Fossilized Fish Being Examined By NASA Rover On Mars, Photo, Nov 30, 2019, UFO Sighting News.

• https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/542044/?site=msl

• Please donate to help me with my research: 

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

UFO Visited Space Shuttle Endeavor In May 1996, Photo Is Proof, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Nov 30, 2019
Location of sighting: Earth orbit over Albania
Source photo: 

• https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/photo.pl?mission=STS077&roll=161&frame=242
  
  

This photo was taken back in May 26, 1996. As the camera panned upward it settled on a glowing UFO near the shuttle Endeavor. The UFO then began to move away and upward. When I tried to find other photos of what happened next...I only found the next photos location to say"No Browse Image Available." This is the same NASA index where I found the legendary and viral photos of the Black Knight Satellites which I released back in 2011. This is 100% proof that the Shuttle Endeavor was visited by an alien ship while in orbit for those ten days. 
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

There is a huge secret hidden beneath the ice in Antarctica. Military whistleblowers report large alien structures under two miles of Antarctic ice.

It all started when Linda Moulton Howe received a shocking and astonishing email from a retired 60 year old U.S Naval officer first class engineer on the extremely strange events happening in the Antarctic.

The Naval Officer (Navy Seal Spartan 1) experienced and saw, like a huge opening in the ice in a no-fly area, when they were crossing with a medical emergency on board.

Then, Navy Seal Spartan 1 walked an alien hallway inscribed with mysterious hieroglyphs and tells Linda that Antarctica’s alien presence spans centuries, linked to Star Gate portals around Earth and beyond our solar system.

The new revealing documentary is now available at:

• https://www.earthfiles.com/antarctica/

  

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

Astronomers discover supermassive black hole in the Milky Way galaxy 70 TIMES larger than the Sun that according to current scientific understanding should NOT exist

• Black hole, dubbed LB-1, has a mass that is 70 times greater than the sun
• Experts say it's impossible for something this size to form in the Milky Way
• It couldn't have bee formed by a supernova, but by another  physical mechanism

By AFP and STACY LIBERATORE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Astronomers have discovered a black hole in the Milky Way so massive that it challenges existing models of how stars evolve.

Called LB-1, this black hole is 15,000 light years from Earth and has a mass 70 times greater than the Sun.  

LB-1's large mass falls into a range known as the 'pair instability gap' where supernovae should not have produced it, leading experts to believe this is a new kind a black hole, formed by another physical mechanism.

The Milky Way is estimated to contain 100 million stellar black holes but LB-1 is twice as massive as anything scientists thought possible, said Liu Jifeng, a National Astronomical Observatory of China professor who led the research.

Scroll down for video 

LB-1 (artist impression) is 15,000 light years from Earth and has a mass 70 times greater than the Sun. The black holes's large mass falls into a range known as the 'pair instability gap' where supernovae should not have produced it

'Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution,' he added.

Scientists generally believe that there are two types of black holes.

The more common stellar black holes -up to 20 times more massive than the Sun -- form when the center of a very big star collapses in on itself.

Supermassive black holes are at least a million times bigger than the Sun and their origins are uncertain.

But researchers believed that typical stars in the Milky Way shed most of their gas through stellar winds, preventing the emergence of a black hole the size of LB-1, Liu said.

'Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation.'

The Milky Way is estimated to contain 100 million stellar black holes, but LB-1 is twice as massive as anything scientists thought possible, researchers say

David Reitze, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved in the discovery, told AFP: 'Astronomers are still only beginning to grasp 'the abundance of black holes and the mechanisms by which they form.'

Stellar black holes are usually formed in the aftermath of supernova explosions, a phenomenon that occurs when extremely large stars burn out at the end of their lives.

'LB-1's large mass falls into a range 'known as the 'pair instability gap' where supernovae should not have produced it,' Reitze said.

'That means that this is a new kind a black hole, formed by another physical mechanism!'

LB-1 was discovered by an international team of scientists using China's sophisticated LAMOST telescope.

Additional images from two of the world's largest optical telescopes -Spain's Gran Telescopio Canarias and the Keck I telescope in the United States -confirmed that the size of LB-1, which the National Astronomical Observatory of China said was 'nothing short of fantastic'.

WHAT ARE BLACK HOLES?

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

KOMT NIBIRU  NU WERKELIJK OM DE HOEK kiJKEN?

Wat is de kans dat voor de tweede keer binnen een korte tijd er wederom een object van buiten ons zonnestelsel langs komt?

Er wordt bovendien gezegd dat dit object onder een vreemde hoek van boven het zonnestelsel binnen komt, allemaal toeval of toch niet?

Wat opvalt is dat we nu in een kort tijdsbestek een tweede bezoeker hebben in ons zonnestelsel die hier niet thuis hoort. Dat is opmerkelijk want voor zover ons bekend is dit nog nooit eerder voorgekomen.

Zo is er nu komeet Borisov

De komeet werd afgelopen zomer ontdekt door de Oekraïense amateurastronoom Gennadiy Borisov, naar wie het object ook is vernoemd. Onderzoekers denken dat het object uit het eigen planetenstelsel is geslingerd, nadat het tot een bijna-botsing kwam met een planeet.

Ze kletsen natuurlijk maar een stuk in de ruimte, want ze hebben werkelijk geen flauw benul wat dit object hier komt doen en waarom het hier is.

Een lezer schrijft (dank!) naar aanleiding van bovengenoemd nieuwsbericht het volgden

Graag mag ik uw site elke dag een paar keer checken om te zien of er nieuwe artikelen zijn geplaatst.
Wellicht heeft u over het volgende al de nodige informatie ontvangen, maar ik stuur het u toch graag toe. Rond 7/8 december zal een komeet-achtig object de zon en de aarde passeren op een afstand van 300 miljoen kilometer. Het heeft een staart, maar gedraagt zich niet als een komeet, zo wordt geschreven. En het heeft een rode gloed.

Ik moest daarbij denken aan eerdere artikelen van u over Niburu en "komeet-planeet".

Er wordt geschreven dat de baan van het object van bovenaf komt door het zonnestelsel, en er dus zo doorheen is met ongelooflijke snelheid. Tegelijkertijd wordt vermeld dat het ruim een half jaar in het zonnestelsel blijft tot in 2020.

Zelf werk ik met droomboodschappen welke elke nacht doorgenomen. In de afgelopen jaren zaten daar meerdere bij over Niburu. In de afgelopen maand kwam o.a. de datum van 8 december door. In het Italiaans, ik weet nog niet precies waarom. De kortste afstand van het object tot de zon blijkt bereikt te worden rond 8 december. Misschien heeft het niks met elkaar te maken, maar ik vind het wel frappant.

Tot zover de lezer met een zeer interessant verhaal. Bovenstaande foto is enkele dagen geleden gemaakt en laat zien hoe groot de komeet is ten opzichte van de aarde.

Hiermee is het object te klein om de planeet Nibiru te kunnen zijn die naar verluid minimaal zes keer zo groot is als de aarde.  Maar, het zou natuurlijk heel goed een soort voorbode kunnen zijn van de komst van het minizonnestelsel waartoe de planeet Nibiru behoort.

In dat kader is natuurlijk ook vorig jaar de eerste bezoeker van buiten ons zonnestelsel, Oumuamua, zeer interessant. Dit object had duidelijk alle kenmerken van een soort verkenner.

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. 

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.

Nu komen er via NASA berichten dat een team van wetenschappers met behulp van gegevens van de Hubble ruimtetelescoop en andere bronnen heeft vastgesteld dat Oumuamua opeens accelereert en van koers is veranderd.

En dan zijn er natuurlijk nog de frappante voorspellingen van de Chileense astronoom Muñoz Ferrada, die medio vorige eeuw al sprak over de komst van de planeet Niburu die zich zou gedragen als een komeet. 

{ https://niburu.co/ }

WAT VEROORZAAKT DEZE VREEMDE CIRKEL OP BUIENRADAR ? ( VIDEO )

Wanneer je wilt weten waar je in ons land de komende uren buien kunt verwachten of hoelang het duurt voordat het droog wordt, dan kijk je op de buienradar.

In het algemeen zijn dit soort radars vrij betrouwbaar, maar nu gebeuren er vreemde dingen bij Buienradar.

Maar, wat is nu precies een buienradar?

In het algemeen kan een radar gedefinieerd worden als een elektronische installatie is,die bedoeld is om de omgeving af te zoeken naar objecten in de lucht, op het land of in de zee. Deze objecten zijn bijvoorbeeld vliegtuigen, raketten, schepen of auto's. De objecten worden via een beeldscherm zichtbaar gemaakt.

Een radar zendt via een antenne radiogolven (elektromagnetische straling) uit en ontvangt de door de objecten gereflecteerde radiostraling, oftewel echo, weer op via (meest dezelfde) antenne. Uit de aard van de ontvangen echo kunnen gegevens van het object bepaald worden ten opzichte van die radar, zoals richting, afstand, hoogte, vorm en snelheid.

Vanwege het zgn. Doppler- effect- d.w.z. dat de golflengte van de radiogolven verandert naarmate de afstand tot de bron groter of kleiner wordt- kan ook bekeken worden wat de intensiteiten van de neerslag in een wolk zijn en tevens wat de windkracht en - richting is; ook geldt dat hoe meer er van het signaal wordt teruggekaatst, des te intensiever de neerslag is.

Even kort door de bocht betekent dit dat de radar iets uitzendt wat weer teruggekaatst wordt. Hoe meer solide het object of hoe intensiever de neerslag des te sterker wordt de weerkaatsing. Kijk met dat in het achterhoofd even naar de volgende beelden van Buienradar die wij donderdagochtend kregen opgestuurd van een lezer (dank!).

Is het een natuurlijk fenomeen, waarbij onweersbuien een perfecte cirkel vormen? Of hebben we hier te maken met weermanipulatie, waarbij misschien technieken zoals HAARP worden gebruikt?

Feit is dat de radar iets teruggekaatst krijgt en omdat het Buienradar is, neemt men aan dat het neerslag is. Echter, we hebben eerder gezien hoe een weerradar gek kan doen als er bijvoorbeeld een ufo in de buurt is. Zoals dat gebeurde in Mexico, waar in 2012 een sigaarvormige ufo met een enorme snelheid de Popocatepetl vulkaan in dook.

Dezelfde dag verschenen er het volgende soort beelden op de Mexicaanse weerradar:

Onderstaande afbeelding is afkomstig van de weerradar van Intellicast van 27 oktober, de dag dat een Ufo de vulkaan Popocatepetl in vloog. Het beeld bleef de hele dag online tot en met 28 oktober.

Hier zie je heel duidelijk de vorm van de vortex.

Het centrum van de vortex ligt precies op de plaats waar de vulkaan zich bevindt.

Was er misschien ook bij ons een verborgen ruimteschip of ufo? Een groot object dat zich verborgen hield in de dikke wolkenlaag en daardoor verscheen als een cirkelvormige onweersbui.

Dat dit helemaal niet vergezocht hoeft te zijn blijkt wel uit het feit dat de dag ervoor aan de Engelse oostkust ook een merkwaardig object werd waargenomen in de lucht.

De combinatie onweersbuien en ufo's komt in de praktijk heel veel voor en dan is er natuurlijk nog de mogelijkheid dat er zich boven Nederland een soort dimensieportaal heeft geopend, iets waarover wij regelmatig schrijven.

Kortom, wie het weet mag het zeggen, maar vreemd is het wel. Hierna nog wat bewegende beelden van het object boven Engeland.

{ https://niburu.co/ }

Artificial Intelligence BREAKTHROUGH: 'Better than human' AI algorithm beats brain in test

AN ARTIFICIAL intelligence algorithm designed to interpret images and video has beaten human scientists at mapping active neurons in the brain, a shocking new study has claimed.

To Prevent a Robot Apocalypse, We Must Study “Machine Behavior”

Ritesh Jain

• Authored by Dagny Taggart via the organic pepper blog

Experts have been warning us about potential dangers associated with artificial intelligence for quite some time. But is it too late to do anything about the impending rise of the machines?

Once the stuff of far-fetched dystopian science fiction, the idea of robot overlords taking over the world at some point now seems inevitable.

The late Dr. Stephen Hawking issued some harsh and terrifying words of caution back in 2014:

The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded. (source)

Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, warned that we could see some terrifying issues within the next few years:

The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five year timeframe. 10 years at most. Please note that I am normally super pro technology and have never raised this issue until recent months. This is not a case of crying wolf about something I don’t understand.

The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I’m not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast. Unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deepmind, you have no idea how fast — it is growing at a pace close to exponential.

I am not alone in thinking we should be worried.

The leading AI companies have taken great steps to ensure safety. They recognize the danger, but believe that they can shape and control the digital superintelligences and prevent bad ones from escaping into the Internet. That remains to be seen… (source)

Experts say it is time to study “machine behavior.”

Last week, a team of researchers made a case for a wide-ranging scientific research agenda aimed at understanding the behavior of artificial intelligence systems. The group, led by researchers at the MIT Media Lab, published a paper in Nature in which they called for a new field of research called “machine behavior.” The new field would take the study of artificial intelligence “well beyond computer science and engineering into biology, economics, psychology, and other behavioral and social sciences,” according to an MIT Media Lab press release.

Scientists have studied human behavior for decades, and now it is time to apply that kind of research to intelligent machines, the group explained. Because artificial intelligence is doing more collective ‘thinking,’ the same interdisciplinary approach needs to be applied to understanding machine behavior, the authors say.

“We need more open, trustworthy, reliable investigation into the impact intelligent machines are having on society, and so research needs to incorporate expertise and knowledge from beyond the fields that have traditionally studied it,” said Iyad Rahwan, who leads the Scalable Cooperation group at the Media Lab.

Machines are making decisions and taking action without human input.

Rahwan explains:

“We’re seeing the rise of machines with agency, machines that are actors making decisions and taking actions autonomously. This calls for a new field of scientific study that looks at them not solely as products of engineering and computer science but additionally as a new class of actors with their own behavioral patterns and ecology.” (source)

This is particularly concerning, especially considering we already know that AI can hate without human input and that robots have no sense of humor and might kill us over a joke.

“We’re seeing an emergence of machines as agents in human society; these are social machines that are making decisions that have real value implications in society,” says David Lazer, who is one of the authors of the paper, as well as University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Computer and Information Sciences at Northeastern.

We interact numerous times each day with thinking machines, as the press release explains:

We may ask Siri to find the dry cleaner nearest to our home, tell Alexa to order dish soap, or get a medical diagnosis generated by an algorithm. Many such tools that make life easier are in fact “thinking” on their own, acquiring knowledge and building on it and even communicating with other thinking machines to make ever more complex judgments and decisions—and in ways that not even the programmers who wrote their code can fully explain.

Imagine, for instance, a news feed run by a deep neural net recommends an article to you from a gardening magazine, even though you’re not a gardener. “If I asked the engineer who designed the algorithm, that engineer would not be able to state in a comprehensive and causal way why that algorithm decided to recommend that article to you,” said Nick Obradovich, a research scientist in the Scalable Cooperation group and one of the lead authors of the Nature paper.

Parents often think of their children’s interaction with the family personal assistant as charming or funny. But what happens when the assistant, rich with cutting-edge AI, responds to a child’s fourth or fifth question about T. Rex by suggesting, “Wouldn’t it be nice if you had this dinosaur as a toy?”

“What’s driving that recommendation?” Rahwan said. “Is the device trying to do something to enrich the child’s experience—or to enrich the company selling the toy dinosaur? It’s very hard to answer that question.” (source)

There is still a lot we don’t know about how machines make decisions.

What hasn’t been examined as closely is how these algorithms work. How do they evolve with use? How do machines develop a specific behavior? How do algorithms function within a specific social or cultural environment? These issues need to be studied, the group says.

There is a significant barrier to the type of research the group is proposing, however:

But even if big tech companies decided to share information about their algorithms and otherwise allow researchers more access to them, there is an even bigger barrier to research and investigation, which is that AI agents can acquire novel behaviors as they interact with the world around them and with other agents. The behaviors learned from such interactions are virtually impossible to predict, and even when solutions can be described mathematically, they can be “so lengthy and complex as to be indecipherable,” according to the paper. (source)

And, there are ethical concerns surrounding how AI makes decisions:

Say, for instance, a hypothetical self-driving car is sold as being the safest on the market. One of the factors that makes it safer is that it “knows” when a big truck pulls up along its left side and automatically moves itself three inches to the right while still remaining in its own lane. But what if a cyclist or motorcycle happens to be pulling up on the right at the same time and is thus killed because of this safety feature?

“If you were able to look at the statistics and look at the behavior of the car in the aggregate, it might be killing three times the number of cyclists over a million rides than another model,” Rahwan said. “As a computer scientist, how are you going to program the choice between the safety of the occupants of the car and the safety of those outside the car? You can’t just engineer the car to be ‘safe’—safe for whom?“ (source)

The researchers explain that it will take experts from a host of scientific disciplines to study the way machines behave in the real world, as a press release from Northeastern University states. “The process of understanding how online dating algorithms are changing the societal institution of marriage, or determining whether our interaction with artificial intelligence affects our human development, will require more than just the mathematicians and engineers who built those algorithms.”

{ http://worldoutofwhack.com/ }

As we watch robots, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence machines and the like slowly (and sometimes rapidly) permeate our world, it’s not hard to imagine them going from permeating to taking over. Reaching that point, even those who don’t watch sci-fi movies can see the possibility of rogue robots and AI machines using computer logic to eliminate the one thing that could stop their takeover – humans – and initiating a robot apocalypse. Fortunately, some computer scientists in California have developed an algorithm that trains robots to always avoid the bad, human-elimination decisions and stay on the path of good, obedient servitude instead. How well do you think this will work?

“We want to advance AI that respects the values of its human users and justifies the trust we place in autonomous systems.”

In a Stanford University press release announcing the publication in the journal Science of the paper “Preventing undesirable behavior of intelligent machines,” Emma Brunskill, an assistant professor of computer science at Stanford and senior author of the paper, illustrates the alleged noble goal of robot and AI developers – making them tools for the good of humankind – and describes the algorithm she and her colleagues have designed to accomplish – and hopefully guarantee – that goal.

“We show how the designers of machine learning algorithms can make it easier for people who want to build AI into their products and services to describe unwanted outcomes or behaviors that the AI system will avoid with high-probability.”

The idea is to describe bad decisions and behaviors mathematically. While “don’t do this or the patient will die” decisions are easy to describe, behaviors such as gender bias – a line AI is crossing as it’s used more and more to evaluate employment or school applications – requires a sense of fairness that is obviously much harder to define mathematically. The Stanford researchers modified the algorithm in a program designed to predict the future grade point averages of students and it learned to avoid bias toward one gender. While “fairness” is much more vague than “life or death,” the researchers believe it can – and should – be built into all AI using their algorithm.

Does all of this sound familiar? The paper refers to this solution as a “Seldonian algorithm” and fans of Isaac Asimov will recognize that obvious reference to Hari Seldon, the mathematics professor at Streeling University on the planet Trantor in Asimov’s “Foundation” sci-fi series. Seldon developed psychohistory, an algorithmic science that allowed him to predict the future in probabilistic terms. It worked for Hari Seldon … will it work for us?

“Given the recent rise of real-world ML applications and the corresponding surge of potential harm that they could cause, it is imperative that ML algorithms provide their users with an effective means for controlling behavior. To this end, we have proposed a framework for designing ML algorithms and

shown how it can be used to construct algorithms that provide their users with the ability to easily (that is, without requiring additional data analysis) place limits on the probability that the algorithm will produce any specified undesirable behavior.”

Why do humans want us to avoid bad behavior when bad behavior is so much fun?

In the paper’s conclusion on using machine learning (ML) algorithms to change robot behavior, that nasty word “probability” pops up. The algorithm is not a 100% guarantee of robot apocalypse prevention and even if it were, it depends on humans using it in all applications. Just as it’s easy to imagine a robot apocalypse, it’s easy to imagine it being caused by unscrupulous businesses leaving the “bad behavior prevention algorithm” out to cut costs or make more profits.

Are we doomed?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Henry Lee was the 19^th century expert on sea serpents, as we have seen in several articles I wrote last week. As far as the 20^th century is concerned, however, there is no doubt about to whom the crown was passed. It was one Bernard Heuvelmans, whose work, In the Wake of the Sea Serpents, is the defining book on the subject. Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman – who, with Patrick Huyghe, wrote The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mysterious Denizens of the Deep – said of Heuvelmans, who died in 2001: “From 1948 on, Heuvelmans exhaustively sought evidence in scientific and literary sources. Within five years he had amassed so much material that he was ready to write a large book. That book turned out to be Sur la piste des betes ignorees, published in 1955, and better known in its English translation three years later as On the Track of Unknown Animals.” As for In the Wake of the Sea Serpents, it became a classic – and, to this day, it very much remains a highly important research tool for creature-seekers everywhere.

Of particular significance is Heuvelman’s theory – based upon 358 sightings – that there are far more than just one kind of animal that falls into the sea serpent category. Heuvelmans’ list of creatures is an important one. It not only describes the physical appearances of the animals: it also reveals which kinds of creatures are most often seen – at least, at the time that Heuvelmans compiled his list. He began with what he termed the “long-necked” type, for which Heuvelmans had forty-eight reports. This particular group, he added, had necks that ranged from long to “very long,” a “median hump on the back,” and a pair of horns on the head. As for the color of the creatures, they were typically mottled.

Second on Heuvelman’s list was the “merhorse.” It had, said Heuvelmans, a “long floating mane,” huge eyes, a long neck, and whiskers on the face. For this entry, Heuvelmans had studied no less than thirty-seven cases. The third entry was focused on “many-humped” animals. As their title suggests, they had a “string of dorsal humps of virtually equal size.” The necks were not overly large, and had white stripes on their necks. Now, we move onto the “many finned” beast of the deep. As for these creatures they had “several triangular fins looking like a huge crest.” They also had a jagged crest on the spine and “prominent” eyes. Then, there was the “super otter.” Heuvelmans described it as having “a slender medium-length neck” and a “long tapering tail.” The color was beige or grey, according to the thirteen sightings that Heuvelmans had in his files.

The “super eel” plays an important role in Heuvelmans’ work, as in more recent times reports of massive eels are growing and growing. Twelve reports that Heuvelmans had on file allowed him to make a good image of the animals. They had a long neck, one which formed “am extension of the head.” The tail was “long [and] tapering,” “Leaps out of the water and falls back with a splash,” Heuvelmans told his readers. “The marine saurian” was very much like a crocodile, albeit seen in an “oceanic habitat.” Then, there was the “father-of-all-the-turtles.” Yes, we’re talking about giant turtles, a subject that I will return to here at Mysterious Universe on a later occasion. And, finally, Heuvelmans introduced his followers to “yellow belly,” a beast that was yellow with black stripes. Heuvelmans said of his list that, “It is not surprising that the types based on a few not very detailed sightings have few determining characteristics. It follows that the least well-defined types may include several different species, not necessarily related to one another.”

If you are into Cryptozoology and have not yet read Heuvelman’s classic book, you really should!

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Astrange phenomenon has been filmed in the sky above a field by two friends while driving in a rural area in Krasnodar Region in Russia on November 27, 2019.

Wondering what the strange sky phenomenon could be, they decided to stop their car to take a closer look at the brightly shining oval-shaped object, hanging motionless in the air.

Although some people suggest that the phenomenon is just a sunset, the witnesses are convinced that they have filmed something that cannot be explained.

  

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

While driving on the highway near Bradford on November 26, 2019, Juran Harrison noticed a huge object in the sky that seemly emitted a red glow on which he decided to film it.

According to Thetelegraphandargus - Juran said: "I would describe it as a burning red light, was moving sideways then down and away leaving a slight trail behind it, then, as quickly as it appeared, it is gone."

The footage, taken from a car shows the bright red glowing object moving across the sky above the roofline.

 

  

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

Did Anunnaki Ancient Aliens Build A Civilization On Earth Before Humans?

Discusses whether Out-of-Place Artifacts are evidence of a Lost Human or Ancient Anunnaki Alien Civilization

‘Out-of-Place Artifact’ (OoPArt) is a term coined by American naturalist and cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson for an object of historical, archaeological, or paleontological interest found in a very unusual or seemingly impossible context that could challenge conventional historical chronology by being too advanced for the level of civilization that existed at the time, or showing  human presence well before humans were supposed to exist.

The question that we are ultimately confronted with is who built the lost Civilization before human beings?

Was it the  Ancient Anunnaki Aliens as suggested by alternative historical theories or some other unknown entity/ies?

The question persistently posed by Out of Place Artifacts is whether they are evidence of advanced past Ancient Alien or Lost Human Civilization.

Zechariah Sitchin and other proponents of the Ancient Astronaut Theory suggest that such artifacts are evidence of an Ancient Alien Civilization, whilst on the other end of the unacknowledged History spectrum you have Graham Hancock and others taking the position that it is evidence of an advanced Human Civilization.

We’ve covered the Anunnaki angle considerably as part of the ongoing ‘Anunnaki Chronicles‘ series, and today, we shed light on the alternative Graham Hancock argument on whether the past reveals the presence of an Ancient Alien or Lost Human Civilization.

The Evidence For A Lost Civilization

According to Hancock, the Ancient Astronaut Hypothesis emerges from ancient texts and traditions when they are read in the light of modern space-exploration technology. However, at present NO ancient archaeological site and NO ancient text or tradition provides persuasive evidence for the ancient astronaut hypothesis.

In his view, if one examines the original source material upon which Sitchin drew, and comparing what you find to how Sitchin presented it in his Earth Chronicles series, you would see that Sitchin has created a gigantic work of science fiction masquerading as fact.

As such. Out of Place Artifacts, the anomalies of history and prehistory pointed to by advocates of the ancient astronaut hypothesis are far better and more elegantly explained as emanating from a lost, advanced HUMAN civilization of prehistoric antiquity than from high-tech alien visitors from another Planet.

His verdict on whether the past reveals an Ancient Alien or Lost Human Civilization is therefore that it is a lost Human Civilization that we should credit and not Ancient Aliens.

Top 5 Anomalies & Out Of Place Artifacts

1. Klerksdorp Spheres

Resembling the ‘Death Star’ in Star Wars, the Klerksdorp Spheres were found by Miners in South Africa and their origin remains unknown.

They were found in rock dated  2.8 billion years old and their presence in this Archaeological layer remains perplexing.

2. The Antikythera Mechanism

The next perplexing artifact was recovered by sponge-divers from a shipwreck off the coast of Antikythera, Greece. Its a sophisticated mechanism of gears whose existence 2000 years ago cannot be explained.

3. The Battery Of Babylon

The 2000 Ancient Battery of Babylon was unearthed in Baghdad in 1938. The device could create an electric charge, and this find is particularly remarkable since we only invented batters in 1799.

4. Egyptian Helicopoters & Inca Planes

The mystery of the flying machines of the Gods continues to reign. Our previous entry on the Vimana Epics of Ancient India also shed some light on this extraordinary question.

Hieroglyphs such as those at the Egyptian Temple at Abydos only add to the mystery as they depict Helicopters, submarines and supersonic jets…Meanwhile Golden Ancient Inca Model Aircraft suggest the presence of aviation technology amongst the Ancient Civilizations of South America.

The suggestion that Ancient Civilizations possessed advanced Aviation Technology which we are only beginning to understand today remains, and the jury is still out on how that will be eventually resolved.

5. The Piri Ries Map

Last but not least, is the Piri Ries Map.

In 1929, a group of historians found an amazing map drawn on a gazelle skin. Research showed that it was a genuine document drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, a famous admiral of the Turkish fleet in the sixteenth century.

The controversy lies in that the Piri Reis map shows the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica. The northern coastline of Antarctica is perfectly detailed even though the map was drawn 300 years before it was discovered, drawing the coastline in perfect detail even though it was under ice.

Conclusion: Anunnaki Ancient Aliens or Lost Human Civilization?

Whether Historical anomalies like Ancient Megalith Structures and Out of Place Artifacts demonstrate the existence of an Ancient Alien or Lost Human Civilization remains contested…Perhaps the answer lies in combining both theories instead of adopting a mutually exclusive approach to either theory.

In Ancient Aliens Debunked, our previous entry based on a documentary by the same name which you can read here, we also noted that the Ancient Astronaut Theory was not always correct in its interpretation of certain Out Of Place Artifacts, sometimes making exaggerated claims in order to shore up support of itself.

Nevertheless, its clear that unanswered questions remain and various new lines of enquiry continue to develop, expanding and enriching our understanding of the Human story…That in itself is progress, and we will continue to follow the latest revelations in an effort to answer what is perhaps Humanity’s ultimate question.

The Anunnaki Ancient Astronuat Theory also continues to provoke interest and debate on the question of our origins and whether the Historical Timeline of Civilization provided by the current historical paradigm is correct.

In Realm Of The Elohim, our own E-Book based on Zechariah Sitchin’s Lost Book of Enki, an effort was made to provide accessible and digestible information on the Ancient Astronaut Theory and the activities of the Anunnaki from the landing on Earth, the setting up of the first Base station at Edin, the creation of man, great deluge and the Nuclear destruction of Sumer up to the rise of Babylon under Marduk.

It also explores the implications of the Anunnaki Ancient Astronaut Theory for the existence of God and Spirituality

Due to the ongoing debate and interest on the topic especially online, a list of online references and Documentaries is also included for further individual research and exploration.

For more on Out of Place Artifacts and the Lost Human Civilization argument, peep the Ancient Astronaut Archive video below, as well as Graham Hancock’s website and his seminal work on the lost ancient Human Civilization, ‘Fingerprints Of The Gods’.

If you would like to explore more interesting Alternative History on the Anunnaki, you can click the Archive links below:

• Complete Alternate History Archive
• The Lost Realms Of The Anunnaki
• Civilization Before The Great Flood
• Civilization After The Great Flood
• The Main Events Involving The Anunnaki In World History
• Sumerian Society, Mythology & Culture under the Anunnaki
• Unexplained Structures and Out Of Place Artifacts with links to the Anunnaki
• Anunnaki Wars & Rivalries

The Google Powered Search Box on the Home Page with custom links to official Egyptology and Sumerian Archaeological Texts, Records and Documentaries will also help you along your quest.

One!

{ https://www.afrikaiswoke.com/ }

Ufology: From Fringe Field to Serious Science

David Aragorn

For decades, academic researchers have dismissed the study of UFOs as pseudoscience. But as the evidence becomes harder and harder to ignore, some organizations are finally taking steps to make the field legitimate.

{ http://earthmysterynews.com/ }

NASA releases strange 'music' heard by 1969 astronauts

NASA has made public a recording of strange "music" that astronauts reported hearing in 1969 while on the far side of the Moon, out of radio contact with the Earth.

The Apollo 10 command module Charlie Brown piloted by US astronaut John W. Young is seen from the lunar module Snoopy after separation in lunar orbit on May 22, 1969

The story behind these unusual whistling noises was showcased Sunday night in a show on the cable channel Discovery, as part of a series called "NASA's Unexplained Files."

The noises reportedly were heard in May 1969 by the Apollo 10 astronauts as they circled the Moon, months before the first astronauts stepped foot on the lunar surface on July 21 that same year.

The three astronauts on board were Thomas Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan.

The sounds, which lasted about an hour, were recorded and transmitted to mission control in Houston.

A transcript of the text was released in 2008, but the actual audio has only just been made public.

"You hear that? That whistling sound?" asks Cernan, describing it as "outer-space-type music."

The trio felt the sounds were so strange that they debated whether or not to tell the chiefs at NASA, for fear they wouldn't be taken seriously and could be dropped from future space missions, according to the Discovery show.

NASA says the sounds could not have been alien music.

An engineer from the US space agency said the noises likely came from interference caused by radios that were close to each other in the lunar module and the command module.

Astronaut Al Worden, who flew on Apollo 15, disputed that explanation, saying "logic tells me that if there was something recorded on there, then there's something there," according to the Discovery show.

But Michael Collins, the pilot of Apollo 11, who became the first person to fly around the far side of the Moon by himself while Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were walking on the surface, said he too heard "an eerie woo-woo sound" but accepted the explanation of radio interference.

In fact, he'd been warned ahead of time, he wrote in his book, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys.

"Had I not been warned about it, it would have scared the hell out of me," he wrote.

"Fortunately the radio technicians (rather than the UFO fans) had a ready explanation for it: it was interference between the LM's and Command Module's VHF radios."

• Smithsonian giving visitors a virtual look inside Apollo 11

{ https://phys.org/ }

20 Star Wars Movie Locations You Can Visit in Real Life

BY RUDIE OBIAS

JONATHAN OLLEY // LUCASFILM

While most of the Star Wars saga has been filmed on sound stages in England and Australia, the filmmakers behind the ongoing space opera have sometimes traveled to real-life places to create the alien worlds of a galaxy far, far away. Here are 20 Star Wars movie locations you can visit in real life.

1. AJIM, TUNISIA

George Lucas used various locations around Tunisia to film exteriors for the desert planet Tatooine, most notably the ferry port town of Ajim. The town was used for the exteriors of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s home, which was actually an old mosque, plus the Mos Eisley Spaceport in A New Hope.

2. THE HÔTEL SIDI DRISS // MATMATAT-AL-QADIMAL, TUNISIA

TOM SIMPSON, FLICKR //CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The Hôtel Sidi Driss in Matmatat-Al-Qadimal, Tunisia was used as the Lars homestead (Luke Skywalker’s childhood home) in A New Hope. The hotel consists of five pits, four of them reserved for lodging and sleeping, the fifth dubbed the “Star Wars pit.” Guests can dine in the Lars family dining room, now the hotel’s restaurant. The set dressings were removed after filming in 1976, but returned in the year 2000 in order to film scenes for Attack of the Clones. Ever since, the decorations have remained. Fittingly, it's more commonly known as the "Star Wars hotel."

3. DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, CALIFORNIA

George Lucas used Death Valley National Park for pickup shots after shooting in Tunisia for A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. The area between Sierra Nevada and the Mojave Desert, along with Tunisia, were used to make the desert planet of Tatooine come to life, most notably in the scene when Obi-Wan Kenobi meets Luke Skywalker, C-3PO, and R2-D2 for the first time.

For Return of the Jedi, Twenty Mule Team Canyon in Death Valley was used to film the scene in which C-3PO and R2-D2 travel to Jabba's Palace.

4. HARDANGERJØKULEN GLACIER, NORWAY

BY GRAHAM LEWIS - FLICKR, CC BY 2.0, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The Empire Strikes Back's snowy opening battle scene on the ice planet Hoth was filmed on the Hardangerjøkulen Glacier, the sixth largest glacier in Norway.

5. FINSE, NORWAY

At the foot of the Hardangerjøkulen glacier is the small railroad town of Finse, Norway, which is located between Oslo and Bergen, and was used as the Rebel Alliance’s Echo Base on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. While shooting in 1979, a snowstorm hit the small town, allowing director Irvin Kershner to shoot two key scenes: Luke Skywalker's escape from the Wampa cave, as well as the young hero's interaction with the spirit of Obi-Wan Kenobi before he is rescued by Han Solo. Both scenes were shot just outside of the Finse 1222 Hotel.

6. TIKAL NATIONAL PARK // TIKAL, GUATEMALA

THE LILAC BREASTED ROLLER // FLICKR, CC BY 2.0, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

In A New Hope, Lucas used ancient Mayan ruins, located in Guatemala's Tikal National Park, as the exterior of the Rebel Alliance’s Massassi Outpost.

7. YUMA DESERT, ARIZONA

Instead of returning to Tunisia for Return of the Jedi, the film's producers chose to shoot Buttercup Valley in Arizona's Yuma Desert for the Sarlacc Pit sequence. Jabba's Sail Barge and the Sarlacc Pit took more than five months to build, and more than 5500 cast and crew members lodged in Yuma during filming in 1982.

8. REDWOOD NATIONAL AND STATE PARKS, CALIFORNIA

California's Redwood National and State Parks portrayed the Forest Moon of Endor, the Ewoks’ home world, in Return of the Jedi. Several scenes, such as the speeder bike chase and the Ewok ambush, were shot in the parks’ many redwood groves in Marin County, which is close to Lucas’s home at Skywalker Ranch.

9. GRINDELWALD, SWITZERLAND

BY MARTIN ABEGGLEN, FLICKR, CC BY-SA 2.0, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Most of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith were shot at Fox Studios Australia in Sydney using green screen. However, Lucas would occasionally send crews out to capture scenery in various locations around the world for the plate photography used in background shots.

One of the real-life places shot for Revenge of the Sith was the beautiful mountain range of Grindelwald, Switzerland, which was used as the backdrop for the planet Alderaan, Princess Leia’s home.

10. VILLA DEL BALBIANELLO // LENNO, ITALY

The Lake Retreat where Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala go into hiding in Attack of the Clones is located at the Villa del Balbainello in Lenno, Italy. Originally built in 1787, the villa overlooks Lake Como and served as a monastery before it was turned over to the National Trust of Italy in 1988. Villa del Balbainello makes another appearance at the end of Attack of the Clones, as the location for Anakin and Padme’s wedding.

11. ROYAL PALACE OF CASERTA // CASERTA, ITALY

LAYLA, FLICKR //CC BY-NC 2.0

The Palace of Caserta in southern Italy, just northeast of Napoli, was used to shoot the interiors of the Theed Royal Palace on Naboo in The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Originally built for Bourbon King Charles III in the 1750s, the Palace of Caserta is also the largest royal residence in the world.

12. PHANG NGA BAY // PHUKET, THAILAND

The beautiful island backdrop of Phang Nga Bay in Thailand was used as plate photography for the planet Kashyyyk, Chewbacca’s birthplace, in Revenge of the Sith. For certain scenes, shots of Guilin, China were combined with Phang Nga Bay.

13. WHIPPENDELL WOOD // WATFORD, ENGLAND

EDWARD BADLEY, FLICKR // CC BY-NC 2.0

Lucas used England's Whippendell Wood for two scenes in The Phantom Menace: In the first instance, it's where Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi meet Jar-Jar Binks; the other shows the Wood as a sacred place for Jar-Jar's species, the Gungans.

14. PLAZA DE ESPAÑA // SEVILLE, SPAIN

The beautiful Plaza de España in Seville, Spain was used for the exterior of Theed on Naboo in Attack of the Clones. Anakin and Padme walk through the plaza before the pair go into hiding in the Lake Country.

15. MOUNT ETNA // SICILY, ITALY

LUCASFILM

Although Lucas actually didn’t shoot on Mount Etna, his team used Italy’s most active volcano for plate photography for the epic light saber battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin at the end of Revenge of the Sith. Mount Etna was actually erupting during filming, so Lucas sent a film crew to capture its flowing lava.

16. SKELLIG MICHAEL, IRELAND

LUCASFILM

The island planet of Ahch-To, which the exiled Luke Skywalker called home at the end of The Force Awakens, is actually the island of Skellig Michael, which is located about 7 miles off the southwest coast of Ireland. Around 600 CE, a group of monks built a monastery that sits more than 600 feet above sea level, along with hundreds of rock steps to reach the top. Today, it’s a popular tourist attraction for Star Wars fans because it’s where Rey received her Jedi training in The Last Jedi.

17. RUB' AL KHALI DESERT // ABU DHABI, UAE

LUCASFILM

From Rey’s scavenger marketplace to Poe Dameron and Finn’s crash landing in The Force Awakens, the desert planet of Jakku was filmed in a large section of the Rub' al Khali desert known as “The Empty Quarter,” which is located a few hours away from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The Star Wars cast and crew filmed for six months in the largest contiguous sand desert in the world under the production title “Avco,” named after the L.A. movie theater where director J.J. Abrams watched the original Star Wars for the first time in 1977.

18. SALAR DE UYUNI // POTOSÍ, BOLIVIA

BY M M, FLICKR, CC BY-SA 2.0, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Located near the crest of the Andes is Salar de Uyuni, the Earth’s largest salt flat. It stretches more than 4000 square miles across southwest Bolivia and was used as the filming location for Crait, a mineral planet covered in white salt and red soil where the Resistance held its last stand against the First Order in The Last Jedi. The salt flat was created when prehistoric lakes dried up during the last Ice Age and left more than 10 billion tons of natural salt behind.

19. LAAMU ATOLL, MALDIVES

INDUSTRIAL LIGHT & MAGIC, A DIVISION OF LUCASFILM ENTERTAINMENT

During the climax of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the Rebel Alliance, led by Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), breaks into an Imperial Base located on the planet Scarif to steal the top secret blueprints for the Death Star.

Director Gareth Edwards used Gan and Berasdhoo—two very large islands in the Laamu Atoll island cluster in the Maldives—as the filming location for Scarif, a remote tropical planet in the Outer Rim. "Scarif is based on a paradise world, so we had to go to paradise to film it," Edwards said during Star Wars Celebration in 2016.

In addition, the interior of the Imperial Security Complex on Scarif was mostly filmed in the Canary Wharf Underground Station in London, England. Film crews worked on an exciting chase scene through the subway station between midnight and 4 a.m. when it was closed to the public.

20. DUBROVNIK, CROATIA

BY DONALD JUDGE - FLICKR, CC BY 2.0, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

In The Last Jedi, Canto Bight is a casino city on the planet Cantonica, where Finn and Rose embark on a mission to find a master codebreaker to disable the First Order’s new weapon. Director Rian Johnson used the walled seaside city of Dubrovnik, Croatia as the filming location for the lavish city.

Dubrovnik, which is known as the “Pearl of the Adriatic,” was also used as the filming location for King’s Landing on Game of Thrones. So the Croatian city gets double the nerd cred for Game of Thrones and Star Wars fans alike.

{ https://www.mentalfloss.com/ }

Security officials told unknown object near Congress was ‘hovering’ — no one has any idea what happened

 By Sarah K. Burrns

Fox News reporter Chad Pergram spent the day looking into a strange security threat on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning that has left security officials stumped.

Both the U.S. Capitol and the White House were on lockdown after the restricted airspace was breached and fighter jets were scrambled. The problem is that after several hours, no one knows what it was or even if it was real.

NBC News

✔@NBCNews

 · Nov 26, 2019

DEVELOPING: Airspace violation reported in Washington, DC, and fighter jets have been scrambled, law enforcement officials tells @NBCNews.

White House on lockdown.

NBC News

✔@NBCNews

DEVELOPING: Airspace violation reported in Washington, DC, and fighter jets have been scrambled, law enforcement officials tells @NBCNews.

White House on lockdown. https://www.periscope.tv/w/1OdKrLZplgYJX 

NBC News @NBCNews

DEVELOPING: Airspace violation reported in Washington, DC.

pscp.tv

• 425

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j.d. durkin

✔@jiveDurkey

White House totally on lockdown. All press being sheltered in place inside briefing room. Similar reported response at the a U.S. Capitol + congressional office buildings

video: https://twitter.com/i/status/1199325909829992448

• 847

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“With security incident this morning, Fox has specifically inquired whether Capitol security systems may have been hacked or if this may have been a ‘test’ by nefarious forces to judge how people may have responded,” Pergram tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “Fox is told neither of those scenarios were in play.”

He explained that Fox was told that security officials are still baffled and some even received different versions of a report on what happened, down to even the location and speed of the alleged aircraft.

“Officials heard it was ‘hovering’ and were even given ‘knots’ measuring its speed. But they still don’t know what it was,” Pergram continued.

“We don’t know what the hell it was,” one knowledgeable source told Pergram. He explained that the security doesn’t know “if it was birds, a ‘weather anomaly,’ a drone or what.”

Chad Pergram

✔@ChadPergram

Security officials still baffled by this morning’s Congressional security threat: “We don’t know what the hell it was,” said one knowegeable source. They don’t know if it was birds, a “weather anomaly,” a drone or what

• 40

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Chad Pergram

✔@ChadPergram

Fox is told security officials got different info as to location & speed regarding the aircraft in question potentially posing a security risk in DC today. Officials heard it was “hovering” & were even given “knots” measuring its speed. But they still don’t know what it was

• 40

10:17 PM - Nov 26, 2019

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Chad Pergram
✔@ChadPergram

With security incident this morning,
Fox has specifically inquired whether Capitol security systems may have been hacked or if this may have been a “test” by nefarious forces to judge how people may have responded. Fox is told neither of those scenarios were in play.

• 13

10:18 PM - Nov 26, 2019

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Some on Twitter have joked that the flying object was a possible alien invasion.

Jim Geraghty

✔@jimgeraghty

Come on, aliens, if you're coming for Thanksgiving, call first.

https://twitter.com/ChadPergram/status/1199437105669296129 …

Chad Pergram

✔@ChadPergram

Fox is told security officials got different info as to location & speed regarding the aircraft in question potentially posing a security risk in DC today. Officials heard it was “hovering” & were even given “knots” measuring its speed. But they still don’t know what it was

• 17

10:21 PM - Nov 26, 2019

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See Jim Geraghty's other Tweets

{ https://www.rawstory.com/ }

Asteroid Hygiea May Be the Smallest Dwarf Planet in the Solar System

‘Onmogelijk’ zwart gat stelt astronomen voor raadsel 

Sterrenkundigen hebben een zwart gat ontdekt dat eigenlijk niet kan bestaan. Het is 68 keer zo zwaar als de zon, en dat is veel te zwaar. Als het resultaat klopt, zijn de ideeën over het ontstaan van zwarte gaten aan herziening toe.

Govert Schilling

‘Ik hoorde het nieuws om kwart voor drie in de ochtend’, zegt zwarte-gatenexpert Selma de Mink. ‘Ik was toevallig kort wakker en scande uit gewoonte mijn telefoon. Slecht idee. Geen slaap meer gehad die nacht.’

Een zwart gat is een gebied in de ruimte met zó veel zwaartekracht dat het alles uit zijn omgeving opslokt en er zelfs geen licht meer uit kan ontsnappen. Afgelopen voorjaar presenteerden sterrenkundigen voor het eerst een ‘foto’ van een zwart gat. Dat was een kolossaal monster in de kern van een ander sterrenstelsel.

Zulke zwarte gaten kunnen miljoenen of zelfs miljarden keren zo zwaar zijn als de zon. Maar het nieuw ontdekte zwarte gat moet ontstaan zijn in de nasleep van een supernova – de explosie van een zware ster die aan het eind van zijn leven is gekomen. Die ‘stellaire’ zwarte gaten zijn hooguit 45 tot 55 keer zo zwaar als de zon. Dacht iedereen.

De ontdekking, deze week gepubliceerd in Nature, is gedaan door een groot internationaal team van voornamelijk Chinese astronomen. Het zwarte gat is zelf niet zichtbaar, maar er draait een ster omheen die wél te zien is. De baanbeweging van die ster – één rondje in 79 dagen – verraadt overduidelijk de aanwezigheid van het zwarte gat.

Kosmische slokop

Dat de kosmische slokop maar liefst 68 keer zo veel weegt als de zon, blijkt uit metingen met gloeiend waterstofgas. Dat gas draait vermoedelijk in een platte schijf rond het zwarte gat. Maar volgens De Mink, verbonden aan Harvard University, zijn dat ‘ontzettend lastige metingen’. ‘Het is een baanbrekende ontdekking – als het waar is. Maar ik ben nog niet overtuigd.’

Teamlid Stephen Justham van de Universiteit van Amsterdam snapt dat wel. Sterren kunnen eenvoudigweg niet zó zwaar zijn dat ze na de supernova-explosie een zwart gat achterlaten van meer dan pakweg 50 zonnemassa’s. Maar Justham heeft voldoende vertrouwen in de Chinese metingen, die bovendien bevestigd zijn door andere grote telescopen.

Misschien is er niet sprake van één zwart gat, denkt hij, maar van twee zwarte gaten die in een kleine baan om elkaar heen draaien, elk zo’n 35 keer zo zwaar als de zon. Dat zulke dubbele zwarte gaten bestaan, is de afgelopen jaren gebleken uit metingen aan zwaartekrachtgolven – minieme rimpelingen in de ruimtetijd.

Maar als dat zo is, valt het niet mee om het bestaan van de rondcirkelende ster te verklaren, zegt De Mink. ‘Ik zou ontzettend graag willen dat dit allemaal waar is, want ik hou enorm van mysterieuze puzzels met dubbelsterren en zwarte gaten, maar ik ben nog erg sceptisch.’

Hoe dan ook, het nieuwe zwarte gat vormt zo goed als zeker het topje van een grote ijsberg van soortgelijke objecten. Het is namelijk voor het eerst dat een ‘stellair’ zwart gat is ontdekt via de schommelingen van een ster die eromheen draait. Volgens Justham is dit ‘een voorproefje van een compleet nieuwe populatie van zwarte gaten die we nog maar net beginnen te ontdekken’.

MEER OVER ZWARTE GATEN:

• Luister hier onze podcast spoedcursus zwarte gaten.

{https://www.volkskrant.nl/ }

Hundreds sign up to storm Australia's Area 51

Originally billed as a tongue-in-cheek effort to determine if there are aliens at Area 51 in Nevada, the original "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us" event was posted up on Facebook in July.

When the actual day itself arrived however, only a small handful of the millions of signups actually turned up and the long advertised 'storming' of the base to look for aliens never materialized.

Now several months on, fans in Australia have decided to set up a 'storm' event of their own.

The destination they've chosen is Pine Gap - a US satellite surveillance base that some regard as Australia's answer to Area 51. The base is jointly run by the NSA, CIA and NRO.

Not everyone however is convinced that there are any aliens to uncover at the facility.

"I don't think the Americans are worried about finding aliens," said Northern Territory MLA Gerry Wood. "I think they'd be more worried about China and the Middle East."

"Besides Alice Spring would be an uncomfortable place for aliens to be, it's too hot."

"You'll also get in trouble if you storm that place, it's a secure site."

Whether any of the Facebook signups will attempt to go anywhere near the base remains to be seen.

Source: Facebook | Comments (7)

{ https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/ }

Last week I received a lengthy, rambling series of messages from a guy in Salt Lake City, Utah that – when I finally got around to copy-pasting and formatting it all – amounted to eleven pages in single-spaced Word. I won’t detail the whole story, since it would take an entire batch of articles to do that. Sam (which is his real name) is a twenty-something who has never seen a UFO, has never been abducted by ETs, and has never had a particular interest in the subjects of UFOs and alien life. For a while, however, he did dabble in the occult, which may very well have led to what occurred just a few months back. Here’s the story: Sam found himself in a very weird situation that began in late August of this year, and that he claims is still going on. On the first night of weirdness, he woke up, around 5:00 a.m. in a state of complete confusion on his bed, rather than in it. Sam had had an extremely strange “nightmare” of having been placed into a state of what he called “mind control” a couple of hours earlier, which would have put the time it all began around 3:00 a.m. In that same nightmare, Sam got out of bed, dressed, and exited his apartment. But that’s not all: when he dressed, it was not in his regular, casual clothes. Rather, it was in a black suit, which he put on without giving it a thought. I should stress he doesn’t own a black suit.

Sam cannot remember what happened after he left the apartment, that is until he arrived at the doorstep of an apartment only two blocks down from his. He recalled knocking on the door, which was opened by a woman with a blank look on her face – and who seemed to have no problems about letting a complete stranger into her home at what, by now, was around 4:00 a.m. Sam recalls entering the living-room, with the woman in front of him. He then warned her never to talk about a UFO encounter that she had just a few days earlier – a case that involved “missing time” but not an “abduction.” In his strange state, Sam could hear himself saying the threatening words, but it was as if “it wasn’t me saying it. It was coming from my mouth, but it wasn’t me.” Sam then left, walked back to his home, and went to bed. He fell asleep – and then woke up around 5:00 a.m., as described earlier. In the morning, the suit was nowhere in sight. All that was left were the vivid  memories of that odd night of what Sam fully believes was a case of possession, rather than just a bad dream.

Sam claims that roughly the same scenario has now occurred on three occasions: he wakes in the early hours, dresses in a black suit (which is never still there when he wakes at his usual wake-up time of 7:00 a.m.), and then heads off to the home of the targeted individual, which, so far, is always the same woman. As with the first occasion, he cannot recall how he gets to the home of the person, although he recalls walking back. Oddly, even though he knows the woman lives nearby, he is never able to find her apartment when he is in a normal state during the day. It’s as if (he believes) that he’s being prevented from finding the location – that is, until he is required to make another late night threat. Then, he has no problem at all finding the site. It’s a result of all this undeniable weirdness that Sam chose to contact me, having done some online research and seen that I have written several books on the MIB and one on the Women in Black phenomenon. Sam believes that demons have control of him and that those same demons are behind the MIB phenomenon. In Sam’s world, those same demons use us – in a hypnotized state – to prevent people from getting too close to the truth of the UFO enigma – which is, in Sam’s view, demonic, too. And they do that by literally turning random people into MIBs, via temporary possession of people like Sam. He believes.

When I began to dig into the story deeply, I realized that it was very similar to one that Timothy Green Beckley had shared with me back in September 2010 (specifically on the 21st of the month). The story, in Tim’s own words, went as follows: “There was one case where I might have been threatened by a Man in Black. There was a publication I wrote for in the 1970s called Official UFO. They published their address in the magazine, so they did get a few crank  visitors to the offices. One of these was a gentleman who claimed he was being stalked by the Men in Black.” As Tim also told me, he eventually got to meet a guy who would later turn out to be an alleged Man in Black. They had a degree of correspondence for a while, as well as a few face-to-face encounters. By the end of the 1970s, however, things started to get very menacing, as Tim told me.

The man in question made a number of disturbing calls to Tim’s home phone number. It was something that led Tim to contact the police. When the police tracked the strange character down, Tim finally got the lowdown on who, exactly, the man really was. It transpired he was a homeless character, spending his nights and days on Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, New York City. There was a very good reason – beyond just the threats the guy made – why Tim was concerned. Tim explained to me that the man “…must have called fifty times and left crazy, threatening messages that would go on and on. I spoke with his parents, who were in Florida, and they said that although he wasn’t always like this, something came over him now and again.”

Tim had an intriguing theory, one that echoes the story told to me last week by Sam. Tim said: “With cases like this guy, where something came over him, and with the MIB, it’s like a possession, where a paranormal force takes possession of the person and they become the Man in Black, doing what the force wants them to do, but without their knowledge. Afterward, they might not even remember any of it. These people are living on the fringe of society; they are simple-minded people who can easily be controlled and influenced. Someone, say, who might be living in some rundown apartment, is taken over in a kind of trance, and then he becomes one of the Men in Black. He threatens someone, and then he goes back to his normal life after the possession ends, and he doesn’t remember it. But, while he is under the control of whatever is doing this, he’s not quite right. And, like a zombie, is the best way I can describe it.”

I have to say that all of this paints a very strange, even sinister, picture. Of course, the most likely scenario is that Sam was already aware that I had previously addressed this very same theory (in my 2011 book, The Real Men in Black) that the MIB might actually be regular people in the throes of possession and used by…well…something. The least likely scenario is that supernatural, demonic entities are using us as vessels, as a means to threaten witnesses to UFOs (and to paranormal phenomena, too). I personally go with the “most likely” angle. The fact is, though, that in most MIB encounters, the witnesses describe the Men in Black as acting very strange, as if they aren’t fully self-aware, and as if they are performing a role, but they don’t completely understand what that role is – beyond making that veiled threat to keep people quiet about their particular encounter of the UFO- or paranormal-based type.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

A very common trope of science fiction and fantasy is that of time travel. There has always been an allure to the idea of traveling between two point in time, of making runs to the past or the future to right wrongs or just out of curiosity of ages long past or of eras yet to come. Yet, is any of it really possible at all? In recent times scientists have put much serious thought into the conundrum of time travel, and it seems that even now no one really knows, and that it is all highly speculative and a slave to the domain of scientific speculation. One prominent scientist who very much liked to think about such things was a world renowned scientist who not only entertained the idea, but also threw a party hoping to entertain visitors from the far future.

The question of whether time travel is possible or not was rather deeply pondered and speculated upon by the late, legendary physicist Stephen Hawking, who over the years changed his stance on the possibility of traveling through time. Officially he seemed to not think it was possible in the traditional sense of the word, publishing a paper in the journal Physical Review D in 1992 called Chronology Protection Conjecture, in which he argued that going back into time was not possible in our current understanding of the laws of physics. In his paper he would state:

It seems there is a chronology protection agency, which prevents the appearance of closed timelike curves and so makes the universe safe for historians.

Stephen Hawking

However, Hawking was a self-professed dreamer, and simply could not resist the allure of contemplating time travel, and indeed he was rather obsessed with time in general. What he came up with as the only possible way that time travel would be even remotely possible was through the use of what is called the 4th dimension. What this means is that while every object that we perceive is in three detectable dimensions, height, width, and depth, physicists often talk of a 4th dimension, which is that of time. Theoretically, all one needs to do is to create a tunnel through this 4th dimension and voila, time travel. Yet it is not as simple as this barebones explanation I have provided here may make it seem.

These theoretical tunnels through the 4th dimension are called “wormholes,” which Einstein predicted linked two separate places in time, and which are thought to hypothetically already exist on an incredibly minuscule scale, at a size even smaller than molecules or even atoms, an impossibly small scale called the “quantum foam.” These wormholes form tiny wrinkles and cracks in time itself, constantly blinking in or out of existence, expanding and shrinking, caught in an eternal state of flux. Considering this very unstable nature and the fact that these theoretical wormholes are only around a billion-trillion-trillionths of a centimeter across, they would not be much good for practically travelling through in their current state, and this is where Hawking’s hypothetical time machine comes into play.

By creating some device that could enlarge these wormholes by several orders of magnitude, it is thought that perhaps they could be enlarged and somehow stabilized to the point that a person could theoretically pass through one point and come out in places far away across the cosmos or even in another time. It is a concept already well explored in science fiction, but could it be a reality? However, ultimately Hawking has deemed time travel to the past impossible due to the paradoxes it would cause, because it would violate a fundamental law of the universe in that effect always happens after the cause. He says of this in his article How to Build a Time Machine:

Through the wormhole, the scientist can see himself as he was one minute ago. But what if our scientist uses the wormhole to shoot his earlier self? He’s now dead. So who fired the shot? It’s a paradox. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s the sort of situation that gives cosmologists nightmares. This kind of time machine would violate a fundamental rule that governs the entire universe – that causes happen before effects, and never the other way around. I believe things can’t make themselves impossible. If they could then there’d be nothing to stop the whole universe from descending into chaos. So I think something will always happen that prevents the paradox. Somehow there must be a reason why our scientist will never find himself in a situation where he could shoot himself.

There is also the matter of the unsteady nature of the wormhole itself. Hawking explains that such a wormhole would create a sort of potent “feedback” that would prevent it from working. He compares this to a speaker at a rock concert, when the sound goes into a loop through the microphone and out of the speaker to create that screeching sound that everyone hates, getting louder on each loop until it potentially destroys the sound system. He says the same thing would basically happen with a wormhole, of which he says:

The same thing will happen with a wormhole, only with radiation instead of sound. As soon as the wormhole expands, natural radiation will enter it, and end up in a loop. The feedback will become so strong it destroys the wormhole. So although tiny wormholes do exist, and it may be possible to inflate one some day, it won’t last long enough to be of use as a time machine. Any kind of time travel to the past through wormholes or any other method is probably impossible, otherwise paradoxes would occur. So sadly, it looks like time travel to the past is never going to happen. A disappointment for dinosaur hunters and a relief for historians.

Despite his assurance that time travel to the past is most likely impossible, ever the dreamer Hawking nevertheless created a rather eccentric and some might even say bonkers experiment. In 2009 he decided that he would throw an extravagant party for any time travelers out there, complete with expensive champagne, balloons, hors d’oeuvres, the works. Hawking actually went through with all this, sparing no expense to set everything up at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, but the catch was that he would not send out the invitations, which contained the time, day, and coordinates, until after the party, his rationale being that real time travelers would be able to receive the invitation and travel back to the party. Hawking would say of these invitations:

I’ve drawn up an invitation giving the exact coordinates in time and space. I am hoping copies of it, in one form or another, will be around for many thousands of years. Maybe one day someone living in the future will find the information on the invitation and use a wormhole time machine to come back to my party, proving that time travel will, one day, be possible.

One of the invitations to the time traveler party

On June 28, 2009, the champagne was set out, including an elaborate champagne pyramid, the food was put out, and Hawking got all dressed up in his finest evening attire. For as much as a publicity stunt that it seemed, he was actually going through with it. Hawking sat there at his lavish party under a giant banner reading “Time Travelers Welcome,” waiting for his guests to arrive, then waited some more, and then continued to wait. Not a single person came through those doors, putting all of that food and champagne to waste. He would later say:

I have experimental evidence that time travel is not possible. I gave a party for time-travelers, but I didn’t send out the invitations until after the party. I sat there a long time, but no one came. What a shame. I was hoping at least a future Miss Universe was going to step through the door.

Now of course Hawking was probably only half-serious about this “experiment,” and it is mostly seen as purely a publicity stunt, but that hasn’t stopped people from discussing why no time travelers arrived. Besides the obvious reason, being that time travel will never exist, there have been an array of other possible reasons as well. For instance, the invitations may not have survived long enough into the future for time travelers to have seen them or the invitations were simply just never found. Time travelers might not have known about the party in the first place. There is also the possibility that the time travelers simply did not want to go to the party, and it also makes sense in that they likely wouldn’t want their existence known so why announce it by showing up to a party thrown expressly for the purpose of proving they are real?

Whatever the reasons, interestingly when Hawking passed away on March 14, 2018, his family actually went ahead and made an open invitation for time travelers to come to the funeral. On the webpage for The Stephen Hawking Foundation there was held a raffle for tickets to the event, and curiously there is a section for applicants born between 2019 and 2038, meaning that people from the future could apply. So, will time travel ever be possible, and if it will be, then where is everyone? Is this purely the realm of science fiction or is there anything to it all? Whether time travel exists or ever will, there are ideas, and at least I hope that Mr. Hawking got some good champagne and food out of the deal.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Alien Base On Mars Near Landed UFO In Crater! Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Nov 27, 2019
Location of discovery: Mars
Source photo: 

• http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/218071
  

I found some structures in a Mars photo. One structure is a two tier black base that sits at the center of a crater. Another intesting object is a alien disk that has landed at a 25 degree angle in a crater. I made a video and hope you like it. Please remember to hit like and subscribe to my channel ET DATA BASE. This is absolute proof that aliens exist, yet NASA would never and has never addressed what these objects and others are. 
Thanks,
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

Bright Red UFO Appears Over UK City Bradford On Video, Nov 2019, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: November 26, 2019
Location of sighting: Brandford England, UK
News source: 

• https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/18063801.ufo-sighting-watch-strange-light-bradford-skies/
  
  

A bright red light was recorded over the city Bradford, UK two days ago. The light only lasted about a minute, but the eyewitness got a really great video of the event. Sadly the video released was reduced in quality since the uploader failed to enlarge it correctly, so its difficult to see any detail. However the screenshot above is from the original and as you can see, there is a disk-like object at its center. I believe that this object came from an underground base, transporting to its current location...and powered up...soon disappearing as it shot up and out of our atmosphere. I made a gif below to show the disk when I changed it to negative format and added contrast. The UFO then comes into focus. 
Scott C. Waring

{  https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

The aliens are coming for a landing? A strange pulsing beam of light appeared in the sky over Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on November 29, 2019.

Tinkerbell Bear while driving home saw this really strange pulsing beam in the sky and said "I've never seen anything like it and it is so weird! Anyone know what it is or seen this before?"

According to cbc.ca - the Edmonton Fire Rescue Services determined that the beam of light is flaring and came from Imperial Oil's Strathcona refinery. Flares are used in refineries and petrochemical facilities to safely burn excess hydrocarbon gases that can't be recovered or recycled.

Below Tinkerbell's video of the weird beam of light. More images of the sky phenomenon, see cbc.ca

  

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

Flashing UFO ‘left bizarre landing marks and shut down nearby boat engines in terrifying encounter with two fishermen’ – The Sun

A UFO left strange landing marks on the ground and burnt the grass during a harrowing close encounter with two terrified fishermen in Brazil.

These photos, which have never been made public before, show the strange indentations in the soil and grass flattened in a circular formation.

Fishermen Fernando Beserra and Wilson da Silva Oliveira at the scene of the alleged landing

The strange landing marks and scorched grass that have puzzled UFO hunters

A drawing of what the UFO apparently looked like

Fishermen Fernando Beserra and Wilson da Silva Oliveira were gathering their nets when they saw the bright UFO land just a few metres away.

They thought it was a balloon at first, but when the speed of the object convinced them they were faced with something otherworldly.

According to the terrified witnesses, the UFO landed on an island called Ilha do Major, Soa Vicente, near São Paulo.

The UFO left marks on the ground and traces of radiation.

Fernando said: "When the light was over our heads, it changed direction and went to an a small island, where it landed.

"On the lower part of the UFO there was a number spinning lights.”

Wilson Oliveira added: “I almost died of fear. I hid in the bottom of the boat."

'BOAT ENGINE STOPPED WORKING'

The UFO had a yellowish hue and was so intense the two frightened fishermen tried to flee, but bizarrely they say their boat's engine stopped as the object passed over.

Fernando said: "We made about ten attempts until the engine started and then we left as fast as we could.

"We could see that the UFO had landed on a small island located between us and the mangroves of the Piaçabuçu river."

The fisherman also drew a map to show the exact 'landing spot'

After the scare, Fernando and Wilson made their way back home to tell their relatives.

At dawn the next day, the two fishermen returned to the scene and noticed a circular mark where they believed the UFO had landed.

It was a circle of 18ft in diameter, where the vegetation was dry, twisted and flattened in a clockwise direction.

Four marks from the object's rectangular support legs were also found, each measuring 10 by 15cm.

These markings were proportionately distributed and sank to a depth of 1.5cm into the soil.

It changed direction and went to an a small island, where it landed...on the lower part of the UFO there was a number spinning lights
Fishermen Fernando Beserra

The fishermen returned home and reported their sighting to the newspaper "The Tribuna" in Santos.

Experts from the National Institute of Aerospace Phenomenab (INFA) immediately launched a probe and took plaster moulds of the landing marks.

Soil and vegetation samples were also taken as the investigators at INFA literally left no stone unturned.

The sighting on October 1 1995 was classified as being a Close Encounter of the Second kind, because of the following characteristics:

• Mechanical effect, characterised by the marks left on the ground and by the crumpled
• and broken vegetation at the same location
• EM (electromagnetic) effects causing the boats engine to stop operating
• Physiological effect on the witnesses, with both complaining of eye irritation and diarrhoea

Tests involving planting seeds in these soil samples curiously found in the soil samples taken within the burnt area the seeds germinated easily.

But those planted in the samples harvested outside the circle did not germinate and were attacked by fungi which has baffled the investigators.

Each landing gear would have weighed 25 kilos, although they believed the UFO was much heavier and that it may have not put all its weight into the soft ground.

It became clear to the researchers the marks were not from conventional helicopters or aircraft.

The Santos Military Air Base stated that it had no aircraft in the area at the time.

The vegetation was crumpled and scorched, according to a report

Brazil's leading investigator Thiago Thichetti, whose father was a pilot in the Brazilian air force, has been researching the UFO phenomenon for more than 22 years.

He has now written about the fascinating case in his new book "UFO Contacts in Brazil", published by British publisher Flying Disk Press.

He said: "The two witnesses have constantly stuck to their story and with the supporting physical markings left at the scene there is little doubt in what they had to say.

"The UFO investigators at INFA conducted a first class investigation and thanks to them we have clear photographs of the UFO landing area and UFO landing marks."

The site which allegedly bears the tell-tale signs of a landing

Source: Read Full Article

{ https://celebritysco.com/ }

Huge UFO Scaring Away Fishermen and Leaving Landing Marks on the Ground

Newly released images show the mysterious marks and burnt grass left behind by an alleged UFO, which two fishermen claim to have observed while out on a late-night expedition.

In October 1995, more than two decades ago, Fernando Baserra and Wilson da Silvia Oliveira say they were on Ilha do Major island in Sao Paulo, Brazil gathering their nets when they spotted a disc-shaped UFO.

The pair say they initially thought it was a balloon, but it approached at speed they changed their mind and convinced it was an alien spaceship.

The intense light made the pair terrified. They ran away and jumped on their boat, just a few metres away the strange object landed moments later.

Wilson said he nearly died of fear as he hid in the bottom of the boat.

Fernando added he saw the UFO changed direction as the light was over their heads and went to a tiny island where it landed. He noticed several spinning lights on the lower part of the strange object.

The pair made around ten attempts until the engine started, and then they left as fast as they could.

They could see the UFO landed on a small island between them and the mangroves of the Piacabucu River.

Fernando and Wilson safely went back home after the scare and told their relatives about the incident but could not sleep despite taking a mild medication to help them calm down.

The duo claim they returned to the scene at dawn the next day and saw a circular mark 5.5 metres in diameter in the spot they thought the UFO had landed, where they noticed dry, twisted and flattened vegetation in a clockwise direction.

They found four marks from the rectangular support legs of the object, each measuring 10x15cm, distributed proportionately, and sank into the soil to a depth of 1.50cm.

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

UFO Buzzes Over White House Causing Panic And Lock Down, Nov 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighing: Nov 2019
Location of sighting: Washington DC, White house, USA
Source: 

• https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/26/politics/white-house-lockdown-airspace/index.html
  

A few days ago the white house reported that an airplane caused the Whitehouse to lock down and send up fighter jets to go investigate, but today they are changing their story. Now they say it was a unidentified flying objects seen on radar that appears to be blob shaped. Although visible on radar, to the naked eye it appears to be invisible, because no photos or eyewitnesses of this UFO have yet been reported. The US gov has scrambled to try to explain the situation saying its birds or a outdated radar system, and even saying its a creation by the weather system, they even said this huge object could be a tiny drone...they were really reaching. Clearly they have no idea what this object was...so it was unidentified...and it was flying and it was an object. 

This is absolutely a visit from alien craft. UFOs have been seen over Washington as far back as 1952 when for several weeks from July 12th until July 29. The objects in 1952 were first spotted on radar...just like he UFO this week. Then they saw on radar the movments of the craft were nothing like conventional craft, but moving around like nothin they had ever seen. Then an aircraft spotted one...saying it was like an orange ball of fire with a long trail, but others were white and tailless. They UFOs shot off after the pilot got too close. 

So you see...aliens have a high interest in the American President, the White House...I'm sure 1952 wasn't the first time that ever happened, and 2019 wont be the last. Aliens love seeing history being made first hand. Look at computers screens for them is not as real as...reality. 
Scott C. Waring-Taiwan

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

Navy Officers Say 'Unknown Individuals' Made Them Erase Evidence of 2004 UFO Encounter

By Yasemin Saplakoglu - Search For Life

In 2017, a video of the Nimitz UFO encounter was publicly released.

(Image: © To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science)

Several Navy officers who witnessed the now-famous Nimitz UFO encounter in 2004 say "unknown individuals" showed up after the event and made them turn over data recordings and videos, according to Popular Mechanics.

For several days in November 2004, a Navy missile cruiser sailing around 100 miles (160 kilometers) off the coast of southern California detected strange radar signals emanating from an object in the sky. The signals were erratic and didn't seem to match those given off by known aircraft. The Navy then deployed fighter jets to catch a closer glimpse of the strange object, and one succeeded in recording a blurry, black-and-white video that was, to the government's chagrin, publicly released in 2017 along with two other videos of UFO sightings from years later.

Five Navy veterans recently spoke to Popular Mechanics about what they experienced at the time. The veterans were part of the Navy's Strike Carrier Group 11 and were sailing on the USS Princeton on a training mission prior to their upcoming deployment in the Arabian Sea.

• Related: 7 Things Most Often Mistaken for UFOs

The strange radar signals came from an object that would quickly change altitudes, sometimes lurking at 80,000 feet (24,000 meters) and other times hanging around at 30,000 feet (9,000 m), they told Popular Mechanics. The UFO (an "unidentified flying object," which doesn't necessarily belong to aliens) became known as "Tic Tac" because of its shape. Tic Tac gave off a phosphorus glow at night and would dart around in various directions, said one of the veterans, Gary Voorhis, who looked at the object through binoculars on the ship.

Voorhis recalled that sometime after the officers recorded these strange radio signals, two people showed up on a helicopter, and 20 minutes later,  Voorhis' chain of command (a higher-up authority figure) told him to turn over the data recordings. His chain of command also told him to delete the recordings on the ship. "They even told me to erase everything that's in the shop — even the blank tapes," he told Popular Mechanics. 

Similarly, Petty Officer Patrick "P.J." Hughes, who was an aviation technician, claimed that his commanding officer and two unknown men asked him to turn over the hard drives from the plane. 

However, Cmdr. David Fravor, one of the pilots who got a close view of Tic Tac on a fighter jet, told a different story. In various past interviews, Fravor said the videotapes of the UFO disappeared — not because of any "men in suits" but because people had unintentionally recorded over them. 

Fravor previously told The New York Times that he and Lt. Cmdr. Jim Slaight spotted the object, which was about 40 feet (12 m) long. As they descended in the fighter jet, the object ascended to meet them but then abruptly veered away and disappeared, he told the Times.

The details of what happened in 2004, both in the sky and down below, remain ambiguous. To learn more about what these Navy witnesses had to say, read Popular Mechanics' original feature.

• Gallery of Curiosity Rover's 'UFO' Photos
• 9 Strange, Scientific Excuses for Why Humans Haven't Found Aliens
• 12 Possible Reasons We Haven't Found Aliens

Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

'Slow-moving blob' that may have been a flock of birds caused White House lockdown

Mysterious VINCA Statuettes: Evidence of Extraterrestrial Contact?

Vinca statues seem to confirm that ancient people were visited by extra-terrestrials.

In almost every ancient culture to have been unearthed and sufficiently studied by archaeologists and historians, there is an amazing running theme. Each of these ancient civilizations reveals artifacts, texts, and monuments which seem indicate interaction with extra-terrestrial beings. One such prominent example is the Vinca civilization which existed in around 7000 BC and spread across several European countries including the Balkans and the North of Greece.

The Vinca people were highly advanced for the age that they lived in. Archaeologists have deduced that they developed a syllabic-alphabetic language and or linear writing system. This is remarkable considering that they managed to achieve this mark of a highly evolved society thousands of years before the great ancient civilizations of the Euphrates and Ancient Egypt. In fact, for many experts on the subject, they are a complete historical anomaly.

Recently, archaeologists investigating this mysterious ancient society have been carrying out extensive excavations of the land in the shadow of the Serbian city of Belgrade to find out more about the Vinca people. To their astonishment, they discovered no less than two thousand highly unusual figurines which are completely distinct to the art of the neighboring cultures in the region.

These figures have triangular shaped faces, almond shaped eyes and very slight mouths and noses. Some of the figurines almost appear to resemble animals such as grasshoppers and some depict hybrid humanoids which appear to be half-human and half-reptile.

The appearance of these figurines is striking. Many depictions of extra-terrestrials in ancient literature and art reference the same oval shaped heads, enormous almond eyes with dark pupils and small noses and mouths. The heads of the Vinca figurines are also considerably out of proportion to the slight proportions of the body. Once again, this is a common descriptive in ancient texts describing ‘gods’ that descended from the skies.

The appearance of these highly revealing figurines in conjunction with the remarkable advancement of the Vinca society has suggested to some people that these highly ancient people may well be have been in contact with extra-terrestrial beings. If the story of the Vinca people’s interaction with these aliens is similar to other cultures around the world, then it is likely that they worshiped these aliens as gods who brought them the illumination required to evolve their society to a more enlightened state.

Map showing the extent of the Vinča culture within Southeastern Europe.
Image Credit: Wikipedia

The mysterious depictions of the Vinca Culture – Extraterrestrial beings?

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

Alien civilizations may have explored the galaxy and visited Earth already, new study says. We just haven’t seen them recently.

• The Milky Way could be teeming with extraterrestrial civilizations that have spread across the stars, according to a new study.
• The study offers new perspectives on the Fermi Paradox, which asks why we haven’t found signs of intelligent extraterrestrials in our galaxy.
• There are plenty of scenarios in which aliens could exist but we haven’t heard from them, the study authors wrote. Aliens may have even visited Earth, they say, just not recently enough for us to have noticed.
• The study suggests that aliens might wait for stars to move closer to one another before spreading across the galaxy
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

The Milky Way could be teeming with interstellar alien civilizations, according to a new study. We just don’t know about it because they haven’t paid us a visit in 10 million years.

The study, published last month in The Astronomical Journal, posits that intelligent extraterrestrial life could be taking its time to explore the galaxy, harnessing star systems’ movement to make star-hopping easier.

The work is a new response to a question known as the Fermi Paradox, which asks why we haven’t detected signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.

The paradox was first posed by physicist Enrico Fermi, who famously asked: “Where is everybody?”

Fermi was questioning the feasibility of travel between stars, but since then, his query has come to represent doubts about the very existence of extraterrestrials. Astrophysicist Michael Hart explored the question formally when he argued in a 1975 paper that there has been plenty of time for intelligent life to colonise the Milky Way in the 13.6 billion years since the galaxy first formed, yet we’ve heard nothing from them. Hart concluded that there must be no other advanced civilizations in our galaxy.

The new study offers a different perspective on the question: Maybe aliens are just taking their time and being strategic, the authors suggest.

“If you don’t account for motion of stars when you try to solve this problem, you’re basically left with one of two solutions,” Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback, a computational scientist and the study’s lead author, told Business Insider. “Either nobody leaves their planet, or we are in fact the only technological civilisation in the galaxy.”

Stars (and the planets around them) orbit the centre of the galaxy on different paths at different speeds. As they do, they occasionally pass each other, Carroll-Nellenback pointed out. So aliens could be waiting for their next destination to come closer to them, his study says.

In that case, civilizations would take longer to spread across the stars than Hart estimated. So they may not have reached us yet ⁠- or maybe they did, long before humans evolved.

A new idea about interstellar travel

Researchers have sought to answer the Fermi Paradox in a number of ways – studies have investigated the possibility that all alien life forms in oceans below a planet’s surface, and posited that civilizations may get undone by their unsustainability before accomplishing any interstellar travel. There’s also the “zoo hypothesis,” which imagines that Milky Way societies have decided not to contact us for the same reasons that we have nature preserves or maintain protections for some uncontacted indigenous peoples.

A 2018 Oxford University study, meanwhile, suggested that there’s a roughly 2-in-5 chance we’re alone in our galaxy and a 1-in-3 chance we’re alone in the entire cosmos.

But the authors of the newest study point out that previous research hasn’t accounted for a crucial fact of our galaxy: It moves. Just as planets orbit stars, star systems orbit the galactic centre. Our solar system, for example, orbits the galaxy every 230 million years.

If civilizations arise in star systems far away from the others (like our own, which is in the backwaters of the galaxy), they could make the trip shorter by waiting until their orbital path brings them closer to a habitable star system, the study says. Then once settled in that new system, the aliens could wait again for an optimal travel distance to make another hop, and so on.

In this scenario, aliens aren’t jet-setting across the galaxy. They’re just waiting long enough for their star to get close to another star with a habitable planet.

“If long enough is a billion years, well then that’s one solution to the Fermi paradox,” Carroll-Nellenback said. “Habitable worlds are so rare that you have to wait longer than any civilisation is expected to last before another one comes in range.”

The Milky Way could be full of settled star systems

To explore the scenarios in which aliens could exist, the researchers used numerical models to simulate a civilisation’s spread across the galaxy. They factored in a variety of possibilities for a hypothetical civilisation’s proximity to new star systems, the range and speed of its interstellar probes, and the launch rate of those probes.

The research team did not attempt to guess at aliens’ motivations or politics – a tendency that some astronomers view as a pitfall in other Fermi Paradox solutions.

“We tried to come up with a model that would involve the fewest assumptions about sociology that we could,” Carroll-Nellenback said.

Still, part of the problem with modelling the galactic spread of alien civilizations is that we’re only working with one data point: ourselves. So all our predictions are based on our own behaviour.

But even with this limitation, the researchers found that the Milky Way could be filled with settled star systems that we don’t know about. That still held true when they used conservative estimates of the speed and frequency of aliens’ interstellar travel.

“Every system could be habitable and could be settled, but they wouldn’t visit us because they’re not close enough,” Carroll-Nellenback said, though he added that just because that’s possible doesn’t make it likely.

So far, we’ve detected about 4,000 planets outside our solar system and none have been shown to host life. But we haven’t looked that hard: There are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, and even more planets. One recent study estimated that up to 10 billion of those planets could be Earth-like.

So the study authors wrote that concluding that none of those planets hold life would be like looking at a pool-sized amount of ocean water and finding no dolphins, then deciding that the entire ocean has no dolphins.

Aliens may have visited Earth in the past

Another key element in debates about alien life is what Hart called “Fact A”: There are no interstellar visitors on Earth now, and there is no evidence of past visits.

But that doesn’t mean they were never here, the authors of the new study say.

If an alien civilisation came to Earth millions of years ago (the Earth is 4.5 billion years old), there might be no remaining signs of their visit, the authors wrote. They pointed to previous researchsuggesting that we may not be able to detect evidence of past alien visits.

It’s even possible that aliens have passed near Earth since we’ve been here, but decided not to visit. The paper calls this the “Aurora effect,” named for Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel “Aurora.”

What’s more, aliens might not want to visit a planet that already has life, the authors said. To assume that they would, they added, would be a “naive projection” of a human tendency to equate expansion with conquest.

The study accounted for all of these considerations – the calculations assumed that alien civilizations would only settle a fraction of the habitable worlds they encountered. Still, the researchers said, if there are enough habitable worlds, aliens could easily have spread across the galaxy by now.

There’s still much more to learn

For now, the researchers don’t think we should get discouraged by any perceived silence from the universe.

“It doesn’t mean that we’re alone,” Carroll-Nellenback said. “It just means that habitable planets are probably rare and hard to get to.”

In the next few years, our ability to detect and observe other potentially habitable planets is expected to improve dramatically as new telescopes get built and launched into space.

The Kepler telescope made leaps and bounds in the search for planets that might host life in our galaxy. In Earth’s orbit today, the Hubble Space Telescope and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) are continuing the search. NASA is also building the James Webb Space Telescope, which may be able to see as far through space and time as the Big Bang. It’s slated to launch in 2021.

Of course, what would really improve scientists’ ability to estimate the probability that we’re alone in the universe would be more data on the speed or ranges of interstellar probes. A better sense of how long hypothetical alien civilizations last would be useful, too.

“We’re in desperate need of some data points,” Carroll-Nellenback said.

{ https://www.businessinsider.com.au/ }

{ https://futurism.com/ }

Extraterrestrial life could be more common than previously thought, new study says

Researchers believe there’s a specific type of star system very different from ours that provides a higher chance for intelligent life.

While some in the scientific community believe finding extraterrestrial life is “probably going to take a long time”, others believe aliens could be more prevalent than previously thought.

A new study suggests intelligent life is likely to inhabit a star system drastically different than ours. The researchers modelled a theoretical Earth into binary star systems – those with two stars – and found that 87 per cent of these “exo-Earths” should have their axis tilted similar to that of Earth, an important ingredient for intelligent life.

“Multiple star systems are common, and about 50 (per cent) of stars have binary companion stars. So, this study can be applied to a large number of solar systems,” said the study’s co-author, Gongjie Li, in a statement.

They probably won’t look like this, but scientists think aliens are more likely to exist in certain star systems.

Source:News Limited

These types of discoveries have been made in the past, including most recently LTT 1445 A b, a distant rocky exoplanet that has three stars. LTT 1445 A b is about 22 light-years from Earth. In 2016, NASA discovered a planet orbiting two stars in the OGLE-2007-BLG-349 system, 8,000 light-years away.

A light-year measures distance in space and equals 6 trillion miles.

The researchers compared Earth’s tilt to the tilt of Mars, noting the extreme variations between the two planets, and then looked at what Earth might be like if it were in the Alpha Centauri AB system, 4.4 light-years from Earth.

“Using numerical modelling in α Centauri AB, we show the following: there is a stark contrast between the planetary obliquity variations depending on the host star, planetary neighbours limit the possible spin states for Earth-like obliquity stability, and the presence of a moon can destabilise the obliquity, defying our Earth-based expectations,” the researchers added in the study.

“We simulated what it would be like around other binaries with multiple variations of the stars’ masses, orbital qualities and so on,” said Billy Quarles, the study’s principal investigator, in the statement. “The overall message was positive but not for our nearest neighbour.

The Alpha Centauri group is the closest ‘binary star system’, where the two stars orbit one another.

Picture: NASA/ESASource:Supplied

Going out further into deep space, the results became more promising, leading the researchers to believe it’s a possibility.

“In general, the separation between the stars is larger in binary systems, and then the second star has less of an effect on the model of Earth,” Prof Li added. “The planet’s own motion dynamics dominate other influences, and obliquity usually has a smaller variation. So, this is quite optimistic.”

The study has been published in the scientific journal Astrophysical Journal and was funded by NASA’s Exobiology Program.

A comprehensive study published in June found no evidence of extraterrestrial life among more than 1300 stars in proximity to Earth, a hunt that spanned more than three years.

A separate study published that month drastically cut the number of planets that could potentially host intelligent life, noting the definition for the “habitable zone” – the distance between a planet and star – “is likely limited relative to that for microbial life”.

In October, a former NASA scientist published a stunning op-ed, saying he is convinced the space agency “found evidence of life” on Mars in the 1970s. NASA has vehemently denied this claim.

• This article originally appeared on Fox News and was reproduced with permission

{ https://www.news.com.au/ }

NASA's Orion Capsule Takes a Ride on the 'Super Guppy' (Photos, Video)

By Mike Wall - Spaceflight 

The crew capsule is now in Ohio for testing.

NASA's Super Guppy transport plane, with the Orion crew capsule inside, on the ground at Mansfield Lahm Airport in Ohio on Nov. 24, 2019. Orion will undergo a series of tests at NASA’s Plum Brook Station.

(Image: © NASA/Bridget Caswell)

NASA's Orion spacecraft just took a ride on one of the weirdest airplanes in the world.

Orion, which will help astronauts get to and from the moon and Mars, flew from Florida's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to Ohio over the weekend aboard the Super Guppy, NASA's specialized oversized-transport plane.

The Super Guppy touched down at Mansfield Lahm Airport on Sunday (Nov. 24). Orion was removed from the plane and loaded onto a flatbed truck on Monday morning (Nov. 25), NASA officials said. The capsule is headed for NASA's Plum Brook Station, where it will undergo extensive testing inside the world's largest vacuum chamber.

• Related: The Orion Space Capsule: NASA's Next Spaceship (Photos)

The testing campaign will begin with a "thermal test," during which Orion's various systems will be powered on in a space-like environment.

"During this phase, the spacecraft will be subjected to extreme temperatures, ranging from minus 250 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit [minus 160 to 150 degrees Celsius], to replicate flying in and out of sunlight and shadow in space," NASA officials wrote in a statement. "The second phase is an electromagnetic interference and compatibility test, lasting about 14 days. This testing will ensure the spacecraft’s electronics work properly when operated at the same time."

After these tests are done, Orion will be ferried back to KSC, where technicians will begin integrating it with NASA's huge Space Launch System (SLS) rocket ahead of the Artemis 1 mission. 

Artemis 1, which is targeted for November 2020, will send Orion on a three-week, uncrewed flight around the moon. That mission will be the first for the SLS and the second for Orion, which took a brief uncrewed jaunt to Earth orbit in December 2014. (That flight lifted off atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket.)

Artemis 1 will be a key milestone in NASA's Artemis program, which aims to put two astronauts down near the lunar south pole by 2024 and establish a long-term, sustainable human presence on and around the moon by 2028.

Accomplishing such goals will help NASA and its partners learn the skills needed to put boots on Mars, agency officials have said.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine posted this photo on Twitter on Nov. 25, 2019, along with the following words: "Ohio welcomes NASA's Super Guppy carrying our newest Moon capsule! @NASA_Orion will be tested @NASAglenn's Plum Brook Station. The Orion spacecraft will launch on the #Artemis 1 mission and will travel 280,000 miles from Earth, thousands of miles beyond the Moon!" (Image credit: NASA/Jim Bridenstine via Twitter)-

NASA's Super Guppy transport plane waits to ferry the Orion capsule from Florida to Plum Brook Station in Ohio for testing. (Image credit: Kim Shiflett/NASA)

NASA's Orion capsule, wrapped up for transport, is guided toward the Super Guppy. (Image credit: NASA/Jim Bridenstine via Twitter)

Super Guppy opens wide for Orion. (Image credit: Kim Shiflett/NASA)

Super Guppy was designed to handle oversized loads such as Orion. (Image credit: Kim Shiflett/NASA)

The transport plane has been flying NASA cargo for more than five decades. (Image credit: NASA/Jim Bridenstine via Twitter)

This Orion capsule will fly Artemis 1, an uncrewed mission around the moon that's scheduled to launch in late 2020. (Image credit: Kim Shiflett/NASA)

The Super Guppy's cargo area is 111 feet long by 25 feet wide (34 by 7.6 meters). (Image credit: Kim Shiflett/NASA)

Orion slides right in. (Image credit: Kim Shiflett/NASA)

Another view. (Image credit: Kim Shiflett/NASA)

Room to spare! (Image credit: NASA/Jim Bridenstine via Twitter)

At Plum Brook Station, Orion will undergo extensive testing inside the world's largest vacuum chamber, showing how the capsule performs in a space-like environment. (Image credit: Kim Shiflett/NASA)

The Super Guppy has been hauling oversized NASA cargo for more than five decades. The plane's strange, bulbous shape makes perfect sense, given this role.

"Although there are other aircraft capable of carrying more weight than the Super Guppy, very few come close to its internal dimensions. Boasting an immense cargo area that is 25 feet in diameter and 111 feet long [7.6 by 34 meters], the Super Guppy can carry items that are virtually impossible to fit inside other cargo aircraft," NASA officials wrote in a description of the aircraft.

"The Super Guppy has a unique hinged nose that opens 110 degrees, permitting full frontal cargo loading," they added. "A control lock and disconnect system at the fuselage break allows the nose to be opened and closed without disrupting the flight or engine control rigging."

• Orion Explained: NASA's Multipurpose Crew Vehicle (Infographic)
• Space Launch System: NASA's Giant Rocket Explained (Infographic)
• 'Artemis Is Here:' Vice President Pence Stresses Importance of 2024 Moon Landing

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

Jupiter's Great Red Spot Storm Isn't Dying Anytime Soon

By Samantha Mathewson - Science & Astronomy 

A series of images taken between May and June 2019 capture the reddish extension, or "flaking," observed on the east side of the Great Red Spot.

(Image: © Chris Go)

Despite the apparent shrinkage of clouds in Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the storm itself is still going strong, new research suggests.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot represents the most powerful storm in the solar system. While earlier studies have suggested that the storm has been shrinking since at least the 1800s, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, argued today (Nov. 25) at a conference of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics that there is no evidence that the vortex that powers the cloud formation is changing. 

"I don't think its fortunes were ever bad," Philip Marcus, a professor of fluid dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement released by the society. "It's more like Mark Twain's comment: The reports about [the storm's] death have been greatly exaggerated." 

• Related: Jupiter's Great Red Spot in Photos

The Great Red Spot has been photographed by both professional and amateur astronomers. Photos captured in May and June 2019 revealed large red "flakes" spinning off from the storm, which fueled assumptions that the system is getting smaller. 

However, observers don't see the storm directly, only the visible clouds above it, Marcus said. He and his colleagues suggest that the "flaking" observed around the storm is a natural consequence of storms interacting, rather than an indication that the Great Red Spot storm is itself weakening. 

As a smaller storm spinning the opposite direction approaches the Great Red Spot, a point of stagnation form. Then, when a smaller storm spinning the same direction as the monster storm approaches, its clouds are shattered and flake away in a reddish extension like that observed on the east side of the storm this spring, said Marcus, whose research focuses on the fluid dynamics of vortices, waves, turbulence and hydrodynamic stability. 

"These are very normal healthy activities for the Red Spot and its colleagues," Marcus said during a news conference held at the society's meeting.

In addition, Marcus said, he expects that the heating and cooling patterns around the vortex will continue to fuel the Great Red Spot. 

"I think that unless something somewhat cataclysmic happens on Jupiter, it will last for the indefinite future, until the jet streams change, so I would say likely centuries," Marcus said in the news conference. "Of course, I probably just gave it the kiss of death and it'll probably fall apart next week but that's the way science works."

•  Photos: Jupiter, the Solar System's Largest Planet 
•  In Photos: Juno's Amazing Views of Jupiter 
•  Jupiter's Great Red Spot: A Monster Storm in Pictures 

Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

19 more galaxies mysteriously missing dark matter have been found

The newly found outliers defy ideas of how these star systems evolve

Most dwarf galaxies, like NGC 5477 seen in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope, have far more dark matter than normal everyday matter. But researchers recently found 19 dwarf galaxies that seem to be missing huge stores of dark matter.

HUBBLE/ESA AND NASA

By Christopher Crockett

A smattering of small galaxies appear to be missing a whole lot of dark matter.

Most of a typical galaxy is invisible. This elusive mass, known as dark matter, seems to be an indispensable ingredient for creating a galaxy — it’s the scaffolding that attracts normal matter — yet reveals itself only as an extra gravitational tug on gas and stars.

But now, researchers have found 19 dwarf galaxies — all much smaller than the Milky Way — that defy this common wisdom. These newly identified outliers have much less dark matter than expected. The finding, published November 25 in Nature Astronomy, more than quintuples the known population of dark-matter renegades, adding fuel to an already simmering mystery.

“We are not sure why and how these galaxies form,” says Qi Guo, an astrophysicist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Typical dwarf galaxies concentrate dark matter far more than their larger cousins, she notes. Their smaller size leads to weaker gravity, which has trouble holding on to tenuous clouds of gas. That usually shifts the balance of mass in dwarf galaxies away from normal matter and toward dark matter.

Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

NASA just showed us what a future moon lander might look like – CNET

This illustration shows what the midsize lander concept would look like on the moon.

NASA

NASA just gave us a peek at what a possible future moon lander might look like. The concept design the agency shared on Monday is essentially a space-faring delivery truck, meant to carry gear like rovers to the moon’s polar regions.

NASA doesn’t just want to send humans to the moon with its planned 2024 Artemis mission. The space agency wants to “establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon by 2028 to uncover new scientific discoveries, demonstrate new technological advancements, and lay the foundation for private companies to build a lunar economy.”

NASA is working with commercial partners to eventually deliver science and technology payloads to the moon. The space agency hopes the lander reference design will give them some food for thought as they develop their own equipment.

While this concept is dedicated to a rover payload, designers could use some of the same ideas for future human landers or other types of lunar equipment deliveries.

Engineers, scientists and space fans will enjoy browsing through NASA’s technical paper (PDF) for all the details on the lander’s potential components. It’s a fascinating inside look at how a lunar-lander sausage is made.

{ https://techupdatess.com/ }

Vrees van astronomen komt uit: vloot Starlink-satellieten van Elon Musk verstoort zicht op sterren en planeten - HLN.be

(En er komen nog duizenden exemplaren bij)

Eerder deze maand lanceerde het Amerikaanse ruimtebedrijf SpaceX een tweede cluster van mini-satellieten voor zijn toekomstige constellatie ‘Starlink’, dat wereldwijd - dus ook op afgelegen locaties waar internet nu afwezig, onbetrouwbaar of duur is - supersnel internet moet opleveren. 

Lees ook

Vreemde lichtgevende bol gespot boven België (en daar zit ene Elon Musk vermoedelijk voor iets tussen)

Controverse

Per zestig worden ze gelanceerd en dan komen ze op zo’n 550 kilometer hoogte in onze atmosfeer terecht. Dat is hoger dan het ISS, maar lager dan de meeste andere satellieten. 120 exemplaren zweven op dit moment in de lucht, gespreid over verschillende ruimtebanen. Een peulschil, want SpaceX heeft al toelating gekregen om 12.000 kunstmanen de lucht in te schieten. Het heeft bovendien frequenties aangevraagd voor nog eens 30.000 satellieten.

Al van in het begin gaat het grootse breedbandinternet-project van Elon Musk gepaard met controverse. Zo wordt gevreesd voor overbevolking van satellieten in lage banen, met risico op botsingen. “Elon Musk vult de lucht met ruimteafval”, klinkt onder meer de kritiek. Astronomen vrezen ook een verstoring van sterrenkundige waarnemingen, doordat de satellieten heldere strepen door hun beelden trekken en sterren en andere hemellichamen versluieren.

“Ik ben in shock”

Wat blijkt? De satellieten kunnen inderdaad observaties hinderen. Daarover klaagt onder meer een astronome van het Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), in het noorden van Chili. 

“Wow!! Ik ben in shock!!”, tweette wetenschapster Clarae Martínez-Vázquez. “De grote hoeveelheid Starlink-satellieten passeerde ons luchtruim vanavond”, zei ze. “Onze DECam-zichtbaarheid (Dark Energy Camera, red.) werd zwaar getroffen door 19 van hen. Het treintje Starlink-satellieten duurde langer dan vijf minuten.” De astronome voegde eraan toe dat ze dat “nogal deprimerend” vindt. 

Lichtspoor

Toen in mei de eerste zestig satellieten werden gelanceerd, kwam er al meteen kritiek toen de formatie heel helder en duidelijk werden gespot aan de nachtelijke hemel. Ook bij ons was een streep van tientallen lichtjes zichtbaar die op sterren leken. Een Nederlandse UFO-website werd overspoeld met meldingen van mensen die zich verbaasden over het mysterieuze lichtspoor. 

Een maand later publiceerde de International Astronomical Union een officieel statement waarin werd geklaagd over de reflecterende satellieten. Er werd geargumenteerd dat de kunstmanen astronomisch onderzoek kunnen bemoeilijken en zelfs in gevaar kunnen brengen, onder meer gelet op de gevoelige capaciteiten van grote astronomische telescopen op de grond.

De Europese ruimtevaartorganisatie ESA moest in september dan weer een koerscorrectie uitvoeren met aardobservatiesatelliet Aeolus, om een botsing met een Starlink-satelliet te voorkomen. Door de toenemende drukte in de ruimte worden koerscorrecties steeds normaler, vreest de ESA.

EPA 

Volgens astronomen verpesten dit soort satellieten het zicht op de kosmos en brengen ze toekomstige astronomische waarnemingen in gevaar.

EPA

 EPA

{ https ://www.hln.be/ }

Astronaut stuurt robot vanuit ruimtestation ISS door hangar in Nederland - HLN.be

Bron: Belga

Via een scherm kon de astronaut van het Europese Ruimtevaartbureau ESA zien waar hij het voertuig naartoe stuurde. Volgens ESA had de test nauwelijks beter kunnen verlopen. Voor de proef was een uur uitgetrokken, maar Parmitano trotseerde de baan in minder dan een halfuur.

Lees ook

Eerste koekjes in de ruimte: astronauten op ISS krijgen een oven voor bakexperiment

Het ruimtevaartbureau is zeer enthousiast over de samenwerking tussen mens en robot. “Een rover op Mars zou weken over het werk hebben gedaan dat Luca en de Analog-1-rover in een halfuur verrichten”, zei projectmanager Kjetil Wormnes. En dat is zeer van belang voor ESA, want ESA stuurt volgende zomer met Rusland een robotjeep en een stabiel platform naar Mars. Hoofdvraag van die missie is of op de Rode Planeet ooit leven heeft bestaan.

De technieken die ESA vandaag heeft uitgeprobeerd, kunnen bij toekomstige missies goed van pas komen. Astronauten kunnen op deze manier veilig en comfortabel vanuit een ruimteschip of -basis een robot aansturen die op onderzoek uitgaat. Ze hoeven dan niet zichzelf in een ruimtepak te hijsen. Alleen al het aantrekken van zo’n pak en de deur “uitgaan” door een luchtsluis duurt uren.

Human Spaceflight

✔@esaspaceflight

 · Nov 25, 2019

Replying to @esaspaceflight and 2 others

This is the view @astro_luca sees in space as he moves the #Analog1 rover through a simulated lunar terrain in the Netherlands to search for scientifically interesting rocks.

Human Spaceflight

✔@esaspaceflight

And this is what we see on Earth! Spooky to see the #Analog1 robot move, knowing the operator is thousands of kilometres away orbiting our planet.

• 24

12:39 PM - Nov 25, 2019

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“Archeologen graven gemummificeerde leeuwenwelpjes op in Egypte” - HLN.be

Bron: Belga

Er werden ook 75 houten en bronzen standbeelden van katten gevonden, in verschillende vormen en maten. In houten dozen zaten gemummificeerde katten. Er waren ook standbeelden van andere dieren, zoals mangoesten en kleine krokodillen.

“Als de resultaten bevestigd worden, is het de eerste keer dat in Egypte intacte gemummificeerde leeuwenwelpjes ontdekt zijn”, aldus Mostafa Waziri als topman van de Hoge Raad van Antiquiteiten. Tot nu zijn enkel skeletten van leeuwen gevonden. De leeuwenmummies zouden in de zevende eeuw voor Christus begraven zijn. 

In de bekende necropolis van Saqqara zijn honderdduizenden dieren geofferd en achtergelaten in graven.Egypte kondigde recent een reeks ontdekkingen aan die de toeristische sector in het land er weer bovenop zouden moeten helpen.

 REUTERS 

Standbeelden van katten.

 EPA 

Gemummificeerde katachtigen worden tentoongesteld in Saqqara.

AFP 

Een van de recent ontdekte graftombes waar archeologen aan het werk zijn.

 REUTERS

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Jacht naar (vorig) leven op mars gaat verder: complex plan moet gesteente naar de aarde brengen -  HLN.be

Bron: The Guardian

Het plan werd ‘Mars Sample Return’ gedoopt en moet zo’n 500 gram gesteente dat afkomstig is van mars, naar onze aarde brengen. “En laten we duidelijk zijn, elke stap van de missie belooft behoorlijk uitdagend te worden”, zo stak Jan Wörner, directeur van de Europese ruimtevaartorganisatie, van wal tijdens de voorstelling.

Om het gesteente te verzamelen zullen in de eerste plaats twee marsrovers of robots worden ingezet. De eerste rover verzamelt de staaltjes in metalen buisjes, terwijl de tweede robot die buisjes in een container zo groot als een voetbal, moet opslaan. Vervolgens zal het materiaal in een baan rond mars gekatapulteerd worden door een raket om daar onderschept te worden door een onbemand ruimteschip. Tot slot zullen de staaltjes van mars per parachute in de woestijn in Utah gedropt worden.

Lees ook

Marsrover Curiosity deelt nieuwe selfie van zijn bijzonder experiment

Leven op mars

Waarom de twee ruimtevaartagentschappen uitpakken met zo’n complex plan? Wetenschappers popelen om materiaal afkomstig van mars te bestuderen gezien de omstandigheden op de rode planeet miljarden jaren geleden vergelijkbaar waren met die op aarde. De planeet had destijds een dikke atmosfeer en er was stromend water te vinden op het oppervlak.

Vandaag is het grootste deel van die atmosfeer echter verdwenen en wetenschappers stellen zich de vraag of er vroeger sprake was van geëvolueerd leven.

Inadequate methodes

“We hebben op dit moment slechts twee manieren om het gesteente van mars te bestuderen”, aldus astrobioloog Susanne Schwenzer. “We kunnen sondes naar mars sturen en daar rotsmonsters analyseren of we kunnen stukjes bestuderen die als meteorieten op de aarde arriveren.”

Maar die methodes hebben enkele nadelen. De sondes worden belemmerd door hun (gelimiteerde) opslagplaats, batterijduur en ondervinden vaak problemen bij het landen op de rode planeet. En het bestuderen van meteorieten - stukjes rots die de ruimte werden ingeblazen nadat grotere meteorieten mars troffen - levert nog meer problemen op. “Vaak wordt het gesteente besmet na de aankomst op aarde. Bovendien weten we niet vanwaar op mars de meteorieten afkomstig zijn.”

Vandaar de luide roep van wetenschappers om het gesteente zelf te verzamelen en naar aarde te brengen. 

En wat met dat leven? 

De halve kilogram aan gesteente van mars zal onderzocht worden door wetenschappers wereldwijd. Hun zoektocht naar leven zal zich daarbij vooral focussen op de aanwezigheid van fossiele microben. Al bestaat er een kleine kans dat er nog steeds leven is op mars. “Het is zeer onwaarschijnlijk dat we levende organismen naar de aarde zullen brengen. Zelfs als we dat doen, is het erg onwaarschijnlijk dat ze schadelijk zullen zijn”, verklaart Sanjay Vijendran, lid van de ‘Mars Sample Return’. “We kunnen dat echter niet als vanzelfsprekend beschouwen en alle maatregelen die ervoor zorgen dat de staaltjes geen bedreiging voor de planeet vormen, zullen genomen worden.”

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

6,800-YEAR-OLD RITUAL SITE THREE TIMES BIGGER THAN STONEHENGE'S SARSEN CIRCLE DISCOVERED

6,800 year old "roundel" discovered in Poland

Hannah Osborne
Newsweek

A huge ancient ritual site dating back over 6,800 years has been discovered in Poland. It is believed to have been used by neolithic people for between 200 and 250 years, with new features added every few dozen years, archaeologists have said.

The circular structure is 360 feet in diameter, which is over three times the size of the inner Sarsen Circle at Stonehenge and roughly the same size as the monument's outer ditch.

The structure, which has been called a "roundel" because of its circular shape, was first spotted in 2017. Since then archaeologists have been working at the site to understand its significance. In an article on PAP, a website run by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education Website, researchers have announced radiocarbon dating indicates the site was built before 4,800 B.C.

The roundel is located in the village of Nowe Objezierze, about 50 miles east of Berlin, Germany. It consists of a central area surrounded by three gates that lead to the interior. It then has four ditches circling it. Each ditch is larger and deeper than the last, and it appears they were dug at relatively regular intervals, with a new one being added every few dozen years. The ditches were about 4 to 6.5 feet deep.

Other similar circular enclosures dating to between 4,850 B.C. and 4,600 B.C. are found in a fairly limited area of Europe, including around the River Danube. These are generally thought to have had a ritual purpose and served as some sort of astronomical calendar.

Discussing the new roundel in Poland, project leader Lech Czerniak, from the University of Gdańsk, told PAP: "This is quite sensational, given the fact that it coincides with the dating of structures located on the Danube, considered the oldest. It seems equally important that the four ditches surrounding the central area of the structure probably did not function simultaneously, but every few dozen years, a new ditch with an ever larger diameter was dug.

"The primary focus of the project are questions about the social aspects of the functioning operation of roundels, including what prompted the inhabitants of a given region to make a huge effort in building and maintaining the roundel, where the idea and knowledge necessary to build this object came from, and how often and for how long the object was used."

As well as dating the roundel, archaeologists also excavated the area and found hundreds of bones, ceramics, stone and flint artifacts and shells and dye. The bones are now being analyzed by experts and the team hopes to find out more about the communities that used the structure for worship. It is thought that like the other circular enclosures, the Roundel was used as a "ritual calendar."

"It is worth realizing that many so-called pre-literate communities celebrated the most important holidays once in a few, or even a dozen or so years, but very intensely," Czerniak said.

Comment: 

See also:

• Book Review: Where Troy Once Stood
• Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls
• Winter Solstice: From Chaos to Creation
• Study details immense timber henge at Newgrange, Ireland, discovered during summer drought
• 'Spanish Stonehenge' resurfaces following drought in Extremadura
• Ancient city of Petra was a 'celestial calendar', says new study
• America Before by Graham Hancock - Book review

And check out SOTT radio's:

• MindMatters: America Before: Comets, Catastrophes, Mounds and Mythology
• MindMatters: Everything's a Remix: Origins of the World's Mythologies
• MindMatters: The Meaning of the World's Mythologies

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• 7,000-year-old burial of female "shaman" in Sweden was one of the last hunter-gatherers

{ https://www.sott.net/category/19 }