making Sudden Stops and Instantaneous Turns
The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East coast.
US Navy pilot
Lieutenant Ryan Graves, who flies an F/18 Super Hornet that has a top speed of 1,190 mph, reports seeing objects that he cannot explain that are flying so fast that it makes his plane appear to stand still. More than that, he has observed these UFOs perform maneuvers that his top-level training tells him could not be performed by human beings. And he didn’t just see them appear for a few minutes, it was sometimes as long as 12-hours straight that he watched them fly. Let that sink in for a moment before reading the rest of this story.
“And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.” Luke 17:26 (KJV)
Navy pilots have
been seeing UFOs flying at speeds that even our fastest jets cannot keep up with, and for years they have been silenced from speaking. Now they are coming forward and telling their amazing stories. We are absolutely being prepared to accept aliens and UFOs, and you can fully expect that our first ‘alien encounter’ might be only a few years away. Little green men, you say? The grays are coming to visit us, is it? No, it is the Nephilim, for they know that their hour, and the power of darkness, ir right around the corner.
‘Wow, what is that?’ Navy pilots report unexplained flying objects
FROM MSN:
Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.
“These things would be out there all day,” said Lieutenant Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who has been with the Navy for 10 years and who reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress. “Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”
In late 2014,
a Super Hornet pilot had a near collision with one of the objects, and an official mishap report was filed. Some of the incidents were captured on video, including one taken by a plane’s camera in early 2015 that shows an object zooming over the ocean waves as pilots question what they are watching.
“Wow, what is that, man?” one exclaims. “Look at it fly!”
No one in the Defense Department
is saying that the objects were extraterrestrial, and experts emphasize that earthly explanations can generally be found for such incidents. Graves and four other Navy pilots, who said in interviews with The New York Times that they saw the objects in 2014 and 2015 in training maneuvers from Virginia to Florida off the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, make no assertions of their provenance. But the objects have gotten the attention of the Navy, which this year sent out new classified guidance for how to report what the military calls unexplained aerial phenomena, or unidentified flying objects.
Joseph Gradisher, a Navy spokesman, said the new guidance was an update of instructions that went out to the fleet in 2015, after the Roosevelt incidents.
“There were a number of different reports,” he said. Some cases could have been commercial drones, he said, but in other cases “we don’t know who’s doing this, we don’t have enough data to track this. So the intent of the message to the fleet is to provide updated guidance on reporting procedures for suspected intrusions into our airspace.”
The sightings were reported to the Pentagon’s shadowy, little-known Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which analyzed the radar data, video footage, and accounts provided by senior officers from the Roosevelt. Luis Elizondo, a military intelligence official who ran the program until he resigned in 2017, called the sightings “a striking series of incidents.”
The program, which began in 2007, was officially shut down in 2012 when the money dried up, according to the Pentagon. But the Navy recently said it investigates military reports of UFOs, and Elizondo and other participants say the program — parts of it remain classified — has continued in other forms. The program has also studied video that shows a whitish oval object described as a giant Tic Tac, about the size of a commercial plane, encountered by two Navy fighter jets off the coast of San Diego in 2004.
Leon Golub,
a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said the possibility of an extraterrestrial cause “is so unlikely that it competes with many other low-probability but more mundane explanations.” He added that “there are so many other possibilities — bugs in the code for the imaging and display systems, atmospheric effects and reflections, neurological overload from multiple inputs during high-speed flight.”
Graves still cannot explain what he saw. In the summer of 2014, he and Lieutenant Danny Accoin, another Super Hornet pilot, were part of a squadron, the VFA-11 “Red Rippers” out of Naval Air Station Oceana, Va., that was training for a deployment to the Persian Gulf.
Graves and Accoin
spoke on the record to The Times about the objects. Three other pilots in the squadron also spoke to The Times about the objects but declined to be named.
The pilots began noticing the objects after their 1980s-era radar was upgraded to a more advanced system. As one fighter jet after another got the new radar, pilots began picking up the objects but ignoring what they thought were false radar tracks.
But Graves said the objects persisted, showing up at 30,000 feet, 20,000 feet, even sea level. Then pilots began seeing the objects.
What was strange,
the pilots said, was that the video showed objects accelerating to hypersonic speed, making sudden stops and instantaneous turns — something beyond the physical limits of a human crew.
Asked what they thought the objects were, the pilots refused to speculate. READ MORE
UFO spotted by US fighter jet pilots
UFO Spotted: The video was filmed in 2004 and investigated as part of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. It’s not clear if the object was ever identified. The New York Times reports that the US Department of Defense programme was shut down in 2012.
According to a July 1994 executive summary report available at NSA.gov, titled “Report of Air Force Research Regarding the ‘Roswell Incident’,” officials who revisited the case in the 1990s had mixed feelings about one of the most famous–and contentious–stories of alleged alien contact in the 20th century.
The report suggests that, apart from initial descriptions by newspapers of a “saucer” captured by the USAF on the ranch of Mac Brazel, the case was not considered to be relevant to UFO sightings that were making news at the time. This shift in public attitudes about the case occurred only after civilian investigators revived the story several decades later.
According to the NSA report:
In February, 1994, the General Accounting Office (GAO), acting on the request of a New Mexico Congressman, initiated an audit to attempt to locate records of such an incident and to determine if records regarding it were properly handled… Research revealed that the “Roswell Incident” was not even considered a UFO event until the 1978-1980 time frame. Prior to that, the incident was dismissed because the AAF originally identified the debris recovered as being that of a weather balloon. Subsequently, various authors wrote a number of books claiming that, not only was debris from an alien spacecraft recovered, but also the bodies of the craft’s alien occupants. These claims continue to evolve today and the Air Force is now routinely accused of engaging in a “cover-up” of this supposed event.
Despite this, over the years many hopeful UFO investigators have lived in the shadow of this famous case, which was once taken for being the very “gold standard” of UFO investigative work. Though many still look to Roswell as being among the all-time great cases, enthusiasm has certainly dwindled over time, and not just on account of government agencies issuing “official” dismissals. In fact, some of the leading researchers who once championed the case now argue that there appears to be far less to the entire affair than many once thought.
Kevin Randle, who authored a number of books on the subject, expressed his concerns with those who continue to view Roswell as “evidence” for an extraterrestrial crash landing at his blog, where he wrote:
“For those believing Roswell involved the crash of an alien spacecraft, this has to be worrisome. It is arrayed against testimony that suggests otherwise. The problem is that it is just testimony and over the years much of that testimony has been found to be inaccurate. The longer we investigate the more of these testimonies have fallen by the wayside.”
Kevin Randle appearing in an investigative report on Roswell titled, “Alien Encounters: The Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Connection”
(Credit: Public Domain/National Archives and Records Administration)
Such is the case with much of ufology, and as Randle correctly notes, often with time and further reflection, many of those “gold standard” cases that were once the pillar of ufological interest have to be reexamined, theories revised, and much of the “evidence” does end up being refuted. This tendency to gravitate toward skepticism with time isn’t a bad thing, in my opinion… in fact, it’s what any responsible researcher should do.
However, stories like the alleged “UFO crash” in North Carolina that I shared in Part One of this series illustrates the longer lasting problems associated with cases like Roswell. While some serious researchers do begin to challenge their once-hopeful views on such cases, others do not. Add to this the aspiring ufologists who jump in the game at a much later time, and work to try and secure new evidence in support of older, now-questionable cases; and yes, some even go so far as to create narratives that resemble smaller-scale versions of “Roswell” of their very own.
In short, one could argue that the “mythos” surrounding Roswell has persisted well beyond the actual evidence that supports it. The result is that hopeful ufologists living in the long shadow cast by New Mexico’s most famous UFO case aspire to find evidence of similar ground-breaking conspiracies; but the Roswell incident, if we’re being honest here, hasn’t aged very well… and in likelihood, neither will the majority of similar claims of crashes, cover-ups, and conspiracies related to UFO phenomenon that have continued to follow in its wake.
None of this is to say that there aren’t justifiable reasons for the study ofUAP (as evidenced by recent developments in relation to U.S. military interest in the subject). However, as we learned in the first part of this article series, people do sometimes mistake simple things like meteors for planes going down… and in some rare instances, even Roswell-style flying saucer “crashes.” Our senses can easily mislead us, and it is a natural human tendency to seek patterns and “order” in things; however, the result can be the furtherance of a UFO narrative that simply may have no part in reality.
Scientists have discovered remnants of ancient ice sheets buried in sand a mile (1.6 km) beneath Mars’ north pole, they report in a new study.
The team found layers of sand and ice that were as much as 90 percent water in some places. If it melted, the newly-discovered ice would be equivalent to a global layer of water around Mars at least 5 feet (1.5 meters) deep, which could be one of the largest water reservoirs on the planet, according to the researchers.
A vertically exaggerated view of Mars’ north polar cap.
Stefano Nerozzi is a graduate research assistant at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics and lead author of the new study, published May 22, 2019, in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters, He said in a statement:
We didn’t expect to find this much water ice here. That likely makes it the third largest water reservoir on Mars after the polar ice caps.
The researchers made the discovery using measurements gathered by an instrument on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, called SHARAD, that emits radar waves that can penetrate up to a mile and a half (2.4 km) beneath Mars’s surface.
The layers of ice are a record of past climate on Mars in much the same way that tree rings are a record of past climate on Earth, according to the researchers. They suspect the layers formed when ice accumulated at the poles during past ice ages on Mars. Each time the planet warmed, a remnant of the ice caps became covered by sand, which protected the ice from solar radiation and prevented it from dissipating into the atmosphere.
Here’s more from a statement from the researchers:
Scientists have long known about glacial events on Mars, which are driven by variations in the planet’s orbit and tilt. Over periods of about 50,000 years, Mars leans toward the sun before gradually returning to an upright position, like a wobbling spinning top. When the planet spins upright, the equator faces the sun, allowing the polar ice caps to grow. As the planet tilts, the ice caps retreat, perhaps vanishing entirely.
Until now, scientists thought the ancient ice caps were lost. The new findings show that in fact significant ice sheet remnants have survived under the planet’s surface, trapped in alternating bands of ice and sand, like layers on a cake.
The photograph, taken with the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, was adjusted to show water ice as light-colored layers and sand as darker layers of blue. The tiny bright white flecks are thin patches of frost.
Image via NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.
Jack Holt is a professor at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the University of Arizona and co-author of the new study. He said:
Surprisingly, the total volume of water locked up in these buried polar deposits is roughly the same as all the water ice known to exist in glaciers and buried ice layers at lower latitudes on Mars, and they are approximately the same age.
Studying this record of past polar glaciation could help determine whether Mars was ever habitable, according to Nerozzi.
Understanding how much water was available globally versus what’s trapped in the poles is important if you’re going to have liquid water on Mars.You can have all the right conditions for life, but if most of the water is locked up at the poles, then it becomes difficult to have sufficient amounts of liquid water near the equator.
The findings were corroborated by an independent study using gravity data instead of radar, also published today in Geophysical Research Letters.
Bottom line:Scientists have discovered remnants of ancient ice sheets on Mars buried in sand a mile (1.6 km) beneath Mars’ north pole, which, if melted, could cover the entire planet 5 feet (1.5 m) deep in water.
Black Square UFO Seen Over West Virginia Waching Graduation, May 23, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Black Square UFO Seen Over West Virginia Waching Graduation, May 23, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 24, 2019
Location of sighting: Farmington, West Virginia, USA
The eyewitness was attending a students graduation ceremony when they noticed a black hovering object in the distance. The object is hovering in place as if it is watching the graduation ceremony. You can see that the black thin UFO is far behind the tree line, which means this object is close to the size of motorcycle Its also possible that this is a drone, but I have never seen a drone this style or this size before. You know that the eyewitness was intrigue with this object, because they totally ignored the graduation ceremony for a minute to get a good look at this UFO.
I believe this is the same black square UFO I have reported several times over the last few months. It has also been seen over Las Vegas, Springdale Ohio and Conyers Georgia.
Scott C. Waring
Below are close ups of UFO at Farmington, West Virginia.
A former High Ranking federal government employee, Christopher Mellon, is writing a lot about the reality of UFOs and the need to study the phenomenon.
Reflect On:
Has this phenomenon not already been studied, in secrecy, for decades? Why doesn't Mellon ever address that fact?
If there is one thing that’s glaringly obvious, it’s that Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), or Unidentified Ariel phenomenon, are real. This is evident by hundreds of military encounters that have been documented for decades. Complimenting these encounters is a plethora of radar tracking data, photographs, and videos.
Although once deemed a “conspiracy theory,” similar to how mass surveillance was until that was exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, that’s not the case anymore.
This in large part came from all of the activists in the field sharing information about UFOs in a very credible manner. It also came from recent happenings within the mainstream, when major mouthpieces for the establishment like The New York Times and Washington Post covered the topic of UFOs.
One of the writers of those pieces was Christopher Mellon, who served 30 years in the federal government and was Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Intelligence from 1997 to 2002 and in security and information operations from 1998 to 1999. From 2002 to 2004, he was Minority Staff Director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence under Sen. John Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.).
Mellon’s Washington post article detailed a number of UFO encounters with the military with extreme credibility. But again, this isn’t new information. In the 1950s, President Harry Truman went on national television announcing to the world that UFOs are real, and that they discuss the topic at every conference that they have with the military, that “there’s always things like that going on, flying saucers and they’ve had other things.” (source)
The secrecy wrapped around this subject has been active for more than 100 years.
Congress need do at this juncture is require the secretary of Defense and the director of national intelligence to review the UAP issue and deliver a report providing a comprehensive assessment. This report should include not only an estimate of the situation but a description of the structure and processes required to ensure effective collection and analysis going forward.
He goes on to stress the importance of further study of what’s going on here, hinting that they could be Russian objects, which in my opinion is a ridiculous assumption. He also hints to the fact that they could be extraterrestrial by stating that:
If UAPs turn out to be toys of Elon Musk’s making, we’ll all breathe a sigh of relief. If they are Russian, we’ll be glad we took action now rather than kicking the can down the road. If we learn that someone else’s more advanced version of our Voyager spacecraft has reached Earth, then this humble measure will forever transform our understanding of the universe and man’s place within it.
What’s Fishy About Mainstream Coverage of UFOs
Mellon is one of hundreds of “high-ranking” people who have been outspoken about this phenomenon. He’s even part of the team at To The Stars Academy, which was started by former Blink 182 Rockstar to bring the truth about UFOs into the mainstream in a credible way. On that team is a very impressive list of people including Steve Justice, the recently retired Director of the Aerospace division at Lockheed Martin.
In a quote on their website, he basically alludes to the point that these UFOs have been ‘collected’ somehow, which is evident by him stating that “we need to harvest these technologies from the Science Division to realize that capability.”
“This is a concept for an international point-to-point transportation craft that will erase the current travel limits of distance and time. It mimics the capabilities observed in unidentified aerial phenomenon by employing a drive system that alters space-time metric. We have glimpses of how the physics of this works, but we need to harvest technologies from the Science Division to ‘realize’ the capability.”
– Steve Justice, Aerospace Division Director
Now, the reason why mainstream disclosure is so fishy is because we already have a a plethora of extremely credible sources emphasizing that we already know many of these objects are extraterrestrial. Take Norman Bergrun, for example, a mechanical engineer who has worked for Ames Research Laboratory, NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), and Lockheed Missiles and Space Company (now known as Lockheed Martin). He then went on to found Bergrun Engineering and Research. When he talked about extraterrestrials, I listened. As explained in the article linked, he spoke of numerous encounters with UFOs, and even extraterrestrials that the government has had, and that these objects are known to be real within various circles.
Mellon never addressed that or how, as Paul Hellyer, former Canadian Defence Minister stated, the official policy is to “shoot first and ask questions after.” (source)
Not long ago, Dr. David Clarke, an investigative journalist, reader and lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University in England who was also the curator for The National Archives UFO project from 2008–13, uncovered documents showing how British intelligence has been desperate to ‘take down’ these objects and figure out how they work. You can read more about that here.
Evidence proving that objects have been successfully taken down is a completely different subject, but as Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14) told the world, “yes there have been crashed crafts, and bodies recovered.” (source)
Furthermore, government disclosure has always been subject to deception and misinformation, often being used in some manner to ‘trick’ the population into justifying a specific solution or action step. Are UFOs going to be the same thing? Is mainstream UFO disclosure something for us to be wary of and take with a grain of salt?
All important things to think about, for sure.
The Takeaway
The disclosure of a reality that’s been hidden from us throughout all of history would be huge. It would leave no aspect of humanity untouched, have huge implications, and really open up pandora’s box. There are a lot of questions to be answered, and a lot of information is still going unacknowledged by these mainstream articles. However, so far they’ve done a decent job of bringing it out in a credible way, but where do they want to take it? If these objects present some sort of “threat,” a narrative that also seems to be common amongst recent mainstream UFO disclosure, are they simply going to use that to justify the weaponization of space? There are so many questions. Although some of them could pose a threat, if you’ve looked into this topic, it seems that these objects are harmless and have probably been around longer than we have. If any type of doomsday scenario was going to occur, it probably would have already happened.
What happens when young stars brush past each other? A lot, according to a new study suggesting our solar system contains comets stolen from another star 4.5 billion years ago.
I love the video above. It shows what happens when two young stars – still surrounded by their disks of planetesimals, or planet-building blocks – encounter each other. It’s based on recent computer simulations, part of a newlypublishedstudy by astrophysicists at the University of Zurich, describing how our solar system likely contains comets stolen from a star that swept near our sun 4.5 billion years ago. Stars like our sun are born in clusters. Our sun is thought to be about 4.5 billion years old. So we’re talking about the very young sun here, newly emerged from the cloud of gas and dust that created it and itssister stars. The new study says that, when two young stars meet, their encircling disks mix it up, literally. In particular, the outer planetesimals of the smaller star are heavily disrupted by its higher-mass sibling. Some planetesimals – chunks of rocky or icy material – switch from one star system to the other. They are “stolen,” in other words.
And some planetesimals leave both star systems behind entirely. Tom Hands, who led the new study, explained:
[The encounter] causes a bunch of planetesimals to be ejected, flying away to become things like ‘Oumuamua [the small interstellar object that recently swept near our sun]. I was surprised by the number of ‘Oumuamua-like free-floating objects that can be generated in an environment like this on a relatively short time-scale.
‘Oumuamua is a now-famous object among astronomers, who noticed it and began tracking its movement through our solar system in 2017. Though many free-floating objects are thought to exist, ‘Oumuamua is the only small interstellar object seen moving in our solar system so far. It’s not attached to our sun, or any star. That’s how it received its name, which is Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first.” Astronomers don’t know where ‘Oumuamua came from, exactly. Speaking about the new study, Tom Hands and his colleagues’ statement said:
… it is clear that free-floating planetesimals, comets and asteroids should be ubiquitous in the galaxy.
This diagram shows the path of the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua – the first known interstellar object to pass through our solar system – as it was sweeping toward our sun in late 2017, rounded the sun, and then began moving outward again. ‘Oumuamua passed the distance of Jupiter’s orbit in May 2018. It passed the distance of Saturn’s orbit in January 2019. It will reach a distance corresponding to Neptune’s orbit in 2022, according to some studies.
‘Oumuamua made headlines after it was discovered in October 2017. Many theories have been suggested to explain its origin, including the possibility of its being an alien spacecraft.
Researchers at the University of Zürich used large computer simulations to show how ‘Oumuamua-style objects can be set on their solitary paths through space. They calculated what happens when multiple young stars are born together in a stellar cluster, much as our sun is thought to have been 4.5 billion years ago. Most of what astronomers call planetesimals – the building blocks of planets – ultimately do become planets, comets and asteroids while the stars are still in their infancy. But not all do. Tom Hands commented:
Coming into close contact with other stars can have a profound effect on these planetary systems.
I was also surprised by the ease with which stars can steal material from their stellar siblings at a young age.
Artist’s concept of the cigar-shaped interstellar object ‘Oumuamua.
Image via ESA/Hubble, NASA, ESO, M. Kornmesser, NCCR PlanetS.
Even now, our sun might retain alien comets stolen from another star in these early phases. Hands said:
Even if alien material is really there, there likely isn’t much of it. But we might be able to detect it based on the strange orbits this stuff could be on.
Hands said his research has relevance to the ongoing search for a ninth planet in our solar system, which is based on an odd alignment of orbits of small objects in the outer solar system. He said the results of his study suggest that a large, unseen ninth planet isn’t the only plausible explanation for this observed alignment. Hands commented:
People should keep an open mind when considering how these things might have ended up on the orbits they are on.
Finally, he commented:
This is the first time we have been able to get a feeling for how the cluster environment could affect our Kuiper belt, or similar structures in exoplanetary systems
And I don’t think he’s boasting there. It seems like novel research to me. Forty-plus years ago, when I started writing about astronomy, we’d sometimes hear astronomers say that comets in the Oort Cloud could be dislodged by “passing stars” and thereby be sent hurtling in toward our sun. I always wondered which passing stars, and when, and what went on there? To my knowledge, this study doesn’t relate specifically to Oort Cloud comets; it does talk about objects in the Kuiper Belt, though, which are also in our solar system’s outer reaches, at a lesser distance from our sun. Both Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt material would surely be affected by an encounter with another star 4.5 billion years ago. It’s great to have an actual simulation, at last, that provides concrete images of this long-discussed encounter.
And, by the way – on an entirely different subject – I found a second super cool video at Tom Hands’ website, also based on his computer simulations. You might enjoy it, too, so I posted it below. It’s an exoplanet visualization, based on data from the Open Exoplanet Catalog. He described the video below as:
… a flyby of all known exoplanets around single stars. The systems are ordered according to the largest semi-major axis (planet-star separation) within each of them, from largest to smallest. The systems that you fly past first contain planets which takes hundreds or even thousands of years to orbit their stars, while by the end they take mere hours or days. Designed to give the viewer an overview of the current distribution of exoplanets.
Bottom line: A new study from Tom Hands and colleagues at the University of Zurich suggests our solar system contains comets stolen from another star 4.5 billion years ago. The interstellar visitor ‘Oumuamua might be an example of an object dislodged from its original solar system in that way. According to this study, there might be many free-floating objects like ‘Oumuamua in our galaxy.
President Trump said Monday that the United States will be “going to Mars very soon” as he announced new cooperation between the U.S. and Japan in sending humans tospace, though he did not give a timetable.
“I am pleased to confirm that Prime Minister Abe and I have agreed to dramatically expand our nations’ cooperation in human space exploration,” Trump said during a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo. “Japan will join our mission to send U.S. astronauts to space.”
Trump added, “We'll be going to the moon. We'll be going to Mars very soon. It's very exciting. And from a military standpoint, there is nothing more important right now than space.”
Trump did not provide additional details. But earlier this year, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said of the U.S.’s space ambitions: “The moon is the proving ground; Mars is the horizon goal.”
In February,Trump directed the Department of Defense to draft legislation creating a so-called Space Force within the U.S. Air Force.
InThis image combines NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observations with data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. As well as the electric blue ram pressure stripping streaks seen emanating from ESO 137-001, a giant gas stream can be seen extending towards the bottom of the frame, only visible in the X-ray part of the spectrum.
(Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC) March, Vice President Mike Pence urged NASA to accelerate its moon-landing program, moving it up from 2028 to 2024.
Meanwhile, Trump also said during the press conference he is not "personally" bothered by recent short-range North Korean missile tests and doesn't believe they violated U.N. Security Council resolutions, breaking with Abe, who is hosting the president on a four-day state visit full of pageantry and pomp.
Trump also continued his attacks against former Vice President and 2020 Democratic hopeful Joe Biden, siding with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, who recently criticized Biden as having a low IQ.
The visit was designed to highlight the U.S.-Japan alliance and showcase the warm relations between the leaders. Trump said he and Abe deliberated over economic issues, including trade and Iran, during hours of talks at the Akasaka Palace. But North Korea's recent firing of short-range missiles emerged as an area of disagreement at a press conference Monday.
Asked if he was bothered by the missile tests, Trump said: "No, I'm not. I am personally not."
Japan has long voiced concern about short-range missiles because of the threat they pose to the island nation's security.
Standing beside Trump at a news conference held after hours of talks, Abe, who has forged a strong friendship with Trump and showered him with praise throughout the day, disagreed with the U.S. president, saying the missile tests were "of great regret."
Wauw, wat is dat? Amerikaanse legerpiloten zien vreemde objecten die alle natuurwetten lijken te tarten
Wauw, wat is dat? Amerikaanse legerpiloten zien vreemde objecten die alle natuurwetten lijken te tarten
Steeds meer Amerikaanse marinepiloten zien vreemde objecten in het luchtruim. Eén van de piloten, luitenant Ryan Graves, zag ze tussen de zomer van 2014 en maart 2015 vrijwel dagelijks hoog in de lucht boven de oostkust.
De objecten hadden geen zichtbare motor of uitlaat, maar konden met gemak hypersonische snelheden bereiken.
“Die dingen waren daar iedere dag,” zei Graves, die al 10 jaar bij de marine zit en die zijn waarnemingen heeft gemeld bij het Pentagon en het Congres.
Wauw, wat is dat?
“Een vliegtuig in de lucht houden kost een aanzienlijke hoeveelheid energie,” zei hij. “Ze bleven 12 uur in de lucht, wat 11 uur langer is dan je zou verwachten.”
Een ander object, dat vlak boven de golven vloog, werd begin 2015 vastgelegd op camera.
De piloten reageerden verbaasd: “Wauw, wat is dat?”
In sommige gevallen bleek het te gaan om drones, maar andere gevallen waren niet zo gemakkelijk te verklaren.
Geen idee
Luitenant Graves heeft nog altijd geen idee wat hij enkele jaren geleden heeft gezien.
In de zomer van 2014 maakte hij samen met een aantal andere piloten onderdeel uit van een squadron.
Graves en collega Danny Accoin spraken met de New York Times over hun ervaringen. Drie andere piloten gaven ook een interview, maar wilden anoniem blijven.
De piloten begonnen de objecten pas op te merken nadat het radarsysteem in hun gevechtsvliegtuig was vernieuwd. In het begin schonken ze er vrijwel geen aandacht aan.
Natuurwetten
Maar de objecten bleven verschijnen; op 10.000 meter hoogte, op 5000 meter hoogte en zelfs op zeeniveau.
Ze waren in staat om te versnellen, af te remmen en vervolgens hypersonische snelheden te bereiken, en leken daarmee de natuurwetten te tarten.
Accoin zag de objecten twee keer. De eerste keer zag hij het object alleen op zijn radar. Met de camera op zijn helm kon hij het niet vastleggen.
Een tweede object kon hij wel zien met zijn infraroodcamera, maar niet met het blote oog.
Bol
Toen begonnen de piloten de objecten ook daadwerkelijk met hun eigen ogen te zien.
Eind 2014 vloog Graves boven boven de Atlantische Oceaan ten oosten van Virginia Beach toen iets langs zijn cockpit scheerde.
Het leek volgens hem op een bol met daarin een kubus.
De piloten wilden niet speculeren over de herkomst van de objecten.
Er komt maar geen einde aan de bizarre vondsten die amateur onderzoekers vinden op de planeet Mars.
En je kunt veel dingen misschien uitleggen als “natuurlijke fenomenen”, maar toch zeker niet een soort spoorrails met daarop een treintje.
We hebben in de loop der jaren al heel wat vreemde vondsten die zijn aangetroffen op de planeet Mars gepubliceerd.
En iedere keer komen we terug op twee mogelijkheden.
Er is leven op Mars, of in ieder recentelijk leven geweest, of er is nog nooit iemand op Mars geweest en de opnames die we te zien krijgen zijn ergens op aarde genomen.
In beide gevallen klopt de officiële uitleg zoals we die via NASA krijgen niet.
NASA presenteert beelden van de planeet Mars met daarop voorwerpen en/of objecten die daar alleen kunnen zijn als er leven is of recentelijk geweest is.
Neem de volgende foto die we aantreffen op de website van ufoloog Scott Waring. Hierop zie je een soort spoor met daarop een wit karretje of een soort treintje.
De opname is echt, afkomstig van NASA, maar niets wordt ons daarover verteld. Wij worden geacht dit te zien als iets volkomen natuurlijks wat niets te maken zou hebben met intelligent leven.
Planeten bouwen meestal niet zelf spoorlijnen om daar vervolgens een treintje op te zetten. Meestal gebeurt dat door intelligente wezens die dat doen met een bepaald doel.
Als je het spoort volgt, dan kom je uit bij iets wat lijkt op een soort station met rechthoekige gebouwen.
Er zijn eerder sporen gevonden die lijken op een soort spoor, maar waar waarschijnlijk geen sprake is van een trein, maar een voertuig op rupsbanden of iets dergelijks. Je ziet duidelijk een spoor naar rechts afbuigen waar een dergelijk soort voertuig onderweg schijnt te zijn.
Al in 2011 verschenen er berichten in de Russische Pravda over iemand die een trein met een compleet station had ontdekt.
Wetenschappers discussiëren al lang over de mogelijkheid van leven op Mars, geïnspireerd op de nabijheid en de gelijkenis van die planeet aan de Aarde. Het blijft tot op heden een onbeantwoorde vraag of er op dit moment leven op Mars bestaat of in het verleden bestaan heeft.
En altijd maar weer de wetenschappers die bepalen of iets wel of niet echt of waar is. Geen van hen is ooit op Mars geweest en geen van hen heeft ooit naar de ontelbare beelden gekeken van de dingen die ontdekt zijn door amateur onderzoekers.
Je vraagt je zo langzamerhand af wat het nut is van wetenschappers. Of ze werken voor de hoogste bieder en vertellen ons dat vaccineren goed is en dat de mens verantwoordelijk is voor de opwarming van de aarde, of ze ontkennen glashard al die dingen die met eigen zintuigen zijn waar te nemen en zeggen dat die niet bestaan.
Those writers who cover UFO sightings and those readers who believe some unidentified flying objects are not conventional human-made aircraft have resigned themselves to the fact that these encounters get covered by tabloids, paranormal websites and minor or obscure news services. That’s no longer the case. On the weekend of the biggest military holiday in the U.S. — Memorial Day — The New York Times (“All the News That’s Fit to Print”) published a detailed article whose title says it all: “‘Wow, What Is That?’ Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects.”
“We have helicopters that can hover. We have aircraft that can fly at 30,000 feet and right at the surface.” But “combine all that in one vehicle of some type with no jet engine, no exhaust plume.”
The article doesn’t just describe the encounters between pilots and UFOs, it names names and includes pictures – allowing these eyewitnesses to come out of the military and self-imposed shadows, censorship, enforced suppression and threat of discharge to tell their stories. Lt. Ryan Graves, a 10-year veteran and F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot, told the Times that he and his fellow pilots know these are not conventional aircraft they’re watching because “Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”
Despite what certain people in high office imply, The New York Times does its journalistic job and interviews science and physics experts who explain how and why these encounters can be of the non-alien kind. Here’s Leon Golub, a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics:
“[An extraterrestrial cause] is so unlikely that it competes with many other low-probability but more mundane explanations. There are so man other possibilities — bugs in the code for the imaging and display systems, atmospheric effects and reflections, neurological overload from multiple inputs during high-speed flight.”
Of course, military pilots have heard all of this before. What’s new – and exciting to those in UFO research – is that they’re fighting both tradition and their current commanding officers to reveal these encounters to the general public and in publications like The New York Times where they’re exposed to tough journalistic scrutiny.
“I almost hit one of those things.”
The last thing pilots want is midair collisions and they know their fellow military members would not intentionally put their own in danger with new or unconventional test aircraft or drones. However, the Times could not pin down Lt. Graves or any of the other witnesses interviewed for the article on what they had encountered numerous times in close and even dangerous proximity with their own high-speed sophisticated jets. Do they still fear reprisals or ridicule? This coverage by The New York Times truly lets the UFO cat out of the secrecy bag. It’s only a matter of time before other whistleblowers come forth in this age of whistleblowers coming forth.
Despite the fact that humans have never, as far as we know or the powers-that-be are willing to admit, ventured past the Moon, there’s plenty of talk recently about establishing a permanent colony on Mars. Those conversations cover topics such as transportation, living quarters and profit potential, but they leave out two questions that most humans living on Mars and on Earth will want answered … will there be reunions between the new Martians and old Earthlings, and can they renew old acquaintances in the manner of the time-honored tradition of high school reunions and old flames … with sex? There may be a good reason why these discussions about what may happen under the Martian covers is being kept under the covers … it will probably be fatal to the new Martians.
“What’s interesting to me as an evolutionary biologist is thinking about, what if we’re actually successful?” he asked the site. “I don’t think there has been nearly as much discussion about what would become of the people that are living in these colonies generations later.”
One person has been speaking about the unspeakable – Scott Solomon, an evolutionary biologist, professor at Rice University in Houston and author of “Future Humans: Inside the Science of Our Continuing Evolution.” He recently spoke with Inverse concerning his cautionary TEDx talk in January 2018 warning about sex with human Martians that has had surprisingly few views. His conclusion may be one reason:
“With no immune system, sex between Martian humans and Earthlings would be lethal.”
Wait … what?
“If a mutation pops up for people living on Mars, and it gives them a 50-percent survival advantage, that’s a huge advantage, right? And that means that those individuals are going to be passing those genes on at a much higher rate than they otherwise would have.”
That condom may not be enough protection.
Solomon points out that all babies on Earth are born with 60 new mutations on average, but most don’t get passed on to the next generations because there’s no need for them. That wouldn’t be the case on Mars where humans will need to quickly evolve to develop radiation-resistant skin, bodies that can survive on less oxygen and bones that can survive less gravity. However, the most critical mutation would be the result of living in a pristine, climate-controlled environment – the need for a tough immune system would be eliminated. Without that, assuming their diminished lung capacity can endure the heavy breathing, Solomon says their total lack of immunity would not survive the inevitable sexual exchange of bodily fluids.
“That could impose an artificial limit on how the two populations will be able to interact and co-mingle. The inability to form families or send offspring back and forth between the two planets could drive the two groups even further apart.”
Is there any hope for future family and high school reunions? Solomon offers one potential solution – CRISPR editing of Earthlings to give them the mutations their Mars relatives and friends have developed to survive.
Martian high school reunions will definitely need name-tags.
Solomon even suggests that we could use CRISPR to more purposefully design these helpful mutations.
“Why wait around for this mutation to occur if you can just go in and make them yourself.”
Of course, that means the artificial mutants couldn’t come back to Earth either. Perhaps he’s hinting at the inevitable – that Earth will someday become uninhabitable to normal humans and we’ll either have to move to another planet where we will quickly become a new species … or CRISPR-ly create the mutations for survival and stick around.
Speeding up evolution to accommodate space colonization and apocalyptic survival … sci-fi or our next reality?
It appears as though a is presently underneath Sputnik Planitia on the dwarf planet Pluto. It was believed that the temperate needed for an ocean to remain in liquid format on Pluto would have been too high because the thick ice would have melted. However, Japanese astronomers claim there is a layer of gas located underneath the ice and above the liquid which works as a type of insulation between the two.
Pluto in all of its phases
This is very exciting news for scientists as they previously believed that all the water on Pluto would have been in a frozen state. The research, which was published in Nature Geoscience, read in part, “To maintain an ocean, Pluto needs to retain heat inside. On the other hand, to maintain large variations in its thickness, Pluto’s ice shell needs to be cold.” Additionally, they wrote, “Here we show… that the presence of a thin layer of clathrate hydrates (gas hydrates) at the base of the ice shell can explain both the long-term survival of the ocean and the maintenance of shell thickness contrasts.” They better explained how the clathrate hydrates work by writing, “Clathrate hydrates act as a thermal insulator, preventing the ocean from completely freezing while keeping the ice shell cold and immobile.”
As for the type of gas, they explained that “The most likely clathrate guest gas is methane, derived from precursor bodies and/or cracking of organic materials in the hot rocky core. Nitrogen molecules initially contained and/or produced later in the core would probably not be trapped as clathrate hydrates, instead supplying the nitrogen-rich surface and atmosphere.”
Pluto’s size compared to Earth
Researchers created a simulation of Pluto’s evolution, with and without a gas hydrate layer between the ice and the ocean in order to calculate how long it would take for the subsurface oceans to freeze over. They calculated that without the gas hydrate layer, the ocean would have been totally frozen around 800 million years ago. However, with the gas hydrate layer, the ocean hardly froze at all. In conclusion, without a gas hydrate layer, it would have taken the subsurface ocean approximately 100 million years to freeze over, but with the gas layer, it would take more than a billion years.
The simulation based on observations conducted by New Horizons not only shows the real possibility of a liquid ocean on Pluto, but it also gives a plausible explanation as to how the most iciest planets can still contain water in liquid format.
What’s better than finding aliens? Finding dead aliens. Why? Because it might be the only thing that gets humanity to straighten up and fly right. At least, that’s according to Harvard University professor Avi Loeb who said as much at the Humans to Mars Summit in Washington D.C., in a talk which I assume was titled “Scared Straight in Space.”
Professor Loeb appears to believe, like many people do, that humanity is at a crossroads and our shortsightedness and technological progress combined may be a lethal mixture. At the summit, Loeb argued that we may be such wayward children that we might need to see the direct consequences of horsing around with nuclear weapons and all of the other potential big bungles we’ve got cooking up. He says that a propensity for planetary suicide might be more common than we think, and might be one of the solutions to the famous Fermi paradox, which basically states that there’s a whole bunch of reasons why we should have found aliens by now, but we haven’t. So what gives? Loeb says:
“One possibility is that these civilizations, based on the way we behave, are short-lived. They think short term, and they produce self-inflicted wounds that eventually kill them.”
“I don’t know what happened here, but let’s try not to do it.”
According to Loeb, finding evidence of an alien civilizationthat almost made it to the stars would serve as a wake-up call to humanity, and thus why what he calls “space archaeology” is of vital importance to the future. He says along with looking for living alien civilizations, we should widen our search to include the wreckage of alien civilizations that got a little too rambunctious for their own good: scorched planets, radioactive fallout, broken tech half buried in grey alien sands. Loeb says:
“The idea is we may learn something in the process. We may learn to better behave with each other, not to initiate a nuclear war, or to monitor our planet and make sure that it’s habitable for as long as we can make it habitable.”
But for Loeb, there are more reasons to explore the stars than just the space version of that movie you’re required to watch in driver’s ed. While his views seem to suggest a pessimistic view of the universe, there’s a sense of whiplash when he muses on what might happen if we find a living alien civilization:
“Our technology is only a century old, but if another civilization had a billion years to develop space travel, they may teach us how to do it,”
“Let’s not do this either.”
No, they would eat us. But Avi Loeb, who is the chair of the Harvard Astronomy Department and sits on the board of Breakthrough Starshot, also happens to have co-authored the recent paper suggesting that the interstellar object Oumuamua might be an alien spaceship. So it’s clear he’s got the gift of sensationalism, which might be necessary to drum up public support for space exploration. And he may be right, it’s not that crazy to think that humanity might need some evidence of a larger game to bring us all together.
But maybe we wouldn’t get scared straight. Chances are if we found the ruins of an alien civilization, nuked to oblivion, we’d look at it and say “get a load of these idiots, we’d never be that dumb.”
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Two UFOs Fastwalkers passing each other at the same point over Bavaria, Germany
Two UFOs Fastwalkers passing each other at the same point over Bavaria, Germany
On May 19, 2019 a drone at an altitude of 400 meters caught two fastwalkers but each object comes from a different direction. The most remarkable fact is that both fastwalkers crossing each other above the same landmark.
This is not only the first time that a drone caught 2 fastwalkers at once it also shows that these objects follow coordinated flight paths.
These mysterious objects are under intelligent control and remote controlled by someone behind the scenes using a complete network of coordinates where these highs speed UFOs fly by.
3 Mile Alien Tower Erases All Doubt That You May Have, Aliens On Our Moon, UFO Sighting News.
3 Mile Alien Tower Erases All Doubt That You May Have, Aliens On Our Moon, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: April 15, 2019 Location of discovery: Earths moon Here is a alien obelisk structure at the center of a crater on Earths moon. The structure is amazingly beautiful and highly detailed. It has a tall square base its built upon and it can easily be compared to the Empire State Building in New York City. However this structure is over 3 miles tall. It was found by a little known Youtuber called UFOsAboveUs. He doesn't site his source, but its probably better he doesn't so that NASA wont delete the original photo of it. Absolutely amazing isn't it? The truth...always is. Scott C. Waring
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Alien Drone Close Up In NASA Lunar Module Take Off Video, UFO Sighting News.
Alien Drone Close Up In NASA Lunar Module Take Off Video, UFO Sighting News.
Long ago I found this video on the NASA site. I slowed it down and saw several UFOs shoot past. This video was taken of the lunar module taking off from the moon. As it did the camera recorded a UFO about 1 meter in size shot over the module, but got caught on camera. The drone UFO looks to be all metal construction, but has some areas that are whitish which I assume are clear areas for scanners to shoot through.
Watch the video I made below in slow motion as the UFO appears. This video was taken directly from the NASA archive by me. I will not cite the source because I fear it will be deleted by NASA.
UFO Seen In Earths Orbit From Space Station, May 26, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Seen In Earths Orbit From Space Station, May 26, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 26, 2019 Location of sighting: Earths orbit at ISS I recorded this yesterday while my family was watching TV and talking, so there is no sound. I noticed a triangle looking cloud that I believed to be a cloaked ship at the bottom of the screen. After it had risen a little...the screen when blank and said transmission interrupted. This often happens when a UFO is seen, its SOP (standard operating procedure) for NASA. The days where UFOs can hide in clouds are numbered. The public is taking notice and no longer believe these are just clouds. This object is several miles across. It has a raised upper deck. Honestly, for hundreds and maybe thousands of years, humans have been misidentifying these flying cloaked ships. Its time for humanity to raise their awareness of the world around them. There is so much information in the details all around us. Scott C. Waring
Conspiracy theorists have several times claimed that moon, Earth's only natural satellite is home to an advanced alien civilization. Adding heat to their seemingly outlandish claims, a conspiracy theory YouTube channel named 'Mavi xxx' has now uploaded a mysterious video that shows multiple UFOsflying above the moon.
The conspiracy theory channel revealed that the video was shot by a user named 'Fotohota' from Moscow, Russia. After witnessing the bizarre sighting through the telescope, the amateur astronomer revealed that these flying objects were travelling between Earth and the moon.
"They are not near the moon because there is no shadow. They are between the Earth and the moon, but not far from the moon. Their sizes are not small," said the eyewitness, Daily Star reports.
The video uploaded by 'Mav xxx' soon went viral on online spaces, and it has already racked up more than 35,000 views on YouTube. Most of the viewers who watched the video claimed that this is irrefutable proof of alien existence. These alien enthusiasts claim that alien life is real, and space agencies like NASA are well aware of their presence.
"OMG! Thanx for sharing. I think we all know it is going on. It is so disgusting we don't have full disclosure at this point in our human existence," commented Bo, a YouTube user.
A section of other conspiracy theorists claimed that these flying objects could be actually Donald Trump's space force which has already started surveilling our cosmic neighborhood.
"Our government is finally letting us see where our money goes to, SPACE Force the black budget fleet," commented Nicholas Santos, another YouTuber.
This is not the first time that UFO fleets are being spotted while viewing the moon through telescopes. A few months back, an amateur astronomer from Turkey spotted two unidentified flying objects hovering low above the lunar surface. After analyzing the video, self-proclaimed alien researcher Scott C Waring also assured that the sighting is a proof of extraterrestrial presence on the moon.
A Turkish pilot has claimed to have seen a speeding UFO during a domestic flight from Istanbul to Cologne on May 10. The pilot, Atilla Senturk, revealed that the UFO moved in an incredible speed across the skies.
Interestingly, Senturk also filmed the visuals of the UFO, and in the video, the apparently white unidentified flying object can be seen performing weird manoeuvres at an incredible speed in the day sky.
After witnessing the incident, the pilot also made it clear that he had never seen such an object in his flying career. He added that the object was very bright and visible despite bright sunlight.
"During Germany to Cologne flight, we saw an incredibly bright celestial body at high altitude. It wasn't a satellite or a star. It was the first time I saw something like this. It was very close to us and very bright despite the sun," said Senturk, Dailystar reports.
As the news of the UFO sighting went viral, popular conspiracy theory channel 'UFO Mania' also uploaded a video on YouTube detailing about this incident. The video soon went viral, and it has already racked up more 18,000 views.
After watching the video, viewers of the conspiracy theory channel also put forward various bizarre theories to explain this UFO sighting. Most of the people who watched the video claimed that the bright orb could be actually a secret space vehicle developed by aliens. These people argue that aliens have the habit of visiting the earth to monitor human activities, and this ship might be one among those spy vessels.
"That's exactly what we need, more credible airline pilots stepping up and capturing evidence. Keep it up," commented MatthewDowling.com, a YouTube user.
"Very important evidence," commented M Baris, another YouTuber.
However, after analysing the clip, sceptics claimed that this white object could be either a weather balloon or a plastic bag floating in the air.
Jupiter's magnetic field has changed since the 1970s, and physicists have proved it.
That's not exactly a surprise.Earth's magnetic field, the only planetary field for which we have good ongoing measurements, changes all the time. But the new information is important, because these small changes reveal hidden details of a planet's internal "dynamo," the system that produces its magnetic field.
In a paper published May 20 in the journal Nature Astronomy, a team of researchers looked at magnetic field data from four past missions to Jupiter (Pioneer 10, which reached Jupiter in 1973; Pioneer 11, which reached Jupiter in 1974; Voyager 1, which reached Jupiter in 1979; and Ulysses, which reached Jupiter in 1992). [10 Places in the Solar System We'd Most Like to Visit]
They compared that data to a map of the planet's magnetic field produced by the spacecraft Juno, which conducted the most recent and most thorough probe of the giant planet. In 2016, Juno orbited very close to Jupiter, passing from pole to pole, gathering detailed gravitational and magnetic field data. That allowed researchers to develop a thorough model of the planet's magnetic field and some detailed theories as to how it's produced.
The researchers behind this paper showed that data from those four older probes, though more limited (each of them just swung by the planet once), didn't quite fit with the 2016 model of Jupiter's magnetic field.
"Finding something as minute as these changes in something so immense as Jupiter's magnetic field was a challenge," Kimee Moore, a Juno scientist at Harvard and lead author on the paper, said in a statement. "Having a baseline of close-up observations over four decades long provided us with just enough data to confirm that Jupiter's magnetic field does indeed change over time."
One challenge: The researchers were only interested in changes to Jupiter's internal magnetic field, but the planet also has magnetism coming from its upper atmosphere. Charged particles from volcanic eruptions on Io, Jupiter's most volatile moon, end up in the Jovian magnetosphere and ionosphere (a region of charged particles in the outer reaches of Jupiter's atmosphere) and can also change the magnetic field. But the researchers developed methods to subtract those effects from their data set, leaving them with data based almost entirely on the internal dynamo of the planet.
So the question was, what caused the changes to happen? What's going on in Jupiter's dynamo?
The researchers looked at several different causes of magnetic field changes. Their data most closely matched the predictions of a model in which winds in the planet’s interior change the magnetic field.
Jupiter's southern hemisphere, as photographed by NASA's Juno spacecraft.
"These winds extend from the planet's surface to over 1,860 miles (3,000 kilometers) deep, where the planet's interior begins changing from gas to highly conductive liquid metal," the statement said.
In truth, researchers can't see that deep into Jupiter, so the depth measurements are really best estimates, with several uncertainties, the researchers wrote in the paper. Still, scientists have robust theories to explain how the winds behave.
"They are believed to shear the magnetic fields, stretching them and carrying them around the planet," the statement said.
Most of those wind-driven changes seem to be concentrated in Jupiter's Great Blue Spot, a region of intense magnetic energy near Jupiter’s equator. (This is not the same thing as the Great Red Spot.) The northern and southern parts of the blue spot are shifting east on Jupiter, and the central third is shifting west, causing changes to the planet's magnetic field.
"It is incredible that one narrow magnetic hot spot, the Great Blue Spot, could be responsible for almost all of Jupiter's secular variation, but the numbers bear it out," Moore said in the statement. "With this new understanding of magnetic fields, during future science passes we will begin to create a planetwide map of Jupiter's [magnetic] variation. It may also have applications for scientists studying Earth's magnetic field, which still contains many mysteries to be solved."
In the Chinese science fiction filmThe Wandering Earth, recently released on Netflix, humanity attempts to change the Earth's orbit using enormous thrusters in order to escape the expanding sun — and prevent a collision with Jupiter.
The scenario may one day come true. In five billion years, the sun will run out of fuel and expand, most likely engulfing the Earth. A more immediate threat is a global warming apocalypse. Moving the Earth to a wider orbit could be a solution — and it is possible in theory.
But how could we go about it and what are the engineering challenges? For the sake of argument, let us assume that we aim to move the Earth from its current orbit to an orbit 50% further from the sun, similar to Mars'.
We have been devising techniques to move small bodies — asteroids — from their orbit for many years, mainly to protect our planet from impacts. Some are based on an impulsive, and often destructive, action: a nuclear blast near or on the surface of the asteroid, or a "kineticimpactor", for example a spacecraft colliding with the asteroid at high velocity. These are clearly not applicable to Earth due to their destructive nature.
Other techniques instead involve a very gentle, continuous push over a long time, provided by a tugboat docked on the surface of the asteroid, or a spacecraft hovering near it (pushing through gravity or other methods). But this would be impossible for the Earth as its mass is enormous compared to even the largest asteroids.
Electric thrusters
We have actually already been moving the Earth from its orbit. Every time a probe leaves the Earth for another planet, it imparts a small impulse to the Earth in the opposite direction, similar to the recoil of a gun. Luckily for us — but unfortunately for the purpose of moving the Earth — this effect is incredibly small.
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy is the most capable launch vehicle today. We would need 300 billion billion launches at full capacity in order to achieve the orbit change to Mars. The material making up all these rockets would be equivalent to 85% of the Earth, leaving only 15% of Earth in Mars orbit.
An electric thruster is a much more efficient way to accelerate mass — in particular ion drives, which work by firing out a stream of charged particles that propel the vessel forward. We could point and fire an electric thruster in the trailing direction of Earth's orbit.
The oversized thruster should be 1,000 kilometres above sea level, beyond Earth's atmosphere, but still solidly attached to the Earth with a rigid beam, to transmit the pushing force. With an ion beam fired at 40 kilometres per second in the right direction, we would still need to eject the equivalent of 13% of the mass of the Earth in ions to move the remaining 87%.
Sailing on light
As light carries momentum, but no mass, we may also be able to continuously power a focused light beam, such as a laser. The required power would be collected from the sun, and no Earth mass would be consumed. Even using the enormous 100GW laser plant envisaged by the Breakthrough Starshot project, which aims to propel spacecraft out of the solar system to explore neighbouring stars, it would still take three billion billion years of continuous use to achieve the orbital change.
But light can also be reflected directly from the sun to the Earth using a solar sailstationed next to the Earth. Researchers have shown that it would need a reflective disc 19 times bigger than the Earth's diameter to achieve the orbital change over a timescale of one billion years.
Interplanetary billiard
A well-known technique for two orbiting bodies to exchange momentum and change their velocity is with a close passage, or gravitational slingshot. This type of manoeuvre has been extensively used by interplanetary probes. For example, the Rosetta spacecraft that visited comet 67P in 2014-2016, during its ten-year journey to the comet passed in the vicinity of the Earth twice, in 2005 and 2007.
As a result, the gravity field of the Earth imparted a substantial acceleration to Rosetta, which would have been unachievable solely using thrusters. Consequently, the Earth received an opposite and equal impulse — although this did not have any measurable effect due to Earth's mass.
But what if we could perform a slingshot, using something much more massive than a spacecraft? Asteroids can certainly be redirected by the Earth, and while the mutual effect on Earth's orbit will be tiny, this action can be repeated numerous times to ultimately achieve a considerable Earth orbit change.
Some regions of the solar system are dense with small bodies such as asteroids and comets, the mass of many of which is small enough to be moved with realistic technology, but still orders of magnitude larger than what can be realistically launched from Earth.
With accurate trajectory design, it is possible to exploit so-called "Δv leveraging" — a small body can be nudged out of its orbit and as a result swing past the Earth, providing a much larger impulse to our planet. This may seem exciting, but it has been estimated that we would need a million such asteroid close passes, each spaced about a few thousand years apart, to keep up with the sun's expansion.
The verdict
Of all the options available, using multiple asteroid slingshots seems the most achievable right now. But in the future, exploiting light might be the key — if we learn how to build giant space structures or super-powerful laser arrays. These could also be used for space exploration.
But while it is theoretically possible, and may one day be technically feasible, it might actually be easier to move our species to our planetary next-door neighbour, Mars, which may survive the sun's destruction. We have, after all, already landed on and roved its surface several times.
After considering how challenging it would be to move the Earth, colonising Mars, making it habitable and moving Earth's population there over time, might not sound as difficult after all.
The Starlink satellite train as seen shortly before 1:00 am in the Netherlands on May 25, 2019 (video is three-times normal speed).GIF: Marco Langbroek/Gizmodo
A satellite tracker in the Netherlands has captured stunning video of dozens of SpaceX Starlink satellites passing overhead. Launched together late last week, the chain of satellites looked like a giant, brightly lit train chugging away in the night sky—a rare sight that understandably prompted UFO sightings.
Marco Langbroek, a spy satellite tracker and astronomer, spotted the string of Starlink satellites from a tracking station located in Leiden, the Netherlands. Using data from last week’s launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, he calculated a probable search orbit, got his camera ready, and was duly rewarded.
Just before 1:00 a.m. local time on May 25 (10:55 pm UT on May 24 to be exact), the Starlink train drifted into Langbroek’s view. The satellites had only recently been deployed and were still parked in orderly, soldier-like formation. On his website, SatTrackCam Leiden (b)log, Langbroek wrote:
My search orbit turned out to be not too bad: very close in sky track, and with the objects passing some 3 minutes early on the predictions. And what a SPECTACULAR view it was!
It started with two faint, flashing objects moving into the field of view. Then, a few tens of seconds later, my jaw dropped as the ‘train’ entered the field of view. I could not help shouting “OAAAAAH!!!!” (followed by a few expletives...).
Langbroek uploaded the video to Vimeo, writing on his site, “be prepared to be mind-blown!”
Launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on May 23, these 60 satellites are the first build-out of Elon Musk’s Starlink internet constellation. Eventually, the plan is for this telecommunications system to provide low-cost broadband internet access to paying customers around the planet, including remote areas where internet service is hard to come by. Starlink won’t reach “significant operational capacity” until at least 800 satellites are placed in orbit, so the private company still has a way to go.
Late last week, the 60 Starlink satellites, each weighing 500 pounds (227 kg), were placed in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at an altitude of 400 kilometers (250 miles). The intended orbit is much higher. Accordingly, each satellite is equipped with a Hall ion thruster, which will enable the units to adjust their positions in orbit, hold an intended altitude, and even deorbit themselves when the time comes. SpaceX doesn’t expect these satellites to last more than five years, after which time they’ll dip back into Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrate during reentry; SpaceX intends to replace old satellites with newer models over the course of the project.
Importantly, this Starlink train is a temporary feature. The satellites will drift further and further apart with each successive orbit of Earth. This train, as Langbroek wrote at his website, “will probably quickly dissipate.”
Langbroek wasn’t the only person to see the amazing sight; commenters at his website said they saw the formation in Minnesota, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and elsewhere. Understandably, the strange sight prompted concerns of UFOs, as AFP reported via CTV News:
Shortly afterwards, Dutch website www.ufomeldpunt.nl was inundated with more than 150 sighting reports, with astonished spotters describing a “bizarre train of stars or lights moving across the skies at constant speed.”
“There’s a long line of lights. Faster than a plane. Huh?” one spotter reported, while another called it a “star caravan” and one saying “I have it on film”.
One spotter simply texted: “WTF?”
“I didn’t know what to make of it,” an unnamed witness later told the NOS public broadcaster.
“Is it Russia attacking the US? Are they UFOs? Seriously, I didn’t know,” the witness said.
Thankfully it wasn’t an alien invasion—but this likely won’t be the last Starlink train we’ll get to see, and as a result, not the last time we’ll experience a wave of related UFO sightings. SpaceX needs least 800 Starlink satellites in orbit to gain full functionality of the system, and a total of 1,000 for the project to become economically viable for the company. Incredibly, Elon Musk also envisions as many as 12,000 Starlink satellites as part of the constellation. If that’s true, we can expect many more transient Starlink trains in the coming months and years.
Artist’s impression of Bajadasaurus pronuspinax, a newly discovered sauropod dinosaur from South America.
Illustration: Jorge A. González
Paleontologists in Argentina have uncovered a dinosaur unlike anything ever seen before. Alive some 140 million years ago, these majestic herbivores featured long, forward-pointing spikes running along their necks and backs. These spikes may have served a defensive role, but their exact purpose now presents a fascinating new mystery.
New research published this week in Scientific Reports describes a new species of dinosaur its discoverers are calling Bajadasaurus pronuspinax (pronounced “BA-HAD-AH-SAURUS” “PRONE-OO-SPIN-ACKS”). The first half of its binomial references to the geological formation where its fossils were found, the Bajada Colorada Formation in Northern Patagonia, Argentina. The latter part of its name means “bent over forward spine,” owing to its most distinctive feature. The fossilized remnants of this extraordinary creature, including a nearly complete skull with some teeth, were uncovered in 2013 by paleontologists from CONICET, Universidad Maimónides, and several other institutions.
Bajadasaurus was a sauropod, a wildly successful group of long-necked, four-legged dinosaurs. A Lower Cretaceous dinosaur, it lived 140 million years ago in what is now Argentina, and it belonged to a subgroup of sauropods called dicraeosaurids—medium-sized sauropods with distinctive vertebrae and long spines along their necks and backs.
Lead author Pablo Gallina posing with the new reconstructions.
Image: Secretariat of Science
Analysis of the Bajadasaurus skull and teeth suggests they grazed on low-lying plants. Their eye sockets were located near the roof of the skull, allowing them to keep watch for predators while they munched on foliage. In the beautiful art produced by Jorge A. González, a small pterosaur can be seen perching on a Bajadasaurus spike—a nice touch, given how prolific these winged reptiles were in South America at the time. Reconstructions of the spikey beast were recently unveiled at the Cultural Science Center in Buenos Aires (pictured above).
Prior to this latest discovery, paleontologists had uncovered another South American dicraeosauridae with spikes, Amargasaurus cazaui. This sleek-looking sauropod lived around 15 million years after Bajadasaurus, but its spikes were much shorter and they leaned backward instead of forward. Bajadasaurus is notable both for the size of its spikes and their forward-leaning orientation. The longest of the rod-like neural spines measured nearly 5 feet in length, close to 150 centimeters.
“We’re barely into February, butBajadasaurusmight end up being the most awesome dinosaur of 2019. The name looks a lot likeBadassasaurus, which is actually pretty fitting, as this looks like a punk dinosaur,” Steve Brusatte, a University of Edinburgh paleontologist not directly involved with the research (though he edited the paper for Scientific Reports), told Gizmodo. “The long, spindly spikes sticking out of the neck give the appearance of a Mohawk haircut, or the spiky hair of Johnny Rotten. I can’t help but think that the spines functioned in the same way as Johnny Rotten’s hair: to get attention. These must have been display structures, to attract mates or intimidate rivals, or maybe to rock out in other ways that only the dinosaurs would have known.”
Indeed, the exact function of the spikes isn’t clear. Possibilities include heat regulation (an issue for large-bodied sauropods), sexual display (horns to make dinos horny), a fat reservoir (the fat stores would be located between the spikes, and similar to a camel’s humps), and defense against predators. The authors of the new study, led by Pablo A. Gallina from Universidad Maimónides, favor the idea that the spines served as “passive defense structures.” Any would-be predator, the authors surmised, would risk impaling themselves on these formidable structures during an attack. For that hypothesis to work, however, the long spines would need to be strong enough to avoid shattering or fracturing.
Fossil elements of Bajadasaurus pronuspinax.
Image: P. A. Gallina et al., 2019
“We believe that the long, pointed spines—extremely long and thin—on the neck and back of Bajadasaurus... should serve to deter potential predators,” said Gallina in a CONICET statement. “However, we think that if they were only bare bone structures or covered only with skin they could have broken or fractured easily with a blow or when attacked by other animals. This leads us to suggest that these spines should have been protected by a corneal keratin sheath similar to what [is observed] in the horns of many mammals.”
Brusatte isn’t convinced.
“The paleontologists who described the new dinosaur suggest that the spines may have been used for defense, but it’s hard for me to imagine that such thin, delicate, gaudy structures would have been much use in deflecting the bite of a big meat-eating dinosaur,” said Brusatte. “It’s an interesting idea, and maybe the authors are correct, but I think display is much more likely.”
Eric Gorscak, a postdoctoral research scientist at The Field Museum in Chicago who wasn’t affiliated with the new study, said “Bajadasaurus is certainly a bizarre discovery,” but like Brusatte, he’s skeptical about the authors’ defense hypothesis.
“Their reconstruction is somewhat speculative as it is based on only one recovered neck vertebra with the curved neural spines,” Gorscak told Gizmodo. “The trouble with such unique features in extinct animals is that there are rare, if any, living examples to compare to better understand potential functions. But at the very least, Bajadasaurus demonstrates that life will find a way to modify pre-existing structures in response to ever-changing ecological and biological demands—even if we’re not entirely sure what those were.”
Stephen Poropat, a paleontologist from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, thought the new discovery was significant owing to how much of the skull was recovered, but he was “intrigued” by the significance the authors afforded to the forward-pointing spines, which appeared on only one of the three neck vertebrae recovered.
“They seem not to consider the possibility that these processes [fossils]—which are very long and exceedingly thin—might have been subjected to some degree of post-mortem deformation due to geological processes,” Poropat told Gizmodo. “In other words, when Bajadasaurus was alive they might have pointed forward to a lesser degree, or not pointed forward at all.”
He also said it’s difficult to know the kind of soft tissue that once covered these spines. He agreed that keratin is a possibility, as the authors suggest, but it’s also possible the spines were surrounded by soft tissue, or used to support a frill, he said.
“It is important to remember that these structures were actually part of the vertebrae of these animals, unlike the plates of stegosaurs or the armor of ankylosaurs, which were separate bones, not fused to the spine,” Poropat said, adding that “the conclusions the authors draw about Bajadasaurus using its spines for defense are speculative.”
A reasonable next step for the authors would be to put their theories to the test, and conduct some experimental paleontology. This could be done using computer simulations or with materials that approximate the strength of the Bajadasaurus spikes. Similar experiments have been done before, for example, with researchers using models to estimate the maximum running speed ofTyrannosaurus rex before it would snap its legs with its tremendous bulk.
The exact purpose of the spikes aside, there’s no question Bajadasaurus is one of the more spectacular dinosaurs we’ve seen in quite some time. It’s incredible to think of all the things we’re still learning—and still hope to learn—about the remarkable creatures that lived long before humans.
This post was updated to include comments from Stephen Poropat.
This is an odd start, but before we get into complicated things I want to talk about something near and dear to my heart—corn. Once upon a time, the corn we know and love (at least I do), used to be something called teosinte, a small green plant that doesn’t look anywhere near as appetizing. It is hard to believe, I know, but something very interesting happened. In the area that is now Mexico, this plant was identified as having potential as a food crop, so farmers began intentionally growing it. Being good farmers, they thought that maybe if they kept the seeds of the biggest ones and kept planting those they would get more food out of it. As it turns out, they were right. After ten thousand years of only planting the ones that produced the biggest kernels, we ended up with maize as we know it today. It’s bizarre but entirely true and it happened through a process we call artificial selection.
In nature similar, very strange changes can happen to species over time given enough pressure by the environment around them. Evolutionary biology is essentially the study of how organisms have changed over time to develop into new species. The topic is a bit contentious, as we all know, but there are also many common misconceptions about exactly how this process works. Thinking about it as a whole is difficult, with many points where it is easy to get hung up and confused. So, instead of looking at the big strange picture, we should start with a closer look at the little parts that make up the concept. As we move into this article, remember that, ultimately, every species needs to survive and reproduce because that’s how species continue to exist. With that said, let us take a look!
Credit: Pixabay.
Getting Fit
Let us consider two individuals, Tom and Jack. Tom is long-limbed, athletic, lightweight, and doesn’t have much body hair. Jack is shorter, has a fair amount of hair, and a larger, higher-fat build. If you put both of these men in a forest, it is likely that Tom will have a bit of an advantage with traversing, climbing, et cetera. However, take the same pair and put them in a windy tundra and Jack will likely do a lot better in the harsh weather.
Every environment poses its own unique challenges. If you live in an area that has a lot of water, you will do a lot better if you can swim. If you live in an area that has a lot of plants and cover, predators are less likely to see you if you’re small and green. These factors contribute to something we call fitness which is a measure of how well you are built to survive and how likely you are to reproduce. In some ways, it’s a bit like physical fitness in humans. And, similarly, this fitness affects more than just your looks.
Genetics plays a huge role in this, and your genes (genotype) are expressed through your outward characteristics, called your phenotype. Small brown lizards living in a forest are displaying (‘expressing’) genes that give them the small and brown phenotype, and maybe even more that tell them to like staying on surfaces that match their color. Which brings us to the next main idea, a process called natural selection.
Selection Bias
Natural selection looks at the differences in the likelihood of survival and reproduction based on a species’ phenotype. Ultimately, in nature, creatures that have genes that result in fit phenotypes will survive and reproduce. This concept is where the term “survival of the fittest” comes from. The survivors live to have offspring and so genes in that population will, therefore, start leaning towards that fitter survivor genotype. Let us use an example.
Imagine that in a grassland there is a population of mostly large, green grasshoppers. They are doing well here because nature provides a lot of cover. This season, though, there isn’t much rain and the grassland starts turning brown and sparse. This means that the larger, brighter grasshoppers become much easier to see by predators and many of them get eaten. So, the next generation of grasshoppers ends up being mostly smaller and perhaps a bit less green, because the ones that best survived the change in the grasslands were the ones that were harder to see.
This is natural selection. Those built to survive in an environment will live long enough to have offspring, changing the gene variety in the next generation. The same process happens with plants, fungi, and microorganisms. An important thing to note here, though, is that this is only possible because a healthy population has a wide range of genes to choose from. Not all organisms of a species will be the same size or the same color or have the same features.
Charles Darwin is considered the father of modern evolutionary biology. He developed his theory of natural selection by observing the variations among the species of the Galapagos Islands. He was best known for his study of birds, which all occupied different niches on these far islands but bore obvious resemblances to mainland species.
Image credits: John Gould.
Over a long period of time and given a lot of pressure, a population of organisms can change in significant ways. The reason we are now having an antibiotic crisis is that, after many years of exposing bacteria to chemicals designed to kill them, the ones that had the gene quirks allowing them to survive are the ones which were able to multiply. So now we have a large number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to contend with which have whole sections of DNA that exist only to counteract these drugs—but that, of course, raises a question. If they didn’t have these genes before, why do they have them now?
Mutant Power
Credit: Pixabay.
Mutation is a major factor influencing the process of evolution. Every so often, when cells are dividing, the mechanisms that copy bits of genetic data make a mistake. While it can often result in problems, it sometimes creates just what an organism needs to survive. One reason why HIV has been so hard to cure is that its reproduction process is unstable and prone to genetic errors. What this means is that the medication will work on most viral particles, but not all of them. The virus is, therefore, constantly evolving and the ‘error’, mutant forms that help it survive persist due to natural selection.
Some mutations are overtly harmful, like mutations in hemoglobin genes that cause sickle cell disease, where red blood cells curve into a “sickle” shape. The mutation makes the cells less efficient oxygen carriers and more fragile, and sometimes they cause painful blockages and organ damage. However, these mutations continue to persist because if a person is only a carrier, having received the variant gene from only one parent, it has a protective effect against malaria—a common disease in the parts of Africa where sickle cell is most prevalent. The fragility of the cell due to the hemoglobin structure means the cell will often rupture before the parasite can reproduce. But, since the remainder of their hemoglobin is normal, they don’t experience most of the severe effects seen in persons with the full form of the disease. The carrier phenotype is, therefore, fit. Natural selection is a strange process indeed.
So we have looked at mutation, natural selection, and fitness. We have looked at bacteria and viruses and how these factors have made them survive and evolve on a smaller faster scale. Now, how does that translate to bigger more complex things?
Making Sense of it All
Imagine that there is a ground-dwelling species of mammal that lives in a forest. Many of them are competing for the same food sources. A few of them, have started climbing in the hopes of finding another food source. A mutation comes which makes one offspring’s claws curve a bit more, causing that individual to be better at climbing. It survives to reproduce. A few generations down the line, all its descendants may have these curved claws. Somewhere along the line, a descendant is born with unusually long limbs which makes it better at both climbing and jumping, this individual’s offspring may well, do better than others—and so on. These minor changes can add up over time, just like the biggest teosinte kernels being intentionally planted. In nature, however, it takes far longer than a neat ten thousand years to produce something as different as maize.
Let this mammal group adapt for many thousands of years with natural selection favoring climbing habits and hunting in trees. At the end of that time if you were to take one of these climbing adapted creatures and put them alongside the ground dwellers they would look very different. They may have a different body form, make different sounds, have eyes that are adapted to seeing at a distance, and so on. And, because of the amount of mutation and genetic changes that brought them to this point, any offspring born of a mix of these two creatures would be sterile like a liger or mule. Just like that, you now have two different species. This also speaks to a common misconception, the idea that if one organism advanced from another, the first one should be gone. That simply isn’t how the process works.
In nature, creatures will exist side by side as one group remains the same and others experience changes due to environmental pressure. It is strange, and hard to fully appreciate, but we have a bit of evidence that can follow the trail. Think even of the liger I just mentioned, the mere fact that a lion and tiger—two distinct species from two different regions—can produce offspring means that their genotypes must be similar enough to make an embryo viable. We interpret this to mean that these big cats must have some ancestry in common.
What Do We Know?
Though it happens over a very long period of time in creatures that take longer to reproduce than bacteria or viruses, there are a few ways we can observe that evolution is an acting process. If an organism has advanced from one form to another, it stands to reason that there had to be some forms in between. Well, though we don’t always have all the bits of the puzzle, the fossils we find often help us fill these gaps. For example, between dinosaurs and birds we have found species of feathered, winged dinosaurs like Archaeopteryx.
There are also several odd cases in nature of organisms growing parts they have no need for. Some snake species and legless lizards retain a pelvic girdle with no real function, dolphin embryos in development still start to grow hind limb buds that retract after a time, and many cave dwelling or burrowing species retain non-functioning eyes. The fact that the genetic machinery required to make these structures happen exists, presents as evidence that these genes had a purpose at some point in the organism’s history.
There are other factors to consider as well. Genetic evidence frequently shows fairly small differences between one species and another of a similar type that cannot reproduce with each other. In fact, genetic evidence shows that a large variety of organisms have a surprising number of genes in common—whales, humans, bats, and cats all have the same bones making up their forelimbs. But, this gets into very complex discussion and murky waters. This article really just serves to give a background of a concept. Take the information here, interpret and think about it as you will and, of course, there are many other great sources of information on the topic out there. Whether evolution on a larger scale makes sense to you or not, hopefully we can at least agree that these smaller processes of change are things we can observe. By now, I hope, the idea of what evolution is and how it works is at least a little bit clearer.
The U.S. Navy is drafting new guidelines for pilots and other employees to report encounters with 'unidentified aircraft.'
A growing number of Navy pilotsclaiming to have spotted unidentified flying objects, or UFOS, has led the Navy to update its protocol for reporting them, according to a New York Times report.
In 2007, thePentagonbegan a shadowy program called “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.” It intended to study radar data, video footage captured by pilots and accounts of senior officers who reported seeing UFOs. The program officially ended in 2012 amid dried-up funds, but the Navy has continued investigations of military reports of UFOs,the report said.
Reports of UFO sightings occurred almost daily between 2014 and 2015 in the East Coast. Navy pilots reported seeing flying objects that had no visible engine or exhaust plumes but could read hypersonic speeds. One Super Hornet pilot in late 2014 said he had a near collision with a UFO, The Times reported.
Lt. Ryan Graves, who has been with the Navy for 10 years, told The Times: “These things would be out there all day. Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”
Experts, however, caution against extraterrestrial explanations. Senior astrophysicist Leon Golub, who was quoted by The Times, said “there are so many other possibilities – bugs in the code for the imaging and display systems, atmospheric effects and reflections, neurological overload from multiple inputs during high-speed flight.”
Earlier this year, the Navy issued new classified guidelines on how to report such instances “in response to unknown, advanced aircraft flying into or near Navy strike groups or other sensitive military facilities and formations.”
‘Wow, What Is That?’ Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects
“These things would be out there all day,” Lt. Ryan Graves said. “Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”CreditTony Luong for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast. Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes, but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.
“These things would be out there all day,” said Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who has been with the Navy for 10 years, and who reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress. “Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”
In late 2014, a Super Hornet pilot had a near collision with one of the objects, and an official mishap report was filed. Some of the incidents were videotaped, including one taken by a plane’s camera in early 2015 that shows an object zooming over the ocean waves as pilots question what they are watching.
“Wow, what is that, man?” one exclaims. “Look at it fly!”
No one in the Defense Department is saying that the objects were extraterrestrial, and experts emphasize that earthly explanations can generally be found for such incidents. Lieutenant Graves and four other Navy pilots, who said in interviews with The New York Times that they saw the objects in 2014 and 2015 in training maneuvers from Virginia to Florida off the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, make no assertions of their provenance.
But the objects have gotten the attention of the Navy, which earlier this year sent out new classified guidance for how to report what the military calls unexplained aerial phenomena, or unidentified flying objects.
Joseph Gradisher, a Navy spokesman, said the new guidance was an update of instructions that went out to the fleet in 2015, after the Roosevelt incidents.
“There were a number of different reports,” he said. Some cases could have been commercial drones, he said, but in other cases “we don’t know who’s doing this, we don’t have enough data to track this. So the intent of the message to the fleet is to provide updated guidance on reporting procedures for suspected intrusions into our airspace.”
The sightings were reported to the Pentagon’s shadowy, little-known Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which analyzed the radar data, video footage and accounts provided by senior officers from the Roosevelt. Luis Elizondo, a military intelligence official who ran the program until he resigned in 2017, called the sightings “a striking series of incidents.”
The program, which began in 2007 and was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time, was officially shut down in 2012 when the money dried up, according to the Pentagon. But the Navy recently said it currently investigates military reports of U.F.O.s, and Mr. Elizondo and other participants say the program — parts of it remain classified — has continued in other forms. The program has also studied video that shows a whitish oval object described as a giant Tic Tac, about the size of a commercial plane, encountered by two Navy fighter jets off the coast of San Diego in 2004.
Navy pilots from the VFA-11 “Red Rippers” squadron aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in 2015. The squadron began noticing strange objects just after the Navy upgraded the radar systems on its F/A-18 fighter planes.CreditAdam Ferguson for The New York Times
Leon Golub, a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said the possibility of an extraterrestrial cause “is so unlikely that it competes with many other low-probability but more mundane explanations.” He added that “there are so many other possibilities — bugs in the code for the imaging and display systems, atmospheric effects and reflections, neurological overload from multiple inputs during high-speed flight.”
Lieutenant Graves still cannot explain what he saw. In the summer of 2014, he and Lt. Danny Accoin, another Super Hornet pilot, were part of a squadron, the VFA-11 “Red Rippers” out of Naval Air Station Oceana, Va., that was training for a deployment to the Persian Gulf.
Lieutenants Graves and Accoin spoke on the record to The Times about the objects. Three other pilots in the squadron also spoke to The Times about the objects but declined to be named.
Lieutenants Graves and Accoin, along with former American intelligence officials, appear in a six-part History Channel series, “Unidentified: Inside America’s U.F.O. Investigation,” to air beginning Friday. The Times conducted separate interviews with key participants.
The pilots began noticing the objects after their 1980s-era radar was upgraded to a more advanced system. As one fighter jet after another got the new radar, pilots began picking up the objects, but ignoring what they thought were false radar tracks.
“People have seen strange stuff in military aircraft for decades,” Lieutenant Graves said. “We’re doing this very complex mission, to go from 30,000 feet, diving down. It would be a pretty big deal to have something up there.”
But he said the objects persisted, showing up at 30,000 feet, 20,000 feet, even sea level. They could accelerate, slow down and then hit hypersonic speeds.
Lieutenant Accoin said he interacted twice with the objects. The first time, after picking up the object on his radar, he set his plane to merge with it, flying 1,000 feet below it. He said he should have been able to see it with his helmet camera, but could not, even though his radar told him it was there.
A few days later, Lieutenant Accoin said a training missile on his jet locked on the object and his infrared camera picked it up as well. “I knew I had it, I knew it was not a false hit,” he said. But still, “I could not pick it up visually.”
At this point the pilots said they speculated that the objects were part of some classified and extremely advanced drone program.
Lieutenant Graves with Navy flight log books.CreditTony Luong for The New York Times
But then pilots began seeing the objects. In late 2014, Lieutenant Graves said he was back at base in Virginia Beach when he encountered a squadron mate just back from a mission “with a look of shock on his face.”
He said he was stunned to hear the pilot’s words. “I almost hit one of those things,” the pilot told Lieutenant Graves.
The pilot and his wingman were flying in tandem about 100 feet apart over the Atlantic east of Virginia Beach when something flew between them, right past the cockpit. It looked to the pilot, Lieutenant Graves said, like a sphere encasing a cube.
The incident so spooked the squadron that an aviation flight safety report was filed, Lieutenant Graves said.
The near miss, he and other pilots interviewed said, angered the squadron, and convinced them that the objects were not part of a classified drone program. Government officials would know fighter pilots were training in the area, they reasoned, and would not send drones to get in the way.
“It turned from a potentially classified drone program to a safety issue,” Lieutenant Graves said. “It was going to be a matter of time before someone had a midair” collision.
What was strange, the pilots said, was that the video showed objects accelerating to hypersonic speed, making sudden stops and instantaneous turns — something beyond the physical limits of a human crew.
Asked what they thought the objects were, the pilots refused to speculate.
“We have helicopters that can hover,” Lieutenant Graves said. “We have aircraft that can fly at 30,000 feet and right at the surface.” But “combine all that in one vehicle of some type with no jet engine, no exhaust plume.”
Lieutenant Accoin said only that “we’re here to do a job, with excellence, not make up myths.”
In March 2015 the Roosevelt left the coast of Florida and headed to the Persian Gulf as part of the American-led mission fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The same pilots who were interacting with the strange objects off the East Coast were soon doing bombing missions over Iraq and Syria.
The incidents tapered off after they left the United States, the pilots said.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Wow, What Is That?’ Navy Pilots Reported Unexplained Flying Objects. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
“Here is the video I shot, be prepared to be mind-blown!” Marco Langbroek wrote on his website SatTrackCam Leiden (b)log, where he shared an amazing capture of dozens of SpaceX Starlink internet satellites chugging along, in a straight line, across the heavens.
Netherlands-based satellite tracker Marco Langbroekstunned space fans this weekend with this video of dozens ofStarlink internet satellites soaring overhead. SpaceX had launched its first 60 Starlink satellites into orbit on Thursday, May 23, 2019. It plans to launch nearly 12,000 of these satellites; from low-Earth orbit, they’ll beam internet coverage to the world. Though precise tracking figures for the satellites aren’t available yet, Marco was able to make a rough prediction of where to spot them. His prediction turned out to be close enough to catch the satellites soaring over his location.
On 24 May 2019 at 2:30 UT, SpaceX launched STARLINK, a series of 60 satellites that is the first launch of many that will create a large constellation of satellites meant to provide global internet access.
Just short of a day after the launch, near 22:55 UT on May 24, this resulted in a spectacular view over northwestern Europe, when a ‘train’ of bright satellites, all moving close together in a line, moved across the sky. It rained UFO reports as a result, and the press picked it up as well.
There were no orbital elements for the objects available yet on Space-Track, but based on the orbital information (53 degree inclination, initially 440 km orbital altitude) I had calculated a search orbit and stood ready with my camera.
My search orbit turned out to be not too bad: very close in sky track, and with the objects passing some 3 minutes early on the predictions. And what a SPECTACULAR view it was!
It started with two faint, flashing objects moving into the field of view. Then, a few tens of seconds later, my jaw dropped as the ‘train’ entered the field of view. I could not help shouting ‘OAAAAAH!!!!’ (followed by a few expletives…)!
Marco Langbroek captured the SpaceX Starlink satellites the night after their launch, moving like a train across the heavens.
Marco said he counted at least 56 objects as the satellites flew overhead. He wrote:
Over the coming days the ‘train’ of objects will be making two to three passes each night. As they are actively manoeuvering with their ion thrusters, they will be more spread out with each pass, so the ‘train’ will probably quickly dissipate.
The objects were launched into a ~440 km altitude, 53 degree inclined orbit. Using their ion thrusters, they will raise their orbits to ~550 km the coming days/weeks.
A view of SpaceX’s first 60 Starlink satellites in orbit, still in stacked configuration, with the Earth as a brilliant blue backdrop on May 23, 2019.
Marco isn’t the only stargazer who caught the view. Karoline Mrazek and Erwin Matys of Project Nightflight in Austria were taken by surprise when, while outdoors for a night of observing on May 24, they saw the satellites, too. They said in an email to EarthSky:
We were testing a new imaging system at our dark-sky observing site in Austria. Suddenly a weirdly slow moving streak of light appeared on the horizon, due northwest from our location. The object slowly moved eastward across the sky, stretching in length all during the pass. A few stragglers appeared to trail behind the larger bulk of objects. The several dozen individual objects of the bulk were soon resolvable with the unaided eye. They had approximately 2 magnitudes each. The spooky wagon train of dots culminated near Polaris, before it disappeared in the Earth’s shadow shortly before 22:57 UT. The spectacular show lasted several minutes. We literally stood and watched, stunned speechless.
All in all that was one of the most amazing observations we had in a long time. It was amazing to see this show of a totally unfamiliar object appearing unexpectedly in the sky. We look forward to the next deployment. We can only recommend it to other stargazers to look out for new deployments next time SpaceX launches another Falcon rocket.
And, of course, others were caught unawares on May 24 and, judging from our email today, were stunned by what they saw.
By Saturday night, May 25, the satellites apparently were already fading in brightness, as they were being moved to a higher orbit. Dave Chapman in Canada, another veteran observer of the skies, wrote to EarthSky:
I observed the Starlink train from rural Nova Scotia on Saturday night, May 25 at 10:20 pm ADT. I knew it existed and had seen the video, but I was not expecting it. It appeared to me like a dim jet contrail, but the binoculars resolved it into a train of lights. I was showing beginners the night sky and they were amazed to see it. Very exciting, but worrisome. This could get old very fast!
As for your chances of seeing the Starlink satellite train in the nights ahead, we checked the tried and true website Heavens-Above.com, but didn’t find any predictions. The satellites are currently being maneuvered via their ion thrusters to a higher orbit; as they get higher, they’ll become fainter to earthly observers (hopefully notstill bright enough to be seen, because thousands of them would not be a pretty sight above us). They are also dispersing and so aren’t as likely to appear train-like. Our advice is to keep checking Heavens-Above.com, as well as Marco’s site SatTrackCam Leiden (b)log. Also, try Marco’s Twitter page (@Marco_Langbroek). If predictions do become available, you’ll likely find them at one of those places.
This just in: We got an email Sunday morning, with word of a new tool for finding out when the Starlink satellites will pass over your location. We can’t vouch for its accuracy, but it’s very easy to use. Find the Starlink prediction tool here. Thank you, dev@cmdr2!
And, as always, keep looking up!
Dr Marco Langbroek@Marco_Langbroek
·
WHOAAA!!!! Just had a SPECTACULAR view of the train of @SpaceX#Starlink objects passing over! Video to follow. FAN-TAS-TIC!!!!
Dr Marco Langbroek@Marco_Langbroek
VIDEO! Prepare to be mind-blown! The train of @SpaceX#Starlink satellites passing over Leiden, the Netherlands, some 25 minutes ago. Camera: WATEC 902H with Canon FD 1.8/50 mm lens. I was shouting when they entered FOV!@elonmuskhttps://vimeo.com/338361997
Bottom line: Marco Langbroek shared an amazing video capture of dozens of SpaceX Starlink internet satellites – marching in a straight line across the heavens – at his website SatTrackCam Leiden (b)log.
Thousands of years from now, scientists who dig up our bones may classify our remains in a new way if the results of a momentous vote on Tuesday hold up. If they do, we’ll formally be the fossilized remains (if we’re lucky) of humans born during the Anthropocene — a brand-new geologic epoch, marked by the detritus of modern life, that may soon be recognized by geology’s formal channels to succeed the ongoing Holocene epoch.
On Tuesday, the majority of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), a subcommittee of 34 scientists within the International Commission on Stratigraphy, voted in favor of formally declaring the Anthropocene a new epoch.
The term “Anthropocene” is already used to describe humanity’s large impact on the environment, but it has yet to actually mark a new geological epoch, like these scientists propose. Technically, we’re still in the Holocene, which began 12,000 to 11,600 years ago, but paleobiologist and AWG head Jan Zalasiewicz, Ph.D., argues that human activity has changed the Earth so drastically that it’s time to recognize a new chapter in the planet’s geological history.
“Formally we are still in the Holocene, but in reality many important geological conditions of Earth are now outside the envelope of conditions that have characterized the great bulk of the Holocene,” he tells Inverse. “Getting an official designation of the Anthropocene would reflect this new reality - and help us analyze it more effectively.”
Is the Anthropocene Geologically Real?
Tuesday’s vote builds upon an earlier, informal vote conducted at a meeting in Cape Town in 2016 and crucially lays the groundwork for the case that the AWG will submit for review in 2021. Now, the AWG must seek approval from two larger regulatory bodies before the new epoch can formally be recognized.
If they’re successful, the primary start date for the Anthropocene will be somewhere in the middle of the 20th century.
But new geological epochs mean nothing without actual evidence of change. To impress the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), humanity’s impact has to be shown to be “geologically real”. Zalasiewicz isn’t worried: There’s plenty of physical evidence that humans have changed the planet’s surface in the past 100 years.
The impacts of thermonuclear testing that date from the mid-twentieth century could be crucial markers that define the Anthropocene
The mid-1900s conveniently stick out, says Zalasiewicz, noting that time period is associated with “an array of geological signals.” Those include sharp increases in carbon dioxide, the spread of plastics, persistent organic pollutants or concrete, widespread species invasions and extinctions, and “perturbations to the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles.”
Evidence of these characteristics will be used to make the case for the Anthropocene, but there is one dramatic signal that may drive home the AWG’s point: artificial radionuclides. Thermonuclear bomb tests from the ‘50s onward provide a “particularly sharp and globally synchronous signal” that could be used to help define the Anthropocene as well.
“It is being looked at as a possible ‘primary marker,’” Zalasiewicz explains. “Though all of the changes will be used in characterizing and recognizing an Anthropocene unit in practice.”
The 'golden spike' marking the Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) at the base of the Ediacaran Period
Finding Proof for the Anthropocene
The major holdup for the Anthropocene is that the AWG still needs to find exemplary samples from all around the world that can show a clear transition from the Holocene into the proposed Anthropocene. This transition is sometimes called a “golden spike.” A particularly good sample, if approved, would be labeled as the Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP), an international reference point marked by a golden plaque.
Over the next several years, the team will search for their geological smoking gun to build the final case that the Anthropocene is here — and has been for at least 50 years. “That’s a work in progress,” Zalasiewicz adds, though his team is determined.
“It’s a long process, as we are trying to analyze and reflect multi-faceted forms of change on a large and immensely complex planet,” he says. “The Geological Time Scale is meant to provide a stable reference, so changes to it are not at all easy to make.”
Read more about the emergence of the new epoch known as the Anthropocene:
An amazing transformation has occurred in modern science. It has been slow in coming and is one that many scientists avoid discussing: there is a point where science and religion coincide. The frightening truth about this agreement is that it isn’t about new age physics, the nature of God or the transcendent union of science and religion – it concerns the nature of man, or rather, the problem of man.
For many years, under the influence of liberalism and humanism, science tended to favour the logic of the ‘Noble Savage’. Violence and evil were human problems, probably caused by the conflict between our intellect and natural instincts. Nature was great, instincts were marvellous and sex was fun. This logic was buttressed with romantic notions about the innocence of animals, the moral purity of instinct, and the marketable icon of the harmless, playful, innocent ape. However, as science progressed, these notions fell like a house of cards.
During the 1970s science began to refine its interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution. This refinement became known as sociobiology – the inclusive fitness theory – or in journalistic terms, ‘the selfish gene’. It was popularised by Richard Dawkins’s book The Selfish Gene. This discovery, which is now conventional scientific wisdom, holds that the ultimate driving force for evolution is the genes, the molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. The maximisation of genetic successes to assure the passing on of certain genes to subsequent generations. This principle, however terrifying in its ramifications, is the state of present evolutionary theory.
When this is combined with our new understanding of the nature of animal behaviour, a darker and more reflective scientific paradigm arises, one that has more in common with Gnosticism, a stream of thought that extends from the early followers of Christ.
A Man & a Chimp
Our relationship to apes has always been a matter of conjecture. We need to abandon the theories and debates about origins and consider the state of humanity at present. There are many ways to consider evolution: Whether we accept Darwinian evolution or a modification thereof, or that evolution was manipulated by ETs, God(s), or even if we consider we are part of a stage of a larger evolutionary cycle (Theosophy, Anthroposophy etc.), the fact remains that our present genetic inheritance indicates something about our present condition.
Science places modern man (Homo sapiens sapiens) in the centre of the ape kingdom. It says humans are part of the same lineage as orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos. The standard view of this great-ape ‘family tree’ is that humans and chimps are more similar to each other than either is to the gorilla – because chimps and humans diverged more recently. But with the publication of the sequence of the full gorilla genome in 2012, this theory has been overthrown. Scientists realised that much of the human genome more closely resembles the gorilla than it does the chimpanzee genome.
While they may seem affectionate and lovable at first appearance, extensive study in the wild has shown a far darker side to ape behaviour. Apes murder, rape and torture. They will defend their territory and intrude on any surrounding territories using guerrilla warfare, literally! In various studies of ape behaviour, it is estimated that at least forty per cent of all cases of copulation involves elements of violence, which would be interpreted as rape. Apes have short-term memories when it comes to companions. If an ape leaves one pack to join another, he becomes an instant enemy. Raids on other packs are frequent, bloody and brutal and involve ambush, torture and death. Apes behave differently from many other animal species and their aggressiveness seems very similar to human behaviour. It’s frighteningly clear that our genetic heritage is directly related to the ape kingdom. This invokes some fascinating questions and quandaries.
Why Intellect?
Apes and related kin are excellent reproducers. They create many offspring and continually reinforce their genetic heritage by territorialism and brute force. Researchers in this field raise the question: why would the ‘genetic program’ create what we understand as the conscious mind?
Many argue that intelligence developed as the result of enhanced hand-eye coordination by using tools. However, many other species use tools, including apes. Apes are quick learners, and use whatever they can find to open that nut, get that fruit, or crush that skull. But apes did not develop a high level of intelligence – only the offshoot of Homo sapiens sapiens. This argument sheds light on a fascinating possibility – was human nature tweaked? Did genetic engineering take place that modified available genetic substances to create modern humans? Such writers as Zecharia Sitchin and Erich von Daniken use this sort of reasoning extensively.
The darker side of this theory is why would an alien life form modify genetic substance without adequately balancing the social effects of the inherent flaws within the original substance? If an alien species, a deity or whatever was capable of manipulating genetic materials, then surely it would be aware of the destructive power within the primate form it was transforming. If we consider there was some manipulation of our genetic structure, then was this accomplished by a somewhat primitive and ignorant entity (which is unlikely considering the required technology)? An entity or force that was malefic and unsympathetic to the resulting human condition?
This may seem too much to grasp at first, yet if we consider the myths and legends that abound within humanity’s history, they all seem to include such tales of genetic interference.
The Gnostics believed that a false creator (Demiurge) formed Matter (the physical world), and humans were moulded out of fallen substance in an effort to trap particles of Light (preexistent Souls). Sitchin argued that an alien race (the Anunnaki) genetically engineered humanity as a slave species, but the early humans rebelled and developed consciousness. Numerous myths, stories and legends suggest someone or something interfered with the ape to create man, and all tend to see this creation as negative. While most religions insist that Matter is good and ‘God’ is the creator, other more esoteric approaches from the Vedas to the Gnostic suggest that Matter is at best dangerous, at worst malefic, and our creation was the result of either a miscalculation or error – or a deliberate destructive act.
This view posits that apes were engineered as a mechanism to trap Souls which existed in the ‘first estate’ (the spiritual worlds). Many Gnostic sects believed that the fallen creator, in his attempt to wrest control of the universe, first created Matter to encapsulate and control the Light. He then evolved the physical form of mankind to capture the preexistent Light forms and turn them into automations under his control. While we may debate details, it is certainly true there is a dichotomy between our genetic programming and mind (which is the gate for one’s true spiritual self). Even if we have trouble accepting the more flamboyant aspects of this theory, the split within humanity and the violent traits of our innate genetic programming cannot be ignored.
The Role of the Mind
The role of the mind in human development has been ambivalent to say the least. From one perspective it is our saving grace, from another it keeps us enslaved. According to Sitchin, the mind was genetically engineered through modifications to the brain so that a slave race could be created. Apes were difficult to command, so a brain/mind complex (however originally limited) was created. Through the dichotomy between the brain/mind and the instincts, mind control was achieved. Continuing from this argument, early religions and social structures would have worked as ‘control mechanisms’ to keep the slaves in their preordained roles. As time went on, however, the mechanism of control became the tool of liberation. Even the most limited mind/brain complex began to develop thoughts outside the ‘control spectrum’, and one thought led to another and ultimately rebellion. Whether we accept this paradigm or not, we can see that intellect has a contradictory role: it exists as an affront to what science understands as the normal evolutionary process and can work to enslave or liberate.
In this extraterrestrial cosmology, we deduce there are diverse alien species – some wish to help humans, while many desire to keep us enslaved. Accordingly, some early cultures worked to liberate humanity’s intellect, while some cultures, if not the same ones over time, regressed their culture back into slavery by the same means.
It is interesting to note that many early Gnostic groups had a similar view of human nature. In one Mandean account, we read of demons copulating together and their progeny being man’s body and mind. Man’s physical and mental forms are in direct opposition to his spiritual essence. In other Gnostic traditions, our mind is a mixture of light and darkness which offers the opportunity to ascend beyond limitation through its redemption.
Sigmund Freud argues that civilisation exists only in as much as it suppresses instinct, and in many ways we are now returning to his understanding. While pleasure may be the veneer that we accept as justification for our behaviour, not far under the surface is a pit of uncontrolled violence. The major contradiction in our culture is the desire for individualism – the more we demand freedom, the more restraints removed, the more we return to the unfettered ape-like creature we once were. As moral codes are loosened and as we gain more supposed freedom, crime, rape, murder and social disorder arises. As culture fails, the apes return.
Light Emissaries
If we contemplate the adversarial view of prehistory with evil alien forms controlling humanity for their own purposes, we can perceive it in different ways. Gnostics and some Christians may interpret this on a more spiritual level, with dominions and principalities, demos and demi-gods replacing the ‘little green men’. For the scientifically-minded researcher, we could replace aliens and demons with complexes and unconscious social control mechanisms (memes).Ultimately the symbol system is irrelevant. This model could be extended to explain the role of such figures as Zoroaster, Krishna, Jesus, Gautama (Buddha) and so on.
As humanity’s consciousness began to expand, it rejected the ‘social control religions’ and tried to make it on its own. However, humanity was unaware that the forces which created these paradigms of control also started the human mind on a journey of development. An immense conflict evolved. When man rejects tyranny, his instincts take over and a new tyranny, one of ape violence, comes into effect. He is caught in a vicious cycle.
The forces of Light, which exist beyond the contamination of Matter, decided to intervene. Over many millions of years, they sent emissaries to explain to man his real constitution and the conflicting nature of his being. Each avatar taught that man is a hybrid, a mixture of fallen Matter and Light ‘stuff’. Man is a split being – Animal, Intellect and Spirit – each with its own agenda and programming. The physical organism is made of fallen Matter and its programming is that of an ape ruled by the ‘selfish gene’. It is innately violent and destructive. In some sense it has its own consciousness, we could perhaps call it the ‘GE’ (genetic entity).
The mind is another problem. It was created as a modification to the brain but evolved into something more. It has facets (such as the brain stem) which hark back to its original nature, and yet has advanced nodes that offer interface to the spirit. It is a collection of false I’s, sub-identities and personas. It craves domination and works best under control, whether by a cult or ism or by TV and computer games. Its liberation is painful, yet necessary. The emissaries of Light have been giving man ‘wake-up’ calls for thousands of years, yet man does not listen. As soon as the emissaries die, sometimes even before, their messages are distorted and become part of the ‘social control mechanism’.
Aliens, DNA & Beyond
Ultimately it does not matter how we perceive our masters, whether we believe the extraterrestrial theory of our origins or see them in more religious, psychological or scientific terms. The point of reference for all these paradigms is spiritual: if the aliens created slaves, it was under the influence and control of greater and more malefic spiritual powers and dominions. The Gnostics said that Matter is fallen, nature is a trap, and man’s real self is locked in an eternal game.
As we move further and further into the Kali Yuga, the age of blood and iron, the game becomes more and more vicious. The ‘selfish gene’ is far more malleable than we care to realise, since it is an intrusion from a spiritual reality: it can transform and change according to new challenges. In the distant past the ‘selfish gene’ program realised man could not be controlled by the genetic entity alone, so it evolved new gene-like structures to control the mind like Memes. A Meme is a virus of the mind.
Meme: (pron. ‘meem’) A contagious idea that replicates like a virus, passed on from mind to mind. Memes function the same way genes and viruses do, propagating through communication networks and face-to-face contact between people. – David S. Bennahum
Memes mould consciousness to fulfil the directive of the original DNA program. Memes transform meaningful social movements into bureaucracies, and take ideals and turn them into commodities. They take transformational technologies and turn them into mechanisms of control. TV, computer games and sport are means to stop us using our mind to any spiritual end by keeping it absorbed and controlled. Our entire culture is based on this premise: all thought must be controlled, albeit covertly, so that freedom is impossible. Democracy is simply the choice between different paradigms of control. Isms, cults and ologies offer further mechanisms of control. Many appear to be outside of the structure, but are really part of it.
Where Science Meets Religion
We have arrived in the new millennium, and science meets religion at last, yet in a way neither would have expected. By understanding the ‘selfish gene’, and the split nature of humanity, we have uncovered the reasons behind the constant tension and violent behaviour of modern man. Illusions are washed away when we truly comprehend the hybrid composition of human nature.
“Yes there have been crashed craft, and bodies recovered. . . . We are not alone in the universe, they have been coming here for a long time. . . . I happen to be privileged enough to be in on the fact that we have been visited on this planet, and the UFO phenomenon is real.”
– Doctor Edgar Mitchell, 6th man to walk on the moon (source)(source)(source)
As recent as a decade ago, avid UFO and extraterrestrial researchers were unable to speak openly about their research without being ridiculed. Today, the topic has gained considerable credibility and popularity, so much so that not only are high ranking figures from military, political, and academic spheres speaking out, but also popular global figures as well, and particularly at prestigious conferences around the world. Previously classified documents that have been released from dozens of governments around the world have also allowed this topic to enter the respected public domain.
The 2011 Global Competitiveness Forum, at which a number of prominent scientists attended, featured a lecture by Jacques Vallee, notable for co-developing the first computerized mapping of Mars for NASA, and for his work at SRI International on the network information centre for ARPANET, on the UFO/extraterrestrial phenomenon.
Here’s another talk by nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman at the same conference. The main theme of that conference was contact with intelligent extraterrestrials, and learning from outer space.
As far as documents, whistleblowers, and other ‘proofs’ that have emerged, we’ve covered many in great detail in a number of articles that we’ve published. You can access those articles by visiting the exopolitics section of our website here.
The latest major figure to comment on extraterrestrials was Elon Musk, founder, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX and co-founder, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc. Aside from a phenomenal businessman, Tesla is an activist who uses his wealth and resources to create a better Earth.
He touched on extraterrestrials at the World Government Summit, a global platform dedicated to shaping the future of government worldwide. Each year, the Summit sets the agenda for the next generation of governments with a focus on how they can harness innovation and technology to solve universal challenges facing humanity.
Here’s an excerpt from that speech, which you can view here:
When I was a kid I was wondering, kind of, what’s the meaning of life, like, why are we here, what’s it all about? I came to the conclusion that what really matters is trying to understand the right questions to ask, and, the more that we can increase the scope and scale of human consciousness, the better we are able to ask these questions. . . .
Some of those things are in the long term, having long term sustainable transport and sustainable energy generation, and to be a space-bearing civilization, and for humanity to be out there among the stars, and be a multi-planetary species. I think being a multi-planet species and being out there among the stars is important for the long term survival of humanity. . . . It creates a sense of adventure, and it makes people excited about the future.
Below is a snippet taken from the full interview. In it, he states that if there are super intelligent extraterrestrials somewhere out there, which is the generally agreed upon scientific hypothesis, “they’re probably already observing us, that would seem quite likely, and we’re just not smart enough to realize it.”
“Not Smart Enough To Realize It”
“Intelligent beings from other star systems have been and are visiting our planet Earth. They are variously referred to as Visitors, Others, Star People, ETs, etc. . . . They are visiting Earth NOW; this is not a matter of conjecture or wistful thinking.”
– Theodor C. Loder III, Phd, Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences, University of New Hampshire (source)
I think Musk is right — they are probably already watching us, we just don’t realize it yet. But things are changing. Numerous efforts are being made to educate the public on this subject, from the most credible sources available. Scientific publications, video footage, and photos have already been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals for a number of years. (source)
Below is a powerful statement made by former NASA astronaut and Princeton physics professor Dr. Brian O’Leary, who says that there is “abundant evidence that we are being contacted, and that intelligent civilizations have been visiting for a very long time.”
Again, if you want to sift through some of this evidence, we’ve presented it in hundreds of articles you can view in chronological order in the exopolitics section of our website here.
Why the Masses Haven’t Realized It — Or Have They?
“Behind the scenes, high ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.”
– Former head of CIA Roscoe Hillenkoetter, 1960 (source)
Movies and television shows bombard us constantly with stories of extraterrestrial invasions, and despite all of the evidence available, the fact that we are being and have been visited by extraterrestrials can be a scary thought, particularly given the way extraterrestrials are typically portrayed.
With a massive disinformation campaign that has focused on covering up these facts for decades, along with the mass ridicule of this subject for anyone who took it seriously in the past, it quickly escaped the minds of the masses and many people considered the notion of ongoing intelligent contact with our planet from extraterrestrials completely preposterous.
A great quote from Carl Sagan comes to mind:
One the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re not longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
Current public perception of UFOs and extraterrestrials reveals how easily our minds can be influenced, and how quickly our thoughts about a subject can be given to us, even subconsciously. It begs the question, how many other beliefs do we share that have been, in a sense, ‘programmed’ into us by powerful groups of people with an agenda?
“There are objects in our atmosphere which are technically miles in advance of anything we can deploy, that we have no means of stopping them coming here … [and] that there is a serious possibility that we are being visited and have been visited for many years by people from outer space, from other civilizations. That it behooves us, in case some of these people in the future or now should turn hostile, to find out who they are, where they come from, and what they want. This should be the subject of rigorous scientific investigation and not the subject of ‘rubishing’ by tabloid newspapers.”
– Lord Admiral Hill-Norton, Former Chief of Defence Staff, 5 Star Admiral of the Royal Navy, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee (source)
All this being said, the fact that UFOs/extraterrestrials is one of the most searched subjects on the web suggests that people are at least curious to learn the truth
Enlarge/ The Starship test vehicle, currently under assembly in South Texas, may look similar to this illustration when finished.
On Tuesday, photos began to emerge onlineof a new, Starship-like vehicle being built in an industrial park near Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Later, SpaceX founder Elon Musk confirmed that the company will develop a Starship prototype in Florida to parallel work being done in South Texas.
"Both sites will make many Starships," Musk shared on Twitter. "This is a competition to see which location is most effective. Answer might be both." This will not be a strict A/B test, a randomized experiment. Rather, Musk added, any insights gained by one team must be shared with the other, but the other team is not required to use them.
This is a rather new way to develop an orbital spaceship, especially one as large and as complex as Starship, which is designed to land and take off from other worlds such as the Moon and Mars. However, it is far from unprecedented in the tech world. For example, Google has long had a strategy of making two of everything, with multiple, competing products that go after the same user base.
Musk also provided an update on development of Raptor engines—which will power both the Starship vehicle and its companion rocket, Super Heavy. SpaceX, ultimately, will need dozens of the engines for the spaceship and rocket. But initially, the company will be testing its prototype Starship with one and three engines. SpaceX has now completed four of the engines, and it's building the fifth one in Hawthorne, California. The company should have built more than 100 of the methane-fueled engines by next year, Musk added.
Elon Musk✔@elonmusk
Starship test flight rocket just finished assembly at the @SpaceX Texas launch site. This is an actual picture, not a rendering.
Meanwhile, after about five weeks of downtime, SpaceX appears ready to ramp up activity at its Boca Chica test site in South Texas. In early April, a series of tests culminated in a short, tethered hop of a Starship prototype. Now, the company may begin testing activity again later this month. The Brownsville Herald reports that a nearby highway, State Highway 4 from Oklahoma Avenue to Boca Chica Beach, will be closed on May 28 between 2pm and 10pm CT, or alternatively, on May 29 and May 30.
SpaceX is working toward an orbital launch of the Starship vehicle in 2020, but as with all large aerospace projects, that date is likely to slip later into the 2020s. A flight any time soon, given the absence of government funding and overall ambition of the project, would be notable.
Mysterieuze streep van lichtjes aan Nederlandse hemel leidt tot talloze UFO-meldingen
Mysterieuze streep van lichtjes aan Nederlandse hemel leidt tot talloze UFO-meldingen
In de nacht van vrijdag op zaterdag was in de lucht een bijzonder verschijnsel waarneembaar. Aan de hemel was een streep van tientallen lichtjes zichtbaar die op sterren leken.
Het ging om satellieten van het Amerikaanse ruimtevaartbedrijf SpaceX, die vrijdag in een baan om de aarde zijn gebracht.
In binnen- en buitenland maakten mensen melding van het fenomeen dat zich rond 01.00 uur voordeed.
Intercity
De één vroeg zich af of het ging om een ‘zwerm drones’, de ander zei dat het was ‘alsof de intercity langskwam door de lucht’.
Onderzoeker Marco Langbroek plaatste op Twitter een spectaculair filmpje waarin de ‘trein’ van Starlink-satellieten te zien is.
Het project van het bedrijf van Elon Musk is bedoeld om een verbinding voor snel internet op aarde en op termijn ook in de ruimte te realiseren.
UFO’s
Daarvoor zijn honderden satellieten nodig, waarvan de eerste 60 de ruimte zijn ingeschoten.
Er waren ook veel mensen die dachten dat het om UFO’s ging. Bij het UFO Meldpunt Nederland kwamen uit heel het land meldingen binnen.
“We zijn op de hoogte van een UFO in de vorm van een lange reeks lichtjes die op verschillende plaatsen door heel Nederland (en België) zichtbaar was rond 1 uur vannacht,” tweette het meldpunt.
Beste volgers/lezers, we zijn op de hoogte van een ufo in de vorm van een lange reeks lichtjes die op verschillende plaatsen door heel Nederland (en zelfs België) zichtbaar was rond 1 uur vannacht. Heeft u beeld, deel het dan alstublieft met info@ufomeldpunt.nl. Dank!
PROFESSOR: UFOS, ALIENS ARE HUMAN ANTHROPOLOGISTS FROM FUTURE
PROFESSOR: UFOS, ALIENS ARE HUMAN ANTHROPOLOGISTS FROM FUTURE
In a recent experiment, scientists reversed the arrow of time for a split second, simulating the possibility of time travel using quantum particles called qubits. The experiment was a far cry from achieving time travel anytime in the near future, but if it provides even a modicum of possibility it would support Dr. Michael P. Masters’ theory that UFOs and aliens might just be future anthropologists traveling back in time to study their ancestors — us.
Masters completed his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the Ohio State University and is currently a professor of biological anthropology at Montana Tech. His resume also cites coursework in astrobiology, astronomy, and physics – needless to say, he has some pretty relevant credentials.
OUR FUTURE HUMANOID ALIEN DESCENDANTS
In his bookIdentified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon, Masters explores the evolution of humans in relation to our hominin ancestors, and our likely progression as a species moving forward. Based on the trajectory of our physical, intellectual, and technological development, he says he believes the common trope of the hairless, large-headed, technologically advanced alien is likely where evolution is leading us.
Humans have evolved to become (relatively) hairless creatures compared to our ancestors and many anthropologists believe we’ll eventually lose it entirely as it doesn’t really serve much of a function anymore, save aesthetics. Add to that the fact that our skull size has doubled and tripled to support a larger brain compared to the smaller cranium of ancestors like Homo erectus and Australopithecus, respectively.
“The phenomenon may be our own distant descendants coming back through time to study us in their own evolutionary past,” Masters told a local television station in his home state of Montana. “The extra-tempestrials are ubiquitously reported as being bipedal, upright-walking, five fingers on each hand and foot, bi-lateral symmetry, that they have two eyes, a mouth, a nose, and they can communicate with us in our own languages.”
Dr Michael P. Masters
If that’s the case, and close encounters with aliens are really close encounters with our future relatives, the term extraterrestrial wouldn’t be appropriate to describe our humanoid alien descendants. That’s why Masters coined the term, extratempestrials.
Much like the theme of Michael Crichton’s 1999 novel Timeline, Masters imagines how incredible it would be for future archeologists and anthropologists to travel back in time to study the eras and people we’ve only imagined from our history textbooks.
“As an anthropologist who has worked on and directed numerous archaeological digs in Africa, France, and throughout the United States, it is easy to conceptualize just how much more could be learned about our own evolutionary history, if we currently possessed the technology to visit past periods of time,” Masters said.
THE ALIEN ANTHROPOLOGIST
Language is another facet of his argument: reported encounters with extraterrestrials often involve their ability to communicate with us through the same mechanisms we use for communication.
Masters posits the possibility that extraterrestrials from another planet with a different atmosphere, different physics, and different evolution might use different forms of vibratory communication – not necessarily through language.
Though admittedly just a theory, Masters had his book peer-reviewed by a number of his colleagues to verify some of the foundations of his conclusion.
The theory is an interesting one and might help explain or corroborate the theory that extraterrestrials sometimes appear to act as inter-dimensional entities, who are able to transcend time and space through apparently inexplicable means.
And as we consider some of the bizarre elements of UFO encounters and their seeming ability to zip in and out of existence, appearing to defy known laws of physics, one can’t help but think of Arthur C. Clarke’s famous line “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
UFO technology appears to be magic based on current technological capabilities, but much of our technology today would look like magic to anyone living a century ago, let alone hundreds, or thousands of years ago. What if we were to fast forward hundred or thousands of years from now?
Given that Moore’s Law — that is, computer processing power doubles every two years– has maintained, while quantum physics has conceptually made many science fiction themes now seem within the realm of possibility, time travel might just become science fact. That is, if our species is able to survive long enough to see it come to fruition, but if Masters’ theory is right, it appears we must have.
UFO’s en aliens zijn antropologen uit de toekomst. Amerikaanse professor baart opzien
UFO’s en aliens zijn antropologen uit de toekomst. Amerikaanse professor baart opzien
Natuurkundigen kregen het onlangs voor elkaar om een zogeheten qubit een fractie van een seconde terug in de tijd te sturen.
Wetenschappers creëren tijdmachine die vergelijkbaar is met de Tardis van Doctor Who, kopte de Britse Daily Mirror.
De wetenschappers creëerden een kunstmatige toestand die zich ontwikkelt tegen de thermodynamische richting van de tijd in.
Haarloze wezens
Dit lijkt een ondersteuning te zijn van de theorie van dr. Michael P. Masters, die pas geleden beweerde dat UFO’s en aliens antropologen zijn uit de toekomst, die zijn teruggereisd in de tijd om hun voorouders te bestuderen.
Professor Masters, verbonden aan Montana Tech, suggereert dat mensen in de toekomst zijn veranderd in haarloze wezens met grote hoofden.
“Mogelijk zijn het onze verre verwanten die terugreizen in de tijd om ons in hun eigen verleden te bestuderen,” zei Masters tegenover een lokale tv-zender.
Eigen taal
“Deze wezens lopen rechtop, hebben vijf vingers aan iedere hand en vijf tenen aan iedere voet, hebben twee ogen, een mond, een neus en kunnen in onze eigen taal met ons communiceren,” klonk het.
“We zouden zoveel kunnen leren van ons eigen evolutionaire verleden als we de technologie hadden om naar het verleden te gaan,” zei hij.
Professor Masters suggereerde verder dat echte buitenaardsen, afkomstig van andere planeten met een andere atmosfeer en een andere evolutie, met ons communiceren op een ander trillingsniveau, niet noodzakelijkerwijs via taal.
RH Negative - Real Alien Human Hybrid Programs - A New Race is Appearing on Earth
RH Negative - Real Alien Human Hybrid Programs - A New Race is Appearing on Earth
In this complimentary episode from George Noory’s Gaia TV show, Beyond Belief, hypnotherapist Barbara Lamb details how many of her clients have had encounters with otherworldly beings; and a number of those have had startling similar experiences which revealed they’d been subjected to extraterrestrial hybridization programs.
The Rh blood group system is one of thirty-five known human blood group systems. It is the second most important blood group system, after the ABO blood group system. The Rh blood group system consists of 49 defined blood group antigens, among which the five antigens D, C, c, E, and e are the most important.Wikipedia
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Major Alien Disclosure - They Are Starting To Release Something BIG
Major Alien Disclosure - They Are Starting To Release Something BIG!
The powers that be that are in favour of ending UFO secrecy and they are doing it in some very strange ways, sometimes even using big news outlets or in some cases even Ufologists.
Could it be that there may actually be that the good people among the secret keepers are moving forward with telling the truth, despite resistance within from others that are in the know. UFO researchers right now need to understand that this is the superbowl of history and they’re in the stadium.
Most of the world doesn’t understand this yet. All the information is ready to be released, but everyone is making deals and agreeing to keep things secret.
Planet X: Sumerian Texts Speak of Ancient Kings and a Mystery Planet - Half a Million Years
Planet X: Sumerian Texts Speak of Ancient Kings and a Mystery Planet - Half a Million Years
Most of mythology speaks about the same things, the sky.. Approximately half a million years ago these Anunnaki beings came to Earth because our planet and their planet came in close proximity. And if you don’t believe research the ancient Sumerians and see…
Planet X. Lieder drew the name Planet X from the hypothetical planet once searched for by astronomers to account for discrepancies in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune.
The Nibiru cataclysm is a supposed disastrous encounter between the Earth and a large planetary object that certain groups believed would take place in the early 21st century. Believers in this doomsday event usually refer to this object as Nibiru or Planet X. Wikipedia
Something pretty weird happened in Cambodia this week. On May 23, a mysterious explosion was heard somewhere along Cambodia’s border with Laos in Stung Treng province. While I immediately jumped at the story thinking this would be another mystery boom to add to the pile, villagers in several communes along the Cambodian-Lao border reported finding pieces of unidentified metallic debris shortly after the explosion was heard. What could have exploded over Cambodia?
That remains unknown, but Major General Mao Dara, chief of Stung Treng provincial police, says the debris has been sent to experts for identification. “We heard the sound of an explosion and we saw pieces of iron debris scattered in different places,” Maj Gen Dara said. “We don’t know where the debris came from because we are not experts, so we can’t make a conclusion yet.”
Stung Treng, Cambodia.
Pictures published by the Phnom Penh Post show various pieces of metal housing, circuit boards, and metal canisters. From the look of the debris alone, it’s impossible to make out what it could have been from – at least to my layman eyes. One villager who heard and saw the explosion says rumors have been circulating that the debris may have come from a Chinese space launch gone awry, though. “I heard villagers saying there was an announcement in Laos [on Thursday] that a spacecraft was launching in China,” said Prak Savorn. “This might be part of the debris from a Chinese spacecraft that fell on five southern provinces in Laos. That was what I overhead Lao people saying.”
Unidentified metal and plastic debris fell to earth in Stung Treng province’s Borei O’Svay Sen Chey district near Laos on Thursday following a loud explosion. Photo supplied
A Chinese Long March 3 rocket.
There may be some truth to that. Chinese state media confirmed that a Long March 4C rocket failed to get what is believed to be a secret electromagnetic military satellite into orbit Wednesday after a launch near Beijing ended in what Xinhua News called “abnormal operation.” Footage posted to Chinese social media sites shortly after launch show the rocket’s smoke trail spiraling off into several directions at once as the rocket explodes.
According to Xinhua, “rocket and satellite debris have fallen on the ground” following the failed rocket launch, but exactly where that debris fell wasn’t disclosed. This isn’t the first time other countries have had to deal with China’s falling space debris. Is that what villagers found in Cambodia? If so, there are going to be plenty of people who want to get their hands on that debris before the Chinese do.
Angelic UFO Leaving Our Sun On May 15, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Angelic UFO Leaving Our Sun On May 15, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 15, 2019 Location of sighting: Earths sun I was looking at the NASA SOHO satellite images of our sun when I noticed the angelic UFO was back. This one is slightly different in that one is different size than the other. This angelic UFO has been seen weekly for years and I just love reporting about it. It moves much too fast to be a planet or star. There is only one photo of the object in the SOHO video. If it were a planet, there would be dozens of images of it moving from one side of the photo to the other. So this angelic object is something that moves so fast, it gets caught only for a few minutes on the SOHO satellite, before it hyper jumps out of the area. Scott C. Waring
Alien Figure Near Moon Appears Next To The Moon In Aceh In Indonesia, May 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Alien Figure Near Moon Appears Next To The Moon In Aceh In Indonesia, May 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 2019 Location of sighting: Indonesia This dark object was recorded by the moon last week over Indonesia. The dark object stood out well near the moon and looks to be a standing figure. Its easy to make out the head, shoulders, back and legs. I don't believe that all aliens who visit earth need a spaceship to get here. Some may transport here with a mere thought, because of advances in tech of billions of years. Others may travel in energy form and not need protection from the elements of space. I have seen the energy beings close up, about 400 meters up at midnight over Taipei a few years back, and it was obvious when they came back a few seconds later and circled over me...that they saw me too. SCW
Twitter/Marco LangbroekDe ‘trein’ van lichtjes die vannacht door de hemel trok.
WETENSCHAPDe voorbije nacht was in de lucht een bijzonder verschijnsel waarneembaar. Aan de hemel was een streep van tientallen lichtjes zichtbaar die op sterren leken. Vermoedelijk ging het om satellieten van het Amerikaanse ruimtevaartbedrijf SpaceX, die vrijdag in een baan om de aarde zijn gebracht. Dat zegt ook weerman Frank Deboosere. “De heldere lichtpunten vannacht rond 1.00 uur aan de hemel zijn dus de Starlink-satellieten van SpaceX”, tweette hij.
In binnen- en buitenland maken mensen melding van het fenomeen, dat zich rond 1.00 uur voor het eerst voordeed en ook daarna nog te zien was. De een vraagt zich af of het gaat om een “zwerm drones”, de ander zegt “alsof de intercity langskomt door de lucht”.
Het project van het bedrijf van ondernemer Elon Musk, met de naam Starlink, is bedoeld om een verbinding voor snel internet op aarde en op termijn ook in de ruimte te realiseren. Daarvoor zijn honderden satellieten nodig, waarvan de eerste zestig de ruimte zijn ingeschoten.
Rond 02.30 uur was de trein van satellieten nogmaals te bewonderen al was het toen meer bewolkt.
Over een uurtje, rond 2:30-2:35 Nederlandse tijd, komt de "trein" van #Starlink satellieten opnieuw over. Bijgaande kaart is voor Leiden. Elders wat kleine afwijkingen in het traject, en hou rekening met een plus/min van enkele minuten:
Beste volgers/lezers, we zijn op de hoogte van een ufo in de vorm van een lange reeks lichtjes die op verschillende plaatsen door heel Nederland (en zelfs België) zichtbaar was rond 1 uur vannacht. Heeft u beeld, deel het dan alstublieft met info@ufomeldpunt.nl. Dank!
On the night of October 10, 1973, two men – Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker – were fishing on the banks of Mississippi’s Pascagoula River. All was going fine. That is, until approximately 9:00 p.m. rolled around. That’s when all hell broke loose. Yet, it all began relatively calmly. It didn’t stay that way, however. As they fished, Parker and Hickson suddenly noticed a light in the distance. Not only that, it was following the river and appeared to be coming in their direction. Which was not necessarily a good thing. As the light got closer, they could see it in its full glory: the light was actually a brightly lit, somewhat egg-shaped craft, from which came a deep, throbbing hum. Such was the intensity of the hum, it provoked intense nausea in both men. Confusion, and a sense of distinct unreality, quickly followed. The pair watched in horror and amazement as what was described as a “hatch” opened and a trio of very strange-looking creatures exited the hovering object: they had aerial-like protrusions coming out of their heads and “hands” that resembled the claws of a lobster. Even stranger, and much more unnerving, the three things floated from the craft, across the waters of the river, and towards Hickson and Parker.
The aliens were not of the famous large-headed, black-eyed, and dwarfish kind, however. They weren’t even of the benevolent-looking, so-called “Space Brothers” variety of the 1950s. Nope, this particular breed of E.T. was described later by the shocked and undeniably traumatized men as being humanoid, and with faces that appeared to be almost masked, and heads from which three carrot-style points protruded. On top of that, they had large crab-like or lobster-like claws. Then matters got even worse: when the things from another world were practically on top of terrified Parker and Hickson, both men were rendered into a state of paralysis. Whether due to some technology of the aliens, or provoked by overwhelming fear, remains unknown. Maybe it was a combination of both.
Suddenly, the entities seized the pair, who were manhandled onto the UFO. Like most abductees, Hickson and Parker were quickly reduced to the equivalents of lab rats. When the encounter was over, the pair was dumped back on the edge of the river. The story, hardly surprisingly, became a UFO classic, and in quick time too. The media was soon on the case. As was the military. While Parker chose to keep out of the limelight, Hickson went on to write a book about his experience (UFO Contact at Pascagoula, co-written with William Mendez), and spoke about it on the lecture circuit. So, why am I mentioning all of this now? Well, I’ll tell you.
Just recently I had the opportunity to meet the aforementioned Calvin Parker at the annual Out of This World gig in Edinburg, Texas. In fact, I was able to hang out with him quite a bit at the weekend-long conference. The Pascagoula affair was one that I got interested in as a kid. So, for that reason alone, it was good to meet Calvin and speak to him, face to face, about the now-legendary encounter of October 1973. Not only that, while I was at the conference I bought a copy of Calvin’s book on his experience. Its title: Pascagoula – The Closest Encounter: My Story. If you haven’t yet seen this 2018 publication, then you really should. It’s a fascinating book that not only tells the story of what went down on the night that changed Calvin’s life, but way more too.
What I particularly appreciated, while reading the book, was Calvin’s openness and willingness to share not just the details of that close encounter on the Mississippi River, but much of his life too – from a child to the present day. This skillfully sets the scene for what is to come and lets the reader really know who Calvin Parker was back then and who he is now. This is important because, by opening up to a significant degree, we learn a great deal about the lead-up to the incident and what came afterwards – both immediately and in the years ahead. The fear that followed the incident is detailed graphically. It’s pretty much impossible to come away from the book and not conclude that something seriously strange occurred.
Not only does the book contain Calvin’s very own words on the event; it also includes a mountain of newspaper and magazine clippings on his encounter with Charles Hickson back in 1973. It’s accurate to say that these otherwise-hard-to-find clippings provide not just a look back at how the media coverage the story. They also demonstrate the sheer, incredible scale of interest that the same media displayed. Most important of all, we see how Calvin has come to terms with the trauma-filled incident. Running to more than 400 pages, Pascagoula – The Closest Encounter: My Story, is an excellent story of how the UFO phenomenon – when encountered up close and personal – can provoke amazement, stress, terror, bewilderment, and life-changing experiences. Calvin Parker experienced all of those. He has done all of us a great favor in finally telling his firsthand story of what happened on that incredible night – and way beyond, too.
Last week, a strange series of events had been unfolding in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where locals reported what they believed to have been a possible plane crash near the town of Hendersonville.
“Multiple agencies were searching on the ground after a report of a possible plane going down,” local ABC News affiliate WLOS reported, stating that rescue and search teams, as well as the Mountain Area Medical Airlift helicopter, were all involved in the search.
Emergency dispatch said they received a call on the evening of Thursday, May 16, 2019 “about a possible downed aircraft” near the intersections of Summer Road and Spicer Cove Road. However, after finding no evidence of a crash, the search was called off by 10:30 PM.
So what was behind the false alarm that had rescue teams out looking for a plane crash?
Surprising though it may sound, one of the simplest explanations had been a meteor streaking through the sky, which are a common occurrence on clear spring nights. Despite their prevalence, people can–and often do–mistake shooting stars for being structured aircraft falling out of the sky. I know this for a fact, since in my experience, these brightly illuminated objects have aroused suspicions about far stranger things than alleged plane crashes.
A number of years ago, I was contacted by a MUFON investigator who wanted to share a remarkable story with me. “This is too big,” he explained to me in an email. “I think you’d better come up here.”
Fortunately, “up here” was only an hour away near the town of Burnsville, North Carolina, a little mountain community that sits quite literally in the shadow of Mount Mitchell, the tallest U.S. peak east of the Mississippi River. It was a quick drive up through the country, which is scenic enough to be enjoyed with or without an urgent call pertaining to something mysterious and UFO-related.
We had agreed to meet at a small Chinese restaurant in a little strip mall off the main road. A pleasant, elderly gentleman, he brought a small leather briefcase with him to our table, and once we had placed our order, he opened it and handed me a newspaper.
“Rather than telling you myself, I think I’ll let you read that,” he said.
The front page story described an incident remarkably similar to the recent search for a missing plane in Hendersonville: area law enforcement had been called about what appeared to be a plane that went down over Spanish Oak Mountain toward the end of October some years earlier. Once rescue teams were called in to search for the wreckage, they were unable to find any evidence that anything had crashed there at that time.
However, my host thought otherwise. “Not only do I think there was a crash, but I don’t believe it was a plane… and I think the authorities are hiding what really crashed that night.” As we finished our lunch, we returned to the parking lot and began the second leg of our little adventure; we got in the gentleman’s car, and he drove me around to the locations where several people in the community had been interviewed, all of whom did see something in the sky on the night in question.
“This man refused to talk with me at all,” he said, pointing up a hill toward a small brick home. “We were told to leave his property immediately.”
“Why do you think he had he been so hostile?” I asked.
My driver was silent for a moment. Then he replied, “I think they might have gotten to him first.”
As we continued along, we rounded a large corner and he pointed down to our left at another little house with an unkempt front yard. “Now this family had been willing to talk with me, and they gave a very good description of the craft.” At the time he visited with the family, the father had said that he remembered seeing a bluish-green object that “sparkled” similar to fireworks as it passed over their home.
After driving us around to see several other homes of witnesses in the area, he finally explained his own theory about what had happened that night.
“I think it was a saucer,” he said. “Quite obviously something was seen… these people couldn’t all be lying. And the authorities didn’t report what they found because it wasn’t a plane at all.”
As he dropped me back off at my car, he thanked me for making the trip up the mountain, and we parted ways. However, it was fairly clear by this time what had actually happened that night: observers in the area who had been watching the skies in the final weeks of October had probably seen part of the annual Orionid meteor shower, which occurs around this time every year. Although they generally peak around the 22nd of October, these meteors can be seen on almost any clear night during the latter half of the month, and are actually the result of particle remnants left by the tail of Haley’s Comet. According to Space.com, the majority of these cometary fragments are very small (some as tiny as a grain of sand) and can produce very bright trails before burning up in our atmosphere.
In short, based on the color described by those who had seen it, as well as the rather suspicious time of year it was reported (in fact, the alleged incident had occurred the same weekend that the Orionids would have peaked), it seems very likely that people would have seen something that might have seemed out of the ordinary in the skies that night; it is also very unlikely, being an Orionid meteor, that it ever struck the ground.
It’s actually understandable that someone who is unused to seeing illuminated objects in the sky might mistake a falling star for a plane going down. However, in light of all this information, why would this gentleman have leaped to the conclusion that, rather than a case of mistaken identity, that a UFO crash had occurred?
We can sometimes chalk things like this up to willful belief or fantasies, but I think that in this case, the gentleman in question might have actually felt that his theory was logical: if rescue crews had been called out on the night in question, something must have been seen to warrant this kind of response. Furthermore, the witnesses he interviewed all seemed to confirm that an object was seen passing through the sky over their homes, and yet the official explanation was that no wreckage of any kind had been recovered. In his mind, it seemed that something had to have crashed, and if the authorities wouldn’t talk about whatever it had been, then there must have been a coverup. What he failed to consider was whether there had been a simpler solution to the problem of why local rescue teams concluded that there hadn’t been a crash.
However, I would further argue that there was probably more going on here than just a willful desire to uncover evidence of a groundbreaking UFO crash incident. In fact, part of the reason for his fantastical conclusion was due to the sort of precedent set by what is arguably the most famous investigation in the history of ufology: that of the alleged UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico in the summer of 1947.
In part two of this article series, we will look more deeply at some of the reasons the Roswell incident had such a lasting effect on UFO investigatons, and further point to how the precedent set by this high-profile, but now rather questionable case has continued to shape attitudes toward UFO study.
In the early 2000s, several Spanish scientists became interested in relatively unknown and mysterious meteorological phenomena known asmegacryometeorsafter huge chunks of ice, some weighing up to 6 pounds (2.7 kg), fell repeatedly from cloudless skies over Spain. While a few peer-reviewed studies were published following these incidents (seehereandhere), little remains known about these anomalous ice conglomerations.
Ice falling from passing aircraft is often cited as the most likely explanation for megacryometeors, as ice can form on aircraft at high altitudes and melt as aircraft descend. However, numerous incidences of megacryometeors have been cited far from flight paths, not to mention the fact that accounts of the phenomena pre-date the invention of aviation.
A Spanish megacryometeor from 2007.
The latest report of an anomalous ball of ice falling from the sky occurred in Arizona on April 27 as a 10-pound chunk of ice crashed through a woman’s house in Havasu, Arizona. Unlucky homeowner Sandy Ford said the megacryometeor crashed through her roof and destroyed her garage ceiling before exploding on the ground. The ice was clear, as opposed to the blue ice that is typically used in airline septic systems. According to Ford, the noise of the ice exploding in garage was so loud that neighbors called emergency services:
It sounded like a sonic boom in my garage. My neighbor heard the sound and came over, then someone from the fire department showed up. When I went out, I was expecting to see that my hot water heater exploded … it was a chunk of ice that fell through the tile roof, through the ceiling and all the way to the ground.
In 2018, a megacryometeor was caught on camera as it exploded on a London street just feet away from a street cleaner. Just last month, a huge chunk of ice shattered a Colorado woman’s windshield as she drive along a busy highway. When will one of these incidents turn deadly?
For now, megacryometeors remain an enigma. Could these phenomena merely be signs that aviation and human population growth are contributing to increased incidents of ice falling from aircraft onto populated areas? Then what to make of similar reports that are nowhere near flight paths? Aircraft could be to blame, but that would mean that – gasp! – there are undisclosed aircraft buzzing around places they shouldn’t be. That couldn’t be, could it?
But that leaves out what to make of reports that pre-date aircraft. Could these megacryometeors simply be some kind of super-sized hailstone created under a very specific set of atmospheric conditions? That begs the question: could they become more common as climate patterns change? That’s a scary thought.
Figure 1.
A chunk of ice that fell in Chilches (Castellón de la Plana, Spain) having a diameter of around 10 cm.
Figure 3.Raman spectra obtained at intervals of 60 s on cooling distilled water from 25 to −50°C at a rate of 2°C min−1. The acquisition time of each spectrum was 10 s.
Figure 4.Band fitting performed on the Raman OH stretching band obtained from the Chilches sample. Four bands are obtained after deconvolution and subtraction of the broad feature covering the spectral range of 1900–2800 cm−1.
Figure 5.Band fitting performed on the Raman OH stretching band obtained at −20°C on cooling distilled water. Four bands are also obtained after deconvolution and subtraction of the broad feature covering the spectral range of 1900–2800 cm−1.
Figure 6.Measured δ18O (V-SMOW) versus δD (V-SMOW) values of selected megacryometeors that fell in different areas of Spain and analysed in this work. The samples match quite well with the Meteoric Water Line (Craig’s Line): δD=8×δ18O+10. CHIL, Chilches; ALG, Algemesi; ENG, Enguera; AL, Alcudia; TO, Tocina. (Adapted from Martínez-Frías et al. 2005.)
Meningen verschillen en dat is maar goed ook, want uit al die verschillende meningen komt uiteindelijk de waarheid boven tafel.
De oude geschiedschrijvers beschreven een periode op aarde dat er geen maan was, of was die er toch wel?
Naar aanleiding van ons artikel gisteren over dingen die niet kloppen met betrekking tot de maan, volgt hier een geheel afwijkende mening van onze gewaardeerde auteur Evert Jan Poorterman (dank!).
Klopt de ene versie van het verhaal en de andere niet of is het een mix van beiden. Lees het verhaal van Evert Jan en oordeel zelf.
Geachte redactie,
vóór de zondvloed waren de Zon, de Maan en de planeten en de sterren NIET te zien vanwege de zeer dichte dampkring om de planeet! Afgaande op de omlooptijden van de tweede ster (volgens Zecharia Sitchin 3.600 jaren) vond de zondvloed plaats 10.800 jaren geleden (3 x 3.600 jaren terug) of 14.400 jaren geleden (4 x 3.600 jaren terug). De oude Soemeriërs kenden de Maan al, getuige afbeeldingen en beschrijvingen. Al in het 'Scheppings-epos' wordt de Maan genoemd als KIN.GU. – kind van de stier... ofwel opgewekt door de binnenkomst van de tweede ster – uit de buik van planeet Tiamat. Nou zullen der wel weer lieden zijn die zeggen dat de Soemerische schrijvers dat bedacht hebben, maar waarom zouden ze dat doen?! Het Enoema Elisj (Enuma Elish) is het scheppingsverhaal over het ontstaan van ons zonnestelsel. Planeet Tiamat baart elf monsters, waarvan Kingoe de grootste is... en ook nà de 'hemelstrijd' aan de zijde van Tiamat/Gaia blijft! Daarom is de Maan in verhouding met de andere planeten en hun satellieten te groot voor ons kleine planeetje... maar eens was planeet Tiamat groter; haar bovenste helft (hoeft niet per see 50% te zijn!) werd afgeslagen en is de astroïdengordel en haar onderste helft (hoeft niet per see 50% te zijn!) werd naar 'aarde' weg geketst tussen de planeten Venus en Mars in! In de naam zit duidelijk een verwijzing naar de 'Hemel' ofwel de astroïdengordel! Daar werd de Maan geboren! 4,1 miljard jaren geleden...
MAAN
MA AN> maat-hemel NA AM< gevormd-geworteld
De MAAN is ons hemelmaatje en haar maat, haar formaat werd in de Hemel gevormd. Zij zou een planeet worden, maar haar werden de voorwaarden om een planeet te worden, ontnomen; haar wateren, haar... ach lees maar mee in een eerder bericht aan jullie; de redactie van Niburu:
De Soemeriërs schrijven dat de Maan niet zijn bestemming kreeg; hij was voorbestemd om een planeet om de Zon te worden. Dat ging niet door en de Maan verloor al zijn wateren, zijn potentie om een levende planeet te worden. Hij werd 'als een pot klei' schrijven ze! Hij droogde op en droogde uit en na 4 miljard jaren is de Maan wel echt droog te noemen en net als een terracotta bloempot of een vaas van klei, klinken deze als je der op klopt of tikt...
De Maan oefent enorme kracht uit op onze planeet. Zo sterk dat de Maan onze planeet wegtrekt uit het exacte midden. Zoals een kogelslingeraar één wordt met de kogel en door de opgewekte centrifugaalkrachten zelf ook onderhevig is aan de door hem zelf opgewekte krachten!
En Kingoe, die het hoofd van hen geworden was, Liet hij slinken: Hij noemde hem DOEG.GA.E. Ontnam hem zijn tablet van bestemming Waarop hij geen recht had.
Marduk (tweede ster, later door hem Nibiru genoemd) schrijft Zecharia Sitchin, vernietigde Kingoe dus niet. Hij strafte hem door hem zijn onafhankelijke baan te ontnemen, die Tiamat hem toegekend had, naarmate hij in omvang toenam. Edoch tot een kleiner omvang gekrompen, bleef Kingoe een 'god' - een planeet van ons zonnestelsel. Omgezet in een hemelse 'doeggae' was Kingoe ontdaan van zijn 'vitale' elementen - atmosfeer, wateren, radioactieve materie: zijn omvang kromp en werd een 'massa levenloze klei'.
DOEG.GA.E. zou volgens de vertalers 'pot met klei' betekenen, maar als ik er mijn oertaal Kwando op los laat komt der wat anders uit de bus. DUG GA E> = DU.UG. = 'doen-uitgaande', ofwel komt voort uit de buik van Tiamat: is er uit gekomen, maar ook doeg als daag, adieu, tot ziens... want DUG GA E> = 'vertrekken-garant-lichaam', ofwel alle condities om een garant (levend) lichaam te worden, zijn vertrokken. Weg en foetsie! Omgekeerd: E AG GUD< = 'lichaam-agitatie-Gud', ofwel dat komt door de agitatie van de ster Gud (= aanstormende stier).
Het perfecte lichaam van de pas ontstane Maan/Kingu werd door het kosmisch treffen tussen de ster Gud/Anu/Ra en de leidende planeet Tiamat ontdaan van zijn levenskansen. De andere tien 'monsters' uit Tiamat werden verstrooid door de kracht van de ster Gud/Anu/Ra (Marduk/Nibiru), maar Kingu werd gespaard en mocht aan de zijde van zijn moeder blijven... die echter wel een kleiner formaat heeft; want Gaia is de onderste helft van Tiamat. Haar afgeslagen bovenste helft werd de astroïdengordel.
Groet Evert Jan
Geachte redactie,
krijgen we nu binnenkort ook aandacht voor de platte 'aarde' en voor Jupiter als Satan?! De oude Soemeriërs beweren dat de Maan werd geboren als één der elf monsters die uit de buik van de planeet Tiamat kwamen. Dat werd veroorzaakt door de binnenkomst van de jonge nog vuur brakende ster uit het Orion-stelsel... die wij inmiddels kennen als Gud, als Anu en als Ra (door Sitchin eerst Marduk genoemd en later Nibiru). Indien de Maan een kunstmatig object zou zijn (wat niet zo is) dan is de Maan dat al vanaf het begin van zijn bestaan; 4,1 miljard jaren!
De Maan is wel bewoond, evenals Mars... en wel alleen in ruimtestations of ondergrondse bases. Als de Maan een hol object zou zijn... en zelfs een ruimteschip, dan heeft de Maan onvoldoende massa om onze planeet te beroeren. De draaiing van de Maan om onze planeet haalt onze planeet zelfs uit haar midden (centrifugaalkracht). Zo sterk zijn de twee met elkaar verbonden. De Maan veroorzaakt tweemaal daags eb en vloed. Dat zou een hol object nooit en te nimmer kunnen doen! Neen de Maan heeft massa!
Hierboven zien we voorbeelden van boodschap en antwoord. Carl Sagan verzond een boodschap de ruimte in via de Arecibo-telescoop en jaren later kwam er een antwoord in een graanveld nabij Chilbolton (Zuid-Engeland). Op ons bericht tonen we informatie over onze planeet, het zonnestelsel en de mens. We zien rechts de Zon (afbeelding linksboven), vervolgens de planeten Mercurius en Venus, dan (verhoogd afgebeeld) planeet Gaia, dan Mars, Jupiter, Saturnus, Uranus en Neptunus. Pluto is weggelaten omdat het niet op die schaal kan worden weergegeven.
Op de afbeelding rechtsboven (het antwoord in het graan) zien we NIET een ander stelsel maar opnieuw ons eigen stelsel. We zien links de Zon, vervolgens de planeten Mercurius en Venus, dan (verhoogd weergegeven) planeet Gaia, planeet Mars en de tweede ster Ra (met zijn vier planeten) en dan Jupiter, Saturnus, Uranus en Neptunus. Ook hier zijn de Maan en Pluto weggelaten vanwege hun geringe formaat. Het betreft dus geen ander stelsel, maar opnieuw het onze! De anunnaki wonen op onze planeet en zitten ook op de Maan en op Mars.
IS THE EARTH ROUND OR FLAT? THE FINAL SOLUTION IS HERE
IS THE EARTH ROUND OR FLAT? THE FINAL SOLUTION IS HERE
By Lee Austin
Anyone up for the final solution? The heliocentric model states the coastline of Antarctica is about eleven thousand miles long. The geocentric model, propagates a sixty-thousand mile circular ice wall that ascends to a height of two hundred feet. So which is it? There is a fourty-nine thousand mile differential between both theories. One of them is true. The other is a delusion.
Of course the debate surrounding the shape of the earth could be easily resolved by flying over the South Pole. The rulers of this flat earth want you to believe in the fictious moon landing pictures. Yet there are no videos of man flying over the entire continent of Antartica.. Why? Because it doesn’t exist. And it’s illegal. All flights over the fictional South Pole were banned in 1958. This is what is known as the Nation State Treaty. It’s the only geopolitical topic that the UN can agree upon. The International Maritime Organization, World Meteorological Organization, International Civil Aviation Organization, and The Air Map of The World all display a flat earth flag, adding a layer of Masonic intrigue. The flat UN flag is divided into thirty-three Freemasonic sections.
Although the South Pole doesn’t exist, there is an Antarctica. Just not in the heliocentric sense. Antarctica’s inner ocean frozen border wall/bulkhead is over two hundred feet in height: a threehundred and sixty-degree circumference covering sixty-thousand miles and containing the oceans of the flat earth. At the end of Antarctica’s vast interior territory, the flat earth plane intersects the precipice of the sea firmament dome, which is also where the first heaven of the third dimension ends and the second heaven of the fourth dimension begins.
The answer is so simple and yet is anyone with the resources doing anything about it?
Charter a boat and sail around the coast of Antartica. Once the “continent” has been circumvented, check the mileage and you’ll know the answer. Eleven thousand miles, it’s round. Sixty thousand, it’s flat…..
What you can’t see touch, hear, smell, or feel pales in reality to the multi-dimensional parallel universe existing outside the third dimensional prison of space and time. The first heaven of the third dimension is a tangible demonstration of invisible vibrations. It’s an infinitesimal component of a gigantic electric universe built on and governed by a base foundation of tiny, super-symmetric vibrating strings. Superstring Theory is not a theory. The Universe is comprised of electromagnetic forces containing highly charged particles in a plasma conduit holding the luminaries (stars and planets) in their orbits. Everything animate and inanimate vibrates to corresponding harmonics. These subsequent frequencies result in the building blocks of light and dark matter, the latter comprising twenty-seven percent of the universe.
Before the fall, Adam and Eve reflected the Ancient of Day’s perfect triple-helix DNA genome code, wearing their spirits externally and bodies internally. After their expulsion from Eden, both were downgraded to a perishable double-helix DNA genome code, displaying their bodies externally and their spirits internally. You may want to re-read this paragraph.From the beginning of our beginning, the Ancient of Days prophesied he would restore Eden as the second Adam. A unique God/image hybrid, offering the free gift of restoration through the infusion of his triple-helix DNA genome code.
Every human contains a scroll of DNA determining their physicality, intellect and emotions. Forty-six chromosomes from the father and mother form one individual set containing a doublehelix DNA genome code. This physical testimony and record of the parents’ lives has been passed down and preserved since the deluge.
As above, so below illustrates the lie of duality and confusion. Freemasons and Knights of The Templar believe the Demiurge and Lucifer are equal, as demonstrated in the black and white trestle floor of Masonic Halls and Ying and Yang of Chinese philosophy.
The systemic lie of Kabbalah postulates that God is the total of everything: good and evil, knowable, unknowable, limitless, limited, merciful and cruel. In the beginning, Kabbalists believe God sent out an emanation of himself in the form of ten lights called the Sephiroth or Tree of Secret Knowledge. This equates to the name I Am.
The universe is comprised of layered spheres of frequencies, with the Ancient of Days ruling from the ninth dimension/heaven. To be one with the Light Bearer, disciples must pass through the nine guarded spheres, which are protected by angels and devils. Only those who know the guardian’s passwords can pass though the nine spheres. Gnostic knowledge enlightens the soul as it ascends the ladder of the Sephiroth, attaining apotheosis. The ten Sephiroth spheres are the driving forces that move all of creation. In truth, there are ten heavens in the multi-universe. …..To be continued…
Lee Austin is the author of “Morning Star’s Tale”…. a sci-fi novella
Evidence Of Trains Operating Underground On Mars!!! (Mars Mysteries) Video, UFO Sighting News.
Evidence Of Trains Operating Underground On Mars!!! (Mars Mysteries) Video, UFO Sighting News.
Its a well known fact for most researchers that Mars had intelligent life on it. But what we really want to know is where did they all go? Every few years the atmosphere over Mars fills with 75% methane, a gas created by living organisms, so if the gas exists, then so does life. But life looks hard on the surface of Mars and I believe most life has moved below the surface to survive. Take a look at the screenshot above, of a craft that hovers above the surface and rests every so often, leaving an indention in the dirt below. It appears to be a mining craft. It could be an autonomous mining craft or manned, but nevertheless its there and it seems to be working hard in a straight line, leaving marks as it moves. This is a good video by "Of Sound Mind And Body," which puts all the evidence together for us to see. Scott C. Waring
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A String Of 60 Glowing Objects Recorded By Space X Stirs The Imagination, UFO Sighting News.
A String Of 60 Glowing Objects Recorded By Space X Stirs The Imagination, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 24, 2019 Location of sighting: Earths orbit This string of brightly lit objects flew past a SpaceX satellite and was even visible from the ground. It could easily be mistaken for a fleet of UFO, but SpaceX is claiming its the Starlink satellites being released. Some comments below the video seems to show peoples dismay:
1. I just saw them here in Germany, totally unprepared. I didn't know it were the starlink satellites, never saw something alike. wow. 2. I saw this earlier over Devon, UK. Amazing sight. 3. Saw them here in the Netherlands as well.. I was pretty confused that night😂😅
I can see the conversation now...Elon Musk standing next to James Fredrick head of NASA.
NASA: So, we sent up 3 satellites today. Hows your day been Musk? Elon: Well Fred, I don't really know for sure, we just kinda keep shoving those little basterds into the BFR until we can't pack anymore in. We're at 60 right now. NASA: So...BFR, does it really mean? Musk: Yep, Big F@%#ing Rocket. NASA: Deep sigh as his hopes and dreams are smashed.
I was searching a map and looking over Area 51 when I noticed new construction on the map. This new location appears to be an underground base. On one end of the base is some huge air vents to pull fresh air down into the underground facility. There is also two fields being grow near the underground base. This field look like it might be grown for genetic research. They are altering the genetics of the plants for unknown reason. This worries me...because if they are doing genetic research...then why do they need an underground base to do the research? Unless of course its includes other research that could endanger the public. Scott C. Waring-Taiwan
Those who don't learn the lessons of an extinct alien civilization's fall may be doomed to repeat it.
Humanity appears to be going down a dangerous path. We've developed weapons powerful enough to off ourselves many times over, for example, and we've been altering Earth's climate for decades without much regard for the serious consequences.
Similar behavior may have led to the demise of advanced alien races around the galaxy, said Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard's astronomy department. Indeed, this might help explain, at least in part, why we have yet to make contact with ET despite the profusion of habitable real estate in the Milky Way (a puzzle known as the Fermi paradox).
"One possibility is that these civilizations, based on the way we behave, are short-lived," Loeb said last week during a talk at The Humans to Mars Summit in Washington, D.C. "They think short term, and they produce self-inflicted wounds that eventually kill them."
So, the hunt for ET should be wide-ranging enough to spy artifacts left behind by vanished civilizations, he added — evidence such as burned-up planetary surfaces and products of nuclear war swirling in an alien world's air.
Such a find would perhaps be the greatest scientific discovery of all time, and it might have the added benefit of putting our troubled species on a better path.
"The idea is we may learn something in the process," Loeb said. "We may learn to better behave with each other, not to initiate a nuclear war, or to monitor our planet and make sure that it's habitable for as long as we can make it habitable."
There are other practical justifications for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) as well, Loeb said. For example, making contact could lead to huge technological breakthroughs — if the aliens were kind enough to share their knowledge.
"Our technology is only a century old, but if another civilization had a billion years to develop space travel, they may teach us how to do it," Loeb said.
This possibility is another reason to continue pushing for interstellar-flight technology, he added. Loeb is involved in this field; he chairs the advisory board for Breakthrough Starshot, a $100 million project to develop tiny laser-sailing probes that could zoom toward exoplanetary systems at 20% the speed of light.
Breakthrough Starshot aims to have such a system up and running in 30 years or so. If this effort, or something like it, is successful, intelligent aliens may regard us in a new light — as relative peers worthy of attention and respect, Loeb said.
"My hope is that finding dead civilizations will inspire us to behave better and get our act together," he said. "And another hope that I have is that, once we exit from the solar system, we will receive a message back: 'Welcome to the interstellar club.' And we will figure out that there's a lot of traffic out there that we were not aware of."
We may have already gotten a glimpse of this traffic, Loeb said. He co-authored a paper recently suggesting that 'Oumuamua, the first confirmed interstellar object ever spotted in our solar system, might be an alien spacecraft.
The consensus view is that 'Oumuamua is a cometary body. But it's important not to dismiss the spacecraft idea out of hand, Loeb stressed.
"We should keep an open mind and not presume we know the answer in advance," he said. "You don’t need to pretend that you know something."
The broadband constellation could eventually consist of nearly 12,000 satellites.
The 60 internet satellites SpaceX just launched will be but the tip of a very large off-Earth iceberg, if all goes according to plan.
Last night (May 23), SpaceX lofted the first five dozen members of its Starlink broadband constellation to low-Earth orbit (LEO) using one of the company's workhorse Falcon 9 rockets. Starlink is designed to provide internet connectivity to people around the world, and it will do so using a truly enormous number of satellites.
Starlink won't be able to provide "minor" coverage until about 400 spacecraft are up and running, and "moderate" coverage requires about 800 operational satellites, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said. But the company doesn't plan to stop at "moderate."
"In a year and a half, maybe two years, if things go well, SpaceX will probably have more satellites in orbit than all other satellites combined — a majority of the satellites in orbit will be SpaceX," Musk said last week during a prelaunch teleconference with reporters.
That milestone will come around Starlink launch number 30, with 1,800 satellites delivered to orbit, he said.
But the number could rise higher still — much higher, in fact. The Federal Communications Commission has granted SpaceX permission to launch a total of nearly 12,000 Starlink satellites.
Musk said SpaceX has taken great pains to ensure the constellation doesn't pose a collision risk to the other denizens of LEO. For example, he said the Starlink satellites can automatically navigate around other spacecraft and larger pieces of orbital debris, using tracking data provided by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
And this first batch is headed for an operational altitude of 340 miles (550 kilometers) — low enough that they'll get pulled down to Earth by atmospheric drag in a few years even if SpaceX doesn't manage to deorbit them intentionally.
"So, I think we've got a really solution for making sure that we do not create orbital debris," he said. "And, worst-case scenario — the good news there is, the atmosphere cleans it up."
SpaceX isn't the only company with eyes on a LEO broadband constellation.
OneWeb, Telesat and Amazon have similar goals, though their networks may not be as big as Starlink. (OneWeb and Telesat envision constellations numbering in the hundreds, and Amazon's Project Kuiper will top out at around 3,200 satellites if all goes according to plan.)
Starlink is a key part of Musk's long-term plan to help humanity colonize Mars. SpaceX hopes to use Starlink revenue to fund the development of Starship and Super Heavy, the spaceship and rocket the company is building to carry people to the Red Planet, Earth's moon and other solar system destinations.
Last night's launch featured a Falcon 9 whose first stage had already flown twice. It launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida, with the booster acing its third-ever landing, touching down on SpaceX's drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" off the Florida coast.
Meet Camazotz; the Ancient Maya ‘Batman god’ Worshiped 2,500 Years Ago
Meet Camazotz; the Ancient Maya ‘Batman god’ Worshiped 2,500 Years Ago
Some 2,500 years ago, and even before DC Comics introduced us to Batman, the ancient Maya worshiped Camazotz, an ancient god that had the body of a person and the head of a bat.
Meet Camazotz, the Ancient Mayan Batman
Many things we think originated in recent times are actual copies from much older sources.
There’s plenty of evidence of such cases throughout history.
But did you know that thousands of years ago, the ancient Maya worshiped a god that had the body of a person and the head of a bat? The ‘creature’ had pointy ears and was referred to by the ancient Maya as Camazotz.
Curiously, that description may sound awfully similar to a character most of us are familiar with, seeing him in movies, series, and comic strips.
His name is Batman.
Batman, not the only Bat Man
You guessed it.
Batman’s origins can (sort of) be traced back to a long lost civilization that existed in modern-day Mexico.
Before the DC Comics ‘invented’ the Batman, there was Camazotz, a mysterious pre-Hispanic deity that symbolized night, death and sacrifice.
He was popular among the ancient Maya.
And his description is awfully similar to our modern-day Batman.
But there isn’t really much about him on the internet.
In fact, most of the details describing Camazotz can be traced back to the Popol Vuh.
Origins
Camazotz or Camazot is a relatively unknown character from Mayan mythology. The ancient Mayan god is considered as the murderous bat god.
Representations Camazotz can be found in the museum of Copán, in Honduras although description about him can be found in a few Mayan codices as well.
The ancient deity was dubbed as a master of mysteries, life, and death.
Camazotz comes from two ancient Maya (K’iche ) words ‘kame, which means “death”, and sotz’, which is translated as “bat”.
The worship of Camazotz can be traced back to around 200 B.C. and it is believed to have started among the Zapotecs of Oaxaca, Mexico, who worshiped an anthropomorphic monster with the body of a man and the head of a bat.
The bat was associated with night, death and sacrifice.
Camazots eventually found his place among the pantheon of the Quiche, a Mayan tribe that lived in the jungles of what is now Guatemala and Honduras.
The K’iche quickly identified the bat-god with their god Zotzilaha Chamalcan, which is the god of fire.
Some scholars even believe that the myth surrounding Camazotzs went far beyond the land of the ancient Maya, as stories of similar beings spread across Guatemala, and as far as Brazil.
Featured
It was back in 2014 when Warner Brothers gathered as many as thirty artists for them to reinterpret the looks of Batman for the 75th anniversary.
There were quite a few results.
But one of them was a stunning piece made by Christian Pacheco, owner of a design agency in Yucatan. In fact, it was his examples that stood out the most.
With his piece, Pacheco reminded everyone, that DC Comics was not the first to actually have their very own Batman.
Pacheco’s design gave a heads up to many people that the very first ‘bat’ man can be traced back to the ancient Maya, more than 2,500 years ago.
You can see more images of his version of ‘If Batman was a Mayan god’ in his Behance gallery.
The Popol Vuh and Camazotz
If we take a look at the Popol Vuh we find a few descriptions of this mythical god.
The Popol Vuh, the book of the council ‘or’ book of the community’, is a compilation of mythical, legendary and historical narratives of the K’iche; the Mayan people inhabiting modern-day Guatemala.
The book, of great historical and spiritual value, has been called Sacred Book or the Bible of the Maya Quiche.
In the Popol Vuh, Camazotz was a common name making reference to the bat-like monsters that the Mayan twin heroes Hunahpú and Ixbalanque stumbled across, during their trials in the underworld of Xibalbá.
Temples
It has been found that the Nahua horseshoe-shaped temples were dedicated to the worship of the bat god.
Their altars were made of pure gold and oriented towards the East.
It was believed that the bat god had power to cure any disease, but also power to cut the divine cord of life that unites the body to the soul.
The Nahua priests invoked the bat god when asking for health.
20-year minister and Bible College graduate Jeffrey Daugherty looks at the STUNNING appearance of a UFO in the very first chapter of the Bible–actually between the first and second verses! This is the best explanation in view of the text.
UNINDOCTRINATE YOURSELF! Jeffrey Daugherty, Bible College graduate and former 20-year Christian minister, shines light into the dark corners of Orthodoxy, exposing 2,000 years of suppression and manipulation. You have the right to as much unbiased information as possible when making choices of faith. Mark Twain said ‘It’s easier to fool someone that to convince them they’ve been fooled.
That doesn’t mean Jeffrey is going to stop trying. He is an author, speaker, spiritual worker, frequent guest on Coast To Coast AM, US Air Force veteran, and proud father and grandfather.
The beautiful island of Mayotte was shaken by numerous volcanic temblors.
Image credits: Yane Mainard.
Volcanic shake
About half a year ago, seismologists noticed something unusual off the coast of Mayotte, an overseas French territory between Africa’s eastern coast and Madagascar. Sensors all around the world picked upseismic wavescoming from around the island, but the source was largely unknown.
The locals felt it too. Almost every day, they felt small rumbles, stressing out about what the source might be, and authorities had little answers. French researchers had a hunch what the source might be, but without an on-site expedition, it was impossible to confirm. In February, such an expedition was launched. Nathalie Feuillet of the Institute of Geophysics in Paris (IPGP) and colleagues installed six seismometers on the seafloor, 3.5 kilometers beneath the surface, to monitor the seismic activity.
They pinpointed the seismic area, triangulating a region some 20-50 km deep — but this was only the first step. After the area was identified, researchers mapped it using sonar, finding evidence of a tall volcanic mountain formed underwater, and a huge quantity of solidified lava around it.
The outline of the volcano (in red) was excellently outlined by the sonar beams. The 800-meter (half a mile) volcano was built from nothing in just six months. The eruption was so dramatic that the island of Mayotte sank by about 13 centimeters (5 inches) and moved eastwards about 10 centimeters (4 inches). The sonar also revealed 5 cubic km (1.2 cubic miles) of magma on the seafloor
Image credits: MAYOBS TEAM (CNRS/IPGP-UNIVERSITÉ DE PARIS/IFREMER/BRGM).
Competing theories
Mayotte is part of the Comoros archipelago, an archipelago formed through volcanic eruptions. However, although some areas of the Comoros are still very active, the last eruption around Mayotte took place about 7,000 years ago. It’s not just the location of this new volcano that’s a bit puzzling, its nature is also a mystery.
There are several competing theories regarding the nature of this volcanic range. Most volcanoes are found along mid-ocean ridges — underwater mountain ranges formed where the Earth’s tectonic plates are pulling apart, and where convection currents from the mantle are bringing magma closer to the surface. However, this isn’t really the case in the Comoros.
Another possibility is that of a hotspot. A volcanic hotspot is an area where a rising mantle plume comes really close to the surface, producing volcanic activity. The classic example is Hawaii, although the nearby island of Reunion was also formed this way. Hot spots aren’t affected by plate tectonics, and they stay in place while tectonic plates move about, typically leaving a “trail” of volcanoes on the surface. This is consistent with the fairly deep earthquakes observed around Mayotte, which would also suggest that the volcanic magma chamber is also very deep. But the evidence isn’t convincing enough to definitively say that there’s a hotspot there.
Depiction of a rift breaking down into multiple rigid blocks.
Image credits: Italian Institute for Geosciences.
Another likely culprit is the geological process of rifting. East Africa is one of the world’s most active rift zones, with the African tectonic plate splitting into two separate plates. The rifting area isn’t exactly close to Mayotte, but rifting tends to break large areas into rigid blocks, and this might be responsible for the volcanic events.
Most intriguingly, it could be a combination of some (or all) of the above, making Mayotte one of the most exciting volcanic areas to study.
As for the island’s inhabitants, they still have reason to worry. The volcano is probably too deep to threaten the island in any way — the eruptions are too deep to affect the surface and even a potential collapse of one of its flanks would likely be too deep to generate a tsunami. However, the earthquakes seem to be slowly migrating towards the island, which could po}entially lead to a collapse of the island’s flank itself — which would, of course, be much more dangerous. Given this turn of events, Feuillet wants to extend the mission for a few months and get a much better view of what’s happening with this volcanic activity in order to assess the potential risk to the locals. After this is done, results will also be published in a journal, Feuillet says.
ASTEROID FLYING BY EARTH IS SO BIG IT HAS ITS OWN MOON
ASTEROID FLYING BY EARTH IS SO BIG IT HAS ITS OWN MOON
EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY
KRISTIN HOUSER
Buddy System
Earth will be getting not one but two visitors from space this weekend.
Astronomers expect an asteroid known as 1999 KW4 to swing by the Earth at around 7:05 p.m. ET on Saturday — and when it does, it’ll bring along its very own moon.
“It’s one of the closest binary flybys probably in recent history,” planetary scientist Vishnu Reddy told NBC News. “That’s what makes it a very interesting target.”
Dynamic Duo
Asteroid 1999 KW4 is 1.5 kilometers (.93 miles) wide. That’s about three times the size of its moon, which clocks in at a width of about 0.5 kilometers (.3 miles).
Even at their closest, the space rocks will still be more than 3 million miles away, so don’t worry about them smashing into the Earth. In fact, they won’t even come close enough to see with the naked eye.
Still, the pair won’t be this close to Earth again until 2036, so if you want to catch a glimpse of the dynamic duo, be sure to have your telescope ready Saturday night.
Animation showing the KW4 system viewed from Earth as it moved across the sky from May 21, 2001 to June 12, 2001.
SpaceX’s deploys 60-satellite Starlink blob, all spacecraft successfully phone home
SpaceX’s deploys 60-satellite Starlink blob, all spacecraft successfully phone home
SpaceX’s first 60 “production-design” Starlink satellites have been successfully placed in orbit, kicking off a constellation beta test at an unprecedented scale. According to CEO Elon Musk, all spacecraft also managed to successfully ‘phone home’ after separation.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 lifts off the pad at Space Launch Complex 40 to send 60 Starlink satellites into orbit.
Photo Credit: Graham Smith / SpaceFlight Insider
The company’s Redmond satellite operators still need to verify that all spacecraft are functional and healthy after a Falcon 9 launch and chaotic deployment from the rocket’s upper stage, but the riskiest part of the mission is now arguably behind SpaceX. What remains is essentially a massive, hardware-rich test of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation, ranging from granular flight testing of individual components to an effective simulation of a full constellation’s operations.
All 60 Starlink satellites online, solar array deployment coming up soon
In support of those tests, SpaceX has already received permission from the FCC to begin setting up a number of ground stations and user terminals across the US. Testing will begin on a relatively small scale but will rapidly expand as FCC permissions roll in and the basics of the first 60 Starlink satellites’ operational capabilities are verified.
According to sources familiar with the matter who spoke under the condition of anonymity, SpaceX will most likely begin commercial testing of its Starlink constellation much like Tesla, using its significant workforce (~6000 people) as beta testers. The sources didn’t know how many launches it would take before that internal testing kicks off, but it’s safe to say that SpaceX will need at least a few hundred satellites in orbit to provide uninterrupted broadband service over a few swaths of the US.
Elon: 60 satellites of the production design for the Starlink system (minus the Ka antenna) will be launched tonight. An incredible amount of hard work went into getting to this point. It’s one of the hardest engineering projects that I’ve ever seen done.#SpaceX
A little over one hour after launch, SpaceX deployed all 60 Starlink satellites simultaneously, producing a bizarre blob of spacecraft that appeared to slowly begin to separate, almost like a zipper unzipping. CEO Elon Musk noted on May 15th that there was “a chance” that satellites would bump into each other during deployment. After watching the actual act, it’s safe to say that many of the 60 satellites almost certainly bumped into each other after separating from Falcon 9, albeit very slowly.
The 60 Starlink satellites in their launch configuration before being encapsulated in the Falcon 9’s payload fairing.
Photo Credit: SpaceX
60 Starlink satellites deployed from Falcon 9’s upper stage in a truly bizarre fashion, moving away from the rocket like an 18 ton blob of spacecraft.
(SpaceX)
All 60 Starlink satellites moments after deployment.
Photo Credit: SpaceX
A rendering of a Starlink satellite in orbit.
Image Credit: SpaceX
Starlink’s deployment mechanism is easily the most SpaceX-reminiscent thing SpaceX has ever done. It certainly isn’t pretty and your author would love nothing more than to immediately head to orbit to evenly distribute the satellites (oh, the asymmetry ). And yet, it seems likely that the chaotic blob deployment will ultimately be a success, getting rid of the wasted mass of a dispenser, speeding up deployment, and offloading the need for accuracy from Falcon 9 S2 to the satellites themselves.
Starlink satellites are propelled by krypton-fueled electric thrusters, also known as ion or Hall Effect thrusters.
(SpaceX)
A stack of the first 60 Starlink satellites.
(SpaceX)
By simply designing the satellites to handle minor bumps and more significant mechanical loads during launch and deployment, SpaceX can forgo the hassle of treating each spacecraft as if they’re made out of fine china, fairly routine for most modern satellites.
Check out Teslarati’s newsletters for prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket launch and recovery processes
Foto’s bewijzen dat er iets verborgen ligt onder een Egyptisch tempelcomplex. De autoriteiten willen niet dat jij dit weet
Foto: Леон Петросян Wikimedia Commons
Foto’s bewijzen dat er iets verborgen ligt onder een Egyptisch tempelcomplex. De autoriteiten willen niet dat jij dit weet
Jimmy van YouTube-kanaal Bright Insight heeft een aantal foto’s gepubliceerd van een ontdekking in Egypte waar geen ruchtbaarheid aan gegeven is.
De foto’s zijn gemaakt in het tempelcomplex van Dendera, het heiligdom van Hathor en Isis, dat grotendeels dateert uit de Ptolemaeïsche periode.
Onlangs werd er iets ontdekt onder één van de vloeren van de tempel van Hathor wat maar weinig mensen hebben gezien.
Onbekende tempel
Onder de vloer stuitte men op de bovenkant van meerdere begraven zuilen.
Dat betekent dat recht onder de tempel van Hathor nog een tweede, onbekende tempel gelegen is.
De vraag is nu waarom de internationale nieuwsmedia geen aandacht hebben besteed aan deze bijzondere ontdekking.
In het geheim
Daarnaast kun je je afvragen hoe groot de zuilen zijn, hoeveel het er zijn, hoe groot de onderliggende tempel is en wat we er kunnen aantreffen.
Een gids liet weten dat de blootgelegde zuil eerst zal worden afgedekt en dat pas later, in het geheim, opgravingen zullen worden verricht.
Voorkomen
Dit wijst erop dat de autoriteiten die archeologische vindplaatsen beheren, proberen te voorkomen dat nieuwe informatie de massa bereikt.
Professoren, wetenschappers en egyptologen worden niet op de hoogte gebracht van ontdekkingen, maar er worden in het geheim opgravingen gedaan, waarna wordt besloten wat er naar buiten wordt gebracht (als er al iets naar buiten wordt gebracht).
A retired carpenter in Ireland claims that a stroll home from his neighborhood pub turned into an extraterrestrial encounter when he was abducted by aliens who told him when and how the world would end.
Gerry Battles says that the incident occurred on December 26, 2001 as he was walking home from the Seven Sisters Pub.
As he was admiring the stars, he noticed one particularly odd light emerge in the sky and then suddenly found himself aboard an alien spacecraft.
Paralyzed but able to observe other humans in a similar state aboard the ship, Battles was gob smacked when he finally encountered the alien seemingly in command of the vessel.
"All I remember is his big cone head and his beautiful, ginormous eyes. They were jet black, almost like mirrors," Battles told the Limerick Post.
The ET was impressed that Battles was not afraid like the other abductees and even flew the spacecraft over the North Pole at his request.
During their telepathic conversation, the alien revealed to Battles that Earth was due to be destroyed by an asteroid in 850 years.
The disappointed ET also expressed dismay that humanity continues to engage in warfare and subterfuge.
Additionally, the observant alien told him not to trust politicians or banks, which is likely advice he didn't really need from the ETs.
While Battles story will likely be easily dismissed by skeptics, there is one quizzical element to it which should be of interest to UFO enthusiasts.
The former carpenter had no recollection of his experience until a contractor from the Regional Hospital told him that they'd found his coat on the roof of the building!
After getting his coat back, Battles suddenly remembered his incredible experience aboard the spacecraft.
He hopes that by sharing his story, the scientific community will make a serious effort toward solving the UFO enigma.
Although that is unlikely to happen, perhaps someday in the distant future humans will remember his tale and manage to stop that asteroid from hitting us.
The 2019 crop circle season is officially underway in England as the first formation of the year has been found. The design was reportedlydiscovered in the town of Warminster on Wednesday. The appearance of the formation may have elicited sighs of relief from the UK crop circle research community who have not had to wait this long for the season to begin since 2013, when it took until June for the first design to be discovered.
Suggesting that perhaps the crop circle makers are working off a bit of rust accumulated over the winter months, this first formation of the year is a fairly basic design. It consists of a circle surrounded by a thick ring and then a thinner ring which features a pair of larger spheres opposite of each other. Suggestions as to what the formation may be meant to convey include a rudimentary electrical generator or possibly some kind of celestial alignment.
Per usual, fastidious crop circle investigators in England have already flocked to the site to document the formation by way of two different drone videos as well as close-up photographs from the inside the design. What may be most noteworthy about the scene is that the crops appear to be fairly high, making the shape of the formation noticeably crisp, which somewhat makes up for its lackluster design.
As to who or what may have created the formation, it's a safe bet that the debate over the cause of the crop circle phenomenon will undoubtedly continue in 2019 as skeptics contend that the formation came courtesy of human hands. However, based on his examination of the drone videos, researcher Dr. Horace R. Drew argued that "there is no indication at present of any heavy mechanical or other man-made actions in its formation." One thing that seems certain is that we'll be seeing many more formations in the weeks and months to come now that crop circle season has begun.
Eerste graancirkel van 2019 gevonden in Engeland. Wat is de betekenis hiervan?
Foto: Nick Bull
Eerste graancirkel van 2019 gevonden in Engeland. Wat is de betekenis hiervan?
In Engeland is de eerste graancirkelformatie van het jaar gevonden. De graancirkel werd woensdag ontdekt bij de plaats Warminster.
Het graancirkelseizoen begint dit jaar relatief vroeg. In 2013 moesten liefhebbers bijvoorbeeld wachten tot juni voordat de eerste formatie werd gespot.
De graancirkel bestaat uit een cirkel die wordt omgeven door twee ringen. De buitenste ring wordt onderbroken door twee bollen.
Samenstand
De theorieën over de betekenis van de formatie lopen nogal uiteen. Sommigen zien er een stroomgenerator in, terwijl anderen zeggen dat het iets heeft te maken met een samenstand van hemellichamen.
Onderzoekers zijn al naar de locatie afgereisd om de graancirkel te documenteren. Ook zijn er dronebeelden van gemaakt.
Geen aanwijzingen
Eén van de onderzoekers, dr. Horace R. Drew, liet weten dat ‘er op dit moment geen aanwijzingen zijn dat er mensenhanden aan te pas zijn gekomen’.
De komende weken en maanden zullen er naar verwachting nog veel meer graanformaties gaan verschijnen.
WETENSCHAPHet Amerikaanse ruimtevaartagentschap NASA heeft grootse plannen met de maan. Artemis, dochter van Zeus en tweelingzus van Apollo, “is de godin van de maan” en tevens ook de naam van het nieuwe programma van NASA. Het eerste onderdeel van het ambitieuze maanprogramma is de Lunar Gateway: een nieuw ruimtestation.
“We gaan naar de maan, om er te blijven”, zo verkondigde NASA een tiental dagen geleden bij de voorstelling van het nieuwe “Artemis”-programma. Enkele dagen later lijken de plannen alweer een beetje concreter. In 2022 zal er alvast een testmodel van een nieuw ruimtestation gelanceerd worden. Dat vertelde NASA-baas Jim Bridenstine tijdens een persconferentie.
NASA✔@NASA
We are going to the Moon — to stay.
We will build sustainable infrastructure to support missions to Mars and beyond. This is what we’re building. This is what we’re training for. We are going. #Moon2024
ISS versus Lunar Gateway Het nieuwe ruimtestation zal in vele opzichten lijken op het internationale ruimtestation (ISS). Alleen zal de Lunar Gateway niet rond de aarde, maar wel rond de maan cirkelen. Daarbij zal het veel kleiner zijn dan het ISS. Nog een belangrijk onderscheid: terwijl astronauten ruim een jaar in het ISS kunnen verblijven, zal dat in de Lunar Gateway hooguit drie maanden mogelijk zijn. Doordat de Gateway maar zo groot zal zijn als een eenkamerflat zijn er minder voorzieningen dan in het ISS. Bovendien kunnen er in het ISS, dat groter is dan een huis met zes slaapkamers, grotere voorraden aangelegd worden.
Het nieuwe ruimtestation zal in twee fases gebouwd worden. In een eerste fase zal de Lunar Gateway gebruikt worden om af te dalen naar de maan. In een tweede fase, die omstreeks 2028 gepland staat, wordt het ruimtestation omgetoverd tot een ruimte waar astronauten enige tijd kunnen verblijven. En zo zal het onderzoek naar de maan een tikkeltje geïntensifieerd worden.
(Lees verder onder de foto)
Photo NewsBuzz Aldrin, de eerste man die voet op de maan zette, tijdens de Amerikaanse Apollo 11-missie.
Race naar de maan
Jim Bridenstine maakte eerder al de naam van het programma bekend, alsook de datum waarop de Amerikaanse astronauten opnieuw op de maan willen landen. NASA mikte er in eerste instantie op om in 2028 weer een maanreis te maken, maar Trump wilde de datum vier jaar naar voren halen en kwam daarom met extra geld over de brug: maar liefst 1,6 miljard dollar (1,4 miljard euro). Er zijn immers andere (maan)kapers op de kust en de Amerikaanse president wil de eerste blijven.
Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump
Under my Administration, we are restoring @NASA to greatness and we are going back to the Moon, then Mars. I am updating my budget to include an additional $1.6 billion so that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!
Things are falling from the skies at an alarming rate. With the on comingwar in spaceheating up nicely, nations are starting to test all sorts ofspace-based weapons andkiller satellitespresumably in order to see some rad zero-gravity explosions. Whenever things go ‘boom,’ however, they tend to leave a whole lot of debris behind and, well, we all know what happens to things that go up.
"The Indian test showcased Space Fence's capabilities in a real-world event," Col. Stephen Purdy, director of the Space Superiority System Directorate at Los Angeles Air Force Base, said in a release. "The system was able to quickly respond to a highly dynamic situation providing critical data."
In order to protect hapless civilians from the inevitable tons of flaming satellite shrapnel falling from space, the U.S. Air Force has recently tested a new technology it’s calling “Space Fence.” The system was designed by Lockheed Martin and was able to successfully detect and track the debris field left behind when India recently blew one of their own satellites to smithereens just for kicks.
If a nation can do that to one of their own satellites, think what we can likely do to all of those other weirdos’ satellites with our space weapons.
Lockheed Martin doesn’t share too many details about the system on its official Space Fence website other than that it consists of high-frequency radar positioned in such a way as to be able to accurately track the altitudes of small pieces of space debris in real time and “permit the detection of much smaller microsatellites and debris than current systems.” According to Lockheed Martin, Space Fence will provide peaceful spacecraft with better defenses against space debris and “significantly improve the timeliness with which operators can detect space events, which could present potential threats to GPS satellites or the International Space Station.” Of course, that also means the system will be able to better track adversaries’ satellites, even tiny ones like Russia’s ‘nesting doll’ satellites which are meant to latch onto and hijack other, larger satellites.
The system’s true purpose can be gleaned from the language Lockheed and Air Force spokespersons use in the press release. Vice president and general manager of Radar and Sensor Systems for Lockheed Martin Dr. Rob Smith says in a press release that Space Fence will prove to be an invaluable asset as near-Earth orbits become increasingly crowded, enabling “warfighters” to be more aware of the space battlefield:
The criticality of space assets to both national defense and the world economy cannot be understated. As multiple new mega constellations consisting of thousands of satellites become a reality and the space domain continues to become more congested, the demand for more accurate and timely space situational awareness data will be of the utmost importance to the warfighter.
Colonel Stephen Purdy, Director of the Space Superiority Systems Directorate at the Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base echoes Lockheed’s vice president, likewise saying that “Space Fence is the latest in a long line of capabilities we are collectively bringing to the warfighter as we continue to build out space capabilities for the United States.” Judging from the way Lockheed and Air Force execs describe the system, it’s clear Space Fence is a primarily military tool that will benefit civilians as a side effect. I mean, who will oversee operations of the system? Why the Space Force, of course, making it the Space Force Space Fence. Space War I is coming soon, folks.
KWAJALEIN ATOLL, Marshall Islands, May 22, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — The U.S. Air Force Space Fence system detected the breakup field from an anti-satellite test conducted by India during a scheduled endurance exercise of the new space surveillance radar. As MICROSAT-R was expected to pass…
All this talk of protecting American spacecraft against space threats comes at a time when planetary defense seems to be getting more attention than ever from government agencies. Why the sudden focus on protecting the planet from near-Earth objects and space debris? Could an impact event be looming in our near future? A team of astronomers from University of Western Ontario thinks so, saying the risk may be higher than we currently know.
Earth’s final viral video.
In a new study accepted for publication by the Royal Astronomical Society, Earth scientist David Clark and astronomers Paul Wiegert and Peter Brown write that this summer is the perfect time to analyze the risk of the Taurid meteor swarm. The Taurid swarm is one of the most well-known groups of meteors, creating bright meteor showers every Autumn as it encounters Earth. While the large majority of these are tiny meteoroids smaller than a grain of sand, the Taurid swarm has long been suspected of hiding larger asteroids or meteors in some of its branches. 2019 is predicted to be one of the most active years for the Taurid meteor showers, possibly even creating fireballs bright enough to be observed during the day.
The swarm will come within 30,000,000 km of the Earth in a few months, enabling scientists to better predict the path of the swarm in the future. “There has been great interest in the space community since we shared our results at the recent Planetary Defense Conference in Washington, DC,” says David Clark. “There is strong meteoric and NEO evidence supporting the Taurid swarm and its potential existential risks but this summer brings a unique opportunity to observe and quantify these objects.” Could these meteors or other near-Earth objects pose a greater risk than the public is aware of? We may soon find out. Let’s hope that Space Fence works.
“On May 26, 1946, the U.S. Air Force awarded to the Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation a contract which established Fairchild as the responsible agency of theNuclear Energy for Propulsion of Aircraft(NEPA) project. The purpose of the project was twofold: (1) to perform feasibility investigations and research leading toward the adaptation of nuclear energy to the propulsion of aircraft, and (2) to educate the aircraft engine industry in the field of nuclear science and its adaptation to aeronautical propulsion,” wrote staff based at the Oak Ridge, National Laboratory in Tennessee. The content above is extracted from a lengthier, secret document that dealt with the feasibility – or otherwise – of constructing a nuclear-powered aircraft, one that could be used in a showdown with the Soviets at the height of the Cold War. The content of the document is made particularly controversial for one specific reason. It makes it clear that the military was thinking of using human test-subjects – such as prisoners and even cadavers – in its nuclear experimentation.
In the late summer of 1946 there was a radical shake-up in the Nuclear Energy for Propulsion of Aircraft program. The contract that Fairchild had with the military did not live up to its expectations and was placed into the hands of General Electric, who insisted that the operations be carried out not at Oak Ridge, but at GE’s plant in Ohio. More than a few Fairchild staff jumped ship and joined the new version of NEPA. Others, however, stayed at Oak Ridge, which – despite the severing of ties with Fairchild – had already made plans for a new project: the Aircraft Nuclear Program, ANP.
The biggest challenges that faced both NEPA and the ANP were the scientific and technological issues surrounding the development, construction, and deployment of nuclear-powered aircraft into the skies of our world. Could the crew be affected by very close proximity to a nuclear power-source? There were other challenges, too, and chiefly economic ones: Congress balked and frowned upon the ever-escalating costs, and particularly in light of the fact that missiles and supersonic planes were already demonstrating their significant worth. So, thought Congress, why are we even giving consideration to extremely costly, and potentially hazardous, nuclear aircraft? Congress’ question was a fair and understandable one – to the extent that, not even one year into his presidency, President John F. Kennedy finally had the research programs into nuclear-powered aircraft shut down.
Although official, and extensive, research into nuke planes went ahead, for around fifteen years before JFK closed it down, it is an acknowledged fact that dark and disturbing research was done on human beings, in an effort to understand and combat the potentially troublesome issues of exposing a crew to such a futuristic vehicle and power-plant. This is amply demonstrated in the papers of NEPA’s Medical Advisory Committee, the MAC. A June 1948 document makes it very clear what was going through the minds of the scientists on the program: “The NEPA Medical Advisory Committee is attempting to determine what will happen to humans exposed at infrequent times to amounts of radiations which are higher than those accepted as permissible for peace time operations. The Committee, with the exception of one member, feels that such information cannot be obtained by animal experiments nor by clinical observations.”
MAC made another suggestion, or, as some might call it, an example of crossing the line that should never be crossed. MAC said: “The information sought is sufficiently important to justify the use of humans as experimental subjects.” It was then time for the entire scenario to tumble out. And what a hotbed of controversy it was, and as the official, previously top secret papers show: “The Committee, therefore recommends, that the Armed services arrange for and conduct unclassified experiments on man which will make possible the accurate prediction of biological changes resulting from known levels of radiation exposure. “
Those very same “experiments on man” were aimed at using nothing less than prisoners then held in American jails: “The Committee is not in a position to make recommendations as to where these tests can be conducted other than that they should be carried out at some federal, state, or Armed Services prison, where life prisoners are incarcerated and where arrangements can be made with the prison authorities to cooperate in the experiment. The selection of the prison is a matter for top military consideration. Continued cooperation of the prison staff and prisoners for a matter of many years will be required.”
Actually, it didn’t take years, at all. In fact, it wasn’t even oneyear. By early 1948, MAC’s Subcommittee on Human Experimentation recommended that “the Armed Services arrange for and conduct unclassified experiments making possible accurate prediction of biological damage in man from known levels of radiation exposure.” Matters began to progress with speed. In June 1949, the Joint Panel on Medical Aspects of Atomic Warfare gave its support to the program. Four months later, every scientific agency, and arm of the military, that had a vested interest in seeing the nuclear aircraft program come to life was unanimous. An October 4, 1949 memo makes that starkly clear. Experiments on people, the author noted, were the “number one recommendation.”
Everything was running smoothly; that is, until February 1950. That was when a significant percentage of staff at the Atomic Energy Commission Medical Group (CMG) grew worried about where things were potentially heading. In their eyes and minds, it was one thing to undertake research into the effects of nuclear aircraft on their crews. They saw it as quite another thing entirely, however, to consider, and give the go-ahead for, experiments to be undertaken on American citizens – even those incarcerated in American jails. Unfortunately for the rest of the people allied to the program, the CMG was a large and powerful body, one that, when it flexed its muscles and expressed its concern, was able to put everything into a definitive state of limbo.
The arguing went on until September, with many suggesting it was dangerous to go down the path of using human guinea-pigs – and without their consent and even knowledge, too – and just as many others offering that it was no big deal. Unless, that is, one happened to be just such a prisoner. It was in September that NEPA’s staff began working on a recommendation-style document that would forcibly argue the need for the program to proceed, and also the need for human test-subjects to be found – and quickly, too. Matters came to a head in December when NEPA noted that the only thing to end the stalemate would be for a major, powerful body to make a final decision, once and for all: “At the meeting of the NEPA Research Guidance Committee, it was recognized that unless AEC or some other highly influential agency recommends human experimentation, the NEPA proposal would never be carried out by the Armed Services.”
In essence, this amounted to nothing less than a stern warning, combined with a final ultimatum. NEPA’s Medical Advisory Committee also had their say, as a January 5, 1950 report – Radiation Biology Relative to Nuclear Energy Powered Aircraft Recommendations to NEPA – shows: “For many reasons it is desirable that the aircraft carry a crew. This implies that the reactor will be surrounded with shielding adequate to protect the crew against radiations escaping from the reactor. It is necessary to determine the amount of radiation a human can reasonably tolerate in a given number of doses, at given repetition frequencies, and at given intensities, so that shield weights can be minimized. This knowledge is only partially available.”
Despite the ultimatum, those against the human experimentation proceeding were unmoved. It was this stance that, on February 12, 1951, provoked M.C. Leverett, who was the Technical Director of the nuclear aircraft program, to send a memo to Dr. Shields Warren, the Director of Medicine and Biology at the Atomic Energy Commission. It said:
“Dr. Warren, “In connection with our work on Nuclear Powered Flight, we have as you know called together a group of highly qualified experts in the general field of radiology and the effects of radiation upon human beings, in order to assist us in defining the limiting exposure to which we should plan to subject the crew of a nuclear powered airplane. One of the actions taken by this group of experts was the formulation of a program of recommended research necessary, in their opinion, for adequate coverage of the radiobiological aspects of nuclear flight. Among the recommended research projects was the highly controversial one of human experimentation which this group strongly recommended and gave a position of highest priority. For almost two years the various members of this Committee have been making efforts to gain governmental approval of their recommendation regarding human experiments. These efforts have been largely unsuccessful and we and they have come finally to the conclusion that further efforts in this direction would be a waste of energy. We are therefore discontinuing our efforts to obtain governmental approval for experiments on humans along the lines recommended by our Advisory Committee.”
Although the discontinuing went ahead, in the years that followed further research into nuclear-powered aircraft was put into place. Some of those latter-day prototype aircraft may have been mistaken for UFOs – as we shall see in a follow-up article to this one…
The moon has two very different faces and a new study may explain why. It’s very possible that an ancientdwarf planet or a large asteroid crashed into the moonwhich ultimately caused one side to have thicker crust. There is an extra layer of crust on the far side of the moon that’s full of craters, while the side that’s facing Earth has tons of open basins. Scientists discovered these details when the NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission had two satellites map out specifics of the moon in 2012.
There have been several potential explanations as to why the moon has an extra layer on one side, such as the theory of two moons orbiting Earth many years ago. However, the theory that a huge object – such as a dwarf planet or a large asteroid – crashed into the moon seems a lot more likely and a new study published this month (which can be read here) suggests that very idea.
Scientists took the data from the GRAIL mission and entered it into a computer in order to figure out how large the object would have been in order to cause such asymmetry on the moon. According to their calculations, they believe that the object that crashed into the moon would have been approximately 480 miles in diameter – which is a bit smaller than the dwarf planet named Ceres.
Additionally, they figured out that the object would have hit the near side of the moon at around 14,000 mph in order to have caused lunar debris to fly off that side of moon and fall to the far side like a tsunami. The layer of debris would have been between three and six miles thick which is around how thick the extra layer is on the lunar’s far side. They also found that an object with a diameter of 450 miles could have hit the moon travelling at 15,000 mph.
According to this new data, it’s unlikely that there were once two moons orbiting Earth and the more likely explanation is that a large asteroid or a dwarf planet crashed into the lunar’s side. This would also provide an explanation as to why there are different isotopes found on the Moon than what’s here on Earth, considering that the moon was probably created by splitting off from our planet when a large object crashed into an early Earth.
Breakaway Civilization - Do You Want to Go to Mars
Breakaway Civilization - Do You Want to Go to Mars
The ever-growing expanse of breakaway civilizations requires a vast workforce ranging from menial labor to intelligentsia.
Some people are recruited under false pretenses, some are genetically engineered, and others are outright abducted from their lives on Earth.
None, however, are prepared for what they will face during their tenure inside the program. Those who have returned convey that their involvement challenged the range of human experience from the awful to the unimaginably awesome.
What has been hidden will become evident as the pieces of this intricate puzzle are finally put together.
Date of discovery: May 24, 2019 Location of discovery:Coast of South Africa I found this boomerang UFO over the ocean near Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. The UFO appears to have just risen out of the water and was probably about to fly out into space. The UFO has no smoke or clouds around it which may indicate its a cloud. Its not cloud. Its a solid metallic object flying over the ocean. This is why maps often black out the ocean areas of maps. So we, the public, can't find out about all the UFO and under water bases in our oceans. Scott C. Waring
UFO Filmed Moments Before Cloaking Over Airdrie, Scotland. May 19, 2019, UFO Sighting Nes.
UFO Filmed Moments Before Cloaking Over Airdrie, Scotland. May 19, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 19, 2019 Location of sighting: Airdrie, Scotland This UFO seems to just disappear at .49 into the video. This should be impossible, yet its there on video and I see no flaws or indication of it being CGI. It looks 100% real. Its possible that this UFO was attempting to fly low over the houses in order to scan the residence to gain information of our way of life. OMG, one thing blew my mind...when I heard the guy say, "No it just disappeared," I got shivers...I swear it sounded like Streetcap1, who also is from Scotland, but was reported to have died last year.
Scott C. Waring-Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
This object was first spotted by the four-year-old daughter of this family while having dinner with her family. As her father watched the object pass over their home he realised that this was a UFO and begun to video the cruising craft and right before his very eyes it disappeared... This is my opinion on this footage: I believe this object/craft to be a classic flying saucer and just before the craft vanished we witnessed a bright light emitted from the center of the craft, I believe this to be the craft engaging it's "Cloaking technology" because the UFO didn't fly out of view, it simply vanished.
UFO Fleet Surrounds Helicopter In Naples, Italy On May 23, 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Fleet Surrounds Helicopter In Naples, Italy On May 23, 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting:May 23, 2019
Location of sighting: Naples, Italy
An eyewitness in Naples, Italy noticed a helicopter flying in small circles near his apartments, but then suddenly noticed a fleet of tiny UFO orbs all around. Most the UFOs fade in and out of focus, this is how I know its real. Real UFO orbs have a rotation almost liquid like change that moves across its surface. Need I remind you, I have stood 2 meters from such an UFO orb two years ago, so I know exactly what they look like close up.
This UFO clearly took immediate notice of the UFOs and may have been sent there by a dark government agency in charge of keeping aliens in check.
This discovery was made by an up and coming researcher on Youtube going by the name of Pacitto dominique. He noticed some interesting structure in an old LROC NASA photo of the moon and made a video with convincing evidence in it of the existence of intelligent life on our moon. The most interesting of all the structures was actually one of the smallest. A pyramid that sat in the center of a giant crater. It was a three sided pyramid with a single dark window going along one side. So...the question remains, is this definitive proof that the pyramids in Egypt were built by aliens from our moon? It seems so.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
UFOs seen visiting HUGE volcano which is an ALIEN BASE - shock claim
UFOs seen visiting HUGE volcano which is an ALIEN BASE - shock claim
UFO watchers have been alerted to a pair of ‘alien probes’ spotted flying over one of the largest volcanos in Mexico and conspiracy theorists are convinced it is being used as an alien base.
Eagle eyed viewers spotted two objects hovering near Popocatepetl, near Mexico City, and some are even claiming they were dropping off ‘passengers’. The objects appear to be bright lights, one much larger than each other, and seem to be dancing around one another. As a result, alien enthusiasts believe the two crafts are working in tandem to supply the alleged alien base which is apparently up to six miles beneath the surface.
The footage was uploaded to YouTube channel UFO Mania and quickly went viral with conspiracy theorists offering opinions.
Prominent alien hunter Scott C Waring wrote on ET Database: “The large UFO and the small UFO appear to actual fly into each other on purpose, as if they both were dropping off passengers and cargo with one another.
“Why? Because its been long believed by researchers like me that there is an alien base about 4-6 miles below the surface of this volcano.”
Other people have other ideas, saying aliens could be monitoring the volcano, colloquially known as El Popo, for activity.
UFOs seen visiting HUGE volcano which is an ALIEN BASE - shock claim
(Image: GETTY • YOUTUBE)
One person commented on the original YouTube video: “The volcano starts activity/erupting and a ufo turns up. Could it be a probe sent to gather current data or is it a device sent to heighten or decrease the activity. Are we being helped or hindered?”
However, others have a more logical explanation, believing the ‘alien spaceship’ could be very much of a terrestrial nature.
One commenter wrote: “Could be a chopper investigating inside of the volcano, and or news crews?”
Do aliens live on Earth?
(Image: GETTY)
At 5,426 metres tall Popocatepetl, which is 70 kilometres away from the capital Mexico City, is the second largest volcano in North America, but experts say that it does not pose a huge threat to locals due to its usually dormant nature.
In 2017, Popocatepetl erupted for the first time since 2000 when ash was propelled a staggering three kilometres into the sky. Since then, there have been several eruptions.
The Pentagon has finally uttered the words it always avoided when discussing the possible existence of UFOs — “unidentified aerial phenomena” — and admits that it still investigates reports of them.
In a statement provided exclusively to The Post, a Department of Defense spokesman said a secret government initiative called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program “did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena.”
And while the DOD says it shut down the AATIP in 2012, spokesman Christopher Sherwood acknowledged that the department still investigates claimed sightings of alien spacecraft.
“The Department of Defense is always concerned about maintaining positive identification of all aircraft in our operating environment, as well as identifying any foreign capability that may be a threat to the homeland,” Sherwood said.
“The department will continue to investigate, through normal procedures, reports of unidentified aircraft encountered by US military aviators in order to ensure defense of the homeland and protection against strategic surprise by our nation’s adversaries.”
Nick Pope, who secretly investigated UFOs for the British government during the 1990s, called the DOD’s comments a “bombshell revelation.”
Pope, a former UK defense official-turned-author, said, “Previous official statements were ambiguous and left the door open to the possibility that AATIP was simply concerned with next-generation aviation threats from aircraft, missiles and drones — as skeptics claimed.
“This new admission makes it clear that they really did study what the public would call ‘UFOs,’ ” he said.
“It also shows the British influence, because UAP was the term we used in the Ministry of Defence to get away from the pop culture baggage that came with the term ‘UFO.’ ”
John Greenewald Jr. — whose website The Black Vault archives declassified government documents on UFO reports, “Bigfoot” sightings and other subjects — also called the Pentagon’s use of the term “unidentified aerial phenomena” unprecedented in its frankness.
“I’m shocked they said it that way, and the reason is, is they’ve seemingly worked very hard not to say that,” he said.
“So I think that’s a pretty powerful statement because now we have actual evidence — official evidence — that said, ‘Yes, AATIP did deal with UAP cases, phenomena, videos, photos, whatever.'”
Greenewald said he hopes that the Pentagon will release more information about the AATIP, either by voluntary disclosure or through requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
“But at least we’re one step closer to the truth,” he said.
The existence of the AATIP was revealed in 2017, along with a 33-second DOD video that shows an airborne object being chased by two Navy jets off the coast of San Diego in 2004.
At the time, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took credit for arranging $22 million in annual funding for the AATIP, telling the New York Times that it was “one of the good things I did in my congressional service.”
Reid’s home state of Nevada hosts the top-secret military installation known as “Area 51,” long rumored to be the storehouse for an alien craft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.
Een ‘klapper van een onthulling’: Pentagon geeft eíndelijk toe dat het nog altijd onderzoek doet naar UFO’s. Dit zijn de reacties
Een ‘klapper van een onthulling’: Pentagon geeft eíndelijk toe dat het nog altijd onderzoek doet naar UFO’s. Dit zijn de reacties
Het Pentagon heeft eindelijk toegegeven dat het nog altijd onderzoek doet naar UFO-meldingen, zo schrijft de New York Post.
Hoewel het Amerikaanse ministerie van Defensie zei dat het onderzoek naar UFO’s in 2012 werd beëindigd, liet woordvoerder Christopher Sherwood weten dat het ministerie nog altijd onderzoek doet naar meldingen van onbekende vliegende objecten.
“Het ministerie blijft meldingen van ongeïdentificeerde vliegtuigen waargenomen door Amerikaanse legerpiloten onderzoeken,” aldus de woordvoerder.
Klapper van een onthulling
Nick Pope, die in de jaren negentig in het geheim onderzoek deed naar UFO’s voor de Britse overheid, sprak van een ‘klapper van een onthulling’.
“We kunnen hieruit opmaken ze UFO’s echt bestudeerden,” zei hij.
Volgens Pope is het Britse UFO-onderzoek van invloed geweest op het Amerikaanse, aangezien ook in de Verenigde Staten de term ‘UAP’ (unidentified aerial phenomenon) werd gebezigd.
Verrast
Deze term gebruikten we binnen het ministerie van Defensie omdat ‘UFO’ te zwaar beladen was, aldus Pope.
John Greenewald junior, eigenaar van de website The Black Vault, was ook verrast door de eerlijkheid van het Pentagon.
“Ik ben geschokt dat ze het op die manier hebben verwoord, aangezien ze eerst steeds hun best deden om het juist niet zo te zeggen,” zei hij.
Officieel bewijs
“We hebben nu echt bewijs, officieel bewijs, dat ze UFO-meldingen bestudeerden,” vervolgde hij.
Greenewald zei te hopen dat het Pentagon meer informatie naar buiten zal brengen over het onderzoek naar UFO’s.
“We zijn in ieder geval weer een stap dichter in de buurt van de waarheid,” klonk het.
Pluto zou helemaal bevroren moeten zijn, maar blijkt nu vloeibare oceanen te herbergen. Is hier leven?
Pluto zou helemaal bevroren moeten zijn, maar blijkt nu vloeibare oceanen te herbergen. Is hier leven?
Pluto blijft ons verrassen. Toen de ruimtesonde New Horizons van de NASA in 2015 langs de raadselachtige dwergplaneet vloog, bleek het oppervlak te zijn bezaaid met geologische structuren.
Nu hebben Japanse wetenschappers vastgesteld dat Sputnik Planitia, een groot met ijs bedekt bekken, waarschijnlijk een ondergrondse oceaan herbergt. Vloeibaar water dus.
Soortgelijke oceanen werden eerder ontdekt op Europa en Enceladus.
Andere hemellichamen
Eerder werd gedacht dat een vloeibare oceaan ervoor zou zorgen dat het ijs zou smelten, maar nu vermoedt men dat een laagje gas boven het water en onder het ijs ervoor zorgt dat het ijs intact blijft.
De isolerende werking van de gaslaag kan verklaren waarom de oceaan nog niet bevroren is en waarom ook andere hemellichamen in ons zonnestelsel ondergrondse oceanen hebben.
Volgens de Japanse onderzoekers bestaat de gaslaag uit zogeheten gashydraten.
Computersimulaties
Ze hebben aan de hand van computersimulaties laten zien dat de oceaan niet kan bevriezen als hij bedekt is met een laagje gashydraten.
De wetenschappers denken dat de gashydraten deels bestaan uit methaangas afkomstig uit de kern van Pluto.
Texas
Sputnik Planitia bevindt zich zo rond de evenaar van Pluto en is ongeveer net zo groot als de Amerikaanse staat Texas.
Het is een mooie zomerse dag in Zweden en zoals zo vaak, ontstaan er dan onweersbuien.
Een dame filmt de naderende onweersbui, maar plots ziet ze ook wat heel anders.
Er zijn al een aantal jaren vreemde verschijnselen waar te nemen in de lucht die veel op elkaar lijken waarvan niemand weet wat het is.
Het zijn een soort (brede) lichtstralen die ineens vanuit de hemel naar een bepaald op aarde stralen of andersom.
Iets dergelijks gebeurde ook weer in Zweden enkele dagen geleden toen een dame een naderende onweersbui filmde.
Hierna volgt de video-opname die de vrouw maakte van het fenomeen en veel mensen die dit hebben gezien, denken dat het een soort portaal is dat zich opent in de lucht.
Wanneer je heel goed kijkt naar de beelden lijkt de oorsprong van de straal in de lucht te zijn en niet de grond. Bijzonder in dit geval is dat het plaatsvond tijdens de nadering van een onweersbui.
Hierna volgen een aantal voorbeelden van gelijksoortige lichtstralen die we publiceerden in een eerder artikel.
In sommige gevallen was daar ook sprake van donkere wolken en in sommige gevallen bleef de lichtstraal langer zichtbaar dan een fractie van een seconde. Daarnaast waren er ook lichtstralen in een heldere hemel en lichtstralen die gericht waren/hun oorsprong hadden op/in een bepaald doel op aarde, zoals piramides en een vulkaan.
Is het iets dat wordt veroorzaakt door een naderende planeet (Nibiru)? Dat oude piramides door middel van lichtstralen weer worden geactiveerd? Zijn het lichtstralen die worden veroorzaakt doordat er zich bepaalde portalen openen? Er zijn ook mensen die theorieën hebben over dat deze stralen uit de holle aarde afkomstig zijn.
Allemaal vragen die vooralsnog onbeantwoord blijven.
Wij leven in bijzondere tijden, want bijna iedere dag is er wel iets ongewoons te ontdekken op de planeet die wij aarde noemen.
Zo was er op 6 april het volgende waar te nemen bij Rockwall in de Amerikaanse staat Texas. Een straal die vanuit de aarde naar de hemel gaat of andersom.
Het is gefilmd vanuit een auto die daar op dat moment reed:
Twee dagen later was het opnieuw raak in de buurt van Phoenix in de staat Arizona en dit keer zag het er zo uit:
In beide gevallen heeft niemand een zinnige verklaring kunnen bedenken en ook van deze lichtstraal bestaat een korte video.
Dit is niet de eerste keer dat dit soort verschijnselen zich voordoen. Het is wat de laatste jaren regelmatig voorkomt en nog steeds heeft niemand er een verklaring voor.
Hieronder een deel uit een eerder artikel van ongeveer anderhalf jaar geleden met vergelijkbare verschijnselen.
Zo zagen de bewoners van een klein plaatsje in de buurt van het Argentijnse Buenos Aires op 30 december een vreemde lichtstraal die naar de hemel wees.
De lichtstraal schijnt te wijzen naar de lucht waar duidelijke een soort tweede lichtbron naast de zon is waar te nemen, precies op de plek waar we de planeet Helion zagen.
Is het dan vergezocht om te denken dat de aarde of iets op de planeet reageert, dat er iets ontwaakt, door de komst van dit zonnestelsel.
De laatste jaren is er sprake van nog meer merkwaardige lichtstralen, die dan voornamelijk van piramides en/of vulkanen afkomstig zijn.
Enkele jaren geleden bijvoorbeeld vreemde lichtstralen boven de beroemde Popocatépetl vulkaan in Mexico.
Ook de oude piramides schijnen wereldwijd weer tot leven te komen en lichtstralen naar de hemel te sturen zoals wij schreven in een eerder artikel:
Ter vergelijking volgen hieronder enkele foto’s van piramides waar energiestralen zijn gefotografeerd.
De eerste is een opname vanaf de Bosnische piramide van de Zon.
De volgende is een opname van 24 juni 2009 toen iemand een foto nam van ChiChen Itza piramide, eveneens in Mexico. Deze straal was niet zichtbaar toen de foto werd genomen, maar werd pas later waargenomen toen de afdruk werd bekeken.
De volgende en laatste opname is al wat ouder en genomen in 2000. Ook hier een merkwaardige energie/lichtstraal afkomstig van de Piramide van de Maan, wederom in Mexico.
Niets van dit alles vind je terug in het mainstream journaal van acht uur, noch in die van tien of zes uur.
De grote bol die we op heldere nachten boven onze planeet zien hangen, blijft ons verbazen.
Iedere keer komen er weer nieuwe vraagstukken, zo schijnt het.
We hebben een lezer uit België die al een tijdje rondloopt met vragen over de maan en op zoek is naar een wetenschapper die hem uitleg kan geven op zijn vragen.
Zijn vragen vind je onderaan terug, maar eerst wat algemene dingen over de maan.
Bijna iedereen denkt dat de maan er altijd is geweest en bij ons hoort net zoals Adam bij Eva. Dat is niet zo, want we hebben een tijd op aarde gekend dat we geen maan hadden.
De oude Griekse filosofen en wetenschappers die enkele honderden jaren voor Christus leefden, zoals Democritus en Anaxagoras, schreven over een tijd in het oude Griekenland (Arcadië) dat er geen maan zichtbaar was aan de hemel, net zoals Artistoteles dat ook deed.
De Griekse bibliothecaris en dichter Apollonoius van Rodos die in Alexandrië woonde, noemde ook iets dergelijks in zijn werk en beschreef een periode voordat alle hemellichamen zich op de correcte plaatsbevonden, een tijd voor de grote ramp. De bewoners van het oude Arcadië stonden ook bekend als de Proselenes, wat in oud Grieks betekent: zij die er waren voordat de maan er was.
Er komt niet alleen bewijs uit Griekenland, maar ook uit andere delen van de wereld zoals Zuid Amerika. Symbolen op de muren van de Kalasasaya, een archeologisch bouwwerk uit ongeveer 13.000 voor Christus, laten zien dat de maan op een bepaald moment in een loopbaan om de aarde is gebracht. Dat niet alleen, er wordt ook aangegeven dat er in een bepaalde tijd een kleinere satelliet rondjes om de aarde draaide.
Oude verhalen en legenden van de Indianen in de streken rondom Bogota in Colombia spreken ook over een tijd voordat de maan er was.
Ook in Afrika komen we dergelijke verhalen tegen en wel bij de Zoeloes die een legende kennen die vertelt dat de maan honderden generaties geleden door twee buitenaardsen, Wowane en Mpanku, naar de aarde werd gebracht.
Meer aanwijzingen dat de maan een kunstmatige constructie is, blijkt uit een aantal bijzondere rekenkundige toevalligheden met betrekking tot de zon.
Zo is de uitkomst bij beiden, wanneer je de afstand er naar toedeelt door de diameter, precies 108, een getal dat in oude Indiase en Chinese culturen een bijzondere betekenis heeft. Wanneer wij in de lucht kijken, dan is de maan precies even groot als de zon, terwijl deze 400 keer groter is dan de maan en 400 keer verder weg staat. Is dat alles toeval?
Naast de oude geschiedenis en rekenkundige toevalligheden zijn er natuurlijk nog talloze aanwijzingen dat de maan een holle kunstmatige satelliet is.
De maan, waar niet natuurlijk voorkomende isotopen door NASA zijn gevonden, zo zeggen ze, zoals Uranium 236 en Neptunium 237, wat op zich al bewijs is dat er vóór ons andere beschavingen op de maan zijn geweest.
Maar bovenal wordt keer op keer pijnlijk duidelijk dat de mens werkelijk geen flauwe benul heeft van haar eigen geschiedenis en alle dingen die in lang vervlogen tijden plaatsvonden.
Maar, wat zou dan de reden kunnen zijn dat een beschaving ooit die maan in een omloopbaan van de aarde heeft gebracht.
Er zijn wellicht een aantal redenen te bedenken, maar één daarvan zou kunnen zijn om stabiliteit op aarde te creëren en het menselijk ras een kans te geven om in alle rust te evolueren.
Want, het leven op aarde zou er volgens Scientas heel anders uit zien als er geen maan is:
Maar zonder de maan zouden ook de dagen op aarde er heel anders uit zien. Ze zouden nóg korter zijn. De maan remt de aarde af, waardoor deze 24 uur nodig heeft om een rondje rond de as te voltooien. Zou de maan nooit bestaan hebben, dan zou de aarde veel sneller draaien: een rondje rond de as zou dan vandaag de dag maar ongeveer zes uur duren. Een dag zou dan dus 75 procent korter zijn dan we gewend zijn. Dat levert niet alleen meer stress op. Een planeet die sneller draait, heeft ook te maken met snellere winden en sterkere stormen (kijk maar eens naar Jupiter). Heel concreet zouden winden met snelheden van meer dan 160 kilometer per uur doodgewoon zijn.
Wat nu, als de Annunaki hadden bedacht dat het misschien wel goed zou zijn voor hun nieuwe creatie, de mens, om wat meer stabiliteit te creëren. Wat als ze toen bedachten dat ze ergens in dit zonnestelsel nog een satelliet/ruimteschip hadden waar ze toch niets meer mee deden, maar die heel goed zou kunnen dienen als een object om de aarde af te remmen, met misschien daarnaast nog een aantal nuttige functie?
De oude geschiedschrijvers logen niet: Er was ooit een tijd dat de aarde geen maan had en opeens was deze er wel.
En dan nu de vragen waar de lezer uit België niet uit komt:
Ik was aan het nadenken over de zwaartekracht van de aarde en de maan.
De zwaartekracht zou een gevolg zijn van het draaien van de aarde.
De aarde draait eenmaal om zijn as in 24 uur. De maan net iets minder, want we kijken altijd naar dezelfde kant.
Dus als de omwentelingen van de aarde zo'n grote invloed hebben, hoe kan de maan dan zoveel invloed hebben, met zo weinig omwentelingen, en zoveel minder massa?
Als de maan zo'n grote invloed heeft op eb en vloed, waarom zien we dat dan niet op de weegschaal? Zouden we dan bij springtij, niet x-aantal kilo's minder moeten wegen? Want dan heft de zwaartekracht van de maan, toch een stuk van de zwaartekracht van de aarde op?!?
Of hoe kan Nibiru zo'n invloed hebben vanaf zo'n grote afstand? Zou die dan geen invloed hebben op eb en vloed? Want om miljarden tonnen water te verplaatsen, is er toch wel "wat" kracht nodig. Of om het extreem te stellen, zouden Nibiru en de maan samen, er niet voor moeten zorgen dat we beginnen te zweven? En dat bedoel ik letterlijk.
Astronauten wogen op de maan merkelijk minder dan op aarde, als ze daar ooit geweest zijn, dus weinig zwaartekracht, dus hoe kan de maan dan zoveel invloed hebben op eb en vloed?
Wij adviseren de lezer in eerste instantie om een wiskundige of een natuurkundige naar zijn vragen te laten kijken en misschien het een en ander door te rekenen.
Hierop komt hij met het volgende:
Sorry, ik heb geen idee wie dat zou kunnen doen. Er moeten toch op z'n minst enkele universitairen tussen de lezers zitten, die de juiste contacten hebben. Dus mss vragen in een extra nieuwsbrief, of via een bericht op de website?
Dus, bij deze. Eventuele reacties kunnen naar redactie (apenstaart) niburu.co.
Send in your names to fly aboard the rover to Mars
Send in your names to fly aboard the rover to Mars
Ready to go to Mars? Well, you can get a boarding pass for a trek to the Red Planet, but only your name will make the trip.
Let us explain.
NASA’s wants to launch its next rover to Mars next summer, with a planned landing in February 2021. The space agency is giving people the opportunity to have their names put on the rover (etched on microchips). The Mars 2020 rover will lay the groundwork for eventual human exploration of Mars. It will also study Mars’ climate and geology, collect samples and search for signs of microbial life.
No, you can’t go to Mars (at least not yet), but your name can go on the next rover NASA sends to the Red Planet. You’ll even get a souvenir boarding pass .
Names will be really small
In addition to their names being put on the rover, people will receive a souvenir boarding pass and “frequent flyer” points.
“As we get ready to launch this historic Mars mission, we want everyone to share in this journey of exploration,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a news release. “It’s an exciting time for NASA, as we embark on this voyage to answer profound questions about our neighboring planet, and even the origins of life itself.”
A lab for microdevices at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will use an electron beam to stencil in the names that the public submits, NASA said. The names will be etched on a silicon chip in teeny-tiny text (smaller than the width of a human hair). So NASA could easily put more than a million names on a single chip that’s the size of a dime. One or more chips will sit under a glass cover on the rover.
NASA did something similar when it sent its InSight lander to Mars, which landed on the planet last year. More than two million names are affixed to InSight.
The Mars 2020 rover is all part of NASA’s grand plan to send humans back to the moon and then eventually on to the Red Planet.
Click here if you’d like to add your name to the list (must be done by September 30) and get the souvenir boarding pass.
A strange Martian mineral deposit, imaged from orbit, was likely made by ashfall from ancient volcanic explosions, according to Brown University researchers. The site is expected to be visited by NASA’s next Mars rover.
Credit: NASA
Ashfall from ancient volcanic explosions is the likely source of a strange mineral deposit near the landing site for NASA’s next Mars rover, a new study finds. The research, published in the journal Geology, could help scientists assemble a timeline of volcanic activity and environmental conditions on early Mars.
“This is one of the most tangible pieces of evidence yet for the idea that explosive volcanism was more common on early Mars,” said Christopher Kremer, a graduate student at Brown University who led the work. “Understanding how important explosive volcanism was on early Mars is ultimately important for understand the water budget in Martian magma, groundwater abundance and the thickness of the atmosphere.”
Volcanic explosions happen when gases like water vapor are dissolved in underground magma. When the pressure of that dissolved gas is more than the rock above can hold, it explodes, sending a fiery cloud of ash and lava into the air. Scientists think that these kinds of eruptions should have happened very early in Martian history, when there was more water available to get mixed with magma. As the planet dried out, the volcanic explosions would have died down and given way to more effusive volcanism — a gentler oozing of lava onto the surface. There’s plenty of evidence of an effusive phase to be found on the Martian surface, but evidence of the early explosive phase hasn’t been easy to spot with orbital instruments, Kremer says.
This new study looked at a deposit located in a region called Nili Fossae that’s long been of interest to scientists. The deposit is rich in the mineral olivine, which is common in planetary interiors. That suggests that the deposit is derived from deep underground, but it hasn’t been clear how the material got to the surface. Some researchers have suggested that it’s yet another example of an effusive lava flow. Others have suggested that the material was dredged up by a large asteroid impact — the impact that formed the giant Isidis Basin in which the deposit sits.
The Mars 2020 rover is headed for Jezero crater. In addition to a stunning river delta, Jezero also has exposures of the potential ashfall deposit that was the focus of this study. The rover could confirm these new findings, which will be one of the rover’s “top 10 discoveries,” says Brown professor Jack Mustard.
Credit: NASA
For this study, Kremer and colleagues from Brown used high-resolution images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to look at the geology of the deposit in fine detail. Kremer’s co-authors on the work are fellow Brown graduate student Mike Bramble, and Jack Mustard, a professor in Brown’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and Kremer’s advisor.
“This work departed methodologically from what other folks have done by looking at the physical shape of the terrains that are composed of this bedrock,” Kremer said. “What’s the geometry, the thickness and orientation of the layers that make it up. We found that the explosive volcanism and ashfall explanation ticks all the right boxes, while all of the alternative ideas for what this deposit might be disagree in several important respects with what we observe from orbit.”
The work showed the deposit extends across the surface evenly in long continuous layers that drape evenly across hills, valleys, craters and other features. That even distribution, Kremer says, is much more consistent with ashfall than lava flow. A lava flow would be expected to pool in low-lying areas and leave thin or non-existent traces in highlands.
And the stratigraphic relationships in the area rule out an origin associated with the Isidis impact, the researchers say. They showed that the deposit sits on top of features that are known to have come after the Isidis event, suggesting that the deposit itself came after as well.
The ashfall explanation also helps to account for the deposit’s unusual mineral signatures, the researchers say. The olivine shows signs of widespread alteration through contact with water — far more alteration than other olivine deposits on Mars. That makes sense if this were ashfall, which is porous and therefore susceptible to alteration by small amounts of water, the researchers say.
All told, the researchers say, these orbital data strongly lean toward an ashfall origin. But the team won’t have to rely only on orbital data for long. NASA’s Mars2020 rover is scheduled to land in Jezero Crater, which sits within the olivine deposit. And there are exposures of the deposit within the crater. The olivine-rich unit will almost certainly be one of the rover’s exploration targets, and it might have the final say on what this deposit is.
“What’s exciting is that we’ll see very soon if I’m right or wrong,” Kremer said. “So that’s a little nerve wracking, but if it’s not an ashfall, it’s probably going to be something much stranger. That’s just as fun if not more so.”
If it does turn out to be ashfall, Kremer says, it validates the methodology used in this study as a means of looking at potential ashfall deposits elsewhere on Mars.
But whatever the rover finds will be important in understanding the evolution of the Red Planet.
“One of Mars 2020’s top 10 discoveries is going to be figuring out what this olivine-bearing unit is,” said Mustard, Kremer’s advisor. “That’s something people will be writing and talking about for a long time.”
Contacts and sources: Kevin Stacey Brown University
Youtube UFO investigator channel ThirdPhaseofMoon are onto some really interesting and dangerous evidence of a UFO crash. Of course the US government always denies everything. Thats their official stance on all UFO crashes, but it happens more often than the public would ever dream.
In the video he states on the phone that he has in his possession a metal piece he pulled from a UFO crash and kept for himself. ThirdPhaseofMoon investigators will take that metal, photograph it, have its metal alloys analysed to find out if the metals are of unknown origin and if the metal may have a bio mechanical or living AI metal within its atomic structure itself. I have to tell you…I am really looking forward to seeing their next revealing video about this case. But it is dangerous…such evidence could undermine government intel and thats when people die. The death of my friend, the world famous UFO researcher Streetcap1, not long after a Russian interview he did. I warned him of the dangers, but he did the interview in his home anyways! I am too familiar with what can happen to UFO researcher. Lets wish ThirdPhaseofMoon luck and safely alone the way.
Chimpanzees can figure out on their own how to use sticks as tools to dig up buried items of food — without needing a demonstration first.
An international research team led by the University of Oslo filmed chimps in a Norway Zoo after presenting the primates with buried fruit and various sticks.
The chimpanzees not only used various digging techniques but they also picked different shaped-sticks for different tasks and made their own tools from plants.
The findings may help researchers to understand how early hominins, our distant ancestors, began adopting tools for digging.
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Chimpanzees can figure out on their own how to use sticks as tools to dig up buried items of food such as fruit, roots and tubers — without a demonstration to learn from
University of Tübingen researcher Alba Motes-Rodrigo and colleagues presented a troop of chimpanzees living in Norway's Kristiansand Zoo with buried fruit and a selection of sticks that they could potentially use as tools.
Researchers found that, despite having had no training or previous exposure to other animals digging for food, they spontaneously used the sticks to dig.
The primates were seen performing a number of different behaviours with the makeshift tools — including digging, shovelling and perforating.
Chimpanzees also discriminated between different tool choices, preferring, for example, to use longer sticks as excavation tools.
The chimpanzees were also seen using naturally-occurring vegetation to make their own tools, which they then brought to the digging site.
This is the first time that this digging-with-tools behaviour has been filmed.
The primates were seen performing a number of different behaviours with the makeshift tools — including digging, shovelling and perforating
University of Tübingen researcher Alba Motes-Rodrigo and colleagues presented a troop of chimpanzees living in Norway's Kristiansand Zoo with buried food and a selection of sticks that they could potentially use as tools
A second experiment similarly presented chimpanzees with buried fruit, but no tools with which to dig them up.
In this case, researchers found that the great apes preferred to preferentially use their hands to excavate the food, over that of making use of tools fashioned from nearby vegetation.
Researchers propose that developing the use of tools to dug up roots and tubers would have been a key behaviour learnt during human evolution.
'These underground foods likely made up a significant part of the diet of early hominins during the transition from forested to dry habitats,' said Ms Motes-Rodrigo.
However, we know little about the exact tools and techniques that our earliest ancestors would have employed.
'This study provides novel data to help us understand early hominin behaviour using chimpanzees as behavioural models,' Ms Motes-Rodrigo added.
The full findings of the study were published in the journal PLOS ONE.
WHEN DID HUMANS START USING TOOLS?
It is hard for scientists to say precisely when humans started making tools because the more primitive remains look like a natural object rather than a human artefact.
The oldest-known instruments are the Oldowan stone tools from Ethiopia, which date back about 2.6 million years.
The Acheulean tool technology period - up to 1.76 million years ago - featured large stone hand axes made from flint and quartzite.
Towards the end of this period, the tools became more refined and then followed the so-called Levallois technique, which saw the creation of scrapers, slicers, needled and flattened needles.
About 50,000 years ago more refined and specialised flint tools were made and used by Neanderthals and it is believed it was at this stage tools were constructed out of bone.
As human culture advanced, artefacts such as fish hooks, buttons and bone needles were used.
Cut marks have found on animal bones that have been dated to be 3.4 million years old - around the time that a squat ape-like ancestor called Australopithecus afarensis - known as Lucy - roamed Africa.
In 1984, and behind closed doors, the Central Intelligence Agency embarked on a project to try and “remote-view” the planet Mars, specifically to find evidence of life on the planet. Not today, but in the distant past. For those who may not know, remote-viewing is a process by which a psychic individual may focus his or her mind on a particular location and describe its appearance, whether it exists now, or existed in years, centuries and even millennia long gone. It was on May 22, 1984 that the operation went ahead. In a March 2017 article for Slate, Jacob Brogan wrote: “The transcript appeared on the CIA’s site as part of a large dump of documents related to the U.S. government’s experimentation with paranormal phenomenon—projects that have been variously attributed with helping resolve the Iran hostage crisis and simply derided for wasting taxpayer money. As I soon learned, this particular document was a product of the Star Gate (sometimes spelled as one word, sometimes two) program, an initiative made most famous by Jon Ronson’s book The Men Who Stare at Goats.”
CIA headquarters
The time-frame that the CIA had in mind was approximately one million years B.C. Why? The CIA isn’t telling. The remote-viewer – whose name is deleted from the files – stated that, “I kind of got an oblique view of a, ah, pyramid or pyramid form. It’s very high, it’s kind of sitting in a large depressed area. I’m tracking severe, severe clouds, more like dust storm[s]. I’m looking at an after-effect of a major geologic problem. I just keep seeing very large people. They appear thin and tall, but they’re very large, wearing some kind of clothes.” The remote-viewer then focused on certain, massive structures on Mars that appeared to have been built by intelligent beings:
“Deep inside of a cavern, not of a cavern, more like [a] canyon. I’m looking up, the sides of a steep wall that seem to go on forever. And there’s like a structure…it’s like the wall of the canyon has been carved. Again, I’m getting a very large structures [sic]…huge sections of smooth stone…it’s like a rabbit warren, corners of rooms, they’re really huge. Perception is that the ceiling is very high, walls very wide. They have a…ah…appears to be the very end of a very large road and there’s a marker thing that’s very large. Keep getting Washington Monument overlay, it’s like an obelisk…see pyramids…they’re huge. It’s filtered from storms or something…They’re like shelters from storms.
“Different chambers…but they’re almost stripped of any kind of furnishings or anything, it’s like ah…strictly [a] functional place for sleeping or that’s not a good word, hibernations, some form, I can’t, I get real raw inputs, storms, savage storm, and sleeping through storms. They’re ancient people. They’re dying. It’s past their time or age. They’re very philosophic about it. They’re just looking for a way to survive and they just can’t. They’re…ah…evidently was a…a group or party of them that went to find…ah…new place to live. It’s like I’m getting all kinds of overwhelming input of the corruption of their environment. It’s failing very rapidly and this group went somewhere, like a long way to find another place to live.”
Does this specific piece of almost unique CIA documentation tell of an ancient Martian civilization, one whose world spiraled into ecological collapse, and which forced them to a new world to live on? Maybe our Earth? Of course, such a scenario is outlandish in the extreme. But, should we entirely dismiss the theory? That’s a big question…
The villages of Longyou County, in Zhejiang province, China, have long been renowned for their scatted ponds of extraordinary depth, which have become over the centuries wellsprings of myth and folklore and which are often collectively called the “Bottomless Ponds,” said to stretch infinitely down into the bowels of the earth. It was at one such pond that in 1992 a local farmer by the name of Wu Anai, from the village of Shiyan Beicun, got it into his head to see how true the legends were, and how deep the pond near his own village really was. To this end he went about gathering up a powerful water pump to actually begin emptying the pond. What he found in the “Bottomless Pond” would astound everyone who saw it, become known as the “‘the ninth wonder of the ancient world,” and launch an intriguing historical mystery that has never been solved.
As the water was laboriously siphoned out, a process that took days, it became apparent that this was no normal, naturally made pond, but rather an immense, underground cavern system that seemed to be manmade, carved right into the sandstone beneath them and inundated with water. The cave sprawled out beneath them was fully equipped with stone rooms, pillars, all decorated with cryptic lines and symbols that have been meticulously etched into the stone and with meanings unknown. This discovery soon had other nearby villages draining their own ponds, until over the years 36 similar grottoes were unearthed, all within an area of just one square kilometer. They penetrate down into the earth for 100 feet or more, each an average of 11,000 sq. ft. in area, and although not connected they are often separated only by very thin walls, and were obviously made by the same builders. Despite being examined by numerous experts and scientists, no one has any more understanding of them they did back when that first cave was discovered, and their mysteries are deep.
One of the Bottomless Ponds
Perhaps the biggest mystery of what have come to be called the Longyou Caves is that no one really knows who built them, why, or how. They have been estated as dating back to perhaps 200 BC, but there is absolutely no record of their construction in any of the historical records, nor even any reference to their existence, and so that is about all we know. The purpose of the caves is equally evasive, with no artifacts to show that they were used as tombs, no signs of any mining having been done, and there are no traces of anyone ever having inhabited them. They are just there, their meaning for existing just as inscrutable as the identity of their creators. All that can be known is that these caves took an enormous amount of manpower and time to create, so they must have been important for something to justify such a massive and ambitious project.
Just as perplexing is the mystery of how they were built. In total, it is estimated that around 1,000,000 cubic meters of rock and dirt would have had to be removed, which would have taken around 1,000 workers working 6 years straight, laboring day and night to accomplish, and yet there is no mention of any such project underway in the historic records, nor any clue as to where all of that rock went. Then there is the remarkable precision in the workmanship and the way the caves are so incredibly symmetrical and accurately laid out. Interestingly, the caves are all very similarly designed and laid out, with indeed some of the caves almost identical to each other, so how did they do that without any modern equipment? One Yang Hongxun, an expert at the Archaeological Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has said of this:
At the bottom of each cave, the ancient builders wouldn’t be able to see what the others were doing in the next grotto. But the inside of each cave had to be parallel with that of the other, or else the wall would be holed through. Thus the measure apparatus should have been very advanced. There must have been some layout about the sizes, locations, and the distances between the caves beforehand.
The Longyou Caves
This is not to mention that it is uncertain even what tools the builders used, with no signs of any tools and no hints as to how these caves were dug. Also odd is the strange presence of numerous tiny chisel marks along the walls that are so symmetrical and uniform to look almost as if they were produced by some sort of machine, and which would have taken a mind-boggling amount of work to meticulously etch by hand. Their significance, of course, is just as enigmatic as anything else about this place. Adding to all of this is that the builders would have had to have done this down in the dark, yet there is no evidence of torches having been used, nor any other source of light, so how could they see down there in the eternal gloom? However they did all of this, it is a remarkable feat of engineering and made even more so by how incredibly well-preserved the caves are. Considering that they are thousands of years old, one would expect that there would be some collapses or signs of wear or damage, yet there are none and the caves are remarkably pristine.
Although they have been studied by scientists and a few are even open to tourism, no one has ever been able to figure out all of the pieces to the mystery of the Longyou Caves. We don’t know who built them, how they did it, or why. They are a complete enigma, buried down there underwater for millennia with their secrets long gone with those who crafted them. In the void of any new findings on the mysterious complexes it is quite likely that we will never get the answers we seek, and that these caves will continue to remain curious anomalies flitting out past our understanding.
Something has changed. For some reason, reports of mysterious or otherwise unexplained booms seem to be far less frequent than they have been in recent memory. Over the past two years, I’ve had plenty of weeks where I’ve had four or five mystery boom reports to share. Throughout the end of April and May, however, reports of these anomalous acoustic disturbances seemed to have slowed a bit. What’s with the sudden slowdown in mystery booms?
On Thursday, April 24, residents of two villages in county Suffolk in eastern England reported being shocked a “mystery bang” some initially feared was an automobile crash or industrial explosion. While the case remains unsolved, aircraft scrambled from nearby Royal Air Force bases have been known to cause similar booms in the past over the same area.
A Royal Air Force Typhoon at RAF Honington.
On the evening of Monday, April 29, residents of Hampton Roads, Virginia felt and heard a powerful boom. The National Weather Service in nearby Wakefield issued a statement shortly after claiming that with no meteorological explanations, the boom was likely caused by a supersonic aircraft breaking the sound barrier. Shortly after, the U.S. Navy issued a statementclaiming one of its F/A-18 Super Hornets had indeed caused the boom:
Based on analysis of data by fleet area control, surveillance facility and strike fighter wing Atlantic, we can conclusively state the loud noise heard across Hampton Roads around 6:30 p.m. Monday was a sonic boom generated by a U.S. F18 super hornet from Oceana.
Naval Air Station Oceana is located just east of where the boom was reported. The base is the east coast home of seventeen Navy strike fighter squadrons and Strike Fighter Weapons School Atlantic.
An F/A-18E Super Hornet.
That same night on April 29, houses in suburban Queensland, Australia were rattled by an “unexplained big boom” which witnesses say caused the earth to shudder. “My wife and I were inside when we experienced the house shuddering – it was so loud I could not image any handheld device could possibly create that amount of noise,” said Cornubia resident Shaun Pask. “It was not a small object hitting a small part of the roof – it was like something fell from the sky and it landed on our whole roof at the one time. It was like a sonic boom hammered down on the entire roof and neighbours said they had the same experience.”
A week later, people in Kingman, Arizona were terrified by a “loud boom” that echoed throughout the town on the evening of Wednesday, May 8. Some residents even reported finding debris strewn throughout city roads. Nevertheless, Mohave County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Specialist Anita Mortensen told local news reporters that there is nothing to worry about. “We found nothing that would point to any specific type of occurrence,” Mortensen said. “Nothing is confirmed at this time, and the investigation is ongoing.”
On Monday, May 13, shocked residents of Sidney, Nebraska reported a “mysterious loud ‘boom’ sound” which several residents described as similar to a cannon being discharged. Sidney Police Chief Joe Aikens said that while police received several calls about the noise, they have no idea where it came from or what caused it. The Sidney police have asked residents to share any information they have pertaining to the noise.
On May 16, hundreds of people throughout the Otago coastline in southeast New Zealand reported hearing a massive boom. The New Zealand Herald reports that most witnesses thought the noise could have been a meteorite or an earthquake, but shortly thereafter local meteorological services reported that a single powerful lightning strike was detected 50km (31 miles) out at sea which could have caused the boom. Apparently, the strike was caused by a particularly low-altitude type of thunderstorm called a squat thunderstorm which can cause thunder much louder than typical storms. Do you buy that explanation?
While there may have been fewer incidents to report on this month, six reports in four weeks still isn’t anything to shake a stick at. Interestingly, sonic booms seem to be increasingly cited or suspected as a cause of these booms now that winter is over and “frostquakes” are no longer a standby scapegoat. Could more of these reports be explained by sonic booms? I’ve suspected sonic booms from the start but with little to no evidence left in the wake of these unexplained sonic phenomena, there’s no telling what could be splitting the skies with such regularity.
“[The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)] did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena.”
The New York Post is reportingthat it received an exclusive admission from a Department of Defense (DoD) spokesperson that the Pentagon not only has investigated but still does investigate unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) or unidentified flying objects (UFOs for you traditionalists).
Wait a minute … didn’t we already know this?
“Presented here is the first official evidence released by the US government that can be rightfully designated as credible, authentic confirmation that unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) are real.”
That’s from the well-publicized (and rightly so) announcement in late 2017 revealing both the one-time existence of the top-secret Pentagon program known as AATIP and three videos taken by US military planes in 2004 of unidentified aerial phenomenon. The announcement confirmed that AATIP was defunded in 2012 but The New York Times discovered was still in operation. What this latest exclusive by the New York Post is is apparently the first public admission by the DoD that this is true.
“The Department of Defense is always concerned about maintaining positive identification of all aircraft in our operating environment, as well as identifying any foreign capability that may be a threat to the homeland. The department will continue to investigate, through normal procedures, reports of unidentified aircraft encountered by US military aviators in order to ensure defense of the homeland and protection against strategic surprise by our nation’s adversaries.”
The Post quotes DoD spokesperson Christopher Sherwood in the article, but does not give any further information than the above admissions. For that, it turned to Nick Pope, the well-known former member of the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) who secretly investigated UFO sightings. Pope called The Post revelation a “bombshell” and makes sure he gets a little indirect credit for it.
“This new admission makes it clear that they really did study what the public would call ‘UFOs’. It also shows the British influence, because UAP was the term we used in the Ministry of Defence to get away from the pop culture baggage that came with the term ‘UFO’.”
Pop culture baggage? That’s a different hot debate going on in U.S. UFO/UAP circles. This “exclusive” by The Post should add to the current hot debate about UFO/UAP disclosure. Will it happen? Is there really anything to disclose? Are they aliens, foreign aircraft, our own secret tests or something else? Unfortunately, the Post article ends after quoting investigator John Greenewald Jr. of The Black Vault, who calls it “official evidence — that said, ‘Yes, AATIP did deal with UAP cases, phenomena, videos, photos, whatever.’” The Post says it reached out to former Nevada senator and AATIP approver Harry Reid – who isn’t running for anything and should be open to questions about announcements like this – but received no response.
Greenwald hopes more from the DoD is forthcoming, but he’s still excited about The Post’s exclusive because:
“… at least we’re one step closer to the truth.”
Now, back to the debate about the “pop culture baggage” of the term “UFO.”
Lakes, Forests And A Blue Sky Seen On Mars. Is Everything We Know A Lie? UFO Sighting News.
Lakes, Forests And A Blue Sky Seen On Mars. Is Everything We Know A Lie? UFO Sighting News.
Here is a great video of several items that are 100% proof that Mars is more than we were told by NASA. Areas that appear to be shallow ponds with bushes surrounding it are evident in photos. Tall tree like planets grow from cracks in the ground that probably contain water for them to thrive upon. A blue sky has been found in many Mars photos, making NASA look like fools. Sometime in our lifetime humans will get to Mars and the truth will get out. Until then, we only know what the public has dug up within thin NASA archives. So far, its history changing stuff. Scott C. Waring
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Mysterious Object Flies Over Popocatepetl Volcano, May 14, 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Mysterious Object Flies Over Popocatepetl Volcano, May 14, 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 14, 2019 Location of sighting: Popocatepetl Volcano, Mexico Someone caught these two UFO on live internet cam this week. The large UFO and the small UFO appear to actual fly into each other on purpose, as if they both were dropping off passengers and cargo with one another. Why? Because its been long believed by researchers like me that there is an alien base about 4-6 miles below the surface of this volcano. UFOs as big as 400 meters have been seen on live cam entering and exiting the volcano over the years. The smaller UFO has five sides to it and is almost a perfect pentagon. The larger UFO is about 70% the width of the mouth of the volcano. The mouth is said to be 600+ meters across. So This big UFO is close to 400+ meters. Now it that doesnt blow your mind, I don't know what will. Scott C. Waring-Taiwan
Alien Base On Moon Moon, Near TSIOLKOVSKIY Crater, UFO Sighting News.
Alien Base On Moon Moon, Near TSIOLKOVSKIY Crater, UFO Sighting News.
Location of structure: Tsiolkovskiy crater, earths moon.
Here is a structure I found in the Apollo 15 index. Its huge, not to mention people who saw the video left Youtube comments like;
1. There's a big long ship just up and to the right. 2. Above your structure is a metallic disc UFO! 3. At 0:39 under your courser what the heck is that dark object or more like some building or such. Loads of anomalies in that photo Scott.
They are correct. There are so many alien structures and disks in this photo its just unbelievable. Now we know why NASA kept going back again and again...it was to gather alien intel on the cities on the moon and make a possible alien tech retrieval mission (Apollo 20 covert mission). Scott C. Waring-Taiwan
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UFO Seen By Eyewitnesses Moving Over Neighborhood, Causes Worry, UFO Sighting News
UFO Seen By Eyewitnesses Moving Over Neighborhood, Causes Worry, UFO Sighting News
Date of sighting:May 22, 2019 Location of sighting: Location unknown This UFO was recorded by a family as it moved over the neighborhood in an undisclosed location. Its not uncommon for eyewitnesses to worry about their location or names for safety reasons. The UFO appears to be flat yet has a square shape to it. Notice how the UFO color blends in with the sky so well and can easily be missed if you are not focused on it. Scott C. Waring-Taiwan
Triangular Shaped Object Filmed Hovering Over Mobile County, Alabama. May 16, 2019
Triangular Shaped Object Filmed Hovering Over Mobile County, Alabama. May 16, 2019
Date of sighting: May 16, 2019 Location of sighting: Creola, Alabama, USA Here is an amazing video of a very unique shaped craft. In the screenshot above its actually focused for a few seconds, but then it fades and becomes bright like a light. But for those few seconds...it showed itself for what it is...an alien craft with a shape like no other craft ever. Scott Waring Video states:
This object was captured by Van Daw at 10:02 pm on Thursday May 16, 2019 in Creola, which is a city in Mobile County. In this footage we can see three lights in the sky, motionless but to me this looks like one craft with three lights. Van said that this is the second time this week I’ve seen it but this time he managed to film it. Many thanks to Van Daw for allowing me the use of his footage and to view the unedited video
Many Structures On The Moon In Google Moon Map, UFO Sighting News.
Many Structures On The Moon In Google Moon Map, UFO Sighting News.
Sandra Elena Andradefound these structures and sent it over to me on Facebook. The buildings were found on Google Moon map and are several hundred meters across.
SANDRA states:
Large buildings in the craters of the Moon were discovered by the Argentine researcher Marcelo Irazusta. The images are very clear. Some with a pyramid shape. Their forms show that they were built by intelligent civilization. Coordinates: 23 ° 24'39.31 "N 10 ° 29'28.30" E 26 ° 6'7.99 "N 9 ° 15'40.48" E 25 ° 6'51.89 "N 7 ° 59'20.55" E 26 ° 4'22.56 "N 7 ° 59'12.30" E 18 ° 50'37.52 "N 24 ° 25'24.01" E 18 ° 58'19.42 "N 25 ° 52'28.65" E 19 ° 18'59.60 "N 26 ° 31'39.05" E 22 ° 41'27.95 "N 25 ° 46'18.22" E
Like most planets in our solar system, the Earth has its own magnetic field. Thanks to its largely molten iron core, our planet is in fact a bit like a bar magnet. It has a north and south magnetic pole, separate from the geographic poles, with a field connecting the two. This field protects our planet from radiation and is responsible for creating the northern and southern lights – spectacular events that are only visible near the magnetic poles.
However, with reports that the magnetic north pole has started moving swiftly at 50km (31 miles) per year – and may soon be over Siberia – it has long been unclear whether the northern lights will move too. Now a new study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, has come up with an answer.
Our planetary magnetic field has many advantages. For over 2,000 years, travellers have been able to use it to navigate across the globe. Some animals even seem to be able to find their way thanks to the magnetic field. But, more importantly than that, our geomagnetic field helps protect all life on Earth.
Earth’s magnetic field extends hundreds of thousands of kilometers out from the center of our planet – stretching right out into interplanetary space, forming what scientists call a “magnetosphere”. This magnetosphere helps to deflect solar radiation and cosmic rays, preventing the destruction of our atmosphere. This protective magnetic bubble isn’t perfect though, and some solar matter and energy can transfer into our magnetosphere. As it is then funneled into the poles by the field, it results in the spectacular displays of the northern lights.
A wandering pole
Since Earth’s magnetic field is created by its moving, molten iron core, its poles aren’t stationary and they wander independently of one another. In fact, since its first formal discovery in 1831, the north magnetic pole has travelled over 1,240 miles (2,000 km) from the Boothia Peninsula in the far north of Canada to high in the Arctic Sea. This wandering has generally been quite slow, around 9km (6 mi) a year, allowing scientists to easily keep track of its position. But since the turn of the century, this speed has increased to 30 miles (50 km) a year. The south magnetic pole is also moving, though at a much slower rate (6-9 miles, or 10-15 km a year).
This rapid wandering of the north magnetic pole has caused some problems for scientists and navigators alike. Computer models of where the north magnetic pole might be in the future have become seriously outdated, making accurate compass-based navigation difficult. Although GPS does work, it can sometimes be unreliable in the polar regions. In fact, the pole is moving so quickly that scientists responsible for mapping the Earth’s magnetic field were recently forced to update their model much earlier than expected.
Will the aurora move?
The aurora generally form in an oval about the magnetic poles, and so if those poles move, it stands to reason that the aurora might too. With predictions suggesting that the north pole will soon be approaching northern Siberia, what effect might that have on the aurora?
The northern lights are currently mostly visible from northern Europe, Canada and the northern U.S. If, however, they shifted north, across the geographic pole, following the north magnetic pole, then that could well change. Instead, the northern lights would become more visible from Siberia and northern Russia and less visible from the much more densely populated U.S./Canadian border.
Fortunately, for those aurora hunters in the northern hemisphere, it seems as though this might not actually be the case. A recent study made a computer model of the aurora and the Earth’s magnetic poles based on data dating back to 1965. It showed that rather than following the magnetic poles, the aurora follows the “geomagnetic poles” instead. There’s only a small difference between these two types of poles – but it’s an important one.
Magnetic versus geomagnetic poles.
Image via Wikipedia.
The magnetic poles are the points on the Earth’s surface where a compass needle points downwards or upwards, vertically. They aren’t necessarily connected and drawing a line between these points, through the Earth, would not necessarily cross its center. Therefore, to make better models over time, scientists assume that the Earth is like a bar magnet at its center, creating poles that are exactly opposite each other – “antipodal”. This means that if we drew a line between these points, the line would cross directly through the Earth’s center. At the points where that line crosses the Earth’s surface, we have the geomagnetic poles.
Positions of the north magnetic pole (red) and the geomagnetic pole (blue) between 1900 and 2020.
The geomagnetic poles are a kind of reliable, averaged out version of the magnetic poles, which move erratically all the time. Because of that, it turns out they aren’t moving anywhere near as fast as the magnetic north pole is. And since the aurora seems to follow the more averaged version of the magnetic field, it means that the northern lights aren’t moving that fast either. It seems as though the aurora are staying where they are – at least for now.
We already know that the magnetic pole moves. Both poles have wandered ever since the Earth existed. In fact, the poles even flip over, with north becoming south and south becoming north. These magnetic reversals have occurred throughout history, every 450,000 years or so on average. The last reversal occurred 780,000 years ago meaning we could be due for a reversal soon.
So rest assured that a wandering pole, even a fast one, shouldn’t cause too many problems – except for those scientists whose job it is to model it.
An ocean has been discovered on Pluto(Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Alex Parker)
An ocean onPluto long thought to have frozen over could actually just be hidden from view by an insulating cloud of gas, scientists say.
The new research suggests there could be more oceans in the universe than previously thought and increases the possibility ofextraterrestrial life .
In July 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew through Pluto's system and provided the first ever close-up images of the distant dwarf planet and its moons.
After analysing the images, scientists believed a subsurface ocean had to exist underneath an ice shell that thins at a basin roughly the size of Texas called Sputnik Planitia.
The bright 'heart' on Pluto is located near the equator. Its left half is a big basin dubbed Sputnik Planitia(Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)
The team from Japan's Hokkaido University, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokushima University, Osaka University, Kobe University, and the University of California in Santa Cruz believed the ocean should have frozen over millions of years ago.
But the land formation shown in the images contradicted what was previously thought about the surface, as the inner surface of the ice shell that faces towards the ocean should have appeared flat.
In the new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers created computer simulations covering a timescale of 4.6 billion years, when the solar system began to form, to simulate two scenarios.
(Image: Getty Images/Collection Mix: Subjects RM)
The simulations showed that without a gas hydrate insulating layer, the subsurface sea would have frozen over hundreds of millions of years ago as it would have taken just a million years for the ice crust to completely form over the ocean.
But the results suggested that with the insulating layer the ocean hardly freezes at all, and it slows down the process from one million to one billion years.
The team therefore believe there has to be an "insulating layer" of crystalline ice-like solids formed of gas and trapped within molecular water cages beneath the surface.
Because these gas hydrates are highly viscous and have low thermal conductivity they could create an insulating effect.
The team believes the insulating layer is likely made from methane that comes from Pluto's rocky core - as Pluto's atmosphere is methane-poor and nitrogen-rich.
Similar gas hydrate insulating layers could be maintaining other subsurface oceans in other icy moons and distant celestial objects, the team say.
Lead author Associate Professor Shunichi Kamata at Hokkaido University, said: "This could mean there are more oceans in the universe than previously thought, making the existence of extraterrestrial life more plausible."
Throughout his distinguished government career, Chris Mellon has been keenly focused on the prospect of unconventional national threats. Now he works with a civilian group called To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, trying to prod the U.S. defense and intelligence communities to investigate reports of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs—also known as UFOs) that maneuver in ways that have no known precedent.
He’s inspired, he says, by the growing number of such sightings in sensitive military contexts—reported by highly trained, highly credible witnesses and corroborated by some of the world’s most sophisticated technology, including several infrared videos shot from fighter jets. He doesn’t claim to know what these unusual crafts might be, nor does he assume they bring “aliens” from afar. To him, they signal a potential high-level strategic threat of unknown origin—one the nation would be foolish to ignore.
Chris Mellon (left) and Luis Elizondo of To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science. Photo by Andrew Cagle
Mellon is uniquely qualified to assess such threats. Having served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, and later as Minority Staff Director of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he was heavily responsible for reviewing agencies and budgets involved in top-secret “black programs” related to things such as special operations and nuclear weapons. Mellon is now an integral part of the investigative team featured on HISTORY’s “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.” We talked to him about what’s happening—and what he thinks should be done.ADVERTISEMENT
Why raise the alarm now about UFOs/AAVs?
What is really motivating me right now, what really has accelerated and solidified my interest, is the [2004] USS Nimitz case—when I learned of that and began to talk to the military personnel involved. We had multiple naval aviators [reporting] what they saw [wingless UFOs, with extraordinary capabilities] in broad daylight, over an extended period of time. It was corroborated by the most sophisticated air-defense sensor systems on earth, and on multiple platforms operated by multiple independent individuals. So when you start talking about that level of evidence, I think any reasonable person would have to say—this is real, and we should proceed accordingly.
Which means what? Intelligence gathering? Risk assessment?
From a national security standpoint of course, you’re paid to be paranoid, to think about risk. So you do inevitably wonder: Why are these things currently in these locations at these times? Have we been technologically leapfrogged? Could it be the Russians or Chinese—or someone else? And what else may be going on?
There are craft that are violating our airspace with unknown intentions and extraordinary capabilities. And until we get some answers to the questions about the technology involved and the capability, the intentions, we shouldn’t rest easy.
I have lived through and survived intelligence failures, including the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, and the Iraq war. Some of those problems are manifest in the situation again today. And that’s part of what concerns me—people are not paying attention or not engaging, and the data is extremely compelling. We don’t want to have to relive mistakes we’ve seen in the past, like in Pearl Harbor, where radar blips were observed and nobody paid attention.
When the Nimitz pilots got back to the aircraft carrier, no one took their report seriously.
It was extraordinary that when the [Nimitz] pilots landed, that they were ridiculed. There was no interest expressed on the part of the intelligence personnel on board, in terms of documenting this, running this up the chain. It was the inverse of what you would normally expect. We spent $50 billion a year and have an intelligence apparatus, in large part to avert strategic surprise. And here we have a case where incredible technology is manifesting itself, intelligently controlled vehicles operating in and around the carrier battle group—and the system doesn’t react. It shuts down. It tries to suppress the information.
Why do you think that is?
I think a large part of the reason is because people have a hard time processing something so radical; there’s no frame of reference for it.
There’s a great deal of agitation on the part of our combat personnel who are encountering these objects—and understandably so. Their concerns are what we’re trying to relay. We respect the uniform, we respect those personnel, and we’re deeply concerned that the information they’re trying to provide is not being acted on.
If one of these craft bore a Russian insignia, do you think the response would be different?
One of the things that I’ve often pointed out—and I’ve never found anyone who disagreed with this—is that if any one of these objects had a Russian insignia on it, the entire system would be electrified and would spring into action.
Sixty years ago, the public was rightly agitated to learn that the Soviet Union had beaten us to space, had deployed the first man-made satellite in orbit. That capability and the momentum they were achieving with their space program understandably generated a lot of concern here in the context of the Cold War. I would hope that people, when they get this information, would react now as the public did then, which is to raise questions about what we are doing in response to that.
How has that question-raising gone for you inside the Beltway?
When you’re talking to people about this issue in the Pentagon, you’re going to draw blank stares. Even from very high-ranking officials, very, very few of them have any exposure to the actual underlying information and the empirical data. So there’s a propensity for people to say, “Well if this were real, I’d know about it, because I’m well plugged in, I’ve got all these security clearances, and I get access to all this information.”
Well, the fact is, the information has not been disseminated through normal channels.
Didn’t the U.S. government investigate UFOs during the Cold War?
In the 1940s, shortly after the war, the military began to encounter an increasing a number of UFOs, and the number of incidents spiked enormously. They recognized the need to try to understand the phenomenon, which resulted in series of investigations culminating in the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, a program that lasted until the late ’60s.
We know from documents that in New Mexico, the director of Air Force security was advocating a study of the phenomenon, because so many people in and around Los Alamos and other facilities where nuclear weapons were being tested, were observing these [anomalous] crafts: scientists, military pilots, civilian pilots, a wide range of individuals.
Ultimately, the government determined it needed to tamp down the public concern, in part because during the Cold War, this could create some kind of hysteria. The government concluded, behind the scenes, that it needed to discredit this phenomenon—not due to a lack of compelling information. It was actually the result of compelling information. When the Air Force undertook this study, they examined 12,000 cases. Of those, 700 were unexplained.
Could these crafts be…ours?
The first question all of us have asked when we’ve seen the information is: Could this possibly be one of our own programs, a highly classified U.S. test program?
I served in a capacity in which it was my job to conduct oversight of our black programs, and never saw anything of this kind on the books. Moreover, I was once actually specifically asked to determine whether we had a capability along these lines, in response to a query from the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Bobby Byrd.
I ran that all the way up the flagpole with the Air Force and others, and believe me, everyone respected Senator Byrd. No one was going to lie to him and risk his wrath. And the answer was, “Absolutely not. We don’t have a super-secret black triangle that can go at hypersonic speeds and all that sort of thing.”
Secondly, a technology like this is so radical, it can’t just appear out of nowhere. There have to be facilities, there has to have been research and development, a prototype. We don’t see any evidence of that anywhere.
Thirdly, these aircraft are being observed operating in and around carrier battle groups that are armed with air-to-air missiles and so forth. We never, to my knowledge, put at risk those personnel—or test personnel—by flying them in an uncoordinated manner against carrier battle groups. That’s just not how we operate.
Chris Mellon (right) and Luis Elizondo of To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science. Photo by Andrew Cagle
Talk about To the Stars Academy, where you work with Tom DeLonge and Luis Elizondo. What’s the mission?
They are not necessarily asserting that these are alien craft or anything of that kind. They are people like me who see this as an incredible mystery and enigma that that needs to be resolved.
We’re helping to change the climate, I think, and establish that there are reasonable level-headed, patriotic people who are willing to speak about this.
What role do you play?
My goal, personally, in my role within the organization, is to help break down the bureaucratic walls that are preventing this information from reaching Congress and the American people. I’m not trying to drive any particular agenda. I want to ensure, if possible, that people who have responsibility for national security are informed and have the facts and the data.
Is anyone else exploring these questions?
One of the things that’s really exciting to me is that we are one of only three efforts in the world that are [currently] in a position to potentially answer the profound, timeless question “Are we alone in the universe?”
Today, NASA is spending about $20 billion a year. A small portion of that is directed toward trying to uncover, identify exobiology—alien life. They’re looking for microbial life on Mars, and they want to use the next generation of space telescopes to examine the atmospheres of different planets for molecules that would be consistent with life. Not necessarily intelligent life, just some kind of life. So that’s a very slow-moving, wonderful program—exquisite science, but not likely to answer the question anytime soon.
There’s a Russian billionaire who has self-funded a program listening for signals from space that might reveal alien communications. It’s a very worthwhile effort. But so far they’ve had no success. We probably don’t even know what to look for. We probably wouldn’t recognize the signals. So it’s a difficult proposition.
The third effort, that we’re associated with, is trying to convince our government to use the capabilities it already has to understand the UFO phenomenon. And if we find out it’s the Russians or Chinese or others, then we’ve done a great thing for the country and for national security.
What are those capabilities? What are you suggesting?
The U.S. government has an extraordinary network of sensors—from geosynchronous orbit 22,500 miles away to the depths of the ocean—and many places in between. And that fairly exquisitely sophisticated and calibrated sensor network is acquiring data that could help answer these questions that no one is even bothering to look at.
We’ve already paid for it. It’s just sitting there at a computer and no one is even interested enough to say, “Gee, during that period when this carrier battle group was engaging these unknown vehicles in the Pacific… What other signatures are we seeing in that area?” Nobody’s analyzing it, no one’s pulling it together.
So the first step is to convince the Congress, the executive branch, to simply use the apparatus the taxpayer has already bought and paid for to try to answer the question.
Alien Anomaly: Is It Crashed 'LIVING UFO Spaceship' in New Google Mars Snapshot?
Alien Anomaly: Is It Crashed 'LIVING UFO Spaceship' in New Google Mars Snapshot?
The gas-shrouded Red Planet has long been associated with undercover state programmes, with multiple experiments reportedly being carried out outside Earth’s atmosphere for security reasons, but the latest one of a kind sighting has nothing to do with any technological or military drills, observers claim.
A UFO has been mapped on the surface of the Red Planet, assumes alien conspiracy theorist Scott Waring. The theorist is referring to an oddly coloured anomaly that has been detected by Google Mars.
“This is a UFO that has crashed into a crater on Mars”, Waring pointed out, depicting the enigmatic blue object as a thick disc spacecraft. It is no less surprising, he said, that no one at Google has even edited it out, going on to express his bewilderment at the “burn and scorch marks” that the object features when the compass is rotated – the “sure signs” of something having “crashed here”.
Waring is meanwhile pinning hopes on an edge to this blue disc finally showing itself one day, enthusiastically suggesting that the unidentified object is a “biologically-grown spaceship” due to its rough edges resembling something organically grown.
The UFO conspiracy theorist argued that aliens could have figured out how to do things quicker than humanity, noting that this is one of the most detailed “living ships” he has ever seen.
Admitting he has seen blue “structures” on the planet Mercury, he noted he had never spotted a blue UFO. He continued to speculate on the extraordinary size of the alleged biological anomaly and how big the scorch marks on its surface are: his photo-editing software led him to conclude that the scorch mark trail measures about 6.25 miles (10 km), while the suspected UFO itself is 1.28 miles across.
However, interpretations about the object’s origins ran wild in the comments, even before Waring voiced any concrete idea, assuming it might be anything from a blue-coloured rock due to a nearby cloud of frozen gas, or, alternatively, a crashed meteorite or an asteroid.
“I could be wrong but to me the blue light area looks like light coming up from a huge hole of an underground base rather than a disc but I’d bet many UFOs go in and out of it. Looks awesome whatever it is”, one astonished viewer commented, while another butted in noting it could be “a traveling object in the Martian atmosphere caught in the satellite picture just at right time.”
“This is so important [sic] photo, mostly a crash site, and probably not so ancient, burn marks can't stand the eternity of time. Good job Scott”, a different user posted, with another one suggesting it might be something “shooting out of the surface of Mars”. He argued that the black scorch marks are possibly “remnants of it.”
Some, however, dismissed the UFO version asserting that it looks more like gas coming out of the planet’s surface, or “a tangent metal explosion from the Blue Energy program” – the project aiming to extract sustainable energy from salty and fresh water bodies.
Meanwhile, praise for the author came in abundance:
Send in your names to fly aboard the rover to Mars
Send in your names to fly aboard the rover to Mars
Ready to go to Mars? Well, you can get a boarding pass for a trek to the Red Planet, but only your name will make the trip.
Let us explain.
NASA’s wants to launch its next rover to Mars next summer, with a planned landing in February 2021. The space agency is giving people the opportunity to have their names put on the rover (etched on microchips). The Mars 2020 rover will lay the groundwork for eventual human exploration of Mars. It will also study Mars’ climate and geology, collect samples and search for signs of microbial life.
No, you can’t go to Mars (at least not yet), but your name can go on the next rover NASA sends to the Red Planet. You’ll even get a souvenir boarding pass .
Names will be really small
In addition to their names being put on the rover, people will receive a souvenir boarding pass and “frequent flyer” points.
“As we get ready to launch this historic Mars mission, we want everyone to share in this journey of exploration,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a news release. “It’s an exciting time for NASA, as we embark on this voyage to answer profound questions about our neighboring planet, and even the origins of life itself.”
A lab for microdevices at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will use an electron beam to stencil in the names that the public submits, NASA said. The names will be etched on a silicon chip in teeny-tiny text (smaller than the width of a human hair). So NASA could easily put more than a million names on a single chip that’s the size of a dime. One or more chips will sit under a glass cover on the rover.
NASA did something similar when it sent its InSight lander to Mars, which landed on the planet last year. More than two million names are affixed to InSight.
The Mars 2020 rover is all part of NASA’s grand plan to send humans back to the moon and then eventually on to the Red Planet.
Click here if you’d like to add your name to the list (must be done by September 30) and get the souvenir boarding pass.
Rocky was napping in a doghouse in Costa Rica on April 23 when asmall meteoritepunctured the roof. The dog was unharmed, but couldn't hope to match scientists' interest in fetching the stray meteorite.
That's because Rocky's space rock was just one piece of a clay-rich meteorite that crashed to Earth over the town of Aguas Zarcas in Costa Rica. Clay-rich meteorites are scientifically fascinating, preserving water-rich minerals from beyond Earth. But they're also fragile: Rain can cause this type of meteorite to fall apart. Hence scientists' enthusiasm over Rocky's sample and other fragments of the meteorite, which they estimate was about the size of a washing machine when it entered Earth's atmosphere.
"It formed in an environment free of life, then was preserved in the cold and vacuum of space for 4.56 billion years, and then dropped in Costa Rica last week," Laurence Garvie, a curator at Arizona State University's Center for Meteorite Studies, said in a statement. "Nature has said 'here you are,' and now we have to be smart enough to tease apart the individual components and understand what they are telling us."
Garvie and his colleagues are now working to do just that, analyzing fragments collected in the five days after the Aguas Zarcas meteorite fell last month. (Those days were all dry, preventing rain from eating away at the meteorites.) In addition to analyzing them, the team also needs to protect them, which researchers do by placing the space rocks in nitrogen cabinets that preserve them.
"If you left this carbonaceous chondrite in the air, it would lose some of its extraterrestrial affinities," Garvie said. "These meteorites have to be curated in a way that they can be used for current and future research."
Because the Aguas Zarcas meteorite was a carbonaceous chondrite, it was mostly clay, prompting Garvie to describe it as a mud ball. The high clay content means that scientists may be able to use these meteorites to better understand how humans could one day pull water out of asteroids to turn into drinkable water or rocket fuel.
But the meteorites are also scientifically interesting, since they should contain trace information about the earliest days of the solar system, when all this cosmic rubble first formed.
"Carbonaceous chondrites are relatively rare among meteorites but are some of the most sought-after by researchers because they contain the best-preserved clues to the origin of the solar system," Meenakshi Wadhwa, who leads the meteorite center, said in the same statement.
Ours is a moon with two faces: the nearside boasts a thinner and smoother crust, while thefarside crust
The discrepancies have vexed scientists for decades, and in a new paper, researchers use models to explore what may be possible explanations for the stark differences. They argue that those distinctive sides could be the result of a giant impactor slamming into the moon and leaving a massive crater across the entire nearside.
"The detailed gravity data obtained by GRAIL has given new insight into the structure of the lunar crust underneath the surface," Meng Hua Zhu, a co-author on the new paper and a researcher at Macau University of Science and Technology in China, said in a statement released by the American Geophysical Union, which publishes the journal in which the research appeared.
The giant impact that the researchers propose here would be only one in a long series of moon-battering collisions. One of the two current theories about what formed the moon in the first place is another, still larger impact — which would explain why Earth and the moon appear to be made of identical ratios of different flavors of each element.
This nearside-farside impact would have come later, although still relatively early in our moon's history. The researchers modeled 360 different collisions and compared all the results to what we know about the moon today. That work suggests that an object the size of the large asteroid Ceres — 500 to 560 miles (800 to 900 kilometers) across — could have done the trick.
Such an object would have needed to originate fairly close to the two objects that originally collided to form Earth and the moon — in order to keep those elemental ratios so close. But the impact, the scientists write, could have left a crater stretching 3,500 miles (5,600 km) across the moon's surface, covering essentially the entire near side.
In their models, the hypothetical collision took care of several differences between the two sides of the moon, including the extra layer that gives the farside crust its thickness — which would have been formed by debris from the impact falling down in a layer 3 to 6 miles (5 to 10 km) thick.
If the research holds up, it could displace other proffered explanations, such as the idea that Earth originally had two smaller, distinctive moons that collided to form the modern, two-sided moon.
Scientists are hoping to beef up their models with data from current and future moon missions, including in particular China's Chang'e-4 mission, which landed on the far side of the moon in January.
The research is described in a paper published Monday (May 20) in the journal JGR Planets.
U.S. Navy pilots and sailorswon't be considered crazy for reporting unidentified flying objects, under new rules meant to encourage them to keep track of what they see. Yet just a few years ago, the Pentagon reportedly shut down another officialprogram that investigated UFO sightings. What has changed? Is the U.S. military finally coming around to the idea that alien spacecraft are visiting our planet?
The answer to that question is almost certainly no. Humans' misinterpretation of observations of natural phenomena are as old as time and include examples such as manatees being seen as mermaids and driftwood in a Scottish lochbeing interpreted as a monster. A more recent and relevant example is the strange luminescent structure in the sky caused by a SpaceX rocket launch. In these types of cases, incorrect interpretations occur because people have incomplete information or misunderstand what they're seeing.
Based on my prior experience as a science advisor to the Air Force, I believe that the Pentagon wants to avoid this type of confusion, so it needs to better understand flying objects that it can't now identify. During a military mission, whether in peace or in war, if a pilot or soldier can't identify an object, they have a serious problem: How should they react, without knowing if it is neutral, friendly or threatening? Fortunately, the military can use advanced technologies to try to identify strange things in the sky.
Taking the 'U' out of 'UFO'
Situational awareness" is the military term for having complete understanding of the environment in which you are operating. A UFO represents a gap in situational awareness. At the moment, when a Navy pilot sees something strange during flight, just about the only thing he or she can do is ask other pilots and air traffic control what they saw in that place at that time. Globally, the number of UFO reportings in a year has peaked at more than 8,000. It's not known how many the military experiences.
UFOs represent an opportunity for the military to improve its identification processes. At least some of that work could be done in the future by automated systems, and potentially in real time as an incident unfolds. Military vehicles — Humvees, battleships, airplanes and satellites alike — are covered in sensors. It's not just passive devices like radio receivers, video cameras and infrared imagers, but active systems like radar, sonar and lidar. In addition, a military vehicle is rarely alone — vehicles travel in convoys, sail in fleets and fly in formations. Above them all are satellites watching from overhead.
Drawing a complete picture
Sensors can provide a wealth of information on UFOs including range, speed, heading, shape, size and temperature. With so many sensors and so much data, though, it is a challenge to merge the information into something useful. However, the military is stepping up its work on autonomy and artificial intelligence. One possible use of these new technologies could be to combine them to analyze all the many signals as they come in from sensors, separating any observations that it can't identify. In those cases, the system could even assign sensors on nearby vehicles or orbiting satellites to collect additional information in real time. Then it could assemble an even more complete picture.
For the moment, though, people will need to weigh in on what all the data reveal. That's because a key challenge for any successful use of artificial intelligence is building trust or confidence in the system. For example, in a famous experiment by Google scientists, an advanced image recognition algorithm based on artificial intelligence was fooled into wrongly identifying a photo of a panda as a gibbon simply by distorting a small number of the original pixels.
So, until humans understand UFOs better, we won't be able to teach computers about them. In my view, the Navy's new approach to reporting UFO encounters is a good first step. This may eventually lead to a comprehensive, fully integrated approach for object identification involving the fusion of data from many sensors through the application of artificial intelligence and autonomy. Only then will there be fewer and fewer UFOs in the sky — because they won't be unidentified anymore.
Researchers are smartening up to a new mechanism of water formation, one which can explain how the liquid got to the Moon.
Image credits Patricia Alexandre.
A cross-disciplinary group of researchers has shown chemical, physical, and material evidence for water formation on the moon. The research is the product of two teams of researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa working together — physical chemists at the UH Mānoa Department of Chemistry’s W.M. Keck Research Laboratory in Astrochemistry and planetary scientists at the Hawai’i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP).
Their findings could help explain recent findings of water ice being present on the moon, as revealed by data from the Lunar Prospector and the hard lander Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.
Actually squeezing water from a stone
“Overall, this study advances our understanding on the origin of water as detected on the moon and other airless bodies in our solar system such as Mercury and asteroids and provides, for the first time, a scientifically sound and proven mechanism of water formation,” says Jeffrey Gillis-Davis, who led the HIGP team.
Data beamed back by the two craft does indeed suggest the existence of water ice on the moon’s poles, but where this water came from was far from clear. It’s an especially interesting question for bodies such as NASA, because lunar water represents one of the key requirements for establishing a permanent colony on the moon. Water can be broken down into breathable air or hydrogen fuel, used to grow food, and is, obviously, in high demand with parched spacefarers.
Chemistry Professor Ralf I. Kaiser and HIGP’s Jeffrey Gillis-Davis designed a series of experiments to understand how the liquid got all the way to the moon. Their working hypothesis was that interactions between solar wind, the minerals in lunar soils, and/or micrometeorite impacts, might hold the key. However, due to a lack of available lunar material to work with, the team substituted it with samples of irradiated olivine, a dry mineral that is a good proxy for lunar regolith (soil). The team simulated solar wind — mainly protons — with a flow of deuterium ions.
At first, the study seemed to be a bust. Experiments using only deuterium and the irradiated samples “did not reveal any trace of water formation, even after increasing the temperature to lunar mid-latitude daytime temperatures,” explains Cheng Zhu, a UH Manoa postdoctoral fellow and lead author of the paper.
“But when we warmed the sample, we detected molecular deuterium, suggesting that deuterium—or hydrogen—implanted from the solar wind can be stored in the lunar rock.”
“Therefore, another high-energy source might be necessary to trigger water formation within the moon’s minerals followed by its release as a gas that can be detected,” Kaiser added.
The second round of testing involved more of the same — bombarding the sample with the ions, then heating them up to temperatures that would be seen on the moon — but the team subsequently blasted the sample with powerful laser pulses. This step was meant to simulate the thermal effects of micrometeorite impacts. Analysis of the gas produced by the laser showed that water was indeed present in the sample at this time.
“Water continued to be produced during laser pulses after the temperature was increased, suggesting that the olivine was storing precursors to heavy water that were released by laser heating,” said Zhu.
Hope Ishii and John Bradley from the HIGP used focused ion beam–scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy to image these processes as they were unfurling. They observed sub-micrometer-sized surface pits, some partially covered by lids, suggesting that water vapor builds up under the surface until it bursts, releasing water from lunar silicates upon micrometeorite impact.
The paper “Untangling the formation and liberation of water in the lunar regolith,” has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Most Important UFO Video You Will Ever See plus Chuck Missler (2019)
The Most Important UFO Video You Will Ever See plus Chuck Missler (2019)
The veil is lifting and the real truth behind the UFO phenomenon is finally released to the public. Speaker: Chuck Missler. Thank you for watching God Bless you all!!
Chuck Missler received a Congressional appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy and then served in the U.S. Air Force. After leaving active duty, he became Branch Chief of the Department of Guided Missiles at Lowry Air Force Base.
Chuck has earned a Masters Degree in engineering from UCLA and a Ph.D. from Louisiana Baptist University. Chuck has worked as a systems engineer at TRW, followed by a Senior Analyst position serving both the intelligence community and the Department of Defense.
Charles W. Missler was an American author, evangelical Christian, Bible teacher, engineer, and former businessman. He was the founder of the Koinonia House ministry based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.Wikipedia
The city of Portland, Oregon, in the United States was in the 19th century a major, bustling port town, where ships laden with wheat would make a stop along the Willamette River before continuing out over the sea towards such exotic destinations as Asia and Europe. To cater to all of the crews passing through the town blossomed, but it also had a seedy underside, with brothels, gambling dens, and also secret bars called speakeasies during Prohibition. In addition to being a major export hub, Portland began to earn itself a reputation as one of the most dangerous ports in the country, eventually earning itself the nickname “The Forbidden City of the West,” where all manner of scum and villains went about their nefarious business. It was perhaps this notorious reputation as a den of sin and crime that a rather spooky legend would be born, telling of a dank network of tunnels sprawled down in the earth, through which people would be whisked off to a fate worse than death.
Portland, Oregon
Down under the city were said to be various tunnels and rooms meandering out through the gloom, mostly used at first for holding shipments to keep them out of the rain and to provide a direct link between various storerooms and the waterfront, and many establishments above ground had interconnecting basements that met up with the docks, forming a complex of tunnels. With such an eerie network of gloomy passageways away from prying eyes it was only a matter of time before the tunnels were being used for more sinister purposes, and it is said that many of the city’s gambling dens were located down in the dim confines of these tunnels. Many of the tunnels supposedly congregate around the Old Town Chinatown neighborhood, and Portland historian Barney Blalock has said of these mysterious tunnels:
They were built by Chinese back in the days when Chinatown was the center of gang activity related to the different tongs. The gambling dens, brothels, and opium parlors of Chinatown were connected to separate labyrinths, with steel doors, trap doors leading to secret stairways, and tunnels for escape into far alleyways. These were security measures designed for dealing with both rival tongs and police raids.
An early Portland saloon and card room
According to the stories, other than for hiding the dregs of society, these tunnels, collectively called The Old Portland Underground, were also used for other even more malevolent purposes, shrouding the tunnels in a cloak of fear and grim folklore. These particular tales have to do with a shady practice of the area that was commonly known as “shanghaiing,” which entails the kidnapping of people for the purpose of later selling them as clandestine slaves. The main destination for these poor souls was as manual labor aboard shorthanded vessels about to begin their long voyages, but the practice extended to other dealings as well, and there is all manner of horror stories of women being shanghaied to be sold into sexual slavery or even people being sold to starving crews as food.
In the case of Portland’s tunnels, it was widely believed that the tunnels were extended, with many of them coming up into the various taverns, restaurants, bars, and brothels and fanning out into a labyrinthine system. Here unsuspecting victims would be drugged and whisked away into the inky depths of the catacombs, or in some cases find themselves dropping through a trapdoor to the gloom below, where they would be captured and taken to a life of hardship and certain death. Since many of those targeted were transients and people just passing through on their journeys, no one would miss them and they would just become more of the many who disappeared without a trace along their routes. There were supposedly thousands of people who met their fate this way through Portland’s network of subterranean tunnels, and there were even alleged maps that showed the way from these entry points to the waiting docks and their slave masters, kept in makeshift cells or even crates to await their fates. The practice was supposedly so widespread in Portland that the tunnel system began to earn itself a new nickname as “The Shanghai Tunnels,” and it kept the city in the grip of fear.
The Shanghai Tunnels
It is all rather frightening and ominous, and sounds like it must surely be an urban legend, so how true is any of this? Well, we do know that the basements and at least some tunnels exist there under Portland, and although many have long since collapsed or been flooded by rising waters some of them can still be accessed or even toured today. We also know that the practice of shanghaiing did in fact exist during the era in ports throughout the West Coast. What isn’t apparent is whether this ever really happened in Portland’s tunnels or not to the extent that it is claimed, if at all. It also isn’t known if the tunnels were ever quite as extensive and interconnected as is claimed in these stories, or whether they really meandered all under the city to emerge within bars and restaurants for the purpose of shanghaiing. Even the ones available for viewing are more extensive basements leading from warehouses to the docks.
In the end it is unknown of there was ever really a labyrinth of intertwined tunnels here extending throughout the city as told in the lore, or if they were ever used for the grim practice of shanghaiing. However, the stories remain entrenched within the lore and legends of the city of Portland, and a spooky look into its darker history.
Imagine sitting on the edge of your seat engrossed in a scary horror movie when suddenly … a paranormal conference breaks out. That’s the feeling I got while watching “Terror in the Skies,” the latest documentary fromSmall Town Monsters. Fortunately, in the capable and experienced hands of director/writer/producer Seth Breedlove, this combination is a good thing, with seamless transitions between movie and expert commentaries that maintain the tension while adding meat to already meaty stories about a number of mysterious flying creature events in the history of Illinois that continue to occur right up to the present.
“Terror in the Skies” opens with an eerie twilight recreation of a 1948 small town sighting of what appeared to be an abnormally huge bird … a sighting we quickly learn was just one of many at the time in southern Illinois’ heavily wooded corner of the Ozark Mountains as they fade into the Mississippi River. The sightings are recounted by Illinois native Loren Coleman, founder of the International Cryptozoological Museum and one of the world’s leading authorities on mysterious and mythical beasts.
Wearing his producer hat well, Seth Breedlove recruits an impressive array of senior and up-and-coming cryptid investigators and writers to fill in the details of a surprisingly large yet little known number of flying creature sightings in Illinois dating back to Native American legends and centered around the Mississippi River town of Alton. From giant birds to dinosaur-like creatures to flying humanoids, director Breedlove weaves the narration of longtime collaborator Lyle Blackburn through animated recreations, newspaper clippings and eyewitness accounts of sightings of the Piasa Bird, Thunderbirds and lesser-known aerial apparitions.
“Terror in the Skies” closes in the skies over Chicago, where sightings of various forms of bird-, bat- and Mothman-like creatures have been reportedly steadily since 2017. Bringing together the analyses of a number of cryptozoologists and paranormal investigators who have looked into these sightings, Breedlove creates a form of that paranormal conference staple – the round-table discussion – to form a pseudo-debate of what it might be and whether this apparition deserves its “Mothman” description.
Conclusions? You’ll have to see “Terror in the Skies” to find out. Rest assured it exceeds the high bar Seth Breedlove sets for himself and the rest of his excellent Small Town Monsters team. The long list of Kickstarter contributors in the credits attests to the high quality of their previous documentaries and series and the newest offering will please these folks and the ever-growing number of fans of this soon-to-be-big-town production company. The release date is June 7, 2019, but you can pre-order “Terror in the Skies” by clicking here.
Sometimes it feels like the ancient Egyptians are teasing us. As if everything we’ve uncovered about ancient Egypt is an elaborate prank meant to confound and frustrate all proceeding civilizations. So much of what we’ve discovered under the Egyptian sands has a cruel habit of hinting at something mysterious and perhaps even cosmic. Of course, if you were a pharaoh whose whole shtick was that you were a living god, that’s the exact impression you would want to give. One of the pharaohs most successful—if not the most, by name recognition alone— at cultivating the image of a cosmic deity was King Tutankhamen, AKA King Tut. Themore we learnabout King Tut, the more that “cosmic” part of his image seems to be literal. Arecent study in the journal Geologyof a ceremonial breastplate worn by the boy king found that the gemstone scarab in the center is made of an extremely rare desert glass that was created during amassive meteorite impact. If you’re trying to be a god-king, that’s some top-notch imagery to channel.
The breastplate holding the gemstone was found in 1922 by British archaeologist Howard Carter when he discovered King Tut’s tomb. Like many of the artifacts of the ancient pharaohs it is stunning in its opulence and artistry. In the middle of the breastplate sits a greenish-gold gemstone scarab beetle symbolizing the god Ra, the sun god and creator of the universe. When first discovered, it was believed to be made out of a type of quartz. In 1998, it was discovered that the scarab gemstone was actually made of Libyan Desert Glass, one of the rarest minerals on Earth, found only in the Great Sand Sea of Libya.
King Tut’s pectoral breastplate with the desert glass scarab in the center.
How the desert glass was formed was a mystery. Other types of naturally occurring glass, like Obsidian, are formed by volcanoes, but there are no extinct volcanoes anywhere near where the Libyan Desert Glass exists. Up until now, the prevailing explanation was that a comet with a high percentage of water exploded in the atmosphere—an event called an airburst—and the resulting heat created the glass. A new paper refutes that claim, finding that Libyan Desert glass contains a very rare mineral called Reidite, which is formed through the extremely high pressures. An airburst alone does not generate enough pressure to create Reidite, only an actual, very large, meteorite impact can generate the necessary pressure.
Like many things, this finding creates more mysteries than it solves. If Libyan Desert Glass had to have been made by a meteorite impact, there must be an impact crater. However, there have been no impact craters found in the same area as Libyan Desert Glass. Also, it is unknown how King Tut got his hands on his desert glass gemstone. So far, King Tut is the only Egyptian pharaoh we know of who had any jewelry made of this particular glass. Dating of the glass suggests that the impact occurred 28 to 26 million years ago, well before King Tut’s time. Is it just a coincidence that a symbol of the sun god was carved out of the glass left behind by a massive, violent explosion that came out of space? Of course, it’s also a perfect color to symbolize the sun. Still it’s intriguing, and it’s yet another example of how much we still don’t know about ancient Egypt.
According to a NASA geoscientist, astronauts could eventuallylive inside of caves underneath the surface of the moon. Daniel Moriarty and several of his colleagues answered questions during a Reddit ‘ask me anything’ session which they did on May 16, 2019. During that session, he claimed that the natural shelters on the moon that were created by lunar lava would be a great place where humans could build a lunar base.
The long tunnel-like structures were created from past volcanic activity where the lava flow eventually cooled and hardened up. The hard crust was positioned above the molten rock which was moving underneath it, and when it finally depleted, a hollow tunnel remained.
The caves would shield the astronauts against the damaging solar radiation as well as the fluctuating temperatures on the moon. Since NASA is planning on sending astronauts back to the moon in 2024, the majority of the Q&A session was focused on that which can be read here.
As for the possibility of future moon bases, Dr. Moriarty wrote, “I don’t think we’re going to be able to change anything about the surface of the moon much,” adding, “It could be interesting to set up shop within a pre-existing lava tube.”
He also mentioned that setting up a base near the lunar poles could be beneficial. “For instance, it could be useful to establish a base near a permanently-shadowed polar region in order to take advantage of surface water that’s there,” he explained. In fact, China National Space Administration announced in April that they plan to create an international base that would be located close to the south pole of the moon where there is much ice.
NASA also plans to use “innovative, new technologies” to explore more of the moon. “We will use what we learn as we move forward to the Moon to take the next giant leap – sending astronauts to Mars,” said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine.
Initially, humans were only supposed to go back to the moon in 2028 according to Bridenstine who made the announcement in March of this year. However, plans were changed when Vice President Mike Pence said that humans would be back on the moon by 2024 which is four years earlier than the original plan. In fact, he looked to NASA to “reignite the spark of urgency” for the exploration of space.
Buzz Aldrin during the Apollo 11 mission
Whether astronauts get to the moon in 2024 or slightly later, it would be the seventh manned US lunar expedition – quite a bit later than the first six expeditions that were conducted between 1969 and 1972. This upcoming expedition, named the Artemis mission, will be even more special, as it will be the first time that a woman will walk on the moon. They also hope to be the first crewed mission to land close to the lunar’s South Pole.
Flying Saucer disguised as cloud photographed over Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Flying Saucer disguised as cloud photographed over Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Interesting photograph of a cloaked UFO in the sky over Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Portholes are visible in the upper part of the flying saucer-shaped UFO.
The photographer who has submitted the images to MUFON states:
I parked on Lena’s parking lot, which is a grocery store. I looked up to the sky before getting out of my car when I saw the cloud looking UFO shape in the sky.
I screamed excitedly to my son “Look a UFO” so we excitedly came out of my car quick to take pictures . I was so exited taking pictures I didn’t even think of taking a video.
So then I proceeded after that to go inside the grocery store quick because I wanted to see if it was still there and 11 minutes later I took another photo which was not the full shape UFO I seen, it was like a UFO was there and it left the rest of the cloud behind it or smoke or something.
Upper image left: Cloaked UFO - Upper image right: The UFO has disappeared and left the rest of cloud behind.
Antarctica: Enoch Reveals The Prison For Fallen Angels - Mysteries Revealed In 201
Antarctica: Enoch Reveals The Prison For Fallen Angels - Mysteries Revealed In 2019
Almost everything you’ve been told, almost everything you’ve heard since the time you were a child….. Is a LIE….. an untruth….. a Fabrication created and perpetuated by a lying system, under the control of the fallen angel Lucifer.
Enoch And The Lie About Angels Why was the Book of Enoch removed around 500 years ago? Was it because the religous leaders wanted to hide something too terrifying from the church?
A scientific discovery may have just discovered the prison of the fallen watchers in Antarctica, which points to a prophecy in the book of Enoch detailing the release of these creatures in the ‘Year of Mystery’. Could 2019 be the year of mystery? Find out here!
If this is before their appointed time to be released, then no; man should be able to melt the entire continent and those angels will stay imprisoned. Now, on the other hand; if the appointed time is caused by man’s doing, then yes they will be released and we will witness major Prophecy fulfillment. Man playing with the Spiritual realm is beyond dangerous and defies God. He is coming.
Graham Hancock: America Before-Exposing the Cover-Up of Ancient Advanced Civilizations
Graham Hancock: America Before-Exposing the Cover-Up of Ancient Advanced Civilizations
We speak to Graham Hancock about his new book America Before: The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilization.
Graham Hancock discusses how dogmatism in archaeology has covered up 130,000 years of human history in the Americas and evidence of advanced civilizations that lived in the Americas thousands of years ago, which challenges colonial narratives of uncivilized natives incapable of high culture.
Geologist: A Yellowstone Eruption “Would DESTROY MOST of the U.S.”
Geologist: A Yellowstone Eruption “Would DESTROY MOST of the U.S.”
A geologist has said that if the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, it would destroy most of the United States, all but wiping the country off of the map. Dr. Jerzy Zaba is importantly not predicting that the volcano is going to erupt soon, but simply stating that it does have the power to destroy humanity and life as we know it.
According to Tech WP, Dr. Zaba says that Yellowstone, if it erupted in a similar manner as it did 640,000 years ago, it would destroy much of the United States. Dr. Zaba, who is a geologist at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, said the mass explosion is completely unavoidable although it’s impossible to say when that explosion will occur. In addition to the annihilation of the United States, the geologist also says about 5 billion other people will starve to death in the volcanoes aftermath: a volcanic winter.
It is forecasted that if there was an explosion similar to the one from 640,000. for years, it would destroy most of the United States. Discarded materials would cover everything with a meter layer within a radius of 500 km. And due to the emission of a huge amount of dust, gases or sulfur oxide to the atmosphere, there would be a temporary cooling of the climate. Sulfur oxide would create a thin veil of sulfuric acid around the planet reflecting sunlight. [This] would persist for many years. It is estimated that due to climate change about five billion people would starve to death. The scenario of such an explosion can be seen in the documentary film “Superwulkan – disaster scenario”. This is, of course, a catastrophic film, but a lot of scientific truth in it.
An eruption at Yellowstone would cause the Earth’s temperature to plummet as the sulfuric acid would reflect the sunlight, making growing food difficult across the globe.
As more talk is made by geologists that suggest that the supervolcanoes are “waking up” around the world, the fears will simultaneously spike. That doesn’t mean an eruption will happen anytime soon, only that Earth will experience another supervolcano eruption in the future.
Experts still say there is no reason to fear a supervolcano eruption just yet, but understanding the devastation that we will all face sooner or later is important in the advancement of science and human survival.
This article has been contributed by SHTF Plan. Visit www.SHTFplan.com for alternative news, commentary and preparedness info.
Linda Moulton Howe: Planet X Truths - Explains Everything You Need To Know
Linda Moulton Howe: Planet X Truths - Explains Everything You Need To Know
COAST TO COAST AM. Earthfiles investigative reporter Linda Moulton Howe discussed the possible discovery of a new ninth planet in our solar system. She spoke with Caltech astronomer Mike Brown, who discovered that thirteen objects in the Kuiper Belt surrounding our solar system were all moving together as if influenced by the gravity of a very large object that is so far not visible.
He told her that the astronomical community will now be searching for confirmation of the object. Nicknamed ‘Planet Nine,’ it’s thought to have 10 times the mass of Earth, and travel in a long orbit around the sun that takes between 10,000 to 20,000 years.
At its closest distance to Earth, it would still be around 7 times further away than Neptune is to us, so there’s no danger of ‘Planet X’-like havoc coming from this particular body, Brown noted. Featured guests also include: Craig Hulet News segment guests: Dr. Peter Breggin
The Sumerian Ishtar Mystery that Experts Cannot Fathom
The Sumerian Ishtar Mystery that Experts Cannot Fathom
In the ancient world, it is difficult to overstate the importance of Inanna/Ishtar. As the most famous Mesopotamian goddess, her substantial influence was embedded in many aspects of her worshippers’ lives, and she was revered across the broad geographical reach of the Ancient Near East for a period of history spanning thousands of years.
Ishtar comes from a very early time in the history of complex civilizations, attested at Uruk as early as the late 4th millennium BCE.
In our new animated documentary series we will describe the history of Ancient Mesopotamia and the first episode will be covering Sumer and its rise in the Fertile Crescent, which is rightly considered the cradle of civilizations. Our series will cover all the major civilizations of this region and then will move on to other regions.
Sumer is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia, modern-day southern Iraq, during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze ages, and arguably one of the first civilizations in the world along with Ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley.Wikipedia
Proof We Have Starships in Orbit! Above Top Secret!
Proof We Have Starships in Orbit! Above Top Secret!
John Lenard Walson has used a special telescope camera system he designed to zoom in and record large Starships in Earth’s orbit. Many of them are disguised as stars and only when you zoom into them do you see they are ships. In the video above you’ll see just some of what he’s captured in orbit. Are these ships from our secret space program? Are some of them from the demon “aliens” also known as the fallen angels who pretend they made us and have access to high technology far more advanced than us?
Joe Jordan has the proof that all aliens are demonic. Not just some, ALL of them are demonic. If you have any books or DVDs about aliens throw them in the trash to close the door to them. The following information was censored by all the government controlled UFO conferences. It’s a big secret too and why they want to destroy and kill Christians. As long as Christians live we can pray these alien demon scum away from us. Every abduction stops when the name of Jesus is used to stop it! I studied UFO’s since I was probably 10 years old and never once did I learn about this little secret! Joe Jordan was an atheist but God showed him the truth. His video “Unholy Communion” seen below is excellent and should have 50 million views but of course it’s censored from getting the big exposure. Watch it and you’ll never fear these alien dirt bags again!
I’m sure most of these ships and space stations being seen in orbit are of earthly origin which actually makes sense since Nikola Tesla discovered electromagnetic antigravity over 100 years now. Tesla built a flying antigravity platform and patented a UFO saucer type craft too! Insiders have said the US used antigravity in our own secret space program to first go to the moon in the late 50s and begin building Mars bases in the 60s. Rockets were just a sham to hide the technology that would free humanity from a power bill! The Germans went to space first according to the whistleblowers. Germans formed a breakaway civilization before WWII ended and went to the Moon in the 40s and had a Moon base and Mars base by the 50s. This German breakaway civilization considers Earth a prison planet and have pictures of it with chains wrapped around it on their ships and bases according to Tony Rodrigues who went to the German base on Ceres and was on several German starships. Tony is very believable and makes no money from telling the story. Does it make any sense that Tesla had antigravity technology working 100 years ago but yet we never used it and oh by the way we went to Moon with ancient rocket technology in 1969 and haven’t been back since the 70s? Does that make any sense to you? If so, then you’re a perfect illuminati slave! Good slaves keep watching fake sports on TV and worrying about the latest iPhone. Good slaves do what their Tel-Lie-Visions tell them and they always get all those vaccines your masters want you to get!
Here’s the testimony of Tony Rodrigues on the secret space program and the German breakaway civilization he served as a slave. Here’s just one story of many you can find on youtube. Ceres was completely controlled by the Germans who have hundreds of thousands of people on Ceres and probably over a million on Mars!
There was a lot of truth to the campy movie, Iron Sky. The Germans really did get there long before us with help from the demon aliens who they still work with for technology.
John Walson has also done some incredible videos of the moon also clearly showing massive artificial structures all over the place! Clearly everything we’ve been told about the moon and the current state of technology is a lie. We haven’t needed rockets to get into space for a very long time but they keep lying to us so they can charge us for gasoline and energy. It’s all about keeping us on monthly payments and maintaining their control.
Here’s testimony of Gary McKinnon, a British hacker who hacked into the NSA and NASA. Before he got busted, he viewed pictures showing US Starships in orbit! He also found a list of Navy ships that were not ships on the sea but in space! They were starships with names not existing anywhere. He even found a list of “Non Terrestrial” officers. So this evidence that we have starships in orbits comes from many sources including John Lear whose Dad invented the Lear Jet.
On February 25, 2009, a legendary figure within the Contactee field – Howard Menger– passed away at his Vero Beach, Florida home, at the ripe old age of eighty-seven. As Contactee authority Greg Bishop notes, Menger was quite a character, and someone who had a particular thing for women of the allegedly E.T. kind: “At the age of 19, Menger enlisted in the Army and saw service in the Pacific during WWII in a flamethrower unit flushing the Japanese out of caves and other hideouts,” says Greg. “He was wounded and received the Purple Heart. Returning to his native New Jersey in 1946, Menger started a sign painting business and a family.” Greg adds:
“This changed in 1956, when he appeared on the Long John Nebel radio show, along with Contactee George Van Tassel. He talked about contacts with space brothers – and, more specifically, sisters – who appeared to him, beginning when he was ten years old. Some of his later published descriptions sounded distinctly sexual in nature, although he carefully couched them in language that could be construed as platonic. He also started taking pictures of the space people and their ships; although most who saw the photos say that they are quite indistinct. On August 4th of 1956, Menger said he was invited on board one of the flying saucers. The next month he said that the space people took him for a joyride where he saw alien civilizations on other planets and structures on the Moon.”
It was not long before there was a major development in Menger’s life, says Greg. In 1956, Menger met Connie Weber, a woman who turned up at one of Menger’s events. According to Menger, he suspected – and finally came to believe – that Connie was nothing less than a reincarnated alien; an alien that Menger had met in another life, no less. It wasn’t long at all before Menger and his then-wife went their different ways and Connie became his new love. They were together for more than fifty years. Things changed radically for the pair as their lives in Ufology progressed: in 1959, Menger’s Contactee-driven book, From Outer Space to You, was published. It cemented his place in the domains of the Space Brothers and Menger’s fellow contactees. He was soon lecturing up and down the west coast. Connie was very much a part of all this too: she wrote her own book, My Saturnian Lover. It was focused on Howard’s and Connie’s fun-filled escapades in their previous lives.
At the dawning of a new decade, something else happened; something unforeseen and weird. It was in 1960, while on a prime-time television program, that Menger came out with an amazing confession. He said that much of his story was not what it seemed to be. Menger elaborated and claimed that a clandestine branch of the U.S. Army had secretly approached him some years earlier. That same branch could not have cared less if Menger’s tales were true, partially true, or complete garbage. All they wanted from Menger was his help in determining how the public might react to the presence of extraterrestrials in their midst. So, they wanted him to keep on doing what he was doing: spreading the words of the aliens among us. It must be said that very few of the many contactees of the 1950s-1970s ever backed off from their original claims. In fact, quite the opposite: they made sure that their stories remained fully intact. Not so Menger. Interestingly, as Greg also notes: “Fortean writer Ivan Sanderson arrived at the Menger residence in the late 1950s and claimed that Menger got very angry with him when Sanderson discovered some equipment and crates in a storage area with ‘U. S. Army’ stenciled on them.”
There can be no doubt at all that the stories (or, rather, the yarns) of Howard and Connie stretch credibility to the absolute limit. They still stretch matters to that very same limit! The tales of new lives in new bodies, and of a home on a new world (ours), are highly entertaining. But, in terms of being the literal truth? Well, I just don’t buy it. What I do buy, however (well, sometimes I buy it…) are Howard’s claims that he was approached by the military, who wanted him to play psychological games with the American public – and to do so by using the UFO phenomenon as a means to an end. Such a thing may not be so far-fetched as it might initially seem to be. Read on…
Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, we know that the CIA’s Robertson Panel of 1953 was deeply concerned about the UFO phenomenon. Not because it believed that real aliens were visiting us, but because they – the panel members – were worried that the Russians might use the lore of the UFO to create fear, hysteria and paranoia in the minds of Americans. We’re talking about psychological warfare. Perhaps, there were still similar concerns a few years later; something which promoted someone on the inside to enlist Menger into the program. There is an earlier case that reinforces this theory: Silas Newton, a millionaire business man and a conman too, was significantly responsible for creating the infamous “UFO crash” story of Aztec, New Mexico in March 1948. There’s very little doubt that the tale was bogus. What we know now, however, is that while the Aztec story was still riding high, representatives of a secret group within the U.S. Government clandestinely approached Newton and asked him to keep spreading his UFO tale – even though they knew there was no truth to the story. This all sounds very much like Menger’s claims.
When it came to Menger’s stories of alien contact, some might say that he was telling the literal truth. Others, like me, conclude that his overall tale was simply that: a tale. But, just maybe, Menger was being absolutely truthful when he said that he was pressed by some arm of the U.S. Army to assist them in a program designed to see how the population was reacting to the UFO phenomenon – and how it could be manipulated, too. If you want to find more about the complex lives and claims of Howard and Connie, you can do so in Greg Bishop’s book, It Defies Language!
ANCIENT ROMANS landed in America: Staggering discovery will 'change history'
ANCIENT ROMANS landed in America: Staggering discovery will 'change history'
HISTORIANS claim they have found evidence Romans arrived in North America, more than a thousand years before Christopher Columbus set foot on the continent.
Lead historian Jovan Hutton Pulitzer believes the haul is firm evidence the great empire landed there first and is the "single most important discovery" ever for the Americas.
It remains unclear how ancient Romans could have made the epic journey across the Atlantic Ocean but, according to the Ancient Artifact Preservation Society (AAPS), the haul was discovered in a shipwreck off Oak Island on the south shore of Nova Scotia, Canada.
Mr Pulitzer said: "The ceremonial sword is 100 per cent confirmed as Roman.
"I began my forensic work into it using an XRF analyser - which is a leading archaeological tool for analysing metals.
"And we found all these other metals that tell you this was made from ore that came directly from the ground.
"It has the same arsenic and lead signature in it. We've been able to test this sword against another one like it and it matches."
IG
A Roman sword, a legionnaire's whistle, Gold Carthage coins and a Roman shield were found
GETTY
Are these Roman soldiers?
Mr Pulitzer insists that the shipwreck from which the sword was recovered years ago is "beyond a shadow of a doubt Roman."
He said: "We have scanned it, we know exactly where it lays, but it will be a touchy thing for the Canadian Government to allow an archaeological team to survey it.
"I think this is the single most important discovery for the Americas - an event that will re-write history.
"This is a gunshot to be heard around the world. It changes all of our history."
The shipwreck lies near the infamous 'Money Pit' - a 230ft booby-trapped shaft which is thought to contain valuable artefacts.
IG
It remains unclear how ancient Romans could have made the epic journey across the Atlantic Ocean
HALIFAX
Gold Carthage coins were found in Canada
Pulitzer's team also discovered ancient burial mounds in shallow water on the island dating back to less than two centuries after Christ.
Professor James Scherz, from the University of Wisconsin, said: "These mounds are consistent with ancient European and Levant burial mounds, not native American.
"I am in agreement the underwater mounds being of a foreign ancient mariner style and not native to Nova Scotia or traditional North American.
"These mounds, in looking at the known ocean levels for the area, give a possible date of occurring between 1500BC and 180AD."
As well as the graves, the experts also uncovered carved stones on Oak Island that "possess a language from the ancient Levant".
Another clue, in his report, is the presence of an invasive species of plant which was once used by Romans.
GETTY
As well as the graves, the experts also uncovered carved stones on Oak Island
Mr Pulitzer said: "There are also 50 words in the native M'kmaq language.
"These are ancient nautical sailing terms used by ancient mariners from Roman times - but they were not a seafaring culture.
"Another very interesting 'coincidence' is a bush on Oak Island and one on the mainland which is listed in Canada as an invasive species called Berberis Vulgaris.
"This was used by ancient mariners, including Romans, to season their food and fight scurvy.
"It grows in Oak Island and across the way in Halifax. All these things, signs and symbols add up to more than just coincidence."
Other historians dismissed the finding as inaccurate, insisting the artefacts were simply dropped by collectors in modern times.
Mainstream history states Columbus was the first non-indigenous person to arrive in the continent when he landed in the Bahamas in 1492.
However, over the years several radical theories have emerged that the Vikings, the Polynesians and the Chinese, arrived before Columbus.
Mr Pulitzer added: "We have absolutely been lead to believe that nothing happened on this side of the pond before Christopher Columbus.
"I think anything that challenges history is very risky, very dangerous and extremely political.
"I think we should all fight for the truth and people should make up their own minds."
In the southeast region of the country of Brazil lies Guanabara Bay, off the coast of the major metropolis of Rio de Janeiro. It is the second largest bay in Brazil, but other than that there is nothing particularly special about it other than perhaps the large amount of pollution here. However, lying approximately 15 miles offshore, buried down in 100 feet of water across an area around the size of three tennis courts is a rather strange oddity. Here scattered along the bottom are various relics from ancient Rome, far from where they have any business being, and which have remained a baffling historical anomaly and conundrum that remains unsolved.
The unusual spot was originally first discovered in 1976, when some lobster divers reported having come across what appeared to be ancient, barnacle encrusted jars at the bottom of the bay. It wasn’t long before a diver named Jose Roberto Teixeira actually produced two of the strange artifacts, which were found to be a type of tall, tapered ceramic jars with two handles called amphorae, typically used by the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Phoenicians to carry around all manner of things such as wine, oil, water or grain during long sea voyages. This was certainly a rather odd thing to be pulled up from Guanabara Bay, as the first known European presence in Brazil is thought to date back to 1500, when Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral reached these shores.
Guanabara Bay
The unusual find caught the attention of author, underwater archeologist, and treasure hunter Robert Marx, who in 1982 decided to try and locate more of the objects, along with the help of Dr. Harold Edgerton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Marx was able to get permission for his expedition from the Brazilian government and then went about combing the bottom of the bay with sophisticated sonar technology, peering down there through the waves to try and catch a glimpse of anomalous history. At first he was actually rather skeptical of the whole thing, thinking that the jars that had been found were hoaxes, but what he found was beyond anything even he could have expected.
After finding a promising spot, Marx dove down to find an accumulation of 200 amphorae found down there in the murky, heavily polluted water, where they had been for thousands of years, some on the surface and others buried deep, covered with muck, barnacles or even ensconced in coral and some of them entirely intact even after so many centuries lying there on the sludge of the bottom. It was a remarkable find to say the least, and it was thought by the team that these jars could not have been planted there in modern times, but were rather from some unknown, hidden past. It was Marx’s speculation that the mysterious jars had come from an ancient Roman ship, and he even claimed that there had been evidence of a possible wooden wreck buried down there, but if this was the case then how did such an ancient voyage manage to make it to Brazil many centuries before the first known European presence here, when the Romans were never known to have made it any farther than India in an era when South America might as well have been another planet across a sea of stars? These were things that Marx wanted to find out, and he went about trying to organize a further expedition to the area to uncover more information and look for any wreck that might be there or any other artifacts such as hull fragments, coins, or weapons, for as he has said, “If authentic, it would be one of the most important discoveries in the field of marine archaeology.”
Amphorae
In the meantime, Marx had the jars studied by experts, claiming that everyone who looked at them confirmed that they were from the 2nd or 3rd century and of Roman origin. One of these experts was a professor of classics and specialist in ancient Roman amphoras at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst a specialist by the name of Elizabeth Will, who has said of them:
The highly publicized amphoras Robert Marx found in the ship are in fact similar in shape to jars produced in kilns at Kouass, on the west coast of Morocco. The Rio jars look to be late versions of those jars, perhaps datable to the third century A.D. I have a large piece of one of the Rio jars, but no labs I have consulted have any clay similar in composition. So the edges of the earth for Rome, beyond India and Scotland and eastern Europe, remain shrouded in mystery.
According to Marx, the jars likely came from a Roman ship that had made it to Brazil, and that it could not have been merely a wandering derelict that had blown away across the ocean unmanned because it had managed to navigate all the way up the bay without crashing on the rocks or reefs along the way. His theory was that it had likely made it to Brazil under human control and then perhaps been blown off course to end up where it had. It was an incredible mystery, and one which Marx had hoped to solve before a series of setbacks kept him from it.
Roman ship
In 1983, the Brazilian government, which had been cooperative up to that point, suddenly and without any real explanation denied Marx’s request for permission to further explore the area. In fact, they even went as far as to ban him from entering the country at all, citing the allegations that he had stolen numerous historical objects from shipwrecks all over the country, and with Guanabara Bay this would extend into a full ban on any underwater exploration by anyone whatsoever. The frustrated Marx then accused the Brazilian government of a cover-up, saying that they were trying to wipe out anything that would clash with the established known history of the country, and this was why no effort had ever been made to investigate the fishermen’s claims in the past. He even went as far as to accuse the Brazilian Navy of burying the jars and possible shipwreck in silt in order to keep them hidden, which they denied.
So what is going on here? How did ancient Roman jars get all the way over in Brazil? Were these from a derelict ship blow out across the sea? Were they from some Roman voyage overseas that actually managed to cross the Atlantic? Is the Brazilian government trying to cover it up and subdue any further research on the matter? Or is it all a hoax perpetrated by Marx? Are the jars really even ancient at all? It is still undetermined, and considering that the area has been closed off to any more expeditions, it seems likely that if there is anything there, then it will remain down there in its watery final resting place for many millennia more, forever eluding answers.
The more we learn about this weird universe of ours, the more we realize just how little we know. Soon after scientists realized that they don’t actually know how the sun works, it seems that another thing we thought was totally settled might be completely wrong as well. A new study seems to show that the universe could bea billion years younger than previously thought. Which is a big deal, as it means that something, somewhere in our model of how the universe works, is broken.
The age of the universe was determined by the European Planck telescope’s measurements of cosmic background radiation in 2013. By measuring the background radiation, astrophysicists could determine the rate that the universe was expanding, and by extension, how long it’s been since the universe was a single point, what we call the “big bang.” The number the Planck telescope came up with was 13.8 billion years. It was a solid answer, and was believed to be almost certainly correct. It only needed to be confirmed by other independent telescopes, pointed at neighboring galaxies. Six years and a whole bunch of data later, it turns out we might not be as smart as we think we are. The data did not confirm the Planck telescope measurements, but instead throws a billion year wrench into the whole thing.
The new data showed that the universe was expanding 9% faster than the Planck telescope showed. That 9% difference in the expansion rate adds up to an age discrepancy of a billion years. According to Nobel prize-winner Adam Riess, who co-authored the new study, they were completely unprepared to deal with such a discrepancy:
“It was getting to the point where we say, ‘Wait a second, we’re not passing this test — we’re failing the test!'”
Alone, Riess’ data would suggest that the universe is only 12.5 to 13 billion years old. So there’s a problem somewhere, but no one knows where it is. Further observation by Riess’ team only confirmed their results, while reanalysis of the Planck data showed there was no problem there either. If the numbers are correct, it means that the problem is in how we’re interpreting them. Riess says:
“This is not just two experiments disagreeing. We are measuring something fundamentally different. One is a measurement of how fast the universe is expanding today, as we see it. The other is a prediction based on the physics of the early universe and on measurements of how fast it ought to be expanding. If these values don’t agree, there becomes a very strong likelihood that we’re missing something in the cosmological model that connects the two eras.”
It’s starting to look like there’s a fundamental problem with our model of the universe. As the competing data is checked and re-checked and neither seem to have any errors, it becomes more and more likely that the problem lies with the underlying theories. According to astrophysicist Jo Dunkley, we don’t have any models of the universe that can account for everything:
“There’s currently no consistent story that works for all our cosmological data. That means there is fascinating work to be done, to see if there is something out there that can explain all of it.”
Maybe there is a “theory of everything,” but it’s safe to say we haven’t found it yet, and it’s a good bet that we’ll be wrong a whole bunch of times before we get it right.
In late 2017, thealleged disclosureof a black budget government research project known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) changed the contemporary conversation surrounding UFOs and what the U.S. government may know about them. As it turns out, the Department of Defense is quite aware of many anomalous or otherwise unidentified aerial phenomena whichregularly enter U.S. airspaceand easily outrun the very best aircraft we have. Who knew?
Naturally, there are those within the government who encourage the study of these phenomena and those who want to ignore them. However, there are voices within the intelligence and defense agencies which argue United States government has an obligation to study these phenomena to determine if they pose a threat to American air superiority, the American people, or humanity itself.
That’s according to Chris Mellon, who served for two decades in various intelligence advisory roles within the U.S. government including Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Intelligence from 1999 to 2002. Mellon currently serves as “national security affairs adviser” for Tom DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science and as a consultant on its upcoming History channel series Unidentified. In a new essay published by The Hill, Mellon pulls no punches in declaring prior attempts to study the UFO phenomenon to be failures:
Most Americans would no doubt agree that our inability to identify scores of mysterious aircraft repeatedly violating restricted U.S. military airspace in recent years is a shocking failure.
Mellon argues that given the overwhelming evidence, the United States Congress must act to mandate a report on UAPs, unidentified aerial phenomena. The evidence is clear that these phenomena exist and are much more frequent than we know, Mellon writes, meaning it’s time the government for the government to finally get to the bottom of the UFO phenomenon once and for all:
If UAPs turn out to be toys of Elon Musk’s making, we’ll all breathe a sigh of relief. If they are Russian, we’ll be glad we took action now rather than kicking the can down the road. If we learn that someone else’s more advanced version of our Voyager spacecraft has reached Earth, then this humble measure will forever transform our understanding of the universe and man’s place within it.
Let’s hope they are Elon Musk’s toys. Mellon doesn’t outright call for full disclosure, instead merely arguing that Congress must “require the secretary of Defense and the director of national intelligence to review the UAP issue and deliver a report providing a comprehensive assessment.” It’s unknown if Congressional committees would make such a report public even if it’s ever produced, and Mellon himself argues that the Trump administration “should be free to provide the report at whatever level of classification it deems appropriate,” but come on: why would the government want citizens to know there are freaky outer space gizmos whizzing around overhead that make the F/A-18 look like a failed Wright Brothers model? That’s bad for Boeing sales.
Still, it’s reassuring to see major political publications taking the UAP phenomenon seriously enough to publish such an opinion piece. The timing makes me wonder, though: is all of this merely part of the publicity campaign for the History channel’s upcoming series? History is owned by Hearst and Disney, huge media conglomerates with extensive reach within the media. It’s not too far-fetched to wonder if some strings have been pulled to get this piece published.
Then again, this could be a sign that more voices are joining the chorus calling for disclosure of the government’s UFO research. Are the AATIP revelations a smokescreen or the first taste of public disclosure?
America Before-Exposing the Cover-Up of Ancient Advanced Civilizations
America Before-Exposing the Cover-Up of Ancient Advanced Civilizations
We speak to Graham Hancock about his new book America Before: The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilization.
Graham Hancock discusses how dogmatism in archaeology has covered up 130,000 years of human history in the Americas and evidence of advanced civilizations that lived in the Americas thousands of years ago, which challenges colonial narratives of uncivilized natives incapable of high culture.
SpaceX alien shock: UFO-hunters spot SPACESHIP during International Space Station link-up
SpaceX alien shock: UFO-hunters spot SPACESHIP during International Space Station link-up
ALIEN hunters were sent into a frenzy when they saw what they believe to be a UFO zooming past SpaceX’s Dragon as it latched onto the International Space Station (ISS).
In early December, 2018, SpaceX successfully ferried 2.5 tonnes of supplies to the the orbiting laboratory, including materials to support 250 experiments on its Dragon spaceship. However, while Dragon was latching onto the ISS to deliver the supplies, eagle-eyed viewers believe they spotted something in the distance. As seen on a NASA live feed from the ISS, what looks like three red lights in a triangular formation appear to slowly move by in the background.
Conspiracy theorists had a field day, with some categorically stating it is evidence of an alien spaceship.
According to alien hunters UFO Today, the sighting is evidence that extraterrestrials were observing the mission.
UFO Today said: “At the beginning of the video we suddenly see a large triangular object flying behind the dragon capsule.
“This object was triangular in shape and it was emitting light in several places, probably it's propulsion system. This UFO could investigating the dragon capsule in space.
The alleged UFO
(Image: YOUTUBE)
“Could this be first contact in space?”
However, others have offered a more logical explanation.
One user on Reddit wrote: “That’s just moonlight reflecting off the camera’s internal lenses.”
Wirmish wrote on YouTube: “It's a piece of gold foil used to protect satellite hardware from the heat.
SpaceX alien shock: UFO-hunters spot SPACESHIP during International Space Station link-up
(Image: GETTY)
“Russian astronauts worked outside the space station three days before.”
Scientists who have worked for NASA in the past have a much simpler explanation for all of the bizarre UFO sightings reported.
According to former NASA engineer James Oberg, most UFO sightings are nothing more than “space dandruff” floating in front of cameras.
SpaceX successfully ferried 2.5 tonnes of supplies to the the ISS
(Image: GETTY)
These specks of dandruff can be anything from bits of chipped paint drifting aimlessly in zero gravity, flakes of ice or ISS insulation that has broken off.
He said: “I’ve had enough experience with real spaceflight to realise that what's being seen in many videos is nothing beyond the 'norm' from fully mundane phenomena occurring in unearthly settings.”
Mr Oberg argued the human brain is not wired to make sense of these tiny objects floating above Earth.
At some point, humans might settle Mars. But according to an evolutionary biologist, babies born on the Red Planet will look, function, and behave dramatically different from Earthlings — and all within a few generations.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Tech entrepreneurs and technologists like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos love to talk about our species’ future as a multi-planetary species. And to be fair, they’re actually making important contributions to turn this vision into a reality. But while there’s a lot of focus on the technology that might take us to places such as Mars, not nearly as much thought seems to be given to what happens once we actually get there.
Mars is the most Earth-like planet in the solar system, so it makes sense to make it the first target for an off-world colony. Similar to Earth, Mars has a pair of polar ice caps. Its north pole is made up of a sheet of ice water that is 1.8 miles thick. The sheet at the opposite pole is even thicker, and made mostly of carbon dioxide ice.
There are also important differences between the two worlds. The planet is smaller than ours, with a diameter of approximately 4,200 miles, and the air is comprised mainly of carbon dioxide — it makes up 95 % of the atmosphere. Temperatures on Mars regularly reach a chilling -195 degrees Fahrenheit (-125 degrees Celsius), making living on its surface virtually impossible.
Mars used to support volcanic activity (Mars is home to the largest volcanoes on any planet in our solar system) during a time when water in its liquid phase is believed to have been quite plentiful. In addition, Mars had a thick atmosphere and a magnetic field which would have been capable of shielding the cold surface from dangerous levels of radiation — but not anymore.
Homo martianus
Any human colonists settling Mars would have to be confined to a relatively small habitat where they’d be subject to significantly higher radiation and more difficult living conditions than on Earth. In time, natural selection would amplify certain traits in the Martian population that would considerably differentiate humans born on the Red Planet from Earthlings. And according to Scott Solomon, a Rice University professor of evolutionary biology, this could happen within just a couple of generations.
“Evolution is faster or slower depending on how much of an advantage there is to having a certain mutation,” Solomon told Inverse. “If a mutation pops up for people living on Mars, and it gives them a 50-percent survival advantage, that’s a huge advantage, right? And that means that those individuals are going to be passing those genes on at a much higher rate than they otherwise would have.”
Among other things, Solomon expects Martians will develop the following traits:
Denser and more brittle bones due to Mars’ weaker gravity, which is just a third that of Earth’s.
Near-sightedness since people won’t have to see as far as they would on Earth. Solomon cites studies of cavefish living in deep trenches that have gone blind in pitch black darkness and of children who spent more time indoors, making them far more likely to become near-sighted.
Altered skin tone in response to high levels of radiation. On Earth, human skin contains a pigment called melanin that protects us from ultraviolet rays. People with more melanin in their skin have a darker skin tone. To fight off radiation, Martians might evolve an entirely new type of pigment so it might not be that far-fetched to imagine Martians with a skin tone that doesn’t exist yet.
Enhanced oxygen intake. Martian settlers will have to learn to use oxygen more efficiently and will perhaps adapt traits similar to humans living on the Tibetan plateau where oxygen is 40% lower than at sea level. To cope, Tibetans have denser capillaries that are better at moving blood and altered metabolism that limits the amount of body fat burned while maximizing glucose consumption.
Poor immune system — or none at all. Solomon thinks that the Martian sterile environment might make an immune system obsolete. With no immune system, Martians would have to be off limits from germ-carrying Earthlings, which means that the two populations would have to stop mingling. This also means that at some point there would be no more traveling between the two worlds — and there would certainly be no more sex between them. Lacking any gene flow, in time the two populations would diverge so much that speciation would become inevitable — Homo martianus?
These changes could happen very quickly, spurred by radiation which enhances genetic mutations, but also by artificial means through gene editing tools like CRISPR/Cas9.
According to Solomon, the ideal human colony should number around 100,000 people from all corners of the globe, especially those from Africa who are the most genetically diverse. This is in order to ensure a healthy genetic diversity.
Some hope that we might one-day terraform Mars to make it a second Earth. But even if such an ambitious undertaking were possible, it would still take centuries to complete — ample breeding time for Martian settlers to comfortably drift away from humanity.
You can learn more about how humans on Mars might change over the generations from Solomon’s 2018 TEDx speech.
Scientists have set their sights on getting humans to Mars — and maybe even terraforming the Red Planet. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s goal is tosend humans to Mars by 2024, andNASA plans to launch astronauts there after the Moon.
But despite the resources being funneled into technology to transport us to the Red Planet, we don’t yet understand the evolutionary implications the move will have on the human body. In a new interview with Inverse, evolutionary biologist and Rice University professor Scott Solomon thinks it’s worth asking what will happen to Mars colonists in the long term — as mutations start to cascade through the gene pool.
“What’s interesting to me as an evolutionary biologist is thinking about, what if we’re actually successful?” he asked the site. “I don’t think there has been nearly as much discussion about what would become of the people that are living in these colonies generations later.”
Genetic Jumble
In January 2018, Solomon gave a TEDx talk in Houston that outlined the evolutionary changes the first Martian settlers will likely experience. After about two generations, he thinks their bones will strengthen, they’ll need glasses for nearsightedness, their immune systems will be null, pregnancy and childbirth will be significantly more perilous, and the exposure to radiation—more than 5,000 times the amount we’re exposed to on Earth during a normal lifetime, Solomon says—could lead to an influx of cancer.
Most importantly, though? Solomon argues that Martians should stop reproducing with Earth-humans.
“Evolution is faster or slower depending on how much of an advantage there is to having a certain mutation,” Solomon says in the video. So, if humans on Mars gain a mutation that raises their survival advantage, that’s a good thing — but Solomon says they’ll be “passing those genes on at a much higher rate than they otherwise would have.”
Pop Cap
Contact with Earthlings could even be deadly for Martians — and vice versa. Mars doesn’t have any microorganisms to carry disease, and so if cross contamination between Earth and Mars is controlled, Solomon explains that all infectious disease could be eliminated — meaning there should be no intimate connection between the two groups.
But all mutation isn’t bad. Every new baby on Earth is born with 60 new mutations, a number which Solomon says will jump to the thousands on Mars. By mutating, humans on Mars would gain critical, life-saving benefits to cope with the brutal planet: a different skin tone to protect from radiation, less reliance on oxygen to adapt to the thin atmosphere, denser bones to counteract calcium loss during pregnancy.
CRISPR Drawer
Solomon even suggests that we could use CRISPR to more purposefully design these helpful mutations.
Maybe it’s sadly ironic. If Earth becomes uninhabitable and we look to other planets for a new home, the only way to ensure the long term survival of the human species might be to become a completely different species.
“If we eventually come to inhabit multiple worlds scattered across the gallery, over time, we may see the evolution of a plethora of new human species,” Solomon said. “We should recognize that here could be unintended consequences for who our decedents become many generations from now.”
Did you know that there are forests in the Arctic?
Lush underwater forests of large brown seaweeds (kelps) are particularly striking in the Arctic, especially in contrast to the land where ice scour (scraping of sea ice against the sea floor) and harsh climates leave the ground barren with little vegetation.
Kelp forests have been observed throughout the Arctic by Inuit, researchers and polar explorers. The Canadian Arctic alone represents 10 percent of the world’s coastlines, but we know little of the hidden kelp forests there.
Today, climate change is altering marine habitats such as kelp forests on a global scale. In western Australia, eastern Canada, southern Europe, northern California and eastern United States, kelps are disappearing due to warming temperatures. In other areas, kelps are being heavily over-grazed by sea urchins. Coastal conditions in the Arctic are changing dramatically and the region is warming faster than the rest of the world, but these changes could actually be good for kelp.
Yet we know little about kelp forests in remote Arctic regions. Our latest research, published in Global Change Biology, uncovers the distribution of Arctic kelp forests and explores how these important ecosystems are changing with the climate.
Proliferation of kelps in the Arctic
Kelps currently occur on rocky coasts throughout the Arctic. The longest kelp recorded in the Arctic in Canada was 15 meters, and the deepest was found at 60-meter depth (Disko Bay, Greenland). Many find it surprising that marine plants can grow so well in harsh Arctic environments.
Photographs show examples of Arctic kelp forests: (A) Alaria esculenta in Greenland, (B) Laminaria solidungula in the Beaufort Sea, Alaska (Ken Dunton), (C) Laminaria hyperborea in Malangen fjord, Norway (Karen Filbee-Dexter), (D) Saccharina latissima on sediment in Russia, (E) Agarum clathratum and (F) mixed Saccharina latissima, S. longicruris, Alaria esculenta, Laminaria solidungula in Baffin Island, Canada (Frithjof Küpper), (G) Eularia fistulosa in Aleutian Islands, Alaska (Pike Spector), (H) Laminaria hyperborea in Murmansk, Russia (Dalnie Zelentsy), (I) Laminaria digitata in Svalbard, Norway (Max Schwanitz).
Image via Karen Filbee-Dexter.
Kelps have adapted to the severe conditions. These cool water species have special strategies to survive freezing temperatures and long periods of darkness, and even grow under sea ice. In regions with cold, nutrient-rich water, they can attain some of the highest rates of primary production of any natural ecosystem on Earth.
Kelps function underwater in the same way trees do on land. They create habitat and modify the physical environment by shading light and softening waves. The underwater forests that kelps create are used by many animals for shelter and food. More than 350 different species — up to 100,000 small invertebrates — can live on a single kelp plant, and many fish, birds and mammals depend on the whole forest. Kelp forests also help protect coastlines by decreasing the power of waves during storms and reducing coastal erosion. A lot of kelp break off or are dislodged from the rock they attach to and end up in nearby habitats where they fuel deep food webs.
Changing climates, forests
As waters warm and sea ice retreats, more light will reach the seafloor, which will benefit marine plants. Researchers predict a northern shift of kelp forests as ice retreats.
Genetic evidence reveals that most kelps reinvaded the Arctic from the Atlantic Ocean quite recently (approximately 8,000 years ago, following the last Ice Age). As a result, most kelps in the Arctic are living in waters colder than their optimal temperature. Ocean warming will also move conditions closer to temperatures of maximum growth, and could increase the productivity of these habitats.
However, other changes are happening in the Arctic that complicate this picture. In Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Siberia, permafrost soils that have been frozen for thousands of years are receding by half a meter per year. Thawing permafrost and crumbling Arctic coasts are dumping sediments into coastal waters at alarming rates, which blocks light and could limit plant growth. The run-off from melting glaciers will also lower salinity and increase turbidity, which impacts young kelp.
Understanding kelp forests
The Canadian Arctic is the longest Arctic coastline in the world. The earliest scientific records of kelp in the Arctic are from Canada during expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage. In Hudson Bay and eastern Canada, kelp forests have been scientifically documented between Ellesmere Island and Labrador, and along coasts in Lancaster Sound, Ungava Bay, Hudson Bay, Baffin Bay and Resolute Bay.
In the northwestern Canadian Arctic, lack of rock substrate and a harsher climate support smaller, fragmented kelp forests. However, baseline measures of the extent of kelp communities are missing in many areas. Unfortunately, lack of information has already made it difficult to tell how kelp forests are changing.
Locations of kelp forests in the Arctic. Based on 1,179 scientific records.
Image via Karen Filbee-Dexter.
Today, a number of researchers in Canada have partnered with northern communities and organizations to study kelp in the Arctic. The five-year ArcticKelp Project, for example, explores future changes and opportunities these ecosystems could provide. At the same time new technology (underwater lasers) is being developed in collaboration with Inuit fishers to map kelp forests in the Arctic. This is important, because knowledge of Arctic kelp forests could help northern communities and societies anticipate and benefit from these valuable changing ecosystems.
Forest potential
Kelp forests throughout the world play an important role in coastal economies, supporting a broad range of tourism, recreational and commercial activities. Kelp is making its way onto the plates of North Americans, and the kelp aquaculture industry is growing at a rate of seven percent per year for the last 20 years globally (kelp is a coveted food source in many countries, full of potassium, iron, calcium, fibre and iodine). In the Arctic, Inuit traditionally use kelp as food and wild harvest numerous species.
Arctic kelp forests provide a key example of the diverse responses to climate change. Predictive models and experiments suggest that Arctic coasts are in line to become one of the most impacted environments in the world under changing climate. Yet the possible expansion of kelp forests should provide new habitats for fish and other marine organisms, and enhance a suite of valuable ecosystem services along Arctic coastlines.
This expanding resource may provide needed income to northern communities whose livelihoods are threatened by climate change and other impacts. Anticipating these changes and understanding these new ecosystems will be a key priority for Arctic nations. Just because you cannot see the forests growing in the Arctic does not mean we should not appreciate them and recognize the crucial role they play in the ocean.
At the end of 2017, The New York Times broke the story of a secretive Pentagon program with a budget of $22 million to investigate UFOs called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). The man who exposed the existence of the program, Luis Elizondo, was the former head of the project. Elizondo’s ongoing efforts to investigate the UFO mystery with his new employer, the To the Stars Academy (TTSA), will be featured in a History Channel series premiering May 31 called Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.
However, what The New York Times apparently did not know when they published their story is that the program went by a different name at its inception, and the scope of the program was much broader than just UFOs. In fact, according to a senior manager on the project, the investigations included “bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, animal and human injuries and much more.”
It is unknown whether Unidentified will cover the paranormal aspects of the program. Although Elizondo did work with this paranormal project, he only worked in the UFO division. By the time he was the head of the entire program, the UFO division was all that was left. The rest of the program had been shut down, and you will never guess why. It wasn’t because people inside the Department of Defense (DoD) thought the program was too weird, although some did. It was shut down because of demonic forces.
Don’t worry, demons didn't attack the Pentagon, but apparently, some people inside the government were afraid the potentially paranormal incidents being investigated could be demonic, especially scary occurrences taking place at a ranch in Utah, and they wanted no part of it. They didn’t want the government messing with demons either, so they lobbied for the program to be ended and it was.
This may sound extremely odd, but according to those involved, it's true.
The New York Timesstory that broke the Pentagon UFO program began when an official with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) approached Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow “to visit Mr. Bigelow’s ranch in Utah, where he conducted research.”
That sounds innocent enough, but what the article did not cover is what Bigelow researched at this ranch in Utah. Bigelow was known for his interest in the paranormal and UFOs, and by the time the DIA official had approached him, Bigelow had already spent decades and large sums of money researching the paranormal. Bigelow’s first significant foray into the unknown was an organization created in 1995 called the National Institute for Discovery Sciences (NIDS). Its purpose was to conduct scientific investigations of the paranormal.
After hearing rumors about paranormal phenomena occurring in the Uintah Basin in Utah, primarily focused on Skinwalker Ranch, Bigelow bought the ranch in 1996. It was the perfect place to conduct NIDS investigations. The ranchers who owned the property stayed for a while but left because they did not feel comfortable there. If their stories are to be believed, they had good reason to go.
The family, using the pseudonym Gorman, said they had several terrifying experiences. Among them was the sighting of a giant wolf-like creature that attacked cattle, could withstand multiple point-blank gunshots and seemed to disappear into thin air. The incident that caused them to leave for good, however, was when their beloved dogs chased glowing orbs of light into the forest at night never to be seen again.
The NIDS investigators had their share of experiences as well. As detailed in Knapp and Kelleher’s book, the strangest occurred in the middle of the night while two researchers were observing the ranch from the edge of a bluff. As they were packing up to leave at around 2:30 am, one of them noticed a light in the forest below. At first, they thought it might be a reflection. However, as they watched, the light began to grow. Once it became a couple of feet wide, they say it looked like a tunnel opening up, and they saw a creature within. It was large and black with no face. It crawled out of the light and into the dark forest. The light then began to disappear until it was gone.
Kelleher said years ago he felt whatever was going on at the Skinwalker Ranch outsmarted them and anticipated their actions.
John Alexander, a retired Colonel in U.S. Army Intelligence who also spent time working at Los Alamos Laboratories and still does some work as a defense consultant, helped organize NIDS investigations. In a YouTube interview for OpenMinds.tv in 2013, he describes what they encountered at the ranch as a “precognitive sentient phenomena.”
“What we learned was that the events were real and tangible, and definitely occurring,” Alexander explained. “These weren’t figments of someone’s imagination, or folklore or any of these sorts of things.”
“But, as for the etiology, nope,” says Alexander. ”We remained mystified.”
According to a recent interview with Knapp, Investigations into the ranch petered as the paranormal phenomena occurring on the ranch also waned. By the early 2000s, not much was going on. It was during this lull that Bigelow allowed Knapp to begin working on the book. Once the book was published, it brought a lot of attention to the ranch, but paranormal experiences were still rare.
So when the DIA official approached Bigelow in 2007 to visit the ranch, no one thought there would be anything to worry about. However, precognitive sentient forces on the ranch had other plans. Soon after arriving at the ranch, the DIA official had a paranormal encounter that Knapp described as “remarkable, and it made a very big impression on this guy.”
The New York Times says shortly after this visit, DIA officials met with Senator Harry Reid because they wanted to start a research program. It turns out Reid, a friend of Bigelow’s, was kept in the loop regarding Bigelow’s work researching the paranormal because he shared Bigelow’s interest in the topic.
Reid then found bipartisan support from a couple of fellow members of Congress, secured the funding, and got the project launched - all within 2007. Soon after, a requisition for a contractor to conduct research for the program was posted, and Bigelow’s Bigelow Aerospace won it. Bigelow created Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), lead by Kelleher, to manage the contract.
However, the project was not called AATIP, as The New York Times reported. Per Knapp and documents he obtained, it was called the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System (AAWSAP), and it was set up to investigate not just UFOs, but primarily all of the weird stuff going on at the Skinwalker Ranch, including that list of weirdness at the beginning of this story.
Due to the nature of the project, it was kept as quiet as possible. Few in Congress knew it existed. However, it didn’t take long for religious factions within the government to raise concerns.
“They’re basically high-level people in different intelligence agencies who are fundamentalist Christians; who think that anything involving UFOs and the paranormal is satanic,” says Knapp.
“Certain senior government officials thought our collection of facts on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) was dangerous to their philosophical beliefs,” Elizondo wrote in a post on Medium. “They decided the data was a threat to their belief system.”
Elizondo explained to Den of Geek that by 2008, the negative attention their paranormal investigations received caused them to create a sub-group inside of AAWSAP that only focused on military UFO cases. This was AATIP. When Elizondo joined AAWSAP (the paranormal program), it was to work with AATIP (the UFO division). Eventually, the DIA closed AAWSAP, and only AATIP remained. Elizondo took over leadership of AATIP in 2010.
As for The New York Times, one of the authors of the article, Leslie Kean, told me via email "at the time, our focus was AATIP. This was the name on the documents that we had, and this is what Lue Elizondo had talked to us about in interviews with him, as did others associated with the program." Elizondo says that since his involvement was primarily with AATIP and the UFO side of things, he did not feel at liberty to share AAWSAP information with them.
Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell has recently completed a documentary titled Hunt for the Skinwalker. He worked with Knapp, who intended to make a film when the book came out in 2005. The footage Knapp obtained back then is a large part of the new documentary.
“That $22 million that was created to study the phenomenon was really inspired wholly by Skinwalker Ranch and what Bigelow had been doing there privately with NIDS,” Corbell told this reporter in a recent podcast interview. “The public is going to see by watching this film that connection very clearly and yes, our Department of Defense, specifically the intelligence organization within the Department of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), they took this very seriously...Secrets have been kept, big secrets about this ranch for more than, I would say, two decades, and everybody wondered what has been going on there,” says Corbell. “This has been embargoed, this information. All of that has changed, and this story can now be told.”
These stories, although they sound fictional, are accounts from credible sources, and according to Corbell, Knapp, and Elizondo, there are still more shocking revelations to come. Elizondo recently told Den of Geek, “You ain't seen nothing yet, baby!”
Those of us following this story have been wondering when the time will come for us to find out more. Elizondo says much of what we have been waiting for will be included in the History Channel series Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation premiering May 31.
Amerikaanse overheid beëindigt paranormaal UFO-project vanwege demonische krachten. Dit lijkt op sciencefiction, maar is het niet
Amerikaanse overheid beëindigt paranormaal UFO-project vanwege demonische krachten. Dit lijkt op sciencefiction, maar is het niet
Eind 2017 onthulde de New York Times dat het Pentagon in het geheim onderzoek deed naar UFO’s.
Wat daarbij niet werd vermeld is dat het project ook bizarre wezens, klopgeesten, onzichtbare entiteiten en lichtbollen omvatte.
De man die aan het hoofd stond van het paranormale project, Luis Elizondo, richtte zich alleen op het UFO-fenomeen.
Demonische krachten
Tegen de tijd dat hij werd aangewezen als projectleider, bestond alleen de UFO-afdeling nog. De rest van het programma was beëindigd, vanwege demonische krachten. Dat lees je goed.
Sommige overheidsfunctionarissen waren bang dat de paranormale incidenten die werden onderzocht, demonisch konden zijn en wilden er niets mee te maken hebben.
Ze hadden vooral moeite met vreemde gebeurtenissen op een ranch in Utah.
De functionarissen lobbyden actief om het programma te laten beëindigen en zo geschiedde.
Lichtbollen
De bewuste ranch is van miljardair Robert Bigelow, die zelf nauw betrokken was bij het geheime project.
Bigelow werd benaderd door een functionaris van de Amerikaanse militaire inlichtingendienst DIA, die de ranch – bijgenaamd Skinwalker Ranch – wilde bezoeken.
Op de ranch werd onder meer een gigantisch wolfachtig wezen gezien dat koeien aanviel en in het niets leek te verdwijnen.
Ook werden er ’s nachts lichtbollen gezien in het nabijgelegen bos.
Geen hersenspinsels
Twee wetenschappers zagen zo’n lichtbol in het bos en dachten in eerste instantie dat het een reflectie was.
Het licht werd groter en deed denken aan een tunnel die openging. Middenin de bol zagen ze een groot, zwart wezen zonder gezicht.
De gepensioneerde kolonel John Alexander, die het onderzoek op de ranch overzag, zei: “De gebeurtenissen vonden echt plaats. Het waren geen hersenspinsels of zo.”
Hij voegde toe dat ze nog altijd niet weten wat het is geweest.
Gevaar
Het duurde niet lang voordat de religieuze facties binnen de overheid lucht kregen van het onderzoek.
“Het gaat hierbij om hooggeplaatste mensen in verschillende inlichtingendiensten, fundamentalistische christenen, die denken dat alles wat met UFO’s te maken heeft satanisch is,” zei journalist George Knapp.
“Bepaalde overheidsfunctionarissen vond dat onze verzameling feiten over UFO’s een gevaar vormde voor hun overtuigingen,” zei Elizondo.
“Ze kwamen tot de conclusie dat de informatie een bedreiging vormde voor hun geloofssysteem,” vervolgde hij.
Onderzoekers stuiten op geschokte kwarts in cenote in Mexico. Kan het worden gebruikt bij het vormen van wormgaten?
Foto: Altairisfar Wikimedia Commons
Onderzoekers stuiten op geschokte kwarts in cenote in Mexico. Kan het worden gebruikt bij het vormen van wormgaten?
Eind negentiende eeuw was de algemene opvatting dat er in de diepzee geen leven zou kunnen bestaan. In maart 1875 werd ontdekt dat het diep in de oceanen wemelt van leven.
Er werden bijna 5000 nieuwe diersoorten gevonden. Men sprak van een wetenschappelijke revolutie.
Daarnaast werden op de zeebodem de eerste micrometeorieten van nikkelijzer ontdekt, afkomstig uit de ruimte.
Buitenaards leven
Volgens sommige wetenschappers kunnen deze bolletjes buitenaards leven bevatten.
Zij stellen dat microben duizenden tot wel miljoenen jaren kunnen overleven in zulke meteorieten.
Professor Leonid Moroz van de Universiteit van Florida merkte op dat het aardoppervlak voor 75 procent is bedekt met water in de vorm van zeeën en oceanen en dat we nog maar 10 procent van al het zeeleven in kaart hebben gebracht.
Geschokte kwarts
In een cenote, de naam voor ondergelopen grotten, in het Mexicaanse Tulum is verder geschokte kwarts ontdekt.
Deze vorm van kwarts bevat structuren die zijn ontstaan onder extreem hoge druk maar lage temperatuur, en komt ook voor binnen inslagkraters van meteorieten.
Wormgaten
Sommige onderzoekers zijn van mening dat dergelijk kwarts kan worden gebruikt bij het vormen van wormgaten.
Deze wormgaten zouden vervolgens gebruikt kunnen worden voor interdimensionale reizen.
Bob Lazar: 30-Year Anniversary of Interview on Area 5
Bob Lazar: 30-Year Anniversary of Interview on Area 51
A new report from George Knapp and KLAS-TV’s I-Team looks back at the 30th anniversary of their original Bob Lazar interview. Interestingly, what Lazar described back in 1989 bears some resemblance to properties of UFOs in the Pentagon videos released in 2017 and the possible use of mysterious “meta-materials.” Source.
Robert Scott Lazar claims to have worked on reverse engineering extraterrestrial technology at a site called S-4, near the Area 51 test facility, and that the UFOs use gravity wave propulsion. This is powered by the element 115.Wikipedia
“Since 2015, dozens of Navy F-18 fighter jets have encountered Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAPs) – once commonly referred to as UFOs – off the East Coast of the United States, some not far from the nation’s capital. Encounters have been reported by other military aircraft and civilian airliners elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad, too, including videos shot by airline passengers.
What these UAPs were and who was flying them – whether friends, foes or unknown forces – remains a mystery. Yet careful examination of the data inevitably leads to one possible, disturbing conclusion: A potential adversary of the United States has mastered technologies we do not yet understand, to achieve capabilities we cannot yet match. It is long past time for Congress to discover the answers to those questions, and to share at least some of its conclusions with the public.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to gauge the overall level of UAP activity, since military personnel rarely report their encounters for fear of damage to their careers. Even when reports are filed, the information generally is ignored because nobody “owns” the UAP issue, and the various commands and agencies involved have not shared information on UAPs.
It remains to be seen whether the Navy’s new UAP reporting process will be emulated throughout our massive, almost feudal security apparatus in which the barons sometimes spend more time protecting bureaucratic turf from rivals than protecting U.S. territory from adversaries. Thus, any genuine solution to the UAP issue must address the issue of interagency coordination and collaboration.
The good news is that America already possesses vast sensor networks, ranging from the depths of the oceans to the harsh bleakness of space, capable of collecting the requisite information. All that Congress need do at this juncture is to require the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence to review the UAP issue and deliver a report providing a comprehensive assessment. This report should include not only an estimate of the situation but a description of the structure and processes required to ensure effective collection and analysis going forward.
The Trump administration should be free to provide the report at whatever level of classification it deems appropriate. One entity with which I am involved – To the Stars Academy (TTSA), an organization of former U.S. intelligence and national security experts analyzing the UAP phenomenon – has placed notional legislative language on its website to facilitate this discussion. While some modest manpower costs might be incurred, the TTSA proposal does not require new Defense Department funding. It also averts the spectacle of public hearings and the attendant risk of injecting partisanship or grandstanding into the process.
Why should Congress act? In the first instance because it is Congress’s job to raise, organize and fund the military. It can hardly do so without being fully aware of the threats we face. Indeed, that is why we have a law requiring written notice to Congress of serious intelligence failures. Most Americans would no doubt agree that our inability to identify scores of mysterious aircraft repeatedly violating restricted U.S. military airspace in recent years is a shocking failure. But there is no need to wrangle over compliance with intelligence oversight laws. The Navy’s recent admissions regarding UAP intrusions provide more than adequate grounds for requiring a written report to Congress.
Perhaps we’ll learn that Russian President Vladimir Putin was not idly boasting when he bragged, more than a decade ago, that Russia’s “newest technical systems will be capable of destroying targets at an intercontinental distance with hypersonic speed and extreme maneuverability.” While it seems unlikely that Russia – or China – has pulled that far ahead of the U.S., there is no reason to leave this to chance. And while the Navy’s announcement seems to eliminate the prospect that these vehicles are secret U.S. military aircraft, perhaps we’ll find that Elon Musk has some amazing new toys.
It is not just that the UAPs which military pilots are encountering are strange – no paint, rivets, wings, antenna, safety lights, transponders or exhaust – they sometimes are so fast and maneuverable that they defy our understanding of physics. For example, some of these vehicles appear to withstand forces of acceleration far greater than maximum design limits of any man-made aircraft. No wonder some military witnesses – often, pilots who are scientists or engineers themselves – actually lean towards the hypothesis that they are not from this world. Like all good scientists, these pilots recognize that our theories must adjust to facts and new information, however daunting, not the other way around.
If our best minds were brought to bear to study the technology confronting us, much as the Japanese did in the 1850s when confronted by Admiral Perry’s fleet, then unprecedented technological breakthroughs could occur in short order. For example, the fact that these craft do not seem to produce exhaust, yet fly vast distances at immense speeds, could provide technical solutions to our energy crisis.
Some of America’s finest aviators and air defense personnel are trying to get our attention. They are not panicked – but they are right to be concerned. It seems clear the facts demand further action. In light of the facts, a mere report requirement seems a very modest response to potentially disturbing new national security information.
If UAPs turn out to be toys of Elon Musk’s making, we’ll all breathe a sigh of relief. If they are Russian, we’ll be glad we took action now rather than kicking the can down the road. If we learn that someone else’s more advanced version of our Voyager spacecraft has reached Earth, then this humble measure will forever transform our understanding of the universe and man’s place within it. By any measure, the effort required to prepare a report for Congress seems to be a bargain.”
Is there evidence of a lost city of ancient giants hidden beneath The Empty Quarter bordering Saudi Arabia and Oman. And could this city be linked to the ‘Works of the Old Men’, mysterious geoglyphs found in Jordan? This is part two of our look at Lovecraftian connections to Middle Eastern folklore.
The tribe of iram was a subset of nation of Aad and it is to this tribe that Hud (AS) was specifically sent to, i believe because they were the cause of all evil in the land at that time. They were the ancestors to the nation of Thamood, which was also a nation of giants, to which Saleh (AS) was sent.Both these nations were given the powers of strength, knowledge and financial acumen and they were a proud people.
Both the nations were destroyed because they were idolators and indulged in self worship, meaning the rich in their society were worshiped by the poor. In Ahadees this entire land was regarded as cursed and was prohibited from being visited in general. The people of iram were the first people to indulge in idol worshiping and all sorts of evils after the destruction of the people of Nuh (AS) and the great flood, which is the main reason Hud (AS) was sent to them. Bilal S.
There are paranormal sightings that make you want to know more in the hopes that they’re truly real. Then there are paranormal sightings that make you go “Really?” These three recent, well-publicized sightings are varying degrees of “Really?” and are presented to show just how hard it’s becoming to prove the existence of cryptids, aliens and otherworldly things while the mass media has discovered the attraction of publicizing highly skeptical events in the name of paranormal reality.
Case One is the alleged Chupacabra sighting in Houston reported by multiple local media outlets. This one was the typical Texas-style Chupacabra – a mangy-looking canine-ish creature staggering through the brush on the west side of this heavily populated and increasingly urbanized city in a manner that suggests a sick animal looking for comfort or a secluded place to suffer in peace – not a blood-sucking, vicious cryptid looking for fresh goats, livestock or pets. (See the picture and coverage here.) This is the same city where a starving pet tigerwas found recently in a home living in a filthy cage.
Possible 'chupacabra' caught on camera in Houston, if it were really real
The photo of this animal was taken on Richmond near Highway 6, behind the Shell facility, according to the viewer who spotted it.
So it’s not inconceivable this “Chupacabra” was a mistreated pet. Houston is also the home of numerous recent chemical spills and explosions, so it’s also possible this was a coyote or loose dog suffering from toxic exposure … a possible cause of the Texas version of what Puerto Ricans see as more of a two-legged reptilian creature. Sorry, Houston … the needle is buried in the Highly Skeptical area on our meter.
Better-fed dogs and no chemical spills = less Chupacabras?
“Is that Jesus Christ? Please, oh, Father God.”
Case Two is the alleged “flying humanoid” reported and recorded over Burbank, California, by Pablo Morales, whose inclusion of religious exclamations in the audio surely attracted even more attention to this typical “flying humanoid” sighting on what appeared to be a stormy day – always good for adding to the mood. (Watch the video here.) As usual, the most common of the logical comments on the video was an escaped string of balloons (aren’t we supposed to be suffering from a helium shortage?). With so many Marvel movies out, it seems various fictional superhero characters came in second, while angels of some sort benefited from Pablo’s religious exclamation and finished third. On this dark and stormy nightmare of a balloonish floating ‘something’, the meter is pointing to Very Skeptical.
Finally, we have Case Three – an animal mutilation report from Cornwall that in the U.S. might be blamed on aliens but in England it’s instead linked to witches and pagans. Cornwall Live interviewed Brian Lemin, an animal control official who was contacted by a farmer in the Middle Taphouse area of Dobwalls and arrived there to find two lambs which had their heads cut cleanly from their bodies – heads which were nowhere to be found. (Gross pictures here.) Lemin ruled out any sort of local predator like a fox or dog because the bodies showed no gnaw marks and still had all of their organs. He could have also ruled out Chupacabras or other cryptids because the bodies were still full of blood. Aliens? Cornwall Live says locals would rather blame witches or people who have different religious beliefs that they do – i.e. “pagans.” Richard Blackett, a media officer for the Pagan Federation (pagans have a media department?), responded quickly and angrily.
“This has no part in any practice by Pagan groups. I would say it smacks of antisocial behaviour, cruelty to animals. What has been done to these lambs is gruesome and unpleasant and it is not something those in the Pagan community would ever condone.”
Amen … or whatever Wicca, witchcraft, Druidism and other “land-based religions” say to agree. This actually sounds more like what Jennifer Hobson told Cornwall Live:
“It’s probably nasty little a***holes. Or older nasty a***holes who want to sell the skulls on eBay.”
Nasty a***holes. (Why three asterisks? It’s ‘arse’ in England.) For some reason, that seems to increasingly be the real cause behind many of these alleged paranormal events. While the clean cuts and missing heads in this case warrant further investigation, the needle on this one is still firmly on the skeptical side of the meter.
Over the years (decades, in fact) rumors have circulated suggesting that the CIA has a deep interest in nothing less than the final resting place of Noah’s Ark. There are tales of clandestine treks up Mount Ararat, Turkey to find ancient remains. There are also stories of pieces of the Ark having secretly beentaken to the Smithsonianfor study and storage. The big question, of course, is this: how much of all this can be vindicated? Can any of it be vindicated? Certainly, the CIA has a “file”on the Ark, but having a dossier does not mean that its staff have found the Ark, or have uncovered something amazing about it. Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, the CIA has declassified a number of interesting papers on the Ark, mostly from the 1970s and the 1980s. Let’s take a look at the content. The following words are taken directly from the CIA’s files. The first document of any significance reads as follows: “Noah’s Ark 1974 – 1982. On 13 May 1974, DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] Colby sent a letter to the DS&T, Sayre Stevens, asking if the Agency had any evidence of Noah’s Ark on Mt. Ararat. Mr. Colby said that Lieutenant Colonel Walter Brown of the US Air Force Academy had asked ‘whether it would be appropriate or possible to exploit satellite photography to examine the glacier systems there to see whether any evidence of the Ark could be found.’ On 21 May, the Center responded that no evidence of the Ark could be discerned on U-2 photography acquired on 10 September 1957 or on any satellite imagery available at the Center.”
Moving on to August 6, 1974, the CIA recorded the following: “Congressman Bob Wilson asked the Agency whether any aerial photos of Mt. Ararat could be released to a friend of his, Dr. John Morris, son of Dr. Henry M. Morris, the head of the Institution of Creation Research of San Diego, California. Mr. Hicks stated in a letter to the Agency legislative liaison staff that several U-2.photos dated 1957 were available but were still classified ‘Confidential.’ The younger Dr. Morris wrote to the Agency later requesting the photos. His request was denied by Angus Theurmer, the Agency’s press spokesman who stated ‘We have looked into this matter in some detail and we regret that we are unable to provide any information.’ In September/October 1974, Admiral Showers of the Intelligence Community Staff, in response to a query from Lieutenant Commander Lonnie McClung, asked about the availability of intelligence information concerning the location of Noah’s Ark. He was told that a search had been made of aerial photography with negative results.”
One year later, 1975, there was this from the CIA: “On 30 January 1975, Dr. John Morris again wrote Congressman Bob Wilson noting that aerial photos “were taken in August 1974, as a result of my request. They were not to be classified, but have been classified since and are not available.” Congressman Wilson again contacted the Agency with the request. On 27 February 1975, Mr. Hicks again denied the request. On 11 March 1975, Dr. Morris was notified that the photography of Mt. Ararat was classified and, therefore, could not be provided. An additional request made through Dr. Charles Willis of Fresno, California to Mr. Arthur C. Lundahl, retired Director NPIC on 5 March 1975 was also denied on 31 March 1975.” For those who may not know, “NPIC” means “National Photographic Interpretation Center.”
The CIA continued: “On 3 April 1975, NPIC Section Chief [deleted] sent a memo to the Chief, IEG, detailing the efforts of Messrs. [Deleted] and [deleted] who had searched unsuccessfully all available U-2 and satellite imagery for possible evidence of Noah’s Ark. This search had been prompted by the visit to the Center, on 14 March 1975, of Captain Howard Schue of the IC Staff with a ground photo “showing a long range view of the purported Ark.” The [deleted] Division of NPIC was tasked to determine if the Ark’s features in the photo had been altered; tests failed to identify any manipulation. Attempts to compare the ground photo with satellite imagery for identification and location purposes also proved negative. From 27 March to 5 April 1975, a French archeological explorer, Fernand Navarra was at Iverson Mall in Washington, D.C. publicizing his book Noah’s Ark: I Touched It. As part of the sales pitch for the book, there was a display which included a supposed wood fragment of the Ark. Several NPIC analysts concerned with the Ark problem visited the display but found nothing that would help their search efforts.”
And, there was even more from 1975, as the CIA recorded: “On 10 April 1975, Colonel Paul Tanota and Captain Howard Schue, of the IC Staff visited NPIC to discuss Mt. Ararat and to see the August 1974 aerial photography of the mountain. At the request of Captain Schue, a print of Mt. Ararat showing the 13,000 and 14,000 foot elevations was provided. On 5 July, 1975 a book entitled The Ark of Ararat by Thomas Nelson was released. Mr. Nelson maintained that the CIA had photos of Ararat and that they had been analyzed in the search for the Ark. On 12 October 1975, Tom Crotser from a group known as The Holy Ground Mission of Frankston; Texas showed a ground photo supposedly of the Ark taken during their 1974 expedition to Mt. Ararat. Sometime in 1977, Bill Chaney Speed of Search Foundation, Inc. requested the aerial photos of Mt. Ararat. His request also was denied.”
Senator Barry Goldwater wrote DCI Turner on September 1, 1978, “You may think this is a screwball request and it may be, but I would like to know if you can do anything about it.” The letter went on to ask if satellite photography could be searched “to determine whether or not something in the way of an archeological find might be located near or on top of the Mount.” Goldwater explained that a letter he had received had come “from a man in whom I have great confidence, who certainly is no nut, who knows Turkey rather well but who feels that there is reason to believe the Ark may be resting at or near the top of the mount. I assure that I will keep this at any classification you want it kept and if you desire me to go to the devil, I know the way.” DCI Turner replied “we have been requested on several occasions if we could determine whether there was remains of the Ark on Mt. Ararat. We have, as a result, carefully reviewed the photography of the area but have not found any evidence of the Ark.”
Moving onto the 1980s, the CIA added this to the Noah File: “On 27 May 1981, [deleted] of the Center received a telephone call from Air Force Talent Control Officer, Major Ray Abel, requesting information on Noah’s Ark. Major Abel said he had received a request from General Lew Allen, Air Force Chief of Stall, who, in turn, was answering a, requirement from Congressman Bill Archer of Texas. Congressman Archer had indicated that some of his constituents from Houston, Texas were going on an expedition to Mt. Ararat and would like to have as much information as possible. [Deleted] told Major Abel that NPIC had conducted a study of Mt. Ararat in the 1970s and had found no evidence of the Ark. In February 1982, former Astronaut James B. Irwin of the High Flight Foundation, a Christian group in Colorado Springs, Colorado, called former NPIC official Dino A. Brugioni, at his home and asked about the aerial photos of Mount Ararat. Irwin was informed that no evidence of the Ark had ever been seen on aerial photography.”
A fair amount of material has surfaced from the CIA from the latter part of the 1980s and the early 1990s (the 2000s, too), but it’s almost completely comprised of photocopies of magazine articles and newspaper features on Noah’s Ark. So, what does all of this tell us? Well, that very much depends on how we interpret the data. It’s pretty clear that the CIA was notsitting on some deep and dark secret concerning the Ark. In other words, there’s no evidence that the CIA has portions of the Ark locked away in some kind of “Hangar 18” vault and akin to the final moments of the 1981 Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark. But, the fact is that the CIA does refer in its own files to “the Ark problem.” And, as the files also show, back in 1975, “… Several NPIC analysts concerned with the Ark problem visited the display but found nothing that would help their search efforts.”
Was the “problem” somehow connected to something amazing? Some might very well say “Yes.” On the other hand, though, maybe the problem was actually something else entirely. Namely, a case of the CIA becoming more and more sick and tired of being asked about the Ark and the conspiracy-tinged issues surrounding it. When you’re trying to chase down Russian spies and Chinese espionage agents, being asked repeated questions about a rotted old boat may not be high on your list of priorities. But, it might very well be a pain in the neck. A problem, in other words. As for those 1975 “search efforts,” that does kind of sound like someone in the NPIC wasactively looking for the Ark. Unless, that is, the “search efforts” the CIA referred to were not to find the Ark, but to help find the alleged photos that astronaut James B. Irwin and Congressman Bob Wilson asked for. The latter scenario is far less exciting than the former, but it may very well be the correct scenario. So, at the end of the day, what can we say about this saga of Noah’s Ark? Let’s see.
It’s clear that, on this ancient issue, most of the CIA’s time was spent explaining that they didn’t have much – if anything – in the form of evidence when it came to the Ark. But, a file wascreated, and not all of it is in the public domain. Maybe, one day, we’ll learn that the CIA does hold some extraordinary data on the Ark. But, right now we are a long, long – very long – way away from that. In fact, there’s no solid evidence of it at all in the slightest. While the CIA’s papers don’t provide us with anykind of smoking guns, I still find the whole thing very interesting. Maybe one day, someone will write a book on the whole “Noah’s Ark Conspiracy Theory.” It definitely won’t be me, but I would certainly look forward to reading it, whatever the conclusions might be.
The Hum Sound Is Now Being Heard Worldwide, What's Going On?
The Hum Sound Is Now Being Heard Worldwide, What's Going On?
COAST TO COAST AM. Dr. Glen MacPherson has spent many years documenting the strange phenomenon known as “the Hum.”
MacPherson said the sound was first reported in England in 1970, and spread to the U.S. in about 1990. He reports the sound plagues about two to four percent of the population, who can hear it almost all of the time, although it sometimes gets worse at night.
To most people, the sound is like hearing a truck idling outside, but MacPherson added that it “may not be a sound in the traditional sense of the word.” The Hum can cause loss of sleep. He has personally experienced the noise as well.
Reverse UFO Technology Could Destroy Humanity - Why it's Time to Wake-up! - Capt. Dave Bertrand, Ret. +Video
Reverse UFO Technology Could Destroy Humanity - Why it's Time to Wake-up! - Capt. Dave Bertrand, Ret. +Video
BERTRAND DAILY REPORT The War For Your Mind & Soul Continues
By Capt. Dave Bertrand, Ret.
Since the 1940′s advancement in technology and flight has progressed exponentially. One technology that really came to the forefront is fiber optics discovered in down UFO’s and was reversed engineered for our use today. If you can send data, calls, or video via light through a tube, why not a human?
What we have seen in other technologies only scratches the surface of what is hidden underground in secret Military / Industrial Complex bases scattered throughout the western states of America. For many….it’s hard to relate and/or accept the advancement of how scientists and aero engineers reversed engineered UFO technology and how extremely capable (we) are with that technology.
Who is in-charge of all that technology ??
“Beam me up Scotty” is no longer fiction and the History Channel video below details how sound waves on a particular frequency can dematerialize your body and transport your body a distance away, but what is also unusual, is that your brain waves reach maximum potential, basically causing amnesia of the event…..a common occurrence with ‘alien abductions.’
The same thing happens when we die, we leave our body (in form) and end-up in another dimension. Those that have experienced ‘astral projection,’ leaving the body (in form) and seeing our body in limbo, is often a common (accidental) event that many humans have experienced. Only the most experienced ‘out-of-body’ travelers have perfected the technique, but technology discovered by reverse engineering can “make it happen number one !”
This technology opens the door to ‘time travel’ since time is irrelevant (off-of-earth) and because the theory suggests, if you travel the cosmos at the speed of light or greater and gone only an year, you return to earth and everyone has grown old and are gone, while the astronaut has only aged a year. Which lends to the theory that visiting extraterrestrials are us from the future in some cases, based-on technology WE are now [playing] with.
This technology (also) suggests the ’20 and Back’ Mars program is very real and ties-in with what has been proven to be perfected, which is Quantum Mechanics.
WE are nothing but pure energy in a water based meat covered shield for earth and can be manipulated by technology. It is our mind and soul that is unique….but controlled by a nervous system equivalent to a collar shocker a dog wears. If THEY can destroy your body with cancer, pain or drugs, THEY ultimately control your mind.
Experiments that have been used on humanity continues today by the ‘good, bad and the ugly’ and protecting ourselves from being manipulated…..be it 5G technology, cell phone cancer, or sound waves we cannot hear, to visual brainwashing techniques…..our existence and our extinction is less than a generation away.
WE are on the brink of extraordinary knowledge…….
Sophisticated toys in the hands of the very bad is a secret the Deep State / Illuminati do NOT want us to know about, because THEY profit from reversed engineered technology, THEY experiment on humans, THEY use that technology to control the population into (often) acts of extreme violence, and THEY can use that technology to overthrow governments.
That is why Ufologists and others want FULL DISCLOSURE…..
—Dave Bertrand
History CH: UFO Hunters: FULL EPISODE – Reverse Engineering (Season 1, Episode 7) | History – Video
From the Desk of Capt. Dave Bertrand (Ret.) Your Comments Are Welcomed and Can Be Published Unless You Specify Otherwise.
Retired Int’l Freight Captain (DC-8 & B-727), Former (State) Law Enforcement, U.S. Customs (UC) Sector 5, Vietnam era Veteran (Korea), Embry Riddle Aeronautical University & University of Alaska (Undergraduate), Interests include Border Security, 9/11 Conspiracy, Government Corruption, New World Order, Freedom vs Communism, Secret Space Programs & UFO Encounters, Aviation, and Enjoy Living Off-The-Grid.
Jim Marrs: Texas UFO Crash of 1897, Pilot Not of the World
Jim Marrs: Texas UFO Crash of 1897, Pilot Not of the World
COAST TO COAST AM. Author and journalist Jim Marrs discussed the Aurora, Texas UFO crash of 1897, which he considers to be the “smoking gun” of the UFO issue.
It’s early date belies the explanation that it could have been a misidentified aircraft, as it was six years before the Wright Brothers first flew their planes, he noted.
The date fits into the context of the ‘Great Airship Mystery’ of 1896-7, in which a large cigar-shaped object was seen in the skies of numerous American states.
The Dallas Morning News reported that the airship hit a windmill on a judge’s property and crashed, and that the pilot who died was “not of this world.”
CROWNING ROOTS An analysis of hominid tooth evolution, including specimens from Spanish Neandertals (top row), pushes back the age of a common Neandertal-human ancestor to more than 800,000 years ago. The bottom row shows Homo sapiens teeth.
A. GÓMEZ-ROBLES, ANA MUELA AND JOSE MARIA BERMUDEZ DE CASTRO
People and Neandertals separated from a common ancestor more than 800,000 years ago — much earlier than many researchers had thought.
That conclusion, published online May 15 in Science Advances, stems from an analysis of early fossilized Neandertal teeth found at a Spanish site called Sima de los Huesos. During hominid evolution, tooth crowns changed in size and shape at a steady rate, says Aida Gómez-Robles, a paleoanthropologist at University College London. The Neandertal teeth, which date to around 430,000 years ago, could have evolved their distinctive shapes at a pace typical of other hominids only if Neandertals originated between 800,000 and 1.2 million years ago, she finds.
Gómez-Robles’ study indicates that, if a common ancestor of present-day humans and Neandertals existed after around 1 million years ago, “there wasn’t enough time for Neandertal teeth to change at the rate [teeth] do in other parts of the human family tree” in order to end up looking like the Spanish finds, says palaeoanthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Many researchers have presumed that a species dubbed Homo heidelbergensis, thought to have inhabited Africa and Europe, originated around 700,000 years ago and gave rise to an ancestor of both Neandertals and Homo sapiens by roughly 400,000 years ago. Genetic evidence that Sima de los Huesos fossils came from Neandertals raised suspicions that a common ancestor with H. sapiens existed well before that (SN Online: 3/14/16). Recent Neandertal DNA studies place that common ancestor at between 550,000 and 765,000 years old. But those results rest on contested estimates of how fast and how consistently genetic changes accumulated over time.
With that molecular debate in mind, Gómez-Robles calculated the rate at which eight ancient hominid species evolved changes in tooth shape. That enabled her to gauge how long it must have taken for Sima de los Huesos teeth to evolve after Neandertals diverged from a common ancestor with H. sapiens.
Gómez-Robles used two possible evolutionary trees for the eight hominid species to estimate dental evolution rates. Aside from the Spanish Neandertals and Stone Age H. sapiens, teeth in her study came from African hominids dating to as early as 3.2 million years ago.
Moving back the date of an evolutionary split between Neandertals and H. sapiens appears reasonable based on the new data, says paleoanthropologist Aurélien Mounier of Musée de l’Homme in Paris. The timing of that split could still change, though, if further research modifies the Spanish fossils’ age, he says.
Other Spanish hominid teeth dating to nearly 800,000 years ago display some Neandertal features, supporting the new study’s conclusions, says New York University paleoanthropologist Shara Bailey. But it’s unclear if Gómez-Robles’ contention that hominid teeth evolved at a steady rate will hold true, Bailey says.
Professional and amateur astronomers will be observing asteroid 1999 KW4 – oddly shaped, about a mile wide, with a companion moon – around its closest approach on May 25, 2019. Charts here for amateur observers across the globe.
A large double asteroid is now approaching Earth’s vicinity and will pass by Earth safely on May 25, 2019. Closest approach is at 23:05 UTC (7:05 p.m. EDT;translate UTC to your time) on May 25. Asteroid (66391) 1999 KW4 consists of a primary space rock just under a mile wide (about 1.5 km), with a 0.3-mile-wide (0.5-km-wide) companion asteroid – an asteroid moon – orbiting the main asteroid. The asteroid and its moon will provide a good opportunity for both professional and amateur astronomers to observe the huge space rock. Amateur astronomers will be able to observe it for a few days around May 25. See the charts provided at the bottom of this post.
The video above – from a NASA Goldstone Radar planning document – shows the orbital motion of 1999 KW4 from December 2017 until July 2019, in a heliocentric or sun-centered reference frame. The asteroid makes two close flybys of Earth during this period.
1999 KW4 is an Aten type – or Earth-crossing – space rock. Its orbit brings it between the orbits of Venus and Earth. It completes an orbit around the sun once every 6.18 months (188 days).
During the approach of May 25, 2019, the asteroid will pass at the very safe distance of 3,219,955 miles from Earth (5,182,015 km), or about 13.5 times the Earth-moon distance.
Professional astronomers plan to have a look at this asteroid, too. Radar observations of asteroid 1999 KW4 are scheduled from Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico from May 29 to June 7. Astronomers will also study asteroid 1999 KW4 using NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar, located in the desert near Barstow, California, from May 26 to 31.
An interesting facet of asteroid 1999 KW4 is its shape. It has an oblate shape with an equatorial ridge, similar to asteroids Bennu and Ryugu. Observations suggest the secondary asteroid, or asteroid moon, of 1999 KW4 orbits the main space rock every 16 hours at a distance of about 1.6 miles (2.6 km).
Two radar images of double asteroid 1999 KW4. It’s a large space rock just under a mile wide (about 1.5 km), with a smaller companion moon (the bright speck). The little moon can be seen to move from one side of the asteroid to the other, as it orbits.
Images via Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico/NASA/NSF/S. J. Ostro, J. L. Margot, L. A. M. Benner, J. D. Giorgini, D. J. Scheeres, E. G. Fahnestock, S. B. Broschart, J. Bellerose, M. C. Nolan, C. Magri, P. Pravec, P. Scheirich, R. Rose, R. F. Jurgens, E. M. De Jong, S. Suzuki.
1999 KW4 was discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) astronomical survey in Socorro, New Mexico, in 1999. It has been classified as a Near-Earth object and a potentially hazardous object by the Minor Planet Center. However, the orbit of this huge space rock is well understood and known to pose no risk to Earth. During the closest of its approaches to Earth, its orbit brings it no closer than five Earth-moon distances.
The next encounter with Earth, which will be even closer, occurs on May 25, 2036.
An interesting fact: After asteroid 1999 KW4 passes by Earth on May 25, 2019, no known asteroid as big or larger than this space rock will approach our planet this close until year 2027. On June 6, 2027, asteroid 4953 (1990 MU), a 4 km to 9 km (2.5 to 5.5 mi) space rock will safety pass by Earth at 12 lunar distances, and will return on 2058 at nine lunar distances.
Take a look at the curious shape of asteroid 1999 KW4 and its moon in this video:
Observing Asteroid 1999 KW4 with amateur telescopes:
1999 KW4 is travelling at 48,123 miles per hour (77,446 km/h or 21.5 km/second), relative to Earth. Its fast speed, combined with the size of this asteroid, will allow amateur astronomers to observe it as it moves in front of the stars! The space rock will not be visible to the eye alone, but sky enthusiasts equipped with 8″ in diameter and bigger telescopes might be able to see this asteroid, which might reach a visual magnitude of around 12 during closest approach.
One the best techniques for locating an asteroid is to point a computerized telescope to a star known to be in the space rock’s path, and wait for the asteroid to appear. It will look like a very slow moving “star.” At first, it may be a little tricky to detect since its motion appears very slow. If you are pointing at the correct time and location of the sky, take a good look at the visual field of the telescope.
Or better yet, draw a sketch of the positions of the brightest stars and a few other stars you see at the eyepiece. Then compare the positions just 10 minutes later, and yes, you will find the asteroid!
By updating your sketches showing the asteroid’s position with respect to the stars, you can also show the huge space rock to other people, so they can see the object that is making news with their own eyes.
Although the location of asteroid 1999 KW4 during closest approach will be most favorable for observers in Earth’s Southern Hemisphere, the space rock will be drifting to other constellations, and observers in the Northern Hemisphere should be able to locate it from May 27, 2019.
During closest approach (May 25), the asteroid will be located in the direction of Puppis, a constellation in the southern sky. On May 26, 2019, the space rock will be located in the constellation Antlia.
The next two charts are for Southern Hemisphere observers, where the view is better on the day of closest approach:
During the asteroid’s closest approach, the space rock will be located in the constellation Puppis, visible with telescopes for observers in the Southern Hemisphere. The asteroid’s location forms an approximate triangle with bright stars Sirius and Canopus. This illustration shows the view facing west from Santiago, Chile, on May 25, 2019, at around 7:30 p.m. (23:30 UTC).
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
Using computerized amateur telescopes, observers in the Southern Hemisphere can locate the asteroid on the night of its closest approach (May 25) by pointing their instruments to HIP 40945, a faint naked-eye star in the constellation Puppis. Note that the space rock changes its position in just a few minutes! As seen from the Southern Hemisphere on May 25, 2019, at around 23:35 UTC.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
Observers in North America and other parts of the Northern Hemisphere will need to wait until a day or two after closest approach, for the asteroid to come over our southern horizons:
Location of asteroid 1999 KW4 on May 27, 2019, at nightfall, as seen from the central U.S., facing southwest.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
On May 27, 2019, at around 9:45 p.m. CDT, observers in the U.S. using computerized or Go To telescopes can point their instruments to stars HIP 51053 or HIP 51283 to find asteroid 1999 KW4 slowly moving in front of the stars.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
Location of asteroid 1999 KW4 on May 28, 2019, at around 11:00 p.m. – 11:30 p.m. CDT as seen from the central U.S., facing west-southwest.
Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.
Have a computerized telescope? Point it to star HIP 53907 (61 Leo) on the night of May 28, 2019, at around 11 – 11:30 p.m. CDT to locate asteroid 1999 KW4.
Bottom line: Professional and amateur astronomers are gearing up to observe asteroid 1999 KW4 – a mile-wide, oddly shaped asteroid with a companion moon – around its closest approach on May 25, 2019. Charts here for both Southern Hemisphere and U.S. amateur observers.
A U.S. venture-capital firm recently led a round of seed investment for Hermeus Corp., a new startup looking to develop a hypersonic aircraft.
Hermeus also announced its advisory board in a statement issued Monday (May 13, the board includes the former president of Blue Origin and former associate administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration.
The mission of this aerospace startup is to increase the speed of air transportation by developing vehicles that can fly ''in excess of Mach 5 — over 3,000 miles per hour [4,800 km/h]. At Mach 5, flight times from New York to London will be reduced from 7 hours to 90 minutes,'' Hermeus officials said in the statement. Mach 1 is approximately the speed of sound traveling through Earth's atmosphere.
The idea is to connect the world's cities ''significantly faster than ever before,'' which Hermeus CEO A.J. Piplica likened to the broadband era of data transmissions.
The round of seed investment led by Khosla Ventures (with additional participation from private investors) will continue the development of Hermeus' hypersonic propulsion system, the statement said.
''Hermeus is developing an aircraft that not only improves the aviation experience with very reduced flight times, but also has the potential to have great societal and economic impact," Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, said in the statement.
Hermeus will join a burgeoning field in aerospace. A year ago, NASA gave the aerospace and defense contractor Lockheed Martin a $241.5 million contract to develop a quiet supersonic plane that could fly by mid-2022. In June 2018, Boeing unveiled its hypersonic plane concept at the Aviation and Aeronautics Forum in Atlanta. Two years ago, the startup Boom Technology partnered with Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson to create a carrier that could reach Mach 2.2.
In a computer simulation of spiral galaxy formation, a halo structure partially forms from a pileup of many small galaxies. Even after merged galaxies disintegrate, individual stars retain chemical traces from their original galaxies.
A star in the Big Dipper is an intergalactic alien, according to clues in its chemical fingerprints.
The star's unusual chemistry is unlike that of all known stars in the Milky Way and instead has more in common with stars in nearby dwarf galaxies, new research reveals.
Researchers suspected that the stellar oddball, named J1124+4535, originated in a dwarf galaxy that collided with the Milky Way long ago. According to that theory, when the dwarf galaxy fell apart, it stranded this star in our cosmic neighborhood. [11 Fascinating Facts About Our Milky Way Galaxy]
The star was first discovered in the constellation Ursa Major in 2015, by the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) in China. Higher-resolution images were captured in 2017 by the Subaru Telescope in Japan, the scientists reported April 29 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Spectrum readings from the star revealed that it was low in metals such as magnesium but had unexpectedly high levels of the heavy element europium; an element ratio that was unique in comparison to other Milky Way stars, the researchers wrote.
Elements in stars reflect the composition of the dust and gas clouds where the star formed. Stars that are close neighbors are usually shaped by the same materials and therefore have similar chemical signatures. When a star stands out from a group, scientists look elsewhere to see where it might have been born.
Prior studies have found that the Milky Way formed by colliding with and absorbing smaller galaxies. Metal-poor stars such as J1124+4535 are common in dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way today, the scientists reported.
Their analysis of J1124+4535 provides "the clearest chemical signature" yet of the ancient galaxy mergers that shaped the Milky Way billions of years ago, according to the study.
And that's not the only cosmic evidence that hints at the Milky Way's turbulent past.
A distinctive bulge at the Milky Way's center is thought to be the result of a collision with a sausage-shaped dwarf galaxy about 10 billion years ago. That event inflated the Milky Way's core with an influx of billions of stars, some of which are among the oldest in the universe.
There may be an even bigger smashup in the Milky Way's future: Our galaxy is currently on a collision course with another spiral galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. Luckily, that won't take place for at least another 2 billion years — and that collision is about 2 to 3 billion years before we're predicted to slam into the Andromeda Galaxy.
The famous Star Trek refrain — actually acommon misattribution— aptly describes humanity’s future on Mars. And as more and more tech entrepreneurs outline visions for how to erect settlements on the Red Planet by the 2050s, Rice University professor Scott Solomon is already starting to worry about what’s going to happen to the first Martian settlers and, more interestingly, their babies.
“What’s interesting to me as an evolutionary biologist is thinking about, what if we’re actually successful?” Solomon tells Inverse. “I don’t think there has been nearly as much discussion about what would become of the people that are living in these colonies generations later.”
Solomon’s 2016 book, Future Humans: Inside the Science of Our Continuing Evolution, argues that evolution is still a force at play in modern humans. In an awe-inspiring TEDx talk in January 2018 — which inexplicably still has fewer than 1,000 views — Solomon outlined how humans would change — literally — after spending a generation or two living on Mars.
Far from waiting thousands of years to witness minuscule changes, Solomon instead believes that humans going to Mars could be on the verge of an evolutionary rollercoaster. He expects, among other things, that their bones will be stronger, their sight shorter, and that they’ll, at some point, have to stop having sex with Earth-humans.
“Evolution is faster or slower depending on how much of an advantage there is to having a certain mutation,” Solomon says. “If a mutation pops up for people living on Mars, and it gives them a 50-percent survival advantage, that’s a hugeadvantage, right? And that means that those individuals are going to be passing those genes on at a much higher rate than they otherwise would have.”
Outside of Solomon’s field, discussion of this topic is relatively sparse. Elon Musk’s SpaceX team is holed up in Florida and Texas working on a stainless steel spaceship to send the first humans to Mars in the 2020s, establishing a city by 2050. Dubai has designed dramatic concepts for its own Martian city, and the Matt Damon sci-fi flick The Martian depicted how first trips to the Red Planet would take the form of research missions.
These are all fascinating ideas, but they’re curiously short on how humans may change under the treacherous, radioactive conditions of the solar system’s fourth planet.
Mars City: How Humans Could Change Over Time
Solomon outlined a number of ways — many of them covered in his Ted Talk — about how humans could change.
Humans may develop denser bones to overcome the effects of Mars’ gravity, which is just a third of Earth’s. The reduced force could make bones more brittle, which could lead to complications like fractured pelvises during childbirth.
The inhabitants of smaller spaces may become more near-sighted, as they no longer need to see as far as they would on Earth. Solomon cites cavefish in deep trenches that have gone blind with no need for vision, and studies that show children who spend more time indoors are likely to become more near-sighted.
Mars inhabitants may develop a new skin tone to adjust to the higher levels of radiation. Humans use melanin to fight against ultraviolet rays, while other species use carotenoids. Mars residents may some day have to develop another pigment entirely to fight off radiation.
Residents may perhaps learn to use oxygen more efficiently. A similar change has been observed on the Tibetan plateau, where oxygen is 40 percent lower than it is at sea level. To adjust, Tibetans have denser beds of capillaries to more efficiently move blood, and have the ability to dilate their vessels to get more oxygen to the muscles.
One change that could occur relatively fast? Non-Earth dwelling humans may quickly lose their immune system. In a sterile environment with no microorganisms present, the residents may have no need for a body capable of fighting germs. But this may not be such a bad thing, Solomon suggests it could be an opportunity to eradicate diseases, treating the ship flying to Mars as a sort of quarantine zone and ensuring the new inhabitants can lead healthier lives.
It’s this latter change that may force humans to eventually splinter irreversibly from their Earth-based counterparts. With no immune system, sex between Martian humans and Earthlings would be lethal. That could impose an artificial limit on how the two populations will be able to interact and co-mingle. The inability to form families or send offspring back and forth between the two planets could drive the two groups even further apart, assuming the whole issue of “who pays who taxes” hasn’t created an irreparable rift already.
Mars City: How This Human Takes Form
Solomon argues these changes will happen relatively quickly. Radiation on Mars is extraordinarily high, he notes, without any sort of magnetosphere to protect the humans. Children are normally born with between 20 to 120 genetic mutations, but radiation could cause this figure to spike and accelerate changes in genes.
Humans could also accelerate changes even more through gene editing. CRISPR/Cas9 is a tool that could enable humans to ready our bodies for Martian life more quickly, but with our current limited knowledge of the human genome, random changes could have unexpected consequences. Still, it could represent an avenue for alterations in the near future.
“Why wait around for this mutation to occur if you can just go in and make them yourself?” Solomon says.
Another is the founder effect, which is the theory that gene traits of the first inhabitants of a new area have a huge influence on the future trajectory of the species. That means if we send up the most physically capable humans to Mars, their offspring may be more genetically predisposed to physical strength than humans on Mars.
It also means Musk and others will need to consider genetic diversity, to ensure a good mix throughout the population. Solomon argues for around 100,000 people migrating to Mars over the course of a few years, with the majority from Africa, as that is where humans see the greatest genetic diversity.
“If I were designing a human colony on Mars, I would want a population that would be hundreds of thousands of people, with representatives of every human population here on Earth,” Solomon says.
Hopefully the architects of these new worlds are listening.
afpHet Voynich Manuscript is een bundel van 240 pagina’s, gevuld met een handgeschreven tekst, tekeningen van onbekende planten en ingewikkelde symbolen. De tekst is zo’n 500 jaar oud - dat staat vast - maar wat erin staat, weet niemand.
WETENSCHAP Zo’n twee weken geleden deelde de University of Bristol de veelbelovende boodschap dat het meest mysterieuze manuscript ter wereld eindelijk gekraakt zou zijn. Terwijl anderen er jaren over deden, zou een academicus aan de universiteit er op slechts twee weken tijd in geslaagd zijn de code te kraken. Maar die verklaring trekt de universiteit nu terug in.
Het Voynich Manuscript – vernoemd naar de Poolse boekhandelaar die het in 1912 ontdekte – was jarenlang het onderwerp van discussie bij cryptologen, taalwetenschappers, zelfs bij astronomen. Niemand slaagde erin om het te ontcijferen, al beweerden tal van geleerden dat dat wel lukte. Dat laatste clubje vervoegt Gerard Cheshire nu, de academicus die beweerde dat hij het manuscript op twee weken tijd ontcijferde.
Cheshire beweerde dat het om een proto-Romaanse taal ging, geschreven door de koningin van Aragon, Maria van Castilië. Bovendien zou het de laatst overlevende tekst van die taal zijn. Zijn vondst was “een van de belangrijkste ontwikkelingen binnen de Romaanse taalkunde”. Maar zijn vondst deed vooral wat wenkbrauwen fronsen.
“Sorry maar dit is nonsens”, klonk het bij een andere academicus, gespecialiseerd in de middeleeuwen, via een Twitterbericht. “Zijn conclusie is bullshit”, klonk het bij iemand anders.
Bristol academic cracks Voynich code, solving century-old mystery of medieval text
A University of Bristol academic has succeeded where countless cryptographers, linguistics scholars and computer programs have failed - by cracking the code of the 'world's most mysterious text', the...
eurekalert.org
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𝕄𝕒𝕥𝕥 𝔾𝕒𝕓𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕝𝕖✔@prof_gabriele
as a medievalist, I'm gonna say 1 thing about the recent Voynich nonsense and then I'm gonna be quiet.
His conclusion are bullshit and the journal should be ashamed that they published that article.#medievaltwitter#voynich
Na heel wat bedenkingen van experts, trekt de universiteit haar verklaring dan toch in. Hoewel Gerard Cheshire aanvankelijk nog als een “academicus aan de universiteit van Bristol” werd omschreven, distantieert de universiteit zichzelf nu volledig: “Het onderzoek van de auteur gebeurde onafhankelijk en is niet gelieerd aan de universiteit van Bristol, de kunstacademie noch het Centrum voor middeleeuwse Studies.”
Vooral eigenaardig aan de hele zaak is dat het wetenschappelijk artikel in het vaktijdschrift Roman Studies verscheen. Dat betekent evenwel dat het eerst gecontroleerd werd door collega’s. Cheshire blijft er dan ook van overtuigd dat hij het bij het rechte eind heeft: “Na verloop van tijd zal mijn oplossing gebruikt worden door anderen bij hun onderzoek naar het manuscript. En uiteindelijk zal de weerstand afnemen.”
Voynich Manuscript
Het Voynich Manuscript is een bundel van 240 pagina’s, gevuld met een handgeschreven tekst, tekeningen van onbekende planten en ingewikkelde symbolen. De tekst is zo’n 500 jaar oud - dat staat vast - maar wat erin staat, weet niemand. Wilfred Voynich deed zelf een dappere poging nadat hij de tekst vond, maar faalde in zijn opzet.
TwitterVoynich Manuscript
Beinecke Manuscript GalleryEen pagina uit het Voynich Manuscript
When does a disaster go from ‘natural’ to ‘the mother of all’ disasters’? When it’s the next eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. That’s according to a leading volcano expert from Poland who wants the United States to start thinking ‘when’ not ‘if’ and developing an evacuation plan for an eruption that he predicts could kill five billion people.
“The only thing you can do is evacuate people to another continent.”
In a recent interview with Poland’s WP Media, Dr. Jerzy Żaba,professor of geological sciences and head of the Department of General Geology at the University of Silesia in Katowice, explains why a Yellowstone “Superwulk” eruption would be far more destructive and deadly to life on Earth than most other experts are willing to consider. He starts by comparing it to a recent supervolcano event — the Toba supereruption about 75,000 years ago in Sumatra, Indonesia, which was one of the largest known eruptions.
“As a result of the Toby eruption in Sumatra, according to various estimates, 70 to 90 percent died. the then human population on our planet. More optimistic researchers believe that the outbreak was survived by tens of thousands of people, moderately optimistic that they survived 15,000, and the least – from three to five thousand. The population of a small village survived all over the world!” (Google translation)
Up to 90 percent of the Earth’s albeit small population at that time may have died. If you’re into odds, Żaba points out that there have been 42 similar supervolcano eruptions — on average once in less than a million years. So, as far as Yellowstone is concerned, we’re good for at least a few hundred-thousand years, right?
“Yellowstone is a powerful superwulkan whose explosions took place, to our knowledge, three times. The first took place over two million years ago, the second million 300,000. years ago, and the third, about which we know the most, took place 640 thousand. years ago.”
Żaba says volcanoes are erupting in different locations than in the past (Poland has one that was active 800,000 years ago) and geologists have learned that nearby volcanoes are often linked and can cascade into multiple eruption events. However, none have the destructive potential – both on the ground and in the air – of Yellowstone.
“It would destroy most of the United States. Discarded materials would cover everything with a meter layer within a radius of 500 km. And due to the emission of a huge amount of dust, gases or sulfur oxide to the atmosphere, there would be a temporary cooling of the climate. Sulfur oxide would create a thin veil of sulfuric acid around the planet reflecting sunlight. He would persist for many years. It is estimated that due to climate change about five billion people would starve to death.”
Żaba doesn’t think programs like NASA’s plan to drill a hole and cool Yellowstone’s magma will work due to the sheer size and volume of the magma tank. Besides, it’s not the lava that will kill us – it’s the dust and debris that will be thrown into the atmosphere. Żaba says the only way to escape falling chunks of rock and debris is to evacuate, but the space for holding the millions of people who need to move in a short period of time will require another continent and a monumental effort. And, once they get to their new home, they’ll have to deal with the death of all flora and fauna that will result in Żaba’s prediction that five billion people would starve to death.
Is there any good news, Dr. Żaba?
“There are forces over which people have no influence and have to observe with incredible humility.”
Fifty years after the first moon landings, a new generation of space travellers, from Xi Jinping’s taikonauts to Jeff Bezos, are racing to colonise our nearest neighbour. Is reality catching up with sci-fi?
Oliver Morto
‘Magnificent desolation’ … the moon.
Photograph: Chinese State Media/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock
The moon is rising again above the horizon of the imagination, waxing into worldly relevance. Fifty years afterNeil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first stepped on to what Aldrin called the “magnificent desolation” of the Sea of Tranquility, the possibility of a human return to their dusty stamping ground is greater than it has been at any time since the Apollo programme reached its end just three years later.
The robot vanguard has already set forth. Later this year India will attempt to become the fourth nation to land a probe on the moon; an Israeli attempt to get there failed in April, but its backers plan to try again. China has landed two robot rovers on the moon’s surface in the past five years. One visited the near side, the familiar pockmarked face seen from Earth; the other went to the overflown-but-never-before-visited far side. The Chinese space agency has talked of sending humans in their wake, perhaps in the early 2030s.
They may be beaten to it. Last year Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese fashion entrepreneur and art collector, signed a contract with SpaceX, the rocket firm founded by Elon Musk, for a flight around the moon. He intends to take a crew of as-yet-unspecified artists with him. The chances of this happening in 2023, as notionally planned, are small; SpaceX has yet to fly any humans anywhere. The chances of it happening sometime, though, are at least middling; for the most part, SpaceX has eventually delivered on its promises. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos is spending some of the riches he has accrued as boss of Amazon on Blue Origin, a space company that aims to surpass SpaceX. Earlier this month he unveiled Blue Moon, a lander designed to place scientific equipment on to the lunar surface. After it has been upgraded, he says, it will be capable of landing people there, too.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk believes it is vital for humans to become a multiplanetary species. Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
On 26 March vice-president Mike Pence told an audience at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama: “The first woman and the next man on the moon will both be American astronauts, launched by American rockets, from American soil.” He challenged Nasa to make the first of these crewed missions by 2024. One of the clearest reasons he gave for this new commitment was that China had “revealed their ambition to seize the lunar strategic high ground”.
Our imagined moon has long inspired fear, excitement, hubris and political ambition – fact and myth, science and science fiction have always intertwined. Some of the engineers who advised Fritz Lang on his 1929 film, Frau im Mond went on to develop the first rocket capable of reaching space, Germany’s V-2. When they later moved to Huntsville, they took with them not just their know‑how but also Lang’s anticipation-quickening innovation of counting down the seconds before the rocket’s launch.
Science fiction is often seen as an anticipation – a fiction peculiarly expected to graduate into fact. But if technologies once found only in SF do sometimes become real they do not, in so doing, always cease to be science fictional. SF is not, after all, simply a literature about the future; it is a literature about the shock of new capacities and new perspectives, about transcendence, estrangement and resistance in the face of the inhuman. Its ideas shape and constrain the ways in which technological possibilities are seen, understood and experienced long after those possibilities are first tentatively realised. It illuminates the dreams of Musk, Bezos and all the other new moon-rushers.
Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in 1969. Photograph: Science & Society Picture Library/SSPL via Getty Images
Take the origins of Pence’s reference to the “lunar strategic high ground”. In one of the first moon novels written after the second world war, Robert Heinlein’s Rocket Ship Galileo (1947), an atomic scientist and his teenage crew discover, on what they believe to be the first mission to the moon, a base from which the Third Reich’s rump intends to rain nuclear vengeance on to Earth. Heinlein, an aeronautical engineer who was one of the first American science fiction writers to gain a mainstream audience, had seen the V-2 and the Manhattan Project make real the rocket ships and superweaponry that had been his prewar stock in trade. Such authors were highly exercised by the strategic implications. In the same month that Heinlein’s book was published, John W Campbell, the preeminent American science fiction editor of the age, published an essay by his and Heinlein’s friend L Ron Hubbard on the strategic necessity of America being the first nation to build such a moonbase for its missiles. A year later Colliers, a mass market magazine, was warning of a “Rocket Blitz from the Moon”.
The idea rode high for a decade. “He who controls the moon, controls the Earth,” General Homer A Boushey told the American press in 1958. The US air force investigated the possibility of demonstrating that control, and adding to the moon’s craters, by conducting a nuclear test on its surface, one that would be ominously and spectacularly visible to most of the world below (Carl Sagan, later to be prominent in the fight for nuclear disarmament, was one of those who worked on the project).
It did not happen. Though the Apollo programme was a crucial piece of cold war strategy, its goal was not to occupy the moon or use it as a missile base. Rather, it was to show the world the remarkable resources the US was willing to invest in advancing its technological power; the means, not the end, were the message. But Hubbard’s megalomaniacal dreams of an Earth controlled from the moon still lurks in that idea of the “strategic high ground”.
Rocket Ship Galileo used the moon not only as a way of thinking about the prospect of nuclear war, it also made it a way of understanding the aftermath. (“The moon people ... ruined themselves. They had one atomic war too many.”)
These visions of existential dread led Arthur C Clarke to argue in Prelude to Space (1947), a novel about the preparations for a moon mission, that “atomic power makes interplanetary travel not just possible but imperative. As long as it was confined to Earth, humanity had too many eggs in one rather fragile basket.” That feeling informs dreams of space travel today. Musk, in particular, talks of war, pandemics, rebel AIs and asteroid Armageddons all making it vital for humans to become a multiplanetary species. A more junior Silicon Valley space mogul told me he wants to help build a moonbase for the same reason that, before cloud computing, he would back up his files to a second hard disk: something might happen. (Of course, such plutocratic panic feels dangerously close to the idea of a bolthole for the select.)
As active proponents of the new space age, Clarke and Heinlein realised that linking the moon only with nuclear catastrophe would be a poor sales pitch. To get the public on board, a more fertile idea was the dream of building human settlements on the moon, which could somehow be portrayed as both wonderful and mundane. In Heinlein’s short story “Space Jockey”, the problem facing the astronaut protagonist is not Ming the Merciless or a swarm of comets but the amount of time he has to spend away from home; the resolution is his decision to take a desk job in comfortably domestic Luna City, built under the surface of the moon. A teenager whines that “nothing ever happens on the moon”. This dualism of the familiar and the fantastic is epitomised in the motif of Earth playing the same role in the moon’s sky as the moon does in Earth’s, lighting the landscape’s darkness.
Earthrise … captured by Apollo 8 in 1968. Photograph: Bill Anders/NASA/HANDOUT/EPA
It is not a new insight; Galileo realised that nights on the nearside of the moon would be earthlit, just as earthly nights are moonlit. All early lunar fiction draws the reader’s attention to Earth waxing and waning in the alien sky as the clearest possible indication of the revolutionary Copernican insight. Twentieth-century heirs made a similar use of the image of worlds reversed. Earthlight (1955), Clarke’s first moon-set novel, opens with the accountant Bertram Sadler, new to the moon, looking out of his train window at the “cold glory of this ancient, empty land” illuminated by “a light tinged with blues and greens; an arctic radiance that gave no atom of heat. And that, thought Sadler, was surely a paradox, for it came from a world of light and warmth.”
Clarke’s paradox was made plain to see in the famous image Earthrisecaptured by Apollo 8: a world of warmth and light rising above the cold glory of ancient emptiness. The contrast was strong enough – the blasted basalts below unworldly and unappealing enough – that the colonised, normalised moon which Clarke and Heinlein had imagined fell back into the realm of fancy, if not that of the absurd.
So why does returning to the moon now seem plausible again? For one thing, China, or any other country, can put a man or woman on the moon with far less effort than it took the US in the 1960s: as a way to claim parity with a fading superpower, that relatively modest effort has obvious attractions. And as the effort involved has been reduced the resources in the hands of private individuals have increased: Bezos may choose, in the near-term, to yoke his dreams of expansion into space – unlocking untold wealth – to the more parochial ambitions of the US government. But that is convenience, not necessity. Being the richest person on the planet brings with it its own superempowerment.
Science fiction, too, has cast space travel in economic, rather than political, terms. Once again it is hard to avoid Heinlein, this time his novella The Man Who Sold the Moon (1950). Its main character is DD Harriman, a tycoon who, having made his fortune from other technologies, persuades and cons investors of all sorts to provide the further resources he needs to realise his true dream, the founding of a moon colony. After the sheer Soviet Union-surpassing, 2.5%-of-GDP scale of the Apollo effort became manifest in the 1960s, the story seemed quaint. Moon missions were the work of nations, not cigar-puffing wheeler dealers. Now it seems oddly prescient.
Apollo 12 Lunar Module Intrepid descends to land on the Moon in 1969. Photograph: Science & Society Picture Library/SSPL via Getty Images
If strategic rivalry, existential fear and plutocratic caprice were the only narratives science fiction had lent the moon, one might feel justified in taking a dim view of the whole affair. But there is more. A lifeless world may again provide new insights into a living one, as it did with Earthrise. It is in such changed perspectives on worlds and their peoples that the true promise of science fiction surely lives. Heinlein’s most successful lunar novel, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1967), is driven by a thrilling plot. But the reason it continues to be loved by many, especially in Silicon Valley, is the strange, contradictory, savage but cosy, polyamorous, Malthusian, libertarian, utopian and carceral society it conjures as its cyborg setting. Similarly, the most striking recent novel about the moon, John Kessel’s The Moon and the Other (2017) sets itself in the “Society of Cousins”, a matriarchy inspiring and troubling, idealistic, indulgent and somewhat stifling. It is, to borrow the subtitle of Ursula K Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), an ambiguous utopia.
Which is as much as you can hope for. The moon, as it becomes a target for politicians, billionaires and enthusiasts inspired by science fictions past, should remain ambiguous, longed for and desolate, always the same and yet shockingly new, a strangeness sitting in the sky for all to see.
Oliver Morton’s The Moon: A History for the Future is published by Economist.
For years, scientists have been hunting for the stable lava tubes that are believed to exist on the Moon. A remnant from the Moon's past, when it was still volcanically active, these underground channels could very well be an ideal location for lunar colonies someday.
Not only would their thick roofs provide naturally shielding from solar radiation, meteoric impacts, and extremes in temperature. They could also be pressurized to create a breathable environment.
But until now, evidence of their existence has been inferred from surface features such as sinuous rilles – channel-like depressions that run along the surface that indicate the presence of subterranean lava flows – and holes in the surface (aka “skylights”).
However, recent evidence presented at the 47th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in Texas indicates that one such stable lava tube could exist in the once-active region known as Marius Hills.
The presentation was led by Rohan Sood, a graduate research assistant from the department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University in Indiana.
For some time now, Sood and his research colleagues have been examining data obtained from NASA's twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission in order to get a better sense of what the Moon's interior looks like.
Launched in 2011, the purpose of the GRAIL mission – which consists of two orbiters, Ebb and Flow, working in tandem – was to map the Moon's gravity with extreme precision.
Over time, the information it gathered has provided scientists with the opportunity to gain a better understanding of the Moon's subsurface features, particularly the buried lava tubes that are believed to exist.
In 2009, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Kaguya spacecraft (aka Selene) confirmed the presence of a skylight in the Marius Hills region, which has since come to be known as the "Marius Hole."
In 2011, it was photographed in more detail by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which showed that it was approximately 65 meters wide and 80 meters deep.
The fact that this hole sat between two rilles indicated that it was evidence that lava once flowed beneath the region.
Using the GRAIL gravity data that was collected at different altitudes, the Purdue team went about assessing the presence and extent of ancient lava tubes beneath the surface of Marius Hills.
What they determined was rather interesting. As Sood told Universe Today via email:
"Thanks to NASA's GRAIL mission, we now have derived the lunar gravity field to an unprecedented resolution and accuracy. The data allows us to dig below the lunar surface, with our objective being to recognize signatures that may correspond to those of empty lava tubes."
To assess the possibility of lava tubes, Sood and his team relied on a two-tiered strategy of gradiometry and cross-correlation specific regions.
Whereas gradiometry calculates the gravitational potential from a spherical harmonics data set, cross-correlation utilizes the individual track data based on the relative acceleration between the two spacecraft as they move along their respective orbits.
Much like Earth, the moon's gravitational field is affected by masses below the surface. "Any gravitational field is affected by the density of material," said Sood. "If you are flying the spacecraft over a block of dense material, it will experience an increase in gravitational pull in contrary to flying over a lava tube void, in which case there will be a decrease in gravitational attraction experienced by the spacecraft."
Where the Marius Hole is located, the team spotted a gravitational signature that was indicative of a subsurface cavity.
But that was not all. Distributed across the Moon's near side, Sood and his colleagues also noted that the GRAIL data indicated at least ten signatures that could resemble lava tubes.
All are located near the dark areas left by ancient volcanic seas, with some measuring more than 100 km long and several kilometers wide.
Naturally, there are some doubts as to whether or not the readings are indicative of actual lava tubes.
As the team indicated in their paper — "Detection of Buried Empty Lunar Lava Tubes Using Grail Gravity Data," which contains the findings they presented at the 47th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference — the structures they were looking for were similar or smaller in scale than the resolution of the gravity data.
As a result, it was difficult to determine whether or not the signals they spotted were in fact a sign of an underground recess, or a numerical artifact in the data.
Because of this, proving the existence of stable, subsurface lava tubes will require a next-generation mission, one that has instruments which will be able to penetrate the lunar surface and confirm the presence of recesses.
"[W]e have to remember that gravity is non-unique," Sood added, "which means, in order to support our findings and to add to our ongoing efforts, our team is considering a ground penetrating radar that will probe the lunar subsurface from orbit.
"The goal of the radar would be to confirm the presence of the potential lava tube candidates that we have detected so far, and in addition, look for smaller lava tubes that were beyond the resolution of GRAIL gravity data."
Designed to build upon the success of the GRAIL mission, the concept calls for a spacecraft equipped with ground-penetrating radar to conduct a sounding mission that would potentially confirm both the presence and size of the Moon's buried empty lava tubes.
This is not the first time that researchers from Purdue have presented a case for stable lunar lava tubes at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.
These latest findings, which not only produced more evidence of such subsurface spaces, but indicated that they may be even larger than previously expected, is good news for advocates of lunar settlement.
It is also worth noting that since it began surveying the moon, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has imaged over 200 pits that show signs of being skylights.
Each of these holes could lead to subsurface voids or caverns, which range in diameter from about 16 feet (5 meters) to more than 2,950 feet (900 m).
Assuming that just a fraction of these lead to underground tubes that are large enough to house an entire Earth city, there would be no shortage of possible settlement sites if and when it comes time to colonize the Moon.
After all, one of the biggest challenges in settling on a body where there is no atmosphere to speak of is creating a sturdy and airtight protective shelter.
Another major challenge is shielding the occupants of these and other shelters from incoming cosmic rays and solar radiation since their is no ozone layer to filter them out.
Where better than in an underground tunnel that will not only shield inhabitants from harmful radiation, meteoric impacts, and extremes in temperature, but also has immensely thick walls to keep the air in?
In all likelihood, if and when there is such a thing as "Lunies," they will dwell in elongated caverns beneath the Moon's surface.
Plans are being made for colonization of the moon and it must be ready before 2029.
Countries like the US, Russia, China as well as large private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are engaged in a sort of race to the moon. And it is not just a race, but more a total plan, in which human colonies will be built on the moon.
NASA revealed a new name for its moon program:Artemis. She is a Greek goddess of the moon and twin sister of Apollo. NASA astronauts are going to land on the surface of the Moon by 2024, including the first woman and next man.
Last week, Jeff Bezos, the founder of the Blue Origin, unveiled alunar landerat a mysterious invite-only event in Washington D.C. and suggests his firm will hit VP Pence's 2024 deadline for putting humans back on on the moon by 2024.The plan could ultimately serve as a stepping stone for colonization of the moon and deeper space targets, Bezos suggested.
Since 2009, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has spotted hundreds of conspicuous holes on the Moon. These steep-walled "pits" might lead to underground environments sheltered from radiation, meteorite impacts, and extreme temperatures, making them valuable sites for future exploration
As space agencies prepare to return humans to the Moon, top engineers are racing to design a tunnel boring machine capable of digging underground colonies for the first lunar inhabitants. Analysis of images of the lunar surface show lava tubes capable of housing large cities underground.
Rostami, director of the Earth Mechanics Institute at the US Colorado School of Mines said that the idea is to actually start underground, using a mechanism we already use on the earth, a tunnel boring machine, to make a continuous opening to create habitats or connect the colonies together.
Then, on February 22 Israel launched a lunar probe towards the moon. The small lunar probe carries a 30-million-page archive of human knowledge etched into a DVD-size metal disc. (See above image). The Lunar Library, as the archive is known, constitutes a ‘civilization backup’ to help ensure that our distant descendants never lose humanity’s collective wisdom.
We may wonder why all these organizations are in such a rush to go to the moon. Is it only a space race between the US, Russia and China or is it all about the survival of humankind and time is running out?
This pit in the Moon's Marius Hills is big enough to fit the White House completely inside.
Credit: NASA/ LROC/ ASU
These Kaguya images show the Marius Hills pit in the context of a meandering system of volcanic rilles. Because the pit is in the middle of a rille, it likely represents a collapse in the roof of a lava tube.
Credit: JAXA/SELENE [more]
This cavern in Mare Ingenii is almost twice the size of the one in the Marius Hills.
A declassified CIA document called The Adam and Eve Story has generated much controversy over predictions of an upcoming pole shift (aka crustal displacement) and catastrophic events that may sweep the planet in the not distant future. The57-page documentis based on abook authored by Chan Thomas in 1963. In it, Thomas proposed a pole shift scenario that differed in significant ways with what Charles Hapgood had earlier proposed in his pioneering 1958 book, The Earth’s Shifting Crust.
Hapgood’s theory, which was endorsed at the time by Albert Einstein, proposed that the geophysical poles periodically move by as much as up to 40 degrees through crustal displacements. This phenomenon was brought about by the increasing weight of the polar ice caps which accumulate more and more ice over the millennia until they eventually generate sufficient centrifugal force due to the planet’s rotation, to make the crust move over the mantle as Einstein explained in the book’s foreword.
In The Adam and Eve Story, Chan proposed that the pole shift was much greater, as much as 90 degrees with the poles shifting into the equatorial zone in less than a day. Chan has proposed the poles would flip back and forth in this way so that Antarctica would eventually return to the South Pole region, and the Arctic would do likewise.
Each time the geographical poles did one of these 90 degree flips, there would be catastrophic winds and tidal waves all over the planet, especially in the equatorial region where the Earth’s spin was 1000 mph. Water and wind would continue to move in the westerly direction through the law of inertia, sweeping over the landmasses that traveled over the equatorial region during the shift as Thomas explained:
In ¼ to ½ a day the poles move almost to the equator, and all hell lets loose. The atmosphere and oceans don’t shift with the shell – they just keep on rotating West to East – and at the equator that speed is 1000 miles per hour. It has to be, normally, to make one rotation per day. So, while the shell shifts with the poles going toward the equator, the winds and oceans go eastward, blowing across the face of the earth with supersonic speeds, inundating continents with water miles deep….
You can see, then, that ice ages are not a matter of advancing and retreating ice; it’s simply that different areas of the Earth are in polar regions at different times, for different durations of time, with the changes between positions taking place in a fraction of a day. [The Adam and Eve Story, pp.13-14]
The following video illustrates what happens during one of these 90 degree shifts, and what Thomas was proposing for what’s to come. One can easily see how devastating such a 90 degree shift could be and why the CIA may have been motivated to suppress such information.
According to Ben Davidson, author of the popular Earth Catastrophe series, this flipping back and forth would address paleomagnetic studies that show that the magnetic poles have been in their present locations for millions of years. Davidson concluded that this made Thomas’ pole shift theory much more compelling than Hapgood’s. In fact, Davidson believed Hapgood was putting out his theory as a “limited hangout” by the CIA in order to put the truth out in a way that later could be easily discredited.
Unfortunately for Davidson, ice core samples from Antarctica clearly support Hapgood and not Thomas’ theory. Ice core samples from East Antarctica date back as much as 1.5 million years. The following diagram illustrates ice core samples taken from different Antarctic regions and show how far back in time the ice sheets date.
Figure 1. Antarctic ice core drill sites with depth and record duration. From the US ITASE project.
The results from the ice core drill sites show that East Antarctica has been covered by ice for hundreds of thousands years, with Lake Vostok having some of the oldest discovered ice (220,000 years). Older ice core samples than those recorded in the above map have subsequently been found both at Lake Vostok (400,000 years), and the Dome C area (800,000 years) as shown in NOAA records.
A subsequent 2013 study asserted that ice core samples of up to 1.5 million years are most likely to be found in the Dome C area of East Antarctica. Put simply, scientists agree that East Antarctica has been covered by ice sheets for at least 1.5 million years, and likely much longer than that.
In contrast, the ice core samples in West Antarctica are only a few centuries old, with only one so far matching the age of many of the East Antarctic sites. This site is in the drilling area designated Boyd whose ice was found to be 70,000 years old as the above map illustrates.
The ice core records show conclusively that much of the Antarctic continent has been located in the polar zone (latitudes greater than 66 degrees) for at least 1.5 million years, and not in the equatorial zone (O-23 degrees latitude) as proposed by Thomas. Hapgood’s theory offers a better explanation for why only part of Antarctica has been ice-free for significant periods. But how do we explain the 70,000 year old ice sample found in the Byrd region of West Antarctica?
To find a definitive answer to where the geographical poles have been located and then move via crustal displacements to new positions, preserving some but not all the ice accumulated before the displacement, we can turn to the work of Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, authors of When the Sky Fell.
In their well-documented book, they used a range of archeological and fossil records to show where ice sheets have been found over the last 100,000 years, and how these positions had changed due to crustal displacements as first proposed by Hapgood. To date, I have found no other authors laying out such a compelling case for using available scientific data to track the respective positions of the geographic poles during the last 100,000 years.
Their findings provide a clear explanation for the varying ages found in the ice core samples extracted from different regions of Antarctica; and why Hapgood, rather than Thomas, provides a more accurate explanation for how the crustal displacement theory works.
First, I begin with Flem-Aths’ illustration of the positions of the North and South poles prior to 91,600 BC. It shows how the bulk of East Antarctica was inside the Antarctic circle, while West Antarctic lay in the temperate zone – similar to the present day location of New Zealand. Note the South Pole was located just off the coast of East Antarctica at the time, while the North Pole was located in Alaska.
Importantly, the Dome C area containing some of the oldest ice core samples found to date was located within the Antarctic circle, thereby preserving much of the ancient ice sheets acquired over the previous 1.5 million years or more.
Figure 2. p. 83 from Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, When the Sky Fell
The next diagram shows the Antarctic continent in relation to the South Pole after a crustal displacement led to a pole shift around 91,600 BC. Consequently, during the period from 91,600 BC to 50,600 BC, much of lower region of West Antarctica, along with the Transantarctic mountains, lay within the Antarctic circle, while the Palmer peninsula and significant areas of East Antarctica lay within the temperate zone.
Once again the physical South Pole was located over the ocean, rather than the Antarctic continent – this time off the coast of West Antarctica – adjacent to the Ross Sea. The geophysical pole had moved approximately 40 degrees from off the coast of East Antarctica to just off the West Antarctic coast during the 91,600 BC pole shift.
This is very close to what Hapgood had proposed was the crustal displacement that would occur during a pole shift. Significantly, it is far less than the 90 degree pole shift claimed by Thomas.
Importantly the Dome C area remained entirely within the Antarctic circle thereby preserving its ancient ice sheet. Furthermore, the Byrd area where the 70,000 year old ice sample was found, had been moved from its prior location in the temperate zone prior to the 91,600 BC pole shift, to deep inside the Antarctic circle. This allowed the accumulation of ice to begin, thereby accounting for its estimated age.
Figure 3. p. 84 from Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, When the Sky Fell
The next pole shift occurred around 50,600 BC, and an illustration provided by the Flem-Aths shows the approximate locations of the poles from 50,600 BC to 9,600 BC.
Around 50,600 BC, the South Pole has flipped back to the other side of the Antarctic continent, where it again lay just off the coast of East Antarctica. An approximate 30 degree pole shift had occurred, which is again consistent with Hapgood’s estimate for the cyclic crustal displacements that the Earth undergoes. It’s important to emphasize that the 50,600 BC pole shift was far less than the 90 degree shift predicted in Thomas’ theory.
Most of East Antarctica was again located inside the Antarctic circle, both preserving its ancient ice sheets and allowing them to expand. The Byrd region, containing the 70,000 year old ice core sample, was now located just outside the Antarctic Circle. Its marginal position marginally inside the temperate zone, which would allow the Byrd region to preserve the bulk of its ice sheets similar to the glaciers of southern New Zealand.
Figure 4. p. 85 from Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, When the Sky Fell
The period from 50,600 BC to 9600 BC is significant since it corresponds to the last time major portions of the Antarctic continent lay outside the polar circle. The bulk of West Antarctic lay in the temperate zone, and its coastal area would therefore have been ice free. Significantly, West Antarctica’s coastline and interior would have been navigable, just as the 1513 Piri Reis Map showed.
In the following diagram, the Piri Reis map is superimposed over a map of the globe showing how the Antarctic coastline from the tip of the Palmer Peninsula, all the way down its eastern flank to East Antarctica was known to ancient sea captains.
Fig 5. Piri Reis Map superimposed over map of the globe
Also vital to understand is that this period, 50,600 BC to 9600 BC corresponds to the Atlantean civilization that Plato wrote about in his famous dialogues, Critias and Timaeus. Plato explainedAtlantis’ extensive island system and waterways deep into its interior, and how it was the hub for a mighty empire that ruled over much of Africa, Europe, and Asia.
This finally takes us to the 9600 BC pole shift that led to the entire Antarctic continent, being moved to wholly inside the Antarctic circle. The magnitude of the Earth crustal displacement moving the South Pole from its previous location just off the East Antarctic coast to its present location was approximately 20 degrees. Again, significantly less than what Thomas was proposing in his crustal displacement theory.
The Flem-Aths contend that Atlantis was located in Antarctica and that the remnants of this legendary lost civilization today lie under the West Antarctic ice sheets. This is consistent with what several whistleblowers and insiders have been revealing concerning the discovery of a flash-frozen civilization under the ice sheets.
If the Flem-Aths and others are right that Plato’s Atlantis is buried under the Antarctic ice, this gives us a means of estimating the devastation that would be caused by a crustal displacement of approximately 20 degrees. It would be sufficient to wipe out the coastal regions all over the globe such as the low-lying archipelagos such as Atlantis, but allow those living in elevated or mountainous regions to survive the subsequent tsunamis, earthquakes, and hurricanes accompanying a pole shift.
When ice core samples are examined in relation to what we know about Earth crustal displacement theories proposed by Hapgood and Thomas, they lead to a clear conclusion. The examination of ice core samples from different parts of Antarctica support Hapgood’s theory that earth crustal displacements happen periodically, and involve Pole Shifts of up to 40 degrees.
The Flem Aths book, When the Sky Fell, gives us a means of tracking the most significant pole shifts over the last 100,000 thousand years, and illustrates how these have occurred in a manner that is consistent with what ice core samples tell us.
Thomas’ theory that the Earth regularly experiences 90 degree pole shifts that flip the poles back and forth from equatorial regions is not supported by Antarctic ice core records. While it is comforting to know that the Earth is unlikely to experience anything like the cataclysmic 90 degree pole shift predicted by Thomas, it is sobering to know that even a 20 degree pole shift devastated the worldwide Atlantean civilization 11,600 years ago.
The likelihood that we will soon experience a pole shift due to another crustal displacement caused by solar activity, cosmic rays, collapse of the Earth’s magnetic field, activity from the Earth’s core, and/or a rapid melt off of the West Antarctic, appears to be quite high as I have suggested in previous articles examining Davidson’s Earth Catastrophe series.
This calls for an unprecedented level of transparency by governments in sharing data about Antarctica’s history, what is known about prior pole shifts, and the disclosure of suppressed technologies that would enable the bulk to humanity to prepare and escape from impending cataclysmic events.
At the end of 2017, The New York Times broke the story of a secretive Pentagon program with a budget of $22 million to investigate UFOs called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). The man who exposed the existence of the program, Luis Elizondo, was the former head of the project. Elizondo’s ongoing efforts to investigate the UFO mystery with his new employer, the To the Stars Academy (TTSA), will be featured in a History Channel series premiering May 31 called Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.
However, what The New York Times apparently did not know when they published their story is that the program went by a different name at its inception, and the scope of the program was much broader than just UFOs. In fact, according to a senior manager on the project, the investigations included “bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, animal and human injuries and much more.”
It is unknown whether Unidentified will cover the paranormal aspects of the program. Although Elizondo did work with this paranormal project, he only worked in the UFO division. By the time he was the head of the entire program, the UFO division was all that was left. The rest of the program had been shut down, and you will never guess why. It wasn’t because people inside the Department of Defense (DoD) thought the program was too weird, although some did. It was shut down because of demonic forces.
Don’t worry, demons didn't attack the Pentagon, but apparently, some people inside the government were afraid the potentially paranormal incidents being investigated could be demonic, especially scary occurrences taking place at a ranch in Utah, and they wanted no part of it. They didn’t want the government messing with demons either, so they lobbied for the program to be ended and it was.
This may sound extremely odd, but according to those involved, it's true.
The New York Timesstory that broke the Pentagon UFO program began when an official with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) approached Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow “to visit Mr. Bigelow’s ranch in Utah, where he conducted research.”
That sounds innocent enough, but what the article did not cover is what Bigelow researched at this ranch in Utah. Bigelow was known for his interest in the paranormal and UFOs, and by the time the DIA official had approached him, Bigelow had already spent decades and large sums of money researching the paranormal. Bigelow’s first significant foray into the unknown was an organization created in 1995 called the National Institute for Discovery Sciences (NIDS). Its purpose was to conduct scientific investigations of the paranormal.
After hearing rumors about paranormal phenomena occurring in the Uintah Basin in Utah, primarily focused on Skinwalker Ranch, Bigelow bought the ranch in 1996. It was the perfect place to conduct NIDS investigations. The ranchers who owned the property stayed for a while but left because they did not feel comfortable there. If their stories are to be believed, they had good reason to go.
The family, using the pseudonym Gorman, said they had several terrifying experiences. Among them was the sighting of a giant wolf-like creature that attacked cattle, could withstand multiple point-blank gunshots and seemed to disappear into thin air. The incident that caused them to leave for good, however, was when their beloved dogs chased glowing orbs of light into the forest at night never to be seen again.
The NIDS investigators had their share of experiences as well. As detailed in Knapp and Kelleher’s book, the strangest occurred in the middle of the night while two researchers were observing the ranch from the edge of a bluff. As they were packing up to leave at around 2:30 am, one of them noticed a light in the forest below. At first, they thought it might be a reflection. However, as they watched, the light began to grow. Once it became a couple of feet wide, they say it looked like a tunnel opening up, and they saw a creature within. It was large and black with no face. It crawled out of the light and into the dark forest. The light then began to disappear until it was gone.
Kelleher said years ago he felt whatever was going on at the Skinwalker Ranch outsmarted them and anticipated their actions.
John Alexander, a retired Colonel in U.S. Army Intelligence who also spent time working at Los Alamos Laboratories and still does some work as a defense consultant, helped organize NIDS investigations. In a YouTube interview for OpenMinds.tv in 2013, he describes what they encountered at the ranch as a “precognitive sentient phenomena.”
“What we learned was that the events were real and tangible, and definitely occurring,” Alexander explained. “These weren’t figments of someone’s imagination, or folklore or any of these sorts of things.”
“But, as for the etiology, nope,” says Alexander. ”We remained mystified.”
According to a recent interview with Knapp, Investigations into the ranch petered as the paranormal phenomena occurring on the ranch also waned. By the early 2000s, not much was going on. It was during this lull that Bigelow allowed Knapp to begin working on the book. Once the book was published, it brought a lot of attention to the ranch, but paranormal experiences were still rare.
So when the DIA official approached Bigelow in 2007 to visit the ranch, no one thought there would be anything to worry about. However, precognitive sentient forces on the ranch had other plans. Soon after arriving at the ranch, the DIA official had a paranormal encounter that Knapp described as “remarkable, and it made a very big impression on this guy.”
The New York Times says shortly after this visit, DIA officials met with Senator Harry Reid because they wanted to start a research program. It turns out Reid, a friend of Bigelow’s, was kept in the loop regarding Bigelow’s work researching the paranormal because he shared Bigelow’s interest in the topic.
Reid then found bipartisan support from a couple of fellow members of Congress, secured the funding, and got the project launched - all within 2007. Soon after, a requisition for a contractor to conduct research for the program was posted, and Bigelow’s Bigelow Aerospace won it. Bigelow created Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), lead by Kelleher, to manage the contract.
However, the project was not called AATIP, as The New York Times reported. Per Knapp and documents he obtained, it was called the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System (AAWSAP), and it was set up to investigate not just UFOs, but primarily all of the weird stuff going on at the Skinwalker Ranch, including that list of weirdness at the beginning of this story.
Due to the nature of the project, it was kept as quiet as possible. Few in Congress knew it existed. However, it didn’t take long for religious factions within the government to raise concerns.
“They’re basically high-level people in different intelligence agencies who are fundamentalist Christians; who think that anything involving UFOs and the paranormal is satanic,” says Knapp.
“Certain senior government officials thought our collection of facts on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) was dangerous to their philosophical beliefs,” Elizondo wrote in a post on Medium. “They decided the data was a threat to their belief system.”
Elizondo explained to Den of Geek that by 2008, the negative attention their paranormal investigations received caused them to create a sub-group inside of AAWSAP that only focused on military UFO cases. This was AATIP. When Elizondo joined AAWSAP (the paranormal program), it was to work with AATIP (the UFO division). Eventually, the DIA closed AAWSAP, and only AATIP remained. Elizondo took over leadership of AATIP in 2010.
As for The New York Times, one of the authors of the article, Leslie Kean, told me via email "at the time, our focus was AATIP. This was the name on the documents that we had, and this is what Lue Elizondo had talked to us about in interviews with him, as did others associated with the program." Elizondo says that since his involvement was primarily with AATIP and the UFO side of things, he did not feel at liberty to share AAWSAP information with them.
Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell has recently completed a documentary titled Hunt for the Skinwalker. He worked with Knapp, who intended to make a film when the book came out in 2005. The footage Knapp obtained back then is a large part of the new documentary.
“That $22 million that was created to study the phenomenon was really inspired wholly by Skinwalker Ranch and what Bigelow had been doing there privately with NIDS,” Corbell told this reporter in a recent podcast interview. “The public is going to see by watching this film that connection very clearly and yes, our Department of Defense, specifically the intelligence organization within the Department of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), they took this very seriously...Secrets have been kept, big secrets about this ranch for more than, I would say, two decades, and everybody wondered what has been going on there,” says Corbell. “This has been embargoed, this information. All of that has changed, and this story can now be told.”
These stories, although they sound fictional, are accounts from credible sources, and according to Corbell, Knapp, and Elizondo, there are still more shocking revelations to come. Elizondo recently told Den of Geek, “You ain't seen nothing yet, baby!”
Those of us following this story have been wondering when the time will come for us to find out more. Elizondo says much of what we have been waiting for will be included in the History Channel series Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation premiering May 31.
The Pentagon recently passed a new guideline so US Navy pilots and sailors continue to report unidentified flying objects that they see.
The new rules are meant to encourage them to keep track of what they see.
This renewed interest in UFOs, says Iain Boyd, a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan, is because the Pentagon needs to better understand flying objects that it can't now identify.
U.S. Navy pilots and sailorswon’t be considered crazy for reporting unidentified flying objects, under new rules meant to encourage them to keep track of what they see. Yet just a few years ago, the Pentagon reportedly shut down another official program that investigated UFO sightings.What has changed? Is the U.S. military finally coming around to the idea that alien spacecraft are visiting our planet?
The answer to that question is almost certainly no. Humans’ misinterpretation of observations of natural phenomena are as old as time and include examples such as manatees being seen as mermaidsand driftwood in a Scottish loch being interpreted as a monster. A more recent and relevant example is the strange luminescent structure in the sky caused by a SpaceX rocket launch. In these types of cases, incorrect interpretations occur because people have incomplete information or misunderstand what they’re seeing.
Based on my prior experience as a science advisor to the Air Force, I believe that the Pentagon wants to avoid this type of confusion, so it needs to better understand flying objects that it can’t now identify. During a military mission, whether in peace or in war, if a pilot or soldier can’t identify an object, they have a serious problem: How should they react, without knowing if it is neutral, friendly or threatening? Fortunately, the military can use advanced technologies to try to identify strange things in the sky.
What is this object?
Taking the ‘U’ out of ‘UFO’
“Situational awareness” is the military term for having complete understanding of the environment in which you are operating. A UFO represents a gap in situational awareness. At the moment, when a Navy pilot sees something strange during flight, just about the only thing he or she can do is ask other pilots and air traffic control what they saw in that place at that time. Globally, the number of UFO reportings in a year has peaked at more than 8,000. It’s not known how many the military experiences.
UFOs represent an opportunity for the military to improve its identification processes. At least some of that work could be done in the future by automated systems, and potentially in real time as an incident unfolds. Military vehicles – Humvees, battleships, airplanes and satellites alike – are covered in sensors. It’s not just passive devices like radio receivers, video cameras and infrared imagers, but active systems like radar, sonar and lidar. In addition, a military vehicle is rarely alone – vehicles travel in convoys, sail in fleets and fly in formations. Above them all are satellites watching from overhead.
Military vehicles bristle with antennas, cameras and sensors of all kinds.U.S. Army
Drawing a complete picture
Sensors can provide a wealth of information on UFOs including range, speed, heading, shape, size and temperature. With so many sensors and so much data, though, it is a challenge to merge the information into something useful. However, the military is stepping up its work on autonomy and artificial intelligence. One possible use of these new technologies could be to combine them to analyze all the many signals as they come in from sensors, separating any observations that it can’t identify. In those cases, the system could even assign sensors on nearby vehicles or orbiting satellites to collect additional information in real time. Then it could assemble an even more complete picture.
For the moment, though, people will need to weigh in on what all the data reveal. That’s because a key challenge for any successful use of artificial intelligence is building trust or confidence in the system. For example, in a famous experiment by Google scientists, an advanced image recognition algorithm based on artificial intelligence was fooled into wrongly identifying a photo of a panda as a gibbon simply by distorting a small number of the original pixels.
So, until humans understand UFOs better, we won’t be able to teach computers about them. In my view, the Navy’s new approach to reporting UFO encounters is a good first step. This may eventually lead to a comprehensive, fully integrated approach for object identification involving the fusion of data from many sensors through the application of artificial intelligence and autonomy. Only then will there be fewer and fewer UFOs in the sky – because they won’t be unidentified anymore.
In this photo provided by the US Navy, air traffic controllers aboard the USS Harry S. Truman monitor aircraft departures in the Carrier Control Approach suite in the Mediterranean Sea.
Curiosity will be coming 'round the Martian mountain when it comes — and a colorful new animation highlights where exactly the mission is headed.
Since 2012, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have been exploring Mars with the car-size rover called Curiosity. A sixth grader named this robotduring a contest run by the space agency 10 years ago. And, oh, the places Curiosity will go!
The rover has been climbing Mount Sharp, which rises about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the base of Gale Crater, since 2014. Curiosity is currently analyzing rock samples in a place called the ''clay-bearing unit'' and might someday reach rocky cliffs with sulfate minerals, according to a May 15 statement by the space agency.
NASA officials say each region represents a different period in the mountain's history, and the ''sulfate-bearing unit,'' for example, might reveal if the area once had liquid water that dried up billions of years ago.
Curiosity isn't just studying the ground below. Two months ago, the rover's Mast Camera captured each of Mars' tiny moons crossing the face of the sun. The instrument is fitted with a solar filter that lets it look directly at the star.
CIA REMOTE VIEWING PROGRAM DISCOVERS ANCIENT CIVILIZATION ON MARS
CIA REMOTE VIEWING PROGRAM DISCOVERS ANCIENT CIVILIZATION ON MARS
By: Gaia Staff
DECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET REMOTE VIEWING CIA DOCUMENTS REVEAL THE DISCOVERY OF AN ANCIENT CIVILIZATION THAT ONCE INHABITED THE RED PLANET.
It’s hard to fathom the number of esoteric programs that the CIA has or is currently funding and researching. The clandestine organization has been known to explore myriad outlets for conducting its operations, ranging from sinister to strange. But often the strange ones, particularly those that become declassified because the general populace finds them too bizarre to actually be true, are the most intriguing. When certain programs come to light, it always begs to ask the question, what else are they doing that they aren’t telling us about and what else haven’t they disclosed?
During the Cold War, the CIA conducted several experimental programs involving the human psyche. MKUltra was one of the more malevolent programs aimed at mind control using drugs and other techniques for torture and interrogation purposes. One element of the program involved administering LSD surreptitiously to subjects with the goal of turning them into robot agents that they could then control. The horrific intent of the program eventually came to light and was exposed, despite an attempted cover-up and destruction of all evidence pertaining to it.
But one of the more intriguing (and humane) programs that produced some interesting results was one known as Stargate, which trained operatives in astral projection and remote viewing. These psychic abilities that allow for perception and, if you’re well-practiced, the ability for your astral body to travel anywhere, including distant planets, has cultivated striking imagery and details that often have been confirmed.
Secrets of Remote Viewing
A PSYCHIC JOURNEY TO MARS
During the Cold War, one of the members of Stargate, Joseph McMoneagle, was able to perceive details, which were later confirmed by satellite imaging, of a new type of Russian nuclear submarine being constructed, based simply on coordinates provided to him. The submarine was one of the largest ever built and when he described its magnitude to military engineers, he was scoffed at. It turned out that McMoneagle’s impression was right.
McMoneagle was one of a key group of remote viewing in CIA’s participants that focused on military targets, missing persons and occasionally attempts to see into different time periods. But those attempts were all mundane compared to an unexpected, otherworldly astral journey he would take in 1984. One day he was awoken from a nap and given a sealed envelope that couldn’t be opened until the end of a subsequent viewing session, during which his colleague dictated coordinates for him to view. Soon McMoneagle found himself astral projecting to an unfamiliar locale.
Somewhat recently, the CIA released the transcript of McMoneagle and an agent conducting the viewing. When McMoneagle went into his viewing state, he described a world inhabited by a civilization in dire shape. He described seeing an infrastructure consisting of intersecting roads, aqueducts, channels and pyramids. The transcript is interesting and describes a baffled McMoneagle who often struggles to report the ‘raw data’ his colleague consistently reminds him to stay focused on. Throughout the viewing his astonishment overtakes him leading to tangential periods, sometimes as long as 30 minutes, trying to maintain his focus.
When McMoneagle eventually reports contact with living entities his colleague tells him to initiate communication with them. He describes their situation as being in a critical state, seemingly on the brink of apocalypse. Having purportedly sent members of their civilization on a mission to find a new place to inhabit, these tall shadowed figures appear to be in a state of hibernation awaiting the return of their search party. When he asks if these entities can perceive him, they describe him as something of a hallucination. At the end of the viewing McMoneagle opened his envelope to see where he supposedly projected to – Mars, approximately 1 million years B.C.
Skeptics have written off Stargate and other programs of its ilk as diversionary tactics to steer the Soviets in the wrong direction during the Cold War. The logic being that if the U.S. could subversively convince the Soviets that they were having success in phony psychic programs, the Soviets might then waste time and resources funding similar programs. And of course, there’s no way to know if McMoneagle’s account has any validity without sending a manned mission to Mars to explore the coordinates he was viewing. This probably isn’t going to happen very soon, but McMoneagle said he’d be willing to go, though he is in his 70s.
Whatever the CIA’s original intent may be, many of the members of the Stargate program still practice remote viewing or are willing to talk about it an all seriousness. With the program now having been disclosed and that era of the Cold War being over, it seems there would be no need to continue to maintain secrecy or continue playing along. We would also be remiss to think that the Russians weren’t researching remote viewing long before the U.S. There’s even evidence that they were researching it before Stalin’s reign.
There are other declassified remote viewing CIA documents that were once deemed ‘top secret’ by the CIA, including some that resulted in accurate descriptions of secret Soviet bases on an esoteric island in the middle of the Indian Ocean and another in the middle of the Ural Mountain range. The viewer described details of the bases and their geographic locations in details that were later confirmed. Though the evidence surrounding these particular sessions is somewhat conflicting, the reports affirming the results show astonishment from agents analyzing the program at the amazing accuracy of some of these viewings. And while astral projection and remote viewing are similar in nature, but much different in their scope, the confirmation of results from the remote viewing CIA sessions increases the likelihood that astral projections could have significant accuracy.
NEMESIS STAR THEORY; DOES THE SUN HAVE AN EVIL TWIN?
NEMESIS STAR THEORY; DOES THE SUN HAVE AN EVIL TWIN?
By: Gaia Staff
Many people remain anxious about the threat posed from a hidden nemesis planet, known as Nibiru, that has been prophesied to collide with Earth. Though many of the proposed dates for this collision have come and gone, there is another celestial body that may be more likely to lead to an apocalyptic event: The Nemesis Star.
Clues of the Sun's Twin
THE NEMESIS STAR THEORY
Binary star systems occur frequently and are actually more common than single stars. At least that’s what we thought, until a recent hypothesis proposed the possibility that every star starts out as a binary pair or multi-pair system. While the theory hasn’t been confirmed, there is significant evidence that our Sun likely has a twin, an evil twin.
The majority of stars in the galaxy are red dwarfs, which are a fifth of the size of the sun and up to 50 times fainter. These types of stars are pretty commonly paired with another star in a binary system, leading astronomers to believe that Nemesis would be the Sun’s red dwarf star companion. But due to the small size and faintness of these stars, they can be hard to find, making Nemesis all the more elusive.
binary stars courtesy wired.com
This star is thought to be responsible for 12 cyclical extinction events on Earth, including the one that killed the dinosaurs. The Nemesis Star Theory’s roots can be traced to two paleontologists, David Raup and Jack Sepkoski, who noticed that there was a periodicity to major die-outs throughout Earth’s history, occurring in 26 million year intervals. This led to a number of astrophysicists and astronomers, postulating their own Nemesis Star hypotheses.
So how would the sun’s twin be responsible for mass extinctions? The Nemesis Star Theory proposed the idea that the Earth’s binary twin must be in a large 1.5 light-year orbit, retaining just enough gravitational pull between it and the Sun so as not to drift off. But the issue with the orbit of Nemesis is the possibility that it occasionally passes through a cloud of icy debris on the fringe of our solar system, known as the Oort Cloud.
DON’T PERTURB THE OORT
The Oort Cloud is a theoretical sphere that is believed to orbit our solar system, consisting of planetesimals, the small icy building blocks of planets, comets, and asteroids. These planetesimals are sticky and collide with each other until they become large enough to have a significant gravitational pull, eventually becoming as large as a moon or a planet. They also create asteroids and comets which can be knocked out of orbit and sent hurtling toward the center of the solar system, crashing into planets.
There is a binary star system that once passed close enough to nearly perturb the Oort, and it was likely visible from Earth. Scholz’s Star made a flyby some 70,000 years ago, at a distance of 50,000 astronomical units (AU), with one AU being the distance from Earth to the Sun. The Oort is thought to extend from anywhere between 5,000 and 100,000 AUs and is believed to contain up to two trillion celestial objects. Astronomers are 95% certain that Shulz’s star passed within half of a light year of us, possibly perturbing the Oort, though apparently not enough to cause a mass extinction event.
Comets are believed to exist within the Oort and are the product of a thief model, a give-and-take of celestial bodies between stars when they’re formed. In this process comets get pulled back and forth between the gravitational field of stars. It was for this reason that the Oort was theorized, due to the number of comets coming from it, there had to have been a sibling star that pulled them out to the Oort.
The Oort courtesy of space-facts.com
Astronomers also found a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, a region just before the Oort that also contains icy, celestial bodies. This planet, named Sedna, orbits the Sun in a long, drawn-out elliptical path and is one of potentially hundreds. Sedna may help to explain the Nemesis star theory, in that its far-flung orbit was likely caused by our Sun’s twin, pulling it out as it drifted off into the depths of space. Imagine if instead of 9 planets in our solar system, there were a few hundred?
So where is this Nemesis star? Several years ago, the E.U. launched the wonderfully named, Gaia satellite, to map out the stars in the Milky Way and look specifically at stars that have had a close encounter with our solar system or that might come close in the future. But whether or not Nemesis will be found is unknown; it’s possible that it could make a return for the next mass extinction, or it is possible that it drifted off, perturbing the Oort of another star.
It began as a routine naval training exercise. But it would soon become one of the best-documented—and most baffling—UFO sightings of the 21st century.
Witnesses included highly trained military personnel—among them several deeply experienced radar operators and fighter pilots—who at the time of the sightings were at the controls of arguably the most advanced flight technology ever created. And yet none can explain what they saw.
The date was November 14, 2004, and the location was the Pacific Ocean, about 100 miles southwest of San Diego, California. The USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group, which included the nuclear-powered carrier and the missile cruiser USS Princeton, were conducting a series of drills prior to deployment in the Persian Gulf.
At about 2 p.m., two F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jets from the Nimitzreceived an unusual order from an operations officer aboard the Princeton. Already airborne, the pilots were told to stop their training maneuvers and proceed to new coordinates for a “real-world” task.
More ominously, the officer asked if they were carrying live weapons. They replied that they were not.
An MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter above the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, 2013.
Stocktrek Images/Getty Images
A puzzling presence at 80,000 feet
The Princeton’s highly advanced radar had been picking up mysterious objects for several days by then. The Navy called them “anomalous aerial vehicles,” or AAVs—a term the military preferred to unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, which had been tainted by its association with flying saucers, little green men and countless crackpots.
According to Kevin Day, the Princeton’s senior radar operator at the time, his screen showed well over 100 AAVs over the course of the week. “Watching them on the display was like watching snow fall from the sky,” he says in his first-ever on-camera interview, for HISTORY’s “Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation.”
According to Day, the AAVs appeared at an altitude greater than 80,000 feet, far higher than commercial or military jets typically fly. Initially, the Princeton’s radar team didn’t believe what they were seeing, chalking up the anomalies to an equipment malfunction. But after they determined that everything was operating as it should and they began detecting instances in which the AAVs dropped with astounding speed to lower, busier airspace, Day approached the Princeton’s commander about taking action.
“I was chomping at the bit,” he says. “I just really wanted to intercept these things.”
Two fighters were diverted to intercept one of the strange objects. When they first arrived on the scene, the pilots didn’t see any flying objects. But they did observe what the lead pilot, Commander David Fravor, later referred to as a “disturbance” in the ocean. The water was churning, with white waves breaking over what looked like a large object just under the surface.
Then they noticed one of the objects flying about 50 feet above the water. Fravor, the commander of the elite Black Aces squadron who was a Top Gun program graduate with more than 16 years of flying experience, described it as about 40 feet long, shaped like a Tic Tac candy and with no obvious means of propulsion: "It's white. It has no wings. It has no rotors. I go, 'Holy sh*t, what is that?'"
Even odder were its swift and erratic movements, which Fravor described to HISTORY as something he had never seen in his life: “This thing would go from one way to another, similar to if you threw a ping-pong ball against the wall.”
Another Navy pilot who served as Fravor’s wingman in the air that day—and who spoke to HISTORY on condition of anonymity—gave an account very similar to Fravor’s. Now a high-ranking Navy officer, she was a rookie pilot back in 2004. She remembered being terrified, watching as the more experienced pilot tried to intercept the strange craft: “It was so unpredictable—high G, rapid velocity, rapid acceleration. So you’re wondering: How can I possibly fight this?”
As Fravor flew around it, he says the craft ascended and came right at his plane: “All of a sudden it kind of turns and rapidly accelerates—beyond anything I’ve seen—crosses my nose, and…it’s gone.”
As the Tic Tac accelerated into the distance, according to Day, Navy jets began launching off the carrier to try and intercept the other mysterious objects the Princeton’s radar was tracking.
While Fravor wasn’t able to capture the encounter on video, one of the pilots who took off after he landed was able to track it down. He managed to capture video of a Tic Tac, using a highly sensitive infrared camera.
Renewed attention to the Nimitz incident
While the Nimitz incident seems to have been known in naval circles and to some UFO/AAV buffs, it didn’t come to wide public attention until 2017, when The New York Times ran an article about the sighting, and released the video of the Tic Tac shot by the Nimitz pilot that day.
The Timesalso revealed the existence of a little-known Defense Department initiative called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP. The “shadowy” enterprise, as the Times referred to it, had a budget of just $22 million, less than 0.00004% of the department’s total budget. It was said to be a pet project of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who had a longtime interest in UFOs.
Although the government told the Times that AATIP had officially shut down in 2012, its former director, Luis Elizondo, insisted it was still operating. Elizondo had left the program in October 2017, protesting that its work wasn’t being taken seriously enough within the Defense Department.
More eyes on the skies
Elizondo has since joined To the Stars Academy, an organization co-founded by Tom DeLonge, best known as guitarist with the band Blink-182. The group’s mission includes promoting UAP research.
Apparently they’ll have plenty to work with. According to Christopher Mellon, a former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official who is now national security adviser to the organization, and numerous pilots HISTORY has spoken with, the Nimitz incident was not an isolated event. There have been more than a dozen incidents off the East Coast—some as recent as 2015.
The Navy, which seems to have made little effort to investigate the Nimitzepisode back in 2004, also appears to be taking the subject more seriously now. In late April 2019, the Navy announced it was drafting new guidelines for reporting any sightings of “unidentified aircraft.” The initiative was intended to de-stigmatize such reports and make it easier for service members to come forward with less fear of ridicule.
According to a Navy spokesman: "There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated airspace in recent years.” The Navy, it was announced, was “investigating each and every report.”
As with all things UFO, AAV and UAP, the Nimitz incident has its doubters. Some have suggested the crafts were advanced reconnaissance drones and that the churning water was caused by a submarine. But whatever the now-famous Tic Tac actually was, it’s hard to dispute that the pilots, the radar operators and the infrared camera had seen something. And chances are, it wasn’t just a big breath mint.
Life Beyond Earth? Scientific Community Making Search For UFOs Mainstream
Life Beyond Earth? Scientific Community Making Search For UFOs Mainstream
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – The search for extraterrestrial activity is getting some credibility.
Notable scientists are getting behind a push to make contact with whatever might be out there.
“It was between a half mile and a mile away… it was big and quiet… moving very slowly,” UFO witness Robert Strong said.
Did the Hudson Valley resident really see a UFO?
(Credit: CBS2)
“Military pilots, army personnel… the U.S. Navy now… all of them have reported different types of sightings,” Christopher Deperno of MUFON said.
Even NASA is conceding it’s possible the universe contains different life forms.
“We do know that the phenomenon is real,” Sam Falvo of MUFON added.
Experts say the race is heating up to find answers as to who they are, where they’re from, and what they may want from us.
Deperno and Falvo investigate unidentified flying objects for the New York chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, a global organization established in 1969.
“Most of them… 95 percent or so can be identified… it’s those five or six percent that really stir your interest,” Falvo said.
What they do has long been considered a fringe field of science, but today, this search for answers has gone mainstream. Prestigious universities including Harvardand Penn State are dedicating some of their brightest minds to this as a new field of study.
“We believe the search for extraterrestrial intelligence needs a permanent academic home,” Penn State’s Jason Wright said.
Then there’s the private sector, funding everything from digital, interstellar communication, to a dish that emits radio waves.
These attempts to communicate with the extraterrestrial worlds are a bit more high tech than the recording of unique sounds scientists played from two space probes in the 1970’s.
Author and researcher Linda Zimmermann has investigated some 500 eyewitness accounts of UFO’s in the Hudson Valley.
“There is the possibility that they are drawn to the water here… the rivers, the lakes, and reservoirs, but also this area has a very unique magnetic field and gravitational field,” Zimmermann said.
Zimmermann and Falvo’s organizations have now formed a joint venture called Project Aries – with the hope of collecting as much human intelligence and data as possible, with your help.
“We need you to come forward and tell us of your experiences,” Zimmermann added.
There will be a town hall meeting in early June for Hudson Valley residents to find out more about the sightings in their region.
Een vrouw kreeg een paniekaanval toen ze plots drie vreemde stippen door de lucht zag flitsen tijdens een ritje ’s nachts. Ze was aan het filmen om haar zangtalent op te nemen toen de ufo overvloog, waardoor haar stem onmiddellijk stokte in haar keel. “Verdomme, verdomme, verdomme!”, klinkt het in toenemende paniek. De vrouw belt huilend naar haar echtgenoot om het relaas te doen, maar hij neemt niet op. Dat leidt tot een interessant - maar eenzijdig - gesprek, waarbij paniek, boosheid en smeken om de beurt de revue passeren.
User @sadeyezriri posted a thread on Twitter, sharing her wild encounter and the lack of support her husband showed as she freaked out
De vrouw postte haar paniekaanval op Twitter samen met de beelden van “het ruimteschip” die ze die avond maakte. “Het was een ruimteschip dat op een pizza leek”, schrijft ze bij de vraag waar ze kan melden dat ze de ufo zag. “Het ding had ongeveer dezelfde afmetingen als drie auto’s samen.” Volgens de vrouw was het ruimteschip “zwart” en had het een “strak ontwerp”.
“De lichten waren niet echt fel want ze weerspiegelden nergens in de auto”, aldus de vrouw die liever anoniem blijft. “Ik begon te huilen en ik was compleet in de war. Ik wist niet waar ik naar keek. Ik besefte plots dat het een onbekend vliegend object was.” Haar broer wees er nog op dat er niet één, maar twee ufo’s in beeld verschijnen.
De vrouw tast in het duister en weet nog steeds niet wat ze die avond zag. Wat ze wel weet, is dat ze zich enorm schaamt over hoe ze op de video en de voicemail van haar man klinkt. “Zo gênant, de buitenaardse wezens hadden me beter gewoon meegenomen.”
BEKIJK OOK
Mysterieuze ufo op plek waar ooit meteoor neerstortte: “Het was plots snikheet, net een gloeilamp”
Militaire piloten ontdekken ufo tijdens trainingsvlucht: “Er is een hele vloot van, kijk maar op de radar”
“I experienced a series of ‘eureka’ moments whilst deciphering the code, followed by a sense of disbelief and excitement when I realised the magnitude of the achievement, both in terms of its linguistic importance and the revelations about the origin and content of the manuscript.”
That was Dr. Gerard Cheshire announcing this week that it took him just two weeks to crack the code of the mysterious Voynich manuscript – a Medieval illustrated codex written in an indecipherable language that has baffled cryptographers (the legendary Alan Turing tried unsuccessfully to decode it) since its discovery, including Wilfrid Voynich, who obtained the codex in 1912 and popularized it enough to have it tagged with his name. in “The Language and Writing System of MS408 (Voynich) Explained,” Cheshire claims it is written in proto-Romance, an extinct ancestor of the Romance languages (Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, etc.) and he was able to translate enough of the document to determine that it was “compiled by Dominican nuns as a source of reference for Maria of Castile, Queen of Aragon.”
“Sorry, folks, “proto-Romance language” is not a thing. This is just more aspirational, circular, self-fulfilling nonsense.”
“Ooooh, tough crowd” as comedians like to say when the audience boos rather than laughs. In Cheshire’s case, that crowd includes Lisa Fagin Davis, executive director of the Medieval Academy of America (an organization promoting excellence in the field of medieval studies), who immediatelytweeted her analysis of the announcement. Davis comes by her expertship legitimately – she received her PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale University where the Voynich manuscript is held, and has handily debunked previous announcements of Voynich code-breaking.
“As with most would-be Voynich interpreters, the logic of this proposal is circular and aspirational: he starts with a theory about what a particular series of glyphs might mean, usually because of the word’s proximity to an image that he believes he can interpret. He then investigates any number of medieval Romance-language dictionaries until he finds a word that seems to suit his theory. Then he argues that because he has found a Romance-language word that fits his hypothesis, his hypothesis must be right. His “translations” from what is essentially gibberish, an amalgam of multiple languages, are themselves aspirational rather than being actual translations.”
Davis explains her doubts to Ars Technica and pointed out that the idea of a proto-Romance language “is completely unsubstantiated,” as are Cheshire links between certain glyphs and certain Latin letters.
“One of the reasons the Voynich manuscript is so appealing is because of languages like hieroglyphics and linear B, which were deciphered. But they didn’t come out of nowhere, they were decades in the making and drew on lots of different scholarly expertise. You can’t just have one person saying: ‘I’ve cracked it.’ You have got to have the field, on the whole, agreeing.”
Dr. Kate Wiles, a medievalist and linguist and senior editor at History Today, told The Guardian that such a discovery, if it were true, would need verification by a number of experts before being accepted.
“Regarding the decipherment of the individual symbols, a number of people have come up with a mapping to Latin letters, but those mappings rarely agree with each other, or with this proposal.”
Greg Kondrak, a computer science professor at the University of Alberta who as also tried to crack the Voynich code, also points out that the Romance origins of some of the words in the manuscript has been well known for some time.
Finally, J.K. Petersen, keeper of The Voynich Portal, summarizes his problems with the alleged code-cracking:
But I have trouble accepting the translation in its current form because:
there are a lot of nonsensical word combinations,there’s almost no grammar, the letter distribution is quite different from Romance languages (it would take a whole blog to discuss this aspect of the text, but take 4 as an example, which almost exclusively is at the beginnings of tokens—Cheshire relates it to “d”, and “9” which is usually at the end and sometimes at the beginning, but almost never in the middle, which he designates as “a”), the words still match the drawings if the drawings are interpreted differently (which means the relationship isn’t proven yet), some of the transliterated “words” don’t show any relationship to Romance word-structures (and the author neglected to explain how specific non-Romance words were derived), and the same words (e.g., “na”) are sometimes interpreted differently.
A few things are certain at this point: there are a LOT of people interested in breaking the Voynich code, a large number working to verify the code-breakers and the attempts and debunkings are destined to continue.
Starlink, SpaceX’s ambitious plan to bring high-speed internet to practically anywhere in the world, is about to take shape.
On Wednesday, the company plans to launch 60 test satellites to help develop its planned giant constellation. Elon Musk, the CEO behind the plan, could help redefine how people think about internet access — no longer tied to fixed lines, where satellite internet moves from a last-resort curiosity to a viable service for tens of millions. With the FCC abolishingnet neutrality, Starlink also has an opportunity to save it for its customers — or continue to ignore the concept as terrestrial ISPs have done. There’slots of discussion, but we don’t know yet.
Starlink is a planned constellation of 12,000 satellites, eclipsing the size of existing satellite internet systems operating at a relatively low orbit. Musk has claimed that, unlike other systems, latency will be low enough to power the lightning-fast response times necessary for video games. Using a ground terminal, customers could get connected from practically anywhere in the world with a view to the constellation.
The prospect is so enticing it could eclipse SpaceX’s current revenue streams and rapidly transform the company — providing even more funds for flying to Mars and making humans a multi-planetary species.
SpaceX Starlink: When Is the Launch Date?
SpaceX is expected to launch 60 satellites on Wednesday at 10:30 p.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Weather conditions were at 70 percent favorable the Sunday prior to the launch. The booster will attempt to land on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
Musk shared an image of the Falcon 9 packed with the 60 satellites ready to go.
The future of the internet?
When compared with the Tesla Roadster that Musk sent up on the Falcon Heavy’s maiden voyage, the sheer scale becomes clear.
Tesla Roadster, for comparison.
Unfortunately, it appears these satellites won’t be used for the final constellation. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said at the Satellite 2019 conference in Washington, DC on May 7 that the first launch would lack the intersat links present in future crafts, meaning these 60 will only be used for tests.
“They’re capable, but there’s no intersatellite links on it,” Shotwell said at the event. “I call them ‘test class’ satellites. The antennas are pretty hot on these things. They are very capable systems.”
Although they’re test-class crafts, they should provide more information about how the constellation will work than previous trials. Musk confirmed the craftsare “production design, unlike our earlier Tintin demo sats.” The company previously launched two demo satellites in February 2018 to communicate with six ground stations.
If successful, it could pave the way for multiple Starlink launches later this year. Shotwell stated at the same conference that SpaceX could hold between two and six Starlink launches this year depending on the results from the May 15 launch.
Once SpaceX has completed a few launches, its network could soon take shape. Musk said on Sunday via Twitter that around six more launches of 60 satellites could be enough for “minor” coverage, while 12 launches would be enough for “moderate” coverage. That means by the end of this year, SpaceX could have a basic constellation up and running.
The satellites use lasers to communicate with each other. Mark Handley, a professor of networked systems at University College London, previously explained to Inverse that this could make communications between two points on the planet up to 50 percent faster, as the light would move faster through the vacuum than through fiber optic glass cables.
SpaceX plans to launch 4,409 satellites in its initial constellation. Each one weighs around 850 pounds. Around 1,584 of these will orbit 550 kilometers above the surface of the Earth, while the rest will run at 1,150 kilometers. The company was granted permission for this setup from the FCC in May.
As for space junk, the company claimed to the FCC that there is “zero” chance of pieces hitting anyone on Earth, as the satellites are expected to burn up through the atmosphere.
SpaceX Starlink: What Is the Price for Starlink Internet?
As Starlink has already slipped from its initial plans, it’s perhaps understandable that SpaceX has not yet released definitive pricing. FCC chairman Ajit Pai’s support for the plan draws to mind net neutrality horror stories, where firms charge higher prices for faster access to preferred sites.
Starlink could save consumers billions, even if they don’t choose to go with SpaceX for internet. A BroadbandNow report claims such constellations could save American households up to $30 billion per year. The logic is that increased competition will drive prices down. Around 104 million Americans have one wired broadband provider in their area, and prices cost around $68 per month. Around 75 million have two choices, and they pay around $59 per month. The 14 million with five or more choices pay just $47, so adding Starlink into the mix could push people into the next lower bracket as the competition increases.
The mean lowest price over time.
Existing satellite offerings come to around $50 per month for service. If SpaceX wants to compete with other providers, a price around this area may not be unreasonable.
SpaceX Starlink: Who Is Competing With Starlink?
SpaceX has a number of competitors vying to kickstart their giant satellite constellations. OneWeb, which launched its first six satellites back in February, is aiming for up to 900 satellites with a goal of switching on by 2021.
Another plan by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos would send 3,236 satellites up as part of Project Kuiper. SpaceX and Blue Origin both have similar end goals of using their current projects to fuel space colonization, but Bezos envisions floating structures orbiting the Earth rather than cities on Mars. The success of one internet constellation over another could power these visions and bring them closer to reality.
Another factor working against SpaceX is time. The FCC gave the firm until March 29, 2024 to launch 50 percent of its planned constellation. Around three years later, the firm needs to complete its constellation.
Musk has just eight years to potentially kickstart the future of internet access.
Follow the route of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, as it moves to a new part of Mount Sharp, into an area scientists call the “clay-bearing unit”.
This NASA video,releasedWednesday (May 15, 2019), shows what it would be like to soar over Mars’ Mount Sharp, following the route of theCuriosityrover, which has been climbing Mount Sharp since 2014, and has now moved to a new area that the science team calls the “clay-bearing unit”.
In the video, Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada gives a tour of the rover’s new home in the clay-bearing unit – or “clay unit” for short – where Curiosity has just started analyzing rock samples. The clay-bearing unit has been an important scientific destination since even before Curiosity launched. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter(MRO) spied a strong clay signal in this region, suggesting that water might have played a role in its formation. On its long trek since landing on Mars in 2012, Curiosity has discovered many examples of mudstones containing clay minerals.
Curiosity has been on the road for nearly seven years. Finally drilling at the clay-bearing unit is a major milestone in our journey up Mount Sharp.
This animation shows a proposed route for NASA’s Curiosity rover, which is climbing lower Mount Sharp on Mars. The annotated version of the map labels different regions that scientists working with the rover would like to explore in coming years.
The aerial tour also shows the rover’s proposed path in the years ahead. Targets that are intriguing to scientists include the rocky cliffs of the “sulfate-bearing unit,” where sulfate minerals might indicate the area was drying up or becoming more acidic in ancient times, and an area called Gediz Vallis, where a river may have carved a path through the sulfate unit.
Each region represents a different period in the history of Mount Sharp, which rises about 3 miles (5 km) from the base of Gale Crater. Curiosity’s scientists want to visit these places to learn more about the history of water on the mountain, which slowly dried up as the climate changed.
Bottom line: Video shows current route of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover.
Alien Life Might Be So Advanced That It’s Indistinguishable From the Laws of Physics
Alien Life Might Be So Advanced That It’s Indistinguishable From the Laws of Physics
We’ve never seen aliens … or have we? No, Roswell conspirators, not now. Please sit down. We’re talking in multitudes of higher complexity.
Try this on: Maybe aliens are the puppet masters behind the laws of physics. Or maybe aliens literally are physics. Just when we thought we had a grasp on the fundamental constants of the universe, boom, dark matter rips off the mask, and it’s E.T. Too crazy to be true? Prove it.
Magic, Shmagic
British science-fiction writer and futurist Arthur C. Clarke famously formulated three adages known as Clarke’s three laws. Of them, number three steals most of the spotlight: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Consider cavemen for a moment. If you hand-delivered an iPhone to an ancient cave-dweller, he’d be dumbfounded at the “magical” device. But give it some time, and Fred Flintstone would probably start tweeting and Snapchatting. Now, let’s crank ‘er up a notch. Imagine technology so advanced, it’s not even recognizable as technology, or magic, for that matter. It could be so advanced that calling it magic would be an insult. Sorry, David Blaine.
In 2016, Columbia University director of astrobiology Caleb Scharf posed quite the thought experiment in an article for Nautilus: Just maybe, aliens are so advanced that we can’t tell them apart from the laws of physics. “After all, if the cosmos holds other life, and if some of that life has evolved beyond our own waypoints of complexity and technology, we should be considering some very extreme possibilities,” Scharf writes.
As far as extreme possibilities go, it doesn’t get much more severe than hypothesizing that, hey, maybe the whole of everything ever that exists anywhere is itself alien intelligence. But why not, right?! “Presumably life doesn’t have to be made of atoms and molecules, but could be assembled from any set of building blocks with the requisite complexity,” writes Scharf. “If so, a civilization could then transcribe itself and its entire physical realm into new forms. Indeed, perhaps our universe is one of the new forms into which some other civilization transcribed its world.” Is this the wildest possible solution to the Fermi paradox? Well, it sure ain’t the tamest.
One-Word Explanation for Anything: ALIENS This isn’t all some far-out psychedelic rambling. (Even if it was, we’d still be here for it.) As bonkers as it may sound, Scharf argues that his thought experiment could explain the most mysterious cosmic phenomena. Take our dear ol’ elusive friend, dark matter. This unseen stuff makes up 27 percent of the observable universe, but virtually everything else about it is famously unknown. Based on the assumptions and predictions of cosmologists and astronomers, dark matter could be much more complicated than we’re ready to understand. Inconsistencies between dark matter models and observations only back that up.
With all this apparent complexity, Scharf says it wouldn’t be outlandish to think that technologically advanced life is stored there. “What better way to escape the nasty vagaries of supernova and gamma-ray bursts than to adopt a form that is immune to electromagnetic radiation? Upload your world to the huge amount of real estate on the dark side and be done with it.” The inconsistencies might just be a result of being artificially tampered with.
You can run a similar exercise with the elusive dark energy, which makes up roughly 68 percent of the universe. The universe didn’t start expanding at an accelerated rate until a cool 5 billion years ago, and scientists don’t know why. Well, well, well, how convenient.
According to Scharf, an advanced alien civilization could have bumped the speed up so they wouldn’t have to live in such a crowded, hot mess of a universe. “Any very early life in the universe would have already experienced 8 billion years of evolutionary time by the time expansion began to accelerate,” he writes. “It’s a stretch, but maybe there’s something about life itself that affects the cosmos, or maybe those well-evolved denizens decided to tinker with the expansion.”
Just Sayin’ Note that the ideas Scharf is putting out there are just that: ideas. None of this is peer-reviewed or even testable (YET). This is just one brave astrobiologist on a mission to brainstorm the boundaries of theoretical possibility and make you paranoid beyond all reason that every inescapable, so-called law of “nature” affecting you is extraterrestrial intelligence. We’re just having fun, kids!
Scharf signs off with a mind-bender: “Perhaps hyper-advanced life isn’t just external. Perhaps it’s already all around. It is embedded in what we perceive to be physics itself, from the root behavior of particles and fields to the phenomena of complexity and emergence. In other words, life might not just be in the equations. It might be the equations.”
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The Most Credible Recent UFO Sightings
The Most Credible Recent UFO Sightings
ARE WE BEING VISITED BY ALIENS?
Since the beginning of time, it seems, people have been spotting unidentified objects flying through the sky. These days, it is easy to laugh off UFO sightings or explain them away as planes, drones, or even delusions. However, you may be surprised to discover that there have been numerous recent UFO sightings that many believe to be highly credible. Here are the stories of 10 recent UFO sightings that could be the real deal.
10. UFO Sightings – Breckenridge, Colorado: October 3, 2014
In October of 2014, many residents of Colorado reported spotting three glowing dots hovering in the afternoon sky. Witnesses stated that the objects were round and appeared to be glowing white or silver, likely because of the sun reflecting off of them. The objects didn’t move; instead, they maintained a triangular formation throughout the time they were visible in the sky. As suddenly as they appeared, they vanished from sight.
What makes this report one of the more credible recent UFO sightings is that two local authorities, the Summit County Sheriff’s Office and the Breckenridge Police Department, confirmed that their employees also spotted the flying objects. Although the offices didn’t claim the objects to be extraterrestrial in origin, they admitted that they were at a loss to explain what they actually were. According to locals who witnessed the event, many believe that aliens were the culprit.
9. Midrand, South Africa: May 21, 2011
In May of 2011, numerous citizens of Midrand, South Africa began reporting seeing things in the sky. The reports were eerily similar, lending credence to this recent UFO sighting.
According to reports, witnesses claimed to have seen anywhere from one to seven orange lights floating high in the sky. The witnesses were alarmed by the lights and reported their sightings to authorities.
The official explanation for the lights was that the witnesses were actually spotting evidence of a small meteor shower. Officials claimed that with all of the end-of-days predictions that were circulating at the time, people were more likely to become aware of the residual light from meteors, though it is actually a fairly common occurrence.
Can these lights in South Africa be easily explained as meteors? The numerous people who saw them certainly don’t believe so.
8. Recent UFO Sightings – Houston, Texas: August 12, 2014
The witnesses to this next recent UFO sighting have extra cause to be startled by what they saw; the place where the UFO appeared is exactly 666 miles away from Roswell, New Mexico, the sight of history’s most famous alien facility.
In August of 2014, people living near Houston, Texas were startled to see what appeared to be rings of light in the night sky. Several pictures of the mysterious lights made their way to social media, and other residents began confirming that they, too, saw the lights. The highly suspect distance from Roswell made the sighting credible to many, who believe that it could have been extraterrestrials in search of their lost brethren.
So far, there has been no official explanation for the unidentified objects that shocked Houston.
7. Alborz, Iran: November 11, 2014
Part of the credibility of many recent UFO sightings comes thanks to modern technology. Most people are carrying phones with cameras everywhere they go, allowing them to capture proof of their extraterrestrial experiences.
This is certainly the case in the 2014 sighting in the air above Iran. A passenger in a commercial airplane captured a 34-second video of a large, saucer-shaped object flying rapidly through the clouds just below the plane.
The official explanation is that the object was most likely a government drone. However, the video shows that the object quickly passes the airliner, suggesting that it was moving at a high speed that a drone is not likely to be capable of. In addition, drones do not typically fly at the same altitude as commercial aircraft, leading many to believe that it was, in fact, an alien craft that was captured in this fascinating video.
6. Recent UFO Sightings – Kensington, Canada: June 4, 2014
A man named John Sheppard also caught an impressive UFO video while camping in Canada in 2014. In the video, viewers can see a diamond-shaped light moving over the water of the lake where John had set up camp. Then a second light appears. The lights continue flying over the lake for around 8 minutes before disappearing.
What makes this one of the more credible recent UFO sightings? After capturing the video, John sent it along to the Mutual UFO Network of Canada. Experts there took the video very seriously and made every effort to determine what could have caused the lights in the video. They considered stars, satellites, and drones, but quickly ruled out all of these explanations. The group eventually stated that it believes this to be one of the few confirmed UFO sightings that it has encountered.
5. Ireland: November 9, 2018
In November of 2018, several pilots flying over Ireland called air traffic control to report crafts flying at high speeds near their planes. One pilot claimed that the craft he saw appeared to be moving at Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound. Another believed that he was witnessing some sort of military exercise due to the high speed and tight formations of the crafts that he saw. Other pilots didn’t actually see aircraft, but reported strange lights in the clouds around them, inquiring if they could possibly be seeing meteors entering the earth’s atmosphere. Air traffic control could find no record or indication of either military exercises or meteors.
Because of the number of reports from pilots, the sightings were taken seriously. The Irish Aviation Authority believed the pilots were likely seeing dust or debris entering the atmosphere but stated that they would look into the sightings. There has been no official ruling, but many have a hard time believing that the objects the pilots described could have been mere debris
A fifth-grade student in Kanpur, India made headlines in 2015 when he captured a surprisingly clear photo of what appeared to be a flying saucer. He was out taking photos of the clouds, and when he zoomed in on one of his photos, he was shocked to see the saucer flying in the sky.
The photo is so clear, and clearly does not depict a cloud, that many have begun to doubt its authenticity. They believe that the photo was in some way doctored to make it look like there was a UFO in the sky. However, the boy and his family are adamant that the photo is real. They have stated that they will willingly subject the photo to testing, but so far, no tests of authenticity have been forthcoming.
3. Arizona, United States: January 13, 2018
Here is another case of professional pilots giving credibility to one of the most interesting recent UFO sightings. These sightings took place in the sky above Arizona. A pilot contacted air traffic control to ask if any other crafts were flying above them. They reported seeing reflective objects above their planes, which were flying at around 37,000 feet. This means that the objects they saw were flying at around 40,000 feet. Another pilot flying nearby shortly saw the same thing.
The Federal Aviation Administration initially believed that they were seeing balloons launched by Google, weather balloons, or military craft. However, they were unable to find indications that any such crafts would be in the area at that time. The FAA admits that they are stumped, but alien enthusiasts believe the answer is clear.
2.Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming: October 23, 2010
Most recent UFO sightings are relatively harmless, but in this case, there were serious consequences. In October of 2010, the Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming experienced a massive power failure. The base houses 50 nuclear missiles, so those weapons were completely offline for almost an hour. The air force claimed that hardware failures were to blame, but others working at the base have another theory.
Several anonymous witnesses claim to have seen a cigar-shaped object in the sky above the base before the power outage. They also claim that the power outage was much longer than the official reports say: around 26 hours. The witnesses state that the object in the sky was unlike anything they have ever seen.
Was a UFO to blame for a major issue with United States missiles? If so, was this an intentional sabotage by alien visitors? The implications of this sighting are indeed disturbing.
1. Hangzhou, China: July 7, 2010
On July 7, 2010, China experienced another of the recent UFO sightings that had real fallout. A plane preparing to land at the Xiaoshan Airport reported an unusual object in the sky near the airport. Within minutes, air traffic controllers had grounded all outgoing flights and diverted incoming flights to other airports. Photos of the object that virtually shut down the airport show it reflecting a golden light and being followed by a comet-like tail.
Others near the airport later reported that they, too, saw a bright object streak across the sky. There were many theories about the object, including hidden US bombers and Russian satellites. The Beijing UFO Research Society and the Shanghai UFO Investigative Research Center have agreed to look into the incident. However, no one has been able to confirm what the object was that sent the entire airport into a panic.
A surprisingly gentle merger between two small primordial bodies formed the distant objectUltima Thule, a new study suggests.
These two progenitors themselves likely coalesced from the same cloud of icy material at thedawn of the solar system, billions of miles from the newborn sun. They initially circled a common center of mass but spiraled closer and closer, eventually meeting up in decidedly leisurely fashion.
"These guys look like they came together at literally spacecraft-docking speed," said study lead author Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "This really is informative about the origin of planetesimalsout there."
Stern is principal investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission, which flew by Ultima Thule on Jan. 1 of this year. The new study, which was published online today (May 16) in the journal Science, describes the initial science returns from that flyby, the most-distant planetary encounter in the history of spaceflight.
New Horizons launched in January 2006 to get the first-ever up-close look at Pluto, which had remained largely mysterious since its 1930 discovery. The spacecraft checked off this main mission goal in July 2015, zooming within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of the dwarf planet and capturing amazing images of its stunningly complex and diverse surface.
The New Horizons team then turned its attention to Ultima Thule (official name: 2014 MU69), a small object that currently lies about 4 billion miles (6.5 billion km) from Earth — 1 billion miles (1.6 billion km) more distant than Pluto.
The Jan. 1 flyby, the centerpiece of New Horizons' extended mission, was an even more challenging spaceflight feat than the Pluto encounter.
Ultima Thule is much smaller than the dwarf planet, spanning just 22 miles (35 km) in its longest dimension. And New Horizons gave Ultima Thule a much closer shave than it did Pluto, cruising a mere 2,200 miles (3,540 km) above the small object's frigid surface. The probe was barreling along at 32,280 mph (51,950 km/h) relative to its target at the time.
So far, New Horizons has beamed home just 25% of its flyby data, which should all be in hand by mid-2020. The new study is based on just 10% of the expected total haul — the amount available when the researchers submitted the paper in late February, Stern said. But even this limited first look at New Horizons' imagery and measurements has produced some very intriguing results, as the new paper shows.
New Horizons found that 2014 MU69 is a "contact binary" composed of two lobes, which the team dubbed Ultima (the bigger one) and Thule. The object therefore looks like a snowman — a crushed and bloody one, anyway.
Ultima Thule is the reddest object ever explored by a spacecraft, with the exception of Mars, Stern said. The Red Planet owes its hue to iron oxides (rust), but something else is going on with 2014 MU69. The New Horizons team thinks the color comes from complex organic molecules known as tholins, or something like them.
This would not be unheard of; tholins are thought to be responsible for the reddish swaths that New Horizons spotted on Pluto and its biggest moon, Charon.
And then there's the crushed bit: Ultima Thule, especially the Ultima lobe, is notably flattened — "something that really no one expected or predicted with models, sending the theorists back to the drawing board," Stern told Space.com.
The team isn't sure how Ultima Thule got its pancake-esque shape. It's possible that rapid rotation played a role, Stern said. (The object currently completes one spin every 15.9 hours, but the two constituent lobes may have rotated much faster in their youth, before the merger.)
"Or maybe there was a lot of aerodynamic erosion," Stern said, invoking the possibility that gas and grains of material that didn't get incorporated into Ultima or Thule could have scoured them down.
Many other mysteries remain as well. For example, Ultima sports a number of similar-sized abutting mounds, which may be the outlines of the smaller pieces that built up the lobe. No such mounds are visible on Thule, however.
That may be because the two lobes formed in slightly different ways. But Thule has a 4.3-mile-wide (7 km) crater called Maryland. So, it's possible that the lobe had mounds as well, but these features were buried when the Maryland-gouging impact resurfaced Thule, Stern said. (New Horizons did not spy any big craters on the Ultima lobe.)
In addition, both lobes have numerous small pits, whose origin remains undetermined. And multiple formation processes are likely involved, study team members said.
"Our assessment is that the chains of similarly sized pits are more likely to be formed by internal processes than by cratering, but the isolated pits that show approximately circular planform outlines, bowl-shaped interior depressions, and, in some cases, raised rims, are more consistent with impact crater morphology," the researchers wrote in the new study.
The New Horizons team has not yet spotted any satellites or rings orbiting Ultima Thule, and the object has shown no signs of an atmosphere or any comet-like outgassing. But the researchers will keep looking as more and more data comes down to Earth.
A primordial object
Ultima Thule's two-lobed shape strongly suggests that the object is primordial, going all the way back to the solar system's birth.
Impact speeds in 2014 MU69's neighborhood — the cold, dark depths beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper Belt — are currently around 670 mph (1,080 km/h). A modern meetup of two objects out there would thus be too violent to produce the Ultima Thule we see today; its two lobes would have been destroyed or misshapen, Stern and his colleagues found.
Indeed, modeling work the team presented at a conference last month suggests the collision likely occurred at around 5.5 mph (8.9 km/h) — slower than most joggers go. Such a "gentle dynamical environment" was present long ago, shortly after the sun had formed.
Other lines of evidence bolster the notion that Ultima Thule is an ancient and relatively unchanged object. For example, its two lobes are similar in both brightness and color, suggesting that they formed from the same swirling cloud of gas and dust long ago.
"This is the first unquestionably primordial contact binary that we've seen up close with a spacecraft," Stern said.
New Horizons team members may end up cracking more Ultima Thule mysteries one day; most of the flyby data still hasn't come down to Earth, after all.
And even when that information has all been analyzed, there may be yet more work to do. The spacecraft is healthy and has enough fuel left to fly by yet another deep-space object, Stern said.
NASA would have to grant another mission extension for this to happen, and the New Horizons team can't apply for such an extension until next year, Stern said. But the researchers definitely plan to do so.
"We came all the way out here to the Kuiper Belt, and we're going to try to squeeze every last thing we can [out of this mission]," Stern said.
More spacecraft will explore the outer solar system in the future, "but they're not going to be here anytime soon," Stern said. "We're here, and we're going to milk it."
Researchers studying a volcano in Bermuda report that it is unlike anything else we’ve seen on Earth — it formed through a mechanism we knew nothing about until now.
About 30 million years ago, a disturbance in the mantle’s transition zone supplied the magma to form the now-dormant volcanic foundation on which Bermuda sits.
Image credits: Wendy Kenigsberg/Clive Howard.
With its turquoise seas and pink beaches, Bermuda draws almost 1 million tourists every year. But far beneath the crystalline water, something draws a completely different crowd: scientists.
Cornell researchers had a hunch that there was something off about Bermuda’svolcanoes, so they analyzed a 2,600-foot (800-meter) core sample taken back in 1972. They were looking for isotopes, trace elements, evidence of water content, volatile materials — anything that would give some indication as to how the volcanoes were formed.
“I first suspected that Bermuda’s volcanic past was special as I sampled the core and noticed the diverse textures and mineralogy preserved in the different lava flows,” Mazza said. “We quickly confirmed extreme enrichments in trace element compositions. It was exciting going over our first results … the mysteries of Bermuda started to unfold.”
When the team analyzed the materials from the core, they found a clear signature of the “transition zone” — a layer rich in water, crystals and melted rock that lies beneath the outer and inner mantle. Before now, researchers didn’t know that volcanoes can form from the transition zone.
“We found a new way to make volcanoes. This is the first time we found a clear indication from the transition zone deep in the Earth’s mantle that volcanoes can form this way,” said senior author Esteban Gazel, associate professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University.
Cross-polarized microscopic slice of a core sample. Blue-yellow mineral is augite.
Credits: Gazel lab.
Volcanoes were thought to form through one of two mechanisms: either when two tectonic plates subduct (one moves beneath the other), or when there is a deep mantle upwelling, as is the case in Hawaii. Surprisingly this wasn’t the case in Bermuda.
“We were expecting our data to show the volcano was a mantle plume formation — an upwelling from the deeper mantle — just like it is in Hawaii,” Gazel said. However, 30 million years ago, a disturbance in the transition zone caused the magma to flow towards the surface of what is now Bermuda.
Although geochemical studies of this type have been carried out in most volcanic parts of the world, Bermuda had escaped trialing until now. Now that they know what to look for, researchers say that there’s a good chance they might find these chemical signatures in other volcanic areas as well.
This suggests that the transition zone, which is located at a depth of 410-660 km (250 to 400 mi), is an important chemical reservoir for the Earth, bringing material from that depth and onto the surface.
Not only is the 'head' of the figure clear in the image but a cassock which the saviour was thought to wear appears to flow down to the ground below.
Others said the 'head' even appeared to be adorned with a crown of thorns associated with the Crucifixion of Jesus.
The figure has been compared to the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Social media user Mariela Romano commented: 'The Lord will soon come for us all and we should be ready.'
Carlos Daniel Nieva remarked: 'Thanks for the image that allows us to keep on our path and have a better hope for tomorrow.'
While Romina Salinas wrote: 'If Jesus came back, he would make us all disappear because we are worth nothing. I personally only see the sun coming through the clouds, but people see what they want to see.'
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Do you see the light? Image of Christ-like figure is spotted in the sky in Argentina
Foto van ‘Christusfiguur’ in de lucht boven Argentinië houdt de gemoederen bezig. Zo wordt er gereageerd op social media
Foto van ‘Christusfiguur’ in de lucht boven Argentinië houdt de gemoederen bezig. Zo wordt er gereageerd op social media
De afbeelding van een ‘Christusfiguur’ die door de wolken breekt in de lucht boven Argentinië houdt de gemoederen bezig.
De foto, die is gemaakt in de stad San Salvador de Jujuy, werd in rap tempo verspreid op social media, schrijft de Daily Mail.
Monica Aramayo gebruikte haar smartphone om het verschijnsel vast te leggen. In de lucht lijkt een soort figuur te verschijnen die zijn armen uitstrekt.
Doornenkroon
Social media-gebruikers van het overwegend katholieke Zuid-Amerikaanse land zeiden dat de figuur erg lijkt op Christus de Verlosser, het beroemde standbeeld van Jezus Christus in Rio de Janeiro.
Ze ontwaarden onder meer een ‘hoofd’ en een ‘gewaad’.
Sommigen zeiden dat het ‘hoofd’ zelfs lijkt te zijn voorzien van een doornenkroon, die wordt geassocieerd met de kruisiging van Jezus.
Pad
“De Heer komt ons spoedig halen en we zouden ons klaar moeten maken,” zei Mariela Romano.
“Bedankt voor de foto die ons helpt op het pad te blijven,” reageerde Carlos Daniel Nieva.
“Als Jezus terug zou komen, zou hij ons allemaal laten verdwijnen omdat we niets waard zijn. Ik zie persoonlijk alleen de zon door de wolken komen, maar mensen zien wat ze willen zien,” aldus Romina Salinas.
Mysterieus object van een miljoen zonnemassa’s slaat gat in de Melkweg. Wat is het precies?
Mysterieus object van een miljoen zonnemassa’s slaat gat in de Melkweg. Wat is het precies?
Een ‘kogel’ van een miljoen zonnemassa’s heeft een enorm gat in de halo van de Melkweg geslagen.
Bewijs voor het fenomeen werd ontdekt door Ana Bonaca van het Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Iets onbekends doorkruiste de halo van onze Melkweg, officieel de stellaire stroom genoemd.
Gigantisch
Er bewegen meerdere van deze stellaire stromen door ons sterrenstelsel. Het gaat om sterren die zijn weggeblazen uit hun cluster nadat de Melkweg een dwergsterrenstelsel had verorberd.
Bonaca weet niet precies wat het enorme object is geweest. Het moet in ieder geval gigantisch zijn.
“Het is veel groter dan een ster,” zei ze tegen Live Science. “Iets wat een miljoen keer zwaarder is dan de zon. Er zijn geen sterren die zo zwaar zijn. Dat kunnen we dus uitsluiten.”
Geen sporen
“En als het een zwart gat is, zou het zo groot moeten zijn als het supermassieve zwarte gat in het centrum van ons eigen sterrenstelsel,” zei ze.
Volgens één theorie bestaat het object uit donkere materie, aangezien er geen sporen zijn achtergebleven die erop wijzen dat een object een gat in de stroom heeft veroorzaakt.
Onzichtbaar
Geschat wordt dat ongeveer 27 procent van het universum bestaat uit donkere materie.
Deze donkere materie oefent invloed uit op andere materie, maar is totaal onzichtbaar en weerkaatst geen licht.
David Wilcock: Secret Space 2019 & Antarctic Atlantis (Video)
David Wilcock: Secret Space 2019 & Antarctic Atlantis (Video)
Are we on the verge of hearing about ruins under the Antarctic ice, directly from the mainstream media itself? Is this a last-ditch plan to distract us from other very upsetting disclosures that may emerge?
Join David on a two-hour journey where he summarizes the testimony of a wide variety of insiders into the deep secrets of the classified world — extraterrestrials, ancient civilizations, advanced tech and much more.
We may very well have a secret space program with bases on the moon, Mars and other satellites as well as facilities in Antarctica. David has been writing on the Antarctic Atlantis since 1999, and has had insiders feeding him intel about it since 2004.
This is a re-upload of a broadcast that was originally aired live on Saturday, February 23rd and had 657,000 views before being taken offline due to a disagreement that has yet to be amicably resolved.
Kat Martin has captured something weird flying above Yellowstone. I have seen this type of thing before, but never changing direction so fast as this did.
There are lots of lights which are just reflections. The one this video is about is the bright object which comes in from the upper right of screen. It does turns and then settles near three line where it flashes very bright and appears in different places. It then flies off to the left, then makes a hard right turn.
This was live on the Yellowstone cam at Old faithful on May 5, 2019. Kat slowed the video down because whatever this was moved very fast.
We don’t know what it is. We don’t even know if it’s made of regular matter — but we do know that something blasted a series of holes through some stars in the Milky Way.
“It’s a dense bullet of something,” said Ana Bonaca, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who discovered evidence for the impactor.
Bonaca analyzed a series of stars called GD-1 — a very long and thin, Milky Way star stream. Normally, the stream would appear as a straight line, stretched out by the Milky Way’s galaxy. GD-1 stars have been studied ever since they were discovered in 2006, and Bonaca has been using data from the recently launched Gaia telescope to analyze them in more detail.
This type of stellar stream is created by the tidal (gravitational) force of the Milky Way, which bends and stretches the stream, producing a gap in its approximate middle.
This image from Bonaca's presentation shows the most detailed map yet of GD-1, revealing the apparent second gap and spur.
Credit: New Astrophysical Probes of Dark Matter, Ana Bonaca/GAIA
But when Bonaca looked at GD-1 more recently, she found a second gap — and a weird one at that. The second gap is not smooth as the first one but has a ragged edge — as if something was shot through it.
“It’s a dense bullet of something,” Bonaca said.
The “bullet” would have to be something absolutely massive, much bigger than a star, and more massive than all but the largest black holes. It’s not out of the question for a supermassive black hole to be the culprit, but if this is the case, it would have to be one at the scale of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. There isn’t a clear reason why such a black hole would exist towards the edge of our galaxy, and astronomers haven’t seen any effects from it.
This leaves another tantalizing possibility: a massive object made of dark matter.
Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter that is thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe and about a quarter of its total energy density. We don’t know what dark matter is and we’ve never seen it — but we have seen its effects, and astronomers are quite confident in its existence. We also have no idea how dark matter might be distributed through the universe — is it thin and diffusive, or large and clumpy? If dark matter was indeed shot through GD-1 stars, it would suggest the latter. However, a large ball of dark matter is still speculative at this point, although it seems to line up with the evidence quite nicely.
The results have not yet been peer-reviewed, though they were met positively at the conference of the American Physical Society in Denver where they were presented.
At this point, the turbulent history of GD-1 stars is just not well enough known to draw a definite conclusion. But whatever it is, is Bonaca’s hypothesis is true, something shot a massive “bullet” straight through our galaxy — and we don’t know what it is.
A piece of Libyan desert glass that weighs 22 grams and is about 55 mm wide.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
An exotic and beautiful type of glass found in the Sahara desert has a cosmic origin, according to a new study. After analyzing the chemical makeup of Libyan desert glass — a naturally occurring glass whose striking yellow color made it a much-sought-after decorative material — researchers found that it was produced by ancient meteorite impacts.
Cosmic glass fit for kings
Breastplate found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb. The scarab is made out of Libyan desert glass.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
The rare Libyan desert glass has been prized for its beauty for thousands of years. The glass — the purest natural silica glass ever found on Earth — is generally yellow in color and can be very clear, although most pieces are milky and may even contain tiny bubbles, white wisps, and inky black swirls.
By one estimate, over a thousand tons of Libyan desert glass are strewn across the deserts of eastern Libya and western Egypt. Most are the size of pebbles, although some chunks can have a considerable size and weight — the biggest piece ever found weighs around 26 kg.
Local inhabitants in the Neolithic period made tools out of the glass, and later the Egyptians used it to fashion jewelry. In fact, the carved stone on the breastplate of the famous Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun was made of Libyan desert glass. But these piece of glass were created long before King Tut was born — about 29 million years by one estimate.
Silica glass at the Great Sand Sea.
Credit: Mohamed El-Hebeishy.
For more than a hundred years, scientists have debated what forces could have created the enchanting glasses. There are two major hypotheses that explain their formation: either a meteor impact or an airburst (an atmospheric explosion which happens when meteoroids explode in the lower atmosphere) was responsible. A recently published study supports the former theory.
In a new study, Aaron Cavosie from Curtin University in Australia and colleagues performed chemical analyses of Libyan desert glass samples that unequivocally supports the meteorite formation theory.
While they were examining zircon minerals embedded in the glasses, the researchers found traces of another mineral called reidite. This mineral only forms in high pressure and heat — so far, it hasn’t been found anywhere other than meteorite impact craters.
“Both meteorite impacts and airbursts can cause melting, however, only meteorite impacts create shock waves that form high-pressure minerals,” says Cavosie.
“So finding evidence of former reidite confirms it was created as the result of a meteorite impact.”
Whatever meteorite impacted the desert all those millions of years ago, it must have caused a gigantic explosion. It vitrified (glassified) a huge area, resulting in a broad range of glasses ranging from cloudy dark to stunningly luminous lemon yellow — all depending on the kind of contaminants that dissolved into the liquid silica created by the powerful impact.
A variety of Libyan Desert Glasses.
Credit: Corning Museum of Glasses.
The findings published in the journal Geology are useful for establishing how often near-Earth objects come in contact with our planet’s surface. The study seems to suggest that the kind of impacts that are powerful enough to create Libyan desert glass are, thankfully, quite rare.
“Meteorite impacts are catastrophic events, but they are not common,” says Cavosie.
“Airbursts happen more frequently, but we now know not to expect a Libyan desert glass-forming event in the near future, which is cause for some comfort.”
NASADe vlek werd veroorzaakt door de crash van de Israëlische maanlander Beresheet.
WETENSCHAPEind februari 2019 werd de Israëlische maanlander ‘Beresheet’ gelanceerd. Het doel was om als vierde land ooit voet op de maan te zetten. Maar twee maanden later, tijdens het landen, crashte het toestel. En NASA gelooft te weten waar dat exact gebeurde.
Nieuwe foto’s die gemaakt werden door de Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) - een ruimtevaartuig van het Amerikaanse ruimtevaartagentschap NASA - tonen waar de Israëlische maanlander op 11 april precies neerstortte.
Vergeleken met een foto die in december vorig jaar (2018) werd gemaakt, lijkt er wel een witte vlek te zijn verschenen sinds de crash in april. Die vlek zou inderdaad een gevolg zijn van de impact van de Israëlische maanlander.
(Lees verder onder de foto)
NASAIn december was er nog niets te zien op de maanoppervlakte. Na de crash verscheen er een witte vlek.
Al slaagde de Israëlische maanlander ‘Beresheet’ – vrij vertaald naar ‘Genesis’ – er niet in veilig te landen. Hij zorgde wel voor tal van andere primeurs. De nacht van 21 op 22 februari werd de maanlander gelanceerd. Dat gebeurde vanop Cape Canaveral.
De robot was een onderdeel van de eerste private maanmissie, op initiatief van SpaceIL. Hij droeg een bibliotheek van 30 miljoen pagina’s met zich mee, en maakte onderweg een glorieuze selfie om het moment te vereeuwigen.
In de laatste fase van de afdaling ging het mis. De belangrijkste motor van Beresheet viel uit en het contact werd verbroken. Het toestel is daarna vermoedelijk gecrasht.
AFP
De maanlander Beresheet maakte een selfie met de aarde en de Israëlische vlag.
Greenland’s largestglacier has not only slowed its retreat, but has also thickened in recent years, surprising scientists studying the impacts of global warming on ice in the northern hemisphere.
The island is home to the second-largest ice sheet in the world afterAntarcticaand rapid warming in the northern hemisphere has major implications for continuing global sea-level rise.
The Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier on Greenland’s west coast used to lose more ice from this than anywhere else in the country.
It is known for the huge blocks of ice it calves into Disko Bay, which then drift south into the Atlantic Ocean. It is believed to have calved the iceberg which sank the Titanic.
Between 2000 and 2010, Jakobshavn Isbrae contributed the largest solid ice discharge in all of Greenland’s ice sheet and is estimated to have contributed to nearly 1mm of global sea rise.
Glacier collapse shows climate impact
But despite the trend of rising temperatures, it is no longer the place where the territory loses most of its ice.
Since 2013, when the glacier’s ice loss was at its fastest, the ice at the terminus of the glacier has stopped decreasing in height and started to thicken.
The overall effect is that it is now flowing more slowly, thickening and advancing towards the ocean instead of retreating further inland.
Measurements of the glacier’s elevation changes on its narrow trunk show that instead of losing 20 metres in height a year as it had previously, the glacier is now thickening by 20 metres a year.
New data processing techniques applied to the information gathered by satellites have given a clearer picture of the extent to which the ice is returning to the glacier, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.
“The dynamic speedup of Jakobshavn Isbrae observed from the late 2000’s to 2013 was triggered by warm ocean waters in Disko Bay, entering Jakobshavn Fjord and melting ice at the glacier terminus," said Anna Hogg, a researcher in the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds.
“In recent years, however, temperature measurements show that ocean water in Disko Bay has experienced a series of cooler years – more than one degree lower than mean temperature previously observed. This has reduced the rate of ice melt on Jakobshavn Isbrae.”
However, the glacier does not indicate greater stability in the ice sheet overall. It drains just 7 per cent of all ice on Greenland.
Scientists at the Living Planet Symposium in Milan heard the glacier’s drainage basin as a whole is still losing more ice to the ocean than it gains as snowfall.
It is therefore still contributing to global sea-level rise, albeit at a slower rate.
We are all used to hearing about the world’s ice being the first casualty of #climatechange. Recent findings show that one glacier is not conforming to the norm – it’s actually been flowing more slowly and getting thicker.
Dr Hogg said: “The key question we need to answer now is whether the slowdown of Jakobshavn Isbrae just a pause, or is it more permanent? We will use ESA satellite observations combined with models to monitor change and predict this colossal glacier’s future evolution.”
The ESA’s Mark Drinkwater said further research was required and noted that “large seasonal and year-to-year variability in the dynamics of the Jakobshavn Isbrae Glacier … can easily hide the longer-term climate trend in ice loss.”
The research appears to fit with a study published earlier this year, indicating Greenland’s ice sheet was melting four times faster now than it was in 2003. However, it found the largest amount of ice loss was sustained away from the country's glaciers.
“Whatever this was, it couldn’t be explained by glaciers, because there aren’t many there,” Michael Bevis, the study’s lead author said in January.
He added: “It had to be the surface mass – the ice was melting inland from the coastline. It’s because the atmosphere is, at its baseline, warmer."
Another study of Jakobshavn Isbrae’s unexpected thickening indicated the cooling period will pass as ocean temperatures rise, which will then see the glacier retreat even faster than it was before.
Grootste gletsjer van Groenland groeit met 20 meter per jaar. Wetenschappers staan voor een raadsel
Grootste gletsjer van Groenland groeit met 20 meter per jaar. Wetenschappers staan voor een raadsel
De grootste gletsjer van Groenland is de laatste jaren niet verder gekrompen, maar juist gegroeid. Wetenschappers staan voor een raadsel, schrijft The Independent.
Het eiland heeft de op één na grootste ijskap ter wereld, en moet alleen Antarctica voor zich dulden.
Tussen 2000 en 2010 verloor de Jakobshavn-gletsjer veel ijs. Sinds 2013 krimpt de gletsjer niet meer. Sterker nog: hij groeit in de richting van de oceaan.
20 meter
Uit nieuwe metingen blijkt dat de gletsjer niet langer 20 meter per jaar krimpt, maar 20 meter per jaar groeit, laat het Europese ruimtevaartagentschap ESA weten.
Het smelten van Jakobshavn tussen 2000 en 2013 had te maken met de aanvoer van warmer oceaanwater in de Diskobaai, aldus Anna Hogg van de Universiteit van Leeds.
Einde
De afgelopen jaren is het water in de Diskobaai een stuk koeler, waardoor er abrupt een einde is gekomen aan het smeltproces.
Dr. Hogg zei: “De vraag is nu of er sprake is van een pauze of dat het meer permanent is.”
Met behulp van satellieten van de ESA gaan onderzoekers de kolossale gletsjer de komende tijd nauwlettend in de gaten houden.
ESA EarthObservation✔@ESA_EO
We are all used to hearing about the world’s ice being the first casualty of #climatechange. Recent findings show that one glacier is not conforming to the norm – it’s actually been flowing more slowly and getting thicker.
WAAROM VLUCHT ALLES EN IEDEREEN RICHTING MAAN? ( VIDEO )
WAAROM VLUCHT ALLES EN IEDEREEN RICHTING MAAN? ( VIDEO )
Jarenlang is de maan een soort vergeten gebied geweest waar eigenlijk niemand serieuze belangstelling voor had.
Nu worden er met grote haast plannen gemaakt voor kolonisatie van de maan en dat moet vóór 2029 klaar zijn.
We kunnen veilig stellen dat wij als burgers meestal de laatsten zijn die te horen krijgen wat er werkelijk speelt.
Wij horen dingen meestal als het te laat is om er nog iets aan te veranderen. En in dat kader roept het volgende verhaal de nodige vraagtekens op.
De jaren zestig van de vorige eeuw stonden helemaal in het teken van de maan en de diverse Apollovluchten. We gaan er voor vandaag even vanuit dat die vluchten ook daadwerkelijk plaats hebben gevonden en dat er ook daadwerkelijk mensen op de maan zijn geweest.
Eigenlijk net zo snel als dat hele maan verhaal op kwam, raakte het ook weer in de vergetelheid. Decennialang was er nauwelijks belangstelling voor de maan behalve bij ufo fanaten misschien die er van alles zagen vliegen.
Maar, nu is het een compleet ander verhaal. Talloze landen en ook grote particuliere ondernemingen zijn bezig met een soort race naar de maan.
Niet alleen een race, maar meer een totaalplan, waarbij menselijke kolonies op de maan zullen worden gebouwd.
Hetzijn niet alleen landen zoals Amerika, Rusland, India en China die druk bezig zijn met plannen richting maan, maar ook grote particuliere ondernemingen, waarbij een opvallend figuur, Jeff Bezos, de grote baas van Amazon, die behoort bij de rijkste mensen ter wereld.
Bezos is de oprichter van ruimtevaartbedrijf Blue Origin en afgelopen week werden er in een besloten presentatie voor genodigden in Washington verdere details bekend gemaakt over de plannen van Blue Origin.
En daar kwam uit naar voren dat Blue Origin in 2024 de eerste maanlander operationeel wil hebben genaamd Blue Moon.
Daar blijft het niet bij, want daarna zal in een razend tempo vaart worden gemaakt met de kolonisatie van de maan en wel zo, dat dit uiterlijk 2029 gereed moet zijn.
Waar je dan aan moet denken zijn leefgemeenschappen zoals te zien op de volgende afbeelding.
Dan is er nog iets merkwaardigs, want ook Israël houdt zich intensief bezig met de maan. Ze hebben afgelopen februari pogingen ondernomen om met de maanlander vaste grond onder de voeten te krijgen op de maan.
De landing mislukte weliswaar, maar aan boord van de maanlander bevond zich een bibliotheek van 30 miljoen pagina’s waarin alles is vastgelegd wat de moeite waard is om te weten als je de menselijke beschaving opnieuw zou willen opstarten.
Waarom stuurt Israël een dergelijke bibliotheek naar de maan? Wat weten zij wat wij niet weten?
Iedere keer komt ook dat jaartal 2029 tevoorschijn, het jaar dat alle voorbereidingen voor het weg kunnen vluchten naar de maan klaar moeten zijn.
Dan moet je niet denken aan ons gewone mensen die daar naartoe kunnen. Het wordt meer een scene zoals aan het eind van de film 2012, waarbij een geselecteerde elite aan boord van de arken kunnen gaan.
Alles wijst erop dat er iets met de aarde zal gebeuren, alleen wat dat is, weten we uiteraard niet.
Het zou een geplande kernoorlog kunnen zijn, waarbij de aarde voor langere tijd onbewoonbaar zal zijn, het kan de komst van een planeet of komeet-planeet zijn die voor de nodige chaos kan zorgen.
Maar, het jaar waarop alles klaar moet zijn, 2029, ligt ook dicht bij 2032, het jaar waar volgens tijdreiziger Scott de aarde zal worden getroffen door een asteroïde.
Mocht iemand een andere reden weten waarom men als een gek bezig is om naar de maan te kunnen vluchten, laat het ons weten.
The late Award-winning journalist and New York Times Best Selling author Jim Marrs presented a program on what the military-trained remote viewers experienced when using this mental technology to study alien life forms at the 2016 Ozark Mountain UFO Conference.
Remote Viewing, a psychic technique developed and utilized by the U.S. Army, may have been instrumental in ending the Cold War as there were no longer any secrets thanks to the psychic experiments on the part of both the Soviets and the U.S.
This practice has since been used to take a look at the different extraterrestrial species interacting with the Earth.
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Disclosure! Ted Cruz Warns Space Force Is Needed to Battle Space Pirate Aliens
Disclosure! Ted Cruz Warns Space Force Is Needed to Battle Space Pirate Aliens
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, issued a dire warning about space pirates Wednesday in support of appropriations to fund Space Force, President Trump’s proposed off-planet expansion of the U.S. military.
“Since the ancient Greeks first put to sea, nations have recognized the necessity of naval forces and maintaining a superior capability to protect waterborne travel and commerce from bad actors,” said Cruz, the chairman of the subcommittee on aviation and space, adding, “Pirates threaten the open seas, and the same is possible in space.
In this same way, I believe we too must now recognize the necessity of a Space Force to defend the nation and to protect space commerce and civil space exploration.”
For starters, the Trump administration is seeking $2 billion in new funding from Congress for the creation of Space Force. Yahoo
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Secret Space Force: The Treaty to Prevent War in Outer Space: P.A.R.O.S.
Secret Space Force: The Treaty to Prevent War in Outer Space: P.A.R.O.S.
Ted Cruz announced today that the Space Force is needed to fight space pirates. Are our governments finally going to have to come clean via Disclosure? Their actions speak volumes.
The United States of America will soon have a separate Space Command, that will better organise and advance the military’s vast operations in space. The Space Command is expected to improve the US military’s technological advances in space. Today in IN DEPTH we go into the details of what is the US Space Command … what was the need to create it.
President Donald Trump announced Monday that he is directing the Pentagon to create the “Space Force” as an independent service branch.
Description Definition of MILITARISM:
A: predominance of the military class or its ideals
B: exaltation of military virtues and ideals Definition of IMPERIALISM:
a: the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas
b: This word has its origin in the Latin imperilcrn (empire). In its general meaning it is the expression employed for the aspiration to form a single, powerful empire encompassing the entire world
Huge Cigar-Shaped UFO Craft Captured Next To The Sun
Huge Cigar-Shaped UFO Craft Captured Next To The Sun
Gina Maria Colvin Hill captured through her telescope a series of cigar-shaped objects next to the sun.
She posted the images on herFacebook page and although not all the photos show strange unidentified objects, this image shows one object that stands out and what looks like a cigar-shaped craft.
Get ready to rumble, conspiracy theorists … this story has something for everyone to worry about, no matter which side of Reddit you reside on. Scientists at Cambridge University are studying various forms of geoengineering and weather control for ways to stop climate change, and one involves placing highly-reflective clouds over the North and South poles in an effort to force them to freeze over again. What could possibly go wrong?
“What we do over the next 10 years will determine the future of humanity for the next 10,000 years. There is no major centre in the world that would be focused on this one big issue.”
Sir David King, then UK’s long-serving and now retired chief science adviser to prime ministers Blair, Brown, Cameron and May, told the BBC this week that he wants the new Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge to be that center. It’s part of the Carbon Neutral Futures Initiative, whose mission, according to Dr. Emily Shuckburgh, is to “solve the climate problem.” Nothing like starting at the top, right?
Actually, for Sir King, it means starting at the bottom too. His most radical plan involves sending specially-modified unmanned ships with tall, hollow masts to the poles to suck in seawater and blast it into the atmosphere through extremely fine nozzles. Those nozzles will isolate the salt from the tiny water droplets, creating clouds of salt crystals that will supposedly reflect sunlight back into space, leaving the area underneath them to chill and eventually reform the ice that’s been melting for years — calving monstrous icebergs, sending cracks through the Antarctic surface ice, melting glaciers and keeping the Arctic Ocean from freezing in the winter. Sounds like a good idea … as long as those clouds stay over the poles.
Sir King wants to sprinkle salt in other places as well. Another proposal involves fertilizing the ocean with more salt – iron or ferrous salts like ferrous fumarate, ferrous gluconate, ferrous succinate, and ferrous sulfate – to promote the growth of plankton, which will then absorb more CO2 – the main cause of climate change (unless you don’t believe it exists). Sounds like a good idea … as long as the plankton doesn’t get out of control and take over the oceans, or create monster whales and other sea creature that feed on it.
King is not ruling out more conventional solutions. He supports carbon capture systems to collect and store greenhouse gases, developing viable nuclear fusion technology and improving renewable energy sources. But he obviously wants to think outside the box and ignore the consequences. Dr. Shuckburgh is open to considering everything Sir King proposes – no matter how wild or unconventional the ideas might be.
“In assessing such ideas we need to explore all aspects, including the technological advances required, the potential unintended consequences and side effects, the costs, the rules and regulations that would be needed, as well as the public acceptability.”
“Unintended consequences.” Isn’t that what got us climate change in the first place?
That’s the way one Navy pilot described the now-infamousU.S.S. Nimitz UFO encounterwhich happened over a two-week period in 2004. Several versions of the events have been put forward, and the accompanying footage which accompanied the initial disclosure has beencalled into question. Still, the disclosure of the incident remains one of the most significant events in modern ufology, regardless of how much truth there is behind it.
Now, we have at least one more account – albeit short one – to add to the list of eyewitness reports of the Nimitz event. In the latest trailer for the History Channel’s upcoming series Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation, an anonymous pilot is shown sharing her recollection of the events. The quote above is all we got in the trailer from this most recent pilot to come forward, but it suggests that the History Channel’s new program may actually offer compelling new evidence about what our military and government have encountered in the skies.
The History Channel’s series is the latest endeavor of Tom Delonge, self-proclaimed face for modern ufology and co-founder and President of To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science. In the series, Delonge and Luis Elizondo present evidence gathered as a result of Elizondo’s former Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Several current and former pilots, including the pilot quoted above, have been shown in the series’ various trailers. The series is set to debut May 31 on the History Channel.
The History Channel says the series will “reveal newly authenticated evidence and footage, interviews from eyewitnesses and former military personnel,” and “expose a series of startling encounters and embark on fascinating new investigations that will urge the public to ask questions and look for answers” concerning unidentified aerial phenomena.
Of course, there are those who argue that Delonge and Elizondo are either wittingly or unwittingly carrying out a hidden, subversive agenda intended to push a controlled narrative about these incidents. Members of the entertainment industry have in the past been used by governments as tools for spreading misinformation or disinformation to sway public belief or opinion, and there’s no reason to believe it doesn’t still occur. Will this program lead to disclosure, or muddy the waters? Let’s face it: cable TV is little more than the propaganda arm of a vast corporate machine. The History Channel is owned by the Walt Disney Company, itself known to have had ties to intelligence agencies in the past, not to mention the fact that this is the network that airs Ancient Aliens. I know which one I’m going with.
Up until 1952, much of the coverage of “flying saucers” in the American media remained unsympathetic to the idea that some unusual new phenomenon was appearing in our skies. That was the case, at least, until Saturday Night Fever erupted over our nation’s capital, marking one of the most well known, and often written about UFO flaps in American history.
It was almost midnight on the evening of Saturday, July 19, 1952. Air-traffic controller Ed Nugent (not to be confused with a particular raucous guitarist with a similar name) was working the tower at Washington National Airport, when he observed something odd on the radar screen in front of him: it appeared to be a group of six or seven slow-moving objects moving together over the region, well outside the flight paths of any known aircraft, military or civilian, in the area at that time.
At that time, it had been treated as something of a joke (Nugent reportedly told his supervisor, tongue planted firmly in cheek, that he had just spotted an entire “fleet of flying saucers”). However, shortly thereafter another of the ATC operators noticed something odd and out of place: a strange light in the distance, which appeared to accelerate and disappear “at incredible speed.”
Thereafter, the incident received notable coverage in the press, with many articles emphasizing the USAF’s apparent interest in the matter. This was particularly the case following a statement given to the press by Major General John A. Samford, who appeared on camera on July 31, 1952, addressing the “flying saucers” seen over Washington, DC:
“The Air Force today investigated reports that several ‘flying saucers’ had been spotted by radar virtually in its own backyard on the outskirts of the nation’s capital,” journalist Jack Rutledge later wrote of the incident for Louisiana’s Monroe News-Star. “Not only were unidentified objects seen on radar–indicating actual substance instead of merely light–but two airline pilots and a newsman saw lights fitting the general description of flying saucers the same night.”
Indeed, a number of pilots claimed to have seen lights similar to those observed from Washington National Airport. However, among the most notable accounts had been that given by Captain S. Casey Pierman of Detroit, who was flying Capital Airlines Flight 807 on the night in question, headed southbound from National Airport, who observed seven objects while en route from Washington to Martinsburg, West Virginia. Pierman described the objects as at times “hanging motionless” like stars, while at other times “moving at tremendous speed” and resembling “falling stars without tails.”
In a statement Pierman gave to the press, he noted that “In my years of flying I’ve seen a lot of falling or shooting stars… but these were much faster… They couldn’t have been aircraft. They were moving too fast for that. They were about the same size and as the brighter stars, and were much higher than our 6000-foot altitude.”
Many years have passed since this now famous incident, allowing plenty of time for questions to be raised as far as what, precisely, might have been observed on the night in question (which, in truth, had been one of several similar incidents occurring near Washington at that time). However, even in the years shortly after the series of sightings over Washington took place, there were those who were of the mind that the phenomenon had stemmed from secret U.S. military activities, rather than extraterrestrial “saucers” from another world.
Leon Davidson, Ph.D, an early proponent of the idea that UFOs were largely a result of technologies and misdirection from our own government, noted that radar technology had existed by 1950 that would have allowed the creation of “false positives” that could easily have explained the radar traces observed by ATC controllers at Washington National. The question, rather than being one of what the “objects” were, was one of who might be behind such activities, which were apparently intentionally aimed at confusing the public, the media, and even members of the military?
By about 1950, ECM (electronic countermeasures) was standard equipment on our advanced bombers and was being developed for missiles. Advertisements started to appear about 1956 showing that this equipment could be used for creating simulated targets for training radar operators. I quote from an article in Aviation Research and Development, March 1957, pg. 22:
“A new radar moving target simulator system — which generates a display of up to 6 individual targets on any standard radar indicator — has been developed … to train radar operators … and for in-flight testing of airborne early-warning personnel… Target positions, paths, and velocities can … simulate … realistic flight paths… Speeds up to 10,000 knots (about 11,500 mph) are easily generated… The target can be made to turn left or right… For each target there is … adjustment to provide a realistic scope presentation.”
The reader should keep this quotation in mind when reading about radar sightings of high speed UFOs.
Davidson raises a number of good points, and the description he provides does resemble the circumstances presented in a number of the better known UFO radar reports from over the years. However, if the objects in question had indeed merely been the result of such experimental “war games” being carried out covertly, as Leon Davidson suggested (the CIA was a favorite culprit for this in Davidson’s narratives), can the idea of physical lights observed by pilots be similarly explained in some way?
We may never know the full story behind the objects seen and tracked on radar over Washington in 1952. However, when it comes to military technologies used for misdirection of the public, nothing can be ruled out, as Davidson was already suggesting within years of when the initial sightings took place. In the ever complex annals of Ufology, one thing that should always be kept in mind is that if there’s a will, there’s a way… or as cases like this may indicate, if there’s a way, then someone can find an excuse for a will.
Weird Beam of Light appears over Eskilstuna, Sweden
Weird Beam of Light appears over Eskilstuna, Sweden
Many weird and unexplained things happening in the skies above us. The next footage shows a thunderstorm when suddenly a weird beam of light comes out of clouds.
The photographer said that it was a normal summer day in Eskilstuna, Sweden and while watching the thunderstorm she decided to film it.
She little know that a portal like phenomenon was going to appear..
CHINA’S ROVER COLLECTS FIRST-EVER SAMPLES FROM UNDER LUNAR CRUST
CHINA’S ROVER COLLECTS FIRST-EVER SAMPLES FROM UNDER LUNAR CRUST
CNSA
DAN ROBITZSKI
Digging In
Yutu 2, the Chinese rover that landed on the far side of the Moonearlier this year, just examined the first-ever samples of the Moon’s mantle.
The samples are believed to have been dug out by a meteorite impact so strong that it crashed through the Moon’s crust, according to research published in the journal Nature on Wednesday. With further study, these subsurface rocks could reveal how the Moon formed in the first place.
Extremely Heavy Metal
In its earliest days, the Moon was likely comprised by a vast ocean of magma. During that period, the scientists suspect that heavy metals like iron and magnesium — both of which were prevalent in the new samples — sank below the surface while lighter compounds floated upward, eventually forming the Moon’s crust.
“This is the first ground truth of what the interior of the moon is really made of,” Purdue University scientist Briony Horgan, who did not contribute to the new research, told New Scientist. “I would say the really important thing is that it’s different from the Earth.”
Studying the Moon’s mantle could give scientists new insights into how a large space body forms when the mantle doesn’t interact with water, as it did on Earth — and could help understand how other celestial bodies formed as well.
NASA's first-everplanetary defense missionis preparing to launch in June 2021, making sure all the pieces are in place for the spacecraft to successfully slam into the small "moon" of a binary asteroid.
That mission, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), will culminate in October 2022 with the much-anticipated impact with the binary asteroid Didymos. But mission staff have plenty to keep them busy between now and then, and they know they will be in the spotlight as the mission continues. That's in part because DART represents NASA's first foray beyond scientific and human spaceflight missions; instead, this mission will test a technology that could theoretically save Earth from a dangerous collision with a threatening asteroid.
"People can really get into the whole, 'Oh my god, you're trying to move the what?'" Elena Adams, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, told Space.com during the International Academy of Astronautics' Planetary Defense Conference, held earlier this month in College Park, Maryland. Adams is the mission systems engineer for DART. "I think people are very excited, too, because they wouldn't want to be dinosaurs."
As mission systems engineer, Adams' job is to communicate and coordinate between all the different pieces of the DART mission — from the spacecraft itself to the launch vehicle to how the team members will work together over the course of the mission.
A key recent development in that equation is the rocket. The DART team had been assuming the craft would be piggybacking on a launch, which would have lengthened the journey from Earth to Didymos, but NASA decided to buy a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch dedicated to the mission.
"Before, we had to spend a lot of time spiralling around Earth; we didn't know where we were going to get dropped off," Adams said. "Now, we have a dedicated launch vehicle and we'll be able to just go where we want to go."
In the wake of that decision, Adams and her colleagues are meeting with SpaceX this month to begin coordinating for the launch, which will blast off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in June 2021.
Adams is also looking ahead to a series of crucial mission milestones happening this year. DART's final review by NASA will happen in June. The pieces of the spacecraft will also start coming together this summer, with the body of the probe arriving at the Applied Physics Laboratory in June for testing. Then, the spacecraft will go back out again to pick up its propulsion system, a new electric ion engine that DART will test.
Unlike traditional NASA missions that are packed with scientific devices, DART will carry just one instrument, an advanced camera that will capture a spacecraft's-eye view of the approach. "It will take amazing images along the way," Adams said. "But really, it's a targeting camera." For now, the main priority with that camera is making sure that the unwieldy roll-out solar arrays the mission will test don't smear the camera's images.
And then, of course, there's the people component, making sure the team behind the mission is ready to kick into high gear as the DART spacecraft approaches its target in October 2022.
"For the last 10 days, you need to have 24-hour staffing, and it's a small mission — there are only a few of us," Adams said. "So, we're trying to figure out what's the best way of breaking out all the maneuvers and what are we doing in contingencies."
Artemis is the goddess of the moon in Greek mythology.
Artist’s concept of a future moon landing carried out under NASA's newly named Artemis program. The space agency is working to return men and send the first women to the lunar surface by 2024, as has been directed by the White House.
Half a century after NASA sent men to the moon under project "Apollo," the space agency is now working to land men — and women — on the lunar surface as part of its "Artemis" program.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine revealed the new moniker on Monday (May 13) during a call with reporters that was primarily focused on thebudget for the newly named moon program.
"It turns out that Apollo had a twin sister, Artemis. She happens to be the goddess of the moon," said Bridenstine, referring to Greek mythology. "Our astronaut office is very diverse and highly qualified. I think it is very beautiful that 50 years after Apollo, the Artemis program will carry the next man — and the first woman — to the moon."
The Artemis program, which was previously only referred to by its component names — including the Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket, Orion crew vehicle and Gateway lunar outpost — began when President Donald Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1 in 2017, directing NASA to return astronauts to the moon.
Two years later, in March 2019, Vice President Mike Pence further defined the program by announcing a five-year deadline for the first crewed lunar landing. The 2024 mission, he said, should land at the south pole with the "first woman and the next man on the moon."
On Monday, Trump amended his Fiscal Year 2020 budget request to account for the accelerated schedule and new mission objectives.
"As you know, the President has given our agency the bold charge to land the next man and the first woman on the lunar south pole by 2024, and now President Trump has extended his vote of confidence in our work with an amended budget request for fiscal year 2020," said Bridenstine in a video address to employees. "It includes $1.6 billion in additional funding."
"Among other things, it will allow us to accelerate our development of the Space Launch System and Orion, it will support the development of a human lunar landing system and it will support precursor capabilities on the lunar surface, including increased robotic exploration of the moon's polar region," he said.
To achieve the 2024 goal, NASA intends to scale back its plans for a crew-tended, multi-module Gateway to include only the basic parts needed to support an initial landing. Support for a long-term, sustainable lunar presence, as had been NASA's priority, has been deferred to 2028.
In Greek mythology, Apollo and Artemis were the twin children of Zeus and Leto. In addition to being the goddess of the moon, Artemis was also the goddess of the hunt, with Orion her hunting companion.
A mid-5th century B.C. vase depicting the Greek god Apollo (at left) with his twin sister Artemis.
The name "Apollo" was first proposed for the 1960s moon landing program by Abe Silverstein, NASA's then-director for spaceflight development. He chose the name because of its connection to Greek mythology and its "attractive connotations," per the space agency.
Before being assigned to the current moon landing program, NASA used Artemis to refer to a pair of lunar probes studying the moon's interactions with the sun. The ARTEMIS — or "Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon's Interaction with the Sun" — spacecraft were reassigned from NASA's THEMIS mission in 2010.
Artemis was also selected by a team competing for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contract. The team, led by Draper, named their proposed lunar lander Artemis-7 in honor of the Greek goddess. (The number 7 signified Draper's seventh lunar landing, having a heritage in Apollo.)
The name has also been used for a European communications satellite (retired in 2017) and was the fictional title given to the first city on the moon in author Andy Weir's ("The Martian") 2017 science fiction novel "Artemis." There is also a small crater with the name in Mare Imbrium, or the Sea of Showers, on the moon.
Bridenstine said the name Artemis represents the program's goal of inclusion.
"I have a daughter who is 11 years old, and I want her to be able to see herself in the same role as the next women [who] go to the moon see themselves in today," he said. "This is really a beautiful moment in American history, and I am very proud to be a part of it."
A resourceful type of spider uses its own web like a slingshot to catapult forward and trap prey. Before the discovery of these creatures, only humans were known to use tools in order to amplify the energy of their movements.
Most spiders build a familiar-looking spiral web, waiting for unsuspecting prey to become entangled. But while these webs are static, the triangle-weaver spider (Hyptiotes cavatus) crafts a stretchy triangle-shaped web that acts as a slingshot or bow and arrow.
This is how it works: the spider makes a single thread connecting a wall to the triangle web. The arachnid moves backwards along this thread to tighten the web, storing energy across its entire length. When the time is right, such as when prey is close to the triangle web, the spider lets go of its grip. The spider can remain in tension for hours at a time if needed. The released tension recoils the spider and its triangle web at high velocity, in the same way a rubber band would fly off once you pull it back.
Credit: Sarah Han.
This behavior, known as “power amplification”, has been documented for some time in triangle web spiders, but it was only recently that researchers at the University of Akron have quantified the forces involved. To study the animals, researchers collected triangle-weaver spiders from the university’s campus in Ohio and inserted them in enclosed terrariums. Flies were regularly released into the enclosure so the spiders might feed, while high-speed cameras recorded even the slightest movement of the arachnids.
Using sophisticated motion tracking software, the researchers recorded position data that allowed them to decode the spider’s precise and ultra-fast movements. In fact, the spider slingshots so fast, it travels with the equivalent velocity of 400 body lengths per second, according to the researchers. The maximum recorded acceleration was 773 meters per second squared, which is equivalent to a dizzying 79 g’s. Fighter pilots can’t pull more than 9 g’s without passing out.
Many animals use elastic-energy storage and recoil to produce extremely rapid motions. Examples include the jumping motion of fleas and frogs or the deadly punch of the mantis shrimp. However, the triangle-weaver’s impressive web shooting is the only known case of a nonhuman utilizing an external device for power amplification. In the future, researchers want to investigate how the spider manages to accelerate to fast without squashing itself.
“This finding reveals an underappreciated function of spider silk and expands our understanding of how power amplification is used in natural systems, showing remarkable convergence with human-made power-amplifying tools,” the authors wrote in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Greg Johnson maakte deze prachtige timelapsevideo van een supercel bij Chapman, in de Amerikaanse staat Kansas. De video dateert van 25 mei 2016, maar wordt nu pas vrijgegeven. Het flitsende onweer veroorzaakte vier tornado’s in de staat, waarvan vooral de eerste en de tweede veel schade veroorzaakten bij Abilene, Niles en Chapman.
Bekijk ook: timelapse brengt vallende sterren prachtig in beeld
Bekijk ook: prachtige timelapse van Hudson in New York
WETENSCHAP De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump kondigde nog maar pas aan dat hij 1,6 miljard dollar (1,4 miljard euro) uittrekt voor de geplande maanmissie van NASA. Het Amerikaanse ruimtevaartagentschap is echter niet het enige dat de komende tien jaar een reisje naar de maan plant. Tal van andere landen nemen deel aan de maanrace.
Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump
Under my Administration, we are restoring @NASA to greatness and we are going back to the Moon, then Mars. I am updating my budget to include an additional $1.6 billion so that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!
Zelfs in Amerika zijn er andere (maan)kapers op de kust. Vrij letterlijk dan want Jeff Bezos, CEO van Amazon, wil met zijn commercieel ruimtevaartbedrijf Blue Origin de maan ontginnen, om onze eigen planeet te sparen. “We moeten deze planeet redden en we zouden een toekomst van ontwikkeling en groei voor de kleinkinderen van onze kleinkinderen niet mogen opgeven. We kunnen beide doen”, zei Bezos tijdens de presentatie van zijn maanmissie in Washington DC.
De maan veroveren wil de Amazon-baas doen met zijn gloednieuwe maanlander ‘Blue Moon’. En tegen 2024 moet die maanlander zelfs mensen naar de maan vervoeren. Dat is eveneens de streefdatum die Donald Trump voorop stelde voor de astronauten van NASA. Bovendien wil de president dat de vlucht van NASA bemand is.
De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie stelde zelf een bescheidener doel en mikte er in eerste instantie op om in 2028 weer een maanreis te maken.
China mag natuurlijk niet achterblijven in de nieuwe maanrace. In 2018 schreef de China National Space Administration (CNSA) alvast geschiedenis door als derde land ooit een ruimtetuig op het maanoppervlak neer te zetten - de Verenigde Staten en de Sovjet-Unie gingen China vooraf. De maanlander van China maakte deel uit van de Chang ’e 4-missie, en inmiddels wordt er gewerkt aan een volgende Chang ’e 5-missie. Die moet maangesteente mee terug naar de aarde nemen. Verder willen de Chinezen binnen de komende tien jaar een onderzoeksstation op de maan bouwen.
Europa
Ook het Europese ruimtevaartagentschap (ESA) heeft plannen met de maan. Verschillende Europese landen willen uiteindelijk een zogenaamd ‘Maandorp’ – of internationaal consortium - oprichten waar grondig wetenschappelijk onderzoek gevoerd kan worden.
Om daar te geraken, zullen de Europeanen wellicht beroep doen op een commercieel ruimtevaartbedrijf zoals SpaceX.
SpaceX
Over SpaceX gesproken: het privé ruimtevaartbedrijf van Elon Musk wil met het dearMoon-project tegen 2023 een zesdaagse reis naar de maan maken. Dat zal gebeuren met een Starship-raket met aan boord 9 ruimtetoeristen.
AFP
India
Ook de Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) introduceerde reeds in 2008 een eerste ruimtemissie waarbij het ruimtevaartuig Chandrayaan-1 in een baan rond de maan werd gebracht. De update ‘Chandrayaan-2’ zou in september 2019 een stapje verder moeten gaan en zal landen op de maan, dat zal evenwel onbemand gebeuren.
Rusland
Roscosmos, de Russische tegenhanger van NASA, wil dan weer een maanbasis uitbouwen. Die plannen zijn bestemd voor 2027. Een jaar later, in 2028, wil de Russische ruimtevaartorganisatie een superzware raket genaamd ‘Jenisej’ bouwen. Vermoedelijk is die ook bestemd voor maanreizen.
Japan
De Japanse SLIM-missie gaat volgend jaar (2020) al van start. De Japanse Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) zal aanvankelijk landingstechnieken uittesten, maar later wil JAXA ook onderzoek voeren naar de grondstoffen die aanwezig zijn op de maan. Uiteindelijk is ook Japan van plan om een bemande missie richting de maan te sturen.
Zuid-Korea
Tenslotte wil het Zuid-Koreaanse Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) in 2025 een maanlander lanceren. En volgend jaar zullen de Koreanen alvast een satelliet naar de maan brengen.
Private ruimtevaartmissies
Daarnaast zijn er trouwens nog tal van andere private startups die richting de maan willen reizen. Daaronder de Israëlische maanlander van SpaceIL: Beresheet. Die maakte dan wel een selfie van zichzelf en de maan, landen op de maan mislukte. Geen probleem, vond de voorzitter van SpaceIL: “We zijn dit begonnen en ik hoop dat we het ook ten einde kunnen brengen”. Gisteren kondigde de non-profitorganisatie aan dat er een tweede maanmissie zal volgen: Beresheet 2.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEETDe maan is langzaam aan het afkoelen, waardoor ze krimpt. Zo stelden wetenschappers reeds vast dat de maan de afgelopen paar honderd miljoen jaar ongeveer vijftig diameter kleiner is geworden. Uit gegevens van de Apollo-missies blijkt nu ook dat de maan wellicht nog altijd tektonisch actief is, wat mogelijk gepaard gaat met ‘maanbevingen’. Dat bericht het wetenschappelijke vakblad Nature Geoscience.
Vier verschillende seismometers detecteerden 28 ondiepe maanbevingen tijdens de Apollo-missies tussen 1969 en 1977. Deze bevingen hadden een kracht van twee tot vijf op de schaal van Richter. Ongeveer acht van de maanbevingen vonden plaats nabij jonge scheuren of breuklijnen in het maanoppervlak. Ter illustratie: dergelijke scheuren zijn vergelijkbaar met kliffen van enkele meters diepte. Ze ontstaan door een horizontale krimp van de maankorst, omdat de maan nog altijd afkoelt.
NASA heeft met behulp van de Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), die sinds 2009 opnames maakt, 3.500 breuklijnen ontdekt. Wetenschappers onder leiding van Thomas Watters van The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington bogen zich onlangs opnieuw over die resultaten en onderzochten of er een link is tussen de ondiepe maanbevingen, die plaatsvonden tussen 1969 en 1977, en de meer recente breuklijnen op de maan. Het onderzoeksteam trok op basis van de gegevens een opmerkelijke conclusie: de maan zou, net zoals onze planeet, nog altijd tektonisch actief zijn.
(Lees hieronder verder.)
NASAEen breuklijn gefotografeerd door de Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera.
Tektonische activiteit
De onderzoekers hebben via een speciaal ontwikkeld algoritme de vastgestelde locaties van de bevingen over een kaart heen gelegd van breuklijnen op de maan. Ze stelden vast dat 8 van de 28 ondiepe bevingen zich afspeelden binnen de 30 kilometer van de breuklijnen.
Hieruit concluderen de wetenschappers dat de bevingen wellicht het gevolg waren van tektonische activiteit. Met andere woorden, het over elkaar heen schuiven van stukken maankorst. De kern van de maan koelt immers nog altijd af, waardoor de oppervlakte krimpt. Dit creëert spanning, wat ertoe leidt dat er ‘rimpels’ ontstaan in de maankorst. Het is als een druif die door de droogte een rozijn wordt.
Recente bevingen
Ook blijkt uit de beelden van de LRO dat aan de voet van sommige rotswanden gekleurd puin lag. Op andere hellingen zijn sporen te zien van rotsblokken die naar beneden rolden. Volgens het onderzoeksteam is dat het bewijs dat er nog niet zo erg lang geleden ‘maanbevingen’ zijn geweest.
Wetenschappers ontdekten dat verschillende bevingen plaatsvonden op het moment dat de maan het verst van onze planeet verwijderd was, ook wel ‘apogeum’ genoemd. Op dat punt is de getijdenwerking het sterkst en vinden verschuivingen langs de breuklijnen het vaakst plaats.
Verder onderzoek
Door beelden van breukhellingen met elkaar te vergelijken kunnen signalen van recente tektonische activiteit verder opgespoord worden. “Het opzetten van een nieuw netwerk van seismometers op het maanoppervlak moet een prioriteit zijn. Zo komen we immers meer te weten over de maan en maanbevingen”, zegt Renee Weber, een onderzoeker van NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
Het onderzoeken van seismologische activiteit is belangrijk omdat het ons meer kan vertellen over de evolutie van de maan, onze planeet en getijdenkrachten.
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2-3 Billion Years Ago, Star Formation Was Bursting in The Milky Way
2-3 Billion Years Ago, Star Formation Was Bursting in The Milky Way
The region of the stellar formation Rho Ophiuchi observed by ESA Gaia satellite. The shining dots are stellar clusters with the massive and youngest stars of the region. The dark filaments track the gas and dust distribution, where the new stars are born. This is not a conventional photographic image but the result of the integration of all the received radiation by the satellite during the 22 months of continuous measurements through different filters on the spacecraft.
Credit and Copyright: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
A team led by researchers of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB, UB-IEEC) and the Besançon Astronomical Observatory have found, analysing data from the Gaia satellite, that a severe star formation burst occurred in the Milky Way about to and three thousand million years ago. In this process, more than 50 % of the stars that created the galactic disc may have been born. There results come from the combination of the distances, colors and magnitude of the stars that were measured by Gaia with models that predict their distribution in our Galaxy. The study has been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Just like a flame fades when there is no gas in the cylinder, the rhythm of the stellar formation in the Milky Way, fuelled by the gas that was deposited, should decrease slowly and in a continuous way until using up the existing gas. The results of the study show that, although this was the process that took place over the first 4,000 million years of the disc formation, a severe star formation burst, or “stellar baby boom” –as stated in the article published in the Nature Research Highlights-, inverted this trend. The merging with a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, which is rich in gas, could have administrated new fuel and reactivate the process of stellar formation, in a similar way to when a gas cylinder is changed. This mechanism would explain the distribution of distances, ages and masses that are estimated from the data taken from the European Space Agency Gaia satellite.
“The time scale of this star formation burst together with the great amount of stellar mass involved in the process, thousands of millions of solar mass, suggests the disc of our Galaxy did not have a steady and paused evolution, it may have suffered an external perturbation that began about five billion years ago”, said Roger Mor, ICCUB researcher and first signer of the article.
“We have been able to find this out due having –for the first time- precise distances for more than three million stars in the solar environment”, says Roger Mor. “Thanks to these data –he continues- we could discover the mechanisms that controlled the evolution more than 8-10 billion years ago in the disc of our Galaxy, which is not more than the bright band we see in the sky on a dark night and with no light pollution”.
Like in many research fields these days, these findings have been possible thanks to the availability of the combination of a great amount of unprecedented precision data, and the availability of a great amount of hours in computing in the computer facilities funded by the FP7 GENIUS European project (Gaia European Project for Improved data User Services) –in the Center for Scientific and Academic Services of Catalonia (CSUC).
Distribution of 3 million stars used in this stdy to detect the star formation burst from 2-3 billion years ago. Gaia provided the distance for each of these objects on the gallactic disc. Below, a scheme of the spiral arms of the Milky Way.
Credit; University of Barcelona
Cosmologic models predict our galaxy would have been growing due the merging with other galaxies, a fact that has been stated by other studies using Gaia data. One of these merges could be the cause of the severe star formation burst that was detected in this study.
“Actually, the peak of star formation is so clear, unlike what we predicted before having data from Gaia, that we thought necessary to treat its interpretation together with experts on cosmological evolution of external galaxies”, notes Francesca Figuerars, lecturer at the Department of Quantum Physics and Astrophysics of the UB, ICCUB member and signer of the article.
According to the expert on simulations of galaxies similar to the Milky Way, Santi Roca-Fàbrega –from the Complutense University of Mardid and also signer of the article, “the obtained results match with what the current cosmological models predict, and what is more –he continues- our Galaxy seen from Gaia’s eyes is an excellent cosmological laboratory where we can test and confront models at a bigger scale in the universe”.
Gaia mission until 2020
This study has been conducted with the second release of the Gaia mission, which was published a year ago, on April 25, 2018. Xavier Luri, director of ICCUB and also signer of the article states: “The role of scientists and engineers of the UB has been essential so that the scientific community enjoys the excellent quality of data from the Gaia release”.
More than 400 scientists and engineers from around Europe are part of the consortium in charge of preparing and validating these data. “Their collective work brought the international scientific community a release that is making us rethink many of the existent scenarios on the origins and evolution of our galaxy”, notes Luri.
In one year, more than 1,200 peer review articles published in journals show the before and after Gaia in almost all fields of astrophysics, from the recent detection of new stellar clusters, new asteroids, to the affirmation of the star extragalactic origin in our Galaxy, going through the calculus of the Milky Way mass and the findings that show compact stars end up slowly solidified.
“The satellite continues to operate optimally and this July the five nominal years of scientific operation will be completed”, notes Carme Jordi, UB researcher and member of the Gaia Science Team, the scientific advisor body of the European Space Agency (ESA) for this mission. ESA has approved of the extension of the mission until late 2020 –one more year than expected- and engineering teams estimate that there is enough fuel to continue working until 2024. “There is no doubt this mission has passed a technological unprecedented challenge in space missions of all time”, concludes Carme Jordi.
Stanton Friedman has passed away today May 14th 2019. Stanton was some of my first interviews. I spoke to him on the phone privately for a while as well. Good man and Rest in Peace UFO Legend. J.P.
Stanton Terry Friedman is a retired nuclear physicist and professional ufologist who resides in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. He is the original civilian investigator of the Roswell incident. He worked on research and development projects for several large companies.Wikipedia
FREDERICTON — Stanton T. Friedman, nuclear physicist, lecturer and world-renowned devotee of extraterrestrial existence, has died at the age of 84.
The famed UFO researcher died Monday at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, his daughter Melissa Friedman confirmed Tuesday. She said he was on his way home to Fredericton from a speaking engagement in Ohio. TimesColonist
Many reported UFO sightings actually end up being something as simple as a balloon. UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object and they’ve been seen since the start of recorded history. Throughout that period of time, there were two triangle UFOs sighted in the same place. Ghosts and orbs are believed to be connected in some fashion. If it regards a haunting of any kind, precautions have to go taken. You just need to listen to her songs to be convinced. There’s a whole lot more shit coming.
The New Fuss About UFO Videos from 2019
Normally women enjoy each others company in the place where they receive a great deal of emotional support. There existed a general division of labor, particularly in hunting communities, where they did the bulk of the work. This afternoon, at the exact same time and place, the exact same woman witnessed a similar light show.
There are a lot of theories regarding what the main reason for the noise might be. Something that science alone can’t solve. Although researchers have made attempts to discover what and why the suspension took place, the base won’t comment further on the issue. Many UFO scientists have examined the multiple parts of video footage and photographs.
The 30-Second Trick for UFO Videos from 2019
Data analysis assists in understanding the demographics of the customer and to create services and products in a means to satisfy their demand. Some reports state it’s a ping, but others claim it’s a beep. They state it’s a ping, but others claim it’s a beep. There weren’t any reports of any crashes in the area. It’s so incredible fantastic that it can’t be adequately explained or investigated in just 1 hub article.
The picture managed to create a small wave of publicity for the region. You may see the video below. The quick video below, for instance, is merely one of several contemporary sightings. It, for instance, is only one of several contemporary sightings. Hypnosis video is just one of the most effective tactics to do hypnosis without the usage of a real hypnotist. You may see the footage below.
You might take a look at the video below. You look at the video below. You might look at the video below.
There are lots of finds of strange and bizarre objects made all over Earth. To have the ability to get the utmost benefit for an intensive cardio workout with only a little proportion of the physical output is well worth trying. You won’t have to be concerned anymore. Something needs to be going on here. There’s no doubt you NEED to earn marketing videos in the event that you want to do things the easy way online nowadays. There is really a chance that the sighting over O’Hare might not have made it in the public arena.
Some dismiss the claims as an effort to profit on the rapidly increasing quantity of UFO encounters. Many, by way of example, can have exposure to sun all day, every single day, for long stretches of time. Then, the two of the objects disappeared. The strange object began to approach again.
Astronomically speaking, it’s tough to beat the discovery of a comet or asteroid from another solar system, as all of the hubbub over ‘Oumuamuahas proven. However, this just might do it. Astronomers studying the chemical compositions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy have discovered a star in the Big Dipper with a combination of elements that exists nowhere else in the galaxy. An invader? Interloper? Can we charge it rent?
“Here we report on the discovery of a metal-poor star with an extreme r-process enhancement and α-element deficiency. In this star, the abundance ratio of the r-process element Eu with respect to Fe is more than one order of magnitude larger than the Sun and the metallicity is 1/20 of solar metallicity.”
That’s astronomer-speak for “Hey! Put down your beer and come look at this!” According to the press release for a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, a group of astronomers from China and Japan using the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) in Xinglong Station, Hebei Province, China, discovered a star, now named J1124+4535, just below the bowl of the Big Dipper, also known as the Ursa Major constellation, with an unusual chemical signature. Specifically, it has a very low level of elements such as magnesium compared with an excessively high level of Europium, a soft metal similar to lead. That high-low ratio is not found in the Milky Way but matched the chemical composition of stars in dwarf galaxies orbiting our own.
So, how did J1124+4535 end up in the Big Dipper? It’s believed that there were once many more dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, but our greedy galaxy likes to gorge on them and absorbed them completely – destroying their identities and assimilating them into its own. Somehow, J1124+4535 managed to survive. As we found with interstellar asteroids, if there’s one, there’s probably more, and that’s already the case with this prisoner from another galaxy. Astronomers have discovered non-Milky Way hypervelocity stars speeding through after being spun off by those orbiting dwarf galaxies, particularly the Large Magellanic Cloud. However, J1124+4535 seems to be the only one so far to arrive via complete absorption.
Alaska flag
Speaking of the Large Magellanic Cloud, it’s scheduled to be absorbed via collision in about 2 billion years, followed by the Andromeda Galaxy in another 2 to 3 billion years.
In space, no one can hear you scream, but someone in the future may hear the Milky Way chew, swallow and belch.
The moon doesn’t do that that much. Sure, it’s responsible for the tides and all, but that’s really a function of gravity and the messy ball of duct tape and chicken wire we call “the laws of physics.” As a celestial body, the moon just kind of hangs around. It does do some cool stuff, though. For one, it’s the perfect size to let us earthlings view total solar eclipses, which is a pretty spectacular luxury we have. Some have suggested that the perfect size of the moon in relation to the sun and Earth is a bittoo much of a coincidence, and thus evidence that the moon is fake. Unfortunately, the moon is real, and just like every other real thing in this universe it’s growing up to be a disappointment. You see, it turns out the moon is shrinking.
Tectonic activity—the push and pull of tectonic plates in a planet’s mantle—in our solar system has, for a long time, seemed to be mostly confined to the Earth. We feel the results of this tectonic activity as earthquakes. We know that the moon used to have tectonic activity, but it was though to have stopped millions of years ago. According to a study published this week, the moon may still be tectonically active, and so-called “moonquakes” are shrinking Earth’s satellite like a raisin.
What if you landed on the moon, stepped out, and were just utterly disappointed? That would be awful.
These moonquakes were first recorded by the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1977. Until now, they’ve been unexplained. A study published in Nature Geoscience found that the epicenters of the mysterious moonquakes seem centered around jagged lines of cliffs called scarps. These scarps were first discovered in 2010, and while researchers suggested that they were the result of tectonic activity, they believed that it had died down around 50 million years ago. Based of the apparent connection between these scarps and modern recorded moonquakes, the new study concludes that the moon is probably still tectonically active, which came as a shock to researchers. Co-author of the study Thomas Watters says:
“The whole idea that a 4.6-billion-year-old rocky body like the moon has managed to stay hot enough in the interior and produce this network of faults just flies in the face of conventional wisdom.”
As its interior cools with age, the moon shrinks like a raisin. Its brittle crust compresses and breaks forming the scarps we can see running along the surface. Previously we had thought that this cooling and shrinking process had completed a very long time ago, but the links between the scarps and moonquakes suggest that this shrinking process is still ongoing today. Watters says:
“The connection between the location and timing of shallow moonquakes and known young faults is further evidence that our moon is a dynamic world.”
It’s not going to shrink out of existence any time soon, of course. Rocks don’t feel time the same way we do. But it’s good to know that the moon is still doing something. It’s also good to know we won’t run out of the always entertaining fake-moon arguments any time soon either, because you can bet dollars to donuts that the moon being tectonically active 50 million years after it should be is going to be seen as proof-positive that it’s not as old as they want you to think it is.
Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist devoted to uncovering what he could about alien life, has died. He was 84. (Submitted/Melissa Friedman)
Stanton Friedman, the famed UFO researcher based in Fredericton, has died.
Friedman was returning from a speaking engagement in Columbus, Ohio, when he died suddenly at the Toronto Pearson Airport on Monday night, according to his family.
He was 84.
A nuclear physicist by training, Friedman had devoted his life to researching and investigating UFOs since the late 1960s.
He was credited with bringing the 1947 Roswell Incident — the famous incident that gave rise to theories about UFOs and a U.S. military coverup — back into the mainstream conversation.
Friedman "officially" retired last year but still booked speaking engagements "because he loved talking about UFOs," said his daughter, Melissa Friedman, who works for CBC News.
"Dad was curious about anything he didn't know about. He was always asking questions about how things worked.
Stanton Friedman, second from right, posing for a photo with his wife Marilyn, far right, his daughter Melissa Friedman and her husband David Parsons.
(Submitted/Melissa Friedman)
"I think it's rare for someone to stay so engaged and curious and open-minded for a life that's that long."
She remembered her father as encouraging, proud and caring and said she was fortunate to have one last visit a week ago in Nova Scotia.
'He did his homework'
Friedman was an accomplished writer, publishing dozens of papers about UFOs and writing or co-writing several books. Three of those books were written in tandem with Kathleen Marden.
"He will be greatly missed," Marden, a UFO researcher, said in an interview from Florida.
Stanton Friedman, a leading authority on UFOs, is pictured taking part in a parade in McMinnville, Ore., in 2013.
(CBC)
His qualifications, intelligence and diligence made him irreplaceable in the research field, she said.
"He did his homework," Marden said.
"He went further than most researchers in that he did on-site investigations. He went to actual physical archives to do his research. He was an outstanding researcher, highly intelligent and had a great sense of humour."
He was also a familiar face in documentaries, radio and television, including multiple appearances on Larry King Live, and lectured about UFOs for hundreds of colleges and professional groups across the United States, Canada and many other countries.
Friedman was also inducted into the UFO Hall of Fame in Roswell, N.M.
Stanton Friedman is survived by his wife of 44 years, Marilyn.
(Submitted/Melissa Friedman)
Marden said he remained firm in his conviction that aliens exist and have visited our planet because he had "more than ample evidence."
"He doubted everything until he had the evidence," she said. "He was skeptical himself.
"Once he had the evidence and it was not just speculation — it was confirmatory evidence — he went with it."
'Trying to lift the laughter curtain'
In a 2011 interview with CBC News, Friedman said most people agree with him once they hear the evidence.
"Despite the false claims of a small group of nasty, noisy negativists, most people accept ET reality even though they think most others don't," he said.
"I check my audiences and find at the end of my lecture that about 10 per cent of the attendees have had a sighting. But 90 per cent didn't report it because of a fear of ridicule.
His work was celebrated in New Brunswick, and the City of Fredericton declared Aug. 27, 2007, Stanton Friedman Day.
Friedman, who was born in New Jersey and had dual citizenship, lived in Fredericton with his wife of 44 years, Marilyn, mother to Melissa Friedman. He also had three children from a previous marriage.
Beroemde UFO-onderzoeker Stanton Friedman overleden. Dit waren zijn meest opmerkelijke uitspraken
Beroemde UFO-onderzoeker Stanton Friedman overleden. Dit waren zijn meest opmerkelijke uitspraken
Kerngeleerde Stanton Friedman deed ruim 50 jaar onderzoek naar het UFO-fenomeen. Dankzij hem kwam er veel aandacht voor het Roswellincident in 1947. Friedman overleed maandagavond op 84-jarige leeftijd.
In 1978 had hij een ontmoeting met majoor Jesse Marcel, die in 1947 betrokken was bij de berging van de resten van wat de luchtmacht een weerballon noemde.
Marcel verklaarde tegenover Friedman dat het geen weerballon geweest was, maar een buitenaards ruimtevaartuig.
Doofpot
Hij trof in Roswell nog tientallen andere getuigen, onder wie een generaal, die soortgelijke uitspraken deden.
Friedman schreef er een boek over, ‘The Roswell Incident’, waarna zich nog veel meer getuigen meldden.
De wetenschapper kwam tot de conclusie dat de overheid de crash van het ruimteschip in de doofpot had gestopt.
Hij zei dat de Amerikaanse autoriteiten het hele voorval onder het tapijt hebben geveegd om onrust onder de bevolking te voorkomen.
Meerdere keren
In een ander boek, getiteld ‘Flying Saucers and Science: A Scientist Investigates the Mysteries of UFOs’, stelt hij dat UFO’s uit relatief nabijgelegen zonnestelsels afkomstig zijn.
Friedman heeft verder gezegd dat aliens onze planeet meerdere keren hebben bezocht, maar nog niet van plan zijn zich bekend te maken.
Volgens hem is er geen twijfel over mogelijk dat aliens de aarde hebben bezocht, maar wordt dit onder de pet gehouden door overheden en veiligheidsdiensten.
Schat aan bewijs
“We hebben genoeg om te bewijzen dat planeet aarde wordt bezocht door buitenaardsen,” zei hij.
“Als ze zich bekend willen maken, zullen ze dat ook zeker doen,” vervolgde hij.
Hij stelde dat er een schat aan bewijs is waaruit blijkt dat aliens bestaan en citeerde documenten die door de CIA zijn vrijgegeven.
Quarantaine
Friedman vermoedde dat ze hier zijn om de mensheid onder quarantaine te plaatsen zodat ze de ruimte niet kunnen koloniseren.
Hij stelde dat gecrashte ruimteschepen en UFO-waarnemingen ook worden stilgehouden om politieke redenen.
“Het eerste land dat buitenaardse technologie weet te kopiëren, zal de baas zijn,” zei hij.
Classic Disk Caught Over Argentina On May 13, 2019, UFO Sighting News
Classic Disk Caught Over Argentina On May 13, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May13, 2019 Location of sighting: Argentina
This UFO was photographed in Argentina this week. There are two photos of the UFO and it is a perfect classic disk. Watch the video to learn more. Scott C.Waring
Jesus Appears In The Sky Over Argentina, A Sign? May 14, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Jesus Appears In The Sky Over Argentina, A Sign? May 14, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Location of sighting: Argentina Date of sighting: May 14, 2019
Hey guys, this is a strange one. This is a photo someone took in the sky over Argentina this week and it seems to show Jesus in a rob with a crown of thorns. I do believe in signs and believe this has some real purpose for being there. Have a look at the video below.
Questioning the existence of aliensis something that scientists and average Joes alike have done for decades. Everything from Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial to NASA’s latest press releases shows just how large the discussion is and always has been. In fact, most people do believe that aliens exist in some fashion.
The main necessities for life are water and some form of energy source. Not surprisingly, there are some planets, exoplanets, and moons that fit the bill. Although we probably won’t find little green men with bug eyes, that doesn’t make the prospect any less exciting. Here are our 10 best chances at finding life in the universe.
TRAPPIST-1 is a planetary system a few dozen light-years away whose discovery was announced in early 2017. This system consists of seven Earthlike exoplanets orbiting an “ultra-cool” star, and it is one of our best shots at finding life beyond our own solar system.
For one thing, studying these exoplanets will be relatively easy because of how they rotate around their star. We can use a telescope to observe their transits, which is when they eclipse their star by passing directly in front of it from our perspective. We see the temporary dimming of the star’s light as an exoplanet passes between the star and Earth.[1]
These exoplanets also have reasonable temperatures due to the nature of their star. So they are cool enough for liquid water to have a chance to form.
Although all the exoplanets in this system are legitimate candidates to host alien life, three in particular are soundly in what is called the habitable zone. This is the area around a host star where an Earthlike exoplanet is capable of forming liquid water, assuming that all life-forms, like those on Earth, do in fact need water to survive.
Titan is the largest moon of Saturn, the sixth planet from our Sun. This moon could potentially harbor life but possibly not in the sense that we think. Titan does not exactly fit the description of being in a typical habitable zone.
Titan has water, and it has liquid. It just doesn’t have liquid water.[2] The water on this moon is completely solid because of the extremely cold temperature.
However, the liquid that fills the lakes and streams is not water but rather hydrocarbons. A hydrocarbon is a chemical compound of hydrogen and carbon in varying proportions. On Earth, we often think of these as gases like methane or propane.
This is the key factor that would make potential life on Titan so different. Essentially, these life-forms would not survive on liquid water like we do but rather on these liquid hydrocarbons.
Although there are still some technicalities and unanswered questions about science (like if life can live off something other than water), the possibility that Titan has alien life is certainly there.
Europa is one of Jupiter’s moons here in our own solar system. It is another candidate due to its potential to hold liquid water. Europa is thought to have all the necessities for life including water, energy sources, and the right chemical buildup. The water is thought to be stored in oceans underneath Europa’s surface.
It wasn’t until recently that scientists made it possible to begin the exploration for life on this moon. It was announced in early 2017 that a mission called Europa Clipper would take place over the next several years. This mission is sending a spacecraft to Jupiter’s moon to take pictures of the surface. This flyby would happen repeatedly, offering multiple opportunities to analyze the moon and search for life.[3]
7.Mars
The Red Planet, the fourth from the Sun, is probably one of the most talked-about potential candidates for extraterrestrial life and even for human colonization. Despite the naysayers, finding extraterrestrial life on Marsreally is a serious possibility.
We know by now that we won’t find little green men or any intelligent form of life that we understand. However, there is evidence that there was and may still be microscopic life on the small red planet.[4]
NASA’s data suggests a past presence of floods and streams throughout the dry surface. So there is a chance that liquid water was once on the surface and life could have survived. With further exploration, scientists might find liquid water on Mars presently, instead of just the ice caps that they see today.
Enceladus, another of Saturn’s many moons, has the astronomy world abuzz with its potential to hold water, unlike its hydrocarbon-rich sister. The water is supposedly underneath the crust of the moon, similar to Europa.
Once again, this would mean that microbes of some kind live there. At first, the presence of water was simply a hypothesis after some evidence found in 2015 gave scientists hope.[5]
But in early 2017, a mission involving the Cassini spacecraft detected hydrogen molecules that point to a chemical reaction occurring under the surface. This chemical reaction, in which the ocean water reacts with surrounding rock to produce energy, could be useful to life-forms because an energy source is crucial to life as we know it.
Kepler-186f is an exoplanet orbiting the star Kepler-186 about 500 light-years from Earth. Discovered in 2014, it is the first Earth-size exoplanet found to be orbiting in its star’s habitable zone.
Less than 10 percent greater than Earth’s size, it is the closest “match” to our home planet. Any other similarities, like density, are unknown. But the presumably rocky composition can be hypothesized simply based on the exoplanet’s size.
Both its Earthlike size and its location in the habitable zone are what make Kepler-186f a more likely candidate to accommodate life. However, the presence of water has not been confirmed because of a lack of proper information, such as temperature.[6]
As Earth is our only known host of life, the theory is that a place like Earth in other ways might also be home to some form of life as we know it.
According to NASA, Kepler-452b could be “one of the best [places] to find extraterrestrial life.” This exoplanet, however, may prove to be difficult to explore. It’s over 1,000 light-years away. Even so, scientists have confirmed that Kepler-452b is located in its star’s habitable zone, along with several companion exoplanets.[7]
For a while, Kepler-452b was known for being the closest to Earth’s size. That honor now goes to Kepler-186f. Still, Kepler-452b’s star is much more Sunlike, which is certainly interesting. Furthermore, this exoplanet is one of science’s most notable subjects, particularly in the eyes of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, a leader in the exploration for extraterrestrial life.
This “super-Earth” is a recently discovered exoplanet that is in its star’s habitable zone. LHS 1140b is considered by some scientists to be one of our best opportunities to find other life-forms.
A super-Earth is an exoplanet that is up to 10 times more massive than our Earth. It is often presumed that a super-Earth is rocky, although we can’t be sure without other observations. LHS 1140b, the mother of all super-Earths, is also believed to be rocky with an iron core . . . and to possibly have aliens.[8]
At only 40 light-years away, this exoplanet is in a good position for us to send a signal to intelligent life there, should it exist. In addition to LHS 1140b’s proximity to Earth, the exoplanet’s slower rotation speed makes LHS 1140b easier to observe.
Tabby’s Star, or KIC 8462852, has received a lot of buzz for being the host of an “alien megastructure.” Well, maybe.
At 1,500 light-years away from Earth, this star was discovered by Yale astronomer Tabetha Boyajian and noted for its peculiar behavior. Tabby’s Star dims at such extreme rates over time that the dimming cannot be attributed to an eclipsing planet. Other explanations include an unidentified space object or the more fun explanation, aliens.
An alien megastructure is basically a giant device that captures energy from a star and converts it into something more useful. When a star loses energy, it dims. So the idea of an alien megastructure makes sense, at least a little bit.
However, the most recent and most likely theory about Tabby’s Star is that it ate its own planet, which is certainly fascinating in its own right. Still, aliens have not been completely ruled out.[9]
Another one of Jupiter’s moons might contain life. Like the other moons, Ganymede is thought to have an ocean beneath its crust. Surprisingly, this ocean could contain more water than Earth itself. In fact, investigation into Ganymede’s surface shows that there may have been a flood once when liquid water escaped from beneath the surface through cracks or other openings.
The exploration of this moon even brought about new research methods. For example, by analyzing magnetic fields, scientists found that they can possibly deduce information about the interior of the object, including whether liquid water is present.
As of early 2017, there is no mission exploring Ganymede. But a probe called JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) is set to explore Jupiter’s moons further in the next several years.[10]
Hirondellea gigas (left) is a type of amphipod that lives in the Mariana Trench. It is just one of the deep-sea crustacean species affected by nuclear weapons that were tested decades ago.
Credit: Daiju Azuma, CC BY 2.5/U.S. Department of Energy
Crustaceans that live in the deepest part of the ocean carry radioactive carbon in their bodies, a legacy of nuclear tests performed during the Cold War.
Researchers recently found elevated levels of radiocarbon in amphipods — shell-less, shrimp-like creatures — from deep trenches in the western Pacific Ocean, up to 7 miles (11 kilometers) below the surface.
In those dark and high-pressure depths, deep-sea amphipods scavenge decaying organic matter that drifts down from above. By eating the remains of animals that were exposed to radioactive fallout from Cold War nuclear tests, the amphipods' bodies have also become infused with radiocarbon — the isotope carbon-14, or "bomb carbon" — the first evidence of elevated radiocarbon at the sea bottom, scientists wrote in a new study. [In Photos: The Wonders of the Deep Sea]
When global superpowers detonated nuclear bombs in the 1950s and 1960s, the explosions spewed neutrons into the atmosphere. There, the neutral particles reacted with nitrogen and carbon to form carbon-14, which re-entered the ocean to be absorbed by marine life, according to the study.
Some carbon-14 occurs naturally in the atmosphere and in living organisms. But by the mid-1960s, atmospheric radiocarbon levels were roughly twice what they were before nuclear testing began, and those levels didn't start to drop until testing ceased, the researchers reported.
Soon after the first nuclear explosions, elevated quantities of carbon-14 were already appearing in ocean animals near the sea surface. For the new study, researchers went deeper, examining amphipods collected from three locations on the sea bottom in the tropical western Pacific: the Mariana, Mussau and New Britain Trenches.
Bottom feeders
Organic matter in the amphipods' guts held carbon-14, but the carbon-14 levels in the amphipods' bodies were much higher. Over time, a diet rich in carbon-14 likely flooded the amphipods' tissues with bomb carbon, the scientists concluded.
They also found that deep-sea amphipods were bigger and longer-lived than their cousins closer to the surface. Amphipods in the ocean trenches lived to be more than 10 years old, and measured nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters) long. By comparison, surface amphipods live to be less than 2 years old and grow to be only 0.8 inches (2 cm) in length.
The deep-sea amphipods' low metabolic rate and longevity provide fertile ground for carbon-14 to accumulate in their bodies over time, according to the study.
Ocean circulation alone would take centuries to carry bomb carbon to the deep sea. But thanks to the ocean food chain, bomb carbon arrived at the seafloor far sooner than expected, lead study author Ning Wang, a geochemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzhou, said in a statement.
The study underscores how humans' impact on ocean ecosystems near the surface can circulate through miles of water, affecting creatures in its deepest depths.
"There's a very strong interaction between the surface and the bottom, in terms of biologic systems," study co-author Weidong Sun, a geochemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Qingdao, said in the statement.
"Human activities can affect the biosystems even down to 11,000 meters [36,000 feet], so we need to be careful about our future behaviors," Sun said.
Indeed, recent studies have also shown evidence of plastic in the guts of marine animals inhabiting deep-sea trenches.
Before this slow process dried out the planet, Mars may have been covered by a vast ocean. This illustration shows how the planet may have looked billions of years ago.
Credit: NASA/GSFC
There's a hole in the Martian atmosphere that opens once every two years, venting the planet's limited water supply into space — and dumping the rest of the water at the planet's poles.
That's the explanation advanced by a team of Russian and German scientists who studied the odd behavior of water on the Red Planet. Earthbound scientists can see that there's water vapor high in the Martian atmosphere, and that water is migrating to the planet's poles. But until now, there was no good explanation for how the Martian water cycle works, or why the once-drenched planet is now a dry husk.
The presence of water vapor high above Mars is puzzling because the Red Planet has a middle layer of its atmosphere that seems like it should be shutting down the water cycle altogether. [Mars-like Places on Earth]
"The Martian middle atmosphere is too cold to sustain water vapor," the researchers wrote in the study, which was published April 16 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
So how is water crossing that middle-layer barrier?
The answer, according to computer simulations in the current study, has to do with two atmospheric processes unique to the Red Planet.
On Earth, summer in the Northern Hemisphere and summer in the Southern Hemispheres are pretty similar. But that's not the case on Mars: Because the planet’s orbit is much more eccentric than Earth’s, it’s significantly closer to the sun during its southern hemisphere summer (which happens once every two Earth years). So summers on that part of the planet are much warmer than summers in the Northern Hemisphere.
When that happens, according to the researchers' simulations, a window opens in Mars' middle atmosphere between 37 and 56 miles (60 and 90 kilometers) in altitude, allowing water vapor to pass through and escape into the upper atmosphere. At other times, the lack of sunlight shuts down Martian water cycles almost entirely.
Mars is also different from Earth in that the Red Planet gets frequently overtaken by giant dust storms. Those storms cool the planet's surface by blocking light. But the light that doesn't reach Mars' surface instead gets stuck in the atmosphere, warming it and creating conditions better suited to moving water around, the scientists' simulations showed. Under global dust-storm conditions, like the one that enveloped Mars in 2017, tiny particles of water ice form around the dust particles. Those lightweight ice particles float into the upper atmosphere more easily than other forms of water, so during those periods more water move into the upper atmosphere.
Dust storms can move even more water into the upper atmosphere than the southern summers, the researchers showed.
Once the water passes through the middle boundary, the researchers wrote, two things happen: Some of the water drifts north and south, toward the poles, where it's eventually deposited. But ultraviolet light in the upper atmosphere can also sever the bonds between the oxygen and hydrogen in the molecules, causing the hydrogen to escape into space, leaving the oxygen behind.
This process could be part of the story of how a once-drenched Mars has ended up so dry in its current epoch, the researchers wrote.
Like a grape that wrinkles to produce a raisin, the moon is shrinking day by day as it interior cools. In the process, the lunar crust breaks, producing thrust faults — a type of fault where ground from one section of the crust is pushed up over an adjacent section. Now, scientists have used images NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and seismic data from the Apollo missions, finding that the moon’s shrinkage is also producing moonquakes around these thrust faults.
This prominent thrust fault is one of the thousands discovered on the moon by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). New research suggests that these faults may still be active today, producing moonquakes.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University/Smithsonian.
A shocking study
Since 2009, the LRO mission identified more than 3,500 thrust faults on the moon. Some of these images showed evidence of landslides and boulder falls at the slopes of thrust faults, also known as scarps. These features appeared relatively bright in the images, suggesting that they were produced recently. Normally, weathering darkens material on the moon’s surface in time. What’s more, the constant rain of micrometeoroids should have erased these tracks, suggesting that they are relatively fresh.
In the 1960s and 1970s, astronauts placed fiveseismometerson the moon’s surface. The Apollo 11 seismic instrument listened for rumbles in the moon’s crust for only three weeks, but subsequent missions recorded 28 moonquakes. These were very shallow quakes ranging in magnitude from 2 to 5. To Nicholas Schmerr, an assistant professor of geology at the University of Maryland, this data looked very similar to that of earthquakes produced by tectonic faults.
Schmerr and colleagues superimposed the epicenters for moonquakes recorded by Apollo-era seismometers with LRO imagery of thrust faults. They found that at least eight of the moonquakes matched almost perfectly with scarps, suggesting that they were produced by genuine tectonic activity, rather than processes deep within the moon’s interior or from asteroid impacts.
“We found that a number of the quakes recorded in the Apollo data happened very close to the faults seen in the LRO imagery,” Schmerr said in a statement. “It’s quite likely that the faults are still active today. You don’t often get to see active tectonics anywhere but Earth, so it’s very exciting to think these faults may still be producing moonquakes.”
The authors used their model to produce “shake maps” based on predictions of where the strongest shaking should occur, given the size of thrust faults. Six of moonquakes occurred while the moon was at or near its apogee, which is the point where the moon is farthest away from Earth. This suggests that tidal forces from Earth’s gravity stress the moon’s crust, making fault generation more likely.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this view of the Taurus-Littrow valley. You can see a lunar fault cutting across it.
Credit: NASA.
“We think it’s very likely that these eight quakes were produced by faults slipping as stress built up when the lunar crust was compressed by global contraction and tidal forces, indicating that the Apollo seismometers recorded the shrinking moon and the moon is still tectonically active,” said Thomas Watters, lead author of the research paper and senior scientist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
These stunning findings could have a huge impact on how scientists view the moon from now on. They suggest that the moon may still be tectonically active and raise questions regarding its evolution. According to the leading lunar formation theory, the moon formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago after a planetary-sized body collided with early Earth. Many believe that any internal heat the moon might have had must have escaped a long time ago due to its small size relative to Earth. These new findings, however, suggest that there might still be some “steam” left to blow. Somehow, the moon managed to remain tectonically active after 4.51 billion years — and we don’t know how yet.
And considering Jeff Bezos’ recent grand plans for establishing a human presence in the solar system, including the moon, these new findings published inNature Geosciencesuggest that we ought to prepare for quakes, besides the numerous other perils.
“For me, these findings emphasize that we need to go back to the moon,” Schmerr said. “We learned a lot from the Apollo missions, but they really only scratched the surface. With a larger network of modern seismometers, we could make huge strides in our understanding of the moon’s geology. This provides some very promising low-hanging fruit for science on a future mission to the moon.”
NASA officials presented an updated budget request to the US Congress this Monday. The agency is requesting an additional $1 billion in funding for their upcoming 2024 Moon mission, dubbed the Artemis Mission.
Image via Pixabay.
In Greek mythology, Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo, who was the namesake of the program that sent 12 American astronauts to the Moon between 1969 and 1972. It’s only fitting then that NASA would christen the mission aiming to take man back to the moon after her name. But, as often was the case with Greek gods, there is drama afoot.
Funding request
“This additional investment, I want to be clear, is a downpayment on NASA’s efforts to land humans on the Moon by 2024,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says.
NASA’s original plan was to carry out the moon return mission in 2028, but Vice-President Mike Pence announced in March that the current administration wants to push those plans for 2024. This way, the mission would line up with a possible second term for President Trump. The present budget revision is intended to bring the Agency’s funds up to speed with the new deadline.
The ball, however, is firmly in Congress’ court — they will have to decide whether to back up the Trump administration on the new timeline or not. New York Times writes that NASA’s original budget for the 2019 fiscal year (which ends on Sept. 30) is $21.5 billion strong. The president’s original budget request for the 2020 fiscal year aimed to cut this sum by $500 million; if Congress greenlights the new budget request, this will effectively increase NASA’s 2020 budget by $1.6 billion.
That money is definitely needed. Bridenstine says NASA needs the extra $1.6 billion to pay for the new ground and space vehicles needed to carry out the Artemis mission on the revised deadline. Around $651 million is earmarked for the Space Launch System (SLS), the new large rocket NASA is developing, and the Orion capsule that would take astronauts to the moon and other deep-space destinations. The rest, around $1 billion, will fund the development of a commercial landing system to help take astronauts to the moon’s surface. NASA also plans to scale back and delay plans for Gateway, an outpost in orbit around the moon, to limit costs until Artemis.
The final costs of Artemis will likely be much higher, with Bridenstine calling the current request a “down payment.” When asked how much the new mission would cost in total, he quipped to a reporter: “I would love to tell you that.”
However, there are some concerns that NASA can pull off the mission on its accelerated timeline. Spacefaring isn’t exactly something you want to rush, and there have also been issues with the development of the SLS (being carried out by Boeing). Hopefully, some quick cash is all NASA needs to iron out these issues.
Ik heb nog nooit iets zo snel zien vliegen. Turkse piloot filmt UFO tijdens vlucht (bekijk hier de beelden)
Ik heb nog nooit iets zo snel zien vliegen. Turkse piloot filmt UFO tijdens vlucht (bekijk hier de beelden)
Ik heb nog nooit iets zo snel zien vliegen, zei piloot van Turkish Airlines Atilla Senturk.
Op 10 mei zag hij tijdens een vlucht van Istanbul naar Keulen een mysterieus object door de lucht schieten.
De piloot maakte er beelden van met zijn mobiele telefoon, die hij op social media plaatste.
Ongelooflijk hoge snelheid
“We zagen een ongelooflijk helder object op grote hoogte,” zei hij. “Het was geen satelliet of ster.”
“Het verdween met ongelooflijk hoge snelheid,” vervolgde hij. “In ongeveer een seconde doorkruiste het object de horizon.”
“Het bevond zich heel dicht bij ons en was zeer helder,” aldus Senturk.
Vliegende schotel
Ook bemanningsleden Efsun Selin Sezer en Ozgur Erdas waren getuige van het verschijnsel. Het is niet bekend wat zij hebben gezien.
Een andere piloot, Selahattin Sivri, zei dat hij een vliegende schotel had gezien.
Reusachtig ei
Sivri, die in februari kwam te overlijden, zei dat hij in oktober 1989 tijdens een vlucht van Zürich naar Antalya een rood, blauw, groen en wit gekleurd object zag ter grootte van een huis.
Het had volgens de piloot de vorm van een reusachtig ei.
Bekijk ook onderstaande beelden, gemaakt door Senturk:
HOEVEEL MENSEN HOUDEN HUN MOND DICHT OVER BUITENAARDSE ONTVOERING?
HOEVEEL MENSEN HOUDEN HUN MOND DICHT OVER BUITENAARDSE ONTVOERING?
Als je beseft dat je meestal wordt uitgelachen als je iemand vertelt dat je een ufo hebt gezien, hoe zit het dan met ontvoeringen?
Hoeveel mensen, en dan met name jongeren, zouden er wel niet zijn die gewoon hun mond dicht houden over wat ze hebben meegemaakt?
Een lezer, een dame, die met jongeren werkt, zond ons het volgende bericht (dank!):
Zijn er volwassen personen die van jongeren tussen de 12 t/m 16 jaar te horen krijgen dat ze te maken hebben gehad met ufo ontvoeringen in Nederland?
Ik begeleid jongeren. Het volgende kwam mij vandaag ter ore in een groepsgesprekje.
Dit is wat ik vandaag kreeg te horen:
Start: Onderwerpen in dit groepsgesprekje zoals, vermoeidheid, dromen, nachtmerries, slaapwandelen passeerde de revue.
Eén van de jongeren vertelt plotseling en heel serieus het volgende.
De jongen: “Ik heb wel eens te maken gehad met een ufo in de nacht”.
Ik: Nodig hem uit om verder te vertellen en neem dit serieus.
De jongen zegt: “Ik lag in mijn bed ’s nachts”.
“Boven mij verscheen een grote ronde rode platte schijf”.
“Ik werd omhoog gestraald. Ik kwam in de ufo terecht”.
“Ik heb de binnenkant van de ufo gezien”.
“Verschillende wezens stonden om mij heen. Ze hadden grote ronde ogen en ze bekeken mij. Vertelt dan dat hij allerlei onderzoeken moest ondergaan”.
Zegt letterlijk: “Toen ze me niet meer nodig hadden werd ik op dezelfde manier naar beneden gegooid als dat ik werd opgestraald. Ik kwam met een klap in mijn bed terecht”.
Dan nog het volgende:
Kortgeleden, een paar dagen terug heb ik een soort droom gehad waar in er in het heelal een hele grote platte schijf hing. De bovenkant had de 7 kleuren van de regenboog. Dat kon ik zien omdat de platte schijf eerst schuin in de lucht hing. Ik kon dus de kleuren patronen/volgorde daardoor zien. De onderkant was van een zwaar soort metaal. Dit metaal had te maken met de aantrekking kracht van de Aarde. Het was gemaakt van de zelfde structuur die de aardkern heeft. Deze metalen schijf zorgt er voor dat de mensen ( net als in een computer worden geprogrammeerd ). Dit deden ze met straling en afstemming ( de kleuren ) op het energie veld van de mensen.
Toen ze ( wie weet ik niet ). In de gaten kregen dat ik het opmerkte moest ik maken dat ik weg kwam. Wat is er gaande ( in het heelal? ). Voor deze ( soort droom ) heb ik een andere ( soort droom gehad ) een paar weken terug.
Waarin een immens groot driehoekige metalen vliegtuig/ufo over complete woonwijken/continenten en steden heen vloog. Dit vliegtuig was van precies dezelfde metaal soort als dat ik in de zojuist beschreven ( soort droom ) heb beschreven.
Zijn er mensen die dit soort ervaringen misschien in een zelfde periode tijdens de slaap als ik hebben gehad?
Dus vanaf 3 weken geleden. In de periode van half april, tot aan 7 mei 2019?
Mochten jullie dit willen plaatsen. Dan heel graag anoniem.
Ik heb eerdere artikelen aan jullie toegezonden. Deze zijn geplaatst in 2014 en 2015. Ik heb een ander e-mail adres dan in het jr 2014/2015 omdat ik per 1 januari 2016 naar een andere woonplaats buiten af ben verhuist. Misschien is het voor jullie wel interessant om de artikelen die ik in 2014 en 2015 naar jullie heb toegezonden en die zijn geplaatst door te lezen.
Ik las je antwoordt gisteren, en kreeg de ingeving om jullie attent te maken op deze 2 artikelen die zijn ingezonden door mij. Als ik de ervaringen die toen zijn ingezonden er op na lees. Zijn er interessante overeen komsten met de 2 laatste recente ervaringen in de zogenaamde ( dromen ) die ik jullie deze week heb toegestuurd. Misschien kan je deze artikelen of de linkjes in een mogelijk artikel meenemen? Als je onder aan leest lijkt de ( informatie uit de zogenaamde droom ) de programmatie ( computer d.m.v. intunen kleuren veld mensheid ) door middel van de metalen schijf op de ervaring die ik in 2015 heb gehad ). Alleen nu was er 1 verschil ( ik moest mij uit de voeten maken toen werd opgemerkt wat ik in het heelal waarnam in de laatste ( zogenaamde droom ).
Mijn doel is dat meer mensen zich bewust worden van bepaalde zaken die zo op het eerste gezicht niet zichtbaar zijn. Maar wel degelijk bestaan, en invloed uitoefent op de fysieke wereld. En waarvan een bepaalde groep blijkbaar liever niet wil dat het openbaar wordt. Niet alles is wat het lijkt.
Ik ben de 50 gepasseerd en heb heel erg lang te maken gehad met ernstig misbruik, en heel veel verschillende testen vooral in de nacht tot aan een bepaalde periode in mijn leven.
Er is een bepaalde uitgekozen groep mensen die met extreem ernstig misbruik te maken hebben gehad. Deze mensen raken alles wat dichtbij hoort te staan kwijt. Alles wat dicht bij hen staat, en wat hen lief is moet weg. Alles wat hen lief is, daar wordt doorheen gewerkt zodat er een vreemd soort van conflicten ontstaan. Drugsgebruik, en uithongeren zijn een paar van die zaken die ingezet worden. Deze mensen raken 100% geïsoleerd. Als je alles en iedereen kwijt raakt, dan ben je kwetsbaarder. Ik weet heel zeker dat doel bewust misbruik wordt ingezet om een bepaalde groep mensen te isoleren. En dat er vooral in de slaap/droom staat, testen worden uitgevoerd.
Deze groep mensen worden tot op het bod getest. Het zijn mensen die een bepaald soort begaafdheid hebben. Ze worden van jongs af aan uitgekozen, in bepaalde families geboren ( trauma gerelateerd ). En krijgen het dan ook flink voor de kiezen. Dit allemaal om te voorkomen dat bepaalde technologie en/of bepaalde geheimen aan het licht komen of word doorzien.
Er gaat een enorme kracht uit van deze mensen. Het doel is om deze kracht te ondermijnen, en op angst gebaseerde zaken in stand te houden. waardoor deze mensen in een soort sluimer toestand blijven. Velen worden toch wakker ondanks de ghemtrails, ondanks gemanipuleerd voedsel, ondanks bepaalde technologie die wordt ingezet. Dit wilde ik nog kwijt.
Met name de volgende zin in dit artikel raakte mij. " Het voelde alsof er een computer programma op mij werd losgelaten (op afstand via de linker kant van mijn brein) ". Als je de ( zogenaamde droom, afgelopen week ) die hoogstwaarschijnlijk helemaal geen droom is geweest leest . Dan ervaar ik nagenoeg hetzelfde maar dan op een iets meer collectief niveau. Er staat namelijk: Deze metalen schijf zorgt er voor dat de mensen ( net als in een computer worden geprogrammeerd ). Dit deden ze met straling. Dus, grote groepen mensen worden getest. Ze ( wie weet ik niet ). Wensen niet dat dit openbaar wordt gemaakt. Of dat er mensen zijn die dit waarnemen/doorzien. De mensen die een bepaalde soort begaafdheid hebben krijgen het dan ook flink voor de kiezen, om te voorkomen dat bepaalde technologie word doorzien. Dat liet de zogenaamde droom heel goed zien. Ik schrijf namelijk (dat ik moest maken dat ik weg kwam).
I took a boat through 96 million black plastic balls on the Los Angeles reservoir to find out why they’re there. The first time I heard about shade balls the claim was they reduce evaporation. But it turns out this isn’t the reason they were introduced. Huge thanks to LADWP for arranging this special tour for me. Next time let’s put the GoPro on the submersible!
The balls are made of high density polyethylene (HDPE) which is less dense than water so they float on the surface of the reservoir even if they break apart. They are 10cm (4 inches) in diameter and contain about 210ml of water. So the main reason they are on the reservoir is to block sunlight from entering the water and triggering a chemical reaction that turns harmless bromide into carcinogenic bromate.
This effect occurs with prolonged exposure to bromate so regulators insist that levels be kept below 10 microgram per liter on average over a 12 month period.
Stanton Friedman, a respected nuclear physicist, and UFO researcher passed away yesterday evening in Toronto, Canada. An official announcement by his family has been made to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation earlier today.
Friedman was born in July of 1934 and resided in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Friedman completed his degree in Physics from the University of Chicago and worked for various companies including General Electric and General Motors. A well-respected scientist, Friedman belonged to several academic organizations including the American Nuclear Society and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Friedman in 2013 receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award.
(Image courtesy of Open Minds)
In 1970, Friedman made a splash in the UFO community when he began to investigate the UFO phenomenon full time. Speaking at countless conferences, authoring several books and over 80 articles on “flying saucers,” Friedman became a household name in the study of UFOs. He often drew the ire of the skeptical community and was even the target of the infamous debunker Phillip Klass. Somewhat of a legendary story in the UFO community, Klass entered into a monetary bet with Friedman regarding the typeface of the famous MJ-12 documents. Klass offered Friedman $100 for every legitimate document he could find with the same typeface, and in a brilliant move, Friedman provided Klass with fourteen such examples. Klass, begrudgingly, sent Friedman $1000 (the other $400 never materialized).
Friedman continued his work into the phenomenon and made many friends in the UFO community. Science writer and UFO researcher Chris Rutkowski was friends with Friedman, and often opened his home to the man when he visited Winnipeg. Friedman, known to be quite economical, would often crash on Rutkowski’s couch instead of staying in a hotel room.
Friedman and Rutkowski in 2001.
(Image courtesy of C. Rutkowski)
In an interview with Mysterious Universe, Rutkowski expressed his sadness at the loss of one of Ufology’s most legendary figures,
He was a mentor and will be missed. One of the last “nuts and bolts” Ufologists, who was not afraid to take on skeptics and jaded media.
In an outpouring of support on social media, many of his colleagues and friends have offered their condolences, memories, and fondness for Friedman and his family. The UFO community has lost an important figure, and more importantly, a role model.
UFO Over East London, South Africa On May 13, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Over East London, South Africa On May 13, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Location of sighting:East London, South Africa Date of sighing:May 13, 2019 Source:MUFON #100257 This is from South Africa, the city of East London near the Indian Ocean. Not England! I just reported about a UFO on Google Earth that was deleted just last week and am reporting another so soon. Anyways, this is a difficult one to determine because there is a powerful light below shining up from the ground. So it could be a reflection of light, especially if taking a photo through a window. But this UFO does seem to have some solid appearance to it. This is a hard one guys. So I made a video of it so you can decide for yourselves. Scott C. Waring
Organic Life In Space On NASA Photo, May 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Organic Life In Space On NASA Photo, May 2019, UFO Sighting News.
What happens when life forms show up on NASA SOHO satellite and astronauts Melvin Leland and John Glenn both concur that they saw organic life forms in space? Well, let me show you more. This photo of life forms flying or swimming past the SOHO satellite lens was sent to me by a Facebook friend Holly. She found the amazing photo with not one, but five organic creatures moving past the lens of the SOHO satellite on May 4, 2019 at 16:30. The photo is remarkable, because two of the organic life forms are touching eachother...comforting each other to assure each that they are not alone. A bond of friendship is there. At he location that they touch, notice that when I added contrast, a rectangle appears there. That is the area that they pressed together at...touching. If a creature needs contact with others to feel comfortable...then there is some degree no matter how small of intelligence. Scott C. Waring-Taiwan
While searching for the source of methane on Saturn’s large moon Titan, researchers found a completely unexpected corridor of methane ice wrapping nearly halfway around the moon.
Three orientations of Titan’s globe. The icy corridor is mapped in blue.
Image via Caitlin Griffith/UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.
A research team has discovered huge ice feature on Titan while trying to understand where Saturn’s largest moon gets all of its methane.
Like Earth,Titanhas rain, seas and a surface of eroding organic material. However, on Titan it is methane, not water, that makes up the raindrops and fills the lakes.
A team of scientists searching for the source of Titan’s methane discovered something unexpected – a long corridor of ice that wraps nearly halfway around Titan, making it over 4,000 miles (6,400 km) long.
Caitlin Griffith is a professor in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona and lead author on the paper published April 29, 2019, in the peer=reviewed journal Nature Astronomy. Griffith said in a statement:
This icy corridor is puzzling, because it doesn’t correlate with any surface features nor measurements of the subsurface.
Saturn’s largest moon Titan as seen by the Cassini spacecraft.
Titan is the only object in the solar system other than Earth that is known to have liquid rain. On Titan it’s methane rain, not water, which fills the huge lakes that exist on the moon’s surface. Scientists aren’t sure where Titan’s methane comes from. There is no obvious source, except the evaporation of methane from the polar lakes. But Titan’s lakes contain only one-third of the methane in Titan’s atmosphere.
One theory is that the methane could be supplied by subsurface reservoirs that vent methane into the atmosphere. Prior studies of Titan indicate the presence of what looks like a cryovolcano – an ice volcano that erupts slurries of volatile compounds such as water or methane instead of lava.
The research team set out to study the composition of Titan’s surface, analyzing images from the NASA Cassinimission’s flybys of Titan, partly hoping to find subtle small cryovolcano candidates. They analyzed half of Titan’s surface and none were detected, but, in a surprise discovery, came across the ice feature. The researchers wrote:
Titan’s global ice feature presents a puzzle. Ice-rich terrains in other areas of Titan occur only in local regions excavated by craters or exposed by erosion, suggesting that cryovolcanism, if active, is currently not widespread.
Researchers say the presence of the ice corridor raises the question of whether tectonic processes might have been involved in Titan’s formation. Griffith said:
Given that our study and past work indicate that Titan is currently not volcanically active, the trace of the corridor is likely a vestige of the past. We detect this feature on steep slopes, but not on all slopes. This suggests that the icy corridor is currently eroding, potentially unveiling the presence of ice and organic strata.
Bottom line: Researchers have discovered an enormous ice corridor that wraps almost halfway around Saturn’s largest moon Titan.
Fossils of Giant Prehistoric Beasts Discovered in Underwater Ice Age Death Cave
Fossils of Giant Prehistoric Beasts Discovered in Underwater Ice Age Death Cave
More than 10,000 years ago, as the last Ice Age ended, vast sheets of ice receded, scarring and causing massive cracks to appear on the bridge between North and South America. At that time, the land bridge was known to have been inhabited by fearsome beasts; now new evidence shows these prehistoric beasts included giant ‘wolf-like carnivores’ and the ‘largest bear’ ever to have walked on planet Earth.
‘10,000 BC’ was a 2008 American epic adventure film set in prehistory. It told the adventures of a prehistoric tribe ofmammoth hunters. After its world premiere on February 10, 2008 in Berlin, although it was an immediate box office hit, the film became regarded by professional critics as one of the worst films of the year. The Sunday Times review section noted that the film was “archaeologically inaccurate and contains many factual errors and anachronisms.” But now it would appear this movie was based firmly in reality!
A diver in the Hoyo Negro pit, holding a Protocyon jaw and vertebrae.
At the bottom of an underwater cave in Mexico archaeologists have discovered an ancient graveyard including the skeletons of ancient sloths, sabretooth cats, cougars, elephant-like gomphotheres, bears, and dog-like animals. According to the researchers’ new paper, published in Biology Letters , they have recovered the skull of an enormous short-faced bear ( Arctotherium wingei ) and remains of a wolf-like dog known as Protocyon troglodytes.
Furthermore, in 2007, researchers even found “two human skeletons dating to more than 12,000-years-old.” These are now thought to be two of the “oldest human skeletons ever found in the Western hemisphere” and they inform experts that our ancestors once lived alongside giant ground sloths, towering bears, and fierce wolf-like carnivores.
Arctotherium wingei and Protocyon troglodytes from Hoyo Negro.
The remarkable discoveries were made in the Hoyo Negro pit (Spanish: blackhole) in the Sac Actun cave system on the eastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula . Researchers have described it as “an underworld of exquisitely preserved fossils” naturally formed from limestone in the Late Pleistocene. It is thought that animals fell nearly 60 meters (200 feet) into the death pit and when the melting glaciers filled the pit the remains became a permanent installation.
This large-scale archaeological project is being financially support by a consortium including INAH (National Institute of Anthropology and History), National Geographic Society, the ETSU Center of Excellence in Paleontology, the Archaeological Institute of America, and DirectAMS and Strauss Family Fund. Among the bones recovered by scientists over the past 12 years, the team of US and Mexican researchers were most impressed by the remains of a giant bear and a wolf-like creature .
Divers in the expansive underwater cave of Hoyo Negro, Tulum, Quintana Roo.
While having been collected several years ago, both giant species were misidentified until now. But it’s not only the awe inspiring size of these two skeletons that is fascinating scientists, it’s the fact that they are causing anthropologists to redress their theories about ancient animal populations in South America .
How so? Up until their correct identification, scientists were convinced that the short-faced bear and wolf only populated the southern aspects of the South American continent, “more than 2,000 kilometers away.”
When Did these Prehistoric Beasts Travel Such Vast Distances?
Lead author and paleontologist from the East Tennessee State University, Blaine Schubert, told reporters at Live Science , “The whole previous record of this particular type of bear is just known from a few localities in South America, and those are fragmentary remains.” And having come from almost no knowledge of this bear, the scientists now have what is being called “the best record of this type of bear from the Yucatán of Mexico.”
Trying to account for how the bear and wolf got as far north as Mexico, scientists refer to “many cross-over events between North and South America.” Another possibility being proposed by the authors is that having walked all the way south, during or after the last full glacial event between 35,000 and 12,000 years ago, they returned northwards to the region of the cave. The scientists wrote, “We suggest that landscape and ecological changes caused by latest Pleistocene glaciation supported an interchange pulse that included Homo sapiens.”
When 10,000 BC was released in 2008 critics at Variety wrote: “10,000 BC reps a missed opportunity to present an imaginative vision of a prehistoric moment.” However, in April 29, 2008 the movie had grossed approximately $268.6 million worldwide, which was said to be “dead money.” Now, it appears the movie was a really, really expensive archaeological lesson.
Top Image:A diver holds the skull of an ancient bear known as an Arctotherium. It is one of the species of “prehistoric monsters” found in an underwater Yucatan cave. Source: Copyright Roberto Chavez-Arce
Fossils of Giant Prehistoric Beasts Discovered in Underwater Ice Age Death Cave
Fossils of Giant Prehistoric Beasts Discovered in Underwater Ice Age Death Cave
More than 10,000 years ago, as the last Ice Age ended, vast sheets of ice receded, scarring and causing massive cracks to appear on the bridge between North and South America. At that time, the land bridge was known to have been inhabited by fearsome beasts; now new evidence shows these prehistoric beasts included giant ‘wolf-like carnivores’ and the ‘largest bear’ ever to have walked on planet Earth.
‘10,000 BC’ was a 2008 American epic adventure film set in prehistory. It told the adventures of a prehistoric tribe ofmammoth hunters. After its world premiere on February 10, 2008 in Berlin, although it was an immediate box office hit, the film became regarded by professional critics as one of the worst films of the year. The Sunday Times review section noted that the film was “archaeologically inaccurate and contains many factual errors and anachronisms.” But now it would appear this movie was based firmly in reality!
A diver in the Hoyo Negro pit, holding a Protocyon jaw and vertebrae.
At the bottom of an underwater cave in Mexico archaeologists have discovered an ancient graveyard including the skeletons of ancient sloths, sabretooth cats, cougars, elephant-like gomphotheres, bears, and dog-like animals. According to the researchers’ new paper, published in Biology Letters , they have recovered the skull of an enormous short-faced bear ( Arctotherium wingei ) and remains of a wolf-like dog known as Protocyon troglodytes.
Furthermore, in 2007, researchers even found “two human skeletons dating to more than 12,000-years-old.” These are now thought to be two of the “oldest human skeletons ever found in the Western hemisphere” and they inform experts that our ancestors once lived alongside giant ground sloths, towering bears, and fierce wolf-like carnivores.
Arctotherium wingei and Protocyon troglodytes from Hoyo Negro.
The remarkable discoveries were made in the Hoyo Negro pit (Spanish: blackhole) in the Sac Actun cave system on the eastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula . Researchers have described it as “an underworld of exquisitely preserved fossils” naturally formed from limestone in the Late Pleistocene. It is thought that animals fell nearly 60 meters (200 feet) into the death pit and when the melting glaciers filled the pit the remains became a permanent installation.
This large-scale archaeological project is being financially support by a consortium including INAH (National Institute of Anthropology and History), National Geographic Society, the ETSU Center of Excellence in Paleontology, the Archaeological Institute of America, and DirectAMS and Strauss Family Fund. Among the bones recovered by scientists over the past 12 years, the team of US and Mexican researchers were most impressed by the remains of a giant bear and a wolf-like creature .
Divers in the expansive underwater cave of Hoyo Negro, Tulum, Quintana Roo.
While having been collected several years ago, both giant species were misidentified until now. But it’s not only the awe inspiring size of these two skeletons that is fascinating scientists, it’s the fact that they are causing anthropologists to redress their theories about ancient animal populations in South America .
How so? Up until their correct identification, scientists were convinced that the short-faced bear and wolf only populated the southern aspects of the South American continent, “more than 2,000 kilometers away.”
When Did these Prehistoric Beasts Travel Such Vast Distances?
Lead author and paleontologist from the East Tennessee State University, Blaine Schubert, told reporters at Live Science , “The whole previous record of this particular type of bear is just known from a few localities in South America, and those are fragmentary remains.” And having come from almost no knowledge of this bear, the scientists now have what is being called “the best record of this type of bear from the Yucatán of Mexico.”
Trying to account for how the bear and wolf got as far north as Mexico, scientists refer to “many cross-over events between North and South America.” Another possibility being proposed by the authors is that having walked all the way south, during or after the last full glacial event between 35,000 and 12,000 years ago, they returned northwards to the region of the cave. The scientists wrote, “We suggest that landscape and ecological changes caused by latest Pleistocene glaciation supported an interchange pulse that included Homo sapiens.”
When 10,000 BC was released in 2008 critics at Variety wrote: “10,000 BC reps a missed opportunity to present an imaginative vision of a prehistoric moment.” However, in April 29, 2008 the movie had grossed approximately $268.6 million worldwide, which was said to be “dead money.” Now, it appears the movie was a really, really expensive archaeological lesson.
Top Image:A diver holds the skull of an ancient bear known as an Arctotherium. It is one of the species of “prehistoric monsters” found in an underwater Yucatan cave. Source: Copyright Roberto Chavez-Arce
Discovery of 16,000-year-old Footprint That Could Change the History of the Americas
Discovery of 16,000-year-old Footprint That Could Change the History of the Americas
There are some discoveries that can change the way that we think about history. Archaeologists in Chilebelieve that they have made one such discovery. They have uncovered a human footprintthat is approximately 15,500-16,000 years old. It is the earliest evidence yet found of humans in theAmericas. The imprint has the potential to change how we believe the continent was settled and who were its first inhabitants.
The imprint was found at the late Pleistocene period archaeological site of Pilauco, which according to phys.org “where scientists have been digging since 2007.” The Pilauco site had also yielded evidence of extinct elephants and horses and is located in the Chilean city of Osorno some 500 miles (800 kilometers) south of Santiago, the capital of Chile.
The Pleistocene footprint is the oldest surviving human footprint in the Americas.
The footprint was found in 2010, near a modern house, by “a student at the Universidad Austral of Chile” according to Reuters. While the impression may appear to be clearly a human footprint, the scientists were cautious, as it could have been an animal’s tracks which had become misshapen and elongated over-time. It is believed that the imprint was buried under three feet of residue, which preserved it for posterity.
The Irish state broadcaster RTE reports that ‘”it took years for paleontologist Karen Moreno and geologist Mario Pino to reliably confirm that the print was human.” It was only established by carrying out footprint tests with people and this proved that the imprint was human. These also established that it was made by a “barefooted adult human who was of 'light body weight’” according to the Daily Mail .
Based on foot printing tests they conducted, scientists think the print comes from a straight down step. The diagram shows the different type of prints that could be made with different angles and pressure.
It is believed that the footprint is of a man who weighed 155 pounds (70 kilograms) and according to phys.org, was “of the species Hominipes modernus, a relative of Homo sapiens .” This was established by ichnologicaly, that is by the scientific examination of the traces found in the sediment. Ichnologists comparing the mark with other traces were able to establish that it was H. modernus.
To establish if the Pleistocene footprint was human and how it was made, scientists performed foot printing tests on soil at different soil moisture levels and with different foot angles and pressures.
Scientists were able to date the find by using radiocarbon dating techniques that analyzed organic plant material near where the print was located and established that it was approximately 15,600 years old. This made it according to RTE, the “oldest footprint found in the Americas.” While other prints have been unearthed, none are as old as the one found in the city of Osorno. It seems that the site was occupied by humans for some time as footprints dated a thousand years later have also been uncovered.
The Daily Mail reports that “this was the first evidence of humans in the Americas older than 12,000 years.” Previously it had been believed that the first inhabitants of the continent arrived from Siberia via the Bearing Straits some 10,000 years ago. This discovery is challenging the idea that Clovis Man, a paleo-Indian culture was the first to settle the continent.
Archeologist working on site of the location were Pleistocene footprint was discovered.
According to Plos One , the find provides evidence of “the colonization of northern Patagonia” in the late Pleistocene period . The footprint is supporting evidence found at the Monte Verde , Chile, that this region in the extreme south of the Americas was colonized much earlier than thought. This, in turn, is supporting the so-called coastal migration model. This holds that the first settlers to inhabit the Americas migrated by following coastlines and may suggest that Pacific Islanders were the first to settle on the continent.
The impression and its surrounding sediment has been removed from the Osorno site and is now stored in a specially regulated environment. It has cracked somewhat as the moisture in the soil has dried but the impression is still distinct. The print could be put on display at some later date, but this depends on the state of the traces.
Top image:Region close to where the Pleistocene footprint was discovered. Source: Matyas Rehak / Adobe
SPACEX’S STARLINK SATELLITES COULD MAKE SPACE A MINEFIELD
SPACEX’S STARLINK SATELLITES COULD MAKE SPACE A MINEFIELD
NASA/VICTOR TANGERMANN
DAN ROBITZSKI
Watch Your Step
On Wednesday, SpaceX plans to launch its firstbatch of Starlink satellites, an artificial constellation intended to beam down high-speed internet service from orbit.
It’s an aspirational mission, but there’s an unfortunate downside, according to Scientific American. The satellites could also, in a worst-case scenario, trigger a deadly cascade of space debris known as “Kessler syndrome,” which would fill space with so many hazards that humans are effectively trapped on Earth.
“The worst case is: you launch all your satellites, you go bankrupt, and they all stay there,” European Space Agency researcher Stijn Lemmens told the magazine. “Then you have thousands of new satellites without a plan of getting them out of there. And you would have a Kessler-type of syndrome.”
Mind The Gap
SpaceX proactively took steps to avoid cluttering the skies with even more potentially dangerous space junk — SpaceX plans to launch the Starlink network to a lower altitude that most other satellites that orbit the Earth.
Over time, that number will only climb — it will take thousands of years for the Starlink satellites to be pulled back down into the Earth’s atmosphere where they’ll safely incinerate upon re-entry, per SciAm. And in the meantime, according to the MIT Technology Review, proposed mega-constellations like Starlink will result in 67,000 potential collisions per year.
“This is something we need to pay attention to,” Glenn Peterson, the Aerospace Corporation engineer who calculated the 67,000 annual collision rate, told SciAm. “We have to be proactive.”
A strange light was spotted in the background of a NASA live feed of the ISS, with some quick to point to alien activity. The orb in the background appears to be pulsating, with UFOlogists claiming it is “proof” that extraterrestrials are monitoring astronauts on board the ISS. Prominent alien hunter Scott C Waring said NASA was attempting to hide the evidence.
Mr Waring wrote on the website ET Database: “The UFO seems curved on the top and sides,but flat on its bottom.
“The close up in the video shows its colour changing as it moves past the space station slowly.
“This video is over six minutes and shows some serious close ups of a UFO that NASA does not want you to see.
“This is absolute proof that aliens have a high interest in the space station and how the astronauts on board are dealing with the unique environment of space.”
ALIEN PROOF? UFO ‘seen monitoring International Space Station’ - shock claim
(Image: GETTY)
Conspiracy theorists often look for signs of extraterrestrial activity in official NASA videos and live streams.
But scientists who have worked for the space agency in the past have a much simpler explanation for all of the bizarre UFO sightings reported.
According to former NASA engineer James Oberg, most UFO sightings are nothing more than “space dandruff” floating in front of cameras.
The 'UFO' was seen pulsating
(Image: ET DATABASE)
These specks of dandruff can be anything from bits of chipped paint drifting aimlessly in zero gravity, flakes of ice or ISS insulation that has broken off.
He said: “I’ve had enough experience with real spaceflight to realise that what’s being seen in many videos is nothing beyond the ‘norm’ from fully mundane phenomena occurring in unearthly settings.”
Mr Oberg argued the human brain is not wired to make sense of these tiny objects floating above Earth.
ONE WAY TO FIND ALIENS WOULD BE TO SEARCH FOR ARTIFICIAL RINGS OF SATELLITES: CLARKE BELTS
ONE WAY TO FIND ALIENS WOULD BE TO SEARCH FOR ARTIFICIAL RINGS OF SATELLITES: CLARKE BELTS
Any comments, suggestions or just looking for a chat about this subject? Don't hesitate and leave a comment on our improved comment section down below the article!
When it comes to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) in the Universe, there is the complicated matter of what to be on the lookout for. Beyond the age-old question of whether or not intelligent life exists elsewhere in the Universe (statistically speaking, it is very likely that it does), there’s also the question of whether or not we would be able to recognize it if and when we saw it.
Given that humanity is only familiar with one form of civilization (our own), we tend to look for indications of technologies we know or which seem feasible. In a recent study, a researcher from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) proposed looking for large bands of satellites in distant star systems – a concept that was proposed by the late and great Arthur C. Clarke (known as a Clarke Belt).
The study – titled “Possible Photometric Signatures of Moderately Advanced Civilizations: The Clarke Exobelt” – was conducted by Hector Socas-Navarro, an astrophysicist with the IAC and the Universidad de La Laguna. In it, he advocates using next-generation telescopes to look for signs of massive belts of geostationary communication satellites in distant star systems.
This proposal is based in part on a paper written by Arthur C. Clarke in 1945 (titled “Peacetime Uses for V2“), in which he proposed sending “artificial satellites” into geostationary orbit around Earth to create a global communications network. At present, there are about 400 such satellites in the “Clarke Belt” – a region named in honor of him that is located 36,000 km above the Earth.
This network forms the backbone of modern telecommunications and in the future, many more satellites are expected to be deployed – which will form the backbone of the global internet. Given the practicality of satellites and the fact that humanity has come to rely on them so much, Socas-Navarro considers that a belt of artificial satellites could naturally be considered “technomarkers” (the analogues of “biomarkers”, which indicate the presence of life).-
As Socas-Navarro explained to Universe Today via email:
“Essentially, a technomarker is anything that we could potentially observe which would reveal the presence of technology elsewhere in the Universe. It’s the ultimate clue to find intelligent life out there. Unfortunately, interstellar distances are so great that, with our current technology, we can only hope to detect very large objects or structures, something comparable to the size of a planet.”
In this respect, a Clarke Exobelt is not dissimilar from a Dyson Sphere or other forms of megastructures that have been proposed by scientists in the past. But unlike these theoretical structures, a Clarke Exobelt is entirely feasible using present-day technology.
Graphic showing the cloud of space debris that currently surrounds the Earth.
Image Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/JSC
“Other existing technomarkers are based on science fiction technology of which we know very little,” said Socas-Navarro. “We don’t know if such technologies are possible or if other alien species might be using them. The Clarke Exobelt, on the other hand, is a technomarker based on real, currently existing technology. We know we can make satellites and, if we make them, it’s reasonable to assume that other civilizations will make them too.”
According to Socas-Navarro, there is some “science fiction” when it comes to Clarke Exobelts that would actually be detectable using these instruments. As noted, humanity has about 400 operational satellites occupying Earth’s “Clarke Belt”. This is about one-third of the Earth’s existing satellites, whereas the rest are at an altitude of 2000 km (1200 mi) or less from the surface – the region known as Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
This essentially means that aliens would need to have billions more satellites within their Clarke Belt – accounting for roughly 0.01% of the belt area – in order for it to be detectable. As for humanity, we are not yet to the point where our own Belt would be detectable by an extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI). However, this should not take long given that the number of satellites in orbit has been growing exponentially over the past 15 years.
Based on simulations conducted by Socas-Navarro, humanity will reach the threshold where its satellite band will be detectable by ETIs by 2200. Knowing that humanity will reach this threshold in the not-too-distant future makes the Clarke Belt a viable option for SETI. As Socas-Navarro explained:
“In this sense, the Clarke Exobelt is interesting because it’s the first technomarker that looks for currently existing technology. And it goes both ways too. Humanity’s Clarke Belt is probably too sparsely populated to be detectable from other stars right now (at least with technology like ours). But in the last decades we have been populating it at an exponential rate. If this trend were to continue, our Clarke Belt would be detectable from other stars by the year 2200. Do we want to be detectable? This is an interesting debate that humanity will have to resolve soon.
An exoplanet transiting across the face of its star, demonstrating one of the methods used to find planets beyond our solar system.
Image Credit: ESA/C. Carreau
As for when we might be able to start looking for Exobelts, Socas-Navarro indicates that this will be possible within the next decade. Using instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), scientists will have ground-based and space-based telescopes with the necessary resolution to spot these bands around exoplanets.
As for how these belts would be detected, that would come down to the most popular and effective means for finding exoplanets to date – the Transit Method (aka. Transit Photometry). For this method, astronomers monitor distant stars for periodic dips in brightness, which are indications of an exoplanet passing in front of the star. Using next-generation telescopes, astronomers may also be able to detect reflected light from a dense band of satellites in orbit.
“However, before we point our supertelescopes to a planet we need to identify good candidates,” said Socas-Navarro. “There are too many stars to check and we can’t go one by one. We need to rely on exoplanet search projects, such as the recently launched satellite TESS, to spot interesting candidates. Then we can do follow-up observations with supertelescopes to confirm or refute those candidates.”
In this respect, telescopes like the Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Telescope (TESS) will still serve an important function in searching for technomarkers. Whereas the former telescope is due to retire soon, the latter is scheduled to launch in 2018.
While these space-telescopes would search for rocky planets that are located within the habitable zones of thousands of stars, next-generation telescopes could search for signs of Clarke Exobelts and other technomarkers that would be otherwise hard to spot. However, as Socas-Navarro indicated, astronomers could also find evidence of Exobands by sifting through existing data as well.
“In doing SETI, we have no idea what we are looking for because we don’t know what the aliens are doing,” he said. “So we have to investigate all the possibilities that we can think of. Looking for Clarke Exobelts is a new way of searching, it seems at least reasonably plausible and, most importantly, it’s free. We can look for signatures of Clarke Exobelts in currently existing missions that search for exoplanets, exorings or exomoons. We don’t need to build costly new telescopes or satellites. We simply need to keep our eyes open to see if we can spot the signatures presented in the simulation in the flow of data from all of those projects.”
Humanity has been actively searching for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence for decades. To know that our technology and methods are becoming more refined, and that more sophisticated searches could begin within a decade, is certainly encouraging. Knowing that we won’t be visible to any ETIs that are out there for another two centuries, that’s also encouraging!
Robots and artificial intelligence may be just what we need to meet the denizens of the ocean floor, a new study reports.
Image via Pixabay.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has an important role to play in helping us understand the large variety of species living on the ocean floor, new research from the University of Plymouth reports. Such systems could finally allow marine researchers to push past the efficiency bottleneck created by human users analyzing recordings from the depths of the sea.
Davy Jones’ locker
“Autonomous vehicles are a vital tool for surveying large areas of the seabed deeper than 60m [the depth most divers can reach],” says PhD student Nils Piechaud, lead author on the study. “But we are currently not able to manually analyse more than a fraction of that data.”
“This research shows AI is a promising tool but our AI classifier would still be wrong one out of five times, if it was used to identify animals in our images.”
The new study analyzed the effectiveness of a computer vision (CV) system in taking over the role of humans in analyzing deep-sea images. All in all, the team found, such as system is around 80% accurate in identifying various animals in images of the seabed but can be up to 93% accurate for specific species if enough data is used to train the algorithm. The authors say that such results suggest CV could soon be routinely employed to study marine animals and plants. In such a case, it would lead to a major increase in data availability for conservation research and biodiversity management, they add.
“But we are not at the point of considering it a suitable complete replacement for humans at this stage,” Piechaud notes.
The team used Google’s Tensorflow, an open access library, to teach a (pre-trained) neural network to identify individuals of deep-sea species found in images taken by autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV). One of these AUVs, known as Autosub6000, was deployed back in May 2016 on the north-east side of Rockall Bank, UK, and collected over 150,000 images in a single dive. Around 1,200 of these images were manually analyzed, containing 40,000 individuals of 110 different kinds of animals (morphospecies), most of them only seen a handful of times.
Manual annotation ranged from 50 to 95% on this dataset; however, it was very slow. And, as you guessed from that ‘ranged’ part, it was quite inconsistent across different teams and work intervals. The automated method reached around 80% accuracy, approaching the performance of humans with a clear speed and consistency advantage. The software worked particularly well for certain morphospecies. For example, it correctly identified a type of xenophyophore 93% of the time.
So should we just use it instead of marine biologists? Well, the authors of this present study don’t think that would be a good idea. The study makes a case for automated systems working in tandem with marine biologists, not replacing them. The AIs could greatly enhance the ability of scientists to analyze the data before them.
And combining the ability of high-tech AUVs to survey large areas of the seabed, the fast data-crunching ability of AI, and expertise of marine biologists together could massively speed up the rate of deep-ocean exploration — and with it our wider understanding of marine ecosystems.
“Most of our planet is deep sea, a vast area in which we have equally large knowledge gaps,” says Dr Kerry Howell, Associate Professor in Marine Ecology and Principal Investigator for the Deep Links project.”
“With increasing pressures on the marine environment including climate change, it is imperative that we understand our oceans and the habitats and species found within them. In the age of robotic and autonomous vehicles, big data, and global open research, the development of AI tools with the potential to help speed up our acquisition of knowledge is an exciting and much needed advance.”
The paper “Automated identification of benthic epifauna with computer vision” has been published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series.
New Zealand is home to some of the world’s most unique creatures, and the Moa is definitely one of them.
Artistic depiction of moas.
Image credits: Heinrich Harder.
When Michael Johnston took his dogs aout for a walk, he wasn’t expecting much — it was a day like any other, a walk like any other. Because it was “quite a ripper” of a day, he decided to also go for a swim with the dogs, in a nearby swimming hole. But what he found there was amazing: a set of moa footprints from millions of yers ago, offering a rare glimpse into how life was in New Zealand before the ice age.
The stars aligned perfectly to allow Johnston to make the discovery. Not only did he need to be in the right place, but the imprints had been exposed by significant flooding in the area last year. They probably wouldn’t have survived another rainfall event.
“I’m amazed at the luck of finding them – catching it in this very brief window between being exposed and being scoured out, and then that somebody happened to be fossicking around and went for a swim and noticed them. If any one of those things hadn’t happened, we would never have known they were there, and it makes you wonder how many other moa prints are buried or destroyed, or no-one knows they’re there.”
Image credits: Otago Museum / Kane Fleury.
Moas were large, flightless birds, endemic to New Zealand, whose demise was decided the moment humans laid foot on the island. When New Zealand’s first settlers arrived, there wasn’t much in the way of food — except for some remarkable flightless birds. New Zealand has developed a unique and isolated ecosystem, with almost no native mammals. Because of this lack of mammals, the avian life has thrived and developed in ways which would just not be possible in other parts of the world. They had almost no predators, so flying was essentially renounced — large birds were trotting carelessly on the ground, sometimes not even being aware what a predator is. So when humans entered the scene, they found large flightless birds that were extremely easy to hunt.
Under normal circumstances, the moas would have continued their carefree existence. They were simply too large to be hunted by the island’s normal fauna. But after the Maori settled New Zealand, they were extinct within a century.
Paleontologists from the Otago Museum are now working to extract the footprints from the clay and place them in a museum, where they can be better studied and hopefully provide more information about these birds.
In less than a century, humans have managed the ignoble feat of raising atmospheric CO2 levels by more than 100 parts per million (ppm). Like every year, weather stations are measuring new record levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and according to data from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is now over 415 ppm, which is higher than at any point during the existence of our lineage.
Eric Holthaus✔@EricHolthaus
This is the first time in human history our planet's atmosphere has had more than 415ppm CO2.
Not just in recorded history, not just since the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago. Since before modern humans existed millions of years ago.
We don't know a planet like this.
Keeling_Curve✔@Keeling_curve
415.26 parts per million (ppm) CO2 in air 11-May-2019 http://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/ … First daily baseline over 415ppm
Some believe that global warming, which is responsible for at least 1ºC (1.8ºF) of warming compared to pre-Industrial Age levels, has already triggered an irreversible feedback loop that will see much of the polar ice sheets melt. Whatever the case, the effects of man-made climate change are sorely felt around the world now. The Arctic, which warms twice as fast than the global average, lost nearly one million square kilometers (620,000 square miles) of winter sea ice cover since 1979 — that’s an area twice as large as Texas. Heat waves and droughts are more common and every new year seems like it’s the warmest on record.
Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have been measuring atmospheric carbon since 1958 when the program was started by the late Charles David Keeling. The famous, constantly updated graph that shows the accelerated rise of CO2 in the atmosphere, known as the Keeling Curve (shown above), is named after him.
The latest recorded figure, which stands at 415.26 ppm of CO2, is unprecedented in millions of years. The last time this happened, during the Pliocene Epoch, the Arctic was covered in trees and global sea levels were 25 meters higher than today.
Keeling_Curve✔@Keeling_curve
Comment from Ralph Keeling, director of Scripps CO2 Program: “The average growth rate is remaining on the high end. The increase from last year will probably be around three parts per million whereas the recent average has been 2.5 ppm....” 1/2
The year’s increase in CO2 in the atmosphere has been partly fueled by El Niño conditions — changes in the sea-surface temperature of the tropical Pacific Ocean. This warms and dries tropical ecosystems, reducing their uptake of carbon, and exacerbating forest fires. However, the main factor responsible for the upward trend is, by far, the burning of fossil fuels.
According to a 2017 study, if the world continues on this business as usual route, by 2050 CO2 levels could rise beyond anything the Earth’s atmosphere has seen in the last 50 million years (600ppm). That’s not a death sentence in and of itself — life has flourished in those conditions before — but the shift is too fast and brutal for animals to adapt. A lot of today’s species will find it difficult (if not impossible) to adapt to those conditions in such a short time. As for humans, climate change threatens communities through rising sea levels, more frequent extreme weather, heat waves, and food shortages.
All the signs are pointing to an impending disaster if we don’t do something about it. This means moving to zero-emission energy generation as fast as possible. But that’s not enough — we also need to increase carbon capture and sequestration by planting more forests and developing new technologies that can safely lock excess carbon from the atmosphere.
The notion that the climate change we’re experiencing today is mainly driven by a natural climate cycle is silly and not rooted in scientific reality.
Het is er waarschijnlijk nog steeds. Volgens een onderzoeker kunnen we hier leven vinden op Mars
Het is er waarschijnlijk nog steeds. Volgens een onderzoeker kunnen we hier leven vinden op Mars
Er zijn allerlei aanwijzingen dat er ooit leven heeft bestaan op Mars. Ruimtesondes en Marsrovers hebben daarnaast nog maar een heel klein gedeelte van de rode planeet bestudeerd.
Het is goed mogelijk zich ergens op de planeet leven schuilhoudt, stelde onderzoeker Michael Finney tijdens een recente conferentie.
We weten dat er ooit enorme oceanen waren op Mars, die mogelijk wemelden van leven.
Nog steeds
Finney gelooft dat er waarschijnlijk nog steeds leven is op de planeet.
“Als er vier miljard jaar geleden leven was op Mars, is er nu nog steeds leven op Mars,” legde hij uit. “Er is niets gebeurd op Mars wat het leven volledig heeft uitgeroeid.”
“Als er dus leven was op Mars, heeft het zich wellicht verplaatst, of heeft het zich enige tijd verscholen onder de grond, maar het is er waarschijnlijk nog steeds.”
Water
Onderzoekers die Mars bestuderen hebben ontdekt dat er aardig wat ijs in de poolgebieden kan worden gevonden. Ook is een groot ondergronds meer ontdekt op de planeet.
Op aarde kunnen bepaalde diersoorten in de meest extreme omstandigheden overleven.
Aangepast
Zo zijn micro-organismen bestand tegen extreem hoge temperaturen en kunnen ze lange tijd zonder water.
Het is goed mogelijk dat levensvormen zich hebben aangepast om onder het Marsoppervlak te kunnen overleven.
Reptilian Underground Bases "They Are Living Below Us"
Reptilian Underground Bases "They Are Living Below Us"
There is a hidden reptilian empire which consists of alien cultures and lost civilizations, their presence explains many of the myths of gods walking among humans.
The reptoids may have sought out refuge underground after Earth underwent climate changes some 12,000 years ago.
The Shanidar Cave is a vast archaeological complex located on Bradost Mountain in the Erbil Governorate of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The remains of 10 Neanderthals, dating from 35,000 to 65,000 years ago have been found within the Shanidar Cave.
The cave also contains two later “proto Neolothie” cemeteries, one of which dates back about 10,600 years and contains 35 ‘humanoids’ one such skill is extremely elongated and considered the Reptilian Elongated Race of Sumerians. Nobody know how vast the complex goes underground.
There are many accounts through history of lizard people and snake like bipedal’s from Sumeria to the Hopi Indians.
We will also explore the many accounts at the Dulce underground facility and how this all ties together.
We hope you will become aware of many facts you may have been previously unaware of in this 37-minute Reptilian Documentary.
Author Merrily Harpur haslogged a fascinating account from one George Price, who had an undeniably bizarre experience on Salisbury Plain, England in September 2002, while then serving with the British Army. It was at the height of a military exercise, Harpur was told, and Price was a “commander in the turret of our tank, and we were advancing to contact our warriors.” Suddenly, Price’s attention was drawn to a “large, ape-like figure” that “looked scared because of the noise from the engines and tanks were moving at speed all around.” Although the beast was not in sight for long – it raced for the safety of “nearby prickly shrubs” – an amazed Price could see that “its fur was similar to an Orangutan in color…its height was impressive…[and] it seemed to run with its back low, i.e. bent over.” Salisbury Plain is not just home to military maneuvers, however. It is also home to one of the world’s most famous ancient stone circles: Stonehenge.
While most students of the legendary structure conclude it had its beginnings somewhere around 3,100 BC, evidence of human activity in the area has been found suggesting a presence as far back as 8,000 BC. And a degree of that same presence is indicative of ritualistic activity, even at that incredibly early age. But, regardless of when, precisely, large-scale construction of Stonehenge actually began, what can be said with certainty is that it is comprised of a ditch, a bank, and what are known as the Aubrey holes – round pits in the chalk that form a huge circle. And then, of course, there are those massive stone blocks.
No less than eighty-two of Stonehenge’s so-called bluestones, some of which weigh up to four-tons, are believed to have been transported from the Preseli Mountains in southwest Wales to the Wiltshire site, a distance of 240 miles. Although, the actual number of stones is in dispute since, today, barely more than forty remain. Certainly, such a mammoth operation to move such huge stones would be no easy feat in the modern era, never mind thousands of years ago. And yet, somehow, this incredible and mystifying task was successfully achieved. Stonehenge’s thirty giant Sarsen stones, meanwhile, were brought from the Marlborough Downs, a distance of around twenty-five miles. This might sound like a much easier task than having to haul the bluestones all the way from Wales. Hardly. As noted, the Welsh stones are in the order of four tons. Some of the Sarsen stones from the downs, however, weigh in at twenty-five tons, the heaviest around fifty. And people wonder why so much mystery and intrigue surrounds the creation of Stonehenge?
Now we come to the Rollright Stones, which are situated near Long Compton, a centuries-old little village in the county of Oxfordshire. Collectively, they are comprised of a tomb, known as the Whispering Knights, a classic circle of stones called the King’s Men, and a solitary stone referred to as the King’s Stone. As for the time of the construction of the Rollright Stones, this appears to be a clear-cut issue: in the Neolithic and Bronze Age eras. As with Stonehenge, legends and pet-theories abound as to the particular origin of the Rollright Stones. Certainly, the most engaging is that which surfaced in 1610 from a historian named William Camden. The story goes that the stones were not always stones. They originally represented an unnamed visiting king and his faithful knights who were turned to stone – in classic Gorgon-style, one might well suggest – by a legendary local witch, one Mother Shipton. The king, not surprisingly, became the King’s Stone. The bulk of his men were turned into the King’s Men. While a few who had initially avoided – but not for long, unfortunately – Mother Shipton’s malevolent powers quickly and collectively became the Whispering Knights.
In 1977, author Paul Devereux established what became titled the Dragon Project; the purpose of which was to study claims that certain British prehistoric sites had unusual forces or energies attached to them, including magnetic, infrared and ultrasonic anomalies. While investigating none other than the Rollright Stones, Devereux reported that one of the team members – described as being a well-known archaeologist – was sitting in a van when an unidentified, hair-covered beast of considerable size walked by. An instant later, it utterly vanished, never to put in a re-appearance. It’s also worth noting that a large and lumbering beast was seen near the Peak District-based Ladybower Reservoir in November 1991. Less than one mile away, on Stanton Moor, stands a stone circle called the Nine Ladies. It was constructed during the Bronze Age era, and is a place at which, every year, druids and pagans alike celebrate the summer solstice. As the legend goes, the circle takes its name from nine women who were turned to stone as punishment for dancing on Sundays!
Perhaps, in light of the extraordinary data contained in this article, we should be focusing our attentions far less on what’s going on in the relevant location of ancient stone circles right now, and far more on (A) the matter of what may have occurred there centuries or millennia ago, and (B) the issue of what may continue to linger and wander and, sometimes, terrorize the good folk of Britain, long after physical death claimed their lives in times past and largely forgotten. For the final word on the potential connection between unidentified, upright, hairy animals and places of specifically archaeological, spiritual, and historical nature, I refer you to the writings of one of the world’s leading authorities on the phenomenon of werewolves, Linda Godfrey, the author of such fine pieces of essential reading as The Michigan Dogman, Werewolves, Hunting the American Werewolf, and The Beast of Bray Road.
Of the Native American phenomenon known as the Skinwalker – which Linda describes as “entities created by magic ritual that look like animals but are really spirit doubles of the shaman that either go out from the physical body or envelope it like a supernatural costume” – she says they are “related to the Tibetan ideas” of Tulpas. Rather significantly, when one takes into account the various encounters that occurred in the vicinity of, or relatively close to, famous standing-stones, such as Stonehenge and the Rollright Stones, the following words from Linda most assuredly stand out as being of keen relevance to such matters. She says, still on the subject of Skinwalkers: “I can tell you that Native Americans from various locations have indicated to me that these things absolutely exist, as do zoomorphic (animal-shaped) spirit guardians made to watch over sacred grounds [Author’s Note: Italics Mine].” Linda also notes that in relation to ancient Native American burial mounds (“shaped like traditional ‘water panthers'”) the mounds are “located in almost exactly the same sites as manwolf posts.”
Perhaps, then, the American “man-wolf,” or werewolf, was created, Tulpa-style, to watch over ancient American sites of deep significance, in much the same way that Bigfoot-like creatures seem to be doing precisely likewise at a multiplicity of standing-stones, and circles of stone, in the U.K. One beast may exhibit ape-like characteristics and the other a far more wolfish appearance, but, at the end of the day, they may very well both be definitive supernatural “guard-dogs,” still faithfully patrolling the old sites they were created to protect all those centuries and millennia ago.
Boynton woman's video captures rare 'positive' lightning bolt
Boynton woman's video captures rare 'positive' lightning bolt
When Erica Hite was filming a thunderstorm on Sunday in her home in Boynton Beach, Florida she had her camera ready at just the right time to capture a weird bolt of lightning.
The National Weather Service in Miami identified the unusual weather phenomena.as 'positive lighting,' or a continuous current, which is up to ten times more powerful than a typical flash.
Hite told the Palm Beach Post: 'It was crazy. Very scary, very loud.' 'It was just at the right place at the right time. I could probably never in my life get something like that again.'
In Hite's 12-second video, the glowing bold of electricity can be seen striking a dumpster, crackling like gunfire or fireworks.
Black Ring UFO Over Argentina Recorded May 7, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Black Ring UFO Over Argentina Recorded May 7, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 7, 2019 Location of sighting: Argentina Source: Email I was sent this in an email. He said he was working on a foundation of building when he and his coworkers saw this black ring object flying over head. He had an older phone, but took video of it best he could. The video shows the black ring moving like a disk...which is strange. Had this been a balloon it would be flipping like a wheel end over end. This one seems to stay flat, unlike any balloon I have ever seen. Often when a UFO is nearby, people and animals sense its presence. I mean often they have an emotional aura that either pushes a person to look up and see it, or even make you relax almost in a trance meditative state. You have to seen one first had and feel it to know what I'm saying. Not all UFOs have this aura, but many do. I remember a sighting by the famous actor Dan Aykroyd where he was sleeping he woke up as if someone wanted to wake him, and heard a telepathic voice telling him to walk outside and look at the sky. When he did so, he saw a UFO. Thats what I mean. Scott C. Waring
UFO At Space Station Seen For Almost 7 Minutes! May 10, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
UFO At Space Station Seen For Almost 7 Minutes! May 10, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 10, 2019 Location of sighting:Earths orbit, at ISS I recorded this UFO on the old cams not the new cams. The new cams are on Youtube and seemed to be faked, since I noticed they put it on a loop most the time. The UFO seems curved on the top and sides, but flat on its bottom. The close up in the video shows its color changing as it moves past the space station slowly. This video is over six minutes and shows some serious close ups of a UFO that NASA does not want you to see. This is absolute proof that aliens have a high interest in the space station and how the astronauts on board are dealing with the unique environment of space. Scott C. Waring I often post videos 12-24 hours before I make posts, so follow me on Youtube to stay uptodate.
Leslie Kean is an author and investigative journalist. Her book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record is a New York Times Bestseller. She has authored several credible, well researched article that have garnered the attention of the media, including the New York Times exposing the Pentagon’s secretive UFO program. This interview took place soon after that article. Listen to the interview here.
Alejandro Rojas: I am very happy, very, very happy, especially at this day and time to welcome back to the show. Leslie Kean. Hello Leslie.
Leslie Kean: Hello Alejandro. Great to be with you.
Alejandro Rojas: So thank you so much for coming on the show. I know that you have been absolutely swamped with media requests. What’s it been like?
Leslie Kean: Well, it’s been intense. I mean, and hard work the week after the article came out, it was really unbelievable as you know, there was so much attention drawn to it, so it was, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s been quite a ride. I mean it’s, it’s just been very, very intense demanding of a lot of time and energy. And right now I’m just sort of enjoying this weekend where there’s not as much I have to do. So.
Alejandro Rojas: When you go into these interviews, for example, with Tucker Carlson, you were on Fox News recently, which was kind of, people were like, wow, you know, Tucker Carlson having a UFO discussion on his show. But, which went very well, of course. How do you feel going into it? Do you have any idea, you know, the angle they’re going to take, whether they’re going to ridicule it or not.
Leslie Kean: I’m usually pretty sure they’re not going to ridicule it. I mean, I think, you know, especially the week following the New York Times story, which was when most of the interviews were, I mean they, people were just really turned on by the story. And this recent interview with Tucker Carlson, he made it very clear because my publisher set it up that he wanted to talk about my book. That’s what he said. He was interested in just having me on to serve as an expert not to focus on the, the, the Time story and it’s because he’s genuinely interested in this topic. And I, I remember watching the coverage he did after the Times story came out during that week and he did excellent coverage. I mean, very, very intelligent coverage. I was impressed with it and, and I was, his, his producers told us that he really has a genuine interested in this in this topic.
Leslie Kean: So I went in there not knowing what he was going to really want to talk to me about. I had no idea. And he just zeroed in on this O’Hare case, which, you know, took me by surprise, but I thought it was great. It was great that he actually knew something about a specific case which most anchors don’t and he just seemed to be very passionate about it. So I think he is genuinely interested in this topic. I really do believe that and I think he did a great job irrespective of what anything else has coverage that people might not, I’m not going to comment on Fox. Fox’s attitudes, but in terms of UFOs I think he did a terrific job and he really has a serious interest in the topic, which is great.
Alejandro Rojas: Yeah, you could get that from his, his enthusiasm, his excitement to talk to you and bringing up O’hare is great because you know, at this point we now have this, this, you know, the DoD had a program looking into this, taking it seriously. So now it’s, it’s a good time to reflect on the other great cases out there. And of course Chicago O’Hare was a really good one.
Leslie Kean: Really good one. I absolutely agree with you. It’s such, it’s such a strong case in terms of illustrating the lack of attention that our government has given to this topic.
Alejandro Rojas: Right. And the point where he was making and you are making that, you know, this thing popped through the clouds and, and when it shot up, these were seen by United personnel, um, in 2008 I think it was, right, 2006 to 2006 earlier. And um, but the FAA just called it a weather phenomenon. I think that’s what they ended up on. And the, at first they didn’t want to look into it at all. And He makes a great point that, yeah, which is the point I think everybody should be making is, you know, we obviously, it’s intuitively obvious that we should look into situations like this and not just ignore them.
Leslie Kean: Absolutely. And I, and he really made that point. He kept saying, why wouldn’t they do it? He was like, how outraged. And I thought that was great because it indicated that he had thought about this.
Alejandro Rojas: Yeah. So you were also on Don Lemon and I just wanted to hear your thoughts on this. And of course that interview went great. But I think the day after, or a couple of days after they had,, Neil deGrasse Tyson on and although he kind of Poo pooed at least the alien hypothesis, just saying we don’t have enough evidence for that. Which is a good point I think. Um, yeah, but he, he did go on to kind of say something along the similar vein as Tucker Carlson and that we should be looking into these things. He doesn’t mind that we spend $22 million looking into these unknown situations because we should be looking into them. When you saw him say that, what was that a bit shocking?
Leslie Kean: Yeah. I mean I was glad he said that. And I think also his point about we can’t assume that they’re alien is also a valid point. And the irony of that is that we’re not doing that, we didn’t do that in our article. We didn’t do that in any of it. Uh, no, it wasn’t even a hint of that we had done that, you know. So for him to sort of comment on the New York Times and criticize a point that we never even made isn’t really fair. But um, and then he goes on about, you know, when you have an alien it’ll take me out to lunch. I mean, you know, I’ll take them out to lunch. That’s not the point. The point is that we have an unknown phenomenon that needs further study and I think along those lines, he’s pretty, uh, he’s pretty okay with it as you said. He just likes to stretch it into this realm that isn’t where we went with it anyway in the first place.
Alejandro Rojas: And that would be my next question is frustration about that. You’re obviously very careful, you and the group who wrote the article on and how you crafted it and what information you’re putting in there and obviously very aware of the baggage that comes along with, with these sorts of stories. So like you said, you’re very careful not to make it about aliens. However much of the media, even Don Lemon is trying to press you on aliens and Elizondo has had the same experience. Everybody trying to push them on “What about alien? What about aliens?” And that hasn’t, that wasn’t part of the story. That’s not what you’re talking about.
Leslie Kean: It’s true. I mean, and obviously the extraterrestrial hypothesis is a valid one. I mean, I have said that all along. I said that in my book and I still say that and there are plenty of very respectable people who have studied this, you know, generals, pilots and government officials. As I put in the title of my book, that would all agree that the extraterrestrial hypothesis is valid and rational and, but given, even though that’s true, we still don’t know. We don’t know at the level that will satisfy the scientific community. And that’s where that’s, you know, that may be a while. We may eventually get there, but without investing more resources into this, we’re not going to get there. And that’s why a program like this is important. But I think, you know, I think it’s perfectly valid, but you know, you can’t make that leap. And I think one of the problems with a lot of the people in the UFO community is they, they’ve made that leap to such an extent that they say that it’s fact. And I understand why people assume that when they, when they know a lot about this subject, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s easy to go there, but in terms of what we want to present to the world at large and where we are at in terms of a society dealing with this topic, we’re not there yet.
Alejandro Rojas: Right. And I mean, when you’re doing these interviews, which is a great point, and, and I think it’s difficult to explain that to people because people get frustrated with me for the same thing. Regardless of whatever my opinions are, regardless of whether or not I believe in that it’s a possibility or I believe aliens are here interacting with us, when you’re, when you’re speaking with a mainstream or when you’re writing a credible paper like what you guys, you all did, a credible article, you need to focus on the facts and what’s provable and what you can credibly substantiate, um, which makes,
Leslie Kean: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Yeah.
Alejandro Rojas: And it makes a piece more powerful and, and your pieces certainly have been powerful and they get a lot of attention for that reason.
Leslie Kean: Yeah. I mean, I think you have to, and you know, obviously with the writing, but the New York Times, we have a lot of editors involved as well. So, but yeah, I mean if it’s not provable, if it’s not documentable, it doesn’t go in the, in the article and that’s, that’s the way it should be. I think that’s the way it should be.
Alejandro Rojas: All right. So getting back to the last time we spoke. And that’s what, that’s what’s kind of funny in and validating is you, and this was right after the to the Stars Academy announced and we were both kind of, I think we’ve talked soon and maybe a week or so after your article on that. And we were both kind of surprised at the reactions and, and people seeming to not get the importance of, for instance, someone coming out and saying, I used to work for the Department of Defense Investigating, essentially, UFOs. You and I of course thought, wow, that’s incredible. But you know, we were both kind of like, I don’t know why people are so negative about all of this and a not looking at the juice, but it seems that there were people that certainly took notice, um, the Washington Post, POLITICO and then, oh, you, you all were able to put together this article for the Times that really started the whole thing off. How did that come about? How did the article come about?
Leslie Kean: Well. I went to a meeting on October 4th with some of that was arranged by some of Elizondo’s colleagues who also knew me. And so they wanted me to meet him basically. And I went down and went to Washington and we spent three or four hours together and Elizondo, you know, talked to me and I was shown documentation. I was shown the videos that were eventually released with our story. Um, and just given, you know, told all about Harry Reid, was shown documents about Harry Reid’s involvement and just the story was kind of laid out for me at this meeting. And I realized at that point that it was a New York Times level story given the documentation that was available for the program and for the people involved and everything else. And so that’s, that’s how it all started. And then I went to my colleague Ralph Blumenthal, who I’ve known for a long time, who’s a, who was on staff for the New York Times for 40, 45 years and has since become a freelance writer for the Times.
So he continues to work for the times and on a freelance basis. And I went to him and he, we ended up having, then we sat down with somebody in the New York Bureau of the New York Times and had an initial meeting, the three of us to, to lay out the story for them. That’s how it all started. And then that person, then there’s another meeting with the Washington bureau and you know, it took a while to get the times on board, but once they understood what we had, they assigned us a reporter to work with us. Helene Cooper has been absolutely fantastic. She’s their Pentagon reporter out of the Washington bureau and we just that’s how it all started. And then we just got going on the story and it took quite awhile to do it because the editing process is very intense at the Times.
And you know, there’s just a lot of, every single line is, you know, thought through very carefully. And so there were different drafts that had to go back and forth and you know, we had to decide what information would be included and what wouldn’t and all that kind of thing. But you’re working at the New York Times, you’re working with a team of people. So there’s a lot of considerations that go into a story that beyond the considerations of the three reporters that are writing it. And, and that was interesting for me to experience because in the past I’ve written for the Huffington Post where I basically have no editors. You know, I just write a story and I upload it and it’s there. That’s it. And so this is a very interesting process. It’s just another level of journalism than I’ve ever experienced before. And it’s just been an amazing opportunity and situation for me to be able to write for the Times. I’m just very grateful for that. That door’s been opened.
Alejandro Rojas: Were you skeptical that they would pick it up? I mean, and was Blumenthal? He must’ve been confident that they would be interested in the story.
Leslie Kean: Yeah. He thought they would be. Originally he was the one who originally pitched it to the Times, you know, through an email because he knows people there because he’s worked there for so long and that’s how it all started. So he was pretty confident in it and it wasn’t until we had our sit down meeting with the, um, with the, with Mark, I think his name was Mark Mazzetti. He’s the investigative investigations editor at The Washington bureau. He happened to be in New York shortly after we pitch the story and we sat down with him in New York and it was after that meeting I think that we were pretty confident, but he, he didn’t give us an answer right away. He said, well, I’m going to, I’m going to talk to people in Washington and get back to you. And we had to wait maybe a week before we heard back again. But um, then we, we got the green light. So
Alejandro Rojas: Were you all aware that the Post, the Washington Post and POLITICO were also working on stories?
Leslie Kean: Yeah, we heard rumors to that effect, which was, it was disconcerting for us. But, uh, we knew that, you know, we knew that we had a story that we didn’t think anybody else would be able to get, which is all the, on the record sources that we had. If you look at the POLITICO story, it didn’t have people on the record. A lot of them were, were anonymous sources and uh, we don’t, you know, the Times we’re not, we’re not going to do that in the New York Times.
Alejandro Rojas: Yeah. And, and the Post story even seemed a bit more speculative.
Leslie Kean: Yeah. I mean, they didn’t have access to a lot of the sources that we had and that the documents and all kinds of stuff. So they, I don’t think any stories could match the one that we did just because we had access to a lot that the other media didn’t have.
Alejandro Rojas: One of the parts in the Post story that, you know, at least The Sun has asked me about and others and I want to see what your thoughts are on this is that they seem to be implying that or trying to imply that Elizondo was a little bit, you know, got the videos released under a false pretense a bit. They put in this part that there was some memo and it is kind of weird the way they wrote it. Um, the paragraph on this, some kind of memo that said he tried, he got it released in order to educate pilots on safety, but he alluded to, he really was doing it to get this out to the public and show that there’s this DoD department.
Leslie Kean: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I have the document that shows the process by which these videos were released and it doesn’t say anything along the lines of what the Post has said. So I don’t know where that came from.
Alejandro Rojas: The document about the release, does it say, does it say why he wanted it release and why they approved it?
Leslie Kean: Yeah, it was not educate pilots. I mean, I have to look at it again, but as I recall, there was nothing on there about that. And maybe at our break I can look at that document again.
Alejandro Rojas: Yeah. Because a big question is why did they allow him to release those videos? Um, and I guess, do you have that answer?
Leslie Kean: Um, let me look at that document again maybe and then we can respond. Yeah.
Alejandro Rojas: All right, well we’ll do that at break. We’ll look at that document again. But getting back to your story that, and of course George Knapp obviously has had somewhat of knowledge of some of this that was going on because he’s worked with Bigelow, so at least he knew Bigelow. A lot of us knew Bigelow was spending money on UFO research and these sorts of things back when this all was getting funded. Of course, none of us, at least I didn’t know. And I, I wouldn’t imagine you would have known it, maybe even George Knapp didn’t know that, you know, he was working with the Department of Defense at the time. Did you know that?
Leslie Kean: Um, I don’t think I did know that.
Alejandro Rojas: Yeah.
Leslie Kean: I mean, I knew that he was related to a government investigations and so on, but it was nothing specific, nothing specific like this.
Alejandro Rojas: But Knapp was able to get interviews with Harry Reid. And were you surprised with Harry Reid’s reaction? Will you all even got an interview in your story with Harry Reid.
Leslie Kean: We had the first interview with him.
Alejandro Rojas: How did you feel about his reaction?
Leslie Kean: Harry Reid’s? Oh, he was fantastic. Absolutely. I mean, our partner here, Helene Cooper was the one who flew to Las Vegas and met with him. And, uh, he was absolutely wonderful. He spent like an hour with her. He told her everything and you know, so that he wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed or sorry that he’d done this and he was just a very, very positive, great bright person. And the interview was, was really fantastic.
Alejandro Rojas: Yeah, I mean it’s, I think it’s a really important component to some of that what’s happened since your story and what it inspired is Harry Reid coming out and standing firm that he is very proud of creating this program. He has no regrets whatsoever. And that lends a lot of credibility to what Elizondo was doing and the seriousness that many people and the government really do take towards the UFO topic.
Leslie Kean: I agree with you. It was very, very important component to have him on the record. And we, we knew that from the beginning that we were, we wanted that to happen. So, we, we did a lot of our reporting first so we would have some, you know, we didn’t want to, we saved him more, a lot more or less for the end. We didn’t want to alert him too much in advance that we were doing this story. So, um, so yeah, but it’s extremely important part of it to have him speaking out about it.
Alejandro Rojas: And it feels at, at least for me, and I’m guessing for you a bit validating because although people like Don Lemon last time you were on his show or, you’ve done interviews for important stories you’ve written for like Chile and other UFO stories in the past few years, but the mainstream has been skeptical that anybody in the government does really take UFOs seriously or military or have since 1969 even though we can show evidence, we’ve got documentation to show, look, they did take it seriously. They have investigated certain cases, but still it doesn’t stick. You know, they still haven’t bought into that. But it seems to have changed when you have a Harry Reid, when you have an Elizondo out there now, it seems to have changed. Now it feels, and I’d love to hear what you think that they’ve kind of accepted that, okay, this situation, this, this, UFO investigations are a serious thing. There are at least taken seriously by some of our government and military.
Leslie Kean: Yeah. I mean this is the first time that we’ve known that there is an actual named program, you know, that we know how it was set up, how it was funded, how many years it went for, we know who the person was that was in charge of it. I mean these things were not known before and so it just takes everything to another level when you actually know for a fact that there was a, there, there is still a program, we know where is, we know who was in charge of it and you know, all this information about it and it has a name. So that’s very different from before when we just would sort of speculate about, well yeah, I’m sure that there’s government interest in this, but we don’t exactly know where it is or what it’s called. So yeah, I mean you’re right it, and it does of course.
That’s why the, the article was so important because now the mainstream, uh, you know, will take it seriously a lot more once they know that the, the Pentagon has a program and they can see videos and they can get information from that program. Uh, they understand this at another level that’s never been, you know, it just hasn’t happened since the close of Blue Book that anything that’s important I think has, has come out that’s going to elevate the position that the topic has in the, you know, among the political world and the the world that really is responsible for policy making. So it’s a huge change in that regard and it does absolutely elevate the seriousness that the top ic will have and I think it already has and hopefully it will continue to, it’ll continue that way. You know, I hopefully will have more information will come out and we’ll be able to keep this ball rolling.
Alejandro Rojas: Are you all planning another story to come out anytime soon?
Leslie Kean: We are exploring that. Yeah. It was just not something I really want to comment on. Yeah, no, we’re not, we’re not planning to drop the ball that’s for sure.
Alejandro Rojas: Which is great because a followup is good to keep this in people’s minds. And also because, you know, it does seem like, at least for the moment as we just mentioned it, there’s a shift. There’s, people are taking it more seriously right now.
Leslie Kean: I think that’s true. And I think that’s, that’s a really important, really, really important.
Alejandro Rojas: So it’s about time to take a break. So we will come back momentarily. But it is kind of interesting. I have a lot of people, you know, and maybe you’ve had this experience, saying that, you know, they’re getting calls from family and friend who are, are actually taking the topic seriously as well. Someone joked about it yesterday that even though they do all this research and writing and have several books their family hasn’t even read, all of us sudden now, years later after this person’s been been doing this, you know, they’re being taken seriously by their family where they haven’t up until now. So a demonstration of the impact of this article, but we’ll talk more about that after the break. For those of you listening on KGRA, you’re going to hear a short commercial break. For those of you listening on the podcast, you will hear just a short musical interlude and then we’ll be back with Leslie Kean so stay tuned.
Alejandro Rojas: Welcome back to open mind UFO radio. I’m your host Alejandro Rojas. And we are talking to journalists, Leslie Kean. And you say you were able to look at that memo to confirm that the Post’s statement about the videos being released for education and safety purposes. It’s not in there.
Leslie Kean: No, I mean his request for the release of the videos did not include anything to do with pilot education or aviation safety.
Alejandro Rojas: So they, they essentially are alluding to that he wasn’t straight forward with his superiors. But do you get that sense at all?
Leslie Kean: Not at all. I mean, I don’t, it’s nothing in this document that suggests that he wasn’t being straight forward and I’m absolutely nothing. Now, maybe the Post has some document that I’m not aware of because I don’t know what they, what they were referring to when they made that statement. I have no, I don’t know. All I know is what I have and my documents don’t suggest that. I also know that Elizondo is in a very, a person of incredible integrity and honesty and he wouldn’t, he just knowing him, I don’t think he would ever be careful, be comfortable, uh, being an all disingenuous about anything. He’s very honest, very careful, very astute. And uh, so I just, I have to not comment on that because unless they have some, they’re either making an error or they have some document that I’m not aware of, one or the other.
Alejandro Rojas: Well, and now talking to Elizondo, he doesn’t seem to, he doesn’t have any, um, at least in the discussions that I’ve had with him, he doesn’t seem to be frustrated with or upset with his superiors. He doesn’t seem to be at odds with the DoD. He still is a patriot. He still believes in their mission and he wants, he seems like he, and, and as mentioned, really wants to cooperate with them in what he’s talking about.
Leslie Kean: Yeah, that’s absolutely right. He has the highest respect for the Department of Defense, for the people he worked with. They’re not just in the UFO program at an all the other very, very sensitive jobs that he had a, he was a counter intelligence officer. He was in the field doing a lot of stuff. I mean, this was a small part of what he did this program. So he left the program with the utmost sense of respect of the, of the people he worked with and for the department and for the mission of the department. And the greatest respect for secretary Jim Mattis, who he knew well and actually served with in Afghanistan. And he, he considers MaTTis to be one of the finest people he’s ever known, so that there’s no negativity there at all about, about his work at the DoD. Um, he would, you know, he just needed to retire and he needed to make the point that more resources need to go to this study of this, of this issue.
And he felt the best way to do that was to do what he did, to draw attention to it because it was just sort of impossible for the program to function, uh, within the system there. And it was just dysfunctional. There was no resources for it. There were people that were opposed to it. It was not, you know, very secret. And so that needed to change. And so he made them, he made the step he did to try to facilitate that changing. But it has nothing to do with being critical of, of the people he worked with or the purpose of the department or anything else.
Alejandro Rojas: Yeah. You know, I think it was an opinion piece in the Times. It was another, in another paper, if not the Times. I’m pretty sure it was the Times, though. You, you may recall this story by someone who worked in intelligence. And one of the reasons he said, you know, a program like this would be, there were a few reasons why a program like this would be secret and one of those reasons is simply, and he gave other examples of more mundane sort of projects, but that for some reason have some sort of social stigma attached to them. And even though they may be important, because it’s easy to make fun of them, they don’t want to reveal to the public that they’re doing this sort of thing. And if Elizondo’s actions, which I believe they have, can legitimize this topic some more, then that may allow the military to not have to deal with or ridicule factor if they’re setting up a project or working on a project like this, which hopefully may entice the military or other institutions to do this sort of work. If we can get rid of that stigma that its’ something to giggle about.
Leslie Kean: Yeah, that’s certainly, certainly helps. And I think the New York Times story is, has helped to do that.
Alejandro Rojas: Did you all add then have the DoD or anybody look over the article before you released it or have a consultant that you worked with?
Leslie Kean: You mean within the DoD? Yeah. Oh No, no, no, no, no, no. The media is independent of, you know, the government that it’s reporting on. You don’t have to clear it.
Alejandro Rojas: Yeah. I just know some people I know like Charles Halt for instance, has ran stuff through his superiors before and Nick Pope. So I was just wondering if you all had done something or felt you had to do that. Um, Yep.
Leslie Kean: Cause those are, those are people who are actual employees or who part of the system of the government. So they may have to clear it, but an independent news organization doesn’t have to.
Alejandro Rojas: Hmm. And then I guess the other question is, you know, this whole now of course, and unfortunately the more kind of a fringe aspects of, of this field of which are large, maybe the, the majority of the UFO field, it’s really kind of very speculative and conspiratorial. So, of course there’s this idea that maybe Elizondo is on a secret mission to somehow frame or disinform, people on this topic. I mean, do you get that sense whatsoever?
Leslie Kean: Absolutely not. I mean, it’s just an absurd, absurd notion to me and I’ve, I’ve spent a lot of time speaking with him. And so I would say absolutely not. He’s, he’s genuine. He has high integrity and he’s doing what he’s doing for the reasons he says he is. It’s that simple.
Alejandro Rojas: And it’s funny because even though you say that, and I’ve talked to him and I feel the same way, I think that when you, you talk to him, you get an idea of his motivations, what his life is like, impacts this has had on his life, the sacrifices he’s had to make to get some of this information out. And I think even standing back, even without talking to him, I felt that way, looking at the whole situation. But there are so many people that really build these world-views that even if they were just speak to him, I think, there’s practically nothing that would convince them otherwise.
Leslie Kean: Yeah. I don’t, I don’t know why that is, unless they feel they’re just very, very, very mistrustful of anyone within government possibly, or maybe some of the people, you know, they’ve built their whole kind of careers and personalities around a particular theory that they have. And maybe they don’t want to let that go because it would, you know, they’ve built up their whole persona around it. So they’re very attached to trying to maintain their particular conspiracy theory and therefore they have to fit him into that rather than maybe shifting the way they look at things. But, you know, some of the things, yeah, it just, the conspiracies about, I mean, I wasn’t even aware that people were saying that were saying that, that he’s, he’s trying to deceive people. I mean, it’s just, you know, it’s just, to me it’s just ridiculous.
Alejandro Rojas: It’s unfortunate. And there’s a lot of it out there, even from, you know, more well known researchers, certainly people that you’ve interacted with as well. And it’s unfortunate, I agree with you especially to go there without gathering the facts and it’s missing the point. It’s focusing on the wrong thing. It’s focusing on how do I fit this story into my worldview in this scenario that I’ve built instead of just looking for at it for what it is, and then missing all the important parts of it, such as the effect that this has had on the mainstream, which is such a huge positive, I think for this topic being taken seriously.
Leslie Kean: Yeah. So that’s what I mean, you know, I’m, I’m just not that aware of what’s going on in sort of the, within the UFO community world, but just cause, you know, but so I dunno what else to say about it. Yeah.
Alejandro Rojas: Yeah. With, the, your story, there’s a couple of other important pieces that were in there. Oh. And I guess just to follow up on the last point real quick is yeah, that’s why I think it’s really important to have like you come on and talk about how this story came about. Because I think a lot of people think of, you know, these, these cabal people like an X-Files setting in a dark room at the New York Times coming up with a plan. “We’re going to write this story and that story. Who can we get to write it and who can we get in the DoD to be our guy to tell people this.” You know…
Leslie Kean: You mean like, it’s some kind of orchestrated planned thing by some organization or entity that controls all the information, right? I mean, I have never, ever encountered anything to give me even the smallest hint that that’s what’s going on in my own work. And certainly not in this article with the New York Times. I mean, we, it happened the way I’m telling you it happened, right? I got this information, we pitched it to the Times they said, hey, yes, this is a story. Let’s do it. It’s that simple.
Alejandro Rojas: Yeah. And that’s the tragedy with these conspiracy theories because then all of these people who are working with the mainstream media or you know, or, or production organizations on television shows or movies or documentaries, you know, they’re not giving credit that they’re the ones who came up with this idea. I mean, it was you going to Blumenthal, it was you all. That’s where it, that what generated the, this story and the situation or at least this story to get out. So people then, yeah, you know, it, it allows people to have these conspiracies where they’re not giving credit where credit’s due,
Leslie Kean: I guess. So, I don’t know. They’re so attached to that. I, you know, I don’t know. I mean, obviously there have been plenty of insiders over the years who know a lot more than is being revealed. And so maybe that’s what people are concerned about. A lot of the reason that a lot of stuff has not come out is simply be due to the fact that it’s classified, it’s highly classified and protected in special access programs and so on. And people who know about these things would go to jail if they talked about it. Yeah. So it’s a, you know, they can’t do it. And so you can’t fault them. It doesn’t mean there’s some grand conspiracy behind it. It just means like so many other topics certain things are kept secret for a lot of different reasons. And, you know, on this issue, I’ve learned a lot more about the, the role that, um, concern for our adversaries getting a hold of a lot of this information that plays a big role in the desire to protect it. And that’s legitimate. It’s legitimate. So I don’t know. I, I mean, I can understand that people are frustrated that more has not been released and that the government hasn’t acknowledged a lot of things. But
Leslie Kean: I don’t think, you know, creating this, this idea that there’s some vast cabal conspiracy controlling it and they’re like planning how they’re going to let you know they’re planning everything and they’ve set up to the stars because they’re manipulating Tom DeLonge to create this, this thing. And they’ve giving him certain information and then they’re controlling the next step, which is the New York Times. And then there, I just don’t, I’ve never seen that there’s any force behind these things that are, that are making them all happen.
I just don’t, I don’t understand where that theory comes from unless some of the people behind these theories, know something that I don’t know, but I, and that’s possible. I don’t know everything.
Alejandro Rojas: Yeah. Which may be possible in some cases, but in this case particularly there’s just so much speculation and people standing steadfastly to their speculation and as opposed to doing the hard work and speaking to people like you to figure out what the, how things actually didcome about.
Leslie Kean: I mean, why, why did they have a need to not just accept what’s, you know, what the truth is or why do they have a need to create all these, these complicated scenarios? I Dunno. I Dunno.
Alejandro Rojas: Yeah. I don’t either. So some of the more fascinating parts, some of the really incredible parts of this story. There’s the idea of, there’s a paragraph on a couple of the other things that they looked into, including some sort of metal that is in a Bigelow a building somewhere.
Leslie Kean: Yeah. I mean that of course is an extremely interesting component to me and we are trying to pursue that. I can’t comment any further on it and we would love to be able to learn more about that. Uh, so that’s all I can really say at this point.
Alejandro Rojas: So you can’t speak on its origins or…
Leslie Kean: It’s very, very, very hard to access information along those lines. But, so we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re seeing what we, you know, I just can’t comment or I’ll get in trouble.
Alejandro Rojas: Yeah, that’s fine. No problem. No problem. And then also on the second part of that paragraph, it talks about interviewing people who had, or at least believed they had, had physical effects due to an encounter with a UFO essentially. Did, were you able to find out much about who they talked to? Some speculation out there. Is that, this may be related to the Rendlesham incident?
Leslie Kean: Yeah, I mean, I guess that would be an example of a case where a close encounter certainly affected people. Absolutely. Um, we, you know, we were, we were writing more about cases that the program was involved with, which of course it wouldn’t have been Rendlesham. And, you know, a lot of the, the people who have had these effects are, do not want to go on the record, unfortunately. So, that’s always an issue as a journalist is getting people who are willing to put their names on it on a, on a case like that. And that’s very hard to come by. But, so that’s, that’s just, you know, something else too that we have to try to find more out about, but it is, most people involved in those kinds of effects don’t want to go public about it now. It certainly. Yeah. But I, I understand what you’re saying about Rendlesham that’s a good example. Yeah.
Alejandro Rojas: Do you know the cases that, that, that AATIP, now that we’re all calling it kind of due to the acronym, looked into, were those all submitted to them from the military or were they from the public or perhaps from, from pilots or other organizations?
Leslie Kean: No, they were all military cases, so that really limits, I mean they were sometimes brought by other agencies to them, but they were all cases involving military pilots. So they didn’t even, even cases that occurred during their tenure, such as the O’hare case in 2006, uh, oh wait, no, that was before they didn’t start to 2007. So I’m the wrong about that. But even any cases that just involves civilians or even commercial pilots were not under the purview of that program.
Alejandro Rojas: Do you know how many cases that they looked at?
Leslie Kean: Oh Gosh. I said, you know, at some point I got an estimate. Might’ve been like about maybe a dozen a year or something like that. 10 a year or something like that, as I recall. Yes.
Alejandro Rojas: And were these cases that were already vetted, in other words, the people who obtained or, or felt there was something about their case, did they already go over the investigation trying to figure out what it was before they submitted it to AATIP?
Leslie Kean: That’s a good question. I don’t know. I mean, I think they probably, my sense is they worked with AATIP to explore these cases and maybe didn’t know a lot about it before that because I don’t, yeah. But you know, it’s probably different for every case and I just don’t, I don’t feel I have enough information to answer that.
Alejandro Rojas: What about the number of unknowns?
Leslie Kean: That’s another question. I mean, these would be great things for you to ask Elizondo when you do your interview with him. Yeah. I mean, I, it, these are all questions I’d love to ask him and I just haven’t been focused on it in terms of how many of them, you mean, of those cases were actually resolved and explained versus how many yeah. And that as a question I can’t answer. I wish I could.
Alejandro Rojas: And then I guess, what about the third video? Is that going to be released soon? Do you know much?
Leslie Kean: I think it is going to be really soon, but that’s all I can say at this point. But yeah, I think it is.
Alejandro Rojas: Do you know if it will have more information, uh, along with it than perhaps the gimbal one, for example, it had zero information that came along with it.
Leslie Kean: I know. The problem is that information was classified, so they weren’t allowed to, we weren’t allowed to have access to it. I don’t know about the third one with respect to that. I don’t know. It may be a similar situation where you have the audio, but you don’t have much other data, which is, it’s difficult. But if it’s protected, you know, there’s something we can do about it.
Alejandro Rojas: Yeah. But I mean, luckily we did get one extraordinary case and, and, and this is great because, and that’s why I think I kept thinking 2008 was of course the Nimitz San Diego case which is a very exciting case and it’s wonderful that not only that this case has gotten more attention, and now we know it was taken seriously and investigated by Elizondo and the group. But it’s getting, it’s held up. I mean it’s a strong case and now we have these witnesses, a pilot going, pilots going and talking to people in the media. It’s another really strong case now that we can kind of add to the list of, of strong cases that we can point to for credibility for the topic.
Leslie Kean: Yeah. And I think that it helps the media take it seriously and it, because it was investigated by the program, even though it had occurred actually in 2004 before the program even started. But nonetheless, they went back and they did a bunch of interviews and they collected documents on it. And, uh, fortunately, you know, that case is not buried somewhere in some kind of system that we don’t have access to in the DoD. So I agree with you. It’s, and it was wonderful, Dave Fravor the pilot, uh, was an excellent interview and he’s very available to speak to the media, which has been great because we didn’t know if that would be the case or not when we had them in our story. But he’s very, very compelling and intelligent and, so that’s been an important, that was an important component of our story to have a case that we could bring forward as an example of the kind of things they investigated. And also to have the video of the, of the object that was, you know, or one of the objects if the, if there were more than one that was seen during the Nimitz. There was a period of days, but so it was, it was great to have that as a part of the story. I think really, really important to be able to include that. Yeah.
Alejandro Rojas: Well, I guess that’s everything. Thank you so much. I think that the conversations like this are really important. I think, you know, for people out there before you jump to wild conclusions, you got to vet that stuff. You got to go talk to the people who are doing things and you know, you and I talked about the media and these misperceptions about the media being taken over. And you know, I work with the media, I work closely and some of our colleagues such as James Fox who makes documentaries or at least Spiegel who worked at the Huffington post or George Knapp who works for mainstream news, you know, uh, or Bryce Zabel we’re going to have at the conference who works on movies. Um, you know, these people are the ones coming up with these great stories are, they’re the champions who are trying to, such as yourself get the credible information out and to say that they’re manipulated or somehow their projects came from top down when that’s not the case is unfortunate because these people just work hard to get this information out there and, and like your situation it sometimes takes a lot of work and effort, but it’s worth it because it’s very important and you know, you all deserve the credit for getting this out there. And it’s frustrating when people just kind of blow it off and “Oh, they were told to do that.”
Leslie Kean: I don’t know who they think is telling us.
Alejandro Rojas: I don’t know either, the smoking man.
Leslie Kean: Do you think I would like get on the phone or go in some dark room with a cigarette smoker and you know, I’m told what to do. I don’t know how they imagined that it works. But I can tell you it’s incredibly hard work. I mean, it was really, really, really hard work and do this and so many different levels and my whole life was on hold during this, you know, people read an article, they have no concept of how much goes into every single paragraph and how much background you have to cover in order to write that one paragraph, how much more you know, than is ever even in the article, you know, and just, uh, the, the, the editing process and the sensitivity of all of it and the reporting, it just takes a huge amount of time.
Leslie Kean: It’s very, very hard work. And we’re doing this because we believe that this information needs to reach the world so that we can change the paradigm. And, you know, there’s a whole team of people doing this and when you, when you do this work and then you hear these theories that, like you were just saying, it’s just like what, you know, what are, you know, what is that? Um, so, you know, yeah. I mean, it’s hard for me to have the time to talk to every single UFO researcher that has these concerns. But, you know, I’m, it does help to talk to the people that you’re, you’re preaching about you know, if they’re coming out and saying all these things about me and they’ve never even talked to me, it’s just you wonder where the information comes from. I don’t know. Um, but I, I just, you know, I, I’ve never encountered, and you know, they could say, well, it’s all behind the scenes, so you’re not aware of it. I really don’t think that the editors at the New York Times who decided to do this have anybody telling them what to do and not to do. Yeah. And I just, it just doesn’t work that way. Um, and it was just the moment, the reason the story came now was because Elizondo retired, right? Elizondo decided to that this was the time where he had to, he was, he was, he was frustrated enough that he couldn’t do what he needed to do inside. And that’s what precipitated the whole story. It wasn’t anything beyond that.
Alejandro Rojas: Well that’s great. I think that clears things up a lot. Thank you so much for coming on the show again and I’m really happy to talk to you about all of this and then, you know, thank you so much for pushing this story and getting it in the Times. I think, you know, your stories are, I mean, when you look at the timeline, let’s say, of progress on this topic have been so important and they often garners so much attention because of the careful way that you put them together. It’s just wonderful to have you out there doing this sort of staff and I think you deserve so much credit for this and thank you so much.
Leslie Kean: Well, thanks a lot Alejandro. I appreciate that. And um, thanks to all your listeners and you know, I’m on Facebook, so if anybody has questions about the conspiracies or any of that stuff, they can certainly come on my Facebook page and I’d be happy to dialogue on, on that with anybody.
DoD Confirms They Released Navy F-18 FLIR UFO Videos
The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68), guided missile cruiser USS Princeton (CG 59), and fast combat support ship USS Bridge (AOE 10) participate in an underway replenishment (UNREP).
(Credit: US Navy)
DoD Confirms They Released Navy F-18 FLIR UFO Videos
A document leaked by KLAS and a letter from the DoD given to a government documents researcher proves the Department of Defense (DoD) did release Navy videos related to UFO incidents, despite an earlier denial.
In the December 16, 2017 article published by The New York Times that revealed the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a secretive Pentagon project to investigate UFOs, there were two videos included. The videos were Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) camera videos captured by Navy jet fighters of unidentified objects. The New York Times claimed these videos were “released by the Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.”
Much, not all, of the information The New York Times received about AATIP was from the former head of the program, Luis Elizondo. He retired from the DoD in October of 2017. The same month he joined Tom Delonge and other former high-level officials in a new venture called the To the Stars Academy (TTSA). This group also researches the UFO phenomenon.
Soon after The New York Times released the videos, TTSA also released them. According to TTSA, the videos were released “through the official declassification review process of the United States government and has been approved for public release.”
Questions first arose about the release of the videos soon after The New York Times published their article. The same day TheWashington Post also published an article, and regarding the videos, they wrote: “Elizondo, in an internal Pentagon memo requesting that the videos be cleared for public viewing, argued that the images could help educate pilots and improve aviation safety. But in interviews, he said his ultimate intention was to shed light on a little-known program Elizondo himself ran for seven years: a low-key Defense Department operation to collect and analyze reported UFO sightings.”
I was able to interview Leslie Kean, one of the authors of The New York Times article, in January of 2018. I asked about The Washington Post’s claims. Kean said The New York Times had received the videos from the DoD and had verified they were real. She references a document called a DD 1910: Clearance Request For Public Release of Defense Information. She says although they have not made the document public, it was a release approved by the DoD that authorized the release of the videos. She says the document was vetted by The New York Times and is confident it is real.
In February of 2018, during a Q and A for the International UFO Congress, Elizondo was asked to give further information about the release of the videos. This was a question I slipped in. Here is an excerpt from the transcript of that interview.
Q: How were the videos released? Was it under a false pretense or a trick as the Washington Post suggests?
A: No, there was no trick, and there was no false pretense. The videos were released in accordance with the strict manner that DOD prescribes to DOD manuals and regulations involving the release of information. It went through the official DOPSR process and then furthermore an additional step was taken to have the videos reviewed by foreign disclosure representatives. In fact, the most senior foreign disclosure representatives in the department, and ultimately required OCA or original classification authority approval and review to release the video. So in essence, I didn’t release anything; the department of defense released those videos. The documentation is held by the department of defense, and the justification for releasing those videos were exactly as stated, and that was to create an unclassified database that people could then access and help us identify the signatures we were seeing.
Although Kean and Elizondo shared what they knew about the videos, researchers, rightfully, were still seeking official confirmation. However, the DoD threw us another curve ball. Researcher John Greenewald received a letter from the DoD that claimed, among other things, the “DoD has not released videos related to this program.”
WTF? Were The New York Times and Elizondo wrong or lying, or did the DoD spokesperson get it wrong? My guess was the latter. Kean had stressed they thoroughly vetted the videos. Also, historically, the military press departments often get information wrong regarding UFOs. Case after case we have seen this. Greenwald has also often received erroneous information from military and government press offices.
We finally got more insight into this situation just this week. On May 1, George Knapp and Matt Adams of KLAS 8 News Now in Las Vegas released a copy of the DD 1910.
KLAS wrote:
“The request specifies the three videos: Go Fast, Gimbal and FLIR, which was the original name for the Tic Tac encounter. Some personal information has been redacted, but the document shows authorization for release was granted on August 24 2017. The I-Team also acquired the Department of Defense directive which spells out how the release procedure works. The form shows the videos were released by the book.”
Not everyone was satisfied with this leak of the DD 1910. They argued this was still not an official statement. Fortunately, the DoD responded to a request by Greenewald for a confirmation that the DD 1910 KLAS leaked was real.
The DoD responded:
“I can confirm that the form DD1910 you asked about is a valid DD1910. The standard procedure is for blocks 1-7 on the form to be filled out by the submitter before sending to DOPSR; however, occasional exceptions have occurred. The submitter is responsible for any disclaimers on the form as approved, and also abiding by any amendments that may be included in additional communications from DOPSR to the submitter as part of the approval process. Per block 3 of this form DD1910, the submitter requested release of the videos solely for research and analysis purposes by the US government agencies and industry partners, and not for general public release.”
So Elizondo and Kean were right, and the DoD press department’s initial response regarding the videos was wrong. The DoD spokesperson did not directly address why they made their initial claim of having not released the videos. However, they added at the end of their response the claim that the videos were not released “for general public release.” It is readily apparent this is not accurate.
The DD 1910 is a request for “public release.” This DD 1910 was approved, so the videos were indeed approved for public release. The DoD spokesperson may have been referencing a note in the form that says the videos are not being released for “publication” which is not the same thing as the general public. A publication is an article, book, journals, etc.
The request said the videos would be released for “research and analysis ONLY and info sharing with other USG and industry partners for the purpose of developing a database to help identify, analyze, and ultimately defeat UAS threats.” There is nothing that prohibits these databases from being publicly available. Further, again, this DD 1910 is a form to approve information for “public release,” and it was approved.
Nowhere does this form limit the release to not include the “general public.” My guess as to why they added this note to the end of their response to Greenewald is that they are trying to justify their original false statement that the “DoD has not released videos related to this program.” Even if for some reason you agree the videos were not released for the “general public,” it is still not accurate to say the “DoD has not released videos related to this program.”
In the end, the DoD has now admitted the DD 1910 proving the DoD released the videos is real. The DoD did release the videos, just as Kean and The New York Times had discovered, and Elizondo had claimed.
Open Minds UFO Radio: In this episode, we review the confusing and complicated timeline of how the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) UFO project got started, how we found out about, and the history of some of those involved. To really understand AATIP and all of the news coming at us about it, we have to understand this vital background. This includes why and how rockstar Tom DeLonge is involved, who Robert Bigelow is, the paranormal background of Dr. Hal Puthoff, what AAWSAP is and how it was taken down, AATIP’s relation to BAASS and TTSA, and much much more. We will not be interviewing Lue for a little while yet, but covering this background will make you all ready for it.
Krubera Cave - Journeying to the Depths of Georgia in One of the World’s Deepest Caves
Krubera Cave - Journeying to the Depths of Georgia in One of the World’s Deepest Caves
Krubera Cave was once thought to be the deepest cave on earth, although now it is generally regarded as the second deepest. This natural wonder, found in the Republic of Georgia , is renowned among cavers due to its arduous challenges and the subterranean depth.
The Geology and Layout of Krubera Cave
The cave is located in the Arabika Massif of the Gagra Range of the Western Caucasus and overlooks the Black Sea . It is not the only cave in the area, there are many others in the north-west of Georgia, and in fact Krubera is not far from the world’s deepest cave, the Voronya Cave system. It is a mere 80 feet (24 meters) or so deeper than the third deepest cave which is in the Austrian Alps .
The depth of the cave as measured from the entrance to the distance of the deepest explored point is approximately 7,200 feet (2,200 meters). The entrance is surprisingly narrow for such a large cavern and the bottom was only located in 2001.
The geology of the cave is of limestone that dates from the Cretaceous and Jurassic ages. There are several underground springs and pools within it, and according to those who explored the system, it consists of a number of deep pits connected by passageways. The best known of these is the Cascade pit which is over 500 feet (152 meters) deep and the bottom has a pool of water. Many freezing sumps (water-filled pits) and water cascades have also been discovered.
The cave was not explored until the 1960s. The local population was aware of the cave but did not have the means to explore it. The first experts to really study the Krubera Cave entrance were a group of Soviet speleologists who reported that they believed they had found an underground system that was unusually deep.
Soviet speleologists reported that they believed they had found an underground system that was unusually deep.
This team named the underground system after a great Russian geographer, Alexander Kruber, who is regarded as one of the founders of speleology. He was one of the first to survey of the area and published several papers on the caves and their geology. An alternate name for the site is Crow's Cave ( Vronja), in recognition of all the crows who nest in its vicinity.
There were no further expeditions until the 1980s, when a group of Ukrainian speleologists conducted the first large-scale expedition into the caverns. They were able to push down into the narrow connecting chambers and through tight choke points to a depth of 900 feet (274 meters).
Due to the instability brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union , the cave was not explored for the next two decades. In 2001 an American expedition revived interest in the cave and on a series of Krubera cave expeditions they gradually managed to discover more pits, meanders, tunnels, and passages. Underground divers explored the many bodies of water of the cave system.
Underground divers explored the many bodies of water of the cave system. ( Excitement N Net )
In 2012, a Ukrainian diver reached the deepest point of Krubera at a depth of over 2,000 feet (600 meters), which at the time was a world record. In 2017 a team proved that the Veryovkina Cave, also in Abkhazia, was the world’s deepest.
To explore this site is an ambition of many cavers and it is known as the Everest of Caves. Descending into the caves requires great planning and resources, including tents and breathing equipment. One recent expedition to Krubera took two weeks exploring the underground labyrinth. It is only now, after 20 years of near constant exploration, that we have a reliable map of Krubera Cave and some believe that more pits and passageways remain undiscovered.
Exploring Krubera Cave is Not for Everyone
Garga, Abkhazia, is a breakaway region and is currently under the control of the Russian Federation and its local allies. Because of this, the cave is difficult to access. It is not possible to enter the region via Georgia and permission is needed to enter Abkhazia from Russia. Only highly trained experts should enter Krubera Cave as it is incredibly dangerous. Amateurs and visitors with a yearning for adventure can explore the area around the entrance.
Only highly trained experts should enter Krubera Cave as it is incredibly dangerous.
Both spaceships will rely on parachutes to deliver a crew back to Earth, so the companies are extensively testing them with NASA.
Tests performed in April purposefully disabled one of the system’s parachutes to see if the others would still deploy and land the craft. According to NASA, some of those tests failed.
NASA is speeding toward a future in which private companies like SpaceX and Boeing ferry its astronauts to and from orbit.
But first, it has the earthly issue of parachutes to solve.
Over the past decade or so, the space agency has partnered with two companies – SpaceX and Boeing – as part of a roughly $8 billion initiative called the Commercial Crew Program. Its goal: create safe and reliable spacecraft to taxi NASA’s finest to the International Space Station.
SpaceX has developed its Crew Dragon capsule for that purpose, while Boeing built the CST-100 Starliner. Both spaceships are designed to hold up to seven people, but neither have flown with any human crew members yet.
Crewed flight tests were expected this year, but a recently discovered problem may cause new delays for those launches. This week, NASA officials told Congress that SpaceX’s spaceship parachute system did not pass a critical (though difficult) test in April.
“It failed,” William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon during a House subcommittee hearing. “The parachutes did not work as designed.”
Similar problems appear to have emerged during Boeing’s tests, according to Spaceflight Now. However, a Boeing spokesperson disputed this claim.
What went wrong with the parachute test
Foto: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
sourceSpaceX/Twitter
A spaceship riding a rocket into space is just the start of its mission. After it reaches orbit, the vessel has to safely return to Earth.
During those return trips, space capsules plow through Earth’s atmosphere at about 25 times the speed of sound, creating intense heat. They use a base of thermal protection on their bottoms to deflect that. Then once the spacecraft are falling through air that’s dense enough, they generally deploy parachutes to get safely to the ground.
So it’s vital to test these parachute systems before putting lives or even cargo at stake. The parachute test SpaceX conducted in April was not the first for Crew Dragon; many other tests have been conducted without issue. But in this case, Gerstenmaier said during the hearing, the parachute test simulated a partial failure.
One of four parachutes did not deploy – that was intentional – leaving only three to break the fall. The test was meant to examine what would happen if that problem were to arise during a real flight. Unfortunately, the other parachutes didn’t properly deploy either.
The test didn’t use an actual space capsule; the parachutes were tested on a metal sled, which was damaged.
Gerstenmaier told Spaceflight Now that Boeing’s “Starliner parachute drop tests have encountered anomalies similar to the one suffered by SpaceX last month.” (That test didn’t use a real space capsule, either.)
Foto: An illustration of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft.
sourceBoeing
But Boeing’s spokesperson said the “anomalies” mentioned do not pertain to a failure – at least not in the four out of five qualification tests the company has completed since February 2017 (the fifth has yet to happen). Qualification tests are required by NASA before it will allow astronauts to fly inside the spaceship. “We have not seen anything that’s led to any total failure, or really anything that would prevent us from declaring every single qualification test a success. Those have gone fine,” the spokesperson said. “We’re also conducting a series of reliability tests with NASA on the system outside of the [qualification] program, and we have not seen anything unexpected there either.”
Gerstenmaier said, though, that it’s not yet clear whether SpaceX’s parachutes themselves are the problem. Because both companies have seen testing issues, there may be something wrong with the setup or the way parachutes are being packed.
“This is why we test,” he said, adding that SpaceX, Boeing, and NASA are all learning from the failures. “This is part of the learning process. By these failures, we’re going to learn from the data and information to end up with a safe design for our crews.”
SpaceX echoed that perspective in a statement.
“To date, SpaceX has completed 19 tests of the parachute system with a number of additional tests planned prior to flying crew. Data collected from this test provides industry leading insight, informs future testing, and allows us to develop an even safer system,” the company told Business Insider.
The vehicle had previously flown to the space station and landed in the ocean as part ofSpaceX’s Demo-1 mission.
“The vehicle was destroyed,” Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX’s vice president of mission assurance, said during a NASA press briefing on May 2.
NASA and SpaceX are participating in a joint and ongoing investigation.
“We don’t have, currently, something where we could say, ‘Oh, it was most likely this or that,'” Koenigsmann said.
Correction (May 10, 2019): NASA told Congress that a SpaceX parachute test failed, not a Boeing parachute test. Boeing says it hasn’t seen a parachute failure similar to SpaceX’s in recent qualification tests, as was reported by other outlets.
As far as we know, there’s no life that currently exists on Mars. Missions to the Red Planet have yielded tantalizing cluesthat life may have existed at some point in the past, but no living organisms have ever been spotted by any rover or other hardware humans have sent to Mars.
But Mars is a big place. Despite several rover missions and other trips to the planet we’ve still only barely scratched the surface of the secrets Mars may hold, and there’s still the possibility that life in some form persists there. At least that’s what Michael Finney, a researcher and co-found of The Genome Partnership, believes, and he said as much during a recent conference at UC Berkeley.
Mars, as imaged by NASA's Viking 1 orbiter in the 1970s.
As Space.com reports, Finney spoke about the possibility of Martian life still existing on the Red Planet today. Mars, which at one point in its history had huge bodies of water across its surface, could have been teeming with various forms of life that have since been wiped out as the planet lost much of its atmosphere and surface water. If that was indeed the case, Finney believes something likely stuck around for the long haul.
“If Mars had life 4 billion years ago, Mars still has life,” Finney explained. “Nothing has happened on Mars that would’ve wiped out life. So, if there were life on Mars, it may have moved around, it may have gone into hiding a bit, but it’s probably still there,”
It might sound like a stretch, but it’s actually not that hard to believe when you look at some of the more Earth-like regions of Mars. Researchers studying the planet know that it still has quite a bit of ice in its polar areas, and liquid water might not be hard to find during certain times of the Martian year.
On Earth, life can be found in some of the most hostile environments imaginable. Microorganisms, in particular, have a habit of withstanding extreme temperatures and lack of water for long periods of time, and it’s entirely possible that life in some form has adapted to exist beneath the surface of Mars.
Future missions to the planet would be our best chance of proving or disproving that notion, but unfortunately, that means we’ll have to wait a while before we know for sure.
It seems like play, but they’re serious. Every year, at the Planetary Defense Conference, asteroid experts from around the globe run days-long simulations of asteroids headed for major cities. In 2019, it was New York City’s turn.
Artist’s concept of a large asteroid hitting Earth. In a new simulation conducted during the Planetary Defense Conference in early May, New York City was wiped out by just such a cataclysmic event.
We’ve all seen movies about what might happen if an asteroid were to hit the Earth. While these thrilling, apocalyptic dramas are not real, asteroid experts do consider the question of what it might really be like if an asteroid used Earth for target practice. For example, what if a large asteroid were heading toward New York City specifically? If we knew far enough in advance that the asteroid were coming, could the Big Apple be saved?
That was the question posed in a new simulation, called the Planetary Defense Conference Exercise 2019, presented during the International Academy of Astronautics Planetary Defense Conference (PDC) held April 29 to May 3, 2019 in Washington, D.C. The annual conference brings together asteroid experts from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and other organizations to try to understand and plan how humanity would respond if an asteroid threat were to occur. How could Earth be saved?
This article describes a simulation, an exercise, and there is no real asteroid posing a threat to Earth at this time.
Astronomers hold a new simulation every year, in which they practice using their expertise and knowledge to spare various cities from ensuing calamity. In last year’s simulation, Tokyo was successfully saved after a nuclear bomb was used to destroy the asteroid. In previous simulations, however, other places such as the French Riviera and Dhaka (largest city of Bangladesh) were not so lucky. This year’s simulation got more publicity, in part because it was highlighted on social media. Day by day on Twitter, for example, the public was able to follow along, as experts participating in the simulation were giving new parameters to consider. Rüdiger Jehn, ESA’s head of Planetary Defence, explained in a statement why experts run simulations like these. He said:
The first step in protecting our planet is knowing what’s out there. Only then, with enough warning, can we take the steps needed to prevent an asteroid strike altogether, or to minimize the damage it does on the ground.
The imaginary orbit of asteroid 2019 PDC – an imaginary asteroid used in the recent Planetary Defense Conference simulation – compared to Earth’s orbit, from March 26, 2019, until the time of the simulated impact on April 29, 2027.
Image via PDC/CNEOS/JPL.
So what about New York? Was the catastrophe averted?
Unfortunately, no.
The simulation began on Day 1 of the conference. In this scenario, a large imaginary asteroid that the conference named after itself as 2019 PDC – said to be between 330 and 1,000 feet (100 and 300 meters) in diameter – was imagined to be on a near-Earth collision course. At first, according to the simulation, the asteroid had only about a 1 percent chance of hitting the Earth, so there was not too much reason to worry. Yet. A fake press release was issued, even though the chance of impact was still very small:
College Park, Maryland, USA, April 29, 2019. The International Asteroid Warning Network has announced that a recently discovered near-Earth asteroid could pass very close to the Earth 8 years from now, on April 29, 2027, and there is a small chance – 1 in 100 – that it could impact our planet.
Day 2 of the conference was in the simulation year 2021. NASA had launched a probe to look at the asteroid more closely. At that point in the simulation, the space rock was on a collision course with Earth, and the impact site had been narrowed down to Denver, Colorado.
The risk corridor for imaginary asteroid 2019 PDC during the recent simulation. The simulated impact was pictured as happening directly over New York City.
Image via PDC/CNEOS/JPL.
On Day 3 – the year 2024 in the simulation – the world’s space power nations had decided to build a fleet of six “kinetic impactors,” spacecraft designed to ram into the asteroid, slowing it down and hopefully deflecting it off course. The impactors were launched in 2024, still three years from impact, and three of them were imagined to hit the asteroid successfully. This was enough to fragment the asteroid, but there was still a problem. Although the biggest piece of the asteroid would no longer hit the Earth, a smaller fragment was imagined to be still on a collision trajectory, headed for the eastern United States.
At this point in the simulation, there wasn’t too much else that could be done. It was too late to try to nuke the incoming asteroid fragment, due to politics (as usual).
Now, analysis of the asteroid’s imaginary trajectory showed it would hit New York City. The only thing that could be done at this point was mass evacuation.
Toward the end of the simulation, the asteroid was imagined as striking Earth’s atmosphere at 43,000 mph (69,000 kmh) and exploding right over New York in a blast that was 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. New York City, the largest city in North America, was no more.
All of this is, of course, just an exercise. But simulations like these help experts figure just what actions might be taken, if an asteroid were discovered to be on a collision course with Earth. At this point in Earth’s history, there are no large asteroids known to be headed our way. And the odds of a large asteroid hitting Earth at any given time are statistically exceedingly low. However, as astronomers have come to recognize more profoundly in recent decades, asteroid strikes do happen. They’ve happened before and could happen again.
A massive asteroid impact in what’s now the Yucatán Peninsula is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Could it happen again?
The dinosaurs unfortunately experienced this firsthand, 65 million years ago. And if it happened before, it can happen again, at some point. We don’t know exactly when, though, so it is prudent to be ready at all times, even if the chance of the unthinkable happening is small.
About 20,000 near-Earth asteroids have been discovered so far, with another 150 or so new ones found every month, according to the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).
NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) also released an 18-page document in June 2018 explaining what steps the agencies would take over the next 10 years to prevent actual potential asteroid strikes and to prepare the country for the worst if one did hit us. That plan is two-fold, increasing ground-based surveillance of near-Earth asteroids and having a protocol in place for mass evacuations. This would require other nations to work with the U.S., a worthy goal since we don’t know just when or where an asteroid will hit, the next time one does.
In all probability, another asteroid will strike Earth, eventually, even if it’s tens of thousands of years from now. Let’s hope a future human civilization will fare better than the dinosaurs did 65 million years ago.
Bottom line: In 2019’s Planetary Defense Conference simulation, New York City was obliterated by an asteroid fragment that hit Earth in 2027. Although not based on reality, simulations such as these are designed to help NASA, ESA, FEMA and other agencies prepare for a time if – or when – just such a catastrophe really doeshappen again.
Remember the Twilight Zone on television? Well, play that theme song in your head while you read this post…
The US Navy is drafting new guidelines for reporting Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) after a significant uptick in the number of sightings on (above?) American soil.
No, it doesn’t mean we’re being invaded by aliens (at least not yet). Nor does it mean that the US is about to live out the storyline from Colony, Netflix’s all-too-soon ended show about an Earth under alien control.
So what DOES it mean?
Key Points:
First, “UFO” does not equal alien. A UFO is anything in the sky that cannot be accurately identified — an animal, a device, an aircraft, or even some kind of natural phenomenon. UFOs are a significant concern, but not because they spell doom for humans due to an oncoming onslaught of alien warriors.
Instead, the risks are much more mundane. Flying devices can be used in attacks by foreign enemies, to import drugs across the border, and even to gather intel at America’s military bases.
Studying UFOs is extremely important. Regardless of what the object is, or what discoveries are made along the way, the information gathered is almost always useful. In some cases, that info is even critically important to national security, as it can reveal an impending threat, such as an aircraft flying in to attack.
UFOs may also indicate that a foreign entity or enemy has achieved a technological breakthrough, making them much more powerful, and thus, much more dangerous. In a world where tech is advancing more and more rapidly all across the world, this must be considered.
Even when the phenomenon turns out to be natural, studying it can be remarkably insightful. In 2009, researchers received reports of an “alien spaceship” that turned out to be a strange type of lighting filled with “blue jets,” later theorizing that the phenomenon may impact ozone and the weather.
The Navy’s statement announcing significant changes for reporting UFOs clarifies the issue further. “There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated airspace in recent years,” it reads. “For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report.”
One such report includes a release from To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences that showcases a declassified video of two Navy pilots coming into close contact with a UFO. “GO FAST,” which has been certified authentic by the DoD, is a remarkable watch:
The UFO in the GoFast video was never identified, but that doesn’t mean studying it isn’t useful. The information within it can help our military better protect the country and improve tech equipment — far from a simple spooky alien story on television.
In fact, former Pentagon intelligence official Chris Mellon believes we should retire the term UFO altogether. Instead, he proposes “unexplained aerial phenomena,” which demystifies the subject and encourages a more scientific and analytical approach.
“Right now, we have a situation in which UFOs and UAPs are treated as anomalies to be ignored rather than anomalies to be explored,” he explains. “We have systems that exclude that information and dump it.”
Mellon also cautions against the assumptive mindset that most UFOs should be ignored. “…in a lot of cases [military personnel] don’t know what to do with that information, like satellite data or a radar that sees something going Mach 3. They will dump [the data] because that is not a traditional aircraft or missile.”
The new Navy guidelines will encourage and require sightings to be reported “to cognizant authorities” depending on the specifics of the incident. This could very well lead to technological advancement, improved national defense — and yes, maybe the discovery of new life, too.
You’d think at this point in humanity’s development, with our big ridiculous particle smashing machines, our spaceships, our plans to colonize other planets, we’d have a pretty solid understanding of something so basic as the sun. You’d be wrong. For starters, the sun is hardly basic, despite its constant presence, hanging in the sky every day since before there even were days. We often take the sun for granted and forget that it’s a giant ball of condensed nuclear fire, so heavy that it warps spacetime enough to keep a series of giant balls of rock spinning around it. Far from being basic, its mind-boggling. In fact, because of our advancements in knowledge and understanding of the cosmos, scientists have recently realized that the sun is muchmore mysterious and strange than they’ve ever imagined.
Compiling over a decade’s worth of data from telescopes pointed at the sun, NASA scientists found that their predictions of the glow from gamma rays —the highest frequency band of light—were wrong. Not just a little bit wrong, but completely, utterly, and inexplicably wrong in a way that disrupts the entire understanding of the sun, and perhaps even our understanding of physics. According to particle physicist Brian Fields:
“It’s amazing that we were so spectacularly wrong about something we should understand really well: the sun.”
Hubris: looking at this thing and thinking you’ve got it all figured out.
Scientists had previously theorized that although the sun’s core would produce gamma rays, none would escape due to degradation as they try to escape the burning ball of nuclear fire. Despite that, scientists believed that the sun would still emit a gamma ray glow because of something called cosmic rays: protons that have been blasted into our solar system by supernovas or other violent cosmic events. When these cosmic rays hit the sun, scientists postulated, they would be reflected back by the suns magnetic field and burn up into gamma radiation. Johnathan Beacom, one of the scientists who worked on the project explains it, in a way we can all understand, with cartoons:
“Remember the Road Runner cartoon? Imagine the proton runs straight toward that sphere, and at the last second it changes its direction and comes back at you.”
Except then the Road Runner burns up as a burst of radiation.
Scientists figured out that, based on the rate of cosmic rays hitting the sun and an expected one percent efficiency in bouncing them back, the sun would emit a faint glow of gamma rays. When they looked at the data they found that the gamma ray glow of the sun was seven times brighter than they had predicted. This suggests that if the cosmic ray theory is correct, the sun is bouncing cosmic rays back with 100% efficiency, which should be impossible. Even weirder, at the highest frequency of gamma rays the sun glows 20 times brighter than scientists had predicted. Weirder still, while most of the frequency bands of gamma rays are far brighter than scientists predicted, there is a conspicuous and unexplained dip in one band of frequencies that, according to astrophysicist Tim Linden, “defies all logic.” He says:
“It’s much easier to get bumps than dips. If I have something that comes out of the sun, OK, that’s an extra channel. How do I make a negative channel out of that?”
The explanations for this unexpected weirdness in the sun all fall short in some way. Scientists have hypothesized that the sun’s core might be partially composed of dark matter, which, trapped and compressed by gravity could be annihilated and turned into gamma radiation, but that leaves the problem of how that gamma radiation could escape the sun. The other explanation is that something we don’t understand is happening with the sun’s magnetic field. According to astrophysicist John Giacalone the gamma ray signal “is probably telling us something very fundamental about the magnetic structure of the sun.”
However, no explanation accounts for the mysterious dip in the gamma ray frequency band. In fact, such a dip is so outside expectations that some experts think it’s a mistake in the data. According to Tim Linden, it’s no mistake:
“I think there are 15 pages in the appendix of different tests we ran to see whether we were miscalculating. Statistically, the dip appears very prominent.”
So rather than explaining and putting to rest the unsolved mysteries of the cosmos, science has once again shown us that the more layers you peel back, the more mysteries present themselves like a cosmic game of whack-a-mole. It is exciting though, and such a mystery will inevitably lead to a deeper understanding of our little slice of the the universe, and perhaps a deeper understanding of the fundamental substrate of reality as well. John Beacom sums it up nicely:
“The worst that can happen here is that we find out that the sun is stranger and more beautiful than we ever imagined. And the best that could happen is we discover some kind of new physics.”
Einstein’s general theory of relativity shows that gravity is the result of a mass, such as a planet or star, warping the geometry of the merger of time and space known as spacetime.
(Credit: koya979/Shutterstock)
Rod Serling knew all about dimensions.
His Twilight Zone was a dimension of imagination, a dimension of sight and sound and mind, a dimension as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It was all very clear except for the space and time part, the dimensions of real life. Serling never explained them.
Of course, ever since Einstein, scientists have also been scratching their heads about how to make sense of space and time. Before then, almost everybody thought Isaac Newton had figured it all out. Time “flows equably without relation to anything external,” he declared. Absolute space is also its own thing, “always similar and immovable.” Nothing to see there. Events of physical reality performed independently on a neutral stage where actors strutted and fretted without influencing the rest of the theater.
But Einstein’s theories turned Newton’s absolute space and time into a relativistic mash-up — his equations suggested a merged spacetime, a new sort of arena in which the players altered the space of the playing field. It was a physics game changer. No longer did space and time provide a featureless backdrop for matter and energy. Formerly independent and uniform, space and time became inseparable and variable. And as Einstein showed in his general theory of relativity, matter and energy warped the spacetime surrounding them. That simple (hah!) truth explained gravity. Newton’s apparent force of attraction became an illusion perpetrated by spacetime geometry. It was the shape of spacetime that dictated the motion of massive bodies, a symmetric justice since massive bodies determined spacetime’s shape.
Verification of Einstein’s spacetime revolution came a century ago, when an eclipse expedition confirmed his general theory’s prime prediction (a precise amount of bending of light passing near the edge of a massive body, in this case the sun). But spacetime remained mysterious. Since it was something rather than nothing, it was natural to wonder where it came from.
Now a new revolution is on the verge of answering that question, based on insights from the other great physics surprise of the last century: quantum mechanics. Today’s revolution offers the potential for yet another rewrite of spacetime’s résumé, with the bonus of perhaps explaining why quantum mechanics seems so weird.
“Spacetime and gravity must ultimately emerge from something else,” writes physicist Brian Swingle in the 2018 Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics. Otherwise it’s hard to see how Einstein’s gravity and the math of quantum mechanics can reconcile their longstanding incompatibility. Einstein’s view of gravity as the manifestation of spacetime geometry has been enormously successful. But so also has been quantum mechanics, which describes the machinations of matter and energy on the atomic scale with unerring accuracy. Attempts to find coherent math that accommodates quantum weirdness with geometric gravity, though, have met formidable technical and conceptual roadblocks.
At least that has long been so for attempts to understand ordinary spacetime. But clues to a possible path to progress have emerged from the theoretical study of alternate spacetime geometries, thinkable in principle but with unusual properties. One such alternate, known as anti de Sitter space, is weirdly curved and tends to collapse on itself, rather than expanding as the universe we live in does. It wouldn’t be a nice place to live. But as a laboratory for studying theories of quantum gravity, it has a lot to offer. “Quantum gravity is sufficiently rich and confusing that even toy universes can shed enormous light on the physics,” writes Swingle, of the University of Maryland.
A strange type of spacetime with unusual curvature known as anti de Sitter space, illustrated here, is nothing like the universe we live in, but could nevertheless provide clues to the quantum processes that may be responsible for producing ordinary spacetime.
(Credit: U. Moschella/Seminaire Poincare 2005)
Studies of anti de Sitter space suggest, for instance, that the math describing gravity (that is, spacetime geometry) can be equivalent to the math of quantum physics in a space of one less dimension. Think of a hologram — a flat, two-dimensional surface that incorporates a three-dimensional image. In a similar way, perhaps the four-dimensional geometry of spacetime could be encoded in the math of quantum physics operating in three-dimensions. Or maybe you need more dimensions — how many dimensions are required is part of the problem to be solved.
In any case, investigations along these lines have revealed a surprising possibility: Spacetime itself may be generated by quantum physics, specifically by the baffling phenomenon known as quantum entanglement.
As popularly explained, entanglement is a spooky connection linking particles separated even by great distances. If emitted from a common source, such particles remain entangled no matter how far they fly away from each other. If you measure a property (such as spin or polarization) for one of them, you then know what the result of the same measurement would be for the other. But before the measurement, those properties are not already determined, a counterintuitive fact verified by many experiments. It seems like the measurement at one place determines what the measurement will be at another distant location.
That sounds like entangled particles must be able to communicate faster than light. Otherwise it’s impossible to imagine how one of them could know what was happening to the other across a vast spacetime expanse. But they actually don’t send any message at all. So how do entangled particles transcend the spacetime gulf separating them? Perhaps the answer is they don’t have to — because entanglement doesn’t happen in spacetime. Entanglement creates spacetime.
At least that’s the proposal that current research in toy universes has inspired. “The emergence of spacetime and gravity is a mysterious phenomenon of quantum many-body physics that we would like to understand,” Swingle suggests in his Annual Review paper. Vigorous effort by several top-flight physicists has produced theoretical evidence that networks of entangled quantum states weave the spacetime fabric. These quantum states are often described as “qubits” — bits of quantum information (like ordinary computer bits, but existing in a mix of 1 and 0, not simply either 1 or 0). Entangled qubits create networks with geometry in space with an extra dimension beyond the number of dimensions that the qubits live in. So the quantum physics of qubits can then be equated to the geometry of a space with an extra dimension. Best of all, the geometry created by the entangled qubits may very well obey the equations from Einstein’s general relativity that describe motion due to gravity — at least the latest research points in that direction. “Apparently, a geometry with the right properties built from entanglement has to obey the gravitational equations of motion,” Swingle writes. “This result further justifies the claim that spacetime arises from entanglement.”
Still, it remains to be shown that the clues found in toy universes with extra dimensions will lead to the true story for the ordinary spacetime in which real physicists strut and fret. Nobody really knows exactly what quantum processes in the real world would be responsible for weaving spacetime’s fabric. Maybe some of the assumptions made in calculations so far will turn out to be faulty. But it could be that physics is on the brink of peering more deeply into nature’s foundations than ever before, into an existence containing previously unknown dimensions of space and time (or sight and sound) that might end up making The Twilight Zone into Reality TV.
Tom Siegfried is a science writer and editor in the Washington, DC, area. He writes the Context blog for Science News and his book about the history of the multiverse will be published in September.
This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.
Before we send people to Mars, we need to understand more about how Martian dust could affect astronauts and their equipment. Here are 3 things we’ve learned from the planet’s 2018 global dust storm.
This animated image blinks two versions of a May 11, 2016, selfie of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at a drilled sample site called “Okoruso.” In one version, cameras atop the rover’s mast face the arm-mounted camera taking the portrait. In the other, they face away.
The global Martian dust storm of summer 2018 — the one that blotted out sunlight for weeks and put NASA’s belovedOpportunity rover out of business— offered an unprecedented learning opportunity. For the first time, humans had eight spacecraft orbiting Mars or roving its surface — the largest cadre of robotic explorers ever to watch a global dust storm unfold.
Scientists around the globe are still analyzing reams of data, but preliminary reports include insights on how massive dust storms could have affected ancient Martian water, winds, and climate, and how they could affect future weather and solar power.
Images showing the advancing, global dust storm, taken by Curiosity’s Mast Camera between Sol 2075 and Sol 2170 on Mars, which would’ve fallen between June 8, 2018, and September 13, 2018, on Earth.
Images via NASA/JPL-Caltech/York University.
Martian dust storms are common, especially during southern hemisphere spring and summer. They tend to last a couple of days and can cover regions of the planet the size of the United States. But planet-encircling ones are unpredictable, sometimes lingering for months. Why? Scott Guzewich, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is a lead researcher in NASA’s dust storm investigation. He said:
We still don’t know what drives the variability, but the 2018 storm gives another data point.
NASA first saw a global dust storm up close in 1971 when our Mariner 9 spacecraft — the first to orbit another planet — arrived at a dust-engulfed red planet. Since then, we’ve seen global storms in 1977 (twice), 1982, 1994, 2001, 2007 and 2018.
Here are three things we saw from space and from the ground during the recent global dust storm that helped address some open questions and exposed new ones:
Hydrogen atoms escape from Mars’ upper atmosphere, while water containing heavy hydrogen (deuterium) remains trapped on the planet. The escape of hydrogen helped to turn Mars from a wet planet 4.5 billion years ago into a dry world today.
Video via NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
1. Could global dust storms have blown away the planet’s water?
Scientists have found loads of evidence that Mars had rivers, lakes and maybe even oceans of water billions of years ago. Dry riverbeds, ancient shorelines, and salty surface chemistry are all clues. But why did much of the water disappear? And how? Geronimo Villanueva, a Martian water expert at NASA Goddard, said:
The global dust storm may give us an explanation.
Villanueva worked with colleagues at the ESA (European Space Agency) and Russia’s Roscosmos space agency to confirm that powerful, global dust storms appear to loft water vapor from its typical altitude of 12 miles (20 km) above the Martian surface to much higher elevations of at least 50 miles (80 km). NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observed a similar phenomenon in 2007.
By thrusting water into the upper atmosphere, global dust storms may interfere with the planet’s water cycle, preventing H2O from condensing and falling back down to the surface. On Earth, H2O falls back down as rain or snow. The same process could have existed on Mars billions of years ago.
At higher altitudes, where the Martian atmosphere is especially tenuous, Villanueva and his colleagues speculate, solar radiation can easily penetrate to break up the water molecules and blow their component elements into space. Villanueva, who has spent his career piecing together the history of water on Mars, said:
When you bring water to higher parts of the atmosphere, it gets blown away so much easier.
Villanueva and his colleagues reported on April 10, 2019, in the peer-reviewed journal Nature that they found evidence of receding water vapor by using the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter at Mars, a spacecraft managed by ESA and Roscosmos. The orbiter measured water molecules at different altitudes before and after the 2018 storm. Scientists saw for the first time that all types of water molecules (there are lighter and heavier ones) reached the “escape region” of the upper atmosphere, which was an important insight into how water may be disappearing from Mars. Now, says Villanueva, scientists will have to take this new information into account in their predictions about how much water flowed on ancient Mars and how long it took for it to disappear.
The surface of Mars is covered by constantly shifting sand blown by the planet’s winds. This creates an ever-evolving desert landscape with diverse and striking dunes. Loose mounds of sand are found all over Mars, ranging in height from a few dozen feet to higher than some of Earth’s tallest skyscrapers. Images taken by the HiRISE instrument aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft have allowed scientists to study Mars’ dunes in unprecedented detail. The enhanced-color views captured from orbit reveal characteristics of their shape, composition, and movements over time, giving clues about the planet’s dynamic atmosphere and current climate.
2. Global dust storms don’t seem to significantly reshape Martian sand dunes
For scientists who track sand dunes shifting inches across the surface, the global dust storm offered critical evidence in their investigation of wind patterns on the red planet. Only the forceful winds during a global dust storm would be able to move the planet’s extensive dunes, scientists once thought, given that Mars’ super thin atmosphere makes 100-mile-per-hour (160 kph) wind feel like a breeze. Yet images from orbiters and landers throughout the decades have revealed that Martian sand moves all the time, implying that it doesn’t need strong gusts to do so. This was a surprise to researchers.
Now that scientists finally got to watch a global dust storm from the ground through the eyes of NASA’s Curiosity rover, they noticed another surprising characteristic of Martian wind: strong gusts don’t appear to move sand more than normal. Mariah Baker is a Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins University who helps track changes in Martian sand ripples. She said:
This has added to the overall mystery of how wind behaves on Mars.
Ongoing analysis of the entire Martian globe will reveal whether Gale Crater, where Curiosity is roving, was unique. The heart of the storm was over Opportunity, after all, which was roving on the other side of the globe from Curiosity. Plus, wind may behave differently inside Gale Crater, scientists note. Guzewich said:
Were we being sheltered? That’s possible.
If it turns out sand dunes didn’t shift much anywhere on Mars during the storm, there could be a good reason, Baker said:
Winds swirling dust around in the atmosphere might not be the same thing as winds on the surface.
Some scientists think that when dust gets lifted into the atmosphere during a global storm, blocking sunlight from reaching the surface, it shuts down the wind-generating process close to the ground that, under normal conditions, is induced by temperature fluctuations between the air and surface.
Whatever the reason turns out to be, understanding the behavior of sand dunes today helps us reveal Mars’s ancient climate, says Baker.
We can look at wind-shaped sandstones on the surface and look at dunes that are moving now, and say, ‘OK, what does that say about the conditions that were here billions of years ago when these dunes were moving and now are cemented into the rock record?’
Navigation cameras aboard NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover observed several whirlwinds carrying Martian dust across Gale Crater in 2017. Dust devils result from sunshine warming the ground, prompting convective rising of air. All the dust devils were seen in a southward direction from the rover. Timing is accelerated and contrast has been modified to make frame-to-frame changes easier to see.
Video via NASA/JPL-Caltech/TAMU.
3. Dust storms make rover-cleansing dust devils disappear
Dust devils, which are rotating columns of air and dust, are common on Mars. They form when hot air from the surface rises, creating a current of air that forms a whirlwind. These devils are useful for cleaning off dust from the panels of solar-powered spacecraft, like InSight, as they pass over them. Thus, it’s important to understand how often they occur.
The Curiosity rover is powered by a nuclear battery, which allowed it to collect data while Opportunity hibernated, with minimal sunlight reaching its solar panels. Through Curiosity, we learned that dust devils disappear during a dust storm, right when we need them most, and for months afterwards. This happens because of an interruption in the same wind-generating process that might affect the movement of sand dunes.
Guzewich says that understanding a global storm’s impact on dust devils is important in planning how to power equipment during future Mars missions. He said:
You need to be prepared to go a while before your next dust devil passes over and cleans you off.
Bottom line: Three things scientists have learned from the 2018 global dust storm on Mars.
Arsenic is a deadly poison for most living things, but new research shows that microorganisms are breathing arsenic in a large area of the Pacific Ocean.
Researchers fix the line on an instrument that pumps large volumes of seawater in order to extract DNA. The instrument on the left measures properties such as temperature, salinity and depth and collects smaller samples of seawater.
Arsenic is a deadly poison for most living things, but new research has found microorganisms in a low-oxygen area of the Pacific Ocean that breathe arsenic.
University of Washington professor of oceanography Gabrielle Rocap is a co-author of the study, published April 29, 2019, in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Rocap said in a statement:
We’ve known for a long time that there are very low levels of arsenic in the ocean. But the idea that organisms could be using arsenic to make a living – it’s a whole new metabolism for the open ocean.
The team analyzed samples collected during a 2012 research cruise to the tropical Pacific, off the coast of Mexico. The seawater samples came from a region below the surface, where oxygen is almost absent. Rocap said:
In some parts of the ocean there’s a sandwich of water where there’s no measurable oxygen. The microbes in these regions have to use other elements that act as an electron acceptor to extract energy from food.
A purple arsenic atom surrounded by four oxygen atoms is arsenate (left). An arsenic atom surrounded by three oxygen atoms is arsenite (right). The study found evidence of marine organisms that can convert one to the other to get energy in oxygen-deficient environments.
Image via Wikimedia.
Genetic analyses on DNA extracted from the seawater found two genetic pathways that are known to convert arsenic-based molecules as a way to gain energy.
According to the researchers, the microbes discovered in the water are probably distantly related to the arsenic-breathing microbes found in hot springs or contaminated sites on land.
California’s Mono Lake is naturally high in arsenic and is known to host microbes that survive by breathing arsenic. The organisms that live in the marine environment are likely related to the ones on land.
Biologists believe the strategy of using arsenic for respiration is a holdover from Earth’s early history. During the period when life arose on Earth, oxygen was scarce in both the air and in the ocean. Oxygen became abundant in Earth’s atmosphere only after photosynthesis became widespread and converted carbon dioxide gas into oxygen. Early lifeforms had to gain energy using other elements, such as arsenic, which was likely more common in the oceans at that time.
Jaclyn Saunders, a postdoctoral fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, is the study first author. She said:
We found the genetic signatures of pathways that are still there, remnants of the past ocean that have been maintained until today.
Arsenic-breathing populations may grow again under climate change. Low-oxygen regions are projected to expand, and dissolved oxygen is predicted to drop throughout the marine environment. Rocap said:
For me, it just shows how much is still out there in the ocean that we don’t know.
Bottom line: Researchers have discovered microorganisms that breathe arsenic.
Virgin Galactic's deal with New Mexico entails moving its commercial spaceflight activities toSpaceport Americawhen its vehicles and operations are ready for primetime. Looks like the company is nearly there, because, Sir Richard Branson and company have decided that it's time. Virgin Galactic has announced that its "program had advanced sufficiently to move the spaceline staff and space vehicles from Mojave, California to [its] commercial operations headquarters at Spaceport America, New Mexico."
The corporation conducted VSS Unity's first test flight with a passenger onboard back in February, two months after its first ever flight to space. It will now complete the vehicle's final tests from New Mexico after the company relocates it and its carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, over the summer. One of the flights could have Branson himself as a passenger, seeing as he intends to fly to the edge of space on July 16th, 2019 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11.
Virgin Galactic is also moving 100 staff members to its new HQ, since that's where it'll run things from now on. As the company said, the move "signals the final countdown" to the beginning of its commercial spaceflight service.
Sir Richard Branson said in a statement:
"Our Virgin Galactic adventure has been intertwined with New Mexico and Spaceport America right from the start and our stories have unfolded together. New Mexico delivered on its promise to build a world-first and world-class spaceport. Today, I could not be more excited to announce, that in return, we are now ready to bring New Mexico a world-first, world-class spaceline. Virgin Galactic is coming home to New Mexico where together we will open space to change the world for good."
It’s going to be special to see the world’s most beautiful spaceship fly from one of the world’s most wonderfully designed buildings, Spaceport America https://virg.in/UEw@virgingalactic
New Mexico will be one of the very few places on the planet which will be hosting human spaceflight launches. We are initiating the move of our spaceship and operations team to New Mexico’s @Spaceport_NM. https://virg.in/UEi
Are octopuses alien? New theory argues Earth was ‘seeded’ by interstellar genetic code
Are octopuses alien? New theory argues Earth was ‘seeded’ by interstellar genetic code
OCTOPUSES are weird. This is not just because they look odd. It’s not because they’re disturbingly smart. And that could mean they’re alien.
Jamie Seidel
OCTOPUSES are weird. This is not just because they look odd. It’s not because they’re disturbingly smart. It’s because they have a strange power.
The ability to edit their own bodies.
This has biologists scratching their heads.
Evolution doesn’t work that way. It’s supposed to be spurred by genetic mutations — a change in DNA — that proves to be beneficial to the host.
So how could a creature evolve in such a way as to allow them to rebuild themselves?
Now a new train of thought has emerged.
They didn’t.
At least, not here.
Instead — it’s an advanced biological ability that came from outer space.
An ethereal octopus emerges from the depths.
Picture: iStockSource:istock
THE KRAKEN WAKES
In April last year, researchers found octopuses — and some of their cuttlefish and squid cousins — regularly edit their RNA.
This sets them apart from the rest of the animal world.
RNA, like DNA, records genetic code. But where DNA is a double-stranded molecule, RNA consists of just one strand. Its role within our body is to transmit genetic information to trigger the production of proteins.
But some scientists feel RNA may have been the original DNA, acting as the permanent storehouse of genetic code among Earth’s earliest organisms.
When it comes to cephalopods like the common squid, researchers have found that up to 60 per cent of the RNA in its nervous system had been edited after it was programmed by DNA. These changes adapted its brain to shifting temperatures in it ocean habitat.
Last year, it was discovered two species of octopus and one of cuttlefish does the same thing — routinely.
“It could be something as simple as temperature changes or as complicated as experience, a form of memory,” Rosenthal says.
But the ability to reshape physiologies on the fly has come at a price.
Coleoids aren’t evolving much.
This could be because the drive isn’t there: They’ve found editing RNA is way to adapt to — and survive — change. So their DNA doesn’t need to change.
“The conclusion here is that in order to maintain this flexibility to edit RNA, the coleoids have had to give up the ability to evolve in the surrounding regions — a lot,” Rosenthal wrote.
Nasa astronaut Ron Garan took this photo of a meteor through a window in the International Space Station.
Picture: TwitterSource:Supplied
PANSPERMIA THEORY
The origin of life on Earth is one of the toughest nuts for science to crack. We know much of the chemistry involved. But not the circumstances that brings it all together into a living being.
There’s still a gap in our understanding large enough for gods and other extraordinary ideas to fit within.
Such as panspermia.
It’s the idea that life here began out there — with scatterings of organic molecules carrying their pre-programmed codes for life across the gulf of time and space.
Evidence is lacking.
But the idea is being examined.
Now a peer-reviewed article published in the science journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology is stirring the origins-of-life pot.
The recent Rosetta mission to Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko confirmed organic molecules that form the basis of sugars and amino acids were dusted among its mounds and valleys of frozen ice.
It’s not life.
But these materials are the building blocks of DNA.
Instead, it builds up the idea that our biochemistry has been contaminated by influences from beyond our own planet.
The authors argue that a cloud of organic material likely rained down upon the Earth about 500 million years ago. And that changed everything.
Could the code of life be carried across the cosmos in space dust? One group of researchers believes so.
Picture: HubbleSource:Supplied
ALIEN IMPACT
The Cambrian Explosion is certainly mysterious. It was a period of time where life on Earth diversified dramatically, and rapidly.
It’s an event which took place shortly after the emergence of retroviruses in our environment.
It was especially dramatic for a type of mollusc called a cephalopod. Tentacles reached out from their shells and wove their way into enormous variety of creatures which eventually became the octopus, cuttlefish and squid we know today.
“We believe this coincidence is not fortuitous but is consistent with a key prediction ... whereby major extinction-diversification evolutionary boundaries coincide with virus-bearing cometary-bolide bombardment events,” the study’s abstract reads.
This idea is that space-borne retroviruses eventually found their way to the Earth’s surface before attaching themselves to living organisms. Once there, they reprogrammed the creatures’ evolution.
“A second focus is the remarkable evolution of intelligent complexity (Cephalopods) culminating in the emergence of the Octopus,” the study reads.
“A third focus concerns the microorganism fossil evidence contained within meteorites as well as the detection in the upper atmosphere of apparent incoming life-bearing particles from space.”
The paper argues the space-based transfer of life was likely on a larger scale than just retroviruses. Whole sets of frozen genetic material were cast about on the stellar winds before splashing down in our oceans.
“Thus the possibility that cryopreserved squid and/or octopus eggs, arrived in icy bolides several hundred million years ago should not be discounted,” the study reads.
Therefore, octopuses are aliens.
It’s interesting conjecture. It’s an idea that fits the circumstances. But concrete evidence is yet to be produced. The idea is yet to be tested.
But it’s tantalising.
“Life may have been seeded here on Earth by life-bearing comets as soon as conditions on Earth allowed it to flourish (about or just before 4.1 Billion years ago); and living organisms such as space-resistant and space-hardy bacteria, viruses, more complex eukaryotic cells, fertilised ova and seeds have been continuously delivered ever since to Earth so being one important driver of further terrestrial evolution which has resulted in considerable genetic diversity and which has led to the emergence of mankind.”
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Ligt diep in onze planeet nog een andere aarde verscholen? Dit zet je aan het denken
Ligt diep in onze planeet nog een andere aarde verscholen? Dit zet je aan het denken
Op 13 juni 2014 kondigden wetenschappers aan dat de aardmantel tot wel drie keer zoveel water bevat als alle oceanen op aarde.
De ontdekking liet zien dat we nog maar heel weinig weten over het binnenste van de aarde.
Het diepste gat ooit gemaakt door mensen is ongeveer 12 kilometer. “Dat is niets,” aldus natuurkundige John Brandenburg in het tv-programma Ancient Aliens.
Agartha
Tot dusver zijn er alleen theorieën over de samenstelling van de aarde. We hebben nog nooit diep genoeg geboord om ze te kunnen verifiëren.
Sommigen stellen dat er diep in onze planeet nog een andere aarde kan worden gevonden.
In boeddhistische geschriften wordt gesproken van een plek genaamd Agartha of Agharti, een wereld in de aarde die bewoond zou zijn.
Nog een zon
Gerespecteerde wetenschappers en wiskundigen hielden zich hiermee bezig.
Edmond Halley is vooral bekend geworden vanwege de komeet van Halley, maar hij stelde ook dat het binnenste van de aarde hol is en bestaat uit meerdere concentrische lagen.
Leonhard Euler, die algemeen wordt beschouwd als één van de belangrijkste wiskundigen aller tijden, was er ook van overtuigd dat de aarde hol is en dat er in onze planeet nog een zon kan worden gevonden.
Onbekend gebied
Euler zei verder dat zich rond de polen openingen bevinden die toegang verschaffen tot de holle aarde.
De beroemde wiskundige opperde dat er geavanceerde beschavingen leven diep in de aarde.
In 1947 maakte admiraal Richard Byrd verkenningsvluchten boven de Noordpool. Daar ontdekte hij naar verluidt een onbekend gebied, dat hij ‘het centrum van het onbekende’ noemde.
Mysterieuze vaartuigen
Hij deed een aantal opmerkelijke uitspraken. Zo werd hij naar eigen zeggen geconfronteerd met mysterieuze vaartuigen, die ‘van pool naar pool vlogen’.
Eenmaal terug in de Verenigde Staten zou de admiraal opdracht hebben gekregen om zijn mond te houden.
"I Had A Near Death Experience, and It Was Beautiful!" (True Story!)
"I Had A Near Death Experience, and It Was Beautiful!" (True Story!)
A near-death experience is a personal experience associated with death or impending death. Such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, the experience of absolute dissolution, and the presence of a light. NDEs are a recognized part of some transcendental and religious beliefs in an afterlife.
These are a collection of 100% TRUE paranormal Stories. Here at “Strange But True Stories”, we vow to bring you 100% True cases of: Paranormal Stories, Bigfoot stories, Time Glitches & the Mandela Effect, and so much more! You can submit your TRUE story to us at: strangebuttruestories2@gmail.com
What do you think about this video? Let us know in the comments section and thanks for stopping by Beforeitsnews!
During excavations in Eastern Sudan, the scientists from the Wrocław University’s Institute of Archeology found remnants of the humanoids’ presence which tell the untold story of the different phases of human species migration from half a million years ago.
Instytut Archeologii Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego/Facebook
A group of Polish archeologists have uncovered sensational proof that Homo Erectus, the ancestor of today’s humans, spread around the globe using previously undiscovered migration routes.
During excavations in Eastern Sudan, the scientists from the Wrocław University’s Institute of Archeology found remnants of the humanoids’ presence which tell the untold story of the different phases of human species migration from half a million years ago.
Discoveries in the Eastern Desert also confirm the long coexistence of Homo erectus with Homo sapiens in Africa: it is a period of at least 100,000 years, falling between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. Both species lived there simultaneously.
Instytut Archeologii Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego/Facebook
The Polish archeologists, together with colleagues from Germany, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and the United States decided to conduct their research north of the area, which is usually perceived as the cradle of humanity (along the Great Rift Valley, from Mozambique to the Red Sea) – the Eastern Desert in Sudan.
Enticed by the news, that gold miners in the area were uncovering prehistoric tools, the scientist not only confirmed this information but came across a lot more.
Enticed by the news, that gold miners in the area were uncovering prehistoric tools, the scientist not only confirmed this information but came across a lot more.
Instytut Archeologii Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego/Facebook
On March 6th, the archeologists summarized their project on the Institute of Archeology’s Facebook:
“We just finished the last season of excavations in Sudan, which are carried out by our Institute in collaboration with Museum of Archaeology in Gdansk and Neelian University in Khartoum.
“This international project entitled ‘Homo erectus on the path to Eurasia…’ is focused on remains of Pleistocene settlement in the Eastern Desert. During this season we excavated four sites which yielded many finds.
“The oldest artifacts, which we found at archaeological site EDAR 7, are dated to 0,5 Ma [500 thousand years ago] and related to early middle Pleistocene Acheulean culture. This is the oldest known archaeological site in NE Africa.”
Homo Erectus migrations from Africa.
PAP Infographics/PAP
What they found was that Homo Erectus traveled outside of Africa not only along the Nile river but also through what is now a desert which used to be a humid area with plants and rivers leading to the Red Sea.
Discoveries in the Eastern Desert also confirm the long coexistence of Homo erectus with Homo sapiens in Africa: it is a period of at least 100,000 years, falling between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. Both species lived there simultaneously, although one gave birth to the other.
The archeologists, led by Wrocław University’s Prof. Mirosław Masojć (pictured), discovered “… an assemblage of artifacts containing, among others, choppers and chopping tools, bifacial tools (hand axes and cleavers) and big flake tools. ”
Instytut Archeologii Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego
The archeologists, led by Wrocław University’s Prof. Mirosław Masojć reveal they discovered “… an assemblage of artifacts containing, among others, choppers and chopping tools, bifacial tools (hand axes and cleavers) and big flake tools.
“Younger finds from the Middle Stone Age, which were manufactured using the Levallois method, can be linked to the settlement of this region by anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens).
“Every day, we covered 90 kilometers in the desert from our base in Atbara to the sites. In the afternoons, after finishing field work, we devoted ourselves to analyses and recording of our artifacts. Some of the tools were chosen to be transported to Poland, which will allow us to conduct microscopic use-wear analyses.”
Secrets of the Solar System Documentary - Formation of Earth and Solar System
Secrets of the Solar System Documentary - Formation of Earth and Solar System
Our Solar System, and all other star systems, form from a collapsing nebula. Often called stellar nurseries, nebulae are the birthplace of stars.
They are made up of mostly hydrogen but also contain other matter like gases, dust, ice and rock. The gravity of the nebula pulls this matter into the centre, and the nebula experiences a gravitational collapse.
If the compression raises the core temperature enough to reach thermonuclear fusion, the centre mass generates a protostar. This process takes about 10 million years.
Ever forget where something was? The car keys, a hat, your parked car? Well, I saw this photo with something in the background in the news over ten years ago. Just the photo and I knew I had to find it no matter what it takes. I have been on the lookout for it for a long time and had almost forgotten about it until I accidentally came across it today in the Apollo 14 image index. Why was I searching for this boring photo of rocks on the moon with a hammer and cup on a rock near an astronaut shadow? It couldn't possibly be that important right? Maybe it could be. You see, there was a face on the edge of the rock and I think that astronaut shadow is of him taking photos of his hammer and the rock with the face in the background, so that there would be a size comparison in the photo of the face. Yes, I believe he saw the face too. Its so old and covered in lunar dust, he may have wondered if it was just coincidence or an actual alien artefact.
Parodolia you say?
Seeing faces where they don't exist? I have a masters in counselling, I know psychology. I have also learned about a lot of secret psychological studies that the CIA conducted for decades. For instance, during the cold war the CIA manual for training agents had a cover entitled, "CIA Manual of Trickery And Deception." (see photo above). Did you know that the CIA only started spreading the word of parodolia because of me reporting faces on alien planets in 2010-11 when I was getting noticed by news agencies...and the CIA response was to get one word (parodolia) on TV news and newspapers through their agents working in areas of NASA, US government, SETI, astronomy, oh and hired astronomers and astrophysicists like Phil Plait, Bill Nye and Degrasse Tyson. I have confronted Phil who attacked many UFO eyewitnesses on his blog about this on his own website. Just mention my name to him and he cringes in fear. Yes, they still do work to spread disinformation for the CIA...in turn, they get more public opportunities to speak provided by the CIA. So lets stop wasting our time being mentally programmed by the CIA, shall we? I have accomplished a goal I set out to do over ten years ago. I am proud that I stuck to my guns until I found this important alien evidence. You see, the faces of aliens in rocks or hills and on the ground are the most important astronomy, astrophysics and astrobiology discoveries in the entire history of humanity. The faces teach us something that the CIA dreads the public knowing. The faces teach us what the species of aliens out there look like. And if you know what they look like...you realise they don't look so scary after all. Look closely at this face in the photo. The face is that of a human like alien with pointy long ears. This species looks a little like us! We...are not alone in our solar system...and we never have been.
Victory is sweet! Scott C. Waring - Self-Proclaimed Astrobiologist
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Why This Martian Full Moon Looks Like Candy
Why This Martian Full Moon Looks Like Candy
These three views of the Martian moon Phobos were taken by NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter using its infrared camera, THEMIS. Each color represents a different temperature range.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/SSI
For the first time, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has caught the Martian moon Phobos during a full moon phase. Each color in this new image represents a temperature range detected by Odyssey's infrared camera, which has been studying the Martian moon sinceSeptember of 2017. Looking like a rainbow-colored jawbreaker, these latest observations could help scientists understand what materials make up Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons.
Odyssey is NASA's longest-lived Mars mission. Its heat-vision camera, the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), can detect changes in surface temperature as Phobos circles Mars every seven hours. Different textures and minerals determine how much heat THEMIS detects
This movie shows three views of the Martian moon Phobos as viewed in visible light by NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter. The apparent motion is due to movement by Odyssey's infrared camera, Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), rather than movement by the moon.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/SSI
"This new image is a kind of temperature bullseye — warmest in the middle and gradually cooler moving out," said Jeffrey Plaut, Odyssey project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which leads the mission. "Each Phobos observation is done from a slightly different angle or time of day, providing a new kind of data."
On April 24, 2019, THEMIS looked at Phobos dead-on, with the Sun behind the spacecraft. This full moon view is better for studying material composition, whereas half-moon views are better for looking at surface textures.
"With the half-moon views, we could see how rough or smooth the surface is and how it's layered," said Joshua Bandfield, a THEMIS co-investigator and senior research scientist at the Space Sciences Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "Now we're gathering data on what minerals are in it, including metals."
Iron and nickel are two such metals. Depending on how abundant the metals are, and how they're mixed with other minerals, these data could help determine whether Phobos is a captured asteroid or a pile of Mars fragments, blasted into space by a giant impact long ago.
These recent observations won't definitively explain Phobos' origin, Bandfield added. But Odyssey is collecting vital data on a moon scientists still know little about — one that future missions might want to visit. Human exploration of Phobos has been discussed in the space community as a distant, future possibility, and a Japanese sample-return mission to the moon is scheduled for launch in the 2020s.
"By studying the surface features, we're learning where the rockiest spots on Phobos are and where the fine, fluffy dust is," Bandfield said. "Identifying landing hazards and understanding the space environment could help future missions to land on the surface."
Odyssey has been orbiting Mars since 2001. It takes thousands of images of the Martian surface each month, many of which help scientists select landing sites for future missions. The spacecraft also serves an important role relaying data for Mars' newest inhabitant, NASA's InSight lander. But studying Phobos is a new chapter for the orbiter.
"I think it's a great example of taking a spacecraft that's been around a very long time and finding new things you can do with it," Bandfield said. "It's great that you can still use this tool to collect groundbreaking science."
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. THEMIS was developed by Arizona State University in Tempe in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. The prime contractor for the Odyssey project, Lockheed Martin Space in Denver, developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena.
If aliens can watch us how can they be less advanced?
If aliens can watch us how can they be less advanced?
While theories come and go, facts don't, and the fact is, aliens, as they are called these days, are not really aliens. They have been and are very much an integral part of human civilization that we live in today.
As a result of increasing number of UFO sightings, recently we have seen number of theories floating in the cyberspace strongly proposing aliens do in fact exist. One such theory suggests that aliens exist but are hiding from human beings on this planet. It also proposes number of reasons for such behavior of the aliens.
The “Zoo theory”, proposed by an MIT astronomer, John A. Ball, suggests that “aliens might be living in some distant galaxy, and they know about the existence of humans, but still, they are purposefully hiding from us and avoiding contact with humans. The theory further states that aliens aren’t still advance enough. Therefore they don’t interfere with our activity, similar to zookeepers at a zoo or nature preserve.”
“I suggest, first, that mankind is neither alone nor number one. Advanced civilizations exist and exert some degree of control over the galaxy. Second, they’re aware of us at least at some level. But are they concerned with us? We may be only an obscure entry in their tabulation of inhabited regions of the galaxy. Third, we’re unaware of them because either they want us to be unaware| they’re hiding (But this means that they care about us, else why bother to hide?)|or because we’re not (yet) clever enough to know that they’re there, but they don’t care whether we know,” Ball said. (Source)
While theories come and go, facts don’t, and the fact is, aliens, as they are called these days, are not really aliens. They have been and are very much an integral part of human civilization that we live in. Vedic science has talked about extraterrestrials and civilizations beyond our planet and galaxy thousands of years back.
The difference, however, is the descriptions of such aliens. Almost always, when people discuss about aliens, they only refer to those weird drawings with big eyes and out-of-shape heads. This is misleading or, at the best, inaccurate.
These drawings may be based on some reported UFO crash in the past and may be appropriate from that point of view, but the extraterrestrials or celestial beings residing in the upper planetary systems and described in the Vedic texts are entirely human-like with much more impressive looks and capabilities. Even some of those living in the lower planetary systems are also human-like. There also are weird looking living beings in the universe.
There are incidents recorded in the history of India, previously known as Bharat varsh, when celestial beings came to our planet. One such incident was when Lord Krishna crushed the false pride of the king of heaven, Indra. Realizing his mistake, he personally came down to Vrindavan and apologized to Lord Krishna. In another incident, Lord Brahma, the chief engineer and secondary creator of this universe, came to meet Lord Krishna in Dwarka. These are not imaginary stories as proposed by less intelligent class of people whose limited brain substance and knowledge of the world they live in do not allow them access to such phenomena. There are literally thousands of incidents and even today we can see the proof of those visits.
If aliens can watch us how can they be less advanced considering we aren’t able to watch them? While the Zoo theory is one step ahead of the mainstream science, it does not perform when viewed from Vedic perspective.
It is true that many civilizations spread across the universe are technically more advanced than us, the earthly beings. This being the case, it is also true that they watch us closely. They do not respond to our radio signals does not mean they are afraid of us. It means either our radio signals don’t reach them, don’t speak their language, or they don’t bother to respond considering modern scientists rookies in interplanetary communications.
It is to be noted that the language of the Vedas, Sanskrit, has been rated by many scientists around the world as the most sophisticated and versatile language for interplanetary communication. This makes perfect sense considering the Vedic scriptures have records of such communications and interstellar transportation.
Sending out radio signals in search of other civilizations may be a way to find them, chanting Vedic hymns written in Sanskrit language is a sure way to not only reach such advanced civilizations but also interact with them and meet them. This was a common practice during the Vedic era and devotees used to chant Vedic mantras to invoke the blessings of different demigods and of the Supreme Lord. The vibrations created by properly chanted Vedic mantras travel across galaxies and meet the right audience. In Kaliyuga, however, the ability to chant such mantras is almost lost and so we are advised by the Vedas to just chant the holy names of the Lord.
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GIMBAL: AUTHENTICATED UAP VIDEO
GIMBAL: AUTHENTICATED UAP VIDEO
UNPRECEDENTED HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
GIMBAL is the first of three US military videos of unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) that has been through the official declassification review process of the United States government and has been approved for public release. This footage, and all official USG footage you will see on TTS Academy’s Community of Interest (COI), comes with essential chain-of-custody documentation validating that it is received in its original and unaltered form and is authentic. The US Department of Defense uses this process in order to meticulously ensure that information and material retain their integrity without revealing sources and methods.
This documentation is what sets this footage apart from anything else that has previously made its way to the public domain, by establishing its authenticity and thereby giving it enormous historical significance.
While that fact alone is of historical significance, what this 34 seconds of video provides is remarkable. Several key observations are contained in this one video that may help us collectively better understand the physics and technology being employed. In addition, we hear US fighter pilots struggling to determine the nature of object. Key findings include:
Low observability in both electro-optical and electromagnetic spectrums.
No distinguishable flight surfaces.
Lack of obvious propulsion system.
Never-before-seen flight capabilities.
Possible energy or resonance field of unknown nature.
The filename “GIMBAL” seems to be traceable to the unusual maneuvering of the UAP.
BACKGROUND
GIMBAL is a product of one of the most sophisticated tracking systems on US military aircraft. It was captured by a US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet using the Raytheon AN/ASQ-228 Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) pod. The ATFLIR contains the most advanced sensors and powerful tracking lasers on the market and must be operated by a weapons sensor operator who the military trains at a cost of millions. The ATFLIR has high resolution and can locate and designate targets at distances exceeding 40 nautical miles.
The date, location, and other information have been removed by the originating authority as part of the release approval process.
The GIMBAL footage shows what was on display in the cockpit for the pilots of the Super Hornet. Here are the major features and what they mean:
Description of HUD (Heads Up Display) seen in the GIMBAL video as filmed by a US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet using the Raytheon AN/ASQ-228 Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) pod.
ANALYZING THE VIDEO
As the video starts, this is what the pilots observe from inside their cockpit:
The sensor is in “white-hot” mode—white elements in the display are warmer than the dark, or cooler, areas. The UAP appears as a white shape in the middle of the screen.
The chasing aircraft is in a left-hand turn flying Mach 0.58 at an altitude of 25,010 feet.
The UAP is flying slightly below 2 degrees and 54 degrees to the left of the Super Hornet, traveling right to left.
Looking closely, we can see a dark, or opaque field that appears to surround or encapsulate the object.
The pilots aboard the Super Hornet are not only highly capable fighter pilots, but they are trained observers skilled at scrutinizing their observations and targets in order to ascertain “friend or foe.” They are specifically trained to look for discreet changes in shape, size position, flight attitude (angles), and speed in order to determine the nature of the threat. They are able to discern nuanced details that few people would normally recognize. Paramount to their training is their ability to handle stress and maintain radio discipline. In the footage audio, they are clearly struggling to understand what they are witnessing.
At 0:03, in the first radio transmission, we hear one of the pilots state that it is “a [expletive] drone” aircraft.
At 0:06, upon further observation, a different observer calmly states, “There is a whole fleet of them. Look on the ASA (radar display).” The first observer responds with “My gosh!” It is important to note that the ATFLIR has only a single object in its display. The radar is simultaneously providing the pilots a picture of the larger air space, where they are tracking multiple targets.
At 0:11, it is noted that “They are all going against the wind. The wind is 120 knots (138 mph) out of the west.” We can see that the speed and altitude of the object is unusual for any drone-type aircraft. On that information alone, the likelihood of an entire fleet of drones capable of operating under this scenario is highly improbable and would require resources only few nations could afford.
In the midst of this exchange, the sensor is switched from “white-hot” to “black-hot.” The imaging of the object is now much clearer. It has a distinct shape: a distorted oval with small protrusions from the top and bottom. The object’s opaque aura is now also very distinct: a “cool” glow that extends about a body thickness around the entire object. There appears to be no observable flight surfaces or exhaust plume, nor any typical components usually associated with conventional aircraft.
“Look at that thing, dude.” The observer is clearly surprised at what is being seen.
At 0:24, the object makes a small, but very sharp, altitude change, possibly indicating it may be operating in a vacuum environment. Its direction and speed remain unchanged despite the continuous 120-knot headwind it is encountering.
“That’s not [unintelligible] is it?”
At 0:27, the object begins a series of distinct rotations and changes orientation by almost 100 degrees. Its orientation is now perpendicular to the horizontal plane despite the headwinds. This maneuver is executed in a manner that is inconsistent with current principles of aerodynamics, and possibly indicative of a vacuum environment. As the video concludes, the object's orientation and performance seem to defy current principals of physics to include atmospheric resistance and normal aerodynamic forces. During the orientation change, it also slows to a near stop, but does not change altitude.
One observer states, “Look at that thing!”
Another observer says, “It’s rotating.”
IMPLICATIONS
With the chain-of-custody documentation, GIMBAL can officially be designated as credible, authentic “evidence” of a UAP. Evidence of a flying vehicle with a shape normally associated with something out of science fiction. Currently there are no other known technologies that we can compare to what is being observed in both performance and design, which means there’s a craft that demonstrates flight characteristics unlike anything we know, understand, or can duplicate. Because we cannot duplicate these flight characteristics, we can conclude that the object is employing technologies that are more advanced than our own.
GIMBAL is just one of several official videos obtained by TTS Academy that can be interpreted as credible proof that the physics of advanced flight exists. We are also in the process of collecting additional data from both military and civilian personnel and sensors. The question now changes from “Can it be done?” to “How is it done?”
Blue Origin is 'going to the MOON': Jeff Bezos unveils lunar lander at mysterious invite-only event in Washington D.C. and suggests his firm will hit VP Pence's 2024 deadline for putting humans back on the surface
Blue Origin is 'going to the MOON': Jeff Bezos unveils lunar lander at mysterious invite-only event in Washington D.C. and suggests his firm will hit VP Pence's 2024 deadline for putting humans back on the surface
Jeff Bezos revealed Blue Origin's lunar lander, Blue Moon on Thursday afternoon during a secretive event
The lander has been in development for three years, putting it on track for a 2024 landing, Bezos said
Company also developing a new rocket engine for the system, which could be stepping stone for colonization
Blue Origin teased an image of Ernest Shackleton's exploration ship Endurance, suggesting their moon plans
Shackleton is the name of a crater in the moon's famed South Pole-Aitken Basin, many noted ahead of event
Blue Origin is now in the running to put Americans back on the moon by 2024.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has revealed the ambitious next steps for his aerospace company at a highly-secretive media event in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.
During the event, which kicked off at 4 p.m., the billionaire and Blue Origin founder started off by sharing elaborate concept images of self-sustaining space habitats reminiscent of the film Interstellar, with lush greenery and futuristic homes within its walls.
But, the real star of the talk turned out to be something much closer to home – the moon. On stage, Bezos took the wraps off a massive model of what will be the firm’s first lunar lander, dubbed Blue Moon.
‘This is an incredible vehicle, and it’s going to the moon,’ Bezos said, according to CNN, which live-blogged the event.
According to the CEO, the lander has been in development for the last three years and is on track for a 2024 crewed moon landing – falling in line with the five-year deadline revealed earlier this year by Vice President Mike Pence.
The plan could ultimately serve as a stepping stone for colonization of the moon and deeper space targets, Bezos suggested.
Scroll down for video
Blue Origin is now in the running to put Americans back on the moon by 2024. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has revealed the ambitious next steps for his aerospace company at a highly-secretive media event in Washington, D.C. on Thursday. On stage, Bezos took the wraps off a massive model of what will be the firm’s first lunar lander, dubbed Blue Moon
'It's time to go back to the moon, this time to stay,' Bezos said during the event, according to CNN, mirroring a statement made repeatedly over the past few months by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
Blue Origin says its lunar lander will be able to carry all sorts of payloads to the surface and can hold ‘multiple metric tons.’
The craft will ’enable a sustained human presence on the moon,’ the company said. And, according to the CEO, the company already has about six customers.
The lander builds upon technology the firm has been testing over the past few years in its New Shepard rocket, including propulsion and precision guidance, as well as the vertical landing system. The firm has quietly been developing Blue Moon for years.
According to CNN, Blue Origin is also developing a new rocket engine specifically for its planned moon landings. The system, called BE-7, has been in the works for three years.
Blue Origin says it could conduct the first test fire as soon as this summer.
Bezos also delved into his visions for human colonization of the moon and eventually, deep space, touching on the concept of self-sustaining ‘O’Neill colonies’ exponentially larger than the International Space Station where humans and animals could live.
Blue Origin says its lunar lander will be able to carry all sorts of payloads to the surface and can hold ‘multiple metric tons.’ According to the CEO, the lander has been in development for the last three years and is on track for a 2024 crewed moon landing – falling in line with the five-year deadline revealed earlier this year by Vice President Mike Pence
Jeff Bezos announces Blue Moon, a lunar landing vehicle for the Moon, during a Blue Origin event in Washington, DC, May 9, 2019
Earth’s resources alone won’t be able to sustain humanity forever even with energy conservation, the mogul noted during the event, according to CNN.
Considering the possibility of a future that relies on strict rationing, Bezos suggests we must look toward space in order to continue thriving.
‘That’s the path that we would be on,' he said,’ according to CNN.
‘It would lead for the first time to where your children and grandchildren have worse lives than you. That's a bad path.
The event was first teased last month in a cryptic tweet from the Blue Origin Twitter account, where it shared an image of explorer Ernest Shackleton's Endurance, a polar exploration ship lost to the ice in in 1915.
Additionally, in a notice sent to the reporters, the company said it 'will give an update on [Blue Origin's] progress and share our vision of going to space to benefit Earth.'
Jeff Bezos, owner of Blue Origin, unveils a rocket engine that will be used on a new lunar landing module called Blue Moon
During the event, which kicked off at 4 p.m on Thursday, the billionaire and Blue Origin founder started off by sharing elaborate concept images of self-sustaining space habitats reminiscent of the film Interstellar, with lush greenery and futuristic homes within its walls
Bezos also delved into his visions for human colonization of the moon and eventually, deep space, touching on the concept of self-sustaining ‘O’Neill colonies’ exponentially larger than the International Space Station where humans and animals could live. The moon landing plan could ultimately serve as a stepping stone for colonization of the moon and deeper space targets
WHAT IS THE BLUE MOON LANDER?
Blue Origin unveiled its lunar lander during a secretive event in May
Jeff Bezos has revealed his space exploration company's new lunar lander, dubbed Blue Moon.
The spacecraft is capable of carrying and delivering payloads to the moon's surface.
'This is an incredible vehicle and it's going to the moon,' Bezos said.
Blue Origin has long called out a mission to the moon as one of its foremost priorities and spent the past three years working to develop the craft.
It harnesses many of the same 'propulsion, precision guidance, vertical landing and landing gear systems' utilized by New Shepard, Blue Origin's rocket meant to ferry humans to the moon.
The craft is equipped with fuel cells to provide 'kilowatts of power' that are capable of lasting for long-distance missions.
Once Blue Moon arrives at its destination, it uses machine learning algorithms to land with precision on the lunar surface.
Blue Moon can deliver several metric tons of payload to the moon, thanks to its top deck and lower bays, the latter of which will allow for 'closer access to the lunar surface and off-loading,' the firm said.
With this technology, Blue Origin hopes it will prepare us to be able to send humans back to the moon as soon as 2024.
The spacecraft is capable of carrying and delivering payloads to the moon's surface. 'This is an incredible vehicle and it's going to the moon,' Bezos said
Blue Origin also shared a copy of the 'Earthrise' photo taken by NASA astronauts during the Apollo 8 mission, in addition to the image of Endurance it tweeted out.
Several Blue Origin fans were quick to point out that the image of Endurance may be an obscure reference to a future lunar mission. As it turns out, they were correct.
A crater located on the south pole of the moon, called Shackleton, was named after the famed explorer, suggesting that Bezos may have some lunar-related announcements up his sleeve.
The Shackleton crater is located in the expansive South Pole-Aitken Basin, one of the largest known impact craters in the solar system, that spans 1,600 miles and is approximately eight miles deep.
Scientists have long had their eye on the Aitken Basin, as they believe it could hold a bounty of life-sustaining resources.
NASA hopes to conduct a mission to the moon's south pole as soon as 2024, while China's Chang'e 6 lander aims to explore the lunar south pole.
Many scientists are eyeing this area of the moon as they believe it could be host to huge sheets of ice that could be mined for drinking water or converted into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel or oxygen to breathe.
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Many were quick to point out that Blue Moon is already used by the popular brewing company. Blue Moon Brewing Co quickly jumped into the conversation on Twitter
The craft will ’enable a sustained human presence on the moon,’ the company said. And, according to the CEO, the company already has about six customers
The event was teased in a cryptic tweet from Blue Origin's Twitter account, where it shared an image of explorer Ernest Shackleton's Endurance, an exploration ship lost to the ice in in 1915
NASA'S PLAN TO PUT HUMANS BACK ON THE MOON
NASA could have humans back on the moon within the next five years under the latest orders from the Trump administration.
Vice President Mike Pencerevealed the new deadline during a speech at the fifth meeting of the National Space Council in Huntsville, Alabama today, where he told an audience that the president wants astronauts to touch down on the lunar south pole by 2024.
The VP called on NASA to ‘reignite the spark of urgency’ for space exploration and make it a priority to set ‘bold goals’ and stay on schedule.
This accelerated timeline, however will undoubtedly be met with many challenges; just weeks ago NASA said it was on schedule to have humans on the moon by 2028 – a full four years later than the new target. turn, it could help sustain future human colonies on the moon.
IN Blue Origin has also discussed its plans to build and launch a lunar lander, revealing concept images of the spacecraft in 2018.
'The future will be better for our children - and our children's children - if we use space to benefit life on Earth and enable millions of people to live and work in space,' the company said.
'The next logical step in this path is a return to the Moon. To do this we need reusable access to the lunar surface and its resources.'
As part of the mission, referred to as Blue Moon, the company hopes to deliver cargo to the moon's surface, as well as scout for sources of water.
Blue Origin is also part of The Moon Race, a non-profit that aims to establish a new competition, enlisting teams to develop ways to produce energy, grow food and establish infrastructure on the moon in exchange for cash prizes.
The Moon Race has also attracted support from Airbus and the European Space Agency.
Today's announcement could eventually tie into an expected update on Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket.
New Glenn is the company's orbital rocket that it hopes to launch into space in 2021, though Blue Origin has released few details about the vehicle.
It's thought that the heavy-lift launch rocket could help Blue Origin complete a mission to the moon.
Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket lands on May 2nd after its 11th successful test flight into space. The rocket has been eyed as a vehicle to deliver humans to the edge of space
The company has yet to conduct test flights of New Glenn and it has not been seen publicly.
Meanwhile, a smaller rocket named New Shepard is envisioned to deliver humans to the edge of space later this year.
Blue Origin conducted its 11th successful launch and landing of the New Shepard rocket earlier this month.
The company faces stiff competition from a range of players, including Elon Musk's SpaceX and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which some have coined the 'billionaire space race.'
THE BILLIONAIRE SPACE RACE
Jeff Bezos in front of Blue Origin's space capsule
Jeff Bezos' space tourism project with Blue Origin is competing with a similar programme in development by Space X, the rocket firm founded and run by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Virgin Galactic, backed by Richard Branson.
Bezos revealed in April 2017 that he finances Blue Origin with around $1 billion (£720 million) of Amazon stock each year.
The system consists of a pressurised crew capsule atop a reusable 'New Shepard' booster rocket.
The richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos is pursuing Blue Origin with vigour as he tries to launch his 'New Glenn' rocket into low-Earth orbit by 2020.
Whilst Bezos is yet to leave the atmosphere of Earth, despite several successful launches, Elon Musk's SpaceX programme has already sent the Falcon Heavy rocket into space.
On February 6 2018, SpaceX sent the rocket towards the orbit of Mars, 140 million miles away.
On board was a red Tesla roadster that belonged to Musk himself.
Elon Musk with his Dragon Crew capsule
SpaceX have won several multi-million dollar contracts from Nasa as the space agency hopes to use the rockets as a fast-track for its colonisation of the red planet.
It has successfully sent a Dragon capsule to the ISS and undocked without a hitch.
NASA has already selected two astronauts who will be on-board the first manned Dragon mission.
Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic successfully conducted two test flight of the Virgin Galactic’s Unity spaceplane.
The first took place in December 2018 and the latest took place on February 22nd.
The flight accelerated to over 2,000 miles per hour (Mach 2.7).
More than 600 affluent customers to date, including celebrities Brad Pitt and Katy Perry, have reserved a $250,000 (£200,000) seat on one of Virgin's space trips,
The billionaire mogul also said he expects Elon Musk to win the race to Mars with his private rocket firm SpaceX.
Richard Branson with the Virgin Galactic craft
SpaceShipTwo can carry six passengers and two pilots. Each passenger gets the same seating position with two large windows - one to the side and one overhead.
The space ship is 60ft long with a 90inch diameter cabin allowing maximum room for the astronauts to float in zero gravity.
It climbs to 50,000ft before the rocket engine ignites. SpaceShipTwo separates from its carrier craft, White Knight II, once it's passed the 50-mile mark.
Passengers become 'astronauts' when they reach the Karman line, the boundary of Earth's atmosphere.
The spaceship will then make a sub-orbital journey with approximately six minutes of weightlessness, with the entire flight lasting approximately 1.5 hours.
Telescopes and spacecraft are already watching the skies for potentially hazardous asteroids, but what could be done to actuallydeflect a dangerous objectheading toward Earth?
The upcoming mission, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), will send a spacecraft to crash into an object typical of the size of those asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth. According to NASA, almost one-sixth of the known near-Earth asteroids (NEA) are multiple-body or binary systems, and DART will travel to one such system to perform its mission.
The overall goal of the mission — which will conduct its crash test in about two years — is to gauge what future tools can successfully deflect the orbit of a potentially hazardous asteroid. The mission is led by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) and is managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office.
DART will travel to the binary asteroid system 65803 Didymos and will slam into the smaller of the two objects, also known as "Didymoon'' or Didymos B. The two rocks may receive another earthly visitor after DART, too. The European Space Agency is proposing a mission called Hera, which would explore Didymos and, alongside the first two European cubesats to travel into deep space, learn about the aftermath of the DART impact.
Didymos is about 2,540 feet (775 meters) wide, and Didymoon measures 540 feet (165 m) across.
The mission's launch window is now slated to open in July 2021, according to DART Project Manager Cheryl Reed. She also said on May 1 that current estimates suggest the spacecraft will carry a mass of 1,224 lbs. (555 kilograms) and will achieve a closing speed of 14,900 mph (24,000 km/h) before smashing into Didymoon in 2022.
The spacecraft will use the "kinetic impactor" technique to strike Didymoon and change the asteroid's motion. (The probe will not employ any explosives.)
Simulated image of the Didymos system, based on photometric light curve and radar data. The primary body is about half a mile (800 meters) in diameter and the moonlet, known as Didymoon or Didymos B, is approximately 492 feet (150 meters) across.
An element to this collision that several researchers touched on at the conference was how much material ejected from the asteroid after the spacecraft hit would help boost deflection — the momentum enhancement factor, which is known as beta. Research teams are working on 2D and 3Dmodels to better understand how Didymoon's composition, surface material or DART's angle of impact, for example, would affect deflection.
The Hera mission will receive a final full funding decision in November 2019. If it does get the green light, Hera and its two cubesats, APEX and Juventas, will make a series of measurements, observing the shape of DART's impact crater, Didymoon's mass, the asteroid's density and porosity, and more.
New York-based design agency AI SpaceFactory took the top prize in a NASA competition to3D print a habitatthat could be used on the moon or Mars.
AI SpaceFactory won $500,000 for its efforts, while the second-place recipient, Penn State, got $200,000.
The winning habitat, called Marsha, is tall and slim, to reduce the need for construction rovers on unfamiliar terrain, according to AI SpaceFactory. It is designed to be built on a vertically telescoping arm attached to a rover, which stays still during construction. AI SpaceFactory plans to adapt Marsha's design for an eco-friendly Earth habitat called Tera; a crowdfunding campaign will begin shortly, the design agency said in a statement.
Team AI SpaceFactory won first place in the final phase of NASA's 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge with Marsha, a tall, thin proposed habitat for the surface of Mars designed to be built autonomously. Scroll through visualizations of the winning design above.
"We developed these technologies for space, but they have the potential to transform the way we build on Earth," David Malott, CEO and founder of AI SpaceFactory, said in the statement. "By using natural, biodegradable materials grown from crops, we could eliminate the building industry's massive waste of unrecyclable concrete and restore our planet."
The awards came after a grueling 30-hour challenge in which the participants created one-third-scale structures of their architectural designs, according to a statement from NASA. Each team used robotic construction techniques that are supposed to have little human interference, demonstrating that the process could work autonomously on other worlds.
The competition took place May 1-4 at Caterpillar's Edwards Demonstration & Learning Center in Edwards, Illinois. Teams built their habitats in 10 hour stretches as a panel of judges examined their work. The completed structures had to pass tests for qualities such as material mix, durability, leakage and strength.
"The final milestone of this competition is a culmination of extremely hard work by bright, inventive minds who are helping us advance the technologies we need for a sustainable human presence on the moon, and then on Mars," Monsi Roman, program manager for NASA's Centennial Challenges, said in NASA's statement. "We celebrate their vision, dedication and innovation in developing concepts that will not only further NASA's deep-space goals, but also provide viable housing solutions right here on Earth."
The competition, which opened in 2015 and took place over several stages, attracted 60 teams that collectively won more than $2 million in prizes from NASA. NASA's major partner in the competition was Bradley University in Illinois.
5 Extraordinary Stories That Could Suggest We Live in a Multiple Dimensional Reality
5 Extraordinary Stories That Could Suggest We Live in a Multiple Dimensional Reality
Deja vu is to me a strong indication of parallel dimensions. I have one experience which was very strong. It was the first time I played basketball, in school.
At one precise moment I recognized everything I saw. The way the ball was flying, a guy jumping after the ball, another kid courtside shouting out, and finally me stumbling in an exact manner. And this was literally the first time I played basketball ever.
I remembered everything from before, all of it was “familiar”. But I remembered it the moment it happened. I froze up for several seconds in the middle of the game because I had no idea what was going on.
It’s something I didn’t think about much as a kid. It just didn’t make sense, right? But as an adult and having heard all these theories, well now there is at least a possible explanation to what happened. via the channel
Check out these Futuristic SCIFI Weapons That Actually EXIST! From amazing guns from the future like rail guns and laser guns to other futuristic sci-fi technology, this top 10 list of real scifi weapons will amaze you!
9. HEAT RAY
Developed by the U.S. military, the Active Denial System, informally known as the Heat Ray, is a non-lethal, directed-energy weapon designed for area denial, perimeter security, and crowd control. It’s called the ADS for short and works by heating the surface of targets, including human skin.
8. WEAPONIZED HYPERSONIC PLANES
Besides heat rays of the future, this might also remind you of something straight out of a science fiction movie. A ‘scramjet’ powered aircraft called the X-51A WaveRider has been successfully tested by the American military. During testing, it reached a hypersonic speed of Mach (mawk) 5.1, or 3,913 miles per hour (4,828 km/hr) – that’s over five times the speed of sound!
7. AN/SEQ-3 LASER WEAPON SYSTEM
In 2014, the US Navy deployed its first anti-drone laser for active duty in the Persian Gulf aboard the USS Ponce. Known as the An/Seq-3 Laser Weapon System, it’s intended for use against a variety of targets, from drones to small attack boats, and the commander of the USS Ponce is authorized to use it as he deems necessary.
6. ROBOT SOLDIERS
The MAARS, or Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System, is a small robot tank that was developed by QinetiQ North America. The fully-loaded system weighs 369 pounds and is equipped with sensors, weapons, and ammunition, along with a battery that can last three to 12 hours, as well as a sleep mode that lasts up to a week.
5. SELF-AIMING RIFLE
This terrifying, $17,000 piece of technology, known as the TrackingPoint XS1 scope, essentially equips sniper rifles with an automatic aiming system. Using advanced technology, the firearm tags targets; then, it factors in variables like wind speed and movement to calculate the perfect shot before firing.
4.RAILGUN
Before the railgun actually existed, it was a mythical weapon that made frequent appearances in video games and, occasionally, in movies, such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The railgun hurls metal slugs at hypersonic speeds using electromagnets and is considered the future of artillery and small arms.
3. PLASMA FORCE FIELDS
Researchers are attempting to keep up with the ever-advancing pace of weapons technology. A patent has been issued to aerospace and defense giant Boeing to develop a force field-like system that could protect military vehicles from shockwaves following explosions from missiles or IED’s, or improvised explosive devices.
2. CornerShot Rifle and Grenade Launcher
Despite the seemingly space-age nature of up-and-coming military technology, combat soldiers struggle with the ages-old problem of being able to see and fire weapons around corners. This is an especially prevalent issue when it comes to modern warfare in urban settings.
1. DIGITAL REVOLVER
Once again, the Armatix Digital Revolver resembles something out of a science fiction film, and something like it was actually featured in a James Bond movie. It’s a futuristic pistol designed with safety in mind – it’s equipped with a digital safety mechanism that can only be disabled by a special wristwatch worn by the operator, which sends an unlock signal to the gun once a password is put in and if it is within a certain distance.
Origins Explained is the place to be to find all the answers to your questions, from mysterious events and unsolved mysteries to everything there is to know about the world and its amazing animals!
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Torpedo looking UFO flying over Ohio filmed by plane passenger
Torpedo looking UFO flying over Ohio filmed by plane passenger
A fast flying UFO has been filmed by a plane passenger at the moment the plane was at an altitude of 30,000 feet.
Plane passenger said "Taking video and pictures from 30,000 + feet is my favorite thing to do while flying and on May 3, 2019, I happen to catch this torpedo looking UFO."
"As you can see it has no wings or engines, heading west very very fast under the clouds/radar."
"I believe it was Imperial Ohio but I would have calculate the time we left California and the time of my video."
Researchers have discovered water in tiny dust particles from asteroid Itokawa. Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft brought the asteroid dust to Earth in 2010.
Asteroid Itokawa is the much-battered remnant of a larger parent body. The samples studied by Jin and Bose came from the feature called the Muses Sea, which is the smooth area in the middle of Itokawa.
Two cosmochemists have made the first-ever measurements of water in dust grains from the surface of an asteroid. The samples came from asteroid Itokawa and were collected by the Japanese space probeHayabusa.
The team’s findings suggest that as much as half of our planet’s ocean water could have arrived via impacts by similar asteroids early in Earth’s history.
Ziliang Jin is a postdoctoral scholar in Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration and lead author on the paper published May 1, 2019, in Science Advances. Jin said in a statement:
We found the samples we examined were enriched in water compared to the average for inner solar system objects.
The scientists worked with samples provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). In 2005, the Hayabusa spacecraft (Japanese for falcon) collected a small amount of dust from the Itokawa surface and delivered it to Earth five years later in June 2010. The samples that the researchers analyzed were each about half the thickness of a human hair.
The Itokawa particles studied by Jin and Bose are tiny: for comparison, a human hair is 100 to 500 microns in diameter.
Maitrayee Bose, Assistant Professor of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University is the study’s co-author. She said:
To figure out if asteroids like Itokawa were the source of water on Earth, we looked at the ratio of two forms – or isotopes – of hydrogen: hydrogen and deuterium. The planetary science community uses hydrogen as a proxy for water – which is made from two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. It uses the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (D/H) as a type of fingerprint to make connections between planetary bodies and question how the different objects received their water.
Ziliang and I found that Itokawa and Earth have the same D/H ratio, which suggests that they share a common source of water. Some objects, comets and asteroids from the outer solar system, have high D/H ratios, and if they collided with Earth and provided water, then our planet’s D/H ratio would be much higher. But we don’t see that. This led us to conclude that Earth got its water from Itokawa-like asteroids.
The measurements revealed the samples were unexpectedly rich in water. They also suggest, said Bose, that even nominally dry asteroids such as Itokawa may in fact harbor more water than scientists have assumed. Bose said:
Our results support the idea that several Itokawa-like bodies may have collided with the proto-Earth and provided water. These small bodies may be considered the fundamental building blocks of planets, bringing water and other materials like organics to the planets.
Ziliang Jin (left) and Maitrayee Bose prepare Itokawa samples for analysis.
Asteroid Itokawa is more than 1,000 feet (305 meters) long and between 700 – 1,000 feet (213 – 305 meters) wide, roughly 10 times the size of a football field. It has a kind of peanut shape, like a pair of rubble piles crunched together. Itokawa circles the sun every 18 months at an average distance of 1.3 times the Earth-sun distance. Part of Itokawa’s path brings it inside Earth’s orbit, and at farthest, it sweeps out a little beyond that of Mars.
Itokawa is the remnant of a parent body that was at least 12 miles (19 km) wide, said the researchers. The parent body suffered several large shocks from impacts, with one final shattering event that broke it apart. In the aftermath, two of the fragments merged and formed today’s Itokawa, which reached its current size and shape about 8 million years ago.
Bottom line: Researchers have discovered water in tiny dust particles from asteroid Itokawa.
NASA believes exoplanets like TRAPPIST-1f could have the right conditions for liquid water, meaning they could support life.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Whether you grew up in the '60s under a cloud of Area 51 conspiracies or you were a '90s alternative kid with a die-hard love ofDavid Duchovny, you've probably entertained theories aboutalien life.
But turns out, you're not alone. (In your wild theorizing, that is, not "not alone in the universe." We could very well be the only ones here, so if you're the last one to survive, please turn out the lights.)
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (also known as SETI) has been a serious pursuit of modern scientists as far back as the early 1900s, when Guglielmo Marconi first claimed to pick up radio signals "seeming to come from beyond the Earth." (Nikolai Tesla suggested they could be from Mars -- thanks, Nik.)
Over the years, the search has only intensified.
On this week's episode of Watch This Space, we take a look at the entirely scientific, entirely credible search for extraterrestrial intelligence being undertaken by scientists, astronomers and researchers around the world.
So, failing some kind of alien mothership landing on our planet, how do we search for proof? There's a few key ways to do it.
Messages from afar
Just like Marconi imagined, it's possible that we could pick up radio signals from distant planets and finally find out the truth about our (very, very distant) neighbours. Back in 1977, astronomer Jerry Ehman was picking through datafrom Ohio's "Big Ear" radio telescope when he found a radio signal lasting roughly 1 minute. Its origin still remains a mystery, but it's known as the "WOW Signal" for the word Ehman wrote in the margins of his reading printout.
The California-based SETI Institute is continuing this work. One of the leading agencies in the field of SETI research, the SETI Institute has a team of more than 80 researchers working across fields such as astronomy and astrobiology, and they continue to search for radio signals using their Allen Telescope Arraylocated in California's Cascade Mountains. The Institute says we could well find signs of extraterrestrial intelligence in the next two decades.
Exoplanets
So how do we choose where to point our telescopes? Well, the most likely candidates for life outside our solar system are exoplanets -- they're planets that orbit stars like our sun where conditions (such as the availability of surface water) could make them ripe for life.
The now-retired Kepler Space Telescope and the new Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have hunted out these exoplanets by pointing toward stars and looking for dips in their brightness. If a star is bright and then dims before becoming bright again, it could be a sign that a planet is orbiting that star. We've found hundreds of exoplanets this way, including a raft of Earth-like planets that could well support life.
Secret programs and wild conspiracies
It wouldn't be a search for alien life if we didn't look at the crazy programs launched by government agencies over the years.
Back in 2017, the New York Times revealed that the Pentagon had been working on a secret UFO program, funded to the tune of $22 million by the federal government. While the Department of Defense decided to defund the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program in 2012, it reportedly still exists.
Then in April 2019, Politico reported that the US Navy is working on procedures for reporting unidentified aircraft, though the Navy said it wouldn't be making the results of this program public.
While the secret details of Area 51 have now been declassified and many conspiracy theories remain just that -- theories -- there are still plenty of organisations showing a keen interest in what lies beyond our solar system. All that's left to do is find what's out there.
Pluto’s orbit is very elongated. Right now, it’s in a part of its orbit where its distance from the sun is steadily increasing. That fact is devastating its atmosphere.
The spectacular layers of blue haze in Pluto’s atmosphere, captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.
At the time, astronomers had no way of knowing what dramatic changes were in store for the little world’s thin envelope of nitrogen, methane and hydrocarbons.
A cosmic coincidence
By a cosmic coincidence, the last decades of the 20th century and first decades of the 21st also saw a lucky alignment of Earth, Pluto and the dense stellar fields of the distant centre of the Milky Way.
This animation combines various observations of Pluto over the course of several decades. Image via NASA.
This coincidence means Pluto passes relatively often between us and a background star. When this happens, its shadow falls on Earth, an event astronomers refer to as an occultation.
During an occultation, any observatory that happens to lie within the path of the shadow can watch the star seem to disappear as Pluto passes in front of it, and then to reappear as the planetary alignments shift. For any given place on Earth’s surface, a Pluto occultation lasts a couple of minutes at most.
The technique of occultations has been widely used to study the orbits, rings, moons, shapes and atmospheres of the worlds of the outer solar system, including asteroids, comets, planets and dwarf planets.
By comparing what observers see at different locations on Earth, the size and shape of the occulting world can be worked out. If the object has an atmosphere, then for a few brief seconds as the starlight winks out and then comes back on, the starlight can be altered by absorption and refraction as it passes through the planetary atmosphere.
Since the first successful occultation measurements in the 1980s, a succession of observations have established increasingly precise measures of Pluto’s radius, as well as continually sharpening our understanding of the temperature and pressure of its atmosphere.
Long orbit and seasons
Like Earth, Pluto has a seasonal cycle due to the inclination of its poles to the plane of its orbit. Over the course of Pluto’s long year – equivalent to 248 Earth years – first the north pole and then the south pole are angled toward the distant sun.
A drawing of the solar system shows Pluto’s tilted orbit, which is also more elliptical than that of the planets.
But unlike Earth, Pluto’s orbit is stretched into an extreme elliptical shape. Its orbit is so elongated that its distance from the sun varies from 4.4 to 7.4 billion kilometers [2.7 to 4.6 billion miles] (30 to 50 times as far as the Earth-sun distance).
By contrast, Earth’s distance from the sun varies by only 3.4 percent over a year. Pluto’s atmosphere was discovered just before Pluto reached its closest approach to the sun, which happened in 1989.
Since 1989, Pluto has been retreating from the sun. The temperatures have been decreasing accordingly.
Under pressure
At the time Pluto started moving away from the sun, astronomers expected that this would cause its atmospheric pressure to drop, in much the same way that the pressure in an automobile tire decreases with cold weather and increases in the heat. On the contrary, observations from 1988-2016 have shown a steady increase in the atmospheric pressure.
Immediately before the arrival of NASA’s New Horizons probe in 2015, occultation measurements discoveredthe atmospheric pressure on Pluto has tripled since 1988 (the equivalent on Earth would be to compare the pressure at the top of Mt. Everest to that at sea level).
What is the cause of the discrepancy? Any thought that the occultation measurements were in error was banished by the Radio Science Experiment (REX) aboard New Horizons, which returned direct measurements in agreement with the Earthbound observers.
The new research has solved the mystery using a seasonal model for the transport of gas and ice around the surface of the planet.
Even though Pluto is moving farther from the sun every year, its north pole is continuously sunlit during this part of its orbit, causing its nitrogen ice cap to revert to the gas phase.
This explains the rapid increase of atmospheric pressure over the past three decades.
But the climate modeling shows this trend will not continue.
The frozen canyons of Pluto’s north pole captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.
Pluto will continue to move farther from the sun until the year 2113, and the weak sunlight will not be sufficient to similarly warm the southern polar regions.
During the long northern autumn and winter, Pluto’s atmosphere is expected to collapse, frosting out onto the surface like ice on a car windscreen on a clear and cold winter night.
At its lowest ebb, the atmosphere is predicted to have less than five percent of its current pressure. The combination of Pluto’s close approach to the sun and northern hemisphere spring won’t recur until the year 2237.
Until then, it will be of critical importance to test our understanding of planetary atmospheric models under extreme low-temperature and low-pressure conditions through continued occultation measurements.
But these opportunities will become less frequent as Pluto’s orbit takes its apparent position farther from the dense starfields of the galactic center that helped us make the observations.
US Military UFO Investigator Says He Still Has A UFO Part Today From Crash! Will Analysed Show Public, UFO Sighting News.
US Military UFO Investigator Says He Still Has A UFO Part Today From Crash! Will Analysed Show Public, UFO Sighting News.
Youtube UFO investigator channel ThirdPhaseofMoon are onto some really interesting and dangerous evidence of a UFO crash. Of course the US government always denies everything. Thats their official stance on all UFO crashes, but it happens more often than the public would ever dream.
In the video he states on the phone that he has in his possession a metal piece he pulled from a UFO crash and kept for himself. ThirdPhaseofMoon investigators will take that metal, photograph it, have its metal alloys analysed to find out if the metals are of unknown origin and if the metal may have a bio mechanical or living AI metal within its atomic structure itself. I have to tell you...I am really looking forward to seeing their next revealing video about this case. But it is dangerous...such evidence could undermine government intel and thats when people die. The death of my friend, the world famous UFO researcher Streetcap1, not long after a Russian interview he did. I warned him of the dangers, but he did the interview in his home anyways! I am too familiar with what can happen to UFO researcher. Lets wish ThirdPhaseofMoon luck and safely alone the way.
In space, the Event Horizon Imager (currently at concept stage) could have a resolution more than five times that of the Event Horizon Telescope on Earth, which took the first-ever picture of a black hole. Left: Model of supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* at an observation frequency of 230 GHz. Right: A simulation of what type of image EHT could produce of Sagittarius A*.
Thefirst-ever photo of a black hole amazed people across the world. Now, astronomers are aiming to take even sharper pictures of these enigmatic structures by sending radio telescopes into space.
The historic photo became public on April 10, when the worldwide research collaboration known as Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) unveiled the hazy but nevertheless incredible photo of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87.
Astronomers at Radboud University in the Netherlands have recently shared their plans to work with the European Space Agency (ESA) and others to get a better look at black holes by placing two to three satellites in a circular orbit around Earth. The concept is called the Event Horizon Imager (EHI).
The resolution of a radio image is limited by the size of the telescope that receives the signal, and that's why EHT used a network of dish telescopes around the world to essentially turn Earth into a planet-size virtual telescope. By expanding the distances between the radio observations, astronomers could someday present the public with a clearer, more detailed view of a black hole, researchers said in a statement from Radboud University.
"There are lots of advantages to using satellites instead of permanent radio telescopes on Earth, as with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)," Freek Roelofs, a researcher at Radboud University and lead author of an article describing this potential project, said in the statement.
The Event Horizon Telescope, a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration, captured this image of the supermassive black hole and its shadow that's in the center of the galaxy M87.
"In space, you can make observations at higher radio frequencies, because the frequencies from Earth are filtered out by the atmosphere," Roelofs added. "The distances between the telescopes in space are also larger. This allows us to take a big step forward. We would be able to take images with a resolution more than five times what is possible with the EHT."
A crisper look would offer more than just aesthetics. According to the statement, imagery by EHI could be used to test Einstein's Theory of General Relativity in greater detail, because ''you can take near perfect images to see the real details of black holes,'' Heino Falcke, radio astronomer at Radboud University and co-author on the new work, said in the statement. ''If small deviations from Einstein's theory occur, we should be able to see them."
EHI would initially function apart from EHT, but a hybrid system to combine space observations with those taken from the ground could be a possibility.
The plans are detailed in a forthcoming article in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Water worlds that each possess thousands of times more water than Earth does may be more common than Earth-like rocky planets in theMilky Way galaxy, a new study finds.
Over the past 20 or so years, astronomers have confirmed the existence of thousands of exoplanets, or planets around other stars. NASA's recently deceasedKepler spacecraftdiscovered 2,702 confirmed exoplanets, and several thousand more "candidates" it found are awaiting confirmation.
Many exoplanets are quite unlike any planets in our solar system. For example, so-called super-Earths have diameters up to twice that of Earth, and "sub-Neptune" worlds are two to four times wider than Earth. (Neptune's diameter is about four times Earth's.)
Much remains hotly debated about sub-Neptunes, such as how they formed. Their compositions remain unknown, and understanding them could help shed light on these exoplanets' origins. Previous research suggested that sub-Neptunes were either gas dwarf planets with rocky cores surrounded by envelopes rich in hydrogen and helium, or water worlds with major amounts of liquid and frozen water in addition to rock and gas.
To investigate the makeup of sub-Neptunes, scientists ran computer simulations of planetary growth to see what scenarios might best explain the masses and diameters seen to date among exoplanets. Knowing the mass and diameter of a planet can help astronomers estimate its average density, and computer simulations of planetary growth can help reveal whether compositions of gas, rock, ice or water might best explain these densities.
The researchers found that sub-Neptunes are more likely to be water worlds than gas dwarfs. They suggested that each sub-Neptune is at least 25%, and possibly more than 50%,liquid or frozen water by mass. (In contrast, Earth is only 0.02% water by mass.)
"Our study suggests that there are on the order of 1,000 water worlds in just the Kepler confirmed and candidate planets," study lead author Li Zeng, a planetary scientist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told Space.com. "Statistically speaking, these water worlds may be more abundant than Earth-like rocky planets. Perhaps every typical sunlike star — a star of about one solar mass — has one or more of these water worlds."
The researchers divided exoplanets around sunlike stars into four main types:
Rocky worlds up to twice Earth's diameter.
Water worlds two to four times Earth's diameter that are each made up of more than 25% liquid or frozen water.
Transitional planets four to 10 times Earth's diameter that are rich in ice and possess substantial gaseous envelopes.
Gas giants more than 10 times Earth's diameter that are made up primarily of hydrogen and helium gas.
It remains a mystery why our solar system lacks planets between Earth and Neptune in size, and why the planetary systems that Kepler has seen often have more planets closer to their stars than our solar system does. Solving these puzzles might help shed light on how planetary systems typically form.
"Perhaps our solar system is less typical," Zeng said. Instead, planetary systems "with close-in rocky super-Earths and water-rich sub-Neptunes may be more common than our own solar system in our Milky Way galaxy."
The scientists detailed their findings online April 29 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The moon’s south pole has never been explored from the ground, but India’s new Chandrayaan-2 mission will attempt a 1st-ever landing there, with a rover, this September.
Artist’s concept of Chandrayaan-2 approaching the moon. If all goes well, a lander and rover will land near the lunar south pole in September of this year.
So far, only three countries have successfully landed on the moon – the United States, the former Soviet Union and China – but that might change soon, if all goes according to plan. India is preparing to launch its second lunar mission this summer, and this time the goal is to actually land on the surface, near the moon’s south pole. If successful, India would become the fourth nation to land on the moon and the spacecraft,Chandrayaan-2, would be the first of any country to land in that region.
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced the plans via Twitter on May 1, 2019. As of now, the spacecraft is scheduled to launch sometime between July 9 and July 16, 2019, from the ISRO launch facility on Sriharikota, an island off India’s southeastern coast.
We are ready for one of the most exciting missions, #Chandrayaan2. Launch window between July 9-16 & likely Moon-landing on Sept 6, 2019. #GSLVMKIII will carry 3 modules of this #lunarmission - Orbiter, Lander (Vikram), Rover (Pragyan).
This new mission is more ambitious than any previous Indian mission to the moon, and will include an orbiter, lander (Vikram) and rover (Pragyan). The landing itself won’t happen until September 6, 2019. As ISRO said in a statement:
All the modules are getting ready for Chandrayaan-2 launch during the window of July 9, to July 26, 2019, with an expected moon landing on September 6, 2019. The orbiter and lander modules will be interfaced mechanically and stacked together as an integrated module and accommodated inside the GSLV MK-IIIlaunch vehicle. The rover is housed inside the lander.
After landing, the rover is designed to operate for at least 14 days on the surface and drive 1,300 feet (396 meters). That may not sound like a lot compared to NASA’s rovers on Mars, which have been able to drive for many years and travel at least several miles (as well as the Apollo rovers on the moon), but it will be a big accomplishment for ISRO if it succeeds, since it will be their first-ever moon rover. As K. Sivan, ISRO chairman, toldThe Times of India that, once Vikram lands on the lunar surface on September 6, the rover Pragyan will come out of the lander and roll out onto the lunar surface for about 300 to 400 meters (yards). It will spend 14 Earth-days on the moon, carrying out different scientific experiments. Altogether, he told The Times, there will be 13 payloads in the spacecraft: three payloads in rover Pragyan and the other 10 payloads in lander Vikram and orbiter.
Infographic detailing the lander and rover, as well as the landing site near the moon’s south pole.
The rover will use three scientific instruments including spectrometers and a camera to analyze the content of the lunar surface and send data and images back to Earth through the orbiter.
The launch of this mission had originally been planned for April 2018, but it was delayed to changes in the spacecraft design. The four-legged Vikram lander (a qualification model) had also suffered a fracture in one of its landing legs during testing earlier this year, contributing to the delay.
The landing near the moon’s south pole will be uncharted territory, where no other spacecraft has landed before. Previous orbiter missions, including India’s Chandrayaan-1, have found evidence for water ice in craters in this region, in locations where there is permanent shadow. With no atmosphere to speak of, temperatures remain exceedingly cold in those areas – about minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 157 degrees Celsius) – even though they can be boiling hot in sunlit regions. Water ice would be a valuable resource for future crewed missions back to the moon.
This will be India’s second lunar mission. The first, Chandrayaan-1, orbited the moon but did not land. It launched in October 2008 and operated for 312 days, until August 2009. By all measures it was a great success, with the orbiter circling the moon about 3,400 times.
Artist’s concept of the Chandrayaan-2 rover on the moon, near the south pole.
On April 11, 2019, Israel’s Beresheet spacecraft attempted that country’s first landing on the moon – and the first landing of a commercial mission – but unfortunately it crashed after a problem with the main engine in the last few moments before landing. A little earlier, however, on January 3, 2019, China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft didland successfully on the far side of the moon, another first in lunar exploration.
Hopefully this next mission from India will fare better, as a follow-on to the successful first Chandrayaan-1 mission. If so, this will be the first view from the ground near the moon’s south pole that we will have ever had from any spacecraft. Although studied from orbit, this part of the moon is still virtually unexplored, so it is an exciting opportunity to learn more about our nearest neighbor in space.
Bottom line: If all goes according to plan, India will become the first nation to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south in September of this year. Godspeed!
On Thursday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin presented its plansto reach the Moon, including a brand new design for its “Blue Moon” lander.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk thentook to Twitterto crudely imply that Bezos was building unwarranted hype for a plan that wasn’t going anywhere — a move that could be read as the ultimate example of “pot calling the kettle black” irony.
Twitter Tease
In the tweet, Musk writes “Oh stop teasing, Jeff,” along with a winky face emoji and a photoshopped image of the lander with “Blue Moon” replaced by the words “Blue Balls,” a reference to the uncomfortable feeling that can follow sexual excitement without release.
Maybe Elon Musk has never heard the proverb about how visionary CEOs who consistently fail to make good on their own ambitious promises about space travel shouldn’t throw stones. That’s how the saying goes, right?
He said: "We can help meet that timeline but only because we started three years ago.
"It's time to go back to the moon, this time to stay."
The billionaire unveiled a model of one of Blue Moon's proposed rovers, which was roughly the size of a golf cart, and presented a new rocket engine called BE-7 which can blast 10,000lbs of thrust.
Mr Bezos unveiled the rocket engine that Blue Moon will use
Blue Origin is developing its New Shepard rocket for short space tourism trips and a heavy-lift launch rocket called New Glenn for satellite launch contracts.
It is aiming to deliver the New Glenn rocket by 2021, while launching humans in a suborbital flight later this year atop its rocket-and-capsule New Shepard.
Blue Origin has also previously discussed a human outpost on the moon.
Mr Bezos has talked about his broader vision of enabling a future in which millions of people live and work in space.
Mr Bezos has spoken of his desire to colonise space
Unveiling his moon landing plan, he spoke of the importance of future human colonisation of space and mentioned two important issues: reducing launch costs and using resources already in space.
He said: "One of the most important things we know about the moon today is that there's water there.
"It's in the form of ice. It's in the permanently shadowed craters on the poles of the moon."
Mr Bezos' vision is shared by other billionaire-backed private space ventures including Elon Musk's SpaceX and aerospace incumbents such as United Launch Alliance, a partnership between Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin.
While Mr Bezos is angling to become a leading player in space exploration and win business from the US government, he has been the target of repeated criticism from President Donald Trump, who has referred to him as Jeff "Bozo".
Mr Bezos also owns the Washington Post, which Mr Trump has frequently branded "fake news".
Humans colonized South America with impressive ease and speed, but some 8,000 years ago, a sharp decline started taking place. Now, researchers have shown that climate change was responsible for this decline.
Image in public domain.
The initial human colonization of South America was a rapid process. Hunter-gatherers arrived on the continent some14,000 years ago, and within a few millennia, they covered every biome on the continent. However, while colonists were largely successful in their attempts, there was a period of about 4,000 years when things didn’t go so well. Researchers have found that a period called the Middle Holocene (8200 to 4200 cal BP) featured numerous shifts in climatic events.
“Archaeologists working in South America have broadly known that some 8,200 years ago, inhabited sites in various places across the continent were suddenly abandoned. In our study we wanted to connect the dots between disparate records that span the Northern Andes, through the Amazon, to the southern tip of Patagonia and all areas in between,” said Dr. Philip Riris (UCL Institute of Archaeology), lead author of the new study.
Through the analysis of radiocarbon dates using computer algorithms, they found that long-term rain patterns greatly correlate with the archaeological evidence. In other words, when the climate started to change, populations started to decline.
“Unpredictable levels of rainfall, particularly in the tropics, appear to have had a negative impact on pre-Columbian populations until 6,000 years ago, after which recovery is evident. This recovery appears to correlate with cultural practices surrounding tropical plant management and early crop cultivation, possibly acting as buffers when wild resources were less predictable,”added Dr. Riris.
However, it wasn’t the absolute magnitude of climate change that did most of the damage, but rather the frequency of exceptional climatic events. This is particularly interesting for us since while the overall trend of climate change is, in rough terms, rather clear, extreme weather events caused by climate change are much harder to foresee.
In other words, it wasn’t necessarily that there was more or less rainfall, but rather that the changes from low to high occurred much quicker than they were supposed to. Dr. Riris explained:
“We studied ancient records of rainfall such as marine sediments for evidence of exceptional climate events. Within windows of 100 years, we compared the Middle Holocene to the prevalent patterns before and after 8,200 years ago. Normal patterns of rainfall suggest on average an unusually dry or wet year every 16-20 years, while under highly variable conditions this increases to every 5 years or so.”
Climate change
If you’re a climate change denier, I know what you’re thinking: Aha! So climate has changed before in the past. Absolutely, our planet’s climate has changed and is changing all the time. However, there is overwhelming evidence that the current warming trends, along with all the events and consequences that derive from it, are caused by mankind’s emission of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide.
This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution.
(Credit: Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record.) Find out more about ice cores (external site).
ZIJN HET TIJDREIZIGERS OF BUITENAARDSEN? ( VIDEO )
ZIJN HET TIJDREIZIGERS OF BUITENAARDSEN? ( VIDEO )
Dat er objecten rondvliegen die door niemand kunnen worden geïdentificeerd is op zich geen nieuws meer.
Wat wel nieuws is, is dat de herkomst van deze objecten misschien wel een heel andere is dan wij denken.
Er zijn op dit moment eigenlijk twee gangbare theorieën over de herkomst van ufo’s, oftewel niet geïdentificeerde objecten in de lucht.
De eerste is dat ze afkomstig zijn van andere planeten en dat het onze ruimtebroeders zijn die ons komen bezoeken. De tweede is dat de mensheid al veel verder is voor wat betreft technologie dan dat het publiek wordt verteld. Dat we al lang een geheime ruimtevloot hebben, gebaseerd op van buitenaardsen afkomstige technologie en dat er al talloze menselijke nederzettingen zijn zoals bijvoorbeeld op Mars.
Beiden zijn uiteraard ook mogelijk en om een idee te krijgen welke vreemde dingen er zoal in de lucht gebeuren, onderstaand een videoclip van Tyler van Secureteam.
Met daarin onder andere iemand die vanuit een vliegtuig opnamen maakt en opeens met hoge snelheid een object dat hij omschrijft als een soort torpedo, langs ziet schieten.
En een andere waar een man geschrokken naar buiten rent vanwege een soort harde knal, allerlei dingen in de lucht ziet en waar vervolgens de complete hemel rood kleurt.
Naast bovengenoemde mogelijkheden is er sinds kort ook nog een derde.
En die mogelijkheid is afkomstig van een Amerikaanse professor die denkt dat voor wat betreft de herkomst van ufo’s, we dit veel dichter bij huis moeten zoeken dan bij andere planeten.
Michael M. Masters is professor aan Montana Tech University en zegt dat we hier heel goed te maken kunnen hebben met mensen uit de toekomst die een kijkje komen nemen in hun evolutionaire verleden.
Met andere woorden, de inzittenden van deze ufo’s zijn geen buitenaardsen, maar tijdreizigers.
Masters heeft hier een uitgebreid boek over geschreven, getiteld “Identified Flying Objects”.
Hij gebruikt zijn opleiding antropologie om te verklaren hoe het komt dat mensen die contact hebben gehad met buitenaardsen, allemaal ongeveer hetzelfde verhaal vertellen.
Ze praten over wezens die net als wij twee benen hebben, rechtop lopen, vingers hebben aan handen en tenen aan voeten en een symmetrisch gezicht bezitten met twee ogen, een mond en een neus en daarnaast zijn ze in staat om met ons te communiceren.
Masters staat helemaal achter de door hem ontwikkelde theorie en is bereid om met eenieder die dat wil erover in discussie te gaan.
Hij zegt dat hij het boek heeft geschreven voor zowel zijn wetenschappelijke collega’s als iedereen die geïnteresseerd is in het ufo fenomeen.
Zou Masters gelijk kunnen hebben en zijn het mensen uit de toekomst die ons bezoeken of toch wezens afkomstig van andere planeten?
Enkele jaren geleden hebben wij een soort handleiding gepubliceerd, afkomstig uit Rusland, met daarin alle buitenaardse wezens zoals die bekend zijn. En dat zijn er heel wat, dus misschien moeten we dan in plaats van twee mogelijkheden vanaf nu maar gewoon drie mogelijkheden aanhouden. Drie mogelijkheden die uiteraard ook allemaal tegelijk kunnen voorkomen.
Hierna een deel uit dat eerdere artikel en mochten er lezers zijn die slimme ideeën hebben over dit onderwerp, laat het ons weten.
In Rusland zijn ze over het algemeen wat verder met betrekking tot het fenomeen buitenaards leven en dat is dan ook het land waar veel nuttige informatie te vinden is.
Zo is er in Rusland sinds 1946-47 een boek bijgehouden over buitenaardse rassen.
Gelukkig is dit boek inmiddels vertaald in het Engels.
Er komen de meer bekende rassen in voor zoals de Pleijadiërs, de Reptilians, de Zeta’s en de Anunnaki.
Ook wordt in het boek de zogenaamde Council of Five genoemd. Die wordt gevormd door vijf buitenaardse rassen die klaarblijkelijk al miljoenen jaren de aarde en haar bewoners beschermen.
Deze Council besefte dat toen de Anunnaki eenmaal begonnen te knoeien met ons DNA, wij uiteindelijk zouden samenkomen met andere goedwillende sterrenfamilies.
Deze Council, of Raad, bestaat uit de vijf volgende buitenaardse rassen: Orela, Egarot, Ginvo, Redan en Emerther.
Het schijnt dat de Emerther één van de meest invloedrijke rassen zijn volgens dit boek. Zij zijn degenen die drie keer een ontmoeting hebben gehad met de Amerikaanse president Dwight Eisenhower en ook drie keer met hooggeplaatste Sovjet autoriteiten.
Klaarblijkelijk waren ze ook geïnteresseerd om de Amerikaanse president Nixon te bezoeken, maar deze wees het verzoek af, omdat hij te bang was dat de buitenaardsen in staat zouden zijn om zijn (mogelijk kwaadwillende) gedachten te lezen.
Je kunt het boek online doorbladeren en lezen. Wil je het liever op een volledig scherm klik dan op het vierkantje in de rechterbovenhoek.
Zeer merkwaardige zonsondergang leidt tot theorieën over aliens. Bekijk de foto’s
Zeer merkwaardige zonsondergang leidt tot theorieën over aliens. Bekijk de foto’s
In Canada is een wel heel vreemde zonsondergang vastgelegd. Rond de zon waren mysterieuze kringen te zien, die op internet voor de nodigde consternatie zorgden.
Christine McNaughton uit Canada plaatste onderstaande foto’s op Twitter. Ze zijn gemaakt op Manitoulin Island, nabij Toronto.
“Jongens, kijk die zonsondergang!” schreef ze erbij.
Vliegende schotel
De beelden trokken onder meer de aandacht van mensen die zich bezighouden met buitenaards leven.
Scott C. Waring van de website ET Database zei bijvoorbeeld dat de vreemde kringen werden veroorzaakt door een opstijgende vliegende schotel.
De UFO zou overdag schuilen in een nabijgelegen meer en ’s avonds tevoorschijn komen.
Cirruswolken
Volgens website Earthsky.org ging het echter om cirruswolken, waarin ijskristallen zitten. Die breken het zonlicht en weerkaatsen het.
Dat proces zou volgens de website de vreemde kringen veroorzaken die op de foto’s te zien zijn.
The scenario involves oftentimes, a late night knock at the door. Once the door is opened, either one or two young children are seen standing on the porch with their heads down. As they raise their heads though, it becomes clear that there is something just not right about them. Their eyes are pitch black.
The new nature of warfare in many parts of the world has made it increasingly difficult to identify who is a target and who is an innocent civilian. Terrorist groups, in particular, often have no reservations about placing their leadership among civilian populations or even schoolchildren in order to shield them from attacks. To combat this, the U.S. and its allies have been testing new methods of “reducing collateral damage,” or “blowing up innocent people” to use a non-sterilized term.
An MQ-1 Predator drone outfitted with a Lockheed Martin AGM-114 Hellfire Missile
While this has most often meant reducing the explosive payloads of traditional munitions, it turns out that the CIA has been using a terrifying and highly advanced new weapon which could radically change the nature of warfare as we know it. According to a Wall Street Journalreport published today, it turns out the CIA has been using a high-precision kinetic warhead known as the RX9 packed with “a halo of six long blades that are stowed inside and then deploy through the skin of the missile seconds before impact, shredding anything in its tracks.” Yikes. Military news site Task and Purposewrites that “this is basically like dropping a rocket-assisted meteor full of swords on someone.”
Details about the RX9 are still scarce, and The Wall Street Journal has not disclosed its source for the existence of the RX9 but writes that it can confirm the CIA and Department of Defense are indeed using the weapon.
A typical Hellfire missile, believed to be the platform for this kinetic blade warhead.
There is some suspected evidence of its use, too. In 2017, Al-Qaeda second-in-command Abu Khayr al-Masri was killed in a precise drone strike by something which smashed right through the top of his car and yet caused very little other damage. Photos of the smashed car show 4 distinct ‘slice’ marks in the windshield and roof of the car; could they have been made by an RX9’s halo of six long blades as they shredded whatever was in its tracks in the car? Ouch.
Just wait until these things start being dropped from space. By soulless AIs. I don’t know of any deterrent more effective than the fear of a freakin’ sword falling from the heavens directly on one’s head after being dropped by an omniscient non-physical entity. It’s got a mythological ring to it. Still, while these secret missiles might prevent civilian casualties and sound objectively rad, they’re still instruments of death. How impersonal can we make killing from a distance until warfare loses all of its meaning?
For the past several months, I’ve been conducting interviews with leading UFO researchers from countries around the world in an effort to paint a clearer picture of global UFOlogy today.
RG: Who have been the defining figures in Norwegian UFOlogy over the past 70 years, for better or for worse, and why?
TT: As the main investigator of the Hessdalen UFO-phenomenon and an internationally established lecturer on these topics, Dr. Erling Strand is certainly a defining figure in Norwegian UFOlogy. Also important are Mentz Kaarbø and Ole Brænne for their role as editors of the only Norwegian UFO magazine since the seventies. Being the present leader of Norwegian UFO Center, Oftedal is a significant figure. This list should also include individuals such as Kenneth Jacobsen and Arnulf Løken, who are long-time leaders of local UFO groups. Also worthy of inclusion are Bjørnar Hvidsten, an Oslo-based event organiser and UFO activist, and Terje Wulfsberg, a Westcoast-based event organiser and UFO activist. I would also include myself as the producer of two internationally rewarded documentaries on the UFO subject: The Portal – The Hessdalen Light Phenomenon and The Day Before Disclosure, both of which are available on Vimeo through my website.
Dr. Erling Strand, of Project Hessdalen.
RG: Aside from the anomalous lights often sighted around Hessdalen, what do you consider to be the most compelling Norwegian UFO incident on record, and why?
TT: There are so many, from the “Ghost Rockets” of the 1940s, to several reports of close encounters with landed craft and face-to-face meetings with ETs. Many retired airliner pilots I have met with have told me privately about numerous incidents with UFOs during their careers.
RG: Why is Hessdalen so important? What clues, if any, might it offer as to the underlying nature of the UFO enigma?
TT: Hessdalen received national attention from February 1981, as reports came of daily observations of lights and structured craft moving up and down the small valley. For more information about this, I would recommend my documentary, The Portal. Hessdalen has been visited by many researchers and scientists from all over the world, among them Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who proclaimed that Hessdalen was a “UFO-laboratory” due to the high frequency of observations there in the 1980s.
A famous time-lapse image of the mysterious Hessdalen lights.
RG: Is Hessdalen still an active area for UFO sightings?
TT: Yes, still active but not as much so as in the 1980s and 1990s.
RG: What is the Norwegian government’s official stance on UFOs? When was the last time it issued a statement on the subject?
TT: The subject of UFOs doesn’t seem to be a noticeable to our government, and I cannot recall any comments made by any officials.
The Norwegian Ministry of Defence building in Oslo.
RG: Does the Norwegian Ministry of Defence have an official UFO investigations unit?
TT: Not to my knowledge.
RG: Has the Norwegian government shown more or less transparency on the UFO subject than the US government?
TT: No files have been released from our government. It’s simply not a topic here.
RG: Does Norway have a national UFO investigations organisation today, and how many smaller Norwegian UFO groups are you aware of?
TT: We have a group called Norwegian UFO center that collects reports and presents them in their magazine, together with articles on the subject. It is published four times a year. Some smaller private groups of engaged people have been organised over the years, but nothing significant. Actually, just recently, in May 2019, we had a full-day conference on the UFO subject in Oslo, and it gathered 100 attendees. Not bad!
RG: What are the most active regions of Norway for UFO sighting reports hotspots?
TT: Hessdalen is probably still the place, and, as far as I know, some fjords on the west coast.
RG: Have you personally had any UFO sightings?
TT: Once, in Hessdalen. Around midnight, sitting on a mountain top with several people. Two bright lights appeared right above us, hovering side-by-side for 20 seconds before they shot into the stars. No sound. Pretty amazing!
RG: How long have you been involved in the UFO subject; roughly how many cases have you personally investigated; and what conclusions, if any, have you drawn about the underlying nature of UFO phenomena?
TT: I have been interested in the subject since I was a 12-year-old boy in 1962 and came across a book on my father’s bookshelf: George Adamski’s The Flying saucers have landed. He bought it in 1954 after a UFO incident on a Norwegian airfield where he worked at the time. A large disc had hovered over the remote military airfield and was seen on radar and by many of the personnel there. This incident triggered my father’s interest, and later my own. I have pursued the subject all my life and I’m convinced of its legitimacy and importance. I believe we are being visited—or, perhaps more accurately, monitored—by many ET groups. All the ongoing craziness on this planet must be of great anthropological interest to anyone out there watching. I also believe that an apparent alien hybridisation programme is a key part of this story, which is still unfolding. Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs, John Mack, Barbara Lamb and many others have done a great job exploring this.
But, as Edgar Mitchell once pointed out to me: “Beware, you are entering a minefield!” So much dis-and-mis-information; so many wild conspiracy theories; so many self-proclaimed experts and prophets with and big egos, and so on… these are choppy waters to sail. The truth is out there—unfortunately, it’s not always down here. That’s one of the reasons the media has kept its distance, as a great deal of UFO reports are hard to verify. Quoting someone who is later proved to be a fraud does not well serve the publishing businesses. I can understand the editors’ reluctance. It can be very unclear at times what one should believe or not.
RG: How can Norwegian UFOlogy, and UFOlogy in general, better itself?
TT: It depends on what your goals are. Are UFOs something we “need” to force on the general public, or is this a phenomenon that by itself attracts the people who are ready for it? I kind of feel the latter is where I stand at the moment. What we can best do is to help make credible information available, but people must decide for themselves whether or not they wish to engage with it. It is an evolutionary process; one that that cannot be pushed too much. It must follow a natural flow. We cannot save the planet by yelling out that UFOs are real, but by presenting credible information through quality presentations, we can create a curiosity for this and other “paranormal” phenomena, showing that they are not paranormal at all, but actually completely normal and explicable. Mainstream science has just not arrived here yet. Discovering that we are not alone in the universe and becoming a part of a galactic brotherhood is likely to be a natural part of our evolution and it will come when the world is ready for it. But we probably have to grow up first as a civilisation, and to discipline our barbaric nature, which still haunts us and keeps visitors at safe distance. Meantime, we UFO-nerds can enjoy the ride.
One of the foremost authorities on British UFO research has come forward to urge the British government to re-open its investigation of anomalous aerial phenomena. Nick Pope, former head of the Ministry of Defence UFO desk, has publicly called for the MoD to restart its research into unidentified flying objects and other aerial anomalies. Will the Ministry of Defence take heed?
Nick Pope
Nick Pope served at the Ministry of Defence from 1991 to 2006 where he was tasked with investigating reports of UFOs to determine if they posed any risk to British defense. In reality, as our own Nick Redfern has pointed out, Pope was likely merely there to serve as a lightning rod to attract reports which were then actually investigated by members of the Defense Intelligence Staff (DIS) with security clearances.
Still, like Tom DeLonge, Pope was given a level of access to information and institutions that few civilians ever do – even if either one or both were merely part of a government disinformation or public appeasement campaign of some kind. Like DeLonge, Pope also now makes quite a bit of money and publicity off of his legit UFO researcher cred, regardless of if he ever came across any ‘real’ proof of anything anomalous.
Thus, make of it what you will when Pope pops up in the news with some big development. This week, Pope is making the rounds in the British tabloids with his call for the MoD to follow the lead of the U.S. Navy and draft a new policy for documenting and reporting UFOs. “I strongly support the US Navy’s policy, which is a sensible response to the defence, national security and air safety issues raised by the phenomenon – whatever its true nature,” Pope told Metro. “I hope the US policy initiative will lead to the UK following suit. It’s time either to re-open the MoD’s UFO project or put some new reporting arrangements in place.”
Footage alleged to show U.S. Navy aircraft tracking advanced unknown objects surfaced in 2017, bringing the topic of disclosure into the public eye.
Pope even drafted a set of guidelines of his own for reporting unidentified aerial phenomena, writing that the MoD should create a new dedicated unit for collecting these reports:
A new MoD unit should be set up to investigate all such occurrences. All aircrew of all branches of the military who see such objects/phenomena, all civilian aircrew, all radar operators who detect uncorrelated targets, and any other military, MoD or defence contractor witnesses should make a full report to this unit as soon as possible.
Pope writes that the MoD should take each report seriously, cross-checking each with military, civilian, and space radar operated by the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at RAF Fylingdales. Given the number of times the Royal Air Force has been scrambled in response to unidentified objects lately, I’d say they likely already do, but who knows?
A Eurofighter Typhoon at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, England.
Will the MoD follow the U.S. Navy and publicly release new guidelines for reporting UFOs? If all of this is in fact a matter of national security in the U.K. and U.S., why is it receiving so much press? Wouldn’t these two governments want to suppress knowledge and reports of incursions into their airspace by unknown incredibly advanced aircraft?
Maybe all of this is misinformation designed to muddy the waters. If the public is convinced these incursions are being committed by inter-dimensional beings or aliens, no one will freak out that the Russians or Chinese or whoever are flying reality-bending aircraft above our heads. Is any of this leading to any ‘real’ disclosure, or this yet another smokescreen?
Nick Pope's guidelines for the reporting of unidentified aerial phenomena
A recent US Navy policy initiative concerning “unidentified aircraft” making incursions into military-controlled ranges and designated airspace has highlighted the need for similar policy guidance in the UK.
Current reporting is patchy. The 2009 termination of the MoD’s UFO research and investigation program may have created a false perception that military authorities were unconcerned by such reports. The term “UFO” is, in and of itself, unhelpful, in view of the pop culture baggage associated with it. Military and civilian pilots have thus been deterred from making reports, resulting in potentially significant occurrences going unreported. On occasion, to avoid such loaded terminology, phrases such as “unusual aircraft” or “unconventional helicopter” have been used, or – as in the case of recent incidents at Gatwick Airport – sightings have been attributed to drones, which may or may not be the explanation in this instance. To ensure continuity of terminology, the term UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) should be used.
The recent US Navy initiative has brought the requirement into focus, in parallel with US Department of Defense acknowledgement of some aspects of their AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat and Identification Program) program. This is a program designed to assess “foreign advanced aerospace weapon threats from the present out to the next 40 years”, and which included the study of “anomalous events, such as sightings of aerodynamic vehicles in extreme manoeuvres, with unique phenomenology, reported by US Navy pilots or other credible sources.” A new MoD unit should be set up to investigate all such occurrences. All aircrew of all branches of the military who see such objects/phenomena, all civilian aircrew, all radar operators who detect uncorrelated targets, and any other military, MoD or defence contractor witnesses shokd make a full report to this unit as soon as possible.
The MoD should investigate each occurrence thoroughly, cross-checking visual sightings with military and civilian radar data, and the space-tracking radar at the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at RAF Fylingdales
Self-evidently, HMG, the MoD, HM Armed Forces and the CAA need to be aware of all activity in the UK Air Defence Region, because of the clear defence, national security and air safety issues raised. Unusual aerial activity (actual or perceived) may have a number of different causes, including:
Foreign (or non-state actor) military activity, involving aircraft, missiles or drones engaged in operational activity, flight testing, espionage, terrorism, narcotics smuggling, or attempts to assess the capabilities of our air defence network by means of unauthorized penetrations aimed at eliciting a military response.
‘Black projects’ involving prototype technologies operated by another part of HM Armed Forces, allied nations, or defence contractors, in circumstances where the project may be highly classified, with information held only by a very few individuals with the appropriate security clearances and ‘need to know’.
Drone activity from commercial companies or private individuals engaged in legitimate or illegitimate aerial photography, or in deliberately dangerous and/or disruptive activity.
Google Attacks My Discovery Of A UFO Over Cape Of Good Hope, South Africa, Deleting It. UFO Sighting News.
Google Attacks My Discovery Of A UFO Over Cape Of Good Hope, South Africa, Deleting It. UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: 2011 Location of discovery:Cape of Good Hope, South Africa Google Earth Coordinates (deleted): 34°21'12.33"S 18°29'24.02"E Guys, I found this UFO way back in 2011 and had it on my old channel, but I just transitioned from a windows computer to an Apple computer and was still learning the ropes. So there was no sound on it. It was taken by others and some said it was a fake because of no sound. Its 100% real and I know because I made the video in 2011 on my old channel UFOTeamTNT. This UFO is the exact same craft worked on by Area S4 Nuclear engineer Bob Lazar. This leads me to believe that there is a USAF top secret base in the area of Cape of Good Hope. The fact that the UFO was deleted within 4 weeks of announcing it to the world is evidence that Google Headquarters is infiltrated by aliens trying to control the minds of the public by controlling what we see and don't see on Google maps, searches and more. Thats right. I am accusing the higher ups in Google of actually being alien species that believe they are our overlords. Please watch the video below to see the original and learn why Google deleted it. Scott C. Waring-Taiwan UFO Researcher
BAD NEWS, NASA: ASTRONAUTS’ BRAINS ARE FILLING WITH LIQUID
BAD NEWS, NASA: ASTRONAUTS’ BRAINS ARE FILLING WITH LIQUID
ANTHROGAN1337 VIA PIXABAY/VICTOR TANGERMANN
DAN ROBITZSKI
Space Brain
Zero gravity can become a nuisance. Astronauts will Velcro themselves in place while they sleep so they don’t drift away, but there are fewer ways to keep things inside their body in place.
For instance, it turns out fluids float upward into astronauts’ brains during long spaceflights, causing their brains to expand. Even months after they’ve returned to Earth, the astronauts’ ventricles — the sacs in the brain that contain cerebrospinal fluids — remain enlarged, causing vision problems and other medical issues, according to research published Monday in the journal PNAS.
Water Balloons
The study, conducted by a large team of European neuroscientists, found that the ventricles of 11 Russian cosmonauts who returned to Earth had expanded by more than 11 percent, stretched out by the fluid buildup in their brains.
Seven months after they returned, the ventricles were still six percent larger than normal, according to the study, which connected the swollen ventricles to existing reports of worsening astronaut eyesight.
Brain Trust
But because this is an emerging field of medicine, doctors don’t know whether the effect increases during longer spaceflights.
“We need to really check the brain, check the visual system, check cognition because we do not know if this has any effect on that, and check people who spent different durations in space to tell if the effect keeps increasing,” University of Antwerp neuroscientist Angelique Van Ombergen told New Scientist. “Currently, nobody knows.”
Four Glowing UFOs Seen During Day Over Majave Desert, California, Dec 2018, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Four Glowing UFOs Seen During Day Over Majave Desert, California, Dec 2018, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: December 2018
Location of sighting: Giant Rock, Mojave desert, California, USA
The eyewitness said the group was meditating and then the UFOs appeared. Meditation does work, but only if its done with 100% relaxed mental state. Its hard to achieve for me, but has worked.
I have seen a similar sighting long ago here in Taiwan. Seen from the mountain my son goes to school on. Its called Yuming Mountain in Taipei, Taiwan. Back in 2004 a similar sighting occurred, glowing UFOs were seen in a similar formation, but for a longer amount of time. Watch the videos and compare. They are the same craft in both videos.
It is my belief that these UFOs appeared from above at high speed and stopped in their position. Waiting...for the underground base to bring them in. Which happens so fast, that the UFOs seem to shrink and vanish. But in reality, they were transported underground to the alien base 4-6km below. So, we now know there is an alien base below Giant Rock.
Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states:
These light orbs suddenly appeared following a large group meditation at Giant Rock, in the Mojave desert.
BELOW IS THE 2004 UFO SIGHTING SEEN DURING A WEDDING ON TOP OF YUMING MOUNTAIN, TAIPEI, TAIWAN.
BANG, CRASH Physicists using the LIGO and Virgo observatories are catching all sorts of cosmic collisions, including of pairs of neutron stars (illustrated). But scientists hope to bag even more exotic quarry.
NASA’S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER/CI LAB
Seekers of gravitational waves are on a cosmic scavenger hunt.
Since the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory turned on in 2015, physicists have caught these ripples in spacetime from several exotic gravitational beasts — and scientists want more.
“We’re just beginning to see the field of gravitational wave astronomy open,” LIGO spokesperson Patrick Brady from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee said May 2 in a news conference. “Opening up a new window on the universe like this will hopefully bring us a whole new perspective on what’s out there.”
The speed and pitch of gravitational wave signals allow astronomers to make out what’s stirring up the waves. Here are the sources of gravitational waves that scientists that already have in their nets, and what they’re still hoping to find.
1. Pairs of colliding black holes
Status: Found
LIGO’s first catch was a pair of colliding black holes, each around 30 times the mass of the sun (SN: 3/5/16, p. 6). The experiment detected vibrations from the merging black holes on September 14, 2015, four days before the official start of observations for the freshly upgraded LIGO.
That first discovery proved that massive, moving objects do in fact shake spacetime to produce gravitational waves, as Einstein predicted a century earlier. Not only that, the find proved that experiments on Earth could detect those waves, something of which Einstein was skeptical. Three of LIGO’s founders were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2017 for the detection (SN: 10/28/17, p. 6).
In total, LIGO and Virgo have detected gravitational waves from 10 confirmed pairs of colliding black holes, plus another three candidates netted in the last month.
2. Pairs of colliding neutron stars
Status: Found
It was thought that a pair of merging neutron stars, the dense stellar corpses of massive stars that died in a supernova, could also set off gravitational waves. Then, in August 2017, the LIGO-Virgo team caught the first known instance of such an event, and a second on April 25 (SN: 11/11/17, p. 6).
MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR GRAVITATIONAL PHYSICS
Follow-up observations with telescopes that are sensitive to light across the electromagnetic spectrum revealed hidden details of that first neutron star crash, including that the collision forged precious elements like gold, silver and platinum.
3. A neutron star crashing into a black hole
Status: Maybe
Another type of merger that could spawn ripples in spacetime is like the chocolate-vanilla swirl at an ice cream stand: one black hole and one neutron star merging into a single object. The observatories saw a possible signature of this kind of merger on April 26, but the signal was too weak for scientists to be sure.
If the team confirms that that signal really represents a black hole and neutron star swirl, it would prove that the two kinds of objects can live side by side. Before merging, the black hole and neutron star would have had to orbit each other in a close binary system.
“We’d be surprised if they didn’t exist, but we haven’t seen one” of these combinations, says LIGO team member Christopher Berry of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
Studying such a system could help illuminate the mysterious material called nuclear pasta that makes up neutron stars (SN: 10/27/18, p. 8). “Neutron stars are kind of like giant atomic nuclei. They’re nothing like what we can create on Earth,” Berry says. The neutron star merger spotted in 2017 gave some details of the stars’ makeup (SN: 12/23/17, p. 7), including their maximum mass and squishiness. Spying a black hole-neutron star merger could show how a neutron star deforms near the extreme gravity of a black hole, another piece in the puzzle of how nuclear pasta behaves.
4. A collision involving an intermediate-mass black hole
Status: Not yet
All the black holes that LIGO and Virgo have detected so far have been stellar mass, which means that they typically weigh less than 100 times the mass of the sun. Physicists also know of supermassive black holes that weigh millions or billions times the mass of the sun (SN: 4/27/19, p. 6). But it’s not clear if there are black holes with masses in between.
Such intermediate-mass black holes “could be the link between stellar mass black holes and supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies,” Virgo team member Giovanni Andrea Prodi of the University of Trento in Italy said May 2 at a news conference.
Previous research has seen hints of such middleweight black holes, but a collision detected with gravitational waves would be more definitive proof. If they don’t exist, “that’s really interesting,” Berry says, because it would mean supermassive black holes must have been born bigger than physicists can explain (SN Online: 3/16/18).
5. A bumpy neutron star
Status: Not yet
Another way to steal the secrets of neutron stars’ mysterious nuclear pasta is to detect miniature “mountains” on their surfaces. All massive objects that accelerate generate gravitational waves, but most of them are too faint to detect. Physicists think that a lone neutron star with a slight imperfection on it, like a bump about a millimeter high, would emit detectable gravitational waves as it spins. Such waves could help tell how stiff the neutron star material can be, in order to support the bumps.
Unlike most other sources on this list, bumpy neutron stars would produce continuous gravitational waves, detected as a constant “hum” by the observatories.
6. Supernova explosions
Status:Not yet
LIGO and Virgo might also be able to pick up gravitational waves from supernova explosions, the bright cataclysms at the end of massive stars’ lives.
Supernovas emit many types of light and particles, including ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos that are born deep in the heart of the explosions (SN: 2/18/17, p. 20). But scientists still don’t know exactly what makes a star explode as a supernova in the first place.
STARBURST SNAPS Astronomers got a good look at a nearby supernova in 1987 when a star exploded in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud (shown in this image from NASA’s Kuiper Airborne Observatory). Scientists could one day spot a supernova explosion using gravitational wave observatories, shedding light on the powerful event.
NASA’S AMES RESEARCH CENTER
What they do know is that during a supernova explosion, the central core of the star collapses, and the resulting proto-neutron star gathers material from the remainder of the collapsing core. The turbulence at the surface of the proto-neutron star makes it vibrate like a bell, sending off gravitational waves. That specific gravitational wave signal is strongly related to the strength of the turbulence and the structure of the nascent neutron star, astrophysicist David Radice of Princeton University and colleagues report April 29 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“Gravitational waves, neutrinos, and light from the next galactic supernova could allow us to understand the structure of the exploding star, and the nature of the mechanism powering its explosion,” Radice says.
The catch is that a supernova would have to be fairly close, in our own Milky Way galaxy, for the current LIGO detectors to catch it. And astronomers don’t know when the next supernova will happen (SN: 2/18/17, p. 24).
“The expected detection rate is only about two per century, so we will need to be really lucky, or very patient,” Radice says.
7. Waves triggered by the Big Bang
Status: Not yet
Physicists expect that many small gravitational waves from all over the universe crash into Earth all the time. These waves make up a random background of gravitational waves, like a jumble of voices in a crowded room.
Physicists think that at least some of those voices come from the Big Bang. Detecting relic gravitational waves generated by the Big Bang itself would mean seeing back further in the universe’s history than ever before. But it will be difficult to tease that signal apart from all the others.
“As you get a more sensitive detector, you may be able to pick out individual voices,” Berry says. “It’s currently an unsolved problem.”
8.New sources?
Status:Not yet
There’s still the possibility that detectors will catch gravitational waves from a source that scientists don’t recognize. Each time researchers have looked at the universe in a new way, they’ve discovered something that they didn’t predict, Berry says. “Now we’re looking in gravitational waves, a completely different kind of radiation,” he says. “It might be a bit arrogant to think we know everything that’s out there.”
Think robots are all square corners and rigid metal parts? Think again.
Two interns at NASA are part of a larger group working on "soft robots" that could be used for exploring worlds beyond Earth. This includes the moon, NASA'snext major destinationfor astronauts.
The advantage of a soft robot is that it's flexible and, in some ways, better able to adapt to new environments. Soft robots move in ways similar to living organisms, which expands their range of motion, perhaps making it easier to squeeze into a tight spot, for example.
Interns Chuck Sullivan and Jack Fitzpatrick are working at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, to create soft robot actuators. (Actuators are machine components that control a robot's moving parts.)
"When you actuate the soft robot, it changes how you use the material properties," Fitzpatrick said in a statement. "A piece of rubber going from flat to the shape of a finger, it changes the material into something else."
Researchers at NASA's Langley Research Center are developing soft robot actuators from 3D-printed flexible silicone molds to study how "soft robots" can be used for space exploration.
The design is early stage and not nearly space-ready, but the interns are trying to see how these actuators could be used in a real space mission. Sullivan and Fitzpatrick build the actuators by 3D-printing a mold and then pouring it into silicone or another type of flexible substance.
"By design, the actuator has chambers, or air bladders, that expand and compress based on the amount of air in them," NASA said in the statement. "Currently, these two interns are operating the design through a series of tubes in the air bladders, allowing them to control the movement of the robot. By adjusting the amount of air in the chamber of the soft robotic actuator, the robot can flex and relax, just like a human muscle."
In particular, the interns are investigating four key properties of the actuators — mobility, joining, leveling and shaping — and how to use them in space exploration. Mobility refers to how the soft robot moves in its environment, while joining concerns how robots can link together (for example, to make a large temporary shelter). Leveling refers to how actuators can create a surface, such as filling in space underneath a lunar habitat, while shaping examines ways of adding strength to materials like dust shields.
"We see these four things as the crux of the problem. Once we can accomplish those in individual unit tests, we would like to figure out ways to combine them, so maybe we combine mobility and joining," Sullivan said in the same statement.
Both interns are working with principal investigator and computer engineer James Neilan, as well as co-principal investigator and aerospace research engineer Matt Mahlin, who together created this intern project at NASA's Langley Research Center to examine how well soft robots would work in space. This month, researchers and robotics experts from around the country will visit Langley to give the interns feedback on their soft robotics, and the students will continue to make improvements throughout the summer, NASA added.
In 1969, a giant earthquake off the coast of Portugal kicked up a tsunami that killed over a dozen people. Some 200 years prior, an even larger earthquake hit the same area, killing around 100,000 people and destroying the city of Lisbon.
Two earthquakes in the same spot over a couple hundred years is not cause for alarm. But what puzzled seismologists about these tremors was that they began in relatively flat beds of the ocean — away from any faults or cracks in the Earth's crust where tectonic plates slip past each other, releasing energy and causing earthquakes.
One idea is that a tectonic plate is peeling into two layers — the top peeling off the bottom layer — a phenomenon that has never been observed before, a group of scientists reported in April at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly held in Vienna. This peeling may be creating a new subduction zone, or an area in which one tectonic plate is rammed beneath another, according to their abstract.
The peeling is likely driven by a water-absorbing layer in the middle of the tectonic plate, according to National Geographic. This layer might have undergone a geological process called serpentinization, in which water that seeps in through cracks causes a layer to transform into soft green minerals. Now, this transformed layer might be causing enough weakness in the plate for the bottom layer to peel away from the top layer. That peeling could lead to deep fractures that trigger a tiny subduction zone, National Geographic reported.
This group isn't the first to propose this idea, but it's the first to provide some data on it. They tested their hypothesis with two-dimensional models, and their preliminary results showed that this type of activity is indeed possible — but is still yet to be proven.
This research has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Astronauts on the International Space Station will begin testing an innovative algae-powered bioreactor to assess its feasibility for future long-duration space missions.
The algae-powered bioreactor, called the Photobioreactor, represents a major step toward creating a closed-loop life-support system, which could one day sustain astronauts without cargo resupply missions from Earth. This will be particularly important for future long-duration missions to the moon or Mars, which require more supplies than a spacecraft can carry, according to a statement from the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
The Photobioreactor arrived at the space station Monday (May 6) on a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship. The experiment is designed to use algae to convert the carbon dioxide exhaled by astronauts on the space station into oxygen and edible biomass through photosynthesis.
The Photobioreactor is expected to work in conjunction with the physicochemical air-recycling system, or Advanced Closed-Loop System (ACLS), which was delivered to the space station in 2018. The ACLS extracts methane and water from the carbon dioxide in the space station cabin. In turn, the algae in the Photobioreactor will use the remaining carbon dioxide to generate oxygen, creating a hybrid solution formally known as PBR@ACLS, according to the statement.
"With the first demonstration of the hybrid approach, we are right at the forefront when it comes to the future of life-support systems," Oliver Angerer, team leader for Exploration and project leader for the Photobioreactor experiment at DLR, said in the statement. "Of course, the use of these systems is interesting primarily for planetary base stations or for very long missions. But these technologies will not be available when needed if the foundations are not laid today."
German astronaut Alex Gerst of the European Space Agency poses with the Advanced Closed-Loop System (ACLS) at the International Space Station on Oct. 19, 2018.
The experiment will cultivate microscopic algae called Chlorella vulgaris aboard the space station. In addition to producing oxygen, the algae also produce a nutritional biomass that astronauts could eat.
Creating an edible biomass from carbon dioxide within the spacecraft means less food would need to be transported or delivered on space missions. The researchers estimate roughly 30 percent of an astronaut's food could be replaced by algae due to its high protein content, according to the statement.
The search forlife on Marsshouldn't focus exclusively on the distant past, some researchers say.
Four billion years ago, the Martian surface was apparently quite habitable, featuring rivers, lakes and even a deep ocean. Indeed, some astrobiologists view ancient Mars as an even better cradle for life than Earth was, and they suspect that life on our planet may have come here long agoaboard Mars rocksblasted into space by a powerful impact.
Things changed when Mars lost its global magnetic field. Charged particles streaming from the sun were then free to strip away the once-thick Martian atmosphere, and strip it they did. This process had transformed Mars into the cold, dry world we know today by about 3.7 billion years ago, observations by NASA's MAVEN orbiter suggest. (Earth still has its global magnetic field, explaining how our planet remains so livable.)
But this turn of events doesn't necessarily mean that Mars is a dead planet today.
"If Mars had life 4 billion years ago, Mars still has life. Nothing has happened on Mars that would've wiped out life," said Michael Finney, co-founder of The Genome Partnership, a nonprofit organization that runs the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology conferences.
"So, if there were life on Mars, it may have moved around, it may have gone into hiding a bit, but it's probably still there," Finney said last month during a panel discussion at the Breakthrough Discuss conference at the University of California, Berkeley.
Going underground?
One of the most promising hiding places is the Martian underground. Though the Red Planet's surface has no liquid water these days — apart, possibly, from temporary flows on warm slopes now and again — there's likely lots of the wet stuff in buried aquifers. For example, observations by Europe's Mars Express orbiter suggest that a big lake may lurk beneath the Red Planet's south pole.
Earth's diverse residents advertise their presence in dramatic and obvious ways; an advanced alien civilization could probably figure out pretty quickly, just by scanning our atmosphere, that our planet is inhabited.
We don't see any such clear-cut evidence in the Martian air, but scientists have spotted some intriguing hints recently. For example, NASA's Curiosity rover has rolled through two plumes of methane inside the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater, which the six-wheeled robot has been exploring since its 2012 touchdown. The rover mission also determined that baseline methane concentrations in Gale's air go through cycles seasonally.
More than 90% of Earth's atmospheric methane is produced by microbes and other organisms, so it's possible the gas is a signature of modern Martian life.
But the jury is most definitely still out on that. Abiotic processes can generate methane, too; the reaction of hot water with certain types of rock is one example. And even if the Mars methane is biogenic, the creatures that created it could be long dead. Scientists think the Red Planet methane plumes leaked out from underground, and there's no telling how long the gas lay trapped down there before making its way to the surface.
NASA's 2020 Mars rover, which is scheduled to launch next summer, will hunt for signs of long-dead Red Planet life. So will the European-Russian ExoMars rover, a mission that will lift off at about the same time.
But some researchers are pushing to expand the hunt to extant Martian life. One of them is molecular biologist Gary Ruvkun, who's based at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Ruvkun is one of three principal investigators on the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Genomes (SETG) project, which is developing an instrument to detect past or present DNA- or RNA-based life on Mars and other alien worlds.
He was on the Breakthrough Discuss panel with Finney and several other researchers, and he also gave a talk at the conference laying out the case for putting the SETG instrument on future Mars rovers and other robotic explorers.
Part of that case centers on panspermia, the idea that life has spread widely throughout the solar system, and perhaps the galaxy, by either natural or artificial means. If life did indeed come to Earth from somewhere else, there's a good chance it once flourished on Mars as well, the thinking goes. The Red Planet could have been the source, or it may have been "seeded" as Earth was.
Ruvkun views panspermia as very likely; during his Breakthrough Discuss talk, he described himself as "a religious fanatic" about the idea. Ruvkun cited as supporting evidence the very early emergence of ATP synthase, the enzyme that makes the energy-storage molecule adenosine triphosphate.
ATP synthase goes all the way back to the base of the tree of life on Earth, meaning this intricate and complex molecule was up and running by about 4 billion years ago, Ruvkun said.
"It's not just that life kind of got up to kind of working," he said. "It's like it got to being super highly evolved very fast. That's why panspermia is so attractive."
If panspermia is indeed a thing, then any life-forms we find on Mars — or anywhere else in our solar system — will likely be related to us, Ruvkun and others have reasoned. That is, such organisms will use DNA or RNA as their genetic molecule. So, we should go hunt for this stuff.
"It seems really idiotic to not look for DNA on Mars," Ruvkun said during his talk. "It's an experiment that's worth doing, we would say."
Mars isn't the only place in our solar system where alien life might flourish today. Indeed, most astrobiologists would put the Red Planet down the list a bit, behind the Jupiter moon Europa and the Saturn satellites Enceladus and Titan.
Europa and Enceladus harbor deep oceans of salty liquid water beneath their icy shells. Titan is thought to have a buried water ocean as well, and it also sports lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons on its surface. (NASA is developing an ocean-characterizing Europa flyby mission that will launch in the early to mid-2020s. The agency also aims to send a life-hunting lander to the moon's surface in the near future. And a Titan mission is one of two finalists for a NASA "New Frontiers" launch in 2025, along with a comet sample-return project. We should learn which one NASA picks by the end of the year.)
Even hellish Venus, a climate-change cautionary tale for Earth, might still harbor some habitable redoubts, scientists say.
Like Mars, Venus once had plentiful surface water, but a runaway greenhouse effect baked the stuff away and left the planet with surface temperatures high enough to melt lead. However, conditions appear to be pretty clement about 30 miles (50 km) above the Venusian surface.
Penny Boston, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the agency's Ames Research Center in California, said she thinks the chances of modern-day Venus life are low because of the "dewatering" of the planet.
Regardless, the possible existence of cloud-dwelling life on Venus "definitely needs to be interrogated," Boston said during the same Breakthrough Discuss panel discussion.
A new study suggests that our moon formed from a splash of magma when a large object crashed into a proto-Earth covered in a fiery ocean.
Animation simulating an object’s collision with a magma-covered proto-Earth, resulting in the formation of the moon.
Via 2019 Natsuki Hosono, Hirotaka Nakayama, 4D2U Project, Naoj
For more than a century, scientists have struggled to explain how the Earth’s moon formed. The most widely-accepted explanation is that the moon formed from the debris left over after a Mars-sized object, known asTheia, slammed into the early Earth and ejected enough debris to form the moon.
The problem is that when this idea was tested, computer simulations indicated that the moon would be made primarily from the same stuff as the impacting object. Yet the opposite is true. We know from analyzing rocks brought back from Apollo missions that the moon consists mainly of material from Earth.
A new study published April 29, 2019, in Nature Geoscience by a team of scientists from Japan and the U.S. has offered an explanation for the discrepancy.
The key, according to Yale geophysicist Shun-ichiro Karato, who is a study co-author, is that the early, proto-Earth — about 50 million years after the formation of the sun — was covered by a sea of hot magma, while the impacting object was likely made of solid material. The impact splashed magma out into space, and that material formed the moon.
Snapshots of numerical modeling of the moon’s formation by a giant impact. The central part of the image is a proto-Earth; red points indicate materials from the ocean of magma in a proto-Earth; blue points indicate the impactor materials.
Karato and his collaborators set out to test a new model, based on the collision of a proto-Earth covered with an ocean of magma and a solid impacting object.
The model showed that after the collision, the magma is heated much more than solids from the impacting object. The magma then expands in volume and goes into orbit to form the moon, the researchers say. This explains why there is much more Earth material in the moon’s makeup. Previous models did not account for the different degree of heating between the proto-Earth silicate and the impactor.
Karato said in a statement:
In our model, about 80 percent of the moon is made of proto-Earth materials. In most of the previous models, about 80 percent of the moon is made of the impactor. This is a big difference.
Karato said the new model confirms previous theories about how the moon formed, without the need to propose unconventional collision conditions — something theorists have had to do until now.
Bottom line: The moon formed from a splash of magma when a large object crashed into a proto-Earth covered in a fiery ocean, according to a new study.
Distant water exoplanets might have oceans thousands of miles deep. That’s in contrast to Earth’s ocean, which is about 6.8 miles (about 11 km) deep at its deepest point.
Artist’s concept of a water world exoplanet as described in a new study. If they do exist, these distant water worlds might have global oceans much, much deeper than any in our solar system.
Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Water worlds– planets or moons with global oceans – used to be considered part of science fiction, but we are starting to learn now that, not only do they exist, they might actually be fairly common. In our own solar system, the moons Europa, Enceladus, Titan and Ganymede are known or suspected to have such oceans beneath their outer ice crust. EvenPlutois now thought to have one! Perhaps other worlds in our solar system have water we haven’t found yet. Scientists also think they’re getting closer to finding exoplanets – planets orbiting distant stars – that are water worlds as well, including planets with global or near-global oceans on their surfaces.
Now, a new study suggests that some exoplanet water worlds could have oceans much deeper than any in our solar system. Unfathomably deep, even, as in hundreds or thousands of miles deep. The new research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on April 29, 2019, by Harvard University astronomer Li Zeng and his colleagues. Zeng explained that, according to the team’s computer simulations, some planets may have incredibly deep oceans:
Hundreds or thousands of kilometers … Unfathomable. Bottomless. Very deep.
Earth’s oceans are nowhere near as deep. The average ocean depth on Earth is about about 2.2 miles (3.5 km). The maximum depth is 6.8 miles (about 11 km) at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
The data the team gathered from their computer simulations suggests that water worlds are probably common in our galaxy, particularly in sub-Neptune-sized planets – or mini-Neptunes – that have radii two to four times that of Earth but are smaller than Neptune. These planets are most likely to have deep global oceans, rather than thick atmospheres like gas dwarfs, ice giants or gas giants. Moons like Europa and Enceladus have deep subsurface oceans, for their size, but those are still not nearly as deep as the oceans that would exist on sub-Neptune worlds.
Other kinds of water worlds may be rocky exoplanets with global surface oceans, more similar to Earth. This artist’s concept is of Kepler-22b, a super-Earth and the first exoplanet that NASA’s Kepler mission confirmed to orbit in a star’s habitable zone.
Image via NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech.
These sub-Neptune worlds are one of two primary kinds of exoplanets found so far. The others are super-Earths, between one and four times the size of Earth, which are dense and rocky. There aren’t any super-Earths in our solar system, with the possible exception of Planet Nine (if it is ever found). The sub-Neptunes have much lower densities, and astronomers haven’t been sure if they are gas dwarfs, like Jupiter or Saturn but smaller, with a rocky core and a thick hydrogen atmosphere. Or did their low density mean they contained a lot of water?
Normally, they would be assumed to be gas dwarfs, since water worlds would need to be beyond the “snowline” in a planetary system, where temperatures are cold enough for water or ice, and many sub-Neptunes are very close to their stars. But the new computer simulations suggest that is not always the case, that many sub-Neptunes have much smaller atmospheres as related to their size, more like smaller terrestrial planets like Earth or Venus. Their atmospheres would be nowhere near as thick or deep as other gas dwarf-type sub-Neptunes.
As outlined in the new paper:
The discovery of numerous exoplanet systems containing diverse populations of planets orbiting very close to their host stars challenges the planet formation theories based on the solar system. Here, we focus on the planets with radii of 2-4 Earths, whose compositions are debated. They are thought to be either gas dwarfs consisting of rocky cores embedded in hydrogen-rich gas envelopes or water worlds containing significant amounts of water-dominated fluid/ice in addition to rock and gas. We argue that these planets are water worlds.
Yet another kind of hypothesized water world – an “eyeball” planet – where there is an ocean only on the star-facing side. The rest of the surface is ice.
But if there are water world sub-Neptunes close to their stars, how did they form? The findings suggest that they first formed farther out from their stars, and then gradually drifted in closer over time. As Zeng said in Gizmodo:
A water world close to its star must have formed much farther away and then moved closer as its orbit shrank. The planet’s composition was set when it was farther away on a colder orbit. The process of orbital shrinking is called ‘migration’ and it is driven by the gravity of the disk of gas from which the planets formed. If water worlds are common that provides a really strong confirmation that migration really does happen and is a key process in how planets form, both around other stars and in our own solar system.
The research indicates that many sub-Neptunes are quite wet, but just how wet are they? The results show that at least 25 percent of their mass would water or ice, and perhaps up to 50 percent. That’s a staggering amount. We think of Earth as being a water world, but its mass is actually only 0.025 percent water, by comparison. Some water worlds may have so much water that they are completely water-logged, fluid all the way down into the deepest parts of the planet.
Jupiter’s moon Europa is a water world, with a deep global ocean beneath its outer ice crust. This view is from the Galileo spacecraft in the 1990s.
The pressures far down in some of those oceans could also be like nothing on Earth, similar to a million times the atmospheric surface pressure that we experience. In those extreme environments, liquid water would be compressed into uniquely high-pressure phases of ice, such as Ice VII or superionic ice. These ices don’t occur naturally on Earth, but have been created in the laboratory. As Zeng said:
These high-pressure ices are essentially like silicate-rocks within Earth’s deep mantle, they’re hot and hard. These are utterly different worlds compared to our own Earth.
The computer models also took into account other variables, including the abundance of nebular gases, water-rich ices, rocky materials consisting primarily of iron and nickel and influences by complex chemical processes driven by temperature, cooling rates, evaporation, condensation, density and distance to host star. As Zeng noted:
Statistically speaking, these water worlds may be more abundant than Earth-like rocky planets. Perhaps every typical Sun-like star has one or more of these water worlds [and maybe] our solar system is less typical. Generally speaking, this type of planetary system architecture with close-in rocky super-Earths and water-rich sub-Neptunes may be more common in the Milky Way than our type of solar system.
Earth is of course the best-known water world, with oceans that cover about 70% of the surface. That amount of water pales in comparison to what may exist on the water worlds discussed in the new paper, however.
Image via NASA.
So with all that water, could these planets be potential homes for life? Yes, there’s a lot of water, but what about the chemical elements and nutrients needed, as found on the on the ocean floors of Earth, and maybe Europa and Enceladus? According to Anders Sandberg, a senior research fellow at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), these kinds of water worlds may not be ideal, although they would still be much better than gas dwarfs:
While water worlds are not entirely perfect for life since the heavier elements may be buried under hundreds of kilometers of high-pressure ice, they are likely far better than gas dwarfs.
If the water worlds described in this study do indeed exist, it would open a whole new chapter in exoplanetary exploration. These worlds would be unlike any ever seen before, sort of like taking parts of Earth, ocean moons and gaseous planets and combining them, but on a much larger scale. The water worlds in this study are essentially water worlds on steroids.
Bottom line: If the findings in this new study are accurate, then our galaxy may be full of water worlds. Unlike Earth, these would be larger planets with global oceans that are not only deeper than any in our solar system, but mind-bogglingly deep.
A 60-meter fictional asteroid slammed into the heart of New York City with a force 1,000 times more powerful than the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The blast obliterated buildings from Central Park to lower Manhattan, causing up to 1.3 million fatalities. Luckily, this was just a drill — the culmination of a week-long exercise held in Washington last week which tested various planetary defense strategies at our disposal in the event of an asteroid threat. The findings suggest that we are still woefully unprepared to deal with threats from the sky.
Asteroids are one of the few extreme natural disasters that can be prevented
Dozens of astronomers, scholars, and disaster relief experts gathered at the biennial Planetary Defense Conference held last week. The main objective of the gathering was to assess the response ability of space missions and to what degree evacuation plans can mitigate the damage caused by a hypothetical asteroid impact.
The participants, which included experts from NASA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and other federal agencies, were warned 8 years in advance that a 140- to 160-meter asteroid (500- to 850-foot-wide) was going to collide with Earth, somewhere near Denver, Colorado.
In this fictional scenario, NASA collaborates with the world’s foremost space agencies from Europe, Russia, China, and Japan to launch six spacecraft tasked with deflecting the killer asteroid by slamming into it. This approach, known as the kinetic impact technique, will actually be tested by NASA in the real world in 2021 with a mission called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). Some alternatives include gravitationally tugging the asteroid using a nearby spacecraft, painting the asteroid white to change the amount of radiation it absorbs from the sun and thereby shifting its trajectory, and blasting the space rock with nuclear weapons.
Each day of the conference, the clock was advanced by months or years and the participants had to make new decisions based on the updated situation of the simulation. Not long before the conference was supposed to end, the participants were announced that their efforts resulted in the deflection of the asteroid. However, the impact also knocked off a 60-meter fragment from the asteroid that continued its trajectory towards Earth.
Map of the damage zones from the 60-meter asteroid fragment impacting Manhattan. Red zone is the site of total annihilation, in orange buildings collapse and clothing would catch fire, while the outer zone could cause second-degree burns.
Credit: NASA.
On the last day of the conference and ten days before impact in the simulation’s time frame, the participants announced that the asteroid would make a direct hit on Central Park, in the heart of Manhattan, at 43,000 miles per hour. The situation was dire and the only thing the experts could do was to call for the evacuation of 10 million people living in a metropolis bottlenecked by bridges and tunnels. Although there are evacuation plans in place for New York, none is designed to take on this scale so authorities in the simulation quickly became overwhelmed.
“I think the exercise illustrated how time is the most valuable asset when it comes to asteroid hazards,” said Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a participant in the simulation. “In reality, having many decades of warning gives us multiple options and multiple tries to prevent catastrophe.”
Fortunately, a scenario in which an asteroid would hit a major city is extremely unlikely. Instead, an asteroid would likely hit the ocean, which covers most of the planet’s surface. What’s more, there is no known asteroid with a significant probability of impacting Earth in the next century. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t prepare considering the catastrophic potential of an asteroid impact. According to researchers, there are 25,000 near-Earth asteroids as big as the space rock used in the simulation, two-thirds of which are not tracked.
At the conference, NASA stressed that the biggest takeaway from such a simulation is that asteroids represent a real threat to planetary security. Although most people associate asteroid impacts with Hollywood blockbusters, their devastating power is as real as it gets. Unlike the dinosaurs, however, we have the tools to avert our annihilation as long as we prepare properly.
According to NASA and FEMA, the best asteroid defense strategy is finding and deflecting a threat before it ever comes near Earth. In the future, NASA hopes to send a spacecraft to visit asteroid Apophis, which will narrowly miss Earth by just 19,000 miles in 2029.
The ripples in space-time known as gravitational waveshave already helped answer major questions regarding the nature of matter and black holes. And upcoming gravitational-wave observatories both on Earth and in space could soon help solve some of the greatest mysteries in science.
"We're going to be able to learn a lot about the universe," said Cole Miller, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland, College Park.
The existence of gravitational waves was first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916. According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravity results from how mass warps space and time. When any object with mass moves, it generates gravitational waves that travel at the speed of light, stretching and squeezing space-time along the way.
Gravitational waves are extremely weak, making them extraordinarily difficult to sense, and even Einstein was uncertain whether they really existed and if they would get detected. After decades of work, researchers succeeded in discovering the first direct evidence of gravitational waves in 2015 using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).
LIGO uses a pair of detectors — one in Hanford, Washington, and the other in Livingston, Louisiana — to sense the distortions that gravitational waves cause as they move through matter. Each detector is shaped like a gigantic L, with legs about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) long. The legs of each detector are normally the same length, so laser beams take the same amount of time to travel down each. However, if gravitational waves pass through Earth — making the detector legs expand and contract by about one-ten-thousandth the diameter of a proton — atomic clocks can detect the split-second differences in time it takes for laser beams to zip down one leg of the detector versus the other.
Because LIGO's detectors are about 1,865 miles (3,000 km) apart, it can take up to 10 milliseconds for a gravitational wave to cross from one detector to the other. Scientists can use this difference in arrival times to deduce where the gravitational waves come from. As more gravitational-wave detectors come online — such as the Virgo facility near Pisa, Italy — researchers will get better at pinpointing the sources of gravitational waves.
The gravitational waves that LIGO can best detect are the most powerful ones, which are released when extraordinarily massive objects collide with one another. The first gravitational waves LIGO detected were from colliding black holes, and with Virgo, it detected merging neutron stars. These findings have shed light on everything from the nature of gravity to the origin of most of the elements heavier than iron.
The immediate future
Not only are LIGO and Virgo continuing to sense bursts of gravitational waves, but they are getting upgrades to increase their sensitivity to detect even more events. In addition, other gravitational-wave observatories are coming online soon. Japan has built KAGRA, which is planned to join the LIGO and Virgo network in 2019, and LIGO-India will hopefully be operational by the mid-2020s, Miller said.
"More detectors means a better determination of the direction of gravitational-wave sources," Miller told Space.com.
Beyond 2025, scientists are discussing two advanced gravitational-wave observatories — the Einstein Telescope and the Cosmic Explorer. The plan for the Einstein Telescope is to build it underground to reduce the amount of noise experienced from seismic vibrations, whereas the aim for Cosmic Explorer is to use cryogenic systems to help cut down the noise experienced from heat on its electronics. Decreasing noise in turn boosts sensitivity to gravitational-wave events.
The next generation of ground-based gravitational-wave observatories may detect mergers of intermediate-mass black holes, ones that are hundreds to thousands of times more massive than the sun. Previous research suggested that intermediate-mass black holes are the building blocks of the supermassive black holes millions to billions of times the sun's mass found at the hearts of galaxies such as the Milky Way, "but their existence has not yet been conclusively proven," Miller said.
The current and planned ground-based gravitational-wave observatories are all sensitive to wavelengths of about 60 miles (100 km), the kind generated by neutron stars and black holes up to a few dozen times the mass of the sun. However, scientists have long planned space-based gravitational-wave observatories with detectors separated by vast distances that could sense even longer wavelengths, the type released by supermassive black holes.
One space-based gravitational-wave observatory under development is the European Space Agency's Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, scheduled to launch in 2034. LISA will consist of a constellation of three satellites in orbit around the sun and trailing Earth. Inside each satellite is a cube that will fall freely through space, tracing a path that will only get perturbed by gravitational waves. These satellites will carefully monitor the position of each cube to look for signs of space-time ripples.
Each of LISA's satellites will be millions of miles away from each other. In principle, LISA will be able to detect gravitational waves with wavelengths of about 18 million miles (30 million km) from the mergers of black holes 10,000 to 10 million times the mass of the sun, Miller said. The hope is that LISA and similar proposed projects, such as TianQin from China, can help shed light on the mergers of galaxies.
"We can learn how galaxies and supermassive black holes assemble," Miller said.
However, what scientists are likely most looking forward to with gravitational-wave observatories is the unexpected. "We may see unanticipated types of sources of gravitational waves, or see the sources we generally knew about with twists that might surprise us," Miller said.
For example, the hearts of black holes are infinitely dense, infinitely small points known as singularities. And researchers have long suspected that infinitely dense, infinitely thin rings known as cosmic strings might also exist. "If cosmic strings are real, we may be able to detect gravitational waves from them over a broad range of energies," Miller said.
In addition, scientists have long suggested the possible existence of primordial black holes, ones born less than a second after the Big Bang, when dense clumps of the newborn universe collapsed under their own gravity. Such black holes would have masses just that of asteroids or planets.
"If we saw gravitational waves from something, say, half the mass of the sun, there would be no other way to produce them but primordial black holes," Miller said.
Furthermore, some physicists have suggested that black holes may not actually exist. If they do not, then gravitational-wave observatories may discover their actual nature, Miller said.
Generally, researchers think most black holes form when massive stars finish burning their fuel and rapidly collapse under their own weight, getting crushed into singularities that are hidden by invisible boundaries known as event horizons from which nothing can return. (The Event Horizon Telescope recently got the first-ever look at one of these points of no return recently, imaging the boundary of the supermassive black hole at the core of the M87 galaxy.)
However, the possibility of singularities clashes with laws of physics suggesting that destruction of information is impossible, including information encoded within anything falling into black holes.
As such, physicists have suggested that when massive stars die, they may instead form structures with names such as "black stars" and "gravastars." These alternatives resemble black holes in nearly every way but lack singularities and event horizons, sidestepping the conundrums these aspects of black holes raise.
One way to find out whether black hole alternatives exist is by analyzing gravitational waves unleashed by what scientists currently think are merging black holes. As black holes spiral toward one another, they should each give off gravitational waves, but their event horizons should absorb those directly falling onto them. However, since black hole alternatives lack event horizons, they can reflect gravitational waves, and gravitational-wave observatories could detect these "echoes," Miller said.
If such echoes are discovered, they could yield insights into both general relativity and quantum physics. Doing so could finally help lead to a model of "quantum gravity" marrying both long-disparate theories, Miller added.
Miller and his colleague Nicolás Yunes, of Montana State University in Bozeman, detailed this research online April 24 in the journal Nature.
WETENSCHAPEen stuk uit Stonehenge dat al zestig jaar zoek was, is uiteindelijk toch teruggekeerd naar de prehistorische site. Het was de 89-jarige Brit Robert Phillips die het onderdeel al die tijd had verstopt. Tot hij besloot het terug te geven.
Het gaat om een onderdeel van iets meer dan een meter lang, dat verdwenen was na de archeologische opgravingen in 1958. Bij die werken was ook Robert Phillips, nu 89, betrokken. Hij verborg de staaf in zijn kantoor om het pas nu terug te schenken. ‘English Heritage’ hoopt dat de stenen staaf kan helpen bepalen waar de wereldberoemde stenen oorspronkelijk vandaan komen.
61 jaar geleden trokken archeologen een omgevallen trilithon - een structuur van twee verticale stenen waarop een derde horizontaal rust - weer recht. Een van de verticale stenen vertoonde scheuren. Als versterking werden drie gaten in de stenen geboord waarin metalen staven werden aangebracht. De herstellingswerken werden gemaskeerd met fragmenten sarsen-steen, gevonden bij de opgravingen.
BELGAIMAGE
Maar Phillips, een Brit die inmiddels in Florida woont, nam een van de drie kernen van ongeveer een meter lang mee naar huis. Hij bewaarde de stenen staaf eerst in een plastic koker in zijn kantoor in Basingstoke, op 80 km van Londen. Later bevestigde hij het aan de muur van zijn huis in de VS. Het is uitzonderlijk goed bewaard. Het is niet bekend waar de andere twee staven gebleven zijn.
Aan de vooravond van zijn 90ste verjaardag besloot hij nu het alsnog terug te geven aan ‘English Heritage’. Het blijft nog altijd een raadsel hoe de sarsen-stenen van 25 ton duizenden jaren geleden naar hun eindlocatie bij Amesbury konden worden gesleept, zonder de moderne technologie van vandaag. Misschien kan het langwerpige stuk van Phillips het mysterie helpen ontrafelen, of toch de precieze herkomst van de grotere exemplaren tussen de stenen bepalen.
WETENSCHAPInsight, de Marslander die de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartmaatschappij NASA in november 2018 richting de rode planeet stuurde, deelde enkele dagen geleden zijn tweede selfie. Daaruit bleek dat de onbemande robot op enkele maanden tijd heel wat stof heeft gevangen. Bovendien ontbreken er enkele attributen op de foto.
Net zoals op aarde kan het op Mars wel eens stormen, zo’n storm gaat daar vooral gepaard met heel wat stof. Iets wat NASA’s vorige Marslander Opportunity (enkele keren) aan den lijve moest ondervinden. Opportunity was het onbemande robotwagentje dat in 2003 richting de rode planeet werd gestuurd om daar op verkenning te gaan. Veertien jaar later, in de zomer van 2018, ging het contact tussen aarde en de Marsrover voorgoed verloren te wijten aan zo’n stofstorm die enkele weken aanhield. Tenslotte trok NASA in februari 2019 definitief de stekker uit de Marsmissie Opportunity.
Gelukkig was er destijds al een tweede Marslander geland op de planeet: InSight. En uit een recente selfie die de robot maakte, blijkt nu dat InSight ook al te maken kreeg met een kleine storm.
Op 6 december 2018 maakte de tweede Marslander (InSight) een eerste selfie op de rode planeet. Op die manier wisten onderzoekers van NASA zeker dat de robot zijn bestemming heelhuids bereikt had. De tweede foto dateert van 6 mei 2019 – vijf maanden na landing – en het verschil is groot. Terwijl de robot op de eerste foto nog blinkt, wordt hij op het tweede exemplaar bedekt met een dikke laag stof.
Dat kan problematisch zijn vermits het stof de zonnepanelen van de Marslander bedekt. Die zonnepanelen wekken de energie op waarop de robot teert. Gelukkig heeft de robot niet veel energie nodig om te overleven. Enkel in extreme gevallen, wanneer de stofstormen enkele weken aanhouden, kan het fataal aflopen.
(Lees verder onder de foto’s)
NASA
De Marslander InSight maakte 6 december 2018 een eerste selfie.
NASA
Op de tweede selfie zijn de zonnepanelen van InSight bedekt met een dikke stoflaag.
Goed nieuws
Al kunnen de buitenaardse stormen – met windsnelheden van wel 72 kilometer per uur - de verkenners van NASA de kop kosten, ze hebben hun nut ook al bewezen. De krachtige wind blaast het stof immers ook terug weg van de zonnepanelen. Zo zorgde een windhoos er in februari nog voor dat 0,7 procent meer energie werd opgewekt met het ene zonnepaneel, zelfs 2.7 procent met het tweede.
Bovendien heeft die wind de levensduur van Opportunity met maar liefst dertien jaar en negen maanden verlengd. De missie zou oorspronkelijk slechts drie maanden duren omdat astronomen verwachtten dat de zonnepanelen, bedekt met stof, daarna geen energie meer zouden opwekken. Het stof werd echter keer op keer weggeblazen.
Ontbrekende onderdelen
Wie trouwens opmerkte dat er enkele onderdelen van InSight ontbreken op de tweede foto – daarop heeft de Marslander geen seisometer en hitteschild meer – moet zich geen zorgen maken. Enkele dagen na zijn landing plaatste de Marsrover een seismometer, die trillingen in de bodem meet, op het oppervlak van de planeet.
Vervolgens plaatste InSight een hitteschild op Mars. Dat schild verdween bijna vijf meter diep in de bodem van de planeet. Daar moet het berekenen hoeveel warmte er precies uit het binnenste van de planeet komt.
APHet hitteschild dat de Marslander InSight op de bodem van de rode planeet zette.
Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke, a Professor Emeritus at Montana State University who is Cherokee/Choctaw has been researching the Star People, and collecting encounters between them and Native Indians for many years. This article shares one of many.
Reflect On:
Are we alone? If not, what are the implications when the public becomes fully aware of this? How will it change the way we look at reality? Science? Technology? History?
I recently came across the work of Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke, who brings to the field of ufology degrees in history, English, psychology, and educational leadership and a background as a teacher, university professor, junior college and university administrator, licensed therapist and psychologist, and social science researcher. She is a Professor Emeritus at Montana State University and former Director of the Center for Bilingual/Multicultural Education. Dr. Clarke, who is Cherokee/Choctaw, has worked with indigenous people for most of her career, and has some amazing stories to tell.
I first learned about the “Star People” when my grandmother told me the ancient legends of my people. My childhood reality included narratives that traced the origins of the indigenous people of the Americas to Pleiades; stories of little people who intervened in people’s lives; and legends about the magical gift of the DNA of the “Star People” that flowed in the veins of the indigenous tribes of the Earth. I embraced the stories of the celestial visitors who lived among the Indian people as part of my heritage.
In her book, she shares many stories, and one of them comes from a gentleman named Harrison. She writes:
Located in the states of North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, the Northern Plains Indian Tribes have many accounts about UFOs. The story in this chapter is told by a well-respected elder of a Northern Plains tribe. His encounter predates the crash at Roswell. Since I recorded this story, Harrison has passed, but the time I spent with them over the years, changed my life.
Harrison told a story of how his grandfather took him on a spaceship in the summer of 1945. He said he was 12 at the time, and explained how the Army Corps of Engineers came to the reservation around the summer of 1947 to survey the river and surrounding area “for the reservoir.” So originally, there was no reservoir. The Corps confiscated the land and in return gave Harrison’s grandfather a worthless piece of land on the other side of that butte.
I spent every summer on his place from the time I was six years old. Mom and pop both worked for the tribe and they didn’t want me home alone during the summers. So every May I packed two paper bags: one with a change of clothes and the other with books, marbles, and my toy gun. My folks dropped me off to live with Gramps from June to late August. I loved my summers here, even the isolation. I was the only child for miles. I rode horses and herded cattle. Helped with the chores. Whatever I could do. As I got older, there were bigger chores and more responsibility. There was no TV or videos like kids have today. At night Gramps amused me with the ancient myths and legends of our people.
Clarke’s relationship with Harrison grew over the years, and the two of them met when his school district requested her assistance in applying for a federal grant. Harrison was her contact and was responsible for escorting her around the reservation.
She explains, “It took nearly 25 years of visits before Harrison asked me if I believed in Star People.” She replied with a yes, and then he said, “Someone told me you collect stories about the Star People, I find that unusual.”
She replied,
I’ve been collecting stories for a few years. I grew up hearing the ancient stories of the Star People from my grandmother. Everywhere I go, if I am among indigenous people, I ask them about their stories of UFOs and Star People. Perhaps someday I will write a book. I’ve heard some amazing accounts from American Indians.
Harrison then offered to take her to her Grandfathers place, where he shared an incredible story that took place on his Grandfather’s ranch before the Army Corps of Engineers became involved.
He told a story his grandfather told him about a spaceship that crashed on the property. Harrison said:
I saw the ship, I went aboard it. It was a long cylinder about 30 feet wide and 60 feet long. I measured it by pacing it off. Most of it stuck inside a butte, close to the water level. It was well camouflaged. You can’t see the butte now, it was covered by water when the Corps of Engineers flooded the valley creating the reservoir.”
He goes on to explain:
The crash shook the ground so hard that Gramps thought the house was going to collapse. You can still see a crack in the foundation of the log cabin that Gramps said occurred when the spaceship crashed. The horses were so frightened that it took a month to round them up, and even then they were constantly trying to escape. At first, Gramps thought it was an earthquake, but when he cleared, he saw the craft. It hit with such force that only a small section stuck out of the butte, but Gramps not only had a keen eye, he knew this land like the back of his hand. The smallest disturbance caught his attention. For the longest time he sat on the butte watching for any sign of life. He kept a vigil for days. Finally after a week or so, he ventured to the place of impact.”
His grandfather told him that the “star men” who crashed and survived there lived in their craft for approximately 5 months before another ship came and rescued them.
At the time of the crash, the closest ranch to our place was 10 miles away, and as fate would have it those neighbours had moved out of state days before the crash occurred. Gramps delighted in keeping the star men’s presence a secret.
Harrison explained that the first time his grandfather approached them, he did so by taking them an offering of food. They told him they do not eat flesh. He described them as taller than humans, at least 7-8 feet tall and very white. Harrison said:
He described them as being so white that you could almost see inside them. I’m not sure what he meant by that except he said their skin was thin. They had long slender fingers, much longer than humans. Their hair was white. When the sun shined on it, Gramps said it looked like a halo surrounded their heads. He said that sometimes they looked like the angels depicted in the paintings of his bible, except they did not wear gowns. Their eyes, too. He said they changed color depending on the light.
Furthermore, Harrison’s grandfather described to him what they wore:
He was particularly interested in their clothes. They wore a one-piece light green outfit. He told me there were times he saw them wading in the river, and when he approached them their suits were dry. He told me he wished he had a suit like that. When I think of the old man and how he viewed the star visitors, he did his best to describe what he saw. I’m sure if the same thing occurred today, the observers might offer a more sophisticated perspective.
Harrison went on to explain that there were fourteen of them, and how his “Gramps” wasn’t sure if all survived the crash. Harrison says that when he arrived in the summer, after the visitors had left, he went on board the craft and there were seventeen seats.
As far as why they were here, Harrison said:
“Gramps said that he often saw the Star People picking up rocks and plants. At first, when they saw him, they vanished before his eyes. He never discovered an explanation for that, but he wished that he had that power,” Harrison laughed. “Gramps thought that was the ultimate trait-simply to vanish in thin air when you wanted. I can’t imagine how he planned to use it. As time passed, Gramps said the star men realized he meant no harm and they didn’t disappear when he approached. Overtime, it became clear to him that they were concerned about their craft. They did not want it discovered.”
His grandfather told him that the beings lived there from late November until April. According to him, another spaceship appeared on April 17th, 1945 and he never saw them again.
He knew they were waiting for a rescue craft, so he expected it. He told me their spaceship was one of four exploring the Earth. They had been dropped off by a bigger ship that was circling Earth. The big ship would return for them but not for some time. They just had to wait. They were not afraid they would be discovered, they could make themselves invisible, but they could not do the same with their spaceship.
He said that his grandfather witnessed the pick-up.
He watched as they prepared to leave. Each of the stranded star travellers came to him and bowed before they left. He understood they appreciated his discretion.
As far as why they were here:
Gramps said they were voyagers and traveled the universe observing life on other worlds. They had been coming to Earth for thousands of years observing, collecting and noting changes. One day, they took him aboard their craft and showed him pictures from their home. As he described it, I suspect it was some kind of a TV or computer, but in my grandfather’s day there was no such thing, so he was enthralled by what he called “a picture machine.” He talked about flashing pictures that showed a place different from Earth. It reminded him of the Bad-lands, but with no vegetation. Their houses were underground. He asked them if it was Heaven, and they told him they did not have a place such as heaven. He was fascinated by the picture machine and went back several times to view the pictures. Apparently, the star visitors told him they liked the green of Earth, and they thought the Red Willow that grew along the banks of the river was quite beautiful in April. They loved the water. On their world, water was underground: nothing on the surface. My grandfather frequently collected geodes for them. They were amazed when he broke them open to reveal the crystallized cities inside. They were apparently pleased to add them to their collection. Gramps also taught them the medicinal uses of the red willow and how to propagate it from a small sample.
As far as the craft goes, it was left there, it it was well camouflaged to the point that nobody would really be able to recognize it with the naked eye unless they knew specifically what they were looking for. When he went inside the craft (Harrison), he explained that when you sat in a chair, it “melted” around him, as if it was alive. It enveloped the body like a warm hug, and then released you when you wanted to get up. The craft also had what looked to be hieroglyphics.
Eventually, the Army Corps of Engineers came and built their dam, which flooded the area where the craft was. He suspects they took the craft.
The Takeaway
Stories like these are fascinating to say the least, especially for those who are already aware of the UFO/extraterrestrial phenomenon and the growing amount of credibility the field is receiving. It adds a lot more credibility to these stories, but I’m not trying to prove anything here, just simply sharing a story from a in interesting source.
Richard Wagamese is known as one of Canada’s foremost authors and storytellers from the Wabaseemoong First Nation in Northwestern Ontario. He is one of few indigenous scholars left on the planet today that have taken an active effort in retracing their roots and preserving their heritage and stories, which were passed down generation after generation through oral traditions.
According to Wagamese,
“My people tell of Star People who came to us many generations ago. The Star People brought spiritual teachings and stories and maps of the cosmos and they offered these freely. They were kind, loving and set a great example. When they left us, my people say there was a loneliness like no other.” (source)
Scholars have estimated that, prior to the ‘discovery’ of the Americas by Europeans, the pre-contact era population could have been as high as 100 million people. American anthropologist and ethnohistorian Henry F. Dobyns, most known for his published research on American Indians and Hispanic peoples in Latin and North America, estimated that more than one hundred and twelve million people inhabited the Americas prior to European arrival. He estimated that ten million alone inhabited an area north of the Rio Grande before European contact. In 1983, he revised that number to upwards of eighteen million. (source)(source)(source)
The loss of knowledge came as a result of a massive genocide, a time that was foretold in indigenous prophecy.
There have been wounds of injustice, of oppression, of colonization, of greed, of superstition, all those things which injure the human heart. At the same time there’s been no way for this to be expressed, it’s been held inside. So this ancestral wound is this wound that’s been carried on from generation to generation to generation, this intergenerational trauma. But it was also prophesied and promised that after a period of 500 years that a great, great spiritual spring time would emerge with such power and such intensity that all that had been covered in the cold bitter snow would be revealed and cleansed and purified. And that we would emerge galvanized, reunited as not only the reunion of the Condor and Eagle, but a reunion of the entire human family. This time is now. (source)
We are living in a special time, a time of mass awakening to various truths about our planet as well as the nature of reality. One of those truths is the fact that we are not alone, and that we’ve never been alone. These stories of visitors from other worlds are in the literature of indigenous cultures as well as various other cultures around the world like the Vedas, for example.
The realization that we are not alone, and never have been alone has tremendous implications for our planet.
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Stamoudste deelt uitzonderlijk verhaal over ‘sterrenwezens’ die neerstortten in zijn reservaat. Lees het hier
Stamoudste deelt uitzonderlijk verhaal over ‘sterrenwezens’ die neerstortten in zijn reservaat. Lees het hier
Emeritus hoogleraar Ardy Sixkiller Clarke van de Montana State University heeft gedurende het grootste deel van haar carrière gewerkt met indianen.
De opmerkelijke verhalen die ze in de loop der jaren heeft verzameld, heeft ze gebundeld in het boek ‘Encounters With Star People, Untold Stories of American Indians’.
Dr. Clarke merkte op dat indianenstammen uit North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, de Northern Plains en Montana talloze verhalen over UFO’s te vertellen hebben.
Cilindervormig
Een gerespecteerde stamoudste uit de Northern Plains, genaamd Harrison, vertelde haar hoe zijn opa in 1945 aan boord van een ruimteschip was geweest.
Het schip was op 17 april 1945 in de buurt van diens ranch neergestort. “Het was cilindervormig, en ongeveer 10 meter breed en bijna 20 meter lang,” zei Harrison.
In eerste instantie dacht zijn opa dat er een aardbeving had plaatsgevonden, tot hij het schip zag. Pas na een week durfde hij het object te benaderen.
In het schip, dat leek te zijn voorzien van een soort hiërogliefen, trof hij 14 wezens aan, langer dan mensen en heel erg wit. Hij bood hen vlees aan, maar dat aten ze niet.
Duizenden jaren
“Ze hadden lange, dunne vingers, veel langer dan die van mensen,” zei Harrison. “Hun haar was wit. Het leek alsof er een soort halo om hun hoofd hing. Soms leken het wel engelen uit de Bijbel.”
De wezens droegen volgens zijn opa een lichtgroen pak dat waterafstotend was.
Ze maakten hem duidelijk dat hun schip onderdeel uitmaakte van een groter schip dat in een baan om de aarde draaide.
Ze waren volgens zijn opa al duizenden jaren op aarde om te observeren.
Plaatjesmachine
In hun schip lieten ze hem beelden van hun thuisplaneet zien. In die tijd waren er nog geen moderne computers, dus hij sprak van een ‘plaatjesmachine’.
Hij zag een planeet zonder vegetatie waar men onder de grond leefde.
Zijn opa vertelde hem dat de ‘sterrenwezens’ ongeveer vijf maanden overleefden in hun schip voordat ze werden gered door een ander schip.
Dam
Hij zei dat het geniekorps van het Amerikaanse leger twee jaar later het gebied kwam inspecteren. Het leger nam het gebied in beslag en zette het af.
Het bouwde er vervolgens een dam en liet de plek waar het schip was neergestort onder water lopen.
LUISTER NAAR DE RADIOSIGNALEN VAN DEZE "KOMEET" ( VIDEO )
LUISTER NAAR DE RADIOSIGNALEN VAN DEZE "KOMEET" ( VIDEO )
We hebben nu al enkele keren meegemaakt dat wat wanneer wij dachten dat het een komeet was, dit niet zo bleek te zijn.
Kometen zenden normaal gesproken geen radiosignalen uit, maar luister zelf en bepaal of dit een komeet is of wat anders.
We leven in bijzondere tijden waarin veel vreemde onverklaarbare dingen gebeuren.
Niet zo lang geleden hadden we een komeet die vanuit een ander zonnestelsel langs kwam en waarbij de wetenschap duidelijk met de handen in het haar zat.
Eerder dit jaar hadden we te maken met een vreemd ruimteobject, dat werd omschreven en geclassificeerd als een komeet en dat van buiten ons zonnestelsel scheen te komen.
Sinds ons artikel zijn er alleen nog maar meer vragen gerezen over dit object dat inmiddels de naam Oumuamua heeft gekregen. Het object dat van een ander zonnestelsel kwam, om de zon draaide en weer verdween in de ruimte. The Minor Planet Center heeft bijgedragen aan de naamgeving, wat zoveel betekent als eerste boodschapper van ver weg.:
Accordingly, the object A/2017 U1 receives the permanent designation 1I
and the name ʻOumuamua. The name, which was chosen by the Pan-STARRS team, is
of Hawaiian origin and reflects the way this object is like a scout or
messenger sent from the distant past to reach out to us (ʻou means reach out
for, and mua, with the second mua placing emphasis, means first, in advance of).
Volgens de European Southern Observatory (ESO) is Oumuamua een object dat we nog nooit eerder hebben gezien en bestaat het uit rots of metaal met een roodachtige kleur.
Het object moet er ongeveer als volgt uit zien. Een ander fenomeen is dat het om haar eigen as lijkt te draaien en dat de lichtintensiteit varieert.
Men probeert wanhopig om voor dit alles logische verklaringen te vinden, maar slaagt daar niet zo erg in.
Men vermoedt dat het uit de buurt komt van de ster Vega, maar ook dat schijnt niet te kunnen omdat in de tijd dat Oumuamua daar is vertrokken, die ster op een heel andere plek stond. Nu denken ze dat het object misschien wel helemaal nergens thuishoort en als een soort los projectiel door de ruimte zwerft.
De wetenschap zit (ook) wat dit object betreft met de handen in het haar, want niet één van de normale verklaringen past.
Waar we hier over praten, is een groot moederschip dat ons hier met een bezoek heeft vereerd. Dat is de enige logische verklaring en ook is er ook één die past in de omschrijving van het object en de gedragingen.
Net zoals die vreemde komeet Oumuamua geen komeet is hebben wij nog een andere komeet die ook geen komeet is.
In 2016 schreven wij over dit object het volgende omdat daar toen allerlei mysterieuze dingen gebeurden.
Ogenschijnlijk kwam er enkele weken geleden een einde aan de Europese ruimtemissie naar de komeet 67P
Op 30 september 2016, om 12.38 uur crashte Rosetta gecontroleerd op de komeet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Om 13.20 uur (Nederlandse tijd), kwam de bevestiging binnen dat Rosetta gecrasht is. Deze vertraging werd veroorzaakt doordat het 40 minuten duurde voordat de data de aarde bereikte. De sonde werd in overeenstemming met internationale afspraken automatisch uitgezet vlak voor de landing, dit om te voorkomen dat de zender als een stoorzender in het zonnestelsel zou gaan werken en andere observaties zou gaan storen. De crash betekent het einde van de succesvolle missie van Rosetta.
Echter, de dag voordat Rosetta crashte, zijn er toch nog wel een paar interessante opnames gemaakt waaruit blijkt dat die komeet toch wel even iets meer is dan men ons wil laten geloven.
Zoals op de volgende opname te zien, hangt er een grote UFO boven de rotsmassa van komeet 67P.
De bekende videomaker op Youtube BP Earthwatch ontving een e-mail met het volgende nogal schokkende bericht:
Het bericht is afkomstig van iemand die werkt binnen ESA (European Space Agency). Deze zegt dat de belangstelling voor deze komeet zo’n twintig jaar geleden werd gewekt doordat NASA radiosignalen ontving, afkomstig van deze komeet.
Dat niet alleen, maar ergens in de afgelopen twintig jaar schijnt 67P ook van koers te zijn veranderd.
Veel wetenschappers hebben ook al hun verbazing uitgesproken over het uiterlijk van deze komeet omdat men een soort sneeuw en ijsklomp had verwacht. Iets waarbij in het geval van 67P absoluut geen sprake is.
Besloten werd volgens de klokkenluider om deze “komeet” met een bezoek te vereren. Om de aandacht af te leiden en dit zo geruisloos mogelijk te doen, werd een samenwerking aangegaan tussen NASA en ESA, waarbij de laatste een missie zou organiseren onder de noemer van onderzoek naar een komeet.
De klokkenluider zegt verder: "Jullie zijn toch niet zo gek om te geloven dat ze deze Rosetta missie die al in 2004 werd gelanceerd en miljarden Dollars kost, zomaar gaan doen om een stukje rots in de ruimte te onderzoeken? Nee, ze doen dit omdat er iets aan de hand is met 67P en omdat ze vandaar radiosignalen hebben opgevangen".
Wat 67P ook moge zijn, volgens de klokkenluider is het zeker dat het geen komeet is.
Dan, net voordat de Rosetta voor ons gewone mensen volledig uit beeld verdwijnt, een ruimteschip wat daar hangt wat minstens 100 meter lang is.
Deze komeet zendt ook permanent radiosignalen uit en ufoloog Scott Waring heeft die geluiden verzameld en in een video geplaatst.
Een komeet zendt normaal gesproken geen signalen uit en Scott is er dan ook van overtuigd dat hier sprake is van buitenaardse boodschappen.
Hij heeft de uitgezonden boodschap wat vertraagd op de band zodat “het zingen” van de “komeet” beter te horen is.
Feit is dat deze komeet radiosignalen uitzendt die klinken als een soort boodschap.
Feit is dat dit radiosignaal ononderbroken is uitgezonden sinds deze komeet 25 jaar geleden werd ontdekt.
Feit is dat toen wetenschappers dit geluid hoorden, ze 20 jaar geleden besloten om een ruimtesonde te bouwen en dit signaal te gaan onderzoeken.
Feit is dat het publiek nooit iets is verteld over dit radiosignaal totdat de ruimtesonde Rosetta enkele jaren geleden de komeet P67 bereikte. Toen kon men dit signaal niet langer verborgen houden en kreeg P67 de bijnaam “de zingende komeet”.
Van wie de boodschap is en wat het ons probeert te vertellen weten we niet.
Misschien zijn er lezers die na het beluisteren van de radiosignalen slimme ideeën/gedachten hebben.
Insider Alien Disclosure - Everything is Connected - Things that Can’t Happen, But Did!
Insider Alien Disclosure - Everything is Connected - Things that Can’t Happen, But Did!
While still on active duty during the 1980s, Colonel John B. Alexander, Ph.D., created an interagency group to explore the controversial topic of UFOs. All members held Top Secret clearance. What they discovered was not at all what was expected.
UFOs covers the numerous cases they saw, and answers questions like:
What was really in Hanger 18?
Did a UFO land at Holloman Air Force Base?
What happened at Roswell?
What is Majestic 12?
What is the Aviary?
What does the government know about UFOs?
What has happened with disclosure in other countries?
Has the U.S. reverse engineered a UFO?
Why don’t presidents get access to UFO info?
UFOs is at once a complete account of Alexander’s findings, and a call to action. There are no conspiracy theories here—only hard facts—but they are merely the beginning. Serious research is needed in order to understand and anticipate the workings of UFOs, and John Alexander is leading the charge..
Young Alien Abductee Tells All: The Greys, Strange Hieroglyphics
Young Alien Abductee Tells All: The Greys, Strange Hieroglyphics
I recently met this young man at a CE-5 meetup group in Toronto. I thought his story was one of the most fascinating out of all the experiencers there and really wanted to get him on camera for the channel.
At first, he was hesitant — worried that it might affect his career — but I convinced him that we could do it in such a way in which his identity would be hidden.
It took about 3-4 months of trying to find time in our busy schedules, but he finally came over and told his incredible story yesterday afternoon.
Perhaps more people will be willing to share their experiences with us if we give them the option of keeping their face and voice hidden.
Thanks for watching and please help share the videos if you want me to be able to keep doing more of these!
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The Undeniable Reality About UFO Videos from 2019 That nobody Is Telling You
The Undeniable Reality About UFO Videos from 2019 That Nobody Is Telling You
What is Really Going on with UFO Videos from 2019
The picture managed to create a small wave of publicity for the region. You may see the video below. The quick video below, for instance, is one of several contemporary sightings. It, for instance, is only one of several contemporary sightings. You might already have the videos that you would like a transfer over on your computer already. Hypnosis video is just one of the most effective approaches to do hypnosis without the usage of a real hypnotist. You may see the footage below.
You might take a look at the video below. You look at the video below. You might look at the video below.
There are lots of finds of strange and bizarre objects made all over Earth. To have the ability to find the utmost benefit for an intensive cardio workout with only a little proportion of the physical output is well worth trying. You won’t have to be concerned anymore. Something must be going on here. There’s no doubt you NEED to earn marketing videos in the event that you want to do things the easy way online nowadays. There is really a chance that the sighting over O’Hare might not have made it in the public arena.
UFO Videos from 2019 at a Glance
There are many theories regarding what the main reason for the noise could be. Data analysis assists in understanding the demographics of the customer and to create services and products in a means to satisfy their demand. Some reports state it is a ping, but others claim it is a beep. They state it is a ping, but others claim it is a beep. There weren’t any reports of any crashes in the area. Although researchers have made attempts to discover what and why the suspension happened, the base will not comment further on the issue. Many UFO scientists have examined the multiple parts of video footage and photographs.
The incident would draw the eye of both national and global media, as well as numerous UFO investigators over time. The whole incident is apparently one of double-crossing. Comment when you have additional sightings to report which are noteworthy. Many reported UFO sightings actually prove to be something as easy as a balloon. They actually prove to be something as easy as a balloon. Throughout that time frame, there were two triangle UFOs sighted in the same location.
Important details can change within a few minutes. Particulars of the sightings were always the exact same. Some of the most intriguing, it would appear, reside within the uk. You can also get inspiration for your life when you learn how to tune into the inner stillness of your soul. Humor is among the few emotions which enjoy a universal language instead of only does this provide one with the essential laugh but in addition promotes a deeper understanding and better perspective of the scenario. An excellent laugh out of funny videos can cause you to feel much better. There’s a whole lot more shit coming.
Haumea is one of the four known dwarf planets beyond the orbit of Neptune. It has two small satellites, an elongated shape and a short spin period
Discovered in 2004, Haumea is a dwarf planet located beyond Pluto’s orbit in a region of the Solar System called the Kuiper Belt. Pluto was demoted from the category of fully fledged planets in 2006 because of the discovery of Haumea and other dwarf planets.
Haumea was officially recognized as a dwarf planet in 2008. Its ellipsoidal shape resembles that of the ball used in rugby or American football. It has two moons and a ring. Because of its ring, Haumea is a member of a group of Solar System objects comprising the planets Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Jupiter, as well as the asteroids Chariklo and Chiron, which orbit between Jupiter and Neptune.Through computational simulations researchers uncover details of this object of the Solar System located beyond the orbit of Pluto in the Kuiper Belt
Credit: NASA
Haumea’s ring has never been directly observed. Its existence was inferred in 2017 by an international group of astronomers who took detailed measurements of the light fluctuations as Haumea occulted (passed in front of) a star. In space, an occultation occurs when one object passes in front of another from an observer’s perspective.
“The light from the star was observed from Earth as the star was occulted by Haumea. Its brightness decreased as Haumea passed in front of it, enabling the astronomers to obtain information about Haumea’s shape,” said Othon Cabo Winter, Full Professor at São Paulo State University’s Engineering School (FE-UNESP) in Guaratinguetá, Brazil.
“The star’s light also faded when the ring passed in front of it, enabling them to obtain information on the ring as well.”
The researchers who discovered the ring in 2017 suggested that its orbit around Haumea was very close to the 1:3 resonance region, meaning that ring particles make one revolution every three times Haumea rotates.
A new study by Winter, Taís Ribeiro and Gabriel Borderes Motta, who belong to UNESP’s Orbital Dynamics and Planetology Group, shows that a degree of eccentricity would be required for this resonance to act on the ring particles.
According to Winter, the fact that the ring is narrow and practically circular prevents action by the resonance. However, the group identified a specific type of stable, almost circular, periodic orbit in the same region as Haumea’s ring. A periodic orbit is an orbit that repeats over time.
“Our study isn’t observational. We did not directly observe the ring. No one ever has,” Winter said. The reason is that the ring is very tenuous and much too far-flung to be seen by the astronomic observatories here on Earth. The average distance between Haumea and the Sun is 43 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.
“Our study is entirely computational. Based on simulations using the available data on Haumea and the ring, subject to Newton’s law of gravitation, which describes the motions of the planets, we concluded that the ring isn’t in that region of space owing to the 1:3 resonance but owing to a family of stable periodic orbits,” Winter said.
In an article published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the researchers explore the dynamics of individual particles in the region where the ring is located.
The research behind the paper was part of the Thematic Project “On the relevance of small bodies in orbital dynamics” funded by São Paulo Research Foundation – FAPESP and supported by the Brazilian federal government via CAPES, the higher education research council, and CNPq, the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development.
“The main aim of our research was to identify the structure of Haumea’s ring in terms of the location and size of the stable regions. We also wanted to find the reason for the ring’s existence. We were particularly interested in trying to understand the dynamic structure associated with its 1:3 resonance,” Winter said.
Stable regions
The researchers used the Poincaré surface-of-section technique to analyze the dynamics of the region in which the ring is located. By simulating the trajectories of particles in the region, they generated computer graphics (sections) displaying stable areas represented as islands (closed curves) and unstable areas represented as irregularly distributed points.
The islands of stability found to be due to the 1:3 resonance had highly eccentric orbits, more so than would be compatible with the ring (narrow and circular).
“On the other hand, we detected islands of stability in the same area but with trajectories of low eccentricity that were compatible with the ring. These islands were found to be due to a family of periodic orbits,” Winter said.
Haumea has a diameter of 1,456 km, less than half the diameter of Mars, and an oval shape that makes it twice as long as it is wide. It takes 284 years to go round the Sun. The dwarf planet is so far away, and the sunlight that reaches it so weak, that its surface temperature is minus 223 °C.
Haumea’s moons Namaka and Hi’iaka were detected by the giant lenses of one of the observatories atop Hawaii’s dormant volcano Mauna Kea. The dwarf planet is named for the Hawaiian goddess of fertility and childbirth, and its moons are named for Haumea’s daughters. They are believed to have resulted from a collision between the dwarf planet and some other body.
Haumea completes a rotation in under four hours, spinning faster than any other known equilibrium body in the Solar System. This may have to do with a violent past.
Astronomers think Haumea was originally much like Pluto when the Solar System was formed. Billions of years ago, a large object may have collided with Haumea, expelling most of its surface ice and making it spin much faster than the other dwarf planets.
Contacts and sources:
Joao Carlos Silva São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)
Citation: On the location of the ring around the dwarf planet Haumea O C Winter G Borderes-Motta T Ribeiro Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 484, Issue 3, April 2019, Pages 3765–3771,
Planet X: Russian TV is Broadcasting a Huge Object Flying Towards the Earth
Planet X: Russian TV is Broadcasting a Huge Object Flying Towards the Earth
Russian TV is Broadcasting a Huge Object Flying Towards the Earth – That is NIBIRU PLANET X #82
People seem to be having trouble with Planet X. Yet NASA and countless others including Graham Hancock have spoke of roaming planets. Kinda makes you want it to happen doesn’t? Specially for those who cannot grasp the science behind it.
Science that has been proven again and again and again. There are invisible stealth roaming planets that have hurt our Universe before.
What are your thoughts on this Russian broadcast? More hype or is a roaming planet really headed our way?
The Nibiru cataclysm is a supposed disastrous encounter between the Earth and a large planetary object which certain groups believe will take place in the early 21st century. Believers in this doomsday event usually refer to this object as Nibiru or Planet X.Wikipedia
The Most Secret Space Program Mission Ever Recorded Documentary
The Most Secret Space Program Mission Ever Recorded Documentary
Vesta is an asteroid that orbits the Sun, it is 300 miles in diameter, but this is no ordinary asteroid.
In August 1979 a meeting was set up between many different Extraterrestrial races, things didn’t go as planned and this meeting soon turned into a battle for Earth’ survival.
This battle would involve Earth allies, the Raptors and Earths enemies, the Reptilians. The evidence eventually leads us back to the infamous Dulce base.
The Base is a secret alien underground facility under Archuleta Mesa. Claims of alien activity there first arose from Albuquerque businessman Paul Bennewitz. This is supposedly the largest Reptilian and Grey base in America.
A pair of strange discoveries this month shows that there is still plenty of mystery left at the bottom of the deepest parts of the world’s oceans – but not all of it is the good kind. First, scientists announced a grim but fascinating discovery when it was revealed that radioactive fallout was discovered at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest natural trench in the world. If nuclear fallout has managed to make it all the way down there, what does this mean for us surface dwellers?
The discovery of fallout in the Mariana Trench was made when marine biologists collected amphipods from the trench in order to analyze which, if any, radioactive isotopes might be present in the tiny creatures. Amphipods are diminutive crustaceans that feed on microscopic plankton, making them a perfect way to measure levels of ambient isotopes found in the world’s oceans. Prior to this most recent study, it was presumed that amphipods in the deepest parts of the world would be free from radioactive isotopes due to their isolation, yet scientists found high levels of carbon-14 anyway, similar in fact to levels of carbon-14 found on the ocean’s surface.
Most amphipods are only a few millimeters in length or less.
Above-ground nuclear tests conducted between 1955 and 1980 released dramatic levels of carbon-14 into the atmosphere and biosphere, making this isotope perfect for testing for radioactive fallout. This is the first time scientists have reported the presence of radioactive fallout in the Mariana Trench, and shows that radioactive material from nuclear tests can pass through the food chain to reach even the smallest, most remote creatures. It’s still unknown what effects this residual radiation could have on ecosystems in the long term. Can’t stop progress, though, am I right?
In less depressing ocean trench news, scientists with the Five Deeps Expedition may have discovered an entirely new species living in the deepest known part of the Indian Ocean. Five Deeps is the world’s first manned expedition to the deepest point in each of the five oceans and was exploring the Java Trench off the coast of Indonesia when it caught a strange creature on one of its submersible’s cameras. The team called the unidentified creature an “extraordinary gelatinous animal” which “does not resemble anything seen before.” See the footage of the creature for yourself.
A gold-mouth sea squirt
Preliminary analysis suggests the animal may be an unknown type of sea squirt, but it’s difficult to tell from just photographic evidence, not to mention the fact that sea squirts are usually anchored to the sea floor. While it was initially believed the creature was a new jellyfish, Five Deeps chief scientist Alan Jamieson now believes it may be a specially-adapted sea squirt which is able to relocate itself in the event of seismic activity. “Trenches are quite seismic — and normally tunicates would be attached to the sea floor. And, now, if it’s quite a seismic environment, you run the risk of being buried,” Jamieson says, “so an adaptation to destructive environments is to raise yourself off the seafloor and in this case using this big long tentacle.”
We’ve only begun to peer into the world’s deepest oceans, and NOAA estimates only around 20% of the world’s oceans have been explored to date. Who knows what may lie in the darkness of the unfathomable depths below miles and miles of water?
Things much bigger and scarier than sea squirts and radioactive shrimp, I know that much.
Weird Dinosaur with bat-like wings discovered in China
Weird Dinosaur with bat-like wings discovered in China
Near Wubaiding Village, Liaoning Province, China, paleontologists discovered a 163-million-year-old dinosaur fossil.
Research shows it belongs to scansoriopterygids, a group of tiny dinosaurs generally reconstructed as feathered tree climbers.
Unlike its relatives, Ambopteryx longibrachium had membranous wings supported by a styliform.
Researchers believe the dinosaur may have glided from trees. The bat-like wings were probably a short-lived design, tried before the later predominance of feathered wings.
Research:
A new Jurassic scansoriopterygid and the loss of membranous wings in theropod dinosaurs Min Wang, Jingmai K. O’Connor, Xing Xu & Zhonghe Zhou Nature, DOI 10.1038/s41586-019-1137-z Photo and 3-D reconstruction: Min Wang, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Life reconstruction: Chung-Tat Cheung
This sighting was recorded by UFO researcher Jeff Woolwine of Phoenix. The video is one of the clearest I have seen in a while, yet the UFO itself is so reflective its difficult to get detail of its surface. He recorded it with his Cannon HD camera outside his apartments at 2:37 PM. The bright yellow luminosity of this UFO is remarkable to say the least. It does seem to twist and turn as if it has no top, no bottom, but rotates in a 360 degree angle as it moves. Absolute proof that Phoenix is being watched by aliens. Scott C. Waring
Meteor Or UFO, First Of Its Kind Photo Taken By SpaceX This Week. UFO Sighting News.
Meteor Or UFO, First Of Its Kind Photo Taken By SpaceX This Week. UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 2019
Location of sighting: Earths orbit
This photo was taken by SpaceX and is said to be a meteor that they recorded this week. Many agencies are reporting this as a UFO, and that is understandable since NASA has never ever reported a meteor that looks like this. This makes us think NASA is really lazy and is not earning its keep. Why is a public space agency publishing a photo of a meteor like none ever seen before?
Maybe this is a UFO that is deliberately trying to appear as a meteor. Unless we capture the object and take a hands on look at this object, it will remain a mystery. But the colors and the high detail is extraordinary to say the least. Its an object that will have astronomers and astrophysics talking about it for years to come. Above all else, its awesome that SpaceX publishes extraordinary discoveries like this. It looks like we can trust Elon Musk 100%.
UFO or meteor...really doesn't matter. Its absolutely breathtaking.
I decided to take a look at a moon photo in the NASA LROC site and found some unique structures in one photo. The structures of of the white ceramic type. That means they are whitish and highly reflective. They can only be see clearly when in lower sunlight situations. Below is a video I made today to show you a few of the structures I found. This is 100% proof that ancient aliens did once exist on our moon. They may still, but one of the structures (diamond shaped) appears to have an entire side torn off. So it was probably abandoned in this location.
Estimated size of objects. Well, we see the edge of Tycho crater there. Tycho is 86km in diameter, but only 20% of its diameter is showing. So the edge in the photo is 17.2km from one side of the photo to the other roughly. The disk would be about 1/80 the width of the photo. So I think thats about .21 km or 210 meters across for the disk.
According to the Mayans, it wasn’t exactly a gate. The portal though which the dead passed into the underworld of their next life was believed to be a water medium, which is why enterprising Polish archeologists have spent their time searching lake beds and in underground reservoirs for Mayan artifacts. Their waterlogged quest reached fruition on an island in a Guatemalan lake where recently found relics of possible human sacrifices and evidence that this was also the location of a different kind of passing in the surface worlds – the last battle between the Maya and Spanish invaders.
“The Maya resisted the conquistadors for a very long time. Nojpetén – the last independent fortress of the Maya – was captured in 1697 after a great battle. The Spaniards attacked the island on ships, from which they shot their weapons at the Maya.”
Science in Polandis slowly releasing news of recent Polish archeological discoveries in late 2018 near Nojpetén, the capitol city on what is now called Flores Island in Petén Itza Lake in Guatemala. The first surprise was that there were so many ceramic artifacts and they were in such excellent, non-broken condition. That led the archeologists to believe they were not tossed carelessly into the water but lowered using nets as offerings to the gods. Those offerings in the ceramic vessels included animal bones and obsidian blades. (Photos of the artifacts here.)
The discoveries could place final battle between the Maya and Spanish conquerors on the lake's island Flores, rather than a location further west.The photo shows an incense burner found in Lake Petén Itzá on the lake-bed
Hundreds of Mayan artefacts have been found in a lake in Guatemala by polish underwater archaeologists. A stone mace head (pictured) was also discovered which could be is related to the final battle that saw Guatemala being colonised by the Spanish, say archaeologists.
A stone mace head was also found which researchers say is related to the final battle that saw Guatemala being colonised by the Spanish. The image above shows a pot found at what is known as the 'sacred spot' in Lake Petén Itzá
The archaeological evidence could place the last battle with the Spaniards on the lake's island Flores, rather than further west, where most written sources say it took place. Among the finds was an obsidian blade (pictured) was found that may have been used for blood sacrifices
Water has special significance in Mayan mythology, and bodies of water are often believed to be the gateway to the underworld. The image shows an incense burner on the lake bed
Lake Petén Itzá, Guatemala, at the time of its conquest by the Spanish Empire in 1697.
“Ancient Maya used blades like this during their rituals. They could make blood-letting offerings or even kill somebody to offer human blood to the gods.”
Project leader Magdalena Krzemień of Poland’s Jagiellonian University says weapons found in the underwater cache served two purposes – the obsidian (a glassy volcanic rock) blades were used to kill and carve offerings to the gods, while a well-preserved stone head of a mace – the deadly club of warfare in many cultures – was evidence that the last battle to preserve the culture, which ended in 1697, occurred here. Bringing the upper and lower worlds together in one piece was a large shell found near the nearby El Hospital island which was from the Caribbean and used for a variety of rituals covering the full circle of Mayan life from birth and maturation to sacrifice, war and death.
Not all Mayan artifacts are above ground
“That is a great beginning to the process of better learning their customs, beliefs and culture.”
Krzemień revealed that this large cache of artifacts was found on the surface of the lake bed, making them easy to recover. She expects that more will be found with some digging. That could explain why the news of this 2018 discovery is only trickling out now – the archeologists want to protect this historic and sacred site from reckless and unscrupulous recovery efforts.
The ancient gate to the underworld still attracts underworld characters – what a shock.
There is an old Chinese curse (at leastaccording to one former British statesman) which goes, “may you live in interesting times.” I think few would doubt that these are interesting times, particularly as it relates to the subject of UFOs.
No matter where you stand on the issue, it can’t be denied that there is a renewed interest in unusual aerial phenomenon at present. The subject has continued to receive credible attention in the popular media in the last several months, with publications like The New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Politico all reporting on potential “unknowns” in our skies with mostly straight faces.
More impressive are the recent statements by the U.S. Navy, who announced last week that they would be upping their game in relation to study of unexplained aerial phenomenon, or UAP.
And why wouldn’t they? If there are unidentified aircraft which could pose a potential threat to national security operating in our airspace, I think it would be safe to say that most Americans would want their government to take such matters seriously. Most people elsewhere around would probably like their governments to do the same.
If what the U.S. Navy has had to say on the subject lately is any indication, this appears to be precisely what’s going on. “There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years,” read one portion of a recent Navy statement on the issue, as reported by Politico.
Quite obviously, there has been a shift in attitudes lately (or at very least this is the appearance being given publicly). Brian Bender, who authored the piece for Politico, noted that “To be clear, the Navy isn’t endorsing the idea that its sailors have encountered alien spacecraft. But it is acknowledging there have been enough strange aerial sightings by credible and highly trained military personnel that they need to be recorded in the official record and studied — rather than dismissed as some kooky phenomena from the realm of science-fiction.”
Yes, if there is any reasonable potential that these unidentified aircraft or objects–whatever their nature or origins might be–could pose a security threat to the United States and other nations, then surely the matter warrants serious attention. But as Bender noted in his article, all-too-often such things have been dismissed in the past “as some kooky phenomena from the realm of science-fiction.”
Since their arrival on the cultural scene in the late 1940s, the objects that had first been dubbed “flying saucers” immediately captured our imaginations. What else could these objects be, if they don’t appear to be anything of our own, and greatly exceed the capabilities of known technologies here on Earth? However, as the U.S. Air Force and other agencies around the world began to take the matter seriously, it quickly became evident that not all of the flying objects were saucers. In fact, it might be argued that reports of disc-shaped craft were in the minority, and merely one area in a broader emerging mythos of peculiar things seen in the skies. For this reason, Edward Ruppelt, the first chief of the USAF’s Project Blue Book, coined the term unidentified flying object or UFO, in order to promote the concept in more ambiguous terms.
This might have helped somewhat at the outset. However, with time the subject became steadily more sensational, with stories of the “saucers” flooding the pages of popular books and magazines. Far-out claims from opportunists like George Adamski further insinuated that “Space Brothers” were behind the non-existent saucers he had claimed to photograph, as told to him telepathically by a pleasant chap from Venus who dropped in for a visit with him in 1952. With time, and further outlandish claims about the “saucer people” made by other would-be UFO cultists following in Adamski’s footsteps, it was only a matter of time before the subject would be relegated to the lunatic fringe.
We don’t need to go into a detailed history of UFOs here in order to get the point across that a subject which otherwise should have been of great interest to the military and science communities became co-opted by fringe claims and, over time, steadily delegitimized. The entire blame can’t be laid on the shameless opportunists though; there were plenty of serious UFO researchers that sprang forth in advocacy of their extraterrestrial origins, and in equal measure, there were plenty of skeptics who, from the outset, were unwilling to entertain any ideas about anything so seemingly outlandish as “flying saucers.”
In terms of popular opinion, while various polls over the years have continued to show both interest, and belief in UFOs, the consensus majority in the scientific community has largely been that UFO research is a form of pseudoscience; an opinion offered mostly in response to popular writing on the subject. With the recent statements by the U.S. Navy about its updated UFO reporting procedures, which noted similar expected practices on part of the US Air Force, it does at least seem that the subject is being taken seriously again by some government groups.
Writing for Open Minds, Alejandro Rojas commented on the Politico piece, noting that, “[I]t would seem this stigma has caused the military to do a lot of linguistic gymnastics in the past when it comes to UFOs. It seems intuitively obvious that the military would be interested in aircraft entering U.S. airspace that cannot be identified.”
While there are probably a lot of reasons why government agencies might steer clear of the UFO subject, I agree with Alejandro that the stigmas associated with the subject, and the skepticism that has often resulted from it, hasn’t helped. Which brings us to an interesting question: could unwarranted skepticism pertaining to UAP studies actually do more harm than good?
In many ways, I count myself as a “hopeful skeptic” when it comes to subjects like UFOs. I don’t profess to know what they might be, so I suspend judgment on the matter until data forthcoming warrants having an opinion. On the other hand, I wish to have little to do with movements or ideologies associated with “Skepticism” (note the capital “S” here… for more on the inherent problems with such groups, see John Horgan’s excellent blog at Scientific American on why it’s sometimes necessary to apply a bit of healthy skepticism to Skeptics). While I’m intrigued by the idea that our Navy and Air Force have monitored unknown aircraft in our skies and express some concern about them, I am by no means convinced that this is equivalent to “proof” that extraterrestrials are visiting Earth. I simply have no way of knowing, or proving conclusively, what the origins of these objects might be.
However, if they are apparent enough to our military that they continue to be studied, that alone should say something. Further, I worry about ideological skeptics who might dispute such apparent phenomena, based mostly on lingering stigmas of the past rather than information being conveyed in a serious manner at the governmental level. At least in any official capacity, there appear to be few making any claim to the fact that these things are “alien” technology… not our spokespeople at the Navy, nor the Air Force, nor those journalists at The New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Politico who have all been gradually inching toward career suicide in order to report on a “forbidden” subject that, based on the military’s aforementioned attitude, should absolutely be taken seriously.
Further, while there is no evidence that our military’s interactions with UAP they have observed or engaged have presented any kind of a threat, their presence alone–as unidentified objects in military airspace–nonetheless presents a security concern. Hence, again I think it is fair to argue that unwarranted skepticism toward this subject may actually conflict with logical national security interests. Fortunately, the military doesn’t appear to be maintaining this attitude themselves… not anymore, at least.
Interesting times indeed… although to add a final thought to all of this, my intention is not to dismiss skepticism, nor is it to attack those who are critical of the UFO subject. I actually think that a critically-minded approach is the best way to engage such subjects. A simple look at some of the classic books on UFOs–or any subject generally deemed “paranormal”–usually offers a number of fringe claims that haven’t aged very well; time, and accessibility to better information, often causes us to have to rethink old ideas (there are dozens of examples of this, although Nick Redfern gives a good summary of one of my favorites in his article here, where a hoax that was taken out of context became a pillar of “evidence” for many authors in the cryptozoology genre).
We need skepticism, quite simply, because getting to the bottom of our world’s mysteries also requires critical thinking and logic. However, we also need to be able to determine instances where some of our inherent skepticism may be unfounded; I think the recent military discussion of UFOs–whatever they might represent–and the security concerns they have raised presents such an occasion.
It’s been a few weeks since the first actual photograph of a black hole was released and the new love affair with the light-sucking space orifices has many people thinking they may not be so bad after all. That may change with the news this weekthat another group of astronomers has found a black hole so large and powerful that it’s dragging space and time behind it as it moves across its galaxy. Not only that, the black hole is traveling at 60 percent of the speed of light and wobbling as it goes. Is there a galactic speed cop who can pull it over and give it a stellar breathalyzer?
“Typically, radio telescopes produce a single image from several hours of observation. But these jets were changing so fast that in a four-hour image we just saw a blur.”
Alex Tetarenko, an East Asian Observatory Fellow, co-authored a new study published in the journal Nature describing new observations of V404 Cygni, a binary system in the Cygnus constellation consisting of a microquasar (a compact region surrounding a black hole) with a mass of about 9 times our Sun and an early K giant star with a mass slightly smaller than the Sun. The “V” in the name indicates that it is a variable star which repeatedly gets brighter and fainter over time. V404 Cygni has been studied extensively since it was discovered in 1989, but it was only recently that study co-author James Miller-Jones from the Curtin University noticed something unusual.
“Like many black holes, it’s feeding on a nearby star, pulling gas away from the star and forming a disk of material that encircles the black hole and spirals towards it under gravity. What’s different in V404 Cygni is that we think the disk of material and the black hole are misaligned. This appears to be causing the inner part of the disk to wobble like a spinning top and fire jets out in different directions as it changes orientation.”
That wobble is what makes the existence of V404 Cygni an Einsteinian moment. In his theory of relativity, Albert E. predicted this phenomenon called frame-dragging which is caused by the black hole spinning faster at its center and pulling spacetime along with it. In this case, it’s traveling so fast that it was a blur to the radio telescopes watching it. In order to see it, the astronomers took 103 high-resolution, low shutter speed radio images each 70 seconds long and strung them together in a video (see it here) and then used it to produce an explanatory animation (see it here).
As always, more research is needed. Study co-author Dr. Gemma Anderson from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) at Curtin University, says more misaligned black holes will undoubtedly be found doing other strange things.
“That could include a whole bunch of other bright, explosive events in the Universe, such as supermassive black holes feeding very quickly or tidal disruption events when a black hole shreds a star.”
Fortunately, they’re too far away to frame-drag us and spacetime behind them. So they won’t mind if some Earth garage band calls itself The Wobbly Black Holes.
On December 29, 2012, a meteorite fell from the heavens to crash into an area near the city of Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka, after having travelled who knows how far across the sea of stars. One of the first to arrive on the scene was Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham in England, who collected the fallen shard and had it studied. The meteorite was thoroughly scanned and analyzed before the team came to the conclusion that this piece of space rock harbored within it one of the most groundbreaking discoveries in human history – that of life beyond the stars.
After carefully studying the rock with electron microscopes, Wickramasinghe’s team claimed to have found something that had never been seen before. There, embedded in the rock, which he would dub “Polonnaruwa,” were supposedly fossilized phytoplankton of some type, basically microscopic aquatic algae called diatoms, meaning that if these findings were correct then they had found the first solid physical evidence ever of extraterrestrial life. Indeed, the team itself went about boldly proclaiming it to be such, touting the discovery as the first indisputable concrete proof of life beyond the confines of planet Earth, they immediately went about publishing papers on their findings in papers such as the Journal of Cosmology, which were met with quite a lot of speculation and debate. It is interesting to note that Wickramasinghe is a big proponent of the theory of “panspermia,” which entails the seeding of life across solar systems through biological life carried upon comets and meteorites, and he has said of the finding:
We conclude that the identification of fossilized diatoms in the Polonnaruwa meteorite is firmly established and unimpeachable. Since this meteorite is considered to be an extinct cometary fragment, the idea of microbial life carried within comets and the theory of cometary panspermia is thus vindicated.
The Sri Lanka meteorite
There was of course plenty of criticism of these findings, such as that of diatom expert Patrick Kociolek, who speculated that the sample had been merely contaminated with regular freshwater here on earth and showed no signs of fossilization. Another evolutionary biologist named PZ Myers pointed out that the “fossils” were remarkably similar to Earth diatoms, and said:
Why a space organism would evolve to look exactly like a species that evolved in a completely different environment, and how it could have converged in all its details on such remarkable similarity to a specific Earthly species? Why, we might even suggest that it clearly looks like contamination.
In response, the team that had found the meteorite defended their position by asserting that the algae were too deeply embedded into the surrounding mineral matrix to be the result of mere contamination, and that any similarities to Earth diatoms was the result of convergent evolution, or the tendency for disparate lifeforms to evolve similarly in response to similar environmental demands. They also pointed out that tests for nitrogen content and oxygen isotope analysis showed that the anomalous fossils originated well off Earth, probably from a passing comet. Yet other scientists have not been so eager to believe it all. Astronomer Phil Plait has been quite vocal about the case, criticizing the methods employed by Wickramasinghe’s crew and saying:
They provide lots of technical data that gives their work a veneer of credibility, but when you look a bit deeper you find they didn’t do a lot of critically necessary tests to establish the veracity of their claims. All the technical stuff obfuscates the fact that they missed the boat in some very basic ways.
Indeed, there are many who have said that it is not even a meteorite at all, but rather just a piece of terrestrial rock that has been misidentified, possibly altered by lighting strikes, which was the verdict handed out by such esteemed research organizations as the Peradeniya University Geology Division, the Department of Forensic Medicine, and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies in Sri Lanka. In the end, it hasn’t even been established if this rock is even a meteorite at all, let alone whether it holds evidence of actual alien life. Phil Plait has said of this:
They examined the rock using various methods, but none of them establish the sample as being a meteorite. Quite the opposite, in fact. One method was an oxygen isotope analysis. Basically, there are different isotopes of stable oxygen—ones with eight, nine, or ten neutrons in the atomic nucleus. In general, the ratios of these isotopes will be different from rocks that have origins in different parts of the solar system. If you collect a bunch of Earth rocks and get the ratio, and compare it to the ratios from rocks from, say, Mars, you’ll get different ratios. This allows you in principle to say that a given rock must not have formed on Earth.
It is pointed out that there are no mentioned efforts or constraints at preventing contamination by earthly sources even if it is a meteorite, and the rock itself was found in a rice field, which would have been in the water and perfectly open to some sort of biological contamination. Wickramasinghe’s team’s claims that the fossils are too deeply embedded into the rock to be this have had holes poked in them with the fact that these small lifeforms can worm their way surprisingly deeply into such a matrix through tiny cracks, bubbles, and fissures. It doesn’t help that there is little elaboration on how the sample was collected at all, and the journals in which the team has published their findings is rather notorious for making sensational claims that have proven to be unsupported by stringent evidence. In the end, Phil Plait says:
Their claims are, down to a one, extraordinary, with pretty underwhelming evidence to support them. So the idea that these are ordinary rocks found in wet conditions under no control that have been sitting around a long time and are therefore loaded with diatoms that evolved here on good ol’ planet Earth seems just a tad more likely to me. In my opinion, Wickramasinghe and his team are not just wrong, they are precisely wrong: Life didn’t crawl from this rock onto the Earth, life crawled into this rock from the Earth.
The debate still rages from those who doubt the original findings and the original team who made it and their believers. Did a meteorite really fall down into this place, and if so did it really hold the answer to the question of whether we are alone in the universe? Is this a genuine groundbreaking discovery or a miscarriage of science and the result of sensationalism? It seems to have not been adequately settled, and is left for the readers to decide for themselves.
The faces of the Earth and all of the other observable celestial bodies make it clear: things that zoom through space tend to bump into one another from time to time. A meteor impact likely killed off the dinosaurs, and there’s no reason to believe that another world-ending impact couldn’t happen again at any moment, particularly given that there have been plenty ofnear-misses andminor impactsin the last decade alone.
Luckily, the U.S. government has begun taking the threat of near-Earth objects seriously over the last several years, releasing asteroid preparedness plans and conducting impact simulation drills. This year’s drills just took place amid dire warnings from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, warnings which add to the gravity of these simulations and what they may foreshadow. During a speech at the 2019 IAA Planetary Defense Conference in Maryland last month, Bridenstine told his audience that major asteroid impacts tend to happen about every 60 years; thus, while we haven’t had any major impacts recently, we’re likely due for one soon. “I wish I could tell you that these events are exceptionally unique,” Bridenstine said, “but they are not. We have to make people understand this is not about Hollywood, it’s not about movies. This is about ultimately protecting the only planet we know, right now, to host life and that is the planet Earth.”
We’ve been lucky so far in recent history, but we’ve had our share of close calls like the Tunguska Event of 1908 and the Chelyabinsk meteor of 2013 just to name a few. If a major impact happened in a heavily populated area, the outcome could be catastrophic. To simulate what would happen in such an impact, NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) held drills this week to test strategies for responding to a potential strike. The test began at the moment a hypothetical asteroid the size of a small skyscraper was detected by astronomers, allowing the asteroid emergency team to calculate risk of impact.
After that, the team simulated an impact in which a 300-meter asteroid enters Earth’s atmosphere on April 29, 2027, producing a massive fireball that released up to 20 megatons of energy in a catastrophic air burst that scorched 32 square miles (68 sq km) of the ground below and anyone who happened to be in them.
Curiously, European Space Agency scientists at this simulation placed “coordinate pre-impact access to the area by scientists placing sensors to monitor the impact” before “prepare for any casualties & recovery” in their list of priorities for pre-strike preparations once a strike location had been determined. Let’s make sure we appoint some experts from the humanities to balance out these teams out whenever the real thing happens.
Every time these drills occur, I can’t help but think back to a paper published in 2018 by theoretical physicist, inventor, and former Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft Nathan Myhrvold. Myhrvold published an article claiming NASA engaged in scientific misconduct by releasing false data about near-Earth objects like asteroids that may have downplayed the risk we currently face. Could there be any truth to his claims? Do any other recent events suggest that someone may already be planning for such an impact and its aftermath?
Think about it: if the government knew that an asteroid was going to wipe us out ten years from now, would they tell us? Would they want the world to devolve into anarchy as people give up any incentive for paying their mortgages, staying in school, wearing pants, obeying the law, etc.? Of course they wouldn’t. They’d want things to go on as planned as long as possible so that the elite have a chance to move into inflatable space station pods where they can safely watch the rest of us burn down below.
I gotta get one of those pods.
Each red dot is a potential path the fictional asteroid might take as it passes the Earth in 2027. Clearly, this would be an asteroid worth worrying about.
After they’ve exhausted all other available means—abduction, engaging military aircraft, shutting off our nuclear missiles—maybe the aliens finally figured out how to get our attention: Facebook live. Everyone and their uncle seems bent on broadcasting themselves into the uncaring void that is the internet, so it’s about time the aliens jumped on board as well.
Daniel Patterson of Liberty, North Carolina was filming one such Facebook live broadcast earlier this year when a UFO briefly flew overhead. According to WMFY 2 News in Greensboro, North Carolina, Patterson didn’t see the object as he was filming, but was made aware of it afterwards. Patterson says:
“I didn’t know it was there it was brought to my attention by someone else that’s on in the video and said, ‘Hey Dan, did you see the UFO?’ and I said no.”
The UFO in question only appears briefly in the video. A bright light appears over Patterson’s head and flies away. It lasts only a couple of frames in the 13-minute video. WMFY slowed the video down and took some screen shots, and it does look like it could be an object. It also looks like it could be a spot of glare. The incident is being investigated by MUFON, but they have not yet released a determination of what the object is.
If it’s actually a UFO in the video, then the closest thing to what it looks like is this bad boy.
For Daniel Patterson, the incident was a spiritual experience. He says:
“For me, the Holy Spirit was present in those moments.”
In the video, Patterson stands on his property and says he doesn’t have much to say but felt compelled by God to film a video. He talks about his love for his family and decries the tendency of people to judge others. It’s a video of a man appreciating his life, giving thanks, and hoping to do good. It’s pretty heartwarming. It’s also fairly interesting that of all the times a UFO could show up on a Facebook live video, it does so when the person felt compelled by a higher power to start filming and talking about that sort of stuff. Of course, that added spiritual weight may have contributed to the interpretation of the object as a UFO. If it was just a guy showing off his property, would the UFO be immediately and automatically written off as a spot of glare?
Considering that the video was filmed with the sun directly behind Patterson’s head, I’m inclined to believe that the UFO is just glare from the sun. But who knows? Maybe if we all just start streaming every waking moment of our lives, we’ll finally have some definitive proof. So get out there, hit record, and maybe a UFO will show up and I’ll grossly misrepresent you as a person.
The original Star Wars Death Star (for any of you just emerging from 35 years in a cave) was a massive moon-like space station armed with a superlaser capable of vaporizing a planet. Could there possibly be a more useful purpose for such a powerful tool? We may find out soon, as engineers in Romania announced the successful test of a 10-Petawatt laser. That’s 10 million billion watts or 1/10th the energy produced by the sun on Earth. We’re still here, so it’s not capable of destroying a planet … yet. But China (uh-oh) is already working on a 100-Petawatt laser. Is life (or death) about to imitate sci-fi again?
“After demonstration of a beam delivering pulses of 7 PW for more than 4 hours continuously, the Thales system generated its first pulses with a record power level of 10 PW on 7 March 2019. Thales has thus achieved an unprecedented level of performance, which means that the Romanian National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH) and ELI-NP now have the most powerful laser in the world.”
In a press release that is mysteriously just now getting attention, Thales – a French multinational company that designs and builds electrical systems for the aerospace, defense, transportation and security markets – announced the successful test of the Extreme Light Infrastructure for Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) at a facility in Măgurele near Bucharest. The 10 PW pulse was the most concentrated power ever generated.
“This laser will support research in nuclear physics and help advance human understanding of the physics of matter.”
Not to mention the physics of vaporizing matter. The ELI project was started in the mid-2000s by French scientist and Gérard Mourou, the 2018 Nobel prize winner for his work on high-energy laser pulses, and was initially funded by the European Commission to build the world’s largest lasers in Romania, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.
“It may help investigating and controlling aging processes in materials under extreme conditions, such as in nuclear reactors, and help protecting the environment by offering new ways to treat nuclear waste.”
Vaporizing nuclear waste sounds like a good thing, until one thinks about what else a power of that magnitude could vaporize. In fact, how did it not vaporize its own lab – or at least the wall it was pointed in the direction of? The answer is somewhat vague. ExtremeTech quotes Dr. Nicolae Zamfir, project director at ELI-NP, saying that “The beam is focused on mm2 only in the interaction [chamber].” We’re still here and there’s no hole in the wall because the pulse was infinitesimally brief.
That will change soon by an order of magnitude. While the ELI project has plans for a fourth lab with a 100 PW laser, is hasn’t even chosen a location for it. Meanwhile, Chinese physicists are said to already be building a 100 PW laser at the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF). Using a single cylinder of titanium-doped sapphire about 12 inches wide, the researchers believe it will be long enough (possibly a minute) and powerful enough to break a vacuum and create antimatter. Testing is estimated to begin in 2023.
That’s not all. Laser testing is going on around the world in quests to harness its tremendous power. Are the goals noble or just paths to a real Death Star? Only time will tell.
In the meantime, The Titanium-Doped Sapphires would make a great name for a band.
Something strange is in the skies above New Zealand. Over the last few weeks, multiple eyewitnesses have reported seeing a red or orange glow either in the skies or just on the horizon out at sea. It all began on March 31 when a couple in west Auckland on New Zealand’s North Island had what they described as the “craziest experience.” Reddit user ufomystery123described the experienceto the New Zealand subreddit, writing that the experience left the couple terrified:
We were on the beach, my boyfriend and I, and saw two bright orange/red lights far on the other end of the beach. In a matter of seconds, one of the lights started moving at full speed, in a straight line, no more that 200m above the water until directly in front of us. The UFO had changed from having a red light to a bright white light, somewhat like a torch, shining directly at us. We were lying down looking at the stars for a while and then stood up to leave, before realizing there were five surrounding us in different areas of the beach. One of them was flying up and down and another from side to side. The others were just still switching between red and white spotlights. This was when we decided to leave, scared shitless.
Reddit users were characteristically cynical about the description of the events, arguing that the couple likely saw a balloon or some form of LED toy. However, the New Zealand Herald reports that other witnesses have seen similar lights in recent weeks.
Mysterious lights in the sky are some of the most commonly-reported unidentified aerial phenomena.
Much farther to the south in Dunedin and Oamaru on the South Island, eyewitnesses have described similar lights along the coast. After several reports of a “mysterious red light in the sky” came in early this month, law enforcement and public safety officials were dispatched to the coast to search for stricken boats. Oamaru Police Sergeant Tony Woodbridge says that enough reports came in for police to take the case seriously, although nothing has been found.
The famous Moeraki Boulders on New Zealand’s South Island.
”Through investigation, we’ve had another resident of Kakanui who was out walking and someone from Hampden Beach who have both seen a bright orange-red light in the sky about the same time,” Woodbridge told reporters. “We’ve got no reports of anybody missing, so it’s a bit of a mystery what was seen, but we’ve been out and had a good look.”
So what do we have? Multiple eerily similar reports of red lights in the skies above New Zealand, given weeks apart. Could these reports be related? Is this someone having fun with drones, or might there be something more mysterious afoot? For now, with little else to go on, these reports remain a mystery.
Many people believe UFOs visit Earth from other planets far, far away. A Montana Tech professor believes UFOs are much closer to home.
“The phenomenon may be our own distant descendants coming back through time to study us in their own evolutionary past,” said Michael P. Masters.
Masters writes about this theory in his newly released book, “Identified Flying Objects.” With a doctorate in anthropology from Ohio State University, Masters uses science to explain why people who report close encounters with aliens always describe them the same way.
“The extra-tempestrial are ubiquitously reported as being bipedal, upright-walking, five fingers on each hand and foot, bi-lateral symmetry that they have two eyes, a mouth a nose, they can communicate with us in our own languages,” said Masters.
Masters understands this study may be considered fringe science, but he defends the research in the book.
First likely Marsquake heard by NASA's InSight sounds like an underground high-speed train
First likely Marsquake heard by NASA's InSight sounds like an underground high-speed train
This video and audio illustrates a seismic event detected by NASA's InSight on April 6, 2019, the 128th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
Three distinct kinds of sounds can be heard, all of them detected as ground vibrations by the spacecraft's seismometer, called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS):
There's noise from Martian wind; the seismic event itself; and the spacecraft's robotic arm as it moves to take pictures.
This event is the first likely Marsquake recorded by the InSight team. Several other seismic events have been recorded but are much more ambiguous than this signal.
The audio underscores just how seismically noisy the Martian surface can be and was produced from two sets of sensors included with SEIS.
You can hear sounds from the Very Broad Band sensors from your left speakers and sounds from the Short Period sensors from your right speakers. Audio from both sets of sensors have been sped up by a factor of 60; the actual vibrations on Mars would not have been audible to the human ear.
Listen to the 'Marsquake' that sounds like a high-speed train as used in an underground rail system. Playback on headphones or speaker system recommended for best experience.
Missing 411: The 1600 People who VANISHED from America's National Parks
Missing 411: The 1600 People who VANISHED from America's National Parks
1600 people go missing every year in America's national parks. They seemingly vanish into thin air, some of them return and some are never to been seen or heard from again.
The cases David Paulides, an author and former policeman, found were strange and numerous enough that he has since written six volumes of work documenting the disappearances in his books called the 'Missing 411' series.
Strangeries investigates and documents some of the bizarre missing person's cases that David Paulides has been involved in and the shocking statistics of just how many people disappear without a trace!
Phil Schneider Found Alien Base Under Los Alamos Lab, New Mexico, UFO Sighting News
Phil Schneider Found Alien Base Under Los Alamos Lab, New Mexico, UFO Sighting News
I made this video clip back in 2014 and wanted to move it to my channel. Phil Schneider RIP brother. I dedicated my book Dragons of Asgard to you at the end of it. Philip Schneider was a former US Government Geologist and Engineer, who was involved in producing the underground explosions which were required to facilitate the building of various underground military bases, as well as submarine bases for the United States Government. He was the only person to survive the infamous Alien/Human War at Dulce and Los Alamos, where 66 Government Agents and Workers lost their lives in August of 1979. For the last two years of his life he gave lectures about classified information, including UFO's to the media and general public. Philip Schneider was found dead in his apartment on January 17, 1996. He was murdered, and all documents, photos and videos he had in his possession which he was about to use for a massive disclosure to the public...were gone from his apartment. Scott C. Waring
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Comet P67 Slowed Down Singing. The Alien Message Broadcasted To Our Solar System, UFO Sighting News.
Comet P67 Slowed Down Singing. The Alien Message Broadcasted To Our Solar System, UFO Sighting News.
Now I made. I really feel that it holds an alien message. I took the singing sounds made by comet P67 and slowed them down so that we could hear them better. Fun facts about comet P67:
1. Its makes a radio signal that sounds like a message. 2. Its radio signal has gone non stop since discovery over 25 years ago. 3. 20 years ago when scientist heard comet P67, the decided to build and launch a satellite to investigate it. 4. The satellite finally reached the comet several years ago and recorded this signal from the comet...now called the singing comet. 5. The public was never told about the singing until the Rossetta probe had reached the comet. 6. The comet itself is shaped like an alien head with a neck and shoulders.
So, this is a message that aliens created and placed on the comet to either mark their territory or to test species at a certain level of development to come and investigate. I think its the first. The shape of the entire comet is that of an alien bust. Its to show who made the signal...to be 100% sure those that received it and came, would learn of who sent it and who will enforce it. Scott C. Waring
Location of discovery: Earths moon I found a pyramid in NASA photo PIA13510 yesterday. The object is partly hidden in the shadows so you need to add light to it to see the rest of the structure. I believer this structure can fly from place to place. Its a spaceship but is landed in this location of the moon. There are so many ancient cultures on Earth that built huge pyramids like in Bosnia 25,000 years ago, the Egyptians 3,000 years ago, the mayans, Incas and Aztecs 2,000 years ago and so may more. There must be an alien connection between them all. Scott C. Waring
Hey everyone. I actually found this object last year but never made a video about it, so I decided to have some fun and make one today. This is a white ceramic structure, meaning its reflective like a white ceramic dish would be if enough light his it. I am lucky to have found this one in the shadows so its detail is well pronounced. Behind the white base is another huge black walled structure. Not these are huge. The Apollo 17 photo was taken by an astronaut out the window using a Nikon 35 mm camera and they were 90km above the surface of the moon, yet these structures are still big! It must have really been hard for the astronauts not to be able to talk about these things once they made it back to earth. Please check out my video below I made a few minutes ago. Scott C. Waring
I guess I don't have to tell you I love to look at the sky. Well, I was looking at some live cams and found this interesting photo in its archive. The still photo was just a screen grab of the UFO passing. The cam itself actually records video, not still shots.
I noticed this object in the photo and decided to enlarge it. The object appears to be a metallic disk. Not only that, but the disk is leaving a trail of clouds behind it. UFOs often make clouds around the ship to hide it, but if the ship travels too fast, or the wind picks up the clouds are pulled off as you see is done here.
As I have said before, sunset is the most popular time to see a UFO. If you want to see one, watch a dozens sunsets...I promise you will notice something strange in one.
I was going through some SOHO NASA images of our sun when I found one the just rubbed me the wrong way. This mysterious object shape not even close to being a comet, asteroid, meteor, satellite, space station or anything else I could think of. The only possibility left is that its a alien craft. The design has many right angles and the tail area thins like a planes would. Also it seems to have wings on each side. If you look carefully behind the UFO you will see that there are many smaller ships following it. They follow the big ships for safely reasons. There are a lot of intelligent species in our universe, both kind and cruel. Space is a big empty place that leaves a ship on its own to protect itself. So the small ships follow the big ones when traveling in dangerous territory. You know what bothers me here? Its that Earth is in dangerous territory. How safe will it be for a tiny human craft with no weapons or armor to protect itself out there alone? Scott C. Waring
These photos of rings around the sun where taken by Christine McNaughton on Twitter last week. She posted photos of a sunset from an island in Canada and remains baffled by what could possible be the reason for these rings.
Remember, the sun sets in the west, not north, so northern lights are ruled out. Also since the great lakes sit to the west, I would say this was caused by a over abundance of energy surging over the lake in that area. Now live atomic bombs have been lost in those lakes, but if this wasnst seen from other areas, then it couldn't be a atomic bomb from WWII era. It could hoverer be a massive UFO rising out of the bottom of the great lake. This UFO would have to be driven by a huge amount of energy and would be forced to sit there until after sunset when its safe to fly away under the cloak of darkness. It defiantly sounds like evidence of an underwater alien base in that direction on the lake floor.
Tell me your thoughts in the comments below please. Scott C. Waring-Taiwan
Black UFO Ring Flying Over Denver, Colorado Makes Local News. April 2019, Videos, UFO Sighting News.
Black UFO Ring Flying Over Denver, Colorado Makes Local News. April 2019, Videos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: April 15, 2019 Location of sighting: Denver, Colorado, USA A possible UFO sighing was seen in Denver two weeks ago. The whole city seemed to see it and the exact explanation of what it is remains a mystery. Many explanations from fireworks to volcanos have been given. However Denver is a UFO hotspot with most of its citizens having seen UFOs in the area. Its totally possible that this ring is actually the outline of an alien cloaked craft that is having difficulties keeping cloaked. Its also possible that a UFO shot off so fast that it left a black ring around it. Lots of white glowing balls have been seen over the Denver area near the Rocky Mountains for decades, so its no surprise to see such oddities in the sky above Denver. Scott C. Waring
Chirs Spears of CBS4 states:
OKAY ... here's an odd one for you. This was caught on our city cam looking due west around 740 pm. We also had a viewer in LoDo film it. His video was more of a perfect circle. I am baffled at how to explain this one. LOL! CRAZY! And creepy.
When NASA launched two rockets studying auroras in Norway recently, the mission created visuals so magnificently beautiful that it had some around the world thinking aliens.
The New York Post reports that some called the police warning that "aliens are coming," and that a UFO sightings message board picked up on the other-worldly visuals saying a ship "entered an underground base."
This post will run through what the U.S. space agency was doing with its two rockets in the arctic and, of course, some of the amazing visuals created in the process:
Benjamin Raven | braven@mlive.com
The space agency's work studying auroras focuses on measuring the atmospheric density and temperature with instruments on the rockets including visible gas tracers. These tracers are said to be trimethyl aluminum and a barium/strontium mixture, which NASA says ionizes once exposed to sunlight.
During the evening launch back on April 5 from the Andoya Space Center in Norway, NASA released the mixture over the Norwegian Sea between 71 and 150 miles altitude.
"These mixtures, using substances similar to those found in fireworks, created colorful clouds that allow researchers to track the flow of neutral and charged particles with the auroral wind," NASA writes on its website. "By tracking the movement of these colorful clouds via ground-based photography and triangulating their moment-by-moment position in three dimensions, AZURE will provide valuable data on the vertical and horizontal flow of particles in two key regions of the ionosphere over a range of different altitudes.
"Many people believe the Earth’s atmosphere “ends” some 20-30 miles above the ground. However, the air we breathe does not abruptly end at some predefined point -- instead, it gradually thins."
The AZURE mission stands for Auroral Zone Upwelling Rocket Experiment. The space agency says preliminary results from the April 5 launch have left scientists involved "very pleased with the results."
The two rockets flew to an altitude of 200 and 202 miles, as both tracked the movement of the very colorful clouds.
Auroras are defined by the space agency as "energetic particles, which can speed out from the sun both in a steady stream called the solar wind and due to giant eruptions known as coronal mass ejections or CMEs. After a trip toward Earth that can last two to three days, the solar particles and magnetic fields cause the release of particles already trapped near Earth, which in turn trigger reactions in the upper atmosphere in which oxygen and nitrogen molecules release photons of light."
The AZURE mission successfully launched back-to-back aboard two sounding rockets in Norway tonight. These colorful clouds created a light show in the sky, helping researchers track the flow of neutral and charged particles in Earth's ionosphere. Details: https://go.nasa.gov/2oJGOtz.
NASA says that AZURE is the first of eight sounding rocket missions with international collaborators scheduled in the next two years. This mission will mainly focus on measuring the winds in the Arctic region, while trying to "better understand the forces at play."
"By tracking the movement of these colorful clouds via ground-based photography and triangulating their moment-by-moment position in three dimensions, AZURE will provide valuable data on the vertical and horizontal flow of particles in two key regions of the ionosphere over a range of different altitudes," NASA reports on its website.
"Such measurements are critical if we are to truly understand the effects of the mysterious yet beautiful aurora. The results will be key to a better understanding of the effects of auroral forcing on the atmosphere, including how and where the auroral energy is deposited."
Ever wondered what auroras look like from space? @ESA@Astro_Alex Gerst gives us his space-based view from aboard the @Space_Station, tweeting that the experience is "[m]ind-blowing, every single time." Take a look: https://go.nasa.gov/2ODAhei
In 2013, in a big success story, a Mars rover and orbiter made a near-simultaneous observation of methane in Mars’ atmosphere. Now a newer mission orbiting Mars – ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter – has failed to detect methane. Why?
Artist’s concept of ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter, part of the ExoMars mission,
analyzing the Martian atmosphere. Image via ESA/ATG MediaLab.
Ten days ago, we spoke of aJune 2013 detectionof methane in Mars’ atmosphere by both the ground-basedCuriosityrover and theMars Expressorbiter. Scientists were excited about that because, on Earth, methane is generated by living organisms, as well as geological processes. So Mars’ methane might hold clues to possible life on Mars. But now another group of perplexed planetary scientists is asking … where has Mars’ methane gone? The first results from ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) – part of theExoMarsmission, which launched on Mars in 2016 – showed virtually no signs of the gas in the Martian atmosphere. This is surprising, to say the least.
TGO also has some new findings for scientists about dust in Mars’ atmosphere and subsurface deposits of water ice and water-related minerals.
The puzzling methane results were presented at the annual meeting of the European Geosciences Union last week in Vienna, and a first paper was published on April 10, 2019, in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Today. A second paper, also in Nature Today, discusses the impact of the recent global dust storm on water in the Martian atmosphere. A third paper (in Russian), submitted to the Proceedings of the Russian Academy of Science, provides the most detailed map ever produced of water ice and hydrated minerals in the shallow subsurface of the planet.
So far, TGO has found an upper limit of methane in the Martian atmosphere 10 to 100 times less than previous detections. Why?
Image via ESA; spacecraft: ATG MediaLab; data: O. Korablev et al (2019).
These papers indicate an upper limit of 0.05 ppbv (parts per billion by volume), which is 10 to 100 times less methane than all previous reported detections. The most precise detection of 0.012 ppbv, taken by the Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) spectrometer on TGO, was achieved at an altitude of less than two miles (three km). According to ACS principal investigator Oleg Korablev at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow:
We have beautiful, high-accuracy data tracing signals of water within the range of where we would expect to see methane, but yet we can only report a modest upper limit that suggests a global absence of methane.
Earth-based telescopes had previously found transient measurements of up to 45 ppbv, while Mars Express found a limit of 10 ppbv in 2004. The Curiosity rover found a background level of methane of 0.2 – 0.7 ppbv, with higher periodic peaks. Our story from a week ago reported that Mars Express had confirmed one of Curiosity’s largest peaks in 2013, narrowing down the location of at least one methane plume down to east of Gale Crater.
Diagram of Mars, with spacecraft and their results labeled.
A history of key methane measurements on Mars from 1999 to 2018.
Image via ESA.
The upper limit of 0.05 ppbv amounts to about 500 tons of methane overall, but that is actually a very tiny amount when it is spread throughout the entire atmosphere.
The findings by TGO seem to be quite contradictory to all earlier detections, which poses some difficult questions. Where did the methane go? Is it errors in analysis or – as researchers have suggested – is the methane being actively destroyed somehow soon after it is released into the atmosphere? As Korablev explained:
The TGO’s high-precision measurements seem to be at odds with previous detections; to reconcile the various datasets and match the fast transition from previously reported plumes to the apparently very low background levels, we need to find a method that efficiently destroys methane close to the surface of the planet.
As Håkan Svedhem, TGO project scientist, also noted:
Just as the question of the presence of methane and where it might be coming from has caused so much debate, so the issue of where it is going, and how quickly it can disappear, is equally interesting.
We don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle or see the full picture yet, but that is why we are there with TGO, making a detailed analysis of the atmosphere with the best instruments we have, to better understand how active this planet is – whether geologically or biologically.
Diagram showing the seasonal cycle of methane as detected by the Curiosity rover in Gale Crater.
Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Methane is of primary interest to scientists studying Mars, since it can originate either geologically or biologically. On Earth, by far most of the gas – about 95 percent – is produced by living organisms, but some also is created by geological activity. We still don’t know the origin of Mars’ methane, but the Curiosity rover did also determine that it is seasonal in nature – increasing in summer and decreasing again in winter – which may explain why it hasn’t been found yet by TGO. Current evidence also points to the methane most likely coming from beneath the surface. That could fit in with either a geological or biological scenario, or perhaps even both.
Methane is not the only thing that TGO has been studying; the orbiter has also been examining how dust in the atmosphere from the recent global dust storm affected water vapor. Two spectrometers – NOMAD and ACS – made the first high-resolution solar occultation measurements of the atmosphere, to see how sunlight is absorbed in the atmosphere as a way to reveal the chemical fingerprints of its ingredients. The vertical distribution of water vapor was measured from close to the surface to over 50 miles (80 km) in altitude. According to Ann Carine Vandaele, principal investigator of NOMAD at the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy:
In the northern latitudes [of Mars] we saw features such as dust clouds at altitudes of around 25-40 km [15-25 miles] that were not there before, and in southern latitudes we saw dust layers moving to higher altitudes. The enhancement of water vapor in the atmosphere happened remarkably quickly, over just a few days during the onset of the storm, indicating a swift reaction of the atmosphere to the dust storm.
The results fit with previous global circulation models, Vandaele said:
We see that water … is very sensitive to the presence of ice clouds, preventing it from reaching atmospheric layers higher up. During the storm, water reached much higher altitudes. This was theoretically predicted by models for a long time but this is the first time we have been able to observe it.
TGO observations of how dust from the recent global dust storm has affected water vapor in the Martian atmosphere.
Image via ESA; spacecraft: ATG MediaLab; data: A-C Vandaele et al (2019).
TGO has also been using its neutron detector called FREND to map the distribution of hydrogen in the uppermost meter of Mars’ surface. It has indicated the presence, either now or in the past, of water. TGO can find minerals that were formed in water millions or billions of years ago, as well as detect current deposits of ice below the surface. As Igor Mitrofanov, principal investigator of the FREND instrument, said:
In just 131 days the instrument had already produced a map that has a higher resolution than that of the 16 years data from its predecessor onboard NASA’s Mars Odyssey – and it is set to continue getting better.
The data is continually improving and we will eventually have what will become the reference data for mapping shallow subsurface water-rich materials on Mars, crucial for understanding the overall evolution of Mars and where all the present water is now. It is important for the science on Mars, and it is also valuable for future Mars exploration.
The non-detection of methane so far by TGO presents a conundrum for scientists. If it is there, as multiple Mars missions and telescopes have shown, how does it disappear so fast? If it is seasonal as previously determined, was TGO just looking at the wrong time? Only further observations will help to answer that question. Chris Webster, a senior scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Space.com that he is optimistic TGO will still detect methane:
We need to be more patient with TGO, because one thing we have learned is that the methane story is full of surprises, and there are surely more to come. It would not surprise me if TGO detected methane sometime in the future.
Want more detail? There’s a good overview of the new methane findings in a new article in Nature.
Map of shallow subsurface water (hydrated minerals/ice) distribution on Mars.
Image via ESA; spacecraft: ATG/medialab; data: I. Mitrofanov et al (2018).
Bottom line: The origin of Mars’ methane is still a mystery, but now its apparent vanishing act is in itself another puzzle for scientists to solve.
Meteoroid impacts regularly liberate puffs of water vapor from the moon, suggesting that minuscule amounts of water may lurk just under the entire lunar surface, a new study finds.
When the Apollo missions brought lunar rocks to Earth, scientists found evidence that the moon was devoid of water. However, in the past decade, data from a bevy of spacecraft — including NASA's Cassini, Deep Impact and Lunar Prospector missions, and India's Chandrayaan-1 probe — revealed trace amounts of water on the surface of the moon. Even more intriguingly, they found water across the moon's surface, not only at the poles, as was previously expected.
But scientists still have many questions about the source and extent of lunar water. To learn more, researchers analyzed data from NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), which orbited the moon from October 2013 to April 2014.
The scientists behind the newly published research found that the moon released numerous puffs of water vapor from near its surface into its exosphere, the very tenuous layer of molecules comprising the closest thing that the moon has to an atmosphere. These outbursts coincided with 29 known meteoroid streams that passed near Earth during that eight-month span of time, including the Leonids, Geminids and Quadrantids.
"Most of the geological processes we deal with in planetary science are very slow — we almost never get to see something respond dynamically over the scale of hours like we did here," lead author Mehdi Benna, a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, told Space.com.
The researchers suggested that meteoroid impacts kicked up these puffs of water from the moon, and said that four of these puffs were apparently caused by previously undetected meteoroid streams.
"One would think we know all of the meteoroid streams that are out there, but apparently we don't," Benna said.
By analyzing the amount of water released by meteoroid streams of different sizes, the scientists estimated that the uppermost 3.15 inches (8 centimeters) of lunar soil is dehydrated — any less, and smaller meteoroids would have excavated more water. Below this desiccated layer, the researchers suggest, water comprises up to about 0.05% of the weight of the rock up to at least 10 feet (3 meters) deep.
"With our measurements, we could see exactly the water extracted from the moon in a very dynamic way by micrometeroid impacts, and by analyzing the data, see how much water was stored in the lunar reservoir and where it was going," Benna said.
The researchers estimated that meteoroid impacts cause the moon to lose as much as 220 tons (200 metric tons) of water annually. To sustain this amount of loss over time, they suggested that this water either was present when the moon formed, about 4.5 billion years ago, or was delivered by cosmic impacts from water-laden rocks soon after the moon was born.
The lunar samples from the Apollo missions may have appeared devoid of water because the water on those rocks was likely not incorporated into the rocks themselves, but only weakly coated them. As such, any water on the rocks was likely fragile and difficult to hold onto during the return trips, Benna said.
Future research can examine how deep water actually extends on the moon, Benna said. He and his colleagues detailed their findings online today (April 15) in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Picture a world where rain falls, gathers in lakes and ponds, seeps into the surrounding rock, and evaporates away, only to fall again. There's just one catch: The world is Saturn's moon, Titan, where the rain isn't water; it's liquid methane.
Two new papers explore how this eerily familiar, waterless "water cycle" manifests on Titan's surface. To do so, two separate research teams turned to data from the Cassini mission, which ended its stay at the Saturn system in September 2017. The spacecraft flew past the massive moon more than 100 times, gathering crucial observations of this strange world as it did so.
Some of those observations showed scientists something truly extraordinary: their first glimpse of liquid currently on the landscape, rather than mere ghosts of such liquid features. "Titan is the only world outside the Earth where we see bodies of liquid on the surface," Rosaly Lopes, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who worked on the Cassini mission but wasn't involved in either of the new papers. "Some of us like to call Titan the Earth of the outer solar system."
"Titan is the most interesting moon in the solar system. I think that gets me some enemies, but I think it's actually true," Shannon MacKenzie, lead author on one of the new studies and a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, told Space.com. But that doesn't mean the moon is straightforward. "Titan throws us a lot of curveballs," she said.
MacKenzie's study analyzes one potential curveball: three small features that appeared to be liquid-filled lakes when Cassini first spotted them, but seem to have dried up by the time the spacecraft returned to the area. The observations suggest that the liquid either evaporated or seeped into the surrounding planetary surface.
These "phantom lakes" may be evidence of seasonal changes on the moon, MacKenzie and her coauthors believe. (Seven Earth years passed between the spacecraft's two observations of the area, during which the northern hemisphere of the moon transitioned from winter to spring.)
But the situation may not be quite that simple, since the two sets of observations were taken by different instruments. Cassini was built to gather data with either its radar instrument or its visual and infrared light cameras, but not both simultaneously. And during the spacecraft's first pass, the region was too dark to use the cameras.
So MacKenzie and her colleagues had to factor in the change in instruments as a potential variable. But she's still confident that something is different in the two passes, and that it's pretty plausible that liquid was there, then disappeared. Even if the different signals over the two flybys were caused by some other phenomenon, MacKenzie said she's still intrigued by what that could tell us about the strange moon, which is among scientists' plausible candidates for where life may be lurking beyond Earth.
"If we're instead looking at some newly identified materials on the surface, then that's interesting, too, because the sediments on Titan are really important for prebiotic chemistry," MacKenzie said.
But although MacKenzie focused on just three small lakes that seem to have disappeared, plenty of lakes remained visible throughout Cassini's observations of the region. In the second paper published today, scientists used radar data to study a handful of much larger lakes.
During Cassini's very last pass over Titan in April 2017, the spacecraft was programmed to gather a very specific type of data, called altimetry, over the lake region to measure the height of different substances. Marco Mastrogiuseppe, a planetary scientist at Caltech, had already used similar data to measure the depths of some of Titan's seas, much larger bodies of liquids, and the Cassini team hoped he would be able to do the same with lakes.
Mastrogiuseppe and his colleagues did so in their new paper, identifying the bottoms of lakes more than 328 feet (100 meters) deep and establishing that their contents were dominated by liquid methane. "We realized that essentially the composition of the lakes is very, very similar to the one of the mare, of the sea," he said. "We believe that these bodies are fed by local rains and then these basins, they drain liquid."
That suggests that below Titan's surface, the moon may host yet another feature reminiscent of Earth: caves. On Earth, many caves are formed by water dissolving away surrounding rock types like limestone, leaving behind a type of landscape called karst, characterized by springs, aquifers, caves and sinkholes.
Researchers studying Titan's lake region think that they see similar karst-type characteristics. They also haven't spotted channels connecting all these different liquid features, which is why Mastrogiuseppe and others suspect that some of the liquid may be seeping into the surrounding terrain, much like karst systems here on Earth.
"Titan is really this world that geologically is similar to the Earth, and studying the interactions between the liquid bodies and the geology is something that we haven't really been able to do before," Lopes said. The new studies begin to make that happen by seeing those interactions playing out live on another planetary body.
Of course, it's much more difficult to study these interactions so far away, on a world that has never been the primary focus of a mission. "We've been talking about possible missions with robotic explorers that might crawl down into lava tubes and caves on the moon and Mars," Lopes said. "Could we in the future send one of these to sort of crawl down into this terrain and into caves and find out what's underneath there?"
Such a mission likely won't happen any time soon, but NASA is seriously considering a project called Dragonfly that would land a drone on the strange moon. If selected, the mission would launch in 2025 and reach Titan nine years later. And if NASA doesn't choose Dragonfly, chances are good that another mission concept will come along. "Titan's just too cool to not go back to," MacKenzie said.
Both MacKenzie's and Mastrogiuseppe's papers were published today (April 15) in the journal Nature Astronomy.
WETENSCHAPPERS BEVESTIGEN KOMST KOUDE PERIODE ( VIDEO )
WETENSCHAPPERS BEVESTIGEN KOMST KOUDE PERIODE ( VIDEO )
Langzaam maar zeker begint het ook in sommige delen van mainstreamland door te dringen dat we een koude periode tegemoet gaan.
Een periode die decennialang kan duren en wordt veroorzaakt door een zon die in de slaapstand gaat.
Een internationale groep wetenschappers kwam onlangs bij elkaar bij National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) voor een workshop, waarbij ze nogal opzienbarende voorspellingen deden voor de komende zonnecyclus 25.
Tussen de zomer van 2019 en de herfst van 2020 zal het aantal zonnevlekken nog verder verminderen, waardoor we aanzienlijk koudere temperaturen zullen meemaken.
De door hen voorlopig gemaakte voorspelling ziet er zo uit en is identiek aan de voorspelling die wij al heel lang hanteren.
Wij hebben tot nu toe de volgende voorspelling gebruikt, waarin je ziet dat zonnecyclus 25 nog zwakker wordt dan de al zwakke cyclus 24 en dat daarna zonnecyclus 26 nog zwakker zal zijn.
Maar, zo te zien zijn we nog aan de optimistische kant geweest en is het nog maar de vraag of de pieken van cyclus 25 zo hoog zullen komen als op de door ons gebruikte voorspelling.
Hoe dan ook, wat we kunnen verwachten tijdens zonnecyclus 25 is dan een periode die te vergelijken is met het Dalton Minimum.
Het Dalton-minimum was een periode van lage zonneactiviteit, genoemd naar de Engelse meteoroloog John Dalton, die duurde van ongeveer 1790 tot 1830. Zoals het Maunder-minimum en het Spörer-minimum, viel het Dalton-minimum samen met een periode van lager dan gemiddelde wereldtemperatuur. Het Oberlach-station in Duitsland, bijvoorbeeld, mat een 2,0°C afname over 20 jaar.
Tijdens de daarop volgende zonnecyclus wordt het dan nog kouder en krijgen we een periode die te vergelijken is met het Maunder Minimum.
Het Maunder Minimum (ongeveer 1645-1715) betrof een periode waarin er decennia lang opmerkelijk weinig zonnevlekken waargenomen werden, een zogeheten Grand Minimum. Het was een tijdvak in de veel langer durende Kleine IJstijd (16e tot 19e eeuw), waarin de temperaturen onder meer in Europa 1 à 2 graden lager waren dan in de 20e eeuw.
Maar, uiteraard wordt er vastgehouden aan de opwarming van de aarde.
Zo was er deze week te lezen:
De zomer wordt warmer en droger dan gemiddeld. Volgens Weeronline is de kans op een ’bovengemiddeld warm verloop’ in de maand juni zelfs zeventig procent.
Heel goed mogelijk dat iets dergelijks gebeurt, maar vooralsnog is daar heel weinig van te merken.
Vooralsnog hebben we te maken met een stroom koude arctische lucht die onze kant op komt waardoor het in mei net zo koud aanvoelt als rond afgelopen kerst.
Volgens Adept2030 is dit al het derde opeenvolgende jaar waarbij we aan het begin van het jaar een korte warme periode hebben, gevolgd door een langdurige koude periode. Hierdoor zijn volgens hem alleen al in Europa de opbrengsten van de vroege landbouwoogsten zo’n 40 procent minder.
Wanneer we inderdaad een aantal opeenvolgende minima perioden krijgen zoals het Dalton of het Maunder Minimum, dan komt de voedselproductie wereldwijd zwaar onder druk te staan en zullen voedselprijzen astronomisch stijgen vanwege de schaarste.
Zoals we eerder schreven, brak de Franse revolutie uit in een periode van mislukte oogsten en gezien de onvoorstelbaar instabiele situatie in de wereld, zouden voedseltekorten wereldwijd weleens voor de nodige chaos en anarchie kunnen zorgen.
Volgens de klimaatreligie zijn wij als mens verantwoordelijk voor de wereldwijde opwarming.
Kijk hoe deze genadeloos toeslaat in de woestijnen van Saoedi Arabië.
Ook in New Foundland, Canada, keken ze vreemd op toen er op 1 mei nog een pak sneeuw viel. Ze zijn daar wel wat sneeuw gewend, maar dit soort sneeuwval zie je daar normaal gesproken in januari en februari.
En ondertussen gaan de klimaatidioten verder met het kapot maken van ons land door het volledig afhankelijk te maken van het elektriciteitsnet.
Het wordt kouder en kouder en toen kwam er een stroomstoring……
Een draagraket van SpaceX heeft een Dragon-capsule naar de ruimte gebracht, met aan boord voorraden en vracht voor het ruimtestation ISS. De Falcon-9-raket keerde daarna veilig terug naar Aarde en landde verticaal op een onbemand schip op open zee, wat straffe beelden oplevert. De Dragon zal naar verwachting overmorgen aankomen.
Life may have traveled to Earth from afar, aboard an interstellar visitor like the weird, cigar-shaped object 'Oumuamua, researchers say.
'Oumuamua, which zoomed through the inner solar system last fall, is the first confirmed interstellar object ever observed in our neck of the woods. But that doesn't mean it was the first ever to get here — far from it, in fact.
"We think that something like an 'Oumuamua ... there's always one within about 1 AU of the sun at any given time," planetary scientist Bill Bottke said last month during a panel discussion at the Breakthrough Discuss conference at the University of California, Berkeley. (One AU, or astronomical unit, is the average Earth-sun distance — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)
"And that actually has some really interesting implications," added Bottke, who directs the Department of Space Studies at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
One such implication centers on the role that 'Oumuamua-like objects could play in the transfer of life from world to world around the cosmos, an idea known as panspermia.
'Oumuamua's exact size is unknown, but researchers think it spans less than 2,600 feet (800 meters) in its longest dimension. The object displayed "nongravitational acceleration" as it cruised away from the sun, spurring speculation that 'Oumuamua could be an alien spacecraft of some kind. But the consensus view is that the interloper is icy and its weird movements were caused by comet-like outgassing.
"This tells us that ices can survive over these interstellar distances," astrobiologist Karen Meech, of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, said during the Breakthrough Discuss panel.
Previous research on comets and other small bodies within our own solar system suggests that 'Oumuamua-like objects provide good thermal insulation and radiation shielding, she added. That's good news for any microbes that may be hitching a ride.
"You're probably getting significant protection on the inside, and you're not getting any deeper with the radiation field or heating from supernovae below 10, 20 meters [33 to 66 feet] depth in a body," Meech said. "So, the idea that you could bring some living organism in some state — it could be preserved in a cold deep freeze. So, it would be no different than coming from our outer solar system."
Astronomers have not yet identified 'Oumuamua's natal star system, so we don't know long ago the object was ejected into the dark and frigid wastes. But it may have been traveling through interstellar space for 10 million years or more, Meech said.
It's unclear if any putative critters aboard 'Oumuamua could have survived an impact with Earth. The icy object barreled past us at about 134,000 mph (215,000 km/h) relative to our planet, Meech said.
"That's a very high impact velocity," she said. (And it could have been even higher. 'Oumuamua came from above the plane of our solar system; an interstellar body hitting us more head-on could have an impact velocity of around 225,000 mph, or 360,000 km/h, Meech said.)
But 'Oumuamua and its kin are thought to be quite fluffy, so any that impact Earth are likely to "land" relatively gently and break open when they hit our atmosphere, Steinn Sigurdsson, a professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State University, said during a different talk at the Breakthrough Discuss meeting.
Previous work by Harvard University astronomer Avi Loeb and others, along with Sigurdsson's own calculations, suggests that about 100 'Oumuamua-like objects have slammed into Earth over our planet's nearly 4.6-billion-year history, Sigurdsson said. (This is assuming these bodies are on random trajectories — that they weren't sent on their way by intelligent aliens, an idea known as directed panspermia.)
"Now, if any of them have biota in them? We don't know," he said. "Maybe we should go catch one and drill into it."
Catching 'Oumuamua is not feasible, said Loeb, who chairs Harvard's astronomy department and recently co-authored a paper speculating that 'Oumuamua might be an alien sailcraft. We don't know exactly where the object is now, so any chase probe would have to be equipped with a powerful (and heavy and expensive) telescope, he said. And gaining enough speed to catch up to 'Oumuamua would require slingshotting around the sun at a dangerously close distance.
"It makes much more sense to search for the next interstellar object," Loeb said during the question-and-answer portion of the Breakthrough Discuss panel. (He was in the audience, not on the dais.)
The powerful Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which is scheduled to start observing the heavens from Chile next year, will probably spot about one interstellar object per month when it's fully up and running, Loeb added.
"So, just wait a few years and have one per month and just go after those with much less cost," he said. "If you detect them on their approach to us, you can actually meet them halfway at relatively low speeds."
It's also possible, of course, that life took a relatively short leap to Earth long ago. The terrestrial planets in our solar system swap rocks fairly regularly, as the ever-growing collection of Mars meteorites here on Earth attests. Indeed, some researchers think life probably started on the Red Planet and made its way to Earth aboard a rock lofted into space by a powerful impact.
All of this being said, panspermia — interstellar or local, directed or natural — is not the canonical explanation for life's emergence on Earth. There's no evidence for it, after all, so most researchers go with Occam's Razor and presume that we're native to our blue marble.
Very specific language usage here by the media, unthinkable just a few years ago. Putting the words “UFO’s” and “invading” in the same sentence assumes we will make the connection that any such aerial visitors would be both non-human and a ‘threat’. This brings another word to mind – ‘fakery’ – as in: they might know what these things are, but wish to raise a high sense of fear about them, for a reason.
The suspicion is easily raised when you consider a few logical assumptions based around these developments, and how what they want us to believe about them is flawed.
Logical assumption:
#1) If these were aliens, wouldn’t they want to contact humans to ensure we do not mistake them as a threat?
2)Keeping in mind humans have to date only achieved putting a man on a moon, not even on our closest neighbour – Mars; if ET’s were a threat, and they have the technology to traverse vast interstellar distances they would also have mastered the technology to wipe out humans in an instant, without us even knowing it happened.
3)Aerial phenomenon (human engineered drones) filmed over Area 51 in the 1990’s making maneuvers which defied current understanding of physics are logically to blame for some if not all of what has been filmed by US Navy jets in recent times and reported in multiple mainstream media outlets.
4) This act of generating of a fake (ET) threat; has been called ‘the ultimate false flag operation’ for decades. Dr Carol Rosin who worked with the father of rocketry himself Werner Von Braun, said that he told her that there was such a plan in the making (over a number of decades) towards a ‘fake alien invasion’.
Just keep that in mind. The secret technology exists to make your jaw drop. Combine this secret tech with holographic technology of today and we are looking a potential for immense fakery and the realization of objectives which will also remain unknown to us. I understand this looks like paranoid conspiracy talk, but I am not one for conspiracies, and none of this is adding up.
5)At a time of serious planetary threat from human over-consumption, overpopulation.. climate change… what on earth could the system have planned to ‘take care’ of us all? The sums just don’t add up, and they don’t appear to be concerned enough. We have a planet based on false economics, because; Capitalism demands infinite growth and it is impossible to have infinite growth on a planet with finite resources. It makes sense that the elite may have something in place to take care of this peacefully. If they have something non-peaceful they would keep it to themselves.
The question is, if they have something to address the multiple crises – ‘why’ are they keeping any such solution to themselves?
6) Why all this, about UFO’s and non-human intelligences now? Why else now?
Extraterrestrials, take note: The U.S. Navy plans to set up an official reporting and investigative system that will monitor reports from its pilots about unidentified flying objects.
But while this "X-Files"-worthy operation sounds newsy, don't expect to hear details about it anytime soon. The Navy doesn't intend to make the data public, citing the privileged and classified information that these reports usually include,according to The Washington Post.
"Military aviation safety organizations always retain reporting of hazards to aviation as privileged information in order to preserve the free and honest prioritization and discussion of safety among aircrew," Joe Gradisher, a spokesman for the Office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, told The Washington Post. [7 Things Most Often Mistaken for UFOs]
In fact, beyond the announcement that the Navy is setting up this UFO-reporting procedure, "no release of information to the general public is expected," Gradisher said.
The upcoming procedure comes in the wake of other government-related UFO news. In late 2017, word came out that the Pentagon had a secret "UFO" office that spent $22 million over five years to study strange and threatening aeronautical events. Although funding for the venture, called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), ended in 2012, the program didn't entirely stop, according to those reports.
When news of AATIP became public in 2017, the Defense Department released two declassified videos, which showed pilots talking about a bizarre aircraft that appeared to accelerate quickly, even though it had no recognizable means of propulsion. These aircraft, which looked like blobs on the video, could allegedly drive thousands of feet in an instant.
By creating this new program, the Navy hopes to destigmatize any reporting associated with incidents that involve UFOs, which could, after all, be militarized aircraft from other parts of the world.
"There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years," the Navy told Politico, which broke the story. "For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report."
The public may get a whiff of these incidents eventually, although the details may be scarce. For instance, perhaps unclassified parts, broad overviews or statistics about the number of sightings could be released, Luis Elizondo, an intelligence officer who ran AATIP before leaving the Pentagon, told The Washington Post.
"If it remains strictly within classified channels, then the 'right person' may not actually get the information," Elizondo said. "The right person doesn't necessarily mean a military leader. It can be a lawmaker. It can be a whole host of different individuals."
The government is making a smart move by announcing its intentions to formally document and analyze these UFOs, said Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in Mountain View, California.
"It will make everybody happy because it sounds like a move toward transparency," Shostak told Live Science.
With this announcement, the Navy benefits not only because it will formally investigate these strange sightings, which may well be reconnaissance or enemy aircraft from other nations; the Navy is also winning a nod from the roughly two-thirds of Americans who think that the government isn't divulging everything it knows about extraterrestrials and UFOs, said Shostak, citing a 2002 study on attitudes about aliens.
That said, the government probably isn't formalizing this program because it's looking for E.T.
"The military is interested in this stuff not because they think that Klingons are sailing in the skies, but i think because maybe they think the Chinese or the Russians are sailing through the skies," Shostak said.
Like it or not, there has been a tectonic shift in public awareness about UFOs. Since December of 2017, news outlets around the globe have picked up the story about one of the Department of Defense programs that actively investigates UFOs - and also about a fighter pilot named Commander David Fravor who had first-hand experience tactically engaging an Advanced Aerial Vehicle of unknown origin and intent. Now, more than ever, there is a bright light shining on the UFO problem; yet translation is needed to understand what has happened and its significance. Naturally, there are more questions than answers. More division than alignment; and more confusion than clarity.
Many believe the news of late is a type of "confirmation" or “acknowledgement” from the U.S. Government about the mystery of The Phenomenon, as well as, the ongoing government interest and involvement in the study of UFOs. As un-orchestrated as it is - I would agree with that - to a degree.
It’s certainly true that some of the brightest minds in the political, military, intelligence and aerospace communities have acknowledged unequivocally and publicly that we - the people of Earth - are being engaged by intelligently controlled technology of unknown origin; craft that perform maneuvers far beyond current human aerospace and flight capabilities. The global media has been abuzz about this UFO business, and it’s exciting to to be a witness at this time in history.
“The waves were breaking over something that was just below the surface. Whatever it was, it was big enough to cause the sea to churn. The disturbance looked like frothy waves and foam, as if the water were boiling. It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen. It had no plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s."
- Cmdr. David Fravor, F/A-18F fighter pilot & former Commanding Officer of VFA-41 the Black Aces.
Military interest in UFOs begins with the fact that the vehicles encountered represent a new technology. A technology that fits within our known understanding of physics, yet remains outside human replication - at this time. We are on a cosmic precipice; and to some, what we are learning represents a critical defense-code to be cracked by a motivated nation. And in this game, the winner takes all.
However, the issue of UFOs traversing our airspace with impunity is a small aspect of a much larger performance that is commonly referred to by those in-the-know as, "The UFO display" or "The Phenomenon". The entirety of the performance is regarded by our defense and intelligence communities as a "threat to our National Security". It is of note to say that up until now, UFOs have not displayed a recognizable or overt hostility to the people of planet Earth. But this is a much bigger conversation and we are still divided over the fundamentals. It is recklessly reductive to conjure imaginary scenarios to explain away the exotic as ordinary and the profound as mundane. Critics and debunkers have coordinated elaborate philosophical gymnastics to ignore and betray the evidence - twisting knowledge into an unrecognizable ooze of pseudo-explanation - for each and every aspect of what has come to light surrounding this topic. It has to be exhausting to cling to the past paradigm of the Marlboro Man and Isaac Newton, while beating the drum of ignorance and self-glorification with false cleverness. Harnessing one’s will in this way is corrosive, like an acid. It’s blinding, like standing too close to an atomic blast.
Understanding is a game of inches and degrees. It takes thoughtful inquiry and a collected approach. And nobody will do the work for you… well, sometimes they do. Thanks to a recent television report (in a series of illuminating investigations on the subject), by KLAS Investigative Reporter - George Knapp - a document was released. This small piece of paper is just one of many tangible artifacts born from over three-decades of hunting for UFO truth as a mainstream reporter with ties to all aspects of this field of inquiry. If history is a good indicator of future events - I suspect there is much more to come from Knapp on this path of obtaining documentation that is denied to exist at all. He did it with the Bob Lazar case; he did it with the AAWSAP & AATIP UFO programs. I suspect he will continue the trend moving forward.
Official DoD document obtained and released into the public realm by investigative reporter, George Knapp
This particular document provides proof that the famous footage of Anomalous Aerial Vehicles - captured by fighter pilots on both coasts of the United States - were indeed officially authorized for study under the direction and sanction of the U.S. Government. That the videos were property of the U.S. Government, and that they were cleared for additional use. That is despite the initial and outright denial by the Pentagon and their spokespersons that this was the case. Thankfully, we now know the truth about this piece of the puzzle. That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
Specifically, Knapp obtained the DD 1910 request - a part of the paper trail - the final step in a multi-step process, issued by the Department of Defense office of prepublication and security review. This is just one of many supporting documents and pieces of evidence surrounding the government’s role and interest in studying the UFO phenomenon. Knapp laid it at the feet of the public. It’s excellent investigative reporting.
This recent development has me looking at the public response to the UFO videos. It has highlighted for me that the general understanding of what is being seen on the footage can be confusing. In the age of mass accessibility to crystal-clear imagery, Instagram filters and pocket sized cellphone cameras - thermal imaging is not something that the average Snapchat user is exposed to on a daily basis. It made me wonder if there was a way to translate what we are seeing in those exquisitely puzzling FLIR camera videos from US fighter pilots. After all, this footage is the Muhammad Ali of UFO videos; it has weight in the ring. And it’s imperative that we try to understand more deeply what we are seeing; or we lose the battle toward understanding.
As we are well aware in this ever expanding cyber-savvy connected reality we call “now”; technology is a language. And it can be foreign, especially when we’re trying to decipher its capabilities. It can take translation to understand what we are looking at. I was seeking a uniquely capable FLIR-shaman to help read the entrails of this new sacrifice to our ending paradigm - and to assist me on my quest.
My friend Dave (@DaveFalch on Twitter) does interesting work; and is an expert with military FLIR cameras (FLIR pods). He’s exceptionally qualified to understand the footage as seen in the TIC TAC / GIMBAL / GO FAST videos; his comparisons and explanations are insightful. He’s mystified by the mental gymnastics performed by “debunkers” in the attempt to minimize the significance of the Pentagon released F-18 contact footage with Anomalous Aerial Vehicles. Below are a few recent correspondences with Dave - including video explanations to a few of my questions about the government FLIR footage. Dave provided me with insight to understand FLIR technology, and what we might glean in the TIC TAC and GIMBAL event videos. He eloquently and pragmatically challenges the debunker’s attempts at demystifying the footage of the captured UFO phenomenon.
Dave has also provided a detailed “Thermal Signature Comparison” specifically reviewing aspects of the GIMBAL incident. His explanation is informative for anybody interested in hearing the perspective of an expert in the technology.
For a clear picture of Dave’s qualifications - he was an Aviation Electronics Technician in the Navy (E-5) working on F-18/P-3/S-3 avionics. His current position is that of Depot Level FLIR Technician; a contractor that currently works for a government agency. He has been factory trained by several manufacturers in FLIR technology and worked directly off of the Naval Air Station Jacksonville flight line.
Dave knows of what he speaks when it comes to FLIR and the footage we have all been exposed to. He tests his hypotheses, and has been kind enough to break-down some of the basics regarding the technology he works on - and what he sees in the Pentagon released thermal UFO footage.
Enjoy!
Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell Creator, Extraordinary Beliefs
Infrared signatures, or thermal signatures, are what an infrared detector sees in relation to the object it is viewing. For example, birds and planes appear different to the detector due to the heat differences and movement. A wall that was a uniform temperature will show a handprint if someone places their hand on the wall for only a few seconds. I know a guy that I can identify in infrared just from his cold fingers!
This becomes important in identifying objects when using infrared detectors. At the current time, this is crucial when identifying objects using government infrared systems. Two government infrared systems that I will address here are the FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared Radar) and the ATFLIR (Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared Radar). While these are different systems produced by different manufacturers for different purposes, the technology has a large overlap that is relevant to my opinions on the matter.
Let’s begin with the ATFLIR video the social media has been discussing recently called the “Gimbal.”
In this video we see an unidentified object that’s oval in appearance and has a small point at what looks like the bottom of a vehicle of some sort. The video is set to black hot on this picture, and the heat appears uniform over the presumed craft. A rather large “halo” surrounds the object, perhaps an edge enhancement of sort from the ATFLIR, maybe a characteristic of the craft itself. The clouds below it does not interfere with the viewing of the object, and they minimally affect the auto gain/level the system would compensate for. In other terms, the infrared detector is seeing a good representation of the thermal image with minimal interference from other surrounding objects or conditions.
When I view the video, I see no flaring from jet engines, or any other typical variances in a thermal signature I normally see with jets and planes. The uniformity of the heat is unique to what I view every day. Then there is the movement of the object. It appears to me as mechanical, but in a coarse way; normal aircrafts are very gradual and flexing - smooth in nature. It makes me think of what the angle of the attack would be like in such a coarse adjustment, not to mention how the craft itself would be capable of this rotation.
That being said, let’s take a look at a picture of a trainer jet that I caught on infrared recently. This was taken with a FLIR system.
I purposefully adjusted the focus to where it would somewhat resemble the ATFLIR video object. However, there are differences that are worthy of mention and debate.
First, you can see the outline of the jet if you look closely. There are darker greys that show the wings horizontally, and the tail and landing gear can be seen. I’ll blow up the image and get a closer look. Granted, it’s not that easy to see. It’s easier to watch the videos and compare them to see the difference, but it’s there. You will also notice an obvious flaring of the jet engine as the jet flies away: there is spiking and changing of the heat signature that is indicative of a jet. Nothing like that is shown in the Gimbal video.
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE
Now let’s take a look at what is seen with the daylight camera of the FLIR compared to the infrared image. It’s common for FLIR systems to have a few different types of cameras mounted on a chassis that are aligned to each other. This is called boresighting. The cameras are aligned to see the same image in an overlapping manner.
It’s faint, I know. If you look closely though, you can see the outline of the jet when you compare the images in this simple juxtaposition. Now let’s compare the Gimbal video image versus that of which I took:
Experience tells me that this is an anomaly to which I am not familiar with. There are some things that need to be taken into consideration, though.
Different infrared detectors. I have not worked with ATFLIR systems, so I am only relying on my experience on the multitude of FLIRs I have worked on. My experience spans from FLIRs that date from approximately 1998 to present. Hundreds of systems, different manufacturers.
In-air versus ground-based. My experiences are mostly ground-based versus the in-air Gimbal video. I have flown in helicopters and planes and operated FLIRs, but not a jet fighter.
Video manipulation. When I viewed the Gimbal video, I am under the assumption that it is real and unedited. The same goes with other videos similar in nature.
Typical workday, nothing out of the ordinary. Weather was around 65 degrees Fahrenheit, clear skies. I had taken my 10:00 break, and came back at 10:15 to check my work e-mail. I was engrossed in the process of typing a response when a junior technician approached me and said something of the nature of, “Hey Dave, can you look at this?” I was slightly annoyed because it interrupted my train of thought, but I stopped typing and asked him what he was talking about. He said something like, “You gotta check this shit out man, it’s been sitting in the sky for about 15 minutes and I don’t know what it is.”
I went to look at what he was talking about and saw the object on the video monitor. He was right - it wasn’t moving at all. I gathered some technicians to get some other points of view. I believe that 6 of us were watching the monitor and making observations. Some of us were analyzing, some were joking about the situation. One of the technicians made a comment that the object seemed to be “geosynchronous”; he indicated that the object didn’t seem to move at all. We watched this object for about 5-7 minutes without it moving, and the technician that originally alerted me to it said it didn’t move for the 10-15 minutes he first saw it. I pulled out my iPhone and made a recording of the monitor. I stopped after a brief recording because I thought I could get a better video of it with a better FLIR system.
We set up a better FLIR system (high-definition) and waited for it to cryogenically cool (4-5 minutes). We then focused the FLIR towards the area of the sky where the object had been sitting; there was nothing there. We panned the sky for maybe a movement of a blimp or something but there was nothing but open sky. We then thought it might be an anomaly with the original FLIR and got it running again - still nothing in the sky.
All of us, who have many years of looking in the sky at objects, still cannot explain what it was we saw that day. We take many things into consideration such as planets, aircraft, the ISS, etc. Still no explanation.
I hope Dave’s explanations and correspondence with me has been helpful. He has been generous with his time, and pragmatic with his efforts to clarify and distinguish fact from fiction regarding FLIR technology. What is observed in the government released UFO videos is worthy of our attention for understanding. It's kinda like pulling on a string to unravel a more complex story - a story that continues to get bigger and bigger. We must suspend our our predetermined disbelief long enough to accumulate the facts - despite any extensional discomfort. What’s been coming out about UFOs over the past few years is simply the tip of the spear. There is a lot of information poised to emerge in the public realm about the UFO problem. However it’s not going to release itself; it will take all of our efforts here on planet Earth.
It is of note to say that my film on Bob Lazar - and his account of working to reverse engineer an alien propulsion system for the United States military as part of a secret UFO study - can be gleaned from a different vantage now that we know more about the operations being conducted by our DoD. One aspect of Lazar’s account that I find particularly interesting, is the way he describes the gravitational propulsion system used in these flying saucers. Many people have compared the footage from the GIMBAL UFO encounter to the descriptions by Lazar. In-fact, Lazar and I have talked in depth and analyzed this. More on this soon, but if you are curious about Lazar’s description of the “Anatomy of a Flying Saucer”, check out this film clip where he details the way the craft maneuver through space/time.
Weaponize your curiosity,
Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell Creator, Extraordinary Beliefs
Sure, this post is titled a bit curiously. “Wait a minute,” you’re probably thinking. “What kinds of mistakes do I have to start making before I start seeing UFOs?” Ah, I too wish it were only that simple… hence, before I go any further, I’d best clarify a bit.
Earlier today, SiFy Network featured a roundup at their website detailing the “Top 10 most common explanations for UFOs.” Sure, conventional wisdom doesn’t seem to conflict with many of the items included in SiFy’s list being mistaken for alien spacecraft, including meteors, the planet Venus (now there’s a classic), ball lightning and even “experimental military aircraft,” which ranked at number one (while regular, non-military aircraft came in close behind at second place). But the thing that always get’s me going when I see articles like this is that, as a matter of definition, many of these things actually are UFOs!
Think I’m kidding, or maybe just crazy? Before you begin casting stones, follow my rational for a moment, since when we get right down to the matter of definition, this observation actually does begin to make sense. Simply put, the acronym “UFO” doesn’t stand for “Unwanted Foreign Occupants,” or anything that specifically entails an actual extraterrestrial spacecraft. Instead, the popular term merely denotes the presence of an Unidentified Flying Object. Arguably, the funniest thing about all this is that what I’m pointing out here is so well known–even among those who don’t consider themselves UFO buffs–that it’s almost silly to devote time to spelling it out; and yet, somewhere along the way, the notion that a “UFO” is a term that specifically refers to an alien craft obviously began to take shape. How did this happen?
It’s rather difficult to nail down exactly what caused this to occur, much less find an exact date, although when viewing the Wikipedia entry for the term UFO, the authors note a similar aspect regarding the way the definition began to evolve after its inception in the early 1950s:
The United States Air Force, which coined the term in 1952, initially defined UFOs as those objects that remain unidentified after scrutiny by expert investigators, though today the term UFO is colloquially used to refer to any unidentifiable sighting regardless of whether it has been investigated.
Although it is not directly implied that the United States Air Force intended “unknowns” to be accepted as alien visitors, they certainly remained unaccounted for according to USAF records once official investigations turned up empty-handed. Again, many would argue that UFOs today–whether or not they’ve been investigated–are most often also associated with alien visitors from other planets, rather than foreign military craft and other terrestrial possibilities. The last place these things appear to come from is anywhere on Earth, right? Hence, following this logic (and maybe a healthy dose of Occam’s Razor) we can see how easily the notion could have developed over time that if these strange objects are seen in the sky, it’s only rational to conclude that they descended into view from even greater heights (outer space), and that they are likely visitors from other worlds.
When it comes to its application, “UFO” was also a more all-inclusive term for use with the variety of strange objects people began reporting after WWII, especially after pilot Kenneth Arnold’s famous sighting of “flying saucers” over Mount Ranier, Washington, in 1947. Ironically, the craft Arnold spotted weren’t really “saucers” either, but were half-moon shaped, although Arnold had noted they flew “like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.” “UFO” wouldn’t begin to see common use until five years after Arnold’s sighting, but the test of time proved it to be the more popular name in the long run, and by the mid 1950s, various “contactees” claiming to have made contact with spacemen were morphing their wild stories from secluded seances into physical encounters with occupants of UFO craft (often claiming they traveled here from neighboring planets like Mars or Venus, which are less than impressive locales by today’s standards).
The way we perceive UFOs as a culture, right down to nit-picky little definitions, is a fascinating subject when we consider the way our attitudes and beliefs toward them have changed over time; and no doubt are continuing to change in ways we may not yet perceive. How will we treat the subject ten years, or even ten decades from now? Who knows… but one thing is for certain: next time you spot something bizarre and unexplainable in the night sky, you can proudly proclaim with a degree of certainty to those around you, “yes, that is indeed a UFO!”
A meteoroid as seen from the Space Station… make a wish!
At the end of 2015, people in southern California freaked out when they saw a bright white light shoot across the night sky.
The real story? Space dandruff, which are things that have shed off space vehicles during flight, like ice flakes,paint chips, or fragments of insulation. They're different to space junk, because they don't pose a real threat to spacecraft,Oberg explains on his site.
The conclusion? Most of your "insane UFO sightings" are little more than 'space dandruff', or your brain misunderstanding of what space travel actually looks like,says Oberg.
UFOs are all the buzz lately… and have been ever since the initial reporting by the New York Times about the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program in December of 2017.
Since that time, further information has seeped forth at a slow trickle, with recent events including confirmation that the Pentagon had been behind the release of unusual footage promoted by the To the Stars Academy, a private UFO study group that also has various commercial interests. The group is headed by former Blink 182 frontman Tom DeLonge, although Luis Elizondo, former head of the Pentagon’s UFO program, is also a member.
In recent news, an announcement by the US Navy reported previously here at Mysterious Universe announced plans to draft new procedures for UFO reporting. Speaking with the San Francisco Gate, Joe Gradisher, a spokesperson with the office of the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, further stated that this information would include sensitive classified data, and therefore would not be released to the public.
“Any report generated as a result of these investigations will, by necessity, include classified information on military operations,” Gradisher said.
With this in mind, it remains in question just how much information about ongoing UFO studies the public would be made aware of (although the Navy’s acknowledgment does raise hopes for the possibility of Freedom of Information Act requests, which might allow proper civilian channels for accessing certain government records, albeit in redacted form).
Despite the necessity for secrecy in UFO reporting by government agencies like the Navy and USAF, there is still some compelling information about UFO incidents that the government has made available in recent years. It is accessible on account of the simple fact that it was never classified in the first place; however one has to know where to look in order to find it.
John Podesta admitted on Twitter that his biggest regret was “not being part of Alien Disclosure” whilst working under Obama!
The Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) is an online database which logs incident reports related to possible aviation safety hazards. For the last several decades, the ASRS has been maintained by NASA, and allows aviation professionals in various lines of work to report potential concerns anonymously (so as to remove concerns over things like future litigation).
The bulk of the information presented in the ASRS reports deals with issues pertaining to electronic or mechanical problems, as well as weather-related issues and other similar things. Some reports also relate to concerns about collision avoidance, whether between two separate aircraft, or between aircraft and objects or animals (birds hitting aircraft during initial ascent is another frequent happening).
Then there are the odd reports that, while remaining in the distinct minority, nonetheless convey some of the really unusual things going on in our skies.
One of my favorites is an incident that occurred in August of 2015, where a pilot observed an extremely unusual object at approximately 3,500 feet in altitude, and a distance of five miles Northeast of Windham High Peak in Greene County, New York.
According to the incident report:
I was piloting and had a passenger along for his first flight. We could not see any kind of wings, rotors, or form of propulsion. Unfortunately, my camera was stuck in my pocket under tight seat belts and I couldn’t get it out while flying the glider trying to avoid hitting this thing.
It was about 6 feet tall, 2-3 feet wide. Top of UAV was extremely radiant, with black half sphere under the radiant top and what appeared to be an antenna under the half sphere, we watched it skimming over the tree tops below and to the right of our flight path. It was moving at a fast speed southwest toward Windham High Peak. It had a very sparkling appearance like sun shining on a mirror with rainbow colors. I was flying northeast from Windham High Peak at about 3500 feet. As we watched the UAV I banked to the left and half way through the turn and now pointing at Windham High Peak, the UAV turned around and came toward us at a high rate of speed. As I got 3/4 of the way through the turn was within 50 yards of my right wing, quickly got in front of me and followed me around the turn getting closer until it was off my left wing, probably no more than 25-30 yards away. It covered about 5 miles in just a few seconds. We had a really good view of it.
The report concludes with an interesting twist: the pilot notes that as the object left its position off of his left wing, the passenger flying with him “looked up and saw two more UAVs come out of the cloud directly over us.” The pilot, seemingly unnerved by the experience, told his passenger they were “returning immediately to the airport,” at this point.
“I pushed the nose down and picked up speed,” the final line of the report reads. “The UAVs then headed to the west at a fast speed.”
Standard procedure with ASRS reports of any kind usually involves at least one follow up call, in order to glean any additional details that might be determined about the incident in question. With relation to the incident above, additional commentary was provided by the agent who made the follow up, who noted the following:
The reporter estimated at first visual contact the UAV was approximately 3.5 miles away down the hill. It sped up hill to the reporter’s aircraft at a much higher speed than the aircraft. The reporter estimated the closure took less than a minute and as he accelerated his aircraft away from the craft it followed, maneuvering at a speed much high than his. Two other similar shaped UAVs also had brilliant tops but colors somewhat different from the first which was a shimmering, brilliant rainbow type light.
It’s a tantalizing story, to say the least. While it certainly leaves determinations about what the “UAVs” was a bit open-ended, it nonetheless appears to convey a genuine concern on part of the pilot (enough so, obviously, that he or she felt compelled to file an incident report with the ASRS).
It is also just one of several reports of “unknowns” that appear in the database, although the majority of reports that involve unknown or unconventional aircraft are either indistinct, or they describe objects that more closely resemble some kind of unmanned aerial vehicle or projectile. The prevalence of the latter of these two, in fact, served as part of the basis for my own inquiry into “ghost rocket” reports since the end of World War II (the name is borrowed specifically from the sightings of projectile-like objects over Scandinavia in 1946, although I apply it more broadly in my book The Ghost Rockets: Mystery Missiles and Phantom Projectiles in Our Skies).
Although many of the ASRS reports of unidentified craft aren’t as exciting as the case outlined above, they nonetheless point to an odd prevalence of unusual things in U.S. airspace, which were of obvious concern to the pilots and aviation professionals who encountered them. Whether or not the Navy and other agencies are able to disclose information from their forthcoming inquiries, the fact alone that they have publicly stated an intent emphasize their UAP studies is noteworthy.
SpaceX Rocket Live Cam Cuts Out, Faked Rocket Landing? May 3, 2019, UFO Sighting And Alien News.
SpaceX Rocket Live Cam Cuts Out, Faked Rocket Landing? May 3, 2019, UFO Sighting And Alien News.
Date of event: May 3, 2019 (Taiwan Time) Location of event: USA Now I was watching the live coverage of the rockets taking off and landing, but a glitch happened at the very moment that last rocket was to land. If it lands well, its the first time ever that SpaceX had a 100% successful return and landing of all rockets. After the cam cuts out, the announcers tell the audience it had already landed. Camera returns and the rocket is sitting comfortably on the platform as if it had been there all day. It seems to me this was too coincidental That the last rocket may have fallen into the ocean and so a crane replaced it with another rocket on the pad. The rocket we were looking at could have actually been an old one that had fallen into the water and was still on board the recovery ship. If you were 500 million or more in debt to banks...as news says Tesla is, would you be desperate enough to fake a landing? They called it a historical moment. So...watch the video and tell me your thoughts in the comments below please. Scott C. Waring
UFO Photo Near Area 51, Joshua Tree, California, Possibly USAF Secret Craft, April 28, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Photo Near Area 51, Joshua Tree, California, Possibly USAF Secret Craft, April 28, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Source: MUFON #10061 Date of sighting: April 28, 2019 Location of sighting: Joshua Tree, California The eyewitness states that he went home and found this UFO on his vacation photos of Joshua Tree, CA. So he noticed it after the event, but cameras optics captured it well. Now this sighting in Joshua Tree is just 200 miles from Area 51. Yeah I measured it with google map. That being the case, its highly probable that this is a USAF experimental craft from Area S4 within Area 51. Area S4 is the part of the base were nuclear physicist Bob Lazar worked on one of eight alien disks. Each disk was a bit different. The focus of the UFO and the mountains match perfectly as do the shadows. This is a real photo and the craft is about 10 meters across and notice the hump in the upper middle. It a classic disk, clearly USAF top secret kind of stuff happening here. Scott C. Waring
Alexander Weygers, a Renaissance man in the mold of the tech industry’s stated ideal, inspired an art dealer to become an acolyte.
Alexander Weygers made numerous detailed drawings of an aircraft called the “Discopter”, a vertical liftoff aircraft that looked very much like what was to be later termed “flying saucer” and other drawings of an American cities specifically flying saucers in San Francisco and as well as a port in Chicago.
He sent these detailed plans to all the branches of the U.S. Military and was eventually told that they were intrigued by the concept and the design of the craft but were not prepared at that time because the war effort superseded its development.
However he did indeed patent the design for the “Discopter” in January 1944 with the U.S. Patent Office and it served as the prototype for other similar aircraft that have been developed up to the present day.
Ashlee Vance visits the dealer whose curiosity about Weygers has evolved into an obsession.
Russian Strange Ray of Light Emerges From The Sky Captured on Camera
Russian Strange Ray of Light Emerges From The Sky Captured on Camera
Russian photographer Zhiganov, who initially planned to photograph some of his friends lounging in a hot tub with the aurora overhead in the city of Aptity, Russia quickly changed when he noticed a strange phenomenon, explained as a vertical aurora, in the sky upon he started to film it.
“It was the first time I ever saw an aurora in such a rarified form” Zhiganov said but I wonder whether it was an aurora or some sort of a laser/plasma beam since it turned into an enormous bright sphere that moved across the surface until it disappeared.
Here is the amazing video and please decide for yourself whether it is a rare vertical aurora or not.
United States Navy Says They Will Not Allow the American Public to Read UFO Reports That Pilots File With the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program
United States Navy Says They Will Not Allow the American Public to Read UFO Reports That Pilots File With the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program
The U.S. Navy has drafted a procedure to investigate and catalogue reports of unidentified flying objects coming in from its pilots. But the service doesn’t expect to make the information public, citing privileged and classified reporting that is typically included in such files.
Bible believers know that we are not alone in this universe, extraterrestrial beings are all through the pages of scripture, in both Testaments. Little green men? Not so much. But a King on a flying white horse with an army of redeemed soldiers flying behind Him through Outer Space? You better believe it.
“Then I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a flying roll.” Zechariah 5:1 (KJV)
Jesus said that the time of Jacob’s trouble would be like it was in the ‘days of Noah’, when half-breed fallen angel children roamed the earth and God destroyed it all with a flood. If you are interested in the bizarre, the unexplained, 7-headed red dragons, zombies, flying UFOs people coming back from the dead and aliens from Outer Space, then dust off your King James Bible and take it for a spin. It’s the wildest, most unbelievable Book ever written, and it’s all true.
UFO information not expected to go to general public, Navy says
FROM SFGATE: Joe Gradisher, a spokesman for the office of the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, said in a statement that the Navy expects to keep the information it gathers private for a number of reasons.
“Military aviation safety organizations always retain reporting of hazards to aviation as privileged information in order to preserve the free and honest prioritization and discussion of safety among aircrew,” Gradisher said. “Furthermore, any report generated as a result of these investigations will, by necessity, include classified information on military operations.”
He added, “Therefore, no release of information to the general public is expected.”
The Navy’s recent decision to draft formal guidelines for pilots to document encounters with unexplained aerial phenomena comes after the revelation in late 2017 that the Pentagon ran a secret “UFO” office that spent $22 million over five years to collect and analyze “anomalous aerospace threats.” Funding for the office, known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP, officially ended in 2012, though operations continued.
Among other things, the program resulted in the release of footage from the cockpit cameras of military aircraft, which appeared to document oval-shape vessels that resemble flying Tic Tacs.
Reports of curious sightingsfrom military aircraft aren’t new. During World War II, Allied military pilots witnessed unexplained objects and fireballs that they dubbed “foo fighters.” A number of official government investigations looked into such phenomena in the postwar period.
Now, the Navy has agreed to a more formalized process for cataloguing and investigating reports from pilots, a decision welcomed by former U.S. officials who want the military to take the matter seriously and remove the stigma in the armed forces of reporting such incidents. READ MORE
Watch US Navy Jet Lock Scope On UFO
A U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet encountered this apparent UFO off the East Coast of the United States in 2015.
Why alien life no longer seems like science fiction: Expert claims recent discoveries including organic compounds on Mars suggest finding ET is 'inevitable and possibly imminent'
Why alien life no longer seems like science fiction: Expert claims recent discoveries including organic compounds on Mars suggest finding ET is 'inevitable and possibly imminent'
Discoveries over the last few decades have made alien life seem more realistic
Complex organic chemistry is common, as are potentially habitable exoplanets
Some of the conditions for life seem to be duplicated elsewhere in solar system
Extraterrestrial life, that familiar science-fiction trope, that kitschy fantasy, that CGI nightmare, has become a matter of serious discussion, a 'risk factor', a 'scenario'.
How has ET gone from sci-fi fairytale to a serious scientific endeavour modelled by macroeconomists, funded by fiscal conservatives and discussed by theologians?
Because, following a string of remarkable discoveries over the past two decades, the idea of alien life is not as far-fetched as it used to seem.
Discovery now seems inevitable and possibly imminent.
Extraterrestrial life, that familiar science-fiction trope, that kitschy fantasy, that CGI nightmare, has become a matter of serious discussion, a 'risk factor', a 'scenario'. Artist's impression
It's just chemistry
While life is a special kind of complex chemistry, the elements involved are nothing special: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and so on are among the most abundant elements in the universe. Complex organic chemistry is surprisingly common.
Amino acids, just like those that make up every protein in our bodies, have been found in the tails of comets. There are other organic compounds in Martian soil.
And 6,500 light years away a giant cloud of space alcohol floats among the stars.
Habitable planets seem to be common too. The first planet beyond our Solar System was discovered in 1995. Since then astronomers have catalogued thousands.
Based on this catalogue, astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley worked out there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized exoplanets in the so-called 'habitable zone' around their star, where temperatures are mild enough for liquid water to exist on the surface.
There's even a potentially Earth-like world orbiting our nearest neighbouring star, Proxima Centauri.
At just four light years away, that system might be close enough for us to reach using current technology. With the Breakthrough Starshot project launched by Stephen Hawking in 2016, plans for this are already afoot.
Life is robust
It seems inevitable other life is out there, especially considering that life appeared on Earth so soon after the planet was formed.
The oldest fossils ever found here are 3.5 billion years old, while clues in our DNA suggest life could have started as far back as 4 billion years ago, just when giant asteroids stopped crashing into the surface.
Our planet was inhabited as soon as it was habitable – and the definition of 'habitable' has proven to be a rather flexible concept too.
Life survives in all manner of environments that seem hellish to us:
floating on a lake of sulphuric acid
inside barrels of nuclear waste
in water superheated to 122 degrees
in the wastelands of Antarctica
in rocks five kilometres below ground.
Tantalisingly, some of these conditions seem to be duplicated elsewhere in the Solar System.
Snippets of promise
Mars was once warm and wet, and was probably a fertile ground for life before the Earth.
Today, Mars still has liquid water underground. One gas strongly associated with life on Earth, methane, has already been found in the Martian atmosphere, and at levels that mysteriously rise and fall with the seasons.
(However, the methane result is under debate, with one Mars orbiter recently confirming the methane detection and another detecting nothing.)
Martian bugs might turn up as soon as 2021 when the ExoMars rover Rosalind Franklin will hunt for them with a two-metre drill.
Besides Earth and Mars, at least two other places in our Solar System might be inhabited.
Humanity's best hope for finding alien life may be Saturn's moon Enceladus (pictured). Scientists say the icy celestial body is the only world in the solar system other than Earth with all the ingredients needed for life
HOW DID LIFE ON EARTH BEGIN?
Life on Earth may have started thanks to a modified version of modern-day DNA's sister molecule, scientists believe.
DNA is the backbone of life and almost all of our planet depends on it but, on primordial Earth, a primitive version of its lesser-known sister - RNA - was the focal point for evolution, experts say.
RNA is structurally similar to DNA, except one of the four fundamental pieces, thymine, is substituted for uracil.
This changes the shape and structure of the molecule and researchers have long believed this chemical was vital to the development of Earth's first lifeforms.
An accidental discovery by Harvard academics published in December 2018 found that a slightly different version of RNA may have been the key ingredient allowing life on Earth to blossom.
Scientists claim that a chemical called inosine may have been present in place of guanine, allowing for life to develop.
This slight change to the bases, known as a nucleotides, may provide the first known proof of the 'RNA World Hypothesis' - a theory which claims RNA was integral to primitive lifeforms - they say.Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus are both frozen ice worlds, but the gravity of their colossal planets is enough to churn up their insides, melting water to create vast subglacial seas.
In 2017, specialists in sea ice from the University of Tasmania concluded that some Antarctic microbes could feasibly survive on these worlds.
Both Europa and Enceladus have undersea hydrothermal vents, just like those on Earth where life may have originated.
When a NASA probe tasted the material geysered into space out of Enceladus last June it found large organic molecules.
Possibly there was something living among the spray; the probe just didn't have the right tools to detect it.
Russian billionaire Yuri Milner has been so enthused by this prospect, he wants to help fund a return mission.
A second genesis?
A discovery, if it came, could turn the world of biology upside down.
All life on Earth is related, descended ultimately from the first living cell to emerge some 4 billion years ago.
Bacteria, fungus, cacti and cockroaches are all our cousins and we all share the same basic molecular machinery: DNA that makes RNA, and RNA that makes protein.
A second sample of life, though, might represent a 'second genesis' – totally unrelated to us.
Perhaps it would use a different coding system in its DNA. Or it might not have DNA at all, but some other method of passing on genetic information.
By studying a second example of life, we could begin to figure out which parts of the machinery of life are universal, and which are just the particular accidents of our primordial soup.
Perhaps amino acids are always used as essential building blocks, perhaps not.
We might even be able to work out some universal laws of biology, the same way we have for physics – not to mention new angles on the question of the origin of life itself.
A second independent 'tree of life' would mean that the rapid appearance of life on Earth was no fluke; life must abound in the universe.
It would greatly increase the chances that, somewhere among those billions of habitable planets in our galaxy, there could be something we could talk to.
Perhaps life is infectious
If, on the other hand, the discovered microbes were indeed related to us that would be a bombshell of a different kind: it would mean life is infectious.
When a large meteorite hits a planet, the impact can splash pulverised rock right out into space, and this rock can then fall onto other planets as meteorites.
Life from Earth has probably already been taken to other planets – perhaps even to the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. Microbes might well survive the trip.
In 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts retrieved an old probe that had sat on the Moon for three years in extreme cold and vacuum – there were viable bacteria still inside.
As Mars was probably habitable before Earth, it's possible life originated there before hitchhiking on a space rock to here. Perhaps we're all Martians.
Even if we never find other life in our Solar System, we might still detect it on any one of thousands of known exoplanets.
It is already possible to look at starlight filtered through an exoplanet and tell something about the composition of its atmosphere; an abundance of oxygen could be a telltale sign of life.
A testable hypothesis
The James Webb Space Telescope, planned for a 2021 launch, will be able to take these measurements for some of the Earth-like worlds already discovered.
Just a few years later will come space-based telescopes that will take pictures of these planets directly.
Using a trick a bit like the sun visor in your car, planet-snapping telescopes will be paired with giant parasols called starshades that will fly in tandem 50,000 kilometres away in just the right spot to block the blinding light of the star, allowing the faint speck of a planet to be captured.
The colour and the variability of that point of light could tell us the length of the planet's day, whether it has seasons, whether it has clouds, whether it has oceans, possibly even the colour of its plants.
The ancient question 'Are we alone?' has graduated from being a philosophical musing to a testable hypothesis. We should be prepared for an answer.
Could the microbes that surround us actually be encoded with interstellar messages from some far-flung race of space aliens? It’s a question that has been posed for decades by some members of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) community. But most recently it was tackled by longtime space advocate Robert Zubrin, at this month’s ‘Breakthrough Discuss 2019’ conference at the University of California at Berkeley.
Given that we are now capable of sequencing the entire human genome, it’s not so far-fetched to think that we might be well-served to look for patterns, even messages in strands of bacterial DNA. Such microbes might make the perfect conduit for an interstellar Encyclopedia Galactica.
The idea is that once they are launched intentionally or even unintentionally, bacteria can travel interstellar distances and potentially seed the universe with messages from whoever encrypted them.
An individual bacterium --- which typically ranges in size between one and ten-millionths of a meter --- can easily replicate itself. But how could such tiny microbes naturally overcome their star’s gravity in order to make an interstellar journey?
Most likely through light pressure from their star’s outflow of photons, Zubrin, an astronautical engineer who is founder and president of The Mars Society, told me. This method of bacteria transmission would work best for brighter stars such as F-, G-, and K- spectral type stars. However, Zubrin notes that Red dwarf M-stars, the cosmos’ most ubiquitous, might have a difficult time pushing their bacteria outside their solar systems.
Yet if a bacterial colony was strongly magnetized, as Zubrin noted in a 2017 article posted on the popular space blog, Centauri Dreams, it might be able to act as a miniature magnetic sail. If so, it would, in theory, catch a 500 kilometer-per-second solar wind. That’s more than enough to propel it out of the solar system.
In contrast, if a manufactured microbial solar sail were shot out of the Earth’s gravity by a rocket and released into near-Earth space, it would be blown out of the solar system at approximately Earth’s speed around the Sun, or 30 kilometers-per-second. Thus, it would travel a light year every 10,000 years, and be able to reach nearby stars in less than 50,000 years. And Zubrin says the point is that at least some of these bacteria would survive such a trip.
DNA structure
CREDIT: WIKIPEDIA
But they wouldn’t have an easy time of it. They would be subject to high doses of both cosmic ray and ultraviolet radiation that would be close to the limit of survivability for even hardy microbial species such as Deinococcus radiodurans. But Zubrin is adamant that out of the initial billions of bacterium cells sent, at least some would survive and get through; thus, preserving the message in the process.
Researchers here on Earth have already proven that they can successfully encode information in bacterial DNA. As Zubrin noted in this month’s Berkeley talk, microbiologists at Columbia University and The New York Genome Project demonstrated their ability to encode information with a density of 215,000 terabytes per gram of DNA.
If an alien civilization were to send such an extensive library of encoded DNA in a putative interstellar message, they could basically provide us with an Encyclopedia Galactica of everything they ever knew and could hope to know.
What would be involved in conducting such a search?
As Zubrin wrote in his article for Centauri Dreams, he hopes that buried somewhere in a bacteria’s so-called junk DNA, there might be an alien code of amino acids just waiting to be unscrambled and decoded by a top cryptologist.
We could look for messages that might conceivably be found in the genomes of multicellular organisms, says Zubrin. But he says that would require evidence that they were carrying genetic information not useful to bacteria. Finding such evidence would require the genetic sequencing of terrestrial genomes to look for either magic numbers (such as Pi) or other anomalous traits.
As Zubrin noted in his Berkeley talk, a good place to start looking for such encoded microbes would be to focus bacteria showing the strongest signs of most recent extraterrestrial origin. He noted that they might be found by: Subjecting bacterial to space conditions, to see which are adapted for spaceflight. Aerogel sampling to look for microbes in space. Looking for anomalous microbes in Earth’s stratosphere. Looking for microbes in the atmospheres of Mars, Venus, or Saturn’s moon of Titan. Or even looking for alien micro sailcraft in planetary atmospheres.
E.Coli bacteria
CREDIT: WIKIPEDIA
At this point, no one can say whether the evolution of life on Earth had outside help from natural or artificial panspermia --- the theory that life originated from microorganisms or chemical precursors of life present in outer space. But Zubrin seems convinced that life appeared on our own planet as soon as it was physically possible.
In fact, life appeared on Earth 3.8 billion years ago, virtually immediately after the end of the heavy asteroidal and cometary bombardment phase in the inner solar system that is thought to have precluded life on Earth prior to that, says Zubrin. Thus, he concludes that either life evolves quickly and easily from chemistry as soon as it has a chance. Or life was already floating around in space ready to land and multiply as soon as conditions on Earth became livable.
Because we find no evidence of pre-bacteria in Earth’s fossil record Zubrin thinks that it’s highly probable that bacterial life must have arrived here from interstellar space in one fell swoop.
I’m unaware of any free-living organisms on Earth that are equipped with fully-functional DNA/RNA information systems that are simpler than bacteria, says Zubrin.
“If natural or artificial panspermia were occurring, we would see the same general type of life everywhere, with no evidence of a prior evolutionary history of simpler forms,” said Zubrin.
But panspermia could take place naturally, via happenstance, the same way that meteorites from the Moon, Mars and the Main Asteroid Belt show up here on Earth. If we find microbes on Mars with the same information system as Earth, but no prior local evolutionary history that would support panspermia says Zubrin. But we would still need to show it was artificial panspermia, he says.
As for the civilization that sent the DNA message?
They could be very ancient and maybe even long gone.
WETENSCHAP De sterren die deel uitmaken van ons Melkwegstelsel – het zouden er zo’n 200 tot zelfs 400 miljard zijn – hebben een herkenbare en vergelijkbare samenstelling. Totdat astronomen een eigenaardig exemplaar ontdekten met hun telescoop. De ster J1124+4535 is er eentje die helemaal niet lijkt op de andere sterren van ons sterrenstelsel.
Sterren zijn bolvormige hemellichamen die ontstaan uit interstellaire gaswolken. In die gaswolken zijn de druk en temperatuur zo hoog dat er kernfusiereacties plaatsvinden. De chemische elementen van de gaswolk gaan vervolgens, na de kernfusiereacties, ook deel uitmaken van de ster die ontstond.
Die uiteindelijke chemische samenstelling ziet er voor elke ster hetzelfde uit. Tenminste als ze in de buurt van elkaar – in ons Melkwegstelsel – ontstonden.
Daar lijkt J1124+4535 een uitzondering op de regel te zijn. De ster bevat relatief weinig magnesium en opvallend veel europium, wat erop wijst dat de ster niet echt thuishoort in ons sterrenstelsel. En J1124+4535 is niet alleen.
Wetenschappers vonden in het verleden al vaker ‘vreemde’ sterren terug in ons sterrenstelsel. Maar hoe kwamen die dan in onze Melkweg terecht? Wetenschappers vermoeden al een tijdje dat de buitenbeentjes in het verleden deel uitmaakten van een zogenaamd dwergsterrenstelsel, eentje met andere eigenschappen dan ons sterrenstelsel.
Onze Melkweg zou doorheen de tijd gefuseerd zijn met verschillende dwergsterrenstelsels waarna sterren met andere eigenschappen plots bij ons sterrenstelsel werden gevoegd. Dat gebeurde in het verleden, en de wetenschappers vermoeden dat het in de toekomst nog zal gebeuren.
Botsing van sterrenstelsels
Een botsing of een zogenaamde fusie van twee sterrenstelsels gaat gepaard met heel wat kleur, licht en vuurwerk – daar lijkt het althans op.
Nearly two weeks after SpaceX said one of its spaceships suffered a testing “anomaly” – it exploded – an executive of Elon Musk’s aerospace company has provided fresh information and insights into the failure.
On April 20, SpaceX set out to test the escape thrusters of its Crew Dragon capsule, which isdesigned to fly NASA astronauts to and from orbit. The test was supposed to show that the ship’s engine clusters would ignite without incident. SpaceX was then planning to attach the capsule to a rocket in order to test the escape system mid-flight. If all of this had gone smoothly, that would have showed NASA that SpaceX’s launch system is capable of propelling astronauts out of a high-speed pickle if one arises. But that’s not what happened.
Instead, a Florida Today photographer captured worrisome images of pink smoke clouds rising from SpaceX’s test stand at Cape Canaveral. A video later appeared to show the Crew Dragon suffering an explosion.
“The initial tests completed successfully but the final test resulted in an anomaly on the test stand,” SpaceX said on the day of the failure. “Ensuring that our systems meet rigorous safety standards and detecting anomalies like this prior to flight are the main reasons why we test. Our teams are investigating and working closely with our NASA partners.”
SpaceX, which is typically forthcoming after its failures, has been unusually quiet about this one. Even Musk has yet to make a public statement on the matter.
On Thursday, however, Hans Koenigsmann – SpaceX’s vice president of mission assurance – revealed new details about the explosion during a press conference. (The event was supposed to focus on the company’s upcoming cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station, which is scheduled to launch 3:11 a.m. EDT on Friday.)
Here’s what we’ve learned from Koenigsmann – and other reporting – about the Crew Dragon’s testing failure.
1. The ship’s small escape thrusters fired OK, but something bad happened before its larger engines ignited
Foto: Super Dracos are used on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft as part of the vehicle’s launch escape system.
sourceSpaceX
Koenigsmann said the Crew Dragon was attached to a stand in Cape Canaveral, where SpaceX typically lands its Falcon 9 rocket boosters for later reuse.
He said that during the engine test, the clusters of smaller Draco escape engines fired for about five seconds; that part was a success. But just moments before a follow-up test in which eight larger, more powerful Super Draco escape engines would ignite, something went wrong.
“Because this was a ground test, we have a high amount – a huge amount of data – from the vehicle and the ground sensors,” Koenigsmann said. “The initial data indicates that the anomaly occurred during the activation of the Super Draco system.”
By “activation,” Koenigsmann clarified: “You pressurize the system, make sure everything is primed in. You open valves, you close valves.”
2. SpaceX confirmed the capsule blew up, but key components survived intact
“The vehicle was destroyed,” Koenigsmann said. But he said that key parts survived the blast, including pressurized tanks the engines require called composite overwrapped pressure vessel (or COPVs). That may help SpaceX whittle down the list of potential causes of the explosion.
Koenigsmann speculated that neither the Super Draco engines nor the COPVs are to blame, given hundreds of prior tests during which they’ve worked just fine.
“We don’t have, currently, something where we could say, ‘Oh, it was most likely this or that.’ We do think – I think – it was not a Super Draco thruster itself,” he said. “But that’s pretty much all I can say at this time. It will take some time for us to go through the data and figure out what it was.”
3. SpaceX is cagey about it, but this video is almost certainly authentic-
A journalist asked Koenigsmann whether or not a viral video claiming to show the Crew Dragon exploding was authentic. The exec said he couldn’t comment on it because the clip “was not produced by us.”
However, the Orlando Sentinel reported on Tuesday that it had obtained an internal memo that a NASA contractor emailed to its employees. That memo read:
As most of you are aware, SpaceX conducted a test fire of their crew capsule abort engines at [Cape Canaveral Air Force Station], and they experienced an anomaly … Subsequently, video of the failed test – which was not released by SpaceX or NASA – appeared on the internet.
The Sentinel said the memo “confirms the video is authentic and the capsule did explode.”
4. SpaceX still lacks access to the test stand where its capsule exploded
Although it has been nearly two weeks since the explosion, Koenigsmann said SpaceX has yet to get its own up-close look at the testing stand where it happened.
When pressed on the matter, he seemed to indicate that this delay was for safety reasons, saying that some COPVs are still intact – and under immense pressure. The fact that the engines use a toxic oxidizer called dinitrogen tetroxide might also play a role in the limited site access.
5. A question about saltwater led to an interesting reaction by SpaceX
Foto: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is retrieved by the company’s recovery ship, Go Searcher, in the Atlantic Ocean.
sourceNASA/Cory Huston
The Crew Dragon vehicle that SpaceX was testing has previously been sent into space. When it returned, it splashed into the Atlantic Ocean. Saltwater can harm metal and electronics.
So at the press conference, one reporter asked if any of SpaceX’s hundreds of tests of the Super Draco engines had ever used a system that was first exposed to saltwater.
“That’s a good question,” Koenigsmann said, seeming to pause and think for a moment. He was unable to provide an answer.
But he did say that the Super Draco system was “isolated and never used.”
SpaceX presumably inspected and cleaned all areas of the Crew Dragon where salt water got in before the April 20 test. But a spaceflight expert who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Business Insider “that doesn’t eliminate the possibility that [saltwater] was part of the problem.”
6. Two NASA astronauts who are supposed to fly inside the spacecraft called SpaceX after the blast
Foto: NASA astronauts Bob Behnken, left, and Doug Hurley, right, in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spaceship.
sourceNASA
Another reporter asked if anyone at SpaceX had, following the anomaly, spoken with the NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley – the two men who are slated to fly Crew Dragon for the first time.
In fact, Koenigsmann said, the astronauts called SpaceX first.
“They were very sympathetic and reached out to us,” he said. “I almost feel like they’re encouraging us right now, and they are helping us in keeping our motivation and not falling into a hole, basically.”
7. Despite the failure, SpaceX is hopeful
It’s never comforting when a safety test ends in destruction. But Koenigsmann seemed upbeat about the prospects of rooting out the cause and moving forward.
“That is why we test. If this has to happen, I’d rather it happen on the ground in the development program,” he said. “We will take the lessons learned from this, and I’m convinced this will help us to ensure that Crew Dragon is one of the safest human spaceflight vehicles ever built.”
8. SpaceX might still launch its first astronauts before 2020
Foto: An illustration of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicle docking with the International Space Station.
sourceSpaceX
Before the failed test, SpaceX had hoped to launch Behnken and Hurley this summer.
When pressed about schedule changes as a result of the failure, Koenigsmann said he hopes “this is a relatively swift investigation” but added that he “didn’t want to completely preclude the current schedule.”
Koenigsmann said it’s still too early to tell what the result of the joint NASA-SpaceX investigation will be, given its early stage. The required fix could be a small or big change to the Crew Dragon or the way it’s operated.
In the meantime, Boeing may become the first private company to fly NASA astronauts, as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.
People are too complacent about theasteroid threatfor Bill Nye's liking.
The former TV "Science Guy," who currently serves as CEO of the nonprofit Planetary Society, warned that catastrophic impacts like the one thatoffed the dinosaurs 66 million years agoare not confined to the past.
"The Earth is going to get hit with another [big] asteroid," Nye said yesterday (May 2) at the International Academy of Astronautics'2019 Planetary Defense Conference in College Park, Maryland.
"The problem is, we don't know when," he added. "It's a very low probability in anyone's lifetime, but it's a very high-consequence event. If it happens, it would be like control-alt-delete for everything."
Unlike the dinosaurs, however, we don't just have to sit around and wait for doom to rain down on us. We can do something about the asteroid threat — and we should start prepping for it now, Nye stressed.
The first step is to find the dangerous space rocks. There's good news on this front: NASA scientists think they've already discovered more than 90% of the potential civilization-enders — near-Earth asteroids at least 0.6 miles (1 kilometers) wide — and none of these mountain-size space rocks pose a threat for the foreseeable future.
But there are lots of undiscovered asteroids zooming through near-Earth space that could do serious damage on a local scale — wiping out an area the size of a state, for example. So, it would behoove us to get some better detection tools online, Nye said.
Such help is coming, and soon. For instance, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, a big instrument set to start observing the heavens next year from Chile, will likely be able to discover and catalog 80% to 90% of potentially hazardous asteroids at least 460 feet (140 meters) wide, project team members say.
And NASA is considering launching a dedicated asteroid-hunter called the Near-Earth Object Camera. This proposed mission would scan for space rocks in infrared light, spotting their heat signatures in the darkness.
Coordination is the next step after detection, Nye said. A big asteroid hurtling toward Earth would be a global issue, so the international community would have to work together to deal with it.
And we'd have several options at our disposal. If we had enough warning time — years or, preferably, decades — we could launch a probe to fly alongside the asteroid, gradually nudging the rock off course via a gravitational tug. This "gravity tractor" craft would ideally boost its pull by plucking a big boulder off the asteroid, said NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green, who participated in yesterday's event with Nye.
If we were pressed for time, we could slam one or more spacecraft into the asteroid, knocking it onto a benign trajectory through brute force. Or we could detonate a nuclear weapon near the rock, vaporizing much of its surface. The resulting mass loss, and the flow of material off the asteroid, would change the rock's path, experts say. And the shock wave from the blast might do the trick by itself, Nye said.
Nye also mentioned the "Laser Bees" strategy, which involves sending a swarm of small spacecraft out to the potentially dangerous asteroid. Each little probe would focus a laser beam on the same spot on the rock, vaporizing material and causing a jet to erupt. This jet would serve as a sort of engine that would push the asteroid onto a different path.
During his portion of the presentation, Green highlighted the many things we can learn from asteroids — they're time capsules from the dawn of the solar system, after all, and carbon-rich rocks may have helped life get started on Earth — and their potential benefits for exploration. Tapping into asteroid resources could make voyaging spacecraft and astronauts more self-sufficient and improve life here on Earth as well, he said.
But Green agreed with Nye that the space-rock threat is real: There are catastrophic impacts in our future if we don't do something about them.
"It's not a matter of if; it's only a matter of when," Green said.
You’ve probably heard of the Hollow Earth theory – the idea that the planet is a mere shell with openings, usually at North and South poles, through which residents of the underworld can exit and surface dwellers can enter … if they dare. Edmond Halley – the noted astronomer, astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician and Halley’s Comet predictor – was an early proponent of the Hollow Earth theory. Now, a former NASA scientist has proposed a similar and equally radical theory – that the Earth was formed eons ago around a tiny black hole that still exists and is responsible for volcanoes, earthquakes, the planet’s magnetic field and more. Is this possible? Will it inspire any novels, movies, songs or Nazi conspiracy theories?
“Billions of years ago, Earth would have formed around this tiny black hole just as pearl forms around a grain of sand. That black hole would be responsible for generating Earth’s internal heat, which causes volcanoes and earthquakes but has also caused our island to form.”
According to her LinkedIn page, Louise Riofrio studied physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University and worked for ten years at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston assisting senior scientists in Oceaneering Space Systems. According to The Daily Star, she’s currently involved in a project to place an atomic clock on the International Space Station to test her other big theory that the speed of light is changing – something that could facilitate time travel. Any mention of time travel and the speed of light these days always brings in black holes, and Riofrio recently sat down with the website thirdphaseofmoon to discuss her ‘black hole in the center of the Earth’ theory. (Watch the interview here.)
A map of “The Interior World”, from The Goddess of Atvatabar by William Bradshaw (1892).
Yes, it does seem odd that a former NASA scientist currently working on an ISS project wouldn’t explain her theories in scientific journals rather than to a tabloid and a conspiracy theory website. Is this idea so radical that they won’t touch it?
“So then we do not have to fear black holes. Our life could not exist or our planet could not exist, if not for them. And in the future they could be an immense source of energy – something as revolutionary as nuclear power in the last century.”
Riofrio say the Earth’s black hole is the size of a grain of sand but has the weight of the Moon. She’s not proposing a Jules Verne journey to the center of the earth, but points out that CERN has been rumored to be creating tiny black holes on the surface.
“But do not worry. Even if there’s a black hole on this table, it would not suck us, and that’s just a simple math. Do not bother them, it would only sink to the bottom of the earth and hit the black hole there already. “
An interesting theory … and a possible movie plot. It would be nice if this or her ‘variable speed of light’ theory were reviewed by space scientists, physicists or astronomers, but there doesn’t seem to be any other information about them or Riofrio. Her book, The Speed of Light, was self-published in 2014 and doesn’t seem to have any peer reviews either.
While this ‘black hole in the center of the earth’ idea does have a certain sci-fi movie appeal, with so little evidence and no scientific reviews or rebuttals, the needle on the meter is heading for that black hole known as “highly skeptical.”
Scientists believe that we were closer than ever tofinding proof of extraterrestrial life and some even say that it’s “imminent”. One expert said that there have been several clues over the last couple of decades that that point to the real possibility of alien life forms.
Water has been discovered on Mars and chemical elements are located throughout the universe, so there may be some type of life that existed elsewhere even if it was just microbial. Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen are located throughout the cosmos, as well as amino acids “just like those that make up every protein in our bodies, have been found in the tails of comets,” said Cathal O’Connor who is a researcher and center manager at the University of Melbourne.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is scheduled to launch into space in 2021 as the replacement of the Hubble Telescope. Astronomers are optimistic that the new telescope will be able to prove the existence of alien life as it will be able to see 0.3 billion years after the Big Bang happened to when visible light began to form.
The telescope will also be able to see a lot further into space, meaning that it can measure the amounts of water, carbon dioxide, and other elements that are present in the atmosphere of distant exoplanets. They will additionally be able to tell how big the planets are and how far they are from their own suns in order to determine if they could sustain any form of life.
O’Connor wrote, “The James Webb Space Telescope, planned for a 2021 launch, will be able to take these measurements for some of the Earth-like worlds already discovered,” adding, “Just a few years later will come space-based telescopes that will take pictures of these planets directly.”
He then discussed the possibility of alien life by writing, “Following a string of remarkable discoveries over the past two decades, the idea of alien life is not as far-fetched as it used to seem. Discovery now seems inevitable and possibly imminent. Even if we never find other life in our Solar System, we might still detect it on any one of thousands of known exoplanets.”
The age-old question remains “Are we alone in the universe?” and while everyone has a different view on whether aliens do in fact exist, we may finally have the answer we’ve all been waiting for when the James Webb Space Telescope is finally launched into space in 2021. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
China is expanding its robotic space-exploration plans far beyond the moon.
The nation, whose Chang'e 4 spacecraftpulled off the first-ever soft landing on the lunar far side this past January, aims to launch a bold mission just three years from now that will explore both an asteroid and a comet, according to China's state-run Xinhua news agency.
The current plan, which is still under discussion, calls for a probe to visit and collect samples from the small near-Earth asteroid 2016 HO3 (also known as Kamo'oalewa).
"Then, the probe will fly back to the proximity of Earth, and a return capsule will be released to bring the samples back to Earth," Xinhua reported today (April 18), citing a China National Space Administration official. "After that, the probe will continue its journey. With the assistance of the gravity of Earth and Mars, it will finally arrive at the main asteroid belt and orbit the Comet 133P to explore it."
Comet 133P/Elst-Pizarro is not your typical icy wanderer. Rather, it's an odd hybrid beast known as a "main-belt comet" — an asteroid-belt body that has displayed comet-like activity in the past. Indeed, 133P also has an asteroid designation: 7968 Elst-Pizarro.
The object may in fact be an "active asteroid," a cosmic class with just a handful of known members. A recent addition to this list is the near-Earth space rock Bennu, which NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe has been exploring up close since late last year. OSIRIS-REx has observed numerous ejections of dust particles from the 1,650-foot-wide (500 meters) Bennu, the cause of which remains a mystery.
The planned Chinese mission will likely last about 10 years, Xinhua reported. During that time, the spacecraft will gather a variety of data, which will help scientists better understand the two objects' composition, structure, orbit, rotation, shape and size, among other characteristics.
China is not alone in its desire to return samples from an asteroid. OSIRIS-REx will return pieces of Bennu to Earth in September 2023, if all goes according to plan. And Japan's Hayabusa2 mission has already snagged bits of the 3,000-foot-wide (900 m) asteroid Ryugu. This material is scheduled to land on our planet in late 2020. (The original Hayabusa mission brought tiny pieces of the stony asteroid Itokawa home in 2010.)
China also intends to snag some moon rocks, as part of its ambitious and ongoing Chang'e lunar program. The Chang'e 5 sample-return mission will launch toward Earth's nearest neighbor this December, if all goes according to plan.
Is the moon all it's cracked up to be? Yes — and then some. New analysis of the lunar surface reveals that it's far more fractured than once thought.
Since the moon formed 4.3 billion years ago, asteroid impacts have scarred its face with pits and craters. But the damage goes far deeper than that, with cracks extending to depths of 12 miles (20 kilometers), researchers recently reported.
Though the moon's craters have been well-documented, scientists previously knew little about the upper region of the moon's crust, the megaregolith, which sustained the bulk of the damage from space rock bombardment. In the new study, computer simulations revealed that impacts from single objects could fragment the lunar crust into blocks about 3 feet (1 meter) wide, opening surface cracks that extend for hundreds of kilometers. This suggests that much of the fracturing in the megaregolith could have come from single, high-speed impacts, leaving the crust "thoroughly fractured" early in the moon's history. [When Space Attacks: 6 Craziest Meteor Impacts]
These findings helped to address questions raised by NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL), a mission that sent twin spacecraft to the moon in 2011 to create the most detailed lunar gravity map to date.
Data gathered by GRAIL showed that the moon's crust was far less dense than expected, Sean Wiggins, lead author of the new study and a doctoral candidate with the Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences Department at Brown University in Rhode Island, told Live Science.
Wiggins and his colleagues suspected that ancient impacts could have substantially fractured the lunar surface, "adding porosity and therefore lowering the density," he said.
Deep impacts
Using simulations, the study authors found that an impact from an object measuring just 0.6 miles (1 km) in diameter could have opened cracks reaching depths of 12 miles (20 km) in the lunar surface. After impacts from objects measuring 6 miles (10 km) in diameter, cracks yawned to similar depths, but also extended laterally to distances up to 186 miles (300 km) from the impact crater.
"There's quite a lot of damage outside of the main crater area," Wiggins said. "Material is still very broken up, farther away than we would have predicted." Over time, networks of cracks grew and connected, creating a fragmented lunar crust, the researchers reported.
The researchers also used the simulations to explore how similar impacts could affect Earth, which has also been pummeled by asteroids, and they found that gravity played an important role in the quantity and severity of the fractures.
Under conditions with higher gravity — such as on Earth — the surface in simulations suffered less damage from impacts, while lower gravity meant that the surface experienced more damage, the simulations showed. This explains why impacts on the moon created surface cracks that penetrated deeper than cracks from asteroid impacts on Earth.
Piecing together a more detailed picture of the megaregolith will help scientists to better understand how that region conducts heat; this could reveal important clues about the formation of other moons and even planets, Wiggins said.
"It definitely opens doors for further investigation into lots of different processes — not just on the moon, but on other bodies as well, like Mars or Earth," he added.
Could alien life be hiding in the clouds of Venus?
Though the surface of Venus is a hellish landscape, a new study suggests that microbial life may be able to survive in — and change — the venusian atmosphere.
According to a new study, the ever-changing appearance of Venus' clouds may indicate that microbial life can survive in the venusian atmosphere. This artist’s impression shows the clouds above the surface of Venus.
ESA
When it comes to searching for life elsewhere in the solar system, astronomers typically fixate on Mars or the handful of ice-encrusted moons around Jupiter and Saturn. But according to a new study, to find extraterrestrial life, we may only need to look to our nearest neighbor — Venus.
In a paper published March 30 in the journal Astrobiology, an international team of researchers suggests that the thick and acidic atmosphere of Venus may actually serve as a potential safe haven for microbial life. In the hypothesis paper, they not only present multiple lines of evidence showing the venusian clouds could harbor extreme forms of life, but also show that airborne life on Venus would help explain the fluctuating appearance of the planet’s clouds — a mystery that has plagued astronomers for nearly a century.
Although scientists have debated the habitability of Venus’ atmosphere for many decades — Carl Sagan co-authored a paper on the topic in 1963 — our sister world is often still ignored as a target for astrobiological research. This is primarily because the surface of Venus is now almost undoubtedly inhospitable to life, sporting temperatures of over 860 degrees Fahrenheit (450 Celsius) and surface pressures about 90 times greater than those found on Earth. However, despite the fact that Venus is now a hellish landscape (largely due to a run-away greenhouse effect), at one point, the planet looked a lot more like Earth does today.
“Venus had plenty of time to evolve life on its own,” said lead author Sanjay Limaye, a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center, in a press release. In fact, previous research suggests that Venus could have once maintained a habitable climate with liquid water on its surface for as long as 2 billion years. “That’s much longer than is believed to have occurred on Mars,” he said.
This would have allowed life to initially form on the surface of Venus (when the toxic planet looked more like present-day Earth) before eventually migrating up into the venusian clouds. Although this scenario may seem unlikely, on Earth, microorganisms such as bacteria can (and do) get swept high up into the atmosphere. According to co-author David Smith of NASA’s Ames Research Center, by using specialized research balloons, scientists have even found such high-altitude microorganisms surviving up to 25 miles (41 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface.
Furthermore, as the new paper points out, a series of space probes sent to Venus between 1962 and 1978 showed that, though the surface of Venus is not conducive to life, the venusian atmosphere very well could be. At altitudes between 25 and 37 miles (40 and 60 kilometers), the atmospheric temperature of Venus ranges between about 90°F and 160°F (30°C to 70°C), and the pressure is almost the same as you would find at sea level on our own planet. On the other hand, the acidic, sulfur-laden venusian air is rather toxic — that is, at least to most forms of life.
Over the years, though, scientists have compiled a large catalog of microbes that are known to survive and thrive in incredibly harsh environments here on Earth. One such organism is the humble tardigrade — a microscopic animal (often called a “water bear”) that can survive even the most extreme conditions. These hardy critters have been found almost everywhere on the planet, ranging from the driest deserts to the tallest mountaintops. In 2007, researchers even found that Tardigrades could survive up to 10 days in the irradiated vacuum of space.
Tardigrades are one of the most resilient forms of life on Earth. These microscopic animals can go decades without food or water, can exist in the most extreme temperatures, and can survive in the harsh, radiation-filled vacuum of space.
NASA/N. Ottawa/O. Meckes/Eye of Science/Science Source Images
So, is it possible a certain type of microorganism could endure living in Venus’ highly toxic atmosphere? It may not be probable, but it is certainly possible.
“On Earth, we know that life can thrive in very acidic conditions, can feed on carbon dioxide, and produce sulfuric acid,” said co-author Rakesh Mogul, a professor of biological chemistry at California State Polytechnic University, Pomono, in a press release. Considering this, Mogul says it’s worth noting that the atmosphere of Venus is primarily made of carbon dioxide and water containing lots of sulfuric acid, meaning the toxic clouds do not necessarily rule out venusian life.
Perhaps most importantly, according to the paper, the physical and chemical conditions within Venus’ atmosphere allow for microorganisms to not only exist, but also contribute to the persistently changing appearance of the planet’s clouds. “Venus shows some episodic dark, sulfuric rich patches, with contrasts up to 30-40 percent in the ultraviolet, and muted in longer wavelengths,” said Limaye. “These patches persist for days, changing their shape and contrasts continuously, and appear to be scale dependent.”
The researchers also point out that, based on previous spectroscopic observations, the dark patches are made up of particles that are almost the same size and shape as some light-absorbing bacteria found here on Earth. According to Limaye and Mogul, this means that the atmospheric patches could be living colonies of microorganisms, similar to algae blooms commonly found in large bodies of water on Earth. However, every instrument used to sample Venus’ atmosphere so far has been incapable of distinguishing between inorganic and organic compounds.
So for now, it seems, the question of whether extraterrestrial life floats above the surface of Venus remains a mystery. “To really know, we need to go there and sample the clouds,” said Mogul. “Venus could be an exciting new chapter in astrobiology exploration.”
Mankind doesn’t explore space solely in search of extraterrestrials, but we keep our eyes peeled. Still, scientists know that the chances of happening across a fellow traveler in the great beyond are minimal — and they wrap their heads around the infinitesimal odds using the Drake Equation, a seven-variable way of deriving the chance of active civilizations existing beyond Earth.
But equations get older and equations get wrong. The Drake Equation, which takes into account various factors like the rate of star formation, the fraction of stars that could form planetary systems, the number habitable planets in those systems, and so on, is now 55 years old. It doesn’t reflect the new information SETI researchers have collected since the 1960s.
A new study published in the journal Astrobiology seeks to integrate new exoplanet data as part of the Drake Equation while demonstrating the role of “pessimism” and “optimism” in estimating the odds of finding E.T. (you don’t find what you don’t look for).
“The question of whether advanced civilizations exist elsewhere in the universe has always been vexed with three large uncertainties in the Drake equation,” said University of Rochester astronomer and study coauthor Adam Frank in a statement. “We’ve known for a long time approximately how many stars exist. We didn’t know how many of those stars had planets that could potentially harbor life, how often life might evolve and lead to intelligent beings, and how long any civilizations might last before becoming extinct.”
Estimates derived by projects running under NASA’s Kepler satellite and a few other instruments suggest that out of the estimated 2 x 10^22 stars in the known universe, 20 percent have planets that reside in habitable zones that have temperatures, atmospheres, and other traits that could support life. So that takes care of one uncertainty.
That leaves two other questions:
How often would life evolve?
How long could those civilizations survive for?
That last one is a particularly tough question to answer, since we can only really work off the history of human civilization — and we haven’t died off yet.
That’s where the notion of pessimism and optimism arise. Frank and Sullivan write that their method requires only establishing how low the probability that humans are the only intelligent species to have ever evolved is. They call this the pessimism line. “If the actual probability is greater than the pessimism line,” said Frank, “then a technological species and civilization has likely happened before.”
Using current SETI and exoplanet data, Frank and Sullivan ended up calculating this number at one in 10 billion trillion. That’s incredibly small — which means the odds that another intelligent species has evolved are very, very good.
“Think of it this way,” said Frank. “Before our result you’d be considered a pessimist if you imagined the probability of evolving a civilization on a habitable planet were, say, one in a trillion. But even that guess, one chance in a trillion, implies that what has happened here on Earth with humanity has in fact happened about a 10 billion other times over cosmic history!”
The researchers emphasize that this revised interpretation of the Drake equation accounts for the entire 13.78 billion year history of the universe — while the original localizes the odds of finding E.T. to the present day.
That being said, optimism for finding alien life has never been higher. After all, three famous names just started a multi-million dollar project to look for aliens in Alpha Centauri — the closest star system to the Earth — and some prominent scientists think there’s a good chance we’ll find something special. There’s certainly never been a time to be an E.T. optimist.
Scientists have detected traces of water in dust from an asteroid previously assumed to be dry, adding new support for a theory that could explain how Earth’s oceans came to be.
In a new study, researchers from Arizona State University re-examined samples collected by Japan’s first Hayabusa probe back in 2010.
The spacecraft captured roughly 1,500 particles in total when it visited the asteroid Itokawa during the first-ever asteroid sampling mission.
The new analysis revealed a substantial amount of water and hydrogen compositions that are ‘indistinguishable from Earth,’ suggesting water-rich asteroids are far more common than previously thought.
Researchers now say an impact from a similar asteroid in our planet’s history could have been responsible for delivering as much as half of Earth’s water.
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In a new study, researchers from Arizona State University re-examined samples collected by Japan’s first Hayabusa probe back in 2010. The spacecraft captured roughly 1,500 particles in total when it visited the asteroid Itokawa during the first-ever asteroid sampling mission
‘We found the samples we examined were enriched in water compared to the average for inner solar system objects,’ said postdoctoral scholar Ziliang Jin.
Itokawa is what’s know as an S-type asteroid and is thought to have broken off of a larger object that measured at least 12 miles wide.
It’s estimated to be about 1,800 feet long and 700 to 1,000 feet wide, and circles the sun every 18 months.
‘S-type asteroids are one of the most common objects in the asteroid belt,’ said co-author Maitrayee Bose.
‘They originally formed at a distance from the sun of one-third to three times Earth’s distance.’
Despite a series of impacts that occurred to produce today’s Itokawa millions of years ago, the team says the asteroid retained its water.
‘The particles we analyzed came from a part of Itokawa called the Muses Sea,’ says Bose.
The new analysis revealed a substantial amount of water and hydrogen compositions that are ‘indistinguishable from Earth,’ suggesting water-rich asteroids are far more common than previously thought. The particles (shown) are just half the thickness of a human hair
‘It's an area on the asteroid that's smooth and dust-covered.’
‘Although the samples were collected at the surface, we don't know where these grains were in the original parent body,’ Jin adds.
‘But our best guess is that they were buried more than 100 meters deep within it.’
‘The minerals have hydrogen isotopic compositions that are indistinguishable from Earth,’ the Jin said.
The water content of different materials, including primitive Earth and Itokawa, is plotted in the chart above
In the samples, each of which are just half the thickness of a human hair, the researchers found surprising amounts of water.
The discovery suggests these asteroids, assumed to be dry, may be home to much more water than previously thought.
‘This means S-type asteroids and the parent bodies of ordinary chondrites are likely a critical source of water and several other elements for the terrestrial planets,’ Bose said.
‘And we can say this only because of in-situ isotopic measurements on returned samples of asteroid regolith -- their surface dust and rocks.
‘That makes these asteroids high-priority targets for exploration.’
WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF SPACE ROCKS?
An asteroid is a large chunk of rock left over from collisions or the early solar system. Most are located between Mars and Jupiter in the Main Belt.
A comet is a rock covered in ice, methane and other compounds. Their orbits take them much further out of the solar system.
A meteor is what astronomers call a flash of light in the atmosphere when debris burns up.
This debris itself is known as a meteoroid. Most are so small they are vapourised in the atmosphere.
If any of this meteoroid makes it to Earth, it is called a meteorite.
Meteors, meteoroids and meteorites normally originate from asteroids and comets.
For example, if Earth passes through the tail of a comet, much of the debris burns up in the atmosphere, forming a meteor shower.
PEANUT IN THE SKY Asteroid Itokawa (shown in this image from Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft) was thought to be devoid of water. But scientists studying grains of dust returned by the craft in 2010 found trace amounts of the substance.
For the first time, evidence of water has been found in a stony type of asteroid once thought to be bone-dry.
Grains of dust from the asteroid Itokawa actually contain a surprising amount of water, two cosmochemists from Arizona State University in Tempe report May 1 in Science Advances.
“We didn’t really expect water to be there in Itokawa at all,” says study coauthor Maitrayee Bose. But if similar asteroids have similar amounts of water, the space rocks could have been a major source of water for the early Earth.
The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa brought back more than 1,500 grains of Itokawa in 2010 (SN Online: 6/14/10). Itokawa is what’s known as stony asteroid or an S-type asteroid, which means that it was born closer to the sun than to Jupiter. Scientists think that Itokawa formed from the rubble of a catastrophic impact that broke up a larger asteroid.
Most of Itokawa’s water could have boiled away with the heat from that traumatic event as well as the asteroid’s proximity to the sun. Previous studies have shown that meteorites that break off from S-type asteroids are mostly dry.
Bose decided to look for water anyway. Her lab has an instrument called a NanoSIMS, which can measure one atom of hydrogen in 100,000 other types of atoms. If Itokawa held more water than that, she thought her team should be able to detect it.
And it did: In two Itokawa grains, the team found between roughly 680 and 970 parts per million of water. Earth’s crust, by comparison, contains 15,000 to 20,000 ppm of water.
IN A GRAIN OF SAND Specks of dust from an asteroid called Itokawa that scientists studied are just a few tens of micrometers across.
Z. JIN AND M. BOSE/ASU, JAXA
Taking into account all of the ways that Itokawa could have lost water, Bose and colleague Ziliang Jin calculated that Itokawa’s parent body had 160 to 510 ppm of water. Other S-type asteroids, if they had that much water on average, could have delivered water to the rocky planets, including Earth.
Not only did Itokawa have water, it had the right kind of water to seed Earth’s oceans, the researchers found. The grains’ ratio of deuterium, a heavy form or isotope of hydrogen, to the more common form of hydrogen matched the ratio found in earthly water. Previous work has shown that icy comets, on the other hand, have the wrong deuterium ratio to explain Earth’s oceans (SN: 1/10/15, p. 8). But stony asteroids like Itokawa could do have done the trick.
“It’s still dry with respect to anything in our human experience,” Bose says. “But it is wet enough, and with the correct isotopic composition, [for many such asteroids] to provide half the water on Earth” in the oceans.
“This is very nice and careful work,” says planetary scientist Tomoki Nakamura of Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, who led the first team to study the Hayabusa samples. The Arizona State University researchers “proposed a new interpretation for the origin of water on the Earth.”
Nakamura’s only concern is whether water from Earth’s atmosphere could have contaminated the samples. He would like to see the same analysis done on samples of Itokawa that were never exposed to the atmosphere, “although this sample preparation is extremely difficult,” he says.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Celebrates 60 Years
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Celebrates 60 Years
On May 1, 1959, the Beltsville Space Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, was renamed NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in honor ofRobert H. Goddard, widely considered the father of modern rocketry. Thus began a 60-year boom in science and technological innovation.
The center has led or contributed to many of the agency’s accomplishments, ranging from missions to the Moon to detecting the first light in the universe and arriving at an asteroid in space to collect a sample. Goddard now boasts the largest concentration of scientists and engineers dedicated to the study of Earth and space and has successfully sent more than 300 satellites into orbit, secured more than 800 patents, produced more than 50,000 science and technical publications, and contributed to several significant awards, including the Nobel Prize in physics. of its innovations have resulted in commercial applications, such as spacecraft sensors and control centers being re-purposed for traffic management and methods for grinding large observatory mirrors being used to improve machines for Lasik surgery. Thanks to its past successes, Goddard is poised to contribute to NASA’s future goals, including sending a crewed spaceflight to land on the Moon by 2024 and eventually to Mars.
Goddard Space Flight Center was established on May 1, 1959, as NASA's first spaceflight center. In celebration of its 60th year, we look back at the innovations and scientific impacts the women and men of Goddard have made throughout its history.
Many of its innovations have resulted in commercial applications, such as spacecraft sensors and control centers being re-purposed for traffic management and methods for grinding large observatory mirrors being used to improve machines for Lasik surgery. Thanks to its past successes, Goddard is poised to contribute to NASA’s future goals, including sending a crewed spaceflight to land on the Moon by 2024 and eventually to Mars.
Over six decades, Goddard expanded from 1,200 acres in Greenbelt to include five additional sites in New York; White Sands, New Mexico; Wallops Island, Virginia; Palestine, Texas; and Fairmont, West Virginia. Goddard stimulates and strengthens economic activity from local to national scales, investing in technology, manufacturing, and contracting. Goddard’s partnerships and technology transfer spur innovation and business growth. Its workforce has grown from 650 employees in 1959 to approximately 13,000 in 2019. Consisting mostly of scientists and engineers, its workforce also comprises a large cadre of professionals in such fields as procurement, outreach and finance – all of whom contribute to the center’s success. It boasts a diverse workforce as a key element in problem-solving and innovation. In 2018, NASA ranked first among the 17 large agencies and Goddard ranked second among NASA centers, in the best places to work in the federal government, according to the Partnership for Public Service – a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to make government more effective.
Installation of early signage at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Computer engineer Harvey Walden has worked at Goddard for 56 years and has seen advancements unimaginable 60 years ago. “I’ve witnessed many changes at Goddard over the last 56 years of Goddard’s 60-year history,” he said. “Nothing describes them better than Dr. Robert H. Goddard’s own oft-quoted maxim: ‘It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.’ NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center proves the truth of that statement better than almost any place on Earth.”
Goddard’s work in studying the Sun, Earth, solar system and far reaches of the cosmos – as well as in developing such technologies as space communications and robotics – while maintaining a vibrant workforce makes its anniversary tag line “Bringing the Universe Into View” a reality.
Over 70 percent of Earth’s surface is covered in water, almost all of which isin the oceans. But where did all this water come from? Several hypotheses seek to explain how water arrived on our planet in the early days of its formation, including the idea that molecular water leaked out of hydrated minerals on Earth, and the possibility thatasteroids and comets delivered waterto Earth.
New research in the journal Science Advances lends support to the asteroid hypothesis, suggesting that these rocky visitors could have delivered up to half of Earth’s water billions of years ago.
In a paper published Wednesday, a pair of cosmochemists at Arizona State University showed that the first asteroid ever sampled by humans contains hydrogen isotopes in levels that are almost identical to the concentrations found in rocks on Earth. Even though their study examined samples from just one asteroid, this evidence suggests that asteroids could have very well been the source of a significant portion of water in Earth’s oceans.
Maitrayee Bose, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration and the principal investigator on the project, co-authored the study with postdoctoral scholar Ziliang Jin, Ph.D..
“We find ourselves in this ‘pale blue dot,’ a planet full of water, rich in organics and supportive of life,” Bose tells Inverse. “We know of no other such planet. My aim is to find out how.”
Bose (left) and Jin (right) load asteroid samples into a secondary ion mass spectrometer.
Almost a decade before Hayabusa2 landed on the asteroid Ryugu and shot it with a bullet (for science, of course), the first Hayabusa spacecraft delivered microscopic particles of the asteroid Itokawa back to Earth.
The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) provided Bose and Jin with five particles brought back to Earth from Itokawa, an S-type (stony) asteroid, in 2010. By analyzing the particles in a secondary ion mass spectrometer, Bose and Jin identified that Itokawa contained water and hydrogen isotopes in levels that are “indistinguishable” from rocks found on Earth.
“Ziliang and I study small bodies and processes within them to understand asteroids, which are considered the building blocks of our solar system,” says Bose, explaining that the source of Earth’s water is a matter that the scientific community has hotly debated.
Two particles harvested from the asteroid Itokawa.
“The most popular scenario is that water on Earth was delivered by water-rich asteroids from the outer solar system during different periods of planetary formation, i.e., early, when Earth was not as big as it is now (proto-Earth) or late, after the Earth had completely formed,” she says. “Thus, we wanted to study water in this asteroid Itokawa (first asteroid that we have visited!) and see if it had enough water to account for water on Earth.”
Based on their analysis, Bose and Jin write in the paper that “S-type asteroids formed in the inner solar system were hydrous despite high temperatures and could have been a potential source for Earth’s water.”
This is just the first bulk water estimate of the water-content in an S-type asteroid, so Bose is careful to point out that this study is the launching point for future investigations into the water conditions of early Earth.
“There are currently several theories about water delivery to Earth, and we are suggesting another source,” says Bose. “But this is not the end-point but the beginning of trying to gauge through other laboratory investigations of other isotopes and elements, if the arguments hold true.”
Bose hopes the picture will become even clearer once the newer spacecraft Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx return their carbonaceous asteroid samples to Earth — she plans to analyze these samples, of course.
Abstract: We performed the first measurements of hydrogen isotopic composition and water content in nominally anhydrous minerals collected by the Hayabusa mission from the S-type asteroid Itokawa. The hydrogen isotopic composition (dD) of the measured pyroxene grains is −79 to −53‰, which is indistinguishable from that in chondritic meteorites, achondrites, and terrestrial rocks. Itokawa minerals contain water contents of 698 to 988 parts per million (ppm) weight, after correcting for water loss during parent body processes and impact events that elevated the tempera- ture of the parent body. We infer that the Bulk Silicate Itokawa parent body originally had 160 to 510 ppm water. Asteroids like Itokawa that formed interior to the snow line could therefore have been a potential source of water (up to 0.5 Earth’s oceans) during the formation of Earth and other terrestrial planets.
Since 2014, UFOs have intruded upon military airspace as often as several times per month, a military official told theWashington Post. Ina follow-uppublished by the Post on Monday, the same official said that the U.S. Navy will not share any more information regarding what they call “unexplained aerial phenomena” with the public, despite drafting formal procedures to document UFO sightings on an ongoing basis.
“There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air spaces in recent years,” the Navy said in a statement released to Politico, who first reported on the new approach. “The Navy is updating and formalizing the process by which reports of any such suspected incursions can be made to the cognizant authorities. A new message to the fleet that will detail the steps for reporting is in drafts.”
The new processes come in response to multiple sightings of rounded objects spotted and tracked on infrared cameras, including footage of a so-called “Tic-Tac” UFO craft released by The New York Times in 2017. During the 2004 incident, the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group tracked multiple UFOs off California’s Baja Peninsula, with pilots, radar technicians and other military officials confirming the mysterious technology.
“At a certain point, there ended up being multiple objects that we were tracking,” Petty Officer Gary Voorhis, stationed aboard the Princeton missile cruiser escorting the USS Nimitz, said in testimony described by Issues in Science & Technology. “They all generally zoomed around at ridiculous speeds, and angles and trajectories and then eventually they all bugged out faster than our radars.”
The vehicles buzzing military installations are described as having no air intake, no exhaust and no other indication of a power source or known method of generating thrust.
Joseph Gradisher, spokesman for the office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, described multiple recorded sightings per month to The Washington Post, but emphasized that any further information will likely remain classified. Congress may see reports with broad statistics regarding the number of sightings and conclusions taken from follow-up investigations.
But while the Navy plans to keep its UFO sightings out of the public eye, the politician who helped fund the Pentagon’s shuttered UFO program, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), says UFO sightings are far more common in military circles than previously revealed.
Speaking with CBS affiliate KLAS in Las Vegas, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid described widespread sightings on military bases. “You can’t just hide your head and say these things are not happening,” Reid, who has previously described a UFO arms race between the United States and competing countries, told the I-Team’s George Knapp. “We have military installations where hundreds and hundreds of people who are there see these things."
Water is essential for life on Earth and is one of our most precious natural resources. But considering how our planet formed, it is quite surprising how much water we still have. The Earth aggregated from a cloud of gas and dust – a protoplanetary disk– and was incandescently hot for the first few million years. Its surface was kept molten by impacts from comets and asteroids. Earth’s interior was also (and still is) kept liquid by a combination of gravitational heating and the decay of radioactive isotopes.
That means that if there were any initial water (and organic compounds) on the Earth, it should have boiled off quickly. So how come there’s plenty of water on our planet today – where did it actually come from? A surprising new study, published in Science Advances, suggests that a type of asteroid we didn’t think contained very much water could be responsible – simultaneously demonstrating that the solar system is probably a lot wetter than had previously been thought.
Scientists have long debated exactly where the Earth’s water comes from. One theory suggests that it might have been captured from the asteroids and comets that collided with it. Another argues that water was always present in the rocks of the Earth’s mantle and was gradually released to the surface through volcanoes.
itokawa. Credit: NASA/JPL.
Thanks to the Japanese Hayabusa mission we now have fresh evidence. The spacecraft brought back a precious cargo of grains retrieved from the surface of asteroid 25143 Itokawa in 2010. The researchers behind the new study were able to analyse the water content of two grains. They used a sophisticated piece of kit called an ion microprobe, which bombards a sample with a beam of ions (charged atoms) in order to probe the composition of its surface.
The experiment was not easy – the grains are tiny, less than 40 microns (one millionth of a metre) across, and each grain was made up of several different minerals. The ion microprobe had to be focused on one specific mineral within each grain so that the authors could gather the required data. The species of mineral that they analysed was an iron and magnesium-bearing silicate known as a pyroxene, which is almost entirely free of calcium.
This type of substance is not usually associated with water – indeed, it is regarded as a Nominally Anhydrous Mineral (NAM). The lattice of a pyroxene crystal does not contain vacant sites for water molecules in the same way that, for example, a clay mineral does – so its structure is not necessarily conducive to taking up water. However, the sensitivity of the technique that the authors used was such that they could detect and measure tiny quantities of water.
The results were surprising: the grains contained up to 1,000 parts per million of water. Knowing the composition of Itokawa, the researchers could then estimate the water content of the entire asteroid, which translated to between 160 and 510 parts per million of water. This is more than had been anticipated – remote measurements of two similar bodies (also S-type asteroids) found that one contained 30 and the other 300 parts per million water.
Unlikely source
Water is made from hydrogen and oxygen. But those elements occur as different isotopes – meaning they can have a different number of neutrons in their atomic nucleus (neutrons are particles that make up the nucleus together with protons). The researchers looked at the hydrogen isotopic composition of the water and discovered it was very close to that of Earth, suggesting the water on Earth has the same source as that of the Hayabusa grains.
The results raise several interesting questions, the first of which is how so much water came to be in nominally anhydrous minerals? The authors suggest that, during their formation, the grains absorbed hydrogen from the protoplanetary disk, which, at the high temperatures and pressures of the solar nebula, combined with oxygen in the minerals to produce water.
Original morphology of the two studied Itokawa particles. Credit: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), edited by Z. Jin
So far, so reasonable. But how is it possible that the water has remained in the minerals? They after all came from an S-type asteroid – one that forms in the inner and hotter part of the solar system. Itokawa has had a complex history of thermal metamorphism and collision, reaching temperatures at least as high as 900°C. But the researchers used computer models to predict how much water would be lost in these processes – and it turned out to be less than 10% of the total.
Earth’s water
But how does all this relate to Earth’s water? The researchers speculate that following the grains’ uptake of water from the protoplanetary disk, the minerals aggregated and stuck together to form pebbles and eventually larger bodies such as asteroids.
If this mechanism worked for asteroids, it could also hold true for the Earth – maybe its original water came from these minerals coming together to help form the Earth. While water was then lost during the Earth’s early history, it was added again during collisions by the numerous S-type asteroids – as implied by the similarity in hydrogen isotopic composition between Earth and Itokawa.
This fresh look at an old problem – the origin of Earth’s water – has produced a surprising conclusion, one that suggests a large population of inner solar system asteroids might contain a lot more water than had been realised.
So while there is water everywhere in the solar system, the fact that it is hidden away inside minerals means that there is not always a drop to drink.
Jawbone discovered in Baishiya Karst Cave, high on the Tibetan Plateau, is the most complete remains yet from the mysterious ancient-hominin group known as the Denisovans.
(Photo Credit: Dongju Zhang / Lanzhou University)
The story of human evolution is not a straight line but rather a series of branching events. We now know that Homo sapiens were contemporaries not only with their famous cousins, the Neanderthals, but also with Homo floresiensis,the Denisovans(a species that lived around a cave in the Altai Mountains of western Siberia), and according to a recent studywith fifth species, called Homo luzonensis. The Denisovans, which were first discovered in 2010, are particularly intriguing and mysterious since scientists could study them only from a few bone fragments and teeth — until now.
Reporting in a new study published inNature, researchers say they’ve identified a jawbone that belonged to a Denisovan that lived more than 160,000 years ago in the Himalayas.
The Baishiya Karst Cave where the Denisovan jawbone was found.
Credit: Dongju Zhang.
Denisovans were first discovered from a bone fragment in Denisova Cave (pictured) in Siberia. Researchers have now uncovered another specimen in the Tibetan Plateau.
(Photo Credit: rusak / iStock / Getty Images)
The lower jawbone with two remaining teeth was actually found three decades ago in the Baishiya Karst Cave on the Tibetan Platea. The Tibetan monk who found the stunning remains deep in the Himalayan mountains gave it to a local revered as a living Buddha, who passed it on scientists. A team of European and Chinese researchers has been carefully studying the jawbone ever since.
Researchers were not able to extract DNA from the mandible but managed to extract proteins from one of the molars. Their sequencing firmly identified the fossil as Denisovan — the first time researchers have identified the physical remains of a Denisovan outside the cave that gave them their name, Denisova Cave, in Siberia.
Researchers excavating the Baishiya Karst Cave.
Credit: Dongju Zhang, Lanzhou University.
Ancient tools and animals bones showing cut marks were also retrieved from the same cave which stands almost 3,350 meters (11,000 feet) up on the plateau. If these remains were indeed left by Denisovans, they suggest that the ancient humans had adapted to high-altitude, low-oxygen environments long before the regional arrival of modern Homo sapiens. In fact, these traits were likely passed down to the modern human gene poolthrough interbreeding between the two species. We know this likely happened because DNA extracted from the Denisovan teeth in Siberia had genes shared with modern humans, among them one that is common in Tibetans, allowing them to live at high altitudes with low oxygen levels.
Scientists were always puzzled about how Tibetan populations came to carry a Denisovan gene seeing as the Siberian cave wasn’t at a high altitude. The new findings have now connected the dots.
In the future, the team of researchers, which includes members from Lanzhou University in China and the Max Planck Institute in Germany, hopes to find further Denisovan fossils in China which might still hold viable DNA.
View of the virtual reconstruction of the jawbone after digital removal of the adhering carbonate crust. The jawbone is so well preserved that it allows for a virtual reconstruction of the two sides of the mandible.
ShutterstockEen illustratief beeld van een asteroïde die langs de Aarde passeert.
WETENSCHAPDe Aarde krijgt over 10 jaar het bezoek van een enorme asteroïde. Apophis – genoemd naar de Egyptische god van de chaos – is met zijn doorsnede van 340 meter groter dan de Eiffeltoren en zal ons op een afstand van 31.000 kilometer passeren. Dat lijkt misschien ver, maar in astronomische termen is dat ‘rakelings’. Meer nog, het is de hoogte waarop enkele van onze satellieten rond de Aarde draaien. Volgens de NASA is de kans op een inslag evenwel ‘miniem’.
13 april 2029 is de dag dat het zal gebeuren. Wie dan naar de hemel kijkt, zal Apophis zelfs zonder telescoop kunnen waarnemen. Als een lichtpuntje dat steeds helderder en sneller zal worden en door de hemel zal suizen. Volgens de NASA – die de kans dat het ooit tot een inslag komt, schat op minder dan 1 op 100.000 – is het vooral een opportuniteit om zo’n groot hemellichaam van erg dichtbij te bestuderen. De meeste asteroïden die de Aarde passeren zijn veel kleiner.
De NASA verspreidde deze week een animatie van de passage van Apophis. Daarop is te zien hoe de asteroïde dichterbij komt dan sommige van onze satellieten die rond de Aarde draaien (aangeduid als blauwe stippen), maar nog niet in de buurt zit van het internationaal ruimtestation ISS (te zien als een paarse stip). Het ISS vliegt immers op een hoogte van ongeveer 400 kilometer.
“De passage van Apophis in 2029 wordt in elk geval een enorme opportuniteit voor de wetenschap”, zegt Marina Brozovic, een radarwetenschapper van het Jet Propulsion Laboratory van de NASA. Ze houdt zich bezig met de studie van ruimteobjecten in de buurt van de Aarde door middel van radars. “We zullen Apophis bestuderen met optische telescopen en radartelescopen. Met die laatste zullen we details kunnen zien aan de oppervlakte van de asteroïde van amper een paar meter groot.”
De asteroïde zal op de avond van 13 april – net voor middernacht Belgische tijd – op zijn dichtste punt bij de Aarde komen. Hij zal dan over de Atlantische Oceaan vliegen. Maar volgens de NASA zou hij in de uren daarvoor en daarna ook zichtbaar moeten zijn aan de hemel. Eerst in Australië en laatst in de Verenigde Staten, want hij zal zich naar het westen bewegen. Volgens de NASA zal hij snel vliegen en een afstand van de breedte van de maan afleggen in minder dan een minuut.
Hoewel de kans op een inslag miniem is – bij de ontdekking 15 jaar geleden werd ze nog berekend op 2,7 procent, maar intussen is ze bijgesteld tot minder dan 1 op 100.000 dat het óóit tot een botsing komt – zal de passage vermoedelijk wel een impact hebben op de asteroïde zelf. Op de baan die de asteroïde volgt, bijvoorbeeld, en op de manier waarop de asteroïde draait. Volgens de NASA zouden er zelfs kleine lawines kunnen ontstaan aan het oppervlak van het hemellichaam.
Ruimtetuig
Wetenschappers zitten deze week samen op de Planetary Defense Conference in het Amerikaanse Maryland om te bespreken hoe ze - vanuit wetenschappelijk oogpunt - het meeste uit de bijzondere passage kunnen halen. Er wordt zelfs besproken of het aangewezen is om er een ruimtetuig naartoe te sturen.
Apophis is gecategoriseerd als 1 van bijna 2.000 bekende ‘potentieel gevaarlijke asteroïden’. Door hem te bestuderen in 2029 hopen wetenschappers belangrijke info te verzamelen die ooit gebruikt kan worden voor het verdedigen van onze planeet tegen de potentiële inslag van een ander hemellichaam.
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IN BEELD. Zo ziet zonsopgang en zonsondergang op Mars eruit - HLN.be
IN BEELD. Zo ziet zonsopgang en zonsondergang op Mars eruit - HLN.be
NASA/JPL-Caltech
WETENSCHAPDe Marslander InSight van de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA heeft beelden naar de Aarde gestuurd van een zonsopgang en een zonsondergang op de Rode Planeet.
De beelden werden een week geleden genomen met een camera op de robotarm van het ruimtetuig, op de 145ste sol van de missie. Een sol is een dag op Mars. Die duurt 24 uur, 39 minuten en 32,5 seconden, wat ongeveer 2,7 procent langer is dan een dag op Aarde.
De beelden van de zonsopgang werden genomen rond 5.30 uur lokale tijd op Mars, die van de zonsondergang om 18.30 uur. Een camera onder het dek van de Marslander maakte ook mooie beelden van de wolken in de lucht rond zonsondergang.
De zon op Mars ziet er overigens een stuk kleiner uit dan op Aarde en dat is logisch. De afstand van de zon tot de Aarde is 150 miljoen kilometer, de afstand van de zon tot Mars 228 miljoen kilometer. Die grotere afstand maakt dat de zon er op Mars een derde kleiner uitziet dan bij ons. (lees hieronder verder)
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Een beeld van de wolken rond de Marslander.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Een beeld van een zonsopgang op Mars.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
En zo ziet een zonsondergang eruit vanop de plaats waar de InSight zich bevindt.
Het was eigenlijk al de tweede keer dat de InSight dergelijke beelden nam. Op 2 en op 10 maart deed de camera al testopnames.
“Het is een traditie voor missies naar Mars om zonsopgangen en zonsondergangen te fotograferen”, aldus Justin Maki van het Jet Propulsion Laboratory van de NASA in Californië. “We hebben al heel wat van onze belangrijkste beeldvormingsmissies afgewerkt en daarom besloten we dat de tijd gekomen was om de traditie in eer te houden.”
Viking
De allereerste missie die zulke beelden naar de Aarde stuurde, was de Viking 1-lander. Die toonde voor het eerst een zonsondergang op 21 augustus 1976. Viking 2 maakte foto’s van een zonsopgang op 14 juni 1978. Onder meer ook de Spirit, de Opportunity en de Curiosity deden dat.
The crop circle you see above appeared in 2002 in a field near Crabwood, United Kingdom. It's been well documented, pictured and filmed from multiple helicopters. It's existence and the fact that it happened is not up for debate, who put it there is.
Reflect On:
Who could do something like this? In the dead of night, with no entrance or exit marks, with such precision? Who would have this type of mathematical knowledge, artistry and technology?
Chladni's 'Cymatic' diagrams
Diagram showing a Lambdoma Matrix
Did you know that crop circles are actually real? How they’re made and who or what is making them is up for debate, but the existence of intricate, remarkable and very complex designs that are “sown” into crop fields all around the world is a fact that’s not open for debate. Looking at some of these designs, especially footage taken from a plane or a helicopter, should give you goosebumps. Why? Richard Taylor, a physicist from the University of Oregon, outlines it best. Despite ridiculing any type of ‘supernatural’ explanation for these designs, he states that this is “the most science-oriented art movement in history.” It’s also interesting to note that many of these designs have been studied in a laboratory setting, as some of the nodes of these stalks are blasted out on one side. Not many people know this about crop circles, but the crops are not simply flattened. It’s quite clear that some sort of high level technology is being used. (source) This ‘blasting’ effect has been replicated by highly localized microwave heating, which causes water inside the crop to vaporize and dislodge. As a result, the stock flops completely over to one side. Because of this, Taylor concludes that crop circle artists are usingGPS devices, lasers, and microwaves to create these astonishing patterns of geometric forms due to the measurements he found in his research.
There will always be those who reject some sort of supernatural hypothesis, but for those who actually look deeper into the crop circle phenomenon, it’s hard to argue that something strange isn’t happening. Personally, I would say it’s obvious.
The crop circle you see above appeared in 2002 in a field near Crabwood, United Kingdom. Yes, it was real. It’s been filmed, documented and photographed. There is footage all over the internet. It made a lot of noise as it’s documented in the Crop Circle archives and has been researched by multiple scholars all over the world. Here is some great helicopter footage of the Crabwood circle with Terje Toftenes, an award-winning Norwegian filmmaker and video producer.
HERE is some more astonishing helicopter footage taken by the photographer of the photos posted below, Lucy Pringle. You can see people standing in the crop circle here as well, it’s quite detailed footage.
Who could do something like this? Who could design a binary code and implant a face within a crop in the dead of night in only a few hours, leaving no entrance or exit marks, while being artistically and mathematically precise?
Miia Pitkonen is one of many scholars who have examined this particular circle. He is a physicist from the University of Helsinki in Finland, specializing in medical physics. You can view his curriculum vitae here.
Clearly, he has an interest in this phenomenon because he published a paper titled “Crop Circles and Life at Parallel Space-Time Sheets.” It’s a two part series, and in it he examines the Crapwood crop circle. (source)
He explains:
“Crabwood message consists of two parts. An alien picture and a picture representing spiral like bit sequence starting from the center of the picture and proceeding counterclockwise. It has been proposed [59, 60] that the message is coded using 9-bit code and that 8-bit portions obey ASCII code. With this assumption the message reads as:
‘Beware the bearers of FALSE gifts & their BROKEN PROMISES. Much PAIN but still time. EELI!UVE. There is GOOD out there. We OPpose DECEPTION. Conduit CLOSING’
Obviously there are one or two incomprehensible words involved (EELI!UVE). There are also two variants of the message in the net. OPpose appears at Paul Vigay’s homeopage and Oppose at at Martin Keitel’s homeopage. In the following both options are considered. One could consider the possibility that the message has much deeper layer than the somewhat oracle-like statement in ASCII code, and that the presence of the little inconsistency might be intended to make clear that a deeper level is involved. What these aliens would like to communicate is something very essential about themselves as a life form. The image of an alien accompanying the bit sequence indeed suggests this. This something very essential could obviously include the code for translating ordinary DNA triplets to amino-acids. Perhaps also the code for translating the exotic RNA doublets to the analogs of amino-acids. These analogs could be even electromagnetic waves. There could be also other codes: just at the time when the Crabwood message had arrived I developed entire hierarchy of cognitive codes based on Mersenne primes and regular polygons constructible using only compass and ruler. The first guess is that the message should be represented by some universal code. The appearance of 3 × 3 = 9-bit code words decomposing naturally to 3 sequences of 3-bits suggests that a cognitive code consistent with genetic code might be involved. This guess was very useful in that it led to the identification of the genetic code of exotic RNA and the decomposition of 3 3-bit portions also suggests immediately that information about RNA is in question. It however turned out that ASCII code is the proper manner to interpret the message, ninth bit serves as a separation sign only. The interpretation relies on extremely general aspects of the ASCII code: capital and small letters correspond to amino-acids and capital and small forms of a given letter denote for the same amino-acid. Control signs denote the amino-acidic counterparts for the code associated with the exotic RNA. The ordering of the symbols does not matter. One could also use different kinds of symbols: only the numbers of various kinds of symbols telling how many code words are mapped to a particular amino-acid (or whatever counterpart of it) matter.”
It’s quite complicated, I know. Paul Vigay, a British computer consultant notable for work in developing and supporting RISC OS software and longtime researcher in the field, was the first to discover that the message was encoded in ASCI binary code. He also worked with Mel Gibson on the film Signs, but unfortunately died a very mysteries death.
“Beware the bearers of false gifts and their broken promises. Much pain but still time. (Damaged word.) There is good out there. We oppose deception. Conduit closing (bell sound).”
Below is another great screen shot taken by a helicopter.
Pitkonen’s paper is quite in-depth and states that the makers of this circle, whoever/whatever they are, could be using this type of specific code, and much more. One thing is for certain: Whoever made this circle is extremely artistically, technologically, and mathematically advanced to a point beyond belief.
Below is a screenshot of the last part of his paper expressing the same conclusion that many of us have come to, the realization that something amazing is going on here.
Pitkonen, in his paper, also goes into great detail and analysis regarding a broadcast (known as the “Arecibo” message) that was put together by Carl Sagan and his colleagues in 1974. It was sent into space via radio waves at a special ceremony to celebrate the remodelling of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. It was the most powerful broadcast ever deliberately beamed out into space. Directed at a star cluster sitting approximately 25,000 light years away, it consisted of a pictorial message depicting our planet’s location in our solar system, the core principles of our math and science, and the NASA antenna used to transmit the signal in the hopes that it would be interpreted by an extraterrestrial intelligence. The message also included details about human beings, such as our physical appearance and DNA code. The signal was a million times stronger than the typical TV transmission.
27 years later, in 2001, the crop circle phenomenon gained some well-deserved attention when a pattern in the form of a response to the 1974 broadcast appeared right next to Britain’s largest telescope, the Chilbolton, and observatory, home to the world’s largest fully steerable meteorological radar.
The Takeaway
Why are such discoveries and phenomena ridiculed in the mainstream? And when the mainstream does engage in a discussion about the crop circle phenomenon, why don’t they address the facts presented in this article? Why are these considered to be hoaxes when some of the designs are so complicated, precise and complex that they baffle some of the worlds greatest minds? What’s going on here?
There are facts about our reality that are so mind-altering that the human mind, in many cases, will instantly dismiss them. On a collective level, clearly we are all not ready to examine this phenomenon, and no matter how much evidence is in support of it, it always be greeted with ridicule and skepticism.
Something extraordinary is happening here, and it has been happening for years. It could have tremendous implications for humanity as we continue to slowly but surely open our minds to concepts that do not yet fit within the framework of accepted knowledge.
Zijn graancirkels boodschappen uit een verre toekomst? Natuurkundige komt tot opvallende conclusies
Foto: Jabberocky Wikimedia Commons
Zijn graancirkels boodschappen uit een verre toekomst? Natuurkundige komt tot opvallende conclusies
Miia Pitkonen van het Helsinki University Central Hospital in Finland heeft uitgebreid onderzoek gedaan naar graancirkels. De natuurkundige komt tot een aantal opmerkelijke conclusies.
In één van zijn papersstelt hij dat de media graancirkels vaak afschilderen als een hoax. Maar dit kan niet het geval zijn, aldus Pitkonen.
Tijdens zijn onderzoek ontdekte hij bijvoorbeeld dat de groeiknoppen van gewassen tijdens het ontstaan van graancirkels exploderen als gevolg van microgolven.
Plasmabollen
Verder is meteorisch materiaal gevonden in graancirkels, wat volgens Pitkonen absoluut onmogelijk is als ze worden gemaakt door mensen.
Hij merkt op dat graancirkels vooral ontstaan in gebieden waar de bodem rijk is aan calciumcarbonaat (krijt). Dit helpt de omgeving elektrisch te laden, stelt de natuurkundige.
De meest eenvoudige graancirkels doen denken aan de zelforganiserende patronen van plasma, zegt hij.
Er zijn in weilanden voor en na het ontstaan van graancirkels kleine plasmabollen waargenomen.
Bewuste en intelligente entiteit
Pitkonen stelt dat er een link is tussen graancirkels en de ionosfeer. Hij maakt hieruit op dat ieder levend systeem, zelfs planten, een magnetisch lichaam heeft, en dat de magnetosfeer een bewuste en intelligente entiteit is.
Om die reden kunnen we graancirkels zien als een poging van magnetosferische bewuste entiteiten om aan ons te laten zien dat ze bestaan.
Pitkonen heeft zich voornamelijk verdiept in twee fascinerende graanformaties: Chilbolton en Crabwood.
Verre toekomst
Beide formaties kunnen worden gezien als boodschap van een intelligente beschaving die mogelijk in een parallelle ruimtetijd in ons zonnestelsel leeft, zegt hij.
Hij denkt dat de boodschappen afkomstig zijn uit een verre toekomst en gaan over genetische codes van toekomstige beschavingen die in het zonnestelsel leven.
Deze beschavingen kunnen op aarde, maar ook op Mars en Jupiter of diep in planeten leven, besluit Pitkonen.
Ik werd ingezet om buitenaardse schepen te bergen. Amerikaanse sergeant doet boekje open
Ik werd ingezet om buitenaardse schepen te bergen. Amerikaanse sergeant doet boekje open
Enige tijd geleden was de Amerikaanse sergeant Clifford Stone te gast bij Coast to Coast AM. Het gesprek is nu gratis te beluisteren in onderstaande video.
Stone beweert te hebben deelgenomen aan topgeheime missies waarbij gecrashte UFO’s werden geborgen.
Hij zei geregeld niet-menselijke levensvormen te hebben gezien tijdens zijn werkzaamheden.
TOI’s
Volgens Stone zijn er andere getuigen die kunnen bevestigen wat hij heeft gezien, maar ‘die zijn te bang om te praten’.
Hij vertelde dat zijn eenheid zogeheten TOI’s (Tracks of Interest) in de gaten moest houden. Een aantal daarvan bevond zich in de diepe ruimte.
“In sommige gevallen ging het om schepen die niet afkomstig waren van deze planeet,” verklaarde Stone.
Buitenaardse schepen bewegen zich volgens hem op een andere manier voort.
Wormgaten
“Toen we ze voor het eerst zagen, zeiden we dat het onmogelijk was omdat ze snelheden bereikten van 11.000 tot 14.000 kilometer per uur en er geen sonic boom te horen was,” zei hij.
We weten nu dat hun vaartuigen de ruimtetijd vervormen met behulp van antizwaartekracht-aandrijving, aldus Stone.
Hij onthulde verder dat ze via wormgaten reizen en dat een tripje naar een zonnestelsel op 100 lichtjaar hierdoor maar een uur en 40 minuten hoeft te duren.
Handboek
Stone ging tijdens het gesprek dieper in op een incident in Augusta in Georgia in 1973. Daar ging hij naar eigen zeggen een vaartuig binnen met een diameter van ongeveer 11 meter.
Tot zijn verbazing merkte hij dat het schip van binnen een stuk groter was, wat erop wees dat er ‘multidimensionale realiteiten in het schip bestonden’.
Stone zei verder dat zijn eenheid tijdens missies een handboek meenam waarin 57 verschillende buitenaardse soorten waren gedocumenteerd.
They Hid Something in the Mars Rover That No One Knows About
They Hid Something in the Mars Rover That No One Knows About
There is more to the story of Mars than they will ever admit. When NASA received the first pictures of Mars they immediately started tweaking them, even changing the color of the sky from blue to red.
They have been trying to convince us for 40 years that there is no life or even signs of past life but the evidence suggests otherwise.
One of the most interesting stories here regards a technicians who downloaded the Mars rover data, he found images that were not on the original hard drive, are they storing data on a different one and not sharing the data?
WW3: Russian Navy 'Spy Whale' Freed - Weapons of Russia
WW3: Russian Navy 'Spy Whale' Freed - Weapons of Russia
This “spy” beluga whale was found off the coast of Norway with a GoPro harness. Scientists believe escaped from the Russian navy.
We talked to the Norwegian marine biologist who freed a beluga whale from a harness that said “Equipment of St. Petersburg.”
A beluga wearing a bizarre harness appeared in Norwegian waters last week, sparking questions about Russia’s history of training whales for the military.
A strange mariner’s tale is unfolding in a remote Norwegian fishing village. Far above the Arctic Circle, near the small island of Ingøya, a white whale wearing a sort of harness was spotted last Thursday. Vice
2nd video WW3: Russian new weapon missile 27 times faster than speed of sound will beat all air defenses – Russia’s new strategic weapon has rendered any missile defenses useless at a small fraction of their cost, officials said Thursday.
They’re named for a cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia where the remains of five members of an extinct species humans were found in 2010 among the bones of modern humans and Neanderthals. Studies of modern human genomes show there was interbreeding between these species, but there has been no evidence of Densiovans in South Africa, Nigeria, France, Papua New Guinea and China where Denisovan DNA has been found in modern humans. That may change with the discovery of a Denisovan jawbone in a cave in Tibet. How did this Denisovan get to Tibet over 160,000 years ago … and how did the species survive at 10,000 feet (3,280 meters) above sea level with little or no resources, heat or oxygen?
“The Xiahe specimen provides direct evidence of the Denisovans outside the Altai Mountains and its analysis unique insights into Denisovan mandibular and dental morphology. Our results indicate that archaic hominins occupied the Tibetan Plateau in the Middle Pleistocene epoch and successfully adapted to high-altitude hypoxic environments long before the regional arrival of modern Homo sapiens.”
In a new study published in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers explain how the bone was found in 1980 by a Buddhist monk who entered the Baishya Karst Cave near Xiahe, Tibet, to pray. Instead, he found a jawbone that was eventually turned over to anthropologists who put in in their overflowing bones in-box until 2010 when Dongju Zhang, an archaeologist at Lanzhou University in China, picked it up. She eventually traced it to the cave, where she found tools and signs of humans.
Denisova Cave in Siberia
Dongju Zhang circulated photos and information about her discovery and eventually formed a team to study it. the jawbone had rock embedded in it containing uranium, which allowed them to date it to 160,000 years ago. While there was no DNA, there were ancient proteins in the teeth which were a match to the Denisovans of Siberia. How did this Denisovan, who was estimated by the size of the jawbone to be a very large adult, survive in the harsh conditions and thin air of Tibet?
It turns out they survived the same way modern Tibetans do – they had a variant of a gene called EPAS1 that reduces the amount of the oxygen-carrying but blood-thickening protein hemoglobin in their blood, enabling them to live at high altitudes with low oxygen levels. Denisova Cave in Siberia is at a much lower altitude (700 meters), so it appears the Tibetan Denisovans evolved the gene and then passed it down to modern humans … which means there was definitely some interbreeding going down on the higher up.
When and how did all of this happen? That’s just one of the many puzzles about the mysterious Denisovans that remain to be solved. The researchers suggest that the answers may not be in another cave but in a dusty box in a storage room where old bones are kept until someone has the time and budget to examine them. They’re scanning databases to search for possible candidates that can be compared to the Denisovan fossils … and may possibly have the missing link of ancient DNA.
All three genomes – Denisovan, Neanderthal and ancient human – are found in modern humans, which means we’re the end result of a prehistoric ménage à trois or two. Will we ever find out which one made the first move?
The team was able to identify this partial mandible as Denisovan by analyzing its degraded proteins.
Has the Apollo 10 lunar module finally been found? Astronomers believe they have located NASA's probe left in orbit 50 years ago - and now they want to bring it back to Earth
Has the Apollo 10 lunar module finally been found? Astronomers believe they have located NASA's probe left in orbit 50 years ago - and now they want to bring it back to Earth
In 1969, the Apollo 10 crew ejected the lunar module, named Snoopy, from the command module into orbit, never to be seen again – or so they thought
Astronomer Nick Howes, along with flight controllers, space dynamics experts and astronauts from the Apollo program, have spent years looking for it
The team believe they may have found the four-meter wide vehicle
Now all they need is someone with the expertise to go and retrieve it
The Apollo 10 mission was a dress rehearsal for the Apollo 11 moon landing, which took place two months later in July 1969
A team of British astronomers believe they may have located the lunar module from NASA's Apollo 10 mission - fifty years after the crew released the probe into a perpetual orbit around the Sun.
The lunar module is one of the greatest surviving relics of the moon landings and scientists want to devise a way to retrieve it as it orbits some 50,000ft above the lunar surface.
At the time of the mission in 1969, Tom Stafford, a member of the Apollo 10 crew radioed back to Houston from his own orbit around Moon that the crew had completely lost sight of the probe after they jettisoned it from their command module.
In 1969, the Apollo 10 crew jettisoned the lunar module 'Snoopy' from the Apollo command module into an orbit never to be seen again – or so they thought. The command module is pictured here on the far side of the moon
The Apollo 11 Lunar Module is pictured gathering data on the moon's surface. It's sister from the Apollo 10 mission is still circling the moon and scientists believe it could be brought back
Apollo 11 Lunar Module in landing configuration, as viewed from Command & Service Module. The similar module from Apollo 10 is still somewhere out there but may have been spotted
American astronauts and crew of the Apollo 10 mission, from left, Lunar Module pilot Eugene Cernan (1934-2017), Command Module pilot John Young and Commander Thomas P Stafford pose together in front of a Command Module during training in November 1968
The view of earth taken from the Apollo 10 space ship showing the peninsula of Baja, California, seen through swirling clouds
Astronomer Nick Howes, pictured, along with flight controllers, space dynamics experts and astronauts from the Apollo program have spent years looking for the lunar module and believe they may have found it
'We don't have any idea where he went. He just went boom and it disappeared right into the Sun,' Stafford said.
The lunar module, nicknamed Snoopy, was thought to be lost forever, though the search intrigued many back on Earth who felt that one day they might be able to find this tiny needle in a cosmic haystack.
At just four meters wide, it was always going to be a long shot but Nick Howes, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, along with legendary flight controllers, space dynamics experts and astronauts from the Apollo program, have spent a number of years in a calculated hunt for the probe.
The team now believe that they may have found it and according to The Times all they need is someone with the expertise to go and retrieve it.
The Apollo 10 mission was launched in May 1969 as a dress rehearsal for the Apollo 11 moon landing. Stafford and Cernan descended in the Lunar Module (pictured) to within 9 miles of the surface of the Moon
Left to right; Eugene Cernan, John Young and Thomas Stafford standing in spacesuits in front of the Saturn V rocket carried the Apollo 10 spacecraft. The Apollo 10 Lunar Module was code-named Snoopy and the Command Module, Charlie Brown
Space expert Ed Buckbee, left, and Apollo 10 astronauts Tom Stafford and Euene Cernan are pictured in 2010. The crew lost sight of the lunar module after they jettisoned it into space
Howes believes someone with 'expertise' like Elon Musk, pictured, the founder of SpaceX might somehow be able to bring the lunar module back to Earth
All the other craft that were used during the Apollo missions were either fired into the Moon for seismology experiments or jettisoned to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.
Snoopy, however, was used as practice run for the Apollo 11 lunar landing, which would take place two months after Apollo 10 in July 1969.
Two of the three astronauts transferred into it as it drifted nine miles above the Moon's surface. The pair then moved back into the command module. The mission was deemed a success.
Snoopy was fired off and left to drift in orbit around the sun forever with no realistic way to track it.
Then, eight years ago, Howes began a project to try and locate the last surviving module and managed to get astronomers from around the world to focus their telescopes on regions of the moon where he calculated it may pass though.
The inside of Apollo 10. The craft, which had the call sign Charlie Brown, traveled approximately 500,000 miles during the eight-day mission and exceeded 24,790 mph on its return to Earth
The two astronauts are pictured inside their Command Module as part of their mission
He even persuaded schools to get on board and help analyse the data.
'The approximate distance it travels in its orbit is 940 million kilometers. When you are looking for something four meters wide and the last reliable data you've got on it is 50 years ago, it's a bit tricky,' he told The Times.
But against the odds, it seems the astronomers have found this unique piece of space junk after spotting an object that looked 'odd'.
'It was a strange anomalous object in approximately the right orbit and exactly the right size. The radar data was completely whack, as one astronomer put it. It was like nothing we've ever seen. We're 99 percent convinced we've got it,' said Howes.
Apollo 10, carrying astronauts Thomas Stafford, Eugene Cernan and John Young was launched on 18th May 1969 on a lunar orbital mission, the dress rehearsal for the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission which took place two months later
Apollo 10 astronauts inside spacecraft before closing the hatch in May 1969. Now a team in 2019 believe they may have found the four-meter wide lunar module
Apollo 10 astronauts (left to right): Eugene Cernan, Thomas Stafford and John Young, stand smiling in door of helicopter which landed them aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Princeton after their successful splashdown May 26th 1969
But even the strongest telescope is unable to see an object so small at that range. The only real way to verify if the object is indeed the lunar module is to go back up there and take a look.
Howes believes there is a strong argument for doing so.
'To recover one lunar module that is intact would be, I feel, quite special. The quality of engineering that went in to the Apollo program would probably mean that if power was restored you may even be able to fire up some of the systems.
'What I'm hoping is someone like Elon Musk can develop something and capture it and bring it back down.'
Apollo 10 ‘Snoopy’ Lunar Lander May Have Been Found
In 1969, the Apollo 10 crew jettisoned the lunar module 'Snoopy' from the Apollo command module into an orbit never to be seen again – or so they thought. The command module is pictured here on the far side of the moon
Apollo 10 ‘Snoopy’ Lunar Lander May Have Been Found
Before there was Apollo 11 and its historic first steps by a human on the Moon, there was Apollo 10 – when a crew and NASA support team obsessed with the Peanut cartoon strip sent a command module named Charlie Brown and a lunar module named Snoopy. While Charlie Brown carried the three crew members back safely to Earth, Snoopy was left behind in space and has become a treasure for astronomers both pro and amateur to search for. That hunt is over as Snoopy has been found in, still in orbit – not around the Moon but the Sun. These astronomers think NASA, or perhaps Elon Musk, should mount a mission to bring Snoopy home. They face objections from those who believe it would cost too much … and those who don’t believe Apollo 10 or any of the Apollo missions actually occurred.
“We don’t have any idea where he went. He just went boom and it disappeared right into the Sun.”
Apollo 10 crew members: left to right, Eugene Cernan, Tom Stafford and John Young
(NASA)
Eighty-eight-year-old Thomas Stafford is the last surviving member of the Apollo 10 crew and thought he’d never see Snoopy again after descending in it (with Eugene Cernan) to 15,000 meters above the surface, then jettisoning the descent module and returning to the command module, where they jettisoned Snoopy before heading home. The LM is only 4 meters wide and the only thing known about it was when and where it was jettisoned into a heliocentric orbit, but that was enough for British astronomer Nick Howes, who eight years ago began teaming up with with flight controllers, space dynamics experts and astronauts from the Apollo program to search for it.
“It was a strange anomalous object in approximately the right orbit and exactly the right size. The radar data was completely whack, as one astronomer put it. It was like nothing we’ve ever seen. We’re 99 percent convinced we’ve got it.”
Unfortunately, “strange anomalous object” is the best description Howes can give of what he and many others strongly believe is Snoopy. He, along with many space experts, space historians, former astronauts and others, believe that a mission should be sent to confirm the identification and bring Snoopy back.
“To recover one lunar module that is intact would be, I feel, quite special. The quality of engineering that went in to the Apollo program would probably mean that if power was restored you may even be able to fire up some of the systems. What I’m hoping is someone like Elon Musk can develop something and capture it and bring it back down.”
Would that convince doubters that the Apollo missions actually were real and not an elaborate hoax staged at some secret location – a large group of people whose number continues to grow?
“The thing that concerns me more and more about this is, as time passes and the Apollo landings are farther into the past and fewer people remember them, it might be easier to embrace these kinds of ideas.”
In a recent NASA presentation, Roger Launius, a former senior official at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum and author of the new book, “Apollo’s Legacy: Perspectives on the Moon Landings,” expressed concern that 5% of Americans believe the Apollo moon landings were fakedand that percentage is growing fast. Launius blames this on a number of factors: Americans are getting dumber, Americans don’t trust their government agencies, Americans love conspiracy theories and Americans love profiting from the nativity of other Americans. He offers one way to try and convince these skeptics that there was no Apollo hoax: point out that our Cold War enemies and space race competitors, the Soviet Union, have never doubted the Moon landings.
“They had both the capability and the desire to disprove this, if it was true — you know, if we hadn’t landed on the moon but were faking it. And they never said a word. That’s a pretty strong element to me.”
Well, until recently at least. Dmitry Rogozin, the Director General of Roscosmos, has stated that one part of his space agency’s next moon mission will be to “verify whether they’ve been there or not.”
Will finding the Apollo 10 Snoopy module convince lunar landing doubters? When given the choice between believing “me or your lying eyes,” conspiracy theorists seem to continue to side with the conspiracists.
The Indian Army has discovered large footprints close to the Makalu Base Camp in North-Eastern Himalayas that could have possibly been made by a Yeti. The army’s Mountaineering Expedition team located the gigantic footprints on April 9, 2019, that measured 32 inches by 15 inches. They were found close to the Makalu Barun National Park which is located in Nepal and is coincidentally the same location where the creature has allegedly been seen in the past.
The Yeti, which is also known as the Abominable Snowman and the Asian Bigfoot, is believed to live in the Himalayas and there have been several reported sightings of the creature over the years, although there has yet to be any definitive proof of its existence. Yetis are said to be over 6 feet tall and can weigh anywhere from 91 to 181 kilograms (200 to 400 pounds).
The Additional Directorate General of Public Information (ADG-PI) tweeted the photos of the footprints which can be seen here.
Photo of Yeti footprints tweeted by the Indian Army
Unfortunately for the army, they have not received the support they were expecting when they posted the pictures of the footprints online and instead received much ridicule. Since the footprints were one in front of the other (instead of side-by-side), some users said that it was a “yeti catwalk” and that whatever made the footprints must have been “hopping”. Some joked about it being a “mythological one-legged creature”.
Needless to say, the Indian Army has become a popular topic over the last several days, but not in a good way, as one online user asked the army to “delete this tweet to avoid international embarrassment of India.” Another person wrote, “This is deeply, deeply embarrassing: whoever in the Indian Army’s PR has circulated this is disgracing the institution, and India, in the world’s eyes.” Click here to read more of the tweets.
If the past is any indication, the footprints were most likely made from a bear. In 2017, researchers collected 24 “Yeti” samples which included hair, skin, bones, and feces, but after studies were conducted on the samples, it was concluded that they came from a Himalayan brown bear and a black bear.
A few years before that, in 2014, researchers tested 30 hair samples that were believed to have came from a Yeti but instead came from several other animals, including bears and dogs.
While the footprints were probably created by a bear, the mystery of the Yeti continues to fascinate and excite those who believe the creature does exist.
ADG PI - INDIAN ARMY✔@adgpi
For the first time, an #IndianArmy Moutaineering Expedition Team has sited Mysterious Footprints of mythical beast 'Yeti' measuring 32x15 inches close to Makalu Base Camp on 09 April 2019. This elusive snowman has only been sighted at Makalu-Barun National Park in the past.
This is a dark tower I found on planet Mercury in a NASA archive. Most craters on other planets and moons are about 10-30km across. So I will take the low number 10km and the tower is 1/3 the diameter of the crater making it 3km tall. Now thats a low end estimate. If this unknown crater is 30km across, then this tower is actually 10km tall! The gravity on Mercury is 38% that of Earths, so any building will weigh 62% less on Mercury, compared to here on Earth. There is also a huge statue of a person praying in the left side of the photograph. This could mean that the tower we see is of religious significance to the aliens species that created it. The tower could also be a docking point for ship too large to land not he planets surface. Scott C. Waring
I found this ancient tomb on Mars when I was looking back at a tiny skull photo that I had found a few years ago. I had never seen this tomb back then. It was just right there in the center of a photo. It was a totally different photo than the skull. The skull was of a tiny alien species because the photo was taken with he micro viewer camera. The tomb is a little bit bigger than 2 meters long. It looks to be 2.1-2.2 meters long. That would match up to the size of tombs here on earth. The top of the tomb seems to be slightly raised in one corner so we know that the tomb is hollow and this is a lid. Also the sides of the tomb have sculptures in it, but the photos detail is too poor to make out for certain what those carvings are. Still, I am just surprised that I had found this today. This is absolutely 100% proof that intelligent aliens one thrived on Mars. I wonder if this species still exists below the ground in underground cities to escape the horrible heat of the surface? Time will tell. Scott C. Waring
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
They Hid Something in the Mars Rover That No One Knows About
They Hid Something in the Mars Rover That No One Knows About
There is more to the story of Mars than they will ever admit. When NASA received the first pictures of Mars they immediately started tweaking them, even changing the color of the sky from blue to red.
They have been trying to convince us for 40 years that there is no life or even signs of past life but the evidence suggests otherwise.
One of the most interesting stories here regards a technicians who downloaded the Mars rover data, he found images that were not on the original hard drive, are they storing data on a different one and not sharing the data?
Six asteroids will make close approaches to Earth over just two years during the late 2020s, including the asteroid Apophis (seen here), which scientists also observed in 2013.
Buckle your seat belts, Earthlings — the late 2020s will offer an incredible spree of close asteroid flybys, and none will pose athreat to life on Earth.
The six flybys of relatively large asteroids will happen over a span of two years, beginning in June 2027. In a presentation given at theInternational Academy of Aeronautics' Planetary Defense Conferencetoday (April 30) in College Park, Maryland, Lance Benner, a radar specialist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, walked scientists through the scientific opportunities offered by the flyby series.
"The six asteroids that are going to be coming along will begin in the summer of 2027," Benner said. "And then after that, it's going to be bang, bang, bang — not literally bang, bang, bang, but there will be a number of them coming in very short order, and it should make for a very interesting two years as these objects make close approaches."
None of these asteroids are on paths that will intersect with Earth's orbit.
But they'll come close enough that scientists should be able to get a good look at them, Benner said. (In fact, three will be visible with binoculars, and one of those, called Apophis, will be visible to the naked eye.)
The largest asteroid of the lot will swing by first. Called 1990 MU, it is 1.7 miles (2.8 kilometers) wide. Two asteroids in the series will come closer to Earth than the moon's orbit. During the close approaches of all six space rocks, scientists will be able to gather detailed radar imagery of the asteroids, which will give researchers a good sense of the shape and rotation speeds of these objects.
In a few cases, scientists will examine these objects for the third time, giving them enough data to begin analyzing the tiny changes in speed that happen when the sun's radiation heats an asteroid unevenly.
And because scientists are aware of the bonanza so far in advance, spacecraft could get in on the fun. Current missions, like NASA's OSIRIS-REx and Japan's Hayabusa2, have shown that machines are now capable of close approaches to space rocks. Future such missions could potentially spot small changes on an asteroid's surface caused by Earth's gravity tugging on the rock during its flyby.
The close approaches will come at a steady clip of two per year beginning in 2027, concluding with Apophis. The bevy of flybys could even offer an opportunity for a spacecraft trajectory that could carry instruments past multiple of these asteroids in the same mission, Benner said.
"I think this is going to attract considerable scientific interest — interest from the public, potentially interest from people who are planning spacecraft missions," he said.
The U.S. Air Force's X-37B space plane has now been circling Earth for more than 600 days on its latest mystery mission.
The reusable robotic vehicle, which looks like a miniature version of NASA's space shuttle orbiters,launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocketfrom NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sept. 7, 2017.
As of today (April 30), the space plane has been aloft for 601 days, on a mission known as Orbital Test Vehicle 5 (OTV-5) because it's the fifth flight of the X-37B program.
It's unclear what exactly the spacecraft is doing up there. X-37B missions are classified, and Air Force officials tend to speak of project goals in general terms, as this excerpt from the X-37B fact sheet shows: "The primary objectives of the X-37B are twofold: reusable spacecraft technologies for America's future in space and operating experiments which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth."
An artist's depiction of the U.S. Air Force's unmanned X-37B space plane in orbit with its solar array deployed and payload bay open.
Still, the Air Force does divulge some payloads flying on X-37B missions. For example, we know that OTV-5 includes the Advanced Structurally Embedded Thermal Spreader experiment (ASETS-II), which is measuring the performance of electronics and oscillating heat pipes in the space environment.
The Air Force has at least two X-37B vehicles, both of which were built by Boeing. Each space plane is 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.6 feet (2.9 m) tall, with a wingspan of almost 15 feet (4.6 m). The solar-powered spacecraft have payload bays about the size of a pickup-truck bed.
The X-37B launches vertically and lands horizontally on a runway, like the space shuttle orbiters did.
OTV-5 is not, so far, the longest-duration X-37B mission, though the outing will earn that distinction if the established pattern holds: Each OTV flight has lasted longer than its predecessors:
OTV-1 launched on April 22, 2010, and ended on Dec. 3, 2010 (224 days in space).
OTV-2 began March 5, 2011, and landed on June 16, 2012 (468 days).
OTV-3 launched on Dec. 11, 2012, and came down on Oct. 17, 2014 (675 days).
OTV-4 lifted off on May 20, 2015, and landed May 7, 2017 (718 days).
COLLEGE PARK, Md. — The solar system has a sense of humor: A decade from now, on Friday, April 13, 2029, alarge asteroidwill streak across the sky — but it's a cause for excitement, not fear, scientists say.
That asteroid, calledApophis, stretches about 1,100 feet (340 meters) across and will pass within 19,000 miles (31,000 kilometers) of Earth's surface. That might sound scary, but scientists are positive that it will not hit Earth. Instead, it's a once-in-a-lifetime chance for scientists to truly understand asteroids near Earth.
"The excitement is that an object this large comes this close about once per thousand years, so it's all about, What's the opportunity?" Richard Binzel, a planetary scientist at MIT, said yesterday (April 30) during the International Academy of Aeronautics' Planetary Defense Conference, which is being held here this week. The asteroid's proximity and size will also add to the encounter's brightness, so Apophis will capture eyeballs — about 2 billion people should be able to see it pass by with their naked eyes, he said.
The near Earth asteroid Apophis, shown in yellow, will pass by Earth in 2029 within the distance that some satellites (shown in blue) orbit Earth. The purple line represents the International Space Station's orbit.
And of course, scientists have a full 10 years to plan before the space rock makes its closest approach. That means they have time to draw up a wish list of what they'd like to learn, sort out what can be tackled from Earth and dream up spacecraft designs that could give them a front-row seat to the flyby.
Although scientists are positive Apophis won't hit Earth in 2029, they can't yet rule out possible collisions many decades in the future, and there are plenty of other large space rocks orbiting the sun in Earth's neighborhood. Experts in planetary defense track these objects and prepare techniques that could divert any that do pose a threat. And data gathered about Apophis could inform what scientists know about these other asteroids, since this particular space rock seems superficially similar to about 80% of the potentially hazardous asteroids scientists have identified to date.
Asteroid scientists and planetary defense experts have already begun that work, with a series of presentations at the conference here highlighting topics they'd like to consider between now and the 2029 Apophis flyby.
Those proposed investigations bridge the two disciplines, asking questions applicable both to humanity's self-interest and to our greater understanding of the solar system we live in. Take, for example, the interior structure of Apophis, which would be a vital piece of information for engineers to understand if they want to try to break apart the space rock or push its collision course away from Earth. But that information would also likely offer clues to how Apophis formed.
"You could argue, is this science or planetary defense?" Binzel said. "But there is no argument, it's all one and the same."
A key topic of interest is the degree to which Earth's gravitational pull may distort Apophis during the 2029 close approach. Some scientists believe that previous flybys would have also stretched the space rock, and that other asteroids could be similarly affected during their own close approaches.
One question that asteroid scientists have that is also vital for planetary defense experts is the extent to which the sun's radiation nudges Apophis' orbit. That phenomenon, called the Yarkovsky effect, results from the temperature differential between the day and night sides of the asteroid.
The tweaks the Yarkovsky effect cause in an asteroid's orbit are so small that scientists struggle to distinguish the nudges from instrument hiccups. Although scientists have pinpointed Apophis' trajectory in 2029 to within a path just 7.4 miles (12 km) wide that stays thousands of miles away from Earth, they can't quite rule out possible impacts decades in the future — and that's in part because of uncertainty about the Yarkovsky effect.
In addition to flagging some key priorities for the next decade, scientists also discussed some top-level mission concepts that could lay the groundwork for spacecraft to visit Apophis before, during or after its close approach.
The successes of the past year or so have put engineers on a strong footing for such missions: NASA's Mars InSight mission placed the first robotically deployed seismometer on another planet. The first interplanetary cubesats flew with that spacecraft as the MarCO mission. And both NASA's OSIRIS-REx and Japan's Hayabusa2 have excelled at operating close to small asteroids.
Pieces of all those missions showed up in discussions about what scientists could send to Apophis. Several speakers discussed the possibilities offered by cubesat missions, including missions that paired twin spacecraft, as MarCO did.
Scientists also advanced the idea of putting a seismometer on the space rock — one design would impale Apophis like a harpoon — to pick up tiny vibrations through the space rock that could help scientists understand the interior structure of Apophis and how it's affected by Earth's gravity. Also among the ideas is a mission that would create an artificial crater on Apophis, as Hayabusa2 just did at an asteroid called Ryugu, in order to see below the weathered surface of the asteroid.
Some of those ideas may be too risky to be worthwhile, however, since scientists would need to be positive the manhandling wouldn't risk meddling in Apophis' current, safe trajectory. "We've got to be really careful, because this specific object will have intense public and even political pressure to avoid doing anything to change its orbit," James Bell, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University, said during his presentation. "That said, it's an opportunity for NASA and other space agencies, for it to be the PR event of the decade."
And that's the careful balance that asteroid scientists and planetary defense experts will need to achieve over the course of the next decade — making the most of the scientific and outreach opportunities Apophis' close flyby offers without causing panic, or still worse, accidentally creating a truly dangerous situation where there wasn't one before.
"The world will be watching," Binzel said. "It's up to us to get ready."
Editor's Note: This article was corrected to include James Bell's affiliation of Arizona State University.
Mini-SAR map of the Circular Polarization Ratio (CPR) of the north pole of the Moon. Fresh, “normal” craters (red circles) show high values of CPR inside and outside their rims. This is consistent with the distribution of rocks and ejected blocks around fresh impact features, indicating that the high CPR here is surface scattering. The “anomalous” craters (green circles) have high CPR within, but not outside their rims. Their interiors are also in permanent sun shadow. These relations are consistent with the high CPR in this case being caused by water ice, which is only stable in the polar dark cold traps. We estimate over 600 million cubic meters (1 cubic meter = 1 metric ton) of water in these features.
Using data from a NASA radar that flew aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists have detected ice deposits near the moon's north pole. NASA's Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, found more than 40 small craters with water ice. The craters range in size from 1 to 9 miles (2 to15 km) in diameter. Although the total amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater, it's estimated there could be at least 1.3 trillion pounds (600 million metric tons) of water ice.
The Mini-SAR has imaged many of the permanently shadowed regions that exist at both poles of the Moons. These dark areas are extremely cold and it has been hypothesized that volatile material, including water ice, could be present in quantity here. The main science object of the Mini-SAR experiment is to map and characterize any deposits that exist.
Mini-SAR is a lightweight (less than 10 kg) imaging radar. It uses the polarization properties of reflected radio waves to characterize surface properties. Mini-SAR sends pulses of radar that are left-circular polarized. Typical planetary surfaces reverse the polarization during the reflection of radio waves, so that normal echoes from Mini-SAR are right circular polarized. The ratio of received power in the same sense transmitted (left circular) to the opposite sense (right circular) is called the circular polarization ratio (CPR). Most of the Moon has low CPR, meaning that the reversal of polarization is the norm, but some targets have high CPR. These include very rough, fresh surfaces (such as a young, fresh crater) and ice, which is transparent to radio energy and multiply scatters the pulses, leading to an enhancement in same sense reflections and hence, high CPR. CPR is not uniquely diagnostic of either roughness or ice; the science team must take into account the environment of the occurrences of high CPR signal to interpret its cause.
The fresh impact crater Main L (14 km diameter), which shows high CPR inside and outside its rim. SC is the “same sense, circular” polarization; CPR is “circular polarization ratio.” The histograms at right show that the high CPR values within (red line) and outside the crater rim (green line) are nearly identical.
Numerous craters near the poles of the Moon have interiors that are in permanent sun shadow. These areas are very cold and water ice is stable there essentially indefinitely. Fresh craters show high degrees of surface roughness (high CPR) both inside and outside the crater rim, caused by sharp rocks and block fields that are distributed over the entire crater area. However, Mini-SAR has found craters near the north pole that have high CPR inside, but not outside their rims. This relation suggests that the high CPR is not caused by roughness, but by some material that is restricted within the interiors of these craters. We interpret this relation as consistent with water ice present in these craters. The ice must be relatively pure and at least a couple of meters thick to give this signature.
Anomalous Polar Crater
On Floor of Rozhdestvensky, 9 km Diameter, 84.3° N, 157° W
An “anomalous” crater on the floor of Rozhdestvensky, near the north pole of the Moon. This feature shows high CPR within the crater rim, but low CPR outside, suggesting that roughness (which occurs throughout a fresh crater) is not the cause of the elevated CPR. This feature’s interior is in permanent sun shadow. SC stands for “same sense, circular”, OC stands for “opposite sense, circular” and CPR is the “circular polarization ratio.” The histogram of CPR values clearly shows that interior points (red line) have higher CPR values than those outside the crater rim (green line).
The estimated amount of water ice potentially present is comparable to the quantity estimated solely from the previous mission of Lunar Prospector’s neutron data (several hundred million metric tons.) The variation in the estimates between Mini-SAR and the Lunar Prospector’s neutron spectrometer is due to the fact that it only measures to depths of about one-half meter, so it would underestimate the total quantity of water ice present. At least some of the polar ice is mixed with lunar soil and thus, invisible to our radar.
"The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that water creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring on the moon," said Paul Spudis, principal investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. "The new discoveries show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought."
"After analyzing the data, our science team determined a strong indication of water ice, a finding which will give future missions a new target to further explore and exploit," said Jason Crusan, program executive for the Mini-RF Program for NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate in Washington.
The Mini-SAR's findings are being published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The results are consistent with recent findings of other NASA instruments and add to the growing scientific understanding of the multiple forms of water found on the moon. The agency's Moon Mineralogy Mapper discovered water molecules in the moon's polar regions, while water vapor was detected by NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS.
Mini-SAR and Moon Mineralogy Mapper are two of 11 instruments on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1. The Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., performed the final integration and testing on Mini-SAR. It was developed and built by the Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, Calif., and several other commercial and government contributors.
Underwater Structure Thought To Be Over 14,000 Years Old & Man-made
Underwater Structure Thought To Be Over 14,000 Years Old & Man-made
Japan’s Yonaguni Island yields one of the most mysterious sets of nautical ruins to date. Estimated to be 14,000 years old, the Yonaguni ruins have several structures, including a large pyramid 600 feet wide and 90 feet tall with five distinct levels and what appear to be stairs. Tool marks and carvings have been documented on several of the structures; however, debate on whether the ruins are man-made or naturally occurring continues to this day. University of Tokyo professor Teruaki Ishii determined that the submersion of the structures occurred at the end of the last ice age, around 10,000 years ago. Tools and unknown hieroglyphs have been found on land in the surrounding region
DID PRESIDENT EISENHOWER MEET WITH ALIENS AT HOLLOMAN AIR FORCE BASE?
DID PRESIDENT EISENHOWER MEET WITH ALIENS AT HOLLOMAN AIR FORCE BASE?
In 1953, President Harry Truman gave up the oval office and passed the reins of power to his successor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower (Ike). It appears that Truman also gave Ike a pretty hefty file concerning a top secret project called Majestic 12 that Truman establishedBy Classified Executive Order. Majestic 12 consisted of a group of scientists, military personnel and other governmental professionals who all worked together to understand and communicate with UFOs and extraterrestrials (ETs).
President Eisenhower was extremely interested in UFOs and ETs: there isEvidencethat he met with ETs secretly, at least three times.
Once at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) in California and twice at Holloman AFB in New Mexico. Since the Eisenhower meetings, other instances of UFOs landing at or near Holloman AFB have been reported.
1954 EISENHOWER-ET MEETING AT EDWARDS AFB
President Eisenhower, who had been a five-star Army general, always had a “strong belief in life on other planets.” In February 1954, he was spending several days in Palm Springs On Vacation. He disappeared for several hours one Saturday afternoon and even missed a scheduled public dinner. He was not seen again until late the following morning.
The press questioned Ike’s whereabouts, so the White House Press Secretary told them that Ike had chipped a tooth and gone to see a dentist. Even at that time, rumors were that he was visiting ETs at nearby Edwards AFB. The dentist story falls apart upon close inspection. Washington Post Staff Writer, Peter Carlson, denies the story of the chipped tooth and calls it a cover-up.
THERE WAS NO DENTIST VISIT
The Eisenhower Presidential Library has detailed reports of all Eisenhower’s medical and dental records. There is no reference to a broken or chipped tooth or dentist visit related to the Palm Springs visit. The Library also has copies of acknowledgments that were sent to everyone Eisenhower had contact with while in Palm Springs. There were records of people who met the airplane, people who sent flowers, the minister who gave the sermon at the Sunday service he attended, and others who played minor roles. But there is no proof of a note sent to a dentist. Years later, the dentist’s widow said she had no recollection of ever being told by her husband that he had done dental work on the President.
CORROBORATING EVIDENCE OF THE ET VISIT
William Cooper, who was on the Naval Intelligence briefing team and had access to classified documents, is a credible witness. His Review Of Those Documents revealed that ETs had had contact with Earth. They had warned that the Earth was “on a path of self-destruction” and they wanted to meet to help effectuate a long-lasting peace.
MEETING WITH EISENHOWER
The first meeting with the aliens and President Eisenhower occurred at Edwards AFB in February 1954. Navy Commander Charles L. Suggs reported that his father had attended the meeting between Ike and the ETs. Eisenhower met with two Nordic appearing, blue-eyed ETs. A third one stood near the door as a lookout.
The discussions were polite. Eisenhower wanted to effectuate a treaty with the aliens, but was unwilling to agree to their demand that we cease testing nuclear weapons. The aliens left with no treaty in place, but returned the next year to Holloman AFB in New Mexico, not too far from the famous Roswell alien aircraft crash site, for a subsequent meeting with Eisenhower.
GERALD LIGHT’S LETTER
There is a corroborating Story to the ET meeting with Ike at Edwards AFB. The accuracy of the story is difficult to confirm. A man named Gerald Light Wrote A Letter in April 1954 claiming to have been an eyewitness to the Edwards AFB meeting between Eisenhower and ETs. Light provided details such as watching Air Force officials studying five aircraft with the permission of their alien owners!
Some question the credibility of Light’s report since he was known to have a love of the occult and claimed to be clairvoyant, but others like Meade Layne, the former director of Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, confirms and believes Light did know first-hand what occurred.
Aliens and Cover-Ups
1955 EISENHOWER-ET MEETING AT HOLLOMAN AFB
There were Several Eyewitness Reports of a second meeting between Ike and ETs at Holloman AFB in New Mexico, which is only about 120 miles from the well-known Roswell incident. The reports are more detailed than the ones provided for the Edwards AFB meeting.
In February 1955, approximately 300 people saw Air Force One land at Holloman AFB and taxi back out to the end of the runway. Shortly after the plane landed, the pilot instructed the tower to turn off all radar while the president’s plane was on the tarmac. Shortly after Air Force One landed, and the radar was turned off, three round objects were seen in the sky. One landed about 200 feet in front of Air Force One, another hovered over the area as though keeping watch, and a third one disappeared from visibility.
A man, presumed to be Eisenhower, descended the steps of Air Force One.
He was seen shaking hands with a being at the door of the saucer, then entering the unusual saucer-shaped aircraft. Ike was in the saucer for about 45 minutes.
When he left, he was not wearing a hat and was clearly visible to many observers. All witnesses recognized him as President Eisenhower.
Respected author and former pentagon consultant, Timothy Good, came forward in 2012 to talk about Ike’s meetings with ETs. Good discussed the purpose of those meetings. The upshot is that these particular extraterrestrials, like many others ETs, apparently wanted peace. They were trying to negotiate some sort of positive settlement for Earth’s problems. Evidence indicates that they wanted the U.S. To Discontinue Testing Nuclear Weapons. At first, they apparently wanted the public to be told the truth about their existence. In the final treaty, they seemingly had changed their mind and wanted to remain secret.
Ultimately, Eisenhower Signed A Treaty with an alien race called Alien Grays. The terms of the Treaty are reported to have been:
We would not be involved in their affairs and they would not become involved in ours
They would help us with developing our technology
They would not make a treaty with any other nation on Earth
They could abduct humans for various experiments, but had to provide names of all those they abducted to Earth’s Majestic 12 committee
The public would not be informed about the existence of ETs.
UFO LANDINGS AT HOLLOMAN AFB
In 1964, Three UFOs Flew Into The Air Space At Holloman AFB. They were tracked on radar and actually Captured On Film. One seemed to wobble and eventually landed at the AFB. Three humanoids with blue-gray complexions, dressed in tight-fitting flight suits, were met by the Air Force base commander and four other officers. The aliens stayed for several days and their aircraft was purportedly repaired. What was discussed in the meetings is still a mystery. It is also still a mystery as to why so many people could have been involved in the meetings and, to date, so few people have broken their silence.
Through the years, there have been more reports of UFO landings at Holloman AFB. Documentaries have mentioned Holloman AFB as the site of alien landings. A Documentary Narrated By The Legendary Rod Serling, “UFO’s: Past, Present and Future,” was produced in 1974. It has a segment on UFO landings at Holloman AFB and the 1955 meeting with Eisenhower. The documentary was nominated for a Golden Globe award as the best documentary of the year. A later documentary, released in 1976, “UFOS: It Has Begun,” also referenced Holloman AFB and the landings that have occurred there.
IS THIS ONE OF MANY ALIEN GOVERNMENT COVER-UPS?
There may have been a time when alien cover-ups were beneficial for the safety of the country and the planet, but is it still necessary in modern times? There is a Strong Consensus among officials that alien evidence and cover-up is widespread. Will the government ever share with the public all the documents concerning ETs visiting the Earth and making treaties with our government? Why does the government still believe alien visits need to be covered-up? Learn more about Alien Visitors To Earth and subsequent Government Cover-Ups.
My first reaction was that that must be fake. Somebody just composed some sounds effects, and is making fun of astronomy. I didn't succeed in finding any debunking for that though, from the internet, yet. Then I found this NASA site:
Some spacecraft have instruments capable of capturing radio emissions. When scientists convert these to sound waves, the results are eerie to hear. In time for Halloween, we've put together a compilation of elusive "sounds" of howling planets and whistling helium that is sure to make your skin crawl.
Oh... time to start believing? But when I listened to the sounds from the NASA site, actually they didn't sound the same as the sounds in the youtube... So I'm left slightly confused and unsure.
Countless Sci-Fi fans vividly remember the famous scene in Star Wars in which the Death Star obliterates the planet Alderaan.
Mirroring many late night caffeine-fueled arguments among Sci-Fi fans, a University of Leicester researcher asks the question:
Could a small moon-sized battle station generate enough energy to destroy an Earth-sized planet?
A paper by David Boulderston (University of Leicester) sets out to answer that very question. First, for the uninitiated, just what the heck is a Death Star?
According to Star Wars lore, the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, or Death Star, is a moon-sized battle station designed to spread fear throughout the galaxy. The image above shows the Death Star as it appeared in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977). The Death Star’s main weapon is depicted as a superlaser capable of destroying planets with a single blast.
Boulderston claims that it is possible to estimate how much energy the Death Star would need in order to destroy a planet with its superlaser. There are a number of assumptions made, however, in order to come up with the energy requirement.
For starters, Boulderston assumed that Alderaan did not have any sort of planetary “deflector” shield. A second assumption is that the planet is a solid body of uniform density – essentially ignoring the complex interior of planets, due to lack of information on Alderaan itself. Using the idealized sphere model based on Earth’s mass and diameter, it was possible to determine the gravitational binding energy of Alderaan, using a simple equation of:
U= 3GMp2 —— 5Rp
Where G is the Gravitational Constant (6.673×10-11), Mp is planet mass, and Rp is the planet’s radius. Using Earth’s mass and radius, the required energy comes out to 2.25 x 1032 Joules. Using Jupiter’s data, the energy required goes up to 2 x 1036 Joules.
Boulderston asserts that (according to Star Wars lore) the Death Star is powered by a ‘hypermatter’ reactor, possessing the energy output of several main-sequence stars. Given that the power output of our Sun is about 3 x 1026 Joules per second, it’s a reasonable assumption the Death Star’s reactor could power the superlaser.
Despite using a simplified model of a planet, Boulderstone states the simplified model is reasonable to use since the Death Star’s main power reactor has the energy output equal to several main-sequence stars. Even if Earth’s exact composition were used in the equation above, the required energy to destroy a planet would only be affected by a few orders of magnitude – well within the Death Star’s power budget.
Boulderstone reiterated that the energy required to destroy a Jupiter-sized planet would put considerable strain on the Death Star. To destroy a planet like Jupiter, all power from essential systems and life support (no re-routing from the auxiliary EPS conduits – that’s a Star Trek hack!) would be required, which is not necessarily possible.
Boulderstone’s conclusion is that the Death Star could indeed destroy Earth-like planets, given its main power source. While the Death Star could destroy an Earth-sized planet, a Jupiter-sized planet would be a tough challenge, and the Galactic Empire would need to resort to using a Suncrusher to destroy stars.
If you’d like to read Boulderstone’s paper, you can access it at:
Flying Over Planet Earth Image Credit: NASA; Acknowledgement: Infinity Imagined
Explanation:
Have you ever dreamed of flying high above the Earth? Astronauts visiting theInternational Space Stationdo this every day, circling our restless planet twice every three hours. A dramatic example of their view was compiled in theabove time-lapse videofrom images taken earlier this month. As the ISS speeds into thenighttimehalf of the globe, familiar constellations of stars remain visible above. An aerosol haze of Earth's thin atmosphereis visible on the horizon as an thin multi-colored ring. Manywonderswhiz by below, including vast banks of white clouds, large stretches of deep blue sea, land lit up by the lights of big cities and small towns, and storm clouds flashing withlightning. The videostartsoverthe northern Pacific Ocean and then passes from western North Americato western South America, ending nearAntarcticaas daylight finally approaches.
A mosaic of infrared images from NASA’s Cassini orbiter reveals some of Titan’s variegated surface, which is obscured in visible light by the moon’s hazy atmosphere. Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech and University of Arizona
Saturn’s strange moonTitanhides many of its secrets behind layers and layers of thick haze, but scientists have now peered through the haze in a new way—and spotted a massive stretch of water ice to boot.
That ice block stretches across nearly half of Titan’s girth. The feature was a surprise companion to the patches of water ice scientists expected to find, and they aren’t positive precisely what sort of geologic feature it might indicate. The research is based on data gathered by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which spent 13 years studying the Saturn system and made more than 100 flybys of the massive moon before self-destructing in September 2017.
“It’s a good example of how we’re doing really well at continuing to mine these amazing Cassini data for new results,” Jani Radebaugh, a planetary scientist at Brigham Young University in Utah who wasn’t involved in the new research, told Space.com. “We’re far from being finished with understanding Titan to the degree we can with Cassini.”
Scientists want to understand Titan because its features provide an eerie twist on the planet we know and love so well. The moon has a thick, nitrogen-rich atmosphere, and liquids rain down onto its surface to fill lakes and seas. But those liquids are organic compounds falling onto a surface made, in part, of water ice. It’s weird. It’s also a struggle to study, since all those weird things get in the way of each other.
“What we’re curious about is, beyond that global gentle snowfall of organics, what’s happening?" Radebaugh said. “It can be really hard to see through that layer to be able to see what’s going on."
That’s where the technique used in the new paper comes in. The new research uses a statistical approach called principal component analysis, which lets the scientists look past the most dominant features in the data—like the haze—and pick up on much smaller signatures that otherwise get missed—like water ice. In the new study, the scientists applied the technique only to the swath of Titan between 30 degrees north and south latitude.
“The idea was to say ‘Let’s try to get a global sense of what the distribution of ice is on the surface compared to the amount of organics on the surface,’” lead author Caitlin Griffith, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, told Space.com. “We needed a method for measuring these very, very weak features and try to pull out information from these features.”
Principal component analysis allowed Griffith and her colleagues do precisely that. “We’re looking for very subtle features that are hidden behind bigger features,” Griffith said. “That works like a charm actually, so that allowed us to get very detailed information on these very weak features"—like where water ice was visible at the surface.
Some of the regions where the team found water ice were what scientists expected—around what they believe is a large cryovolcano that once erupted liquid water across Titan’s surface and around impact craters where meteorites dug into the moon’s surface. But no one expected the massive belt of water ice—3,900 miles (6,300 kilometers) long—that also turned up in the same analysis.
“There’s really nothing that tells us that it should be made of water ice, even just as you look at the landscape,” Radebaugh said. “There’s nothing that really says this is different from everything else.”
Griffith said she isn’t sure yet what the massive line of ice, which she compares to a scar, represents—it will take more research to pin down what left the ice uncovered on the surface of Titan. “It’s a big feature that tells us something about the way that Titan was in the past, but we don’t know really what it is,” she said. “I think right now it’s basically telling us that it’s complicated, the surface is fairly complicated.”
Radebaugh said that from her perspective outside of the team, it seems like the feature could be the result of a massive faulting—cracking—event that hefted a stretch of water-ice bedrock upward and left it uncovered. If that turns out to be the case, the feature could offer a window into a layer of Titan that has not yet been in the spotlight.
“Tectonism on Titan in some ways has taken a little bit of a back seat just because we see all of these surface processes—the fluid flow, the erosion, the wind deposits, and all of those kinds of things,” Radebaugh said. “These surface processes, those things are sort of in your face.”
But just because something is hidden doesn’t mean it deserves to remain that way, she added. “We need to remember that there’s a very interesting, a possibly active, lithosphere beneath that as well.”
The research is described in a paper published today (April 29) in the journal Nature Astronomy.
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The space rock that hit the Moon at 61,000 kilometres an hour
The space rock that hit the Moon at 61,000 kilometres an hour
Observers watching January’s total eclipse of the Moon saw a rare event, a short-lived flash as a meteorite hit the lunar surface. Spanish astronomers now think the space rock collided with the Moon at 61,000 kilometres an hour, excavating a crater 10 to 15 metres across. Prof. Jose Maria Madiedo of theUniversity of Huelva, and Dr Jose L. Ortiz of theInstitute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, publish their results in a new paper inMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Total lunar eclipses take place when the Moon moves completely into the shadow of the Earth. The Moon takes on a red colour – the result of scattered sunlight refracted through the Earth’s atmosphere - but is much darker than normal. These spectacular events are regularly observed by astronomers and the wider public alike.
The most recent lunar eclipse took place on 21 January 2019, with observers in North and South America and western Europe enjoying the best view. At 0441 GMT, just after the total phase of the eclipse began, a flash was seen on the lunar surface. Widespread reports from amateur astronomers indicated the flash – attributed to a meteorite impact - was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.
Madiedo and Ortiz operate the Moon Impacts Detection and Analysis System (MIDAS), using eight telescopes in south of Spain to monitor the lunar surface. Video footage from MIDAS recorded the moment of impact.
The impact flash lasted 0.28 seconds and is the first ever filmed during a lunar eclipse, despite a number of earlier attempts.
“Something inside of me told me that this time would be the time”, said Madiedo, who was impressed when he observed the event, as it was brighter than most of the events regularly detected by the survey.
Unlike the Earth, the Moon has no atmosphere to protect it and so even small rocks can hit its surface. Since these impacts take place at huge speeds, the rocks are instantaneously vaporised at the impact site, producing an expanding plume of debris whose glow can be detected from our planet as short-duration flashes.
MIDAS telescopes observed the impact flash at multiple wavelengths (different colours of light), improving the analysis of the event. Madiedo and Ortiz conclude that the incoming rock had a mass of 45kg, measured 30 to 60 centimetres across, and hit the surface at 61,000 kilometres an hour. The impact site is close to the crater Lagrange H, near the west-south-west portion of the lunar limb.
The two scientists assess the impact energy as equivalent to 1.5 tonnes of TNT, enough to create a crater up to 15 metres across, or about the size of two double decker buses side by side. The debris ejected is estimated to have reached a peak temperature of 5400 degrees Celsius, roughly the same as the surface of the Sun.
Madiedo comments: “It would be impossible to reproduce these high-speed collisions in a lab on Earth. Observing flashes is a great way to test our ideas on exactly what happens when a meteorite collides with the Moon.”
The team plan to continue monitoring meteorite impacts on the lunar surface, not least to understand the risk they present to astronauts, set to return to the Moon in the next decade.
Media contacts
Dr Robert Massey Royal Astronomical Society Tel: +44 (0)20 7292 3979 Mob: +44 (0)7802 877699 press@ras.ac.uk
Science contacts
Prof. Jose M. Madiedo University of Huelva Spain Tel: +34-959219991 Mob: +34-606858001 madiedo@cica.es
Images and videos
The flash from the impact of the meteorite on the eclipsed Moon, seen as the dot at top left (indicated by the arrow), as recorded by two of the telescopes operating in the framework of the MIDAS Survey from Sevilla (Spain) on 2019 January 21.
The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS, www.ras.ac.uk), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. The RAS organizes scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognizes outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 4,000 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.
The RAS accepts papers for its journals based on the principle of peer review, in which fellow experts on the editorial boards accept the paper as worth considering. The Society issues press releases based on a similar principle, but the organisations and scientists concerned have overall responsibility for their content.
More than a decade has passed since we joined forces to try and find out if there was any reality to a claim that highly accurate units of length had been in used during the British Neolithic. We found that these supposedly primitive people were using a highly developed science that connected them to the rhythms of the Earth.
But our biggest personal challenge has been to face up to the consequences of our own findings because they have brought us to the point where we have found compelling evidence that our planet and its environment has been carefully designed for us. Stranger still, there appears to be a message built into the very fabric of the solar system itself.
This was not a finding that we had looked for or even care for. We are very pragmatic people working in an area of ancient research that is specialised and very sober.
In early 2009 we decided to revisit all of our findings that had resulted in three joint books plus one still in draft manuscript form (now published). We were troubled because despite one of us being an agnostic and an atheist, we could not escape the conclusion we were looking at a message from what we called the UCA (Unknown Creative Agency) that had designed our solar system and all life on Earth.
Then in late November 2009 we were contacted by David Cumming, an expert in AI (artificial intelligence) who had studied our evidence in great detail and independently come to the same conclusion. He claimed that it formed an equation with a very clear message from the creator. The equation and the mathematics of our discoveries is discussed later in this article.
The Origin of the Megalithic Yard (MY)
A BASIC PENDULUM IS A VERY ACCURATE TOOL TO MEASURE TIME.
The starting point of our joint research was simply to consider whether Alexander Thom had been right or wrong in his identification of a prehistoric unit he called the Megalithic Yard (MY). He was a professor of engineering at Oxford University who surveyed hundreds of Megalithic sites over the course of half a century to 1985. Thom concluded the planners and builders must have been highly skilled engineers. He deduced the builders had all been working to a common set of units based on the Megalithic Yard that was 2.722 +/- 0.002 feet (829.7 +/- 0.5 mm). Thom was viewed as an unwelcome outsider by nearly all archaeologists.
Our starting hypothesis was that if the Megalithic Yard were real, then it is highly probable that its apparent accuracy can best be explained as being derived from nature. If we could identify a natural origin, then Thom was probably right.
It did not take too long for us to realise there is only one aspect of nature that delivers up a near perfect means of creating measures – the revolving of the Earth on its axis. This provides the potential for creating a unit of time that can then be used to make units of length, weight and capacity – and potentially everything else from frequency to temperature.
The most obvious way to observe the turning of the Earth is to watch the stars, which appear to pass overhead once for each rotation. They also move across the sky in an annual rotation due to the Earth’s orbit of the Sun. Megalithic astronomers could not help but notice there where 366 of the daily star movements to one annual one.
We know that ancient peoples from across time liked to create patterns where the same values work upwards and downwards. And we had good reason to believe that early stargazers had used a 366 day calendar and a 366 degree circle. These astronomers knew there are 366 star rises (any star such as Sirius) over one circle of the Sun, so it was logical to divide the horizon into 366 parts to measure time in 1/366th part of a day.
They measured time in the same way that all clocks did until recent times – with a pendulum. A hand-held ball of clay on a string is a perfect instrument. When stationary it is a plumb line to gauge verticals and when swinging its beats measure time with great accuracy. The only factors that have any significant effect on the beat are the length of the pendulum from fulcrum to the centreline of the weight and the mass of the Earth (gravity). The energy put into the swing by the user has no effect – if the swing is made more vigorous it just swings faster in a wider arc but the rate of beat remains exactly the same.
Our first and most obvious assumption was that Megalithic people had divided the horizon up into 366 equal parts and then used a pendulum length that beat 366 times.
A FRAME 1/366TH OF THE HORIZON ANGLED TO TIME A STAR.
We found that a pendulum that beat 366 times during one 366th of the Earth’s turn was, much to our joy and amazement, half a Megalithic Yard in length! A circle scribed by such a pendulum would have a diameter of one Megalithic Yard. Archie Roy, emeritus professor of astronomy at Glasgow University (and a friend of the late Alexander Thom) joined us to give a public demonstration of how the Megalithic Yard is a product of measured observational astronomy.
We later refined the timing method, having realised that the Megalithic astronomers had improved their own accuracy by using the movement of the planet Venus at certain times rather than a star. Gordon Freeman, a distinguished professor of chemical physics and a much-published amateur archaeologist specialising in the Megalithic structures, was impressed with this saying; “Tying the MY to Venus path arcsecond is a major discovery. I’m an admirer of Thom, but was neutral about the MY. Now I’m a convert.”
Alexander Thom had been right all along because the chances of this technique producing a perfect fit for his unit could not be a coincidence. But there was more – much more to this system. Given that the builders of these Megalithic sites some 5,000 years ago used a 366 degree circle caused us to look at the Earth itself. Taking the polar circumference as the textbook 40,000,000 metres, we turned it into Megalithic units and found this:
Earth’s polar circumference = 40,000,000 metres
1 Megalithic degree (1/366th) = 109290 metres
1 Megalithic minute of arc (1/60th) = 1822 metres
1 Megalithic second of arc (1/6th) = 303.6 metres
Now, 303.6 metres for a second of arc may look a little boring but it is exactly 366 Megalithic Yards!
The Megalithic second of arc appears to have been adopted later by the Minoan culture of Create some 4,000 years ago. The palaces of Crete were carefully surveyed by Canadian archaeologist J.W. Graham who identified a standard unit he called “the Minoan foot” of 30.36cm. It follows that 1,000 of these feet make precisely one Megalithic second of arc.
Even earlier, the ancient Egyptian culture had adopted units driven by the same thinking. They took the Megalithic Yard and made it the circumference of a circle. The diameter of that circle was called a royal cubit and the hypotenuse of a square from that diameter was called a remen.
Artefact Based Evidence
When we wrote Civilization One, we stated that the people who created the Megalithic Yard must have built very large circles and divided the circumference into 366 parts to be sure they were viewing 1/366th part of the night sky. We suggested they may well have understood a quick method to do this by making a circle with a diameter 233 units (any length would do if they didn’t already have a Megalithic Yard). They then knew they would have a circle of 732 units – which is twice 366, so they could take every other pole on the circumference. This is a 99.999% accurate means of using Pi in a practical manner. For all engineering purposes, this means is perfect.
THE THORNBOROUGH HENGES, A PERFECT COPY OF THE STARS OF ORION’S BELT. A TO B IS 366 MEGALITHIC RODS, B TO C IS 360 MEGALITHIC RODS AND THE TRUE NORTH/SOUTH LATITUDINAL DISTANCE (BLACK LINE) IS 3 MEGALITHIC SECONDS OF ARC.
Several years later we found that structures even older than Megalithic monuments demonstrated the use of the 233/732 circles – exactly as we had predicted. These are henges – large circular mounds such as the group near Thornborough in North Yorkshire, England. They were built around 3500 BCE, well before the Megalithic builders began their stonework phase. What is more, they were using the Megalithic Yard. At Thornborough there are three interlinked henges that are 233 MY across and 732 MY around their outer perimeter. These structures are measurable with units and ratios being 366 Megalithic Rods between the centres of the first two and 360 between the second. The trio, which are also exactly 3 Megalithic seconds of arc apart by latitude, have also been identified as being laid out as a copy of the stars of Orion’s Belt – exactly like the Giza pyramids. The difference is that these are a thousand years older. We explain in our book Before the Pyramids how Khufu’s pyramid builders came to this location in England to get instructions on how to plan this star pattern on the ground!
Weights and Measures
Having established that the people of the British Neolithic had units of lengths and time, we wondered if they had other units such as capacity and weight. We knew (or so we thought) that the Metric system was devised by the French in the late 18th century when they used a pendulum that beat at the rate of one second to create a unit they called the metre (meaning to beat out time). They later made a very small adjustment so their metre was one 10,000,000th of the distance from the equator to the north pole. To create a unit of capacity they took a 1/10th part of the metre (10cm) and made a cube. Filled with distilled water, this cube’s capacity was called a litre and its weight was designated a kilogram.
We applied the same logic to the Megalithic Yard, (which has 40 Megalithic Inches). We calculated what a 4 Megalithic Inch cube would contain. The answer is one pint – to an accuracy of one part in 5,000 as defined by the British government in 1601. And when carefully filled with any unpolished grain, such as barley, it weighed just one Imperial pound.
This was odd in the extreme but it appears that (unknown to history) Imperial units were indeed based on cubes because by doubling the sides of the cube to 8 Megalithic Inches holds one Imperial gallon and doubling again produced a unit equivalent to a bushel, which was used as a dry weight until recent times.
Next, we found some truly bizarre connections. We thought for thoroughness that we ought to consider the volumes of spheres with Megalithic dimensions in addition to the cubes: a 6 Megalithic Inch sphere held a litre and a 1.5 MY wide sphere of water weighs a metric tonne. The level of accuracy was not spot on, but at a level of 99% we were surprised to put it mildly.
We are used to modern measurements that are ad hoc, but the 366 system works in depth. Take just two examples:
1. Earth mass
One Megalithic degree (366th) slice of the Earth = 360 x 1020 pounds
One Megalithic minute slice of the Earth = 6 x 1020 pounds
One Megalithic second slice of the Earth = 1020 pounds
2. Temperature (hypothetical scale)
Water freezes @ 0 degrees
Water boils @ 366 degrees
Absolute zero @ – 1,000 degrees
The Jefferson Paradox
Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, was an amazing polymath. He set out to create a new system of units which were never adopted. He started by looking at what means nature provided for producing a repeatable unit and, like us, he quickly identified the spinning of the Earth and he used a pendulum that beat at the rate of once per second as his starting point.
Thomas Jefferson had unknowingly connected back into the system from prehistory. The following is true:
1,000 Jefferson Feet = 360 Megalithic Yards
366 Jefferson Furlongs = 1 Megalithic degree of arc of the Earth
3662 Jefferson Furlongs = The exact circumference of the Earth
This is a case-winning piece of evidence!
The Sun and the Moon
It is strange that the disc of the Moon should appear to be exactly the same size as the Sun. The Moon is obviously tiny compared to the Sun, and is much closer to Earth, but they still appear as equal discs. To be precise, the Moon is 400 times smaller than the Sun but is 400 times closer to the Earth. Strange!
The odds against this happening at all are huge – but how bizarre that both values are the same, round number. Isaac Asimov, the respected scientist and science-fiction guru, described this perfect visual alignment as being, “the most unlikely coincidence imaginable.”
This perfect fit only works at this point in time because it was very different in the distant past and it will change again.
The strangeness of the Moon continues because it is either hollow or made up of extremely low density material. It centres of mass are just below its surface. Odd!
Applying the Megalithic 366 system of geometry and MYs to the Moon and the Sun produces an astonishing result:
One Megalithic second on Moon = 100 Megalithic Yards
One Megalithic second on Sun = 40,000 Megalithic Yards
It is almost as though we are looking at the blueprint of the solar system.
The Rhythm of the Solar System
Looking closely at every aspect, the following values also stand out:
366 The number of complete rotations of the Earth in a year The number of MY in a Megalithic second of arc on the Earth The percentage size of the Earth compared to the Moon
100 The number of MY in a lunar Megalithic second of arc The number of times the Earth rotates faster than the Moon
400 The Sun is larger than the Moon The number of kilometres the Moon turns on its axis in a day The number of times the Moon is closer to the Earth than the Sun
10,000 The number of times faster that light travels in a vacuum compared to Earth’s speed of orbit around the Sun The number of Earth turns in an orbit of the Sun x the number of Earth turns in one lunar orbit of the Earth
40,000 The number of kilometres to Earth’s polar circumference The number of MY in a solar second of arc
1,000,000 The number of times faster that light travels in a vacuum compared to the Moon’s speed of orbit around the Earth
109.25 The number of Earth diameters to the Sun’s The number of solar diameters across the maximum diameter of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun
27.322 The number times the Earth turns in one turn of the Moon The percentage size of the Moon to the Earth
The Message
Are we looking at ‘God’s blueprint’? These integer numbers could not possible fall out of the Earth – Moon – Sun relationship by accident when every other solar system body appears to have no rules whatsoever.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), originally set up by NASA, spends a vast amount of energy searching for radio messages from a non-human origin based on the belief that we are probably not alone. Professor Christopher Rose and Dr. Gregory Wright have suggested:
“Rather than transmitting radio messages, extraterrestrial civilisations would find it far more efficient to send us a ‘message in a bottle’, some kind of physical message inscribed on matter. And it could be waiting for us in our own backyard.”
Could the Moon have been constructed as a message by integrating ratios and values of both the Sun and the Moon?
Could humans have been ‘seeded’ on a planet that would sustain us? The Moon is an ‘incubator’ to nurture life. No Moon would mean no humans.
Which brings us to David Cumming’s idea that all of this can be expressed as an ‘equation’ that formally identifies there is a message.
The Equation
The equation describes a relationship between the hydrogen fine transition line, the ratio between the circumference and diameter of a circle, and the speed of light in a vacuum.
The top line of the equation, Hlf.π is the hydrogen line – a universal value used as the search frequency by SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence).
Omega is the number 0.0123456789 – all the characters of the base 10 number system. Standard physics says that the frequency of a wave, multiplied by the wavelength of that wave, is equal to the speed of the wave. In the case of the equation, when you divide out π/Ω, the answer must be equal to the wavelength of the hydrogen line, because the hydrogen line frequency multiplied by the hydrogen line wavelength must equal the speed of light.
When we look at the overall equation, we know in advance that the equation will give the value for the speed of light very accurately because what we’re doing is multiplying the frequency of the hydrogen line by the wavelength of the hydrogen line. But remember, we’ve divided π (3.141592653) by Ω (0.0123456790) to get a result for the hydrogen line wavelength expressed in MYs, so the fact that we get a highly accurate answer appears to be nothing short of a miracle.
The speed of light calculated using the equation is 1420,405,751 cycles per sec (frequency [Hz]) multiplied by 0.2544690072 MY (wavelength). This works out at 361,449,241.3 MY per second – the speed of light in Stone Age units!
Amongst the many surprises of the last few years, there is one we came across in early 2009 that stumped us. As we explain in Before the Pyramids, there can be no doubt that the Founding Fathers of the USA secretly designed Washington DC using Megalithic seconds of arc for every detail of the City plan. It is still happening. The Pentagon is a perfect and inspirational exposition of Stone Age knowledge – using the 366 system with as much perfection as Stonehenge or Thornborough.
And this was driven by the 33rd degree of the Ancient Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. Presidents and people unknown have been driven to build a city using God’s own values – a city fit for God’s great purpose.
Do the powers that be in the USA already understand this message? Are they preparing to respond? Is there a new dawn ahead?
Illustrations courtesy of the authors. Much more on the above is available in Christopher Knight and Alan Butler’s book Before the Pyramids: Cracking Archaeology’s Greatest Mystery (Watkins, 2009), available from all good bookstores.
Technologisch voorbijgestreefd of buitenaardse objecten? We voelen ons er niet gemakkelijk bij, maar we moeten kijken naar de feiten
Technologisch voorbijgestreefd of buitenaardse objecten? We voelen ons er niet gemakkelijk bij, maar we moeten kijken naar de feiten
Tot voor kort werden piloten en militairen die onverklaarbare objecten in het luchtruim zagen voor gek verklaard door de autoriteiten. Daar is nu verandering in gekomen, aangezien de Amerikaanse marine heeft aangekondigd UFO-meldingen serieus te gaan onderzoeken.
Volgens Christopher Mellon, een voormalige hoge functionaris van het Pentagon, is deze ommekeer het gevolg van de bemoeienis van beleidsmakers die zich hierin zijn gaan verdiepen.
Er worden zo ontzettend veel UFO’s waargenomen in het luchtruim, dat de autoriteiten er niet langer omheen kunnen.
Schadelijk
Mellon kan niet precies zeggen hoeveel UFO’s er worden waargenomen, maar hij weet wel dat piloten in ongeveer negen van de 10 gevallen hun mond houden en geen melding maken van de waarneming.
Dat de meeste piloten en militairen, getrainde waarnemers, er niet over praten komt volgens Mellon omdat het schadelijk is voor hun carrière.
“Deze individuen werden vaak belachelijk gemaakt,” zei hij tegen Fox News.
Buitenaardse beschaving
Legerpiloten hebben melding gemaakt van objecten die zich veel sneller voortbewogen dan hun eigen straaljager.
Mellon noemt drie verschillende theorieën: de Verenigde Staten zijn technologisch voorbijgestreefd door een ander land, het zijn Amerikaanse testvliegtuigen (wat volgens hem onwaarschijnlijk is), of ze zijn afkomstig van een buitenaardse beschaving.
Bij geen van deze drie theorieën voelen we ons gemakkelijk, maar we moeten naar de feiten kijken, benadrukte Mellon.
Niet alleen NASA doet aan deze simulatie mee, ook het alom bekende FEMA en om een generale repetitie te houden voor wanneer deze ramp werkelijk zal plaatsvinden. Ook andere internationale partners zoals de European Space Agency (ESA) zullen aan deze simulatie deelnemen.
De gevolgen op aarde van een inslag door een asteroïde kunnen heel verschillend zijn, afhankelijk van waar deze zal neerkomen. Feit is dat wij in onze moderne tijd nog nooit een dergelijke ramp hebben meegemaakt, dus bij die oefening zullen er heel veel onbekende factoren meespelen. Desondanks gaat men deze oefening houden om de belangrijkste aspecten van een dergelijke ramp te identificeren.
Het scenario dat gebruikt zal worden is dat op 26 maart er een asteroïde is ontdekt die de codenaam 2019 PDC krijgt. In eerste instantie wordt dan gesteld dat er een kans is van 1 op 50.000 dat deze de aarde zal raken, maar al snel wordt dit bijgesteld naar een kans van 1 op 100.
Zelfs de mainstream wetenschap begint eindelijk wakker te worden en zegt dat wij ons in een periode bevinden van een ongekende toename van het aantal asteroïden vergeleken met eenhele lange periode van relatieve rust op dat gebied die de aarde heeft meegemaakt.
Dit komt ook aardig overeen met het aantal waargenomen vuurbollen in de lucht. In de volgende grafiek die gaat tot en met maart dit jaar zie je de toch wel een spectaculaire toename.
Het aantal vuurbollen in het eerste kwartaal is nu al gelijk aan het totale aantal vuurbollen in geheel 2011.
Men blijft erop hameren dat de kans dat de aarde zal worden geraakt door een asteroïde extreem klein is, maar waarom dan die uitgebreide (internationale) simulaties houden?
Als een kans extreem klein is, dan lijkt het ons dat je wel betere dingen kunt verzinnen om jezelf bezig te houden, of wordt ons weer eens niet het gehele verhaal vertelt?
Is alles wat er nu gebeurt een voorbereiding op de inslag die gaat komen in 2032? Een inslag die door de tot nu toe enige betrouwbare tijdreiziger is voorspeld, zoals we schreven in een eerder artikel.
Veel van de kleinere asteroïden in de ruimte worden niet opgemerkt door de mensheid. Een aantal grotere zijn wel bekend en één daarvan passeert vandaag de aarde.
Florence is de naam van de reuzenasteroïde die vrijdag langs onze planeet zal scheren. Het gaat om de grootste asteroïde die, zover bekend, ooit langs de aarde passeerde. Florence heeft een diameter van bijna vijf kilometer en mocht de asteroïde op aarde inslaan, zou dat het einde betekenen van het leven zoals we het kennen. Florence zal op 7 miljoen kilometer van onze planeet voorbijrazen, ongeveer 18 keer de afstand tussen de aarde en de maan.
Het is van 1890 geleden dat Florence ons zo dicht naderde en de volgende scheervlucht komt er pas in het jaar 2500. Wetenschappers krijgen vrijdag dus een unieke kans op de asteroïde van dichtbij te bestuderen met radars.
Volgens het Amerikaanse ruimteagentschap NASA is het de eerste keer dat een asteroïde van dergelijke omvang zo dicht bij de aarde komt sinds NASA asteroïden begon te observeren.
"Hoewel heel wat asteroïdes dichter bij de aarde zijn gepasseerd, waren die allemaal kleiner", zegt Paul Chodas, manager van het NASA-centrum voor de studie van asteroïden.
Echter, de dag dat één van de ons bekende asteroïden op aarde zal knallen, is al bekend.
In oktober 2013 wordt er in de wereldmedia melding gemaakt van het feit dat er een nieuwe asteroïde is ontdekt en dat de kans groot is dat deze in 2032 de aarde zal raken.
Het volgende is onder andere wat wij schreven in 2013:
An asteroid a third larger than the Shard could hit earth in 2032
GETTY
The rock, described as 2013 TV135, measuring an incredible 1345 feet
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Nasa said the threat of the asteroid hitting earth was only one in 63,000
Natuurlijk weet je dat wanneer iets dergelijks gebeurt NASA onmiddellijk zal ingrijpen en verklaren dat al die astronomen die dat hadden berekend het fout hadden en dat zij hebben gecalculeerd dat deze asteroïde niet of nauwelijks een gevaar zal opleveren.
Normaal gesproken is het dan een beetje einde verhaal, want NASA is voor de meeste mensen net de bijbel of de koran, wat zei zeggen, is waar.
Echter, er is nog een naar onze mening overtuigend argument om aan te nemen dat deze asteroïde wellicht de aarde wel degelijk zal raken in 2032.
En dat argument is afkomstig van een weblog dat in 2005 werd geschreven door een man die zei dat hij uit de toekomst kwam en op aarde was met een bepaalde missie en dat hij vanaf dat moment gerekend over enkele weken weer zou vertrekken naar waar hij vandaan kwam.
Al enkele jaren lang schrijven wij over een tijdreiziger uit het jaar 2063 die naar onze aarde is gekomen in het jaar 2005 op een speciale missie.
Die missie duurde niet zo gek lang en tijdens zijn verblijf in onze tijd schreef deze tijdreiziger onder de naam Scott op een blog waar hij diverse dingen onthulde betreffende onze toekomst.
Mijn codenaam is Qronos1 en mijn werkelijke naam is Scott. De eenheid waartoe ik behoor bestaat uit vier mensen die hier nu in deze tijd zijn. Wij zijn hier op een geheime missie. Er zijn in deze periode ook andere tijdreizigers en ongetwijfeld zullen er meer volgen in de toekomst. De wereld die ik ongeveer een jaar geleden verliet is anders en toch hetzelfde. De vooruitgang in tijdreizen heeft het mogelijk gemaakt dat we nu precies daar naartoe reizen waar we willen.
Er worden op dat blog berichten geplaatst in de periode van 10 september 2005 tot en met 21 september 2005. Daarna stopt het.
Het eerste wat men dan al snel roept is: “Ja, maar dat blog is net gemaakt en ze hebben de data veranderd om het oud te doen lijken”. Dit is echter niet het geval. Want al in de jaren 2006, 2007 etc. werd er op diverse fora al over dit blog gediscussieerd. Voor een voorbeeld van een forum uit 2007 klik hier. Als er dus in die jaren al over werd geschreven, mogen we aannemen dat het blog daadwerkelijk in 2005 is geschreven.
Als Scott geen tijdreiziger was dan wist hij toch heel nauwkeurig te voorspellen wat er de komende jaren zou gaan gebeuren.
Zo voorspelde hij dat 2007 een heel slecht jaar zou worden, dat er in 2009 in de VS een president zou worden geïnstalleerd die niet van Amerikaanse oorsprong was en dat er in 2010 een grote olieramp zou plaatsvinden in de Golf van Mexico.
Echter, iets dat hij ook voorspelt, is het volgende:
“Yes WW3 took allot from us and the asteroid that hit the earth in 2032 also did some bad things, but we have come out off all that ok”.
Het blog waarop dit geschreven is, stamt daadwerkelijk uit 2005, ver voordat asteroïde 2013 TV135 door astronomen werd ontdekt. Astronomen die hiervan schrikken en bekendmaken dat er een kans is dat deze asteroïde de aarde kan raken in 2032, hetzelfde jaar dat dit in 2005 door Scott de tijdreiziger wordt voorspeld.
In dit geval hopen we dat NASA een keer gelijk heeft, maar gezien de vele leugens die ze in de loop der jaren hebben rondgestrooid, houden we het er vooralsnog op dat onze tijdreiziger volkomen gelijk heeft.
Ook over alles wat met buitenaardse zaken te maken heeft worden we voorgelogen.
NASA doet alsof er geen leven is op Mars en UFO’s niet bestaan, maar toch komt er binnenkort een einde aan die geheimhouding.
Het kan zijn dat dat het einde is van wat op zich een hoax is, dat de aarde inderdaad toch plat blijkt en er geen planeten en dergelijke zijn. We houden ons in dit artikel bij het algemeen aanvaardde model met planeten en een aarde als bol.
Afkomstig van een door NASA gemaakte foto verschijnt een dier dat verdacht veel lijkt op een eekhoorn of misschien een hamster.
Wat Scott zich uiteraard afvraagt is wat een eekhoorn doet op Mars? In de volgende video wordt de originele foto door hem grondig geanalyseerd en hoe je ook naar het beeld kijkt, het blijft vreemd.
Het is niet erg waarschijnlijk dat de geheime ruimtevloot een eekhoorn naar Mars heeft getransporteerd, hoewel dit uiteraard altijd een mogelijkheid blijft.
Scott heeft NASA om een verklaring gevraagd en krijgt, zoals meestal, geen antwoord.
Dat roept dan verder de vraag op of er überhaupt wel door NASA foto’s worden gemaakt op Mars, of dat dit gebeurt op Devon Island in Canada, een locatie die heel veel overeenkomsten vertoon met het Mars landschap.
De moraal van het verhaal is dat we geen woord kunnen geloven wat ons via de officiële kanalen wordt verteld.
Via Paul Harmans ontvingen we (dank!) een door hem Nederlands ondertitelde video van Richard Doland:
Ik bestudeer gedurende meer dan 25 jaar het UFO-fenomeen. Ik kan mij geen ander onderwerp voorstellen dat mij meer behulpzaam is geweest bij de verandering van hoe ik naar de wereld kijk, of naar mijzelf. Na het lezen van talloze gedeclassificeerde militaire documenten welke onbekende en mysterieuze objecten beschrijven, die buitengewone capaciteiten vertonen, en waarover de functionarissen zelf grote zorgen hebben, werd het voor mij duidelijk dat UFO’s van groot belang voor ‘s werelds nationale veiligheidselite zijn.
Het trachten tot de bodem te geraken van dit onderwerp heeft tot een eindeloze serie vragen geleid. Hoe kan zoiets voor zo’n lange tijd genegeerd worden? Waar waren de journalisten? Onze wetenschappers? Onze gekozen politici? Het is mij duidelijk geworden dat UFO’s het onderwerp van een cover-up van ongekende dimensies is geweest. Iets dat verder gaat dan ik mij ooit had kunnen voorstellen toen ik al die jaren geleden begon met de studie naar deze zaken. Daarnaast zijn er de meer fundamentele vragen.
Wat is de wetenschap achter deze objecten? Wie of wat is de verantwoordelijke intelligentie erachter? Zijn het buitenaardsen of iets anders? Wat willen ze? Is het een goed ding of iets waarover we ons zorgen moeten maken? Welkom in de fascinerende en soms ergerlijke wereld van UFO’s. Je kunt een levenlang spenderen aan het bestuderen ervan en dan nog betwijfel ik of je elk antwoord vindt dat je zoekt. Ondanks dat kan ik je verzekeren dat de reis je tijd en inspanningen meer dan waard is.
Archaeologists in Guatemala have discovered an ancient Mayan “figurine factory” that they say is the largest ever found. The workshop, called Aragón, which mass produced ceramic figurines of important political and social figures in Mayan society, was buried for over 1000 years. The site contains fragments of over 400 of the figurines and provides a glimpse into one of the world’s most mysterious and puzzling ancient civilizations. This particular region has never before had any archaeological excavations, and most of what is known is based off of the limited Spanish writing from after their conquest.
According to Science, the discovery was by chance. Brent Woodfill, an archaeologist at South Carolina’s Winthrop University was tipped off to the site by friends living in Guatemala. They were doing construction on their property in Cobán, Guatemala and accidentally smashed into a treasure trove of ancient Mayan action figures. Much of the workshop was destroyed during the construction and Woodfill was given a grant for the “emergency salvage” of the location.
Despite the damaged state of the workshop, Woodfill and colleagues were able to recover over 400 fragments of the ceramic figurines and the molds for making them. Researchers believe that these figurines served an important political and economic purpose for the Maya. it is believed that they were exchanged by leaders as a way to strengthen alliances and bolster their own reputation. they also acted as a sort of propaganda tool, publicizing important relationships between leaders and informing the public of alliances or political turmoil.
Ceramic figurines like these played an important role in Mayan politics.
Aragón was likely active between 750 C.E. to 900 C.E. This is well before archaeologists previously believed their were any large cities in the region. Intriguingly, the figurine factory appears to have survived and continued operations through 300 year collapse of the Mayan empire. That the figurine factory was active throughout this time leads researchers to believe there could be a detailed record of this collapse in the figurines that they find there.
Ancient Mayan ruins.
It’s not just a record of the collapse that researchers hope to find, either. Such a large scale and long lasting figurine workshop probably holds important clues to other mysteries of the Mayan civilization too. Archaeologists hope to use the figurines they find in conjunction with the data from the Spanish conquest to paint a more detailed picture of the Mayan empire in Guatemala: how trade routes progressed, how cities rose and fell, how ancient Mayan politics worked. With such limited knowledge of the region, this figurine factory could dramatically increase archaeologists understanding of the region.
Now, just think about what happens a thousand years from now when some future archaeologist finds a complete collection of Star Wars action figures, in their original packaging and alphabetized. What spurious conclusions will they draw from that?
Brief Article Teaches You the Ins and Outs of Ufo Sightings nd What You Should Do Today
Brief Article Teaches You the Ins and Outs of Ufo Sightings and What You Should Do Today
What Is So Fascinating About Ufo Sightings?
With the numbers of UFO sightings increasing each calendar year, it’s important that you know precisely where to report a UFO sighting and what information will be necessary to be able to report it successfully. Usually once you speak about UFO sightings, most folks feel that I mistook it for something else or they may think that it is merely a crap. UFO sightings are now able to easily be captured on video, while it’s through a telephone or video camera. During February in Minnesota, for instance, only 69 UFO sightings are reported since the start of the 21st century. By way of example, over Midlothian, various sightings are made from January to March. It’s simple to comprehend why there are a lot of UFO sightings. The most typically known UFO sighting in the USA is called the Roswell UFO sighting of 1947.
The video has become the fodder for numerous arguments and debates about the authenticity of the same. It shows three different sightings of suspected UFOs in three different parts of the world. Have a look at the pictures and videos and you decide by yourself. Some video footage implies that the objects move quickly. What earns the video footage even more credible is that there’s footage taken by different individuals in various areas of town.
Rumors, Lies and Ufo Sightings
UFOs aren’t so hampered. The UFO looks like it’s been seen by plenty of individuals. UFOs are spotted each and every day. Throughout that time period, there were two triangle UFOs sighted in the very same place. The absolute most famous alien sighting occurred in the uk Rendlesham Forrest in 1980.
How to Get Started with Ufo Sightings?
Why is everyone slightly obsessed with the notion of extraterrestrial life. There’s very little doubt that the world wide web has played a part in the development of UFO reports recently, though most can be explained by natural or human-caused phenomena. In some instances, the truth is so strange it appears impossible. Somewhere in the middle of all the controversy lies it. It is so incredible fantastic that it cannot be adequately explained or investigated in just one hub article. People, generally, do not appear to want to understand the truth about anything. There are also a number of witnesses.
Scientists have been on the lookout for about a hundred decades. Two decades afterwards the scientists publicized the results of their test that they argued revealed that the animal isn’t human. Actually, scientists and a great deal of non-believers make no fuss about expressing their scepticism in regards to extrasensory perception.
Introducing Ufo Sightings
The planet has to be in a comparatively circular orbit otherwise it will stray from the habitable zone. It must be large enough to hold an atmosphere. Some individuals feel that we’re not even alone on Earth.
NASA, FEMA, and other national and international agencies are once again gearing up for a hypothetical asteroid impact preparedness scenario.
They hope to learn the best strategies for responding to a potential strike, starting from the moment a threatening asteroid is first detected by astronomers.
Next week marks the start of the International Academy of Astronautics Planetary Defense Conference.
As part of this conference, NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office will team up with other partners to perform a “tabletop exercise” on how they’d handle the news of a (fictional) asteroid on a collision course with Earth.
NASA, FEMA, and other national and international agencies are once again gearing up for a hypothetical asteroid impact preparedness scenario.
They hope to learn the best strategies for responding to a potential strike, starting from the moment a threatening asteroid is first detected by astronomers.
Next week marks the start of the International Academy of Astronautics Planetary Defense Conference.
As part of this conference, NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office will team up with other partners to perform a “tabletop exercise” on how they’d handle the news of a (fictional) asteroid on a collision course with Earth.
Check out these Futuristic SCIFI Weapons That Actually EXIST! From amazing guns from the future like rail guns and laser guns to other futuristic sci-fi technology, this top 10 list of real scifi weapons will amaze you!
9. HEAT RAY
Developed by the U.S. military, the Active Denial System, informally known as the Heat Ray, is a non-lethal, directed-energy weapon designed for area denial, perimeter security, and crowd control. It’s called the ADS for short and works by heating the surface of targets, including human skin.
8. WEAPONIZED HYPERSONIC PLANES
Besides heat rays of the future, this might also remind you of something straight out of a science fiction movie. A ‘scramjet’ powered aircraft called the X-51A WaveRider has been successfully tested by the American military. During testing, it reached a hypersonic speed of Mach (mawk) 5.1, or 3,913 miles per hour (4,828 km/hr) – that’s over five times the speed of sound!
7. AN/SEQ-3 LASER WEAPON SYSTEM
In 2014, the US Navy deployed its first anti-drone laser for active duty in the Persian Gulf aboard the USS Ponce. Known as the An/Seq-3 Laser Weapon System, it’s intended for use against a variety of targets, from drones to small attack boats, and the commander of the USS Ponce is authorized to use it as he deems necessary.
6. ROBOT SOLDIERS
The MAARS, or Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System, is a small robot tank that was developed by QinetiQ North America. The fully-loaded system weighs 369 pounds and is equipped with sensors, weapons, and ammunition, along with a battery that can last three to 12 hours, as well as a sleep mode that lasts up to a week.
5. SELF-AIMING RIFLE
This terrifying, $17,000 piece of technology, known as the TrackingPoint XS1 scope, essentially equips sniper rifles with an automatic aiming system. Using advanced technology, the firearm tags targets; then, it factors in variables like wind speed and movement to calculate the perfect shot before firing.
4. RAILGUN
Before the railgun actually existed, it was a mythical weapon that made frequent appearances in video games and, occasionally, in movies, such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The railgun hurls metal slugs at hypersonic speeds using electromagnets and is considered the future of artillery and small arms.
3. PLASMA FORCE FIELDS
Researchers are attempting to keep up with the ever-advancing pace of weapons technology. A patent has been issued to aerospace and defense giant Boeing to develop a force field-like system that could protect military vehicles from shockwaves following explosions from missiles or IED’s, or improvised explosive devices.
2. CornerShot Rifle and Grenade Launcher
Despite the seemingly space-age nature of up-and-coming military technology, combat soldiers struggle with the ages-old problem of being able to see and fire weapons around corners. This is an especially prevalent issue when it comes to modern warfare in urban settings.
1. DIGITAL REVOLVER
Once again, the Armatix Digital Revolver resembles something out of a science fiction film, and something like it was actually featured in a James Bond movie. It’s a futuristic pistol designed with safety in mind – it’s equipped with a digital safety mechanism that can only be disabled by a special wristwatch worn by the operator, which sends an unlock signal to the gun once a password is put in and if it is within a certain distance.
Origins Explained is the place to be to find all the answers to your questions, from mysterious events and unsolved mysteries to everything there is to know about the world and its amazing animals!
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OXFORD ACADEMIC: INVISIBLE ALIENS ARE BREEDING WITH HUMANS
OXFORD ACADEMIC: INVISIBLE ALIENS ARE BREEDING WITH HUMANS
SHUTTERSTOCK/VICTOR TANGERMANN
KRISTIN HOUSER__FILED UNDER: SCI-FI VISIONS
Invisible Aliens
An Oxford lecturerthinks we share the Earth with invisible aliens — and, the outlandish idea holds, they’re trying to save our species and theirs from total destruction by breeding with us.
This strange theory is the subject of Korean instructor Young-hae Chi’s new book, which is written in Korean but roughly translates to “Alien Visitations and the End of Humanity” — and while its contents are objectively bizarre, its proximity to the highest tiers of academia could demonstrate just how desperate some are for a solution to Earth’s climate woes.
Human Hybrids
In an interview with The Oxford Student, Chi shared some of the highlights from the book — including his belief that, because these invisible extraterrestrials live among us, they have a stake in avoiding planetary destruction due to climate change.
He theorizes that the hypothetical aliens’ interbreeding with humans could be intended to create a hybrid species capable of surviving future climate conditions on Earth, or that the aliens are “producing these hybrids as a problem-solver, a future leader.”
Desperate Times
Chi doesn’t provide any examples of the “evidence” he claims supports his theory in the interview, and it’s hard to imagine the book itself contains anything terribly concrete.
Still, the fact that someone as highly educated as Chi wrote an entire book based on salvation by extraterrestrials could be a sign of how daunting our future is starting to look.
“We were gobsmacked by what we saw in this system. It was completely unexpected … It tells us a little more about that big question: ‘How did we get here?'”
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) said on April 29, 2019, that astronomers have spied a relatively modest black hole, which nonetheless features jets of fast-moving material that are wobbling or precessing so fast their change in direction can be seen in only minutes. This sort of wobble – witnessed before among black hole jets, but not on such short timescales – happens in a way that requires an effect of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. It happens because, as the black hole spins, its powerful gravity is dragging along nearby space itself.
James Miller-Jones of Australia’s International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research led researchers in this study. He and his team employed the Very Long Baseline Array, a system of 10 radio telescopes located in various U.S. states and remotely operated from Socorro, New Mexico. They studied a black hole known as V404 Cygni, which isn’t a supermassive black hole lodged in the center of a galaxy, but just an ordinary nine-solar-mass black hole, located only 8,000 light-years from Earth in our Milky Way galaxy. NRAO said in a statement:
The black hole is drawing in material from a companion star with a mass about 70 percent that of our sun. As the material streams toward the black hole, it forms a rotating disk, called an accretion disk, surrounding the black hole.
In such systems, the disk becomes denser and hotter with decreasing distance from the black hole. Either the innermost portion of the disk or the black hole itself launches jets of material outward away from the disk. The astronomers said V404 Cygni’s jet material moves as fast as 60 percent of the speed of light.
These jets are precessing or wobbling so fast, the scientists said, that Einstein’s general theory of relativity is needed to explain them. According to Einstein, massive objects like black holes distort space and time. Further, when such a massive object is spinning, its gravitational influence pulls space and time around with it, an effect called frame-dragging. NRAO said:
In V404 Cygni, the black hole’s spin axis is misaligned from the plane of its orbit with the companion star. That causes the frame-dragging effect to warp the inner part of the disk, then pull the warped portion around with it. Since the jets originate from either the inner disk or the black hole, this changes the jet orientation, producing the wobbling observed with the Very Long Baseline Array.
Miller-Jones said:
This is the only mechanism we can think of that can explain the rapid precession we see in V404 Cygni. You can think of it like the wobble of a spinning top as it slows down, only in this case, the wobble is caused by Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Artist’s concept of the inner accretion disk of black hole V404 Cygni. The entire accretion disk is about 10 million km (6.2 million miles) wide. The inner few thousand km are warped. That inner part also is puffed up by strong radiation pressure into a doughnut shape that wobbles, or precesses, like a rigid body.
Normally, astronomers will produce a single image of a system of this sort, using data collected over as much as several hours, like a long time-exposure photograph. The rapid direction changes of the jets of V404 Cygni meant these astronomers had to change their observation strategy. Team member Alex Tetarenko said:
These jets were changing so fast that in a four-hour image we saw just a blur.
To capture the jets’ rapid motion, the researchers made 103 individual images, each about 70 seconds long, then combined them to make a movie.
We were gobsmacked by what we saw in this system. It was completely unexpected. Finding this astronomical first has deepened our understanding of how black holes and galaxy formation can work. It tells us a little more about that big question: ‘How did we get here?’
He said the finding indicates that similar behavior might be found in other objects.
Artist’s concept of black hole V404 Cygni, on right. At left you see the normal star in orbit with the hole. Material from the star falls towards the black hole and spirals inwards in an accretion disk, with powerful jets being launched from the inner regions close to the black hole.
Bottom line: Jets of fast-moving material shot from the area surrounding a black hole are wobbling so fast that their change in direction can be seen in periods as short as minutes, and astronomers say it’s happening because the rotating black hole’s powerful gravitational pull is dragging nearby space itself along with it.
‘Project Blue Book’ Is Based on a True U.F.O. Story. Here It Is.
‘Project Blue Book’ Is Based on a True U.F.O. Story. Here It Is.
Aidan Gillen as the astronomer J. Allen Hynek in “Project Blue Book” on History. The series dramatizes, with some flagrant embellishment, an actual Air Force program designed to investigate and debunk U.F.O.s.
The History series predictably sensationalizes and overdramatizes case investigations and the historical figures involved, adding many story elements that simply never happened. It’s already hard enough for those trying to understand the truth about government involvement with U.F.O.s without mixing fact and fiction.
Nonetheless, melodrama aside, the real story is there:
Project Blue Book was the code name for an Air Force program set up in 1952, after numerous U.F.O. sightings during the Cold War era, to explain away or debunk as many reports as possible in order to mitigate possible panic and shield the public from a genuine national security problem: an apparently technological phenomenon that was beyond human control and was not Russian, yet represented an unfathomable potential threat.
Lights photographed in 1952 over a Coast Guard air station in Salem, Mass., part of the Blue Book archive.CreditShell R. Alpert/U.S. Coast Guard
The central character of the TV series, the prominent astronomer J. Allen Hynek, played by Aidan Gillen, was recruited as Blue Book’s scientific consultant and was indeed initially committed to explaining away flying saucers as natural phenomena or mistaken identifications. But he gradually realized that the bizarre objects were real and needed further scientific attention. (Though he never saw a supposed alien creature floating in a tank or crashed in a plane while recreating a reported U.F.O. dogfight, as depicted in the series.)
While Hynek was involved, Blue Book compiled reports of 12,618 sightings of unidentified flying objects, of which 701 remain unexplained to this day.
But what’s most important to study during that era is what occurred outside Project Blue Book, to the extent that it has been revealed. When we reported on the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which began in 2007, we offered a glimpse into a similar scenario today: military cases being investigated and filmed without the public knowing. This time, however, there was no public agency to accommodate reports of incidents, even when hundreds of witnesses were involved.
We learned through documents from the Pentagon program, and from interviews with participants, that the mystery of the elusive flying objects is still far from solved, and that not enough was being done to address that problem almost 50 years since the close of Blue Book.
The real Hynek, the Blue Book’s scientific consultant, at one of his observatories in the 1960s. Once a U.F.O. skeptic, he became a believer.
CreditNorthwestern University
Gillen as Hynek in “Project Blue Book,” which predictably sensationalizes the story.CreditEduardo Araquel/History
It all began in 1947. Lt. General Nathan Twining, the commander of Air Materiel Command, sent a secret memo on “Flying Discs” to the commanding general of the Army Air Forces at the Pentagon. Twining stated that “the phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.” The silent, disc-like objects demonstrated “extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and motion which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar.”
A new project, code-named “Sign,” based at Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) outside Dayton, Ohio, was given the mandate to collect U.F.O. reports and assess whether the phenomenon was a threat to national security. With Russia ruled out as the source, the staff wrote a top secret “Estimate of the Situation,” concluding that, based on the evidence, U.F.O.s most likely had an interplanetary origin.
According to government officials at the time, the estimate was rejected by General Hoyt Vandenberg, the Air Force chief of staff. From then on, the proponents of the off-planet hypothesis lost ground, with Vandenberg and others insisting that conventional explanations be found.
Project Sign eventually evolved into Project Blue Book, with the aim of convincing the public that flying saucers could be explained.
Yet behind the scenes, authorities grappled with something sobering: well-documented U.F.O. encounters involved multiple trained observers, radar data, photographs, marks on the ground and physical effects on airplanes.
In 1952, the office of Maj. Gen. John Samford, the Air Force director of intelligence, briefed the F.B.I., saying it was “not entirely impossible that the objects sighted may possibly be ships from another planet such as Mars,” according to government documents. Air Intelligence had largely ruled out an earthly source, the F.B.I. memo reported.
National defense concerns were mounting as well. After Air Force planes scrambled to intercept brilliant objects seen and picked up on radar over Washington in 1952, Samford called a news conference to calm the country.
Maj. Gen. Samford's 1952 statement on "flying saucers."CreditCreditUS National Archives
He announced that between 1,000 and 2,000 reports had been analyzed and that most had been explained. “However,” he conceded, a certain percentage “have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things. It is this group of observations that we now are attempting to resolve.”
He said no conclusions had been drawn, but played down any “conceivable threat” to the United States.
Later that year, however, H. Marshall Chadwell, the assistant director of scientific intelligence for the C.I.A., concluded in a memo to the C.I.A. director, Walter Bedell Smith, that “sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles.”
By 1953, authorities were concerned that communication channels were becoming dangerously clogged by hundreds of U.F.O. reports. Even false alarms could be perilous, defense agencies worried, since the Soviets might take advantage of the situation by simulating or staging a U.F.O. wave and then attack.
Documents show the C.I.A. then devised a plan for a “national policy,” as to “what should be told the public regarding the phenomenon, in order to minimize risk of panic.”
After a closed-door session with a scientific advisory panel chaired by H.P. Robertson from the California Institute of Technology, the C.I.A. issued a secret report recommending a broad educational program for all intelligence agencies, with the aim of “training and debunking.”
Training meant more public education on how to identify known objects in the sky. “The use of true cases showing first the ‘mystery’ and then the ‘explanation’ would be forceful,” the report said. Debunking “would be accomplished by mass media such as television, motion pictures, and popular articles.”
That plan involved using psychologists, advertising experts, amateur astronomers and even Disney cartoons to create propaganda to reduce public interest. And civilian U.F.O. groups should be “watched,” the report stated, because of their “great influence on mass thinking if widespread sightings should occur.”
The Robertson Panel Report was classified until 1975, five years after Blue Book was shut down. But its legacy endures in the aura of ridicule surrounding U.F.O. reports, inhibiting scientific progress.
“The implication in the Panel Report was that U.F.O.s were a nonsense (nonscience) matter, to be debunked at all costs,” Hynek wrote. “It made the subject of U.F.O.s scientifically unrespectable.”
One famous photo from the Blue Book files, taken by a farmer, was extensively analyzed but never explained.CreditBettmann/Getty Images
Hynek, the former U.F.O. skeptic, eventually concluded that they were a real phenomenon in dire need of scientific attention, with hundreds of cases in the Blue Book files still unexplained. Even many of the “closed” cases were resolved with ridiculous, often infuriating explanations, sometimes by Hynek himself.
“The entire Blue Book operation was a foul-up based on the categorical premise that the incredible things reported could not possibly have any basis in fact,” he wrote in the 1970s, when he was finally free to speak the truth.
When Blue Book closed in late 1969, the Air Force flatly lied to the American people, issuing a fact sheet claiming that no U.F.O. had ever been a threat to national security; that U.F.O.s did not represent “technological developments or principles beyond the range of present day scientific knowledge”; and that there was no evidence that they were “extraterrestrial vehicles.”
(Just a few years earlier, in 1967, a glowing red oval-shaped object hovered over Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, and all 10 of the facility’s underground nuclear missiles became disabled almost simultaneously while the U.F.O. was present, according to interviews with witnesses and official government reports. Technicians could find no conventional explanation.)
But whatever the Air Force told the public, it didn’t actually stop investigating U.F.O.s. A once-classified memo, issued secretly in October 1969, a few months before the termination of Blue Book, revealed that regulations were already in place to investigate U.F.O. reports that were “not part of the Blue Book system.” The memo, written by Carroll H. Bolender, an Air Force brigadier general, went on to say that “reports of U.F.O.s which could affect national security would continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedures designed for this purpose.”
Clearly, government agencies continued to have some level of involvement in U.F.O. investigations in the decades following — and to the present. Despite government statements to the contrary, once-secret official documents include detailed reports of dramatic U.F.O. events abroad. Many cases at home were not investigated, including a 2006 event in which a disc-shaped object hovered over O’Hare Airport for more than five minutes and shot straight up through the clouds at an incredible speed.
Our reporting in 2017, which led to briefings for members of Congressional committees, showed that not much has changed since the close of Project Blue Book.
Scientists may know more about the behavior and characteristics of U.F.O.s and are closer to understanding the physics of how the technology operates, according to A.A.T.I.P. documents and interviews. But the government still makes every attempt to keep investigations and conclusions secret, while denying any involvement to American citizens.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: This Is It. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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