A lot of people seem to like to poke fun at UFO witnesses and believers. The field has unfortunately drawn to it some amount of skepticism from those who think it is all a bunch of quacks and weirdos out in the boondocks. Yet, this could not be further from the truth. Many of the staunchest supporters of not only UFOs being taken seriously by the public, but also full government disclosure on what might be kept secret from the public at large, are top, eminent members of the fields that matter most.

This particular tale revolves around the legendary astronaut Leroy Gordon “Gordo” Cooper Jr., an American aerospace engineer, test pilot, United States Air Force pilot, an astronaut pioneer, who was also involved in the first human spaceflight program of the United States, Project Mercury, running from 1958 through 1963, piloting the longest and last Mercury spaceflight, Mercury-Atlas 9, and would have numerous accolades and notable achievements throughout his career. He would later go on to join several corporate boards and as technical consultant for more than a dozen companies, and he is widely considered a legend in his field. As respected as he was, he also had his share of stories to tell of strange UFO encounters in space.

Gordon Cooper

Cooper seems to have had a long history of UFO sightings, which he has spoken of in interviews and in his autobiography Leap of Faith. His earliest well-known UFO encounter apparently occurred in 1951, when he saw a circular formation of “metallic, saucer-shaped vehicles” while flying over East Germany. These objects would apparently frequently appear, and he would say, “We never could get close enough to pin them down, but they were round in shape and very metallic looking.” Shortly after this, he was transferred to the Edwards Air Force Base Flight Test Center in the California desert, where the weirdness would continue. In May of 1957, Cooper was a Project Manager at Edwards Air Force Base. He says that he and some of the other crew would sometimes see a strange object come down to hover over the nearby lake bed, of which he would say, “It was a typical circular-shaped UFO. Not too many people saw it, because it took off at quite a sharp angle and just climbed straight on out of sight!” This object would apparently come to rest on the lake bed upon an array of three “legs” that extended from the bottom.

They apparently took a lot of footage of this particular event, and it was allegedly very unnerving for all those present, all of them experienced airmen who were used to seeing experimental aircraft and whatnot. Cooper went about alerting the Pentagon as to what was going on, and he was purportedly subsequently told to send all of the negatives of what they had captured on film in a locked courier pouch. That was the last he would hear about it, with the photos just vanishing and no apparent action taken, no explanation given, despite the fact that this had been an obvious foreign craft in U.S. military airspace. Even though the government had apparently swept it all under the carpet, Cooper would have none of it. He appeared on several high profile programs such as the Merv Griffin Show, where he insisted that the incident was real and said:

I think it was definitely a UFO. However, where it (the object) came from and who was in it is hard to determine, because it didn’t stay around long enough to discuss the matter – there wasn’t even time to send out a welcoming committee! I think it’s fairly credible. I would like to see the time when all qualified people could really work together to properly investigate these stories and either refute or prove them.

Cooper’s UFO experiences would continue, when on May 15, 1963, he would allegedly witness one during his solo space mission above the Earth’s surface, saying that it was an anomalous “greenish object.” This would only add to his suspicions that something weird was going on, and in 1978 he penned a letter to the United Nations begging them to release any information they had. In the letter he expressed the importance of making contact with these entities and finding a way to “resolve our problems by peaceful means, rather than warfare.” Cooper would go on to become a major proponent of full government disclosure on the UFO phenomenon, and believed there was a massive government conspiracy covering it all up. He would claim that he knew of hundreds of cases from fellow pilots and astronauts of seeing something beyond understanding, which were subsequently kept hush hush. He would claim that there had been all sorts of evidence that had been buried as well, and he said in one interview in the late-1990s:

For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists in astronautics. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this, but nobody wants to make them public. Why?

Why, indeed. The public reaction to such allegations by such a well-respected icon of the military and space travel was to merely shrug its shoulders, after all what are you going to do when the guy is an aeronautic legend? In the meantime, Cooper continuously and tirelessly pressed for more information on what was being kept from the public, right up to his death in 2004 from complications of Parkinson’s disease, appearing in the documentary “Out of the Blue” about it and even writing at length about it all in his autobiography Leap of Faith. His whole message later in life was that the mass UFO cover-up that conspiracy theorists drone on about was all completely real, and he was a major champion of full disclosure in this area. It is hard to know how much of an effect he had, and he gained many critics, such as space historian Robert Pearlman, who wrote:

While no one can argue with someone’s experiences, in the case of Cooper’s own sightings, I found some difficulty understanding how someone so connected with ground breaking technology and science could easily embrace ideas such as extraterrestrial visits with little more than anecdotal evidence.

Cooper joins the ranks of very qualified, respectable UFO witnesses and ambassadors of disclosure who have mostly been either met with shrugged shoulders, raised eyebrows, or flat out disdain. Yet what are we to make of the claims and statements of such a well-respected member of the NASA community? Can his accounts an assertions really be written off as the ramblings of someone off their rocker, or do they perhaps deserve a little more consideration? Whether you believe him or hate him, Cooper has earned a place where he represents a certain type of witness and champion of UFOlogy that is hard to ignore.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

When it comes to natural explosions on Earth, nothing tops a volcano and, in modern times, few top the Mt. St. Helens blast. In space, the biggest blasts beyond the original Big Bang belong to the supernovas – stellar explosions that usually collapse into a black hole. Now, imagine the Mt. St. Helens of supernovas. Having trouble picturing it? You don’t have to – astronomers have discovered what they believe to be the largest non-Big Bang explosion ever. How big is (or was) it?

“In some ways, this blast is similar to how the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 ripped off the top of the mountain. A key difference is that you could fit fifteen Milky Way galaxies in a row into the crater this eruption punched into the cluster’s hot gas.”

Mt. St. Helens

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal and summarized in a NASA press release and at Phys.org, Simona Giacintucci of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, and lead author of the study described the discovery of the blast in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster about 390 million light-years from Earth. A supermassive black hole in that cluster was first detected in 2016 astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory, but at the time they couldn’t believe the even-more-massive cosmic hole in the gas surrounding the black hole was the result of an explosion. More recently, astronomers paired the Chandra X-ray data with that of the ESA’s XMM-Newton, the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Western Australia and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India and confirmed that it was indeed a big blast.

“The radio data fit inside the X-rays like a hand in a glove. This is the clincher that tells us an eruption of unprecedented size occurred here.”

This extremely powerful eruption occurred in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, which is located about 390 million light-years from Earth.

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Naval Research Lab/Giacintucci, S.; XMM:ESA/XMM; Radio: NCRA/TIFR/GMRTN; Infrared: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF

Co-author Dr. Maxim Markevitch from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center rightly called the explosion “unprecedented” – it’s at least five times larger than the previous largest explosion. The supermassive cosmic hole was caused by explosive jets shooting away from the erupting supermassive black hole and through a cloud of gas. The radio emissions detected by the telescopes came from electrons traveling at almost the speed of light filling the hole.

While the blast took hundreds of millions of years to carve a void that 15 Milky Ways could fit into, it’s all over now. Professor Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, the director of the MWA, an expert in galaxy clusters and a co-author of the study, compares the discovery to finding dinosaur bones and then recreating the living beast. Knowing what to look for, she expects to find more massive explosions – possibly breaking the record. Putting the discovery in terms non-astronomers can understand:

“The Universe is a weird place.”

Indeed it is.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

The United States made a “Secret Agreement” with the Gray Aliens for the Preservation of Humanity

Many researchers endorse the theory that the United States government has signed a secret deal with Gray aliens. The exact date is unknown, but most researchers indicate that the deal was made in 1954. At that time, a team of (gray) aliens would reach Edwards Air Force Base, for the sole purpose of contacting the then U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower.

Former USAF and US Army officers have testified in the past that that pact was known as the Edwards Agreement or as Dr. Dan Burisch defines it as the IX-Tau Treaty (9 TAU) for the Preservation of the Humanity.

A common goal was established following the discussions of the Treaty. The agreement states that the United States government would let the Grays kidnap or withdraw people regularly with the promise that they would return to their homes unscathed, and with the knowledge that the kidnapped people would be erased from his memory, or the memory of the abductions.

But, as many abductees were able to confirm, the situation was slightly different. More often than not, those who were kidnapped by aliens would remember the accident in detail. In return for allowing the Grays to gain possession of human guinea pigs, the government does not have advanced knowledge and alien technology in its hands. Another clause in the contract ‘was the exchange of ambassadors from both sides. However, it is not clear how many have been involved in this exchange program, but the most renowned are the Etherians, the Crills, the Reptiles and the J-Rod Draco of the constellation Zeta Reticuli and finally the Grays of Tau Ceti.

The Edwards agreement was the culmination of a series of events that began in 1947, when the remains of an alien spacecraft were recovered near Roswell, New Mexico. Among the remains, several alien bodies have been found. This incident certainly sensitized the UFO phenomenon and certainly gave rise to modern ufology. In 1949, another accident took place in New Mexico, but this time there was a survivor among the recovered aliens. One of these called EBE, is the abbreviation for extraterrestrial biological entity.

In 1951, the Grays helped build a communications device for the United States and a year later, extraterrestrial communications were underway, paving the way for the 1954 treaty. On the night of February 20-21, 1954, in California, President Dwight Eisenhower had disappeared for a short period of time. He is believed to have gone secretly to Edwards Air Force Base for a meeting with the gray aliens. His official statement was that he had to undergo a dental emergency and then visit a local dentist.

While the meeting did not go as planned, there were some unexpected consequences. The landing was kept secret to see how people could react when faced with a technologically advanced alien race. The hundreds of soldiers present at Edwards AFB (ex Muroc base) during the first contact did not receive any briefings, no preparation before the demonstration.

This approach has become disastrous, since a high percentage of those present began to suffer from various psychological illnesses, ranging from dysfunctional behavior to psychosis, criminal intent and suicide. People who said they witnessed the alien interaction event including Gerald Light, a famous leader of the metaphysical community of the time, said that his participation was to measure the effect of this development. which could have on the general public, or the socio-cultural and psychological impact on the masses during a possible First Contact.

“Just returned from Muroc [Edwards Air Force Base] . Gerald declares – everything was incredibly true, devastating! During the two-day visit, I saw five different types of alien aircraft being studied and analyzed by our Air Force officials – with the assistance and permission of the humanoid alien race called Etherians! I have no words to express my reactions. Yes, it has finally happened. Now it’s a matter of history, Gerald Light wrote.

Other important figures were present at the meeting. Among them was Eisenhower’s chief and economic adviser, Dr. Edwin Nourse, who offered his experience in the potential economic outcome of a first contact with extraterrestrial intelligent life. Gerald Light also said that several trusted religious leaders had attended the meeting.

The leaders all presented their credentials, participating in two types of meetings with different groups of extraterrestrials. According to former naval intelligence officer William Cooper, large objects travel to Earth of which a huge spacecraft was seen in 1953. They were believed to be asteroids in the first place, but it was later determined that they were actually huge. spaceships. Two different missions, Sigma Project and Plato Project have been able to establish contact with aliens through binary code.

Cooper distinguishes between two alien races: the Nordics who are very kind to humanity, the Grays of Tau ceti, who had different goals with humans. According to him, the Nordic aliens contributed to the signing of a non-aggression treaty between humanity and the grays. The Nordics did not offer any technology, but rather the opportunity for the spiritual advancement of our present to the next dimension. The new treaty with the Nordics and the Grays stated that aliens are not always in our business, nor should they interfere with the human race. Their presence on Earth remained a secret. They could kidnap humans on a regular basis for medical and scientific purposes, as long as they were supposed to keep them safe from harm. The kidnapped humans were then returned to their kidnapping point, without any memory of the demonstration. None of the kidnapped have ever been treated badly or tortured.

Their main demands have been that humans must eliminate the arsenal of nuclear weapons. They recalled humanity’s self-destructive potential and also condemned the fact that we are killing each other, damaging the planet and wasting natural resources. The Committee interpreted the requests very suspiciously, in the belief that nuclear disarmament was not in the best interest of the United States, such as that which could have left the world defenseless against an alien threat. Eisenhower finally rejected the disarmament proposal.

Another witness to the meetings was John Lear, son of the creator of Lear Jet, William Lear. According to him, the Nordic aliens offered a hand to build a space defense against the threat of the Grays, but President Eisenhower refused this aid without explaining the reasons. There are many alien races in space, many of them are neutral, many races are available for dialogue and ready to help the human race, but hostile alien races also exist and not all grays are the same. There are various types of grays such as those of the Pleiadians Grays who are a sort of workers at the service of other breeds, therefore performers and that’s it. But then did this meeting really happen? If so, it would seem to confirm the current global UFO phenomenon and the subsequent confirmation by the Pentagon regarding the encounters with UFO TIC-TAC. However, more than 60 years have passed since the alleged First Contact took place, but his official statement is still missing.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

Secret Space Antigravity Propulsion Technology That Could Get Us to Mars in Five Days

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

Besides, Bruce captured another glowing UFO that apparently fires projectiles followed by what looks like an explosion of some sort.

  

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

Boom! Scientists spot the biggest known explosion in the universe

Evidence for the biggest explosion seen in the universe comes from a combination of X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Europe’s XMM-Newton space telescope, and the Murchison Widefield Array and Giant Metrewave Telescope, as shown here. The eruption is generated by a black hole located in the cluster's central galaxy, which has blasted out jets and carved a large cavity in the surrounding hot gas. Researchers estimate this explosion released five times more energy than the previous record holder and hundreds of thousands of times more than a typical galaxy cluster.

(Image: © X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/NRL/S. Giacintucci, et al., XMM-Newton: ESA/XMM-Newton; Radio: NCRA/TIFR/GMRT; Infrared: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF)

The explosion occurred in the Ophiuchus cluster, which lies about 390 million light-years from Earth. Giacintucci and her colleagues think the source was a supermassive black hole in one of the cluster's constituent galaxies — specifically, jets of radiation and material spewing from the light-gobbling monster, which are powered by inflowing gas and dust.

The possibility of an incredibly powerful Ophiuchus explosion was first raised in 2016 in a study led by Norbert Werner, which examined images captured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Werner and his colleagues reported a strangely curved edge in the cluster, which could be part of the wall of a cavity formed by a blast. And what a blast it would be: The scientists calculated that it would take about 5 times 10^54 joules of energy to create such a cavity. (For perspective, humanity's total global energy consumption each year is about 6 times 10^20 joules.)

But the 2016 study didn't establish that an explosion actually was responsible for that curved edge. Giacintucci and her colleagues just made that determination, after analyzing additional X-ray data from Chandra and Europe's XMM-Newton space telescope, as well as radio information gathered by the Murchison Widefield Array in Australia and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India.

The combined data show that the curved edge is indeed part of a cavity wall, because it borders an area rich in radio emission. That emission likely resulted when the black hole's outburst accelerated electrons to nearly the speed of light, the researchers said.

"The radio data fit inside the X-rays like a hand in a glove," study co-author Maxim Markevitch, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in the same statement. "This is the clincher that tells us an eruption of unprecedented size occurred here."

The energy released by the Ophiuchus blast is hundreds of thousands of times greater than explosions typically seen in galaxy clusters, the researchers said. And it's about five times higher than the previous record holder, an eruption in the cluster MS 0735.6+7421.

The Ophiuchus fireworks appear to be over, by the way; the radio data show no evidence for ongoing jet activity, the scientists said.

The Chandra data reveal just one region of radio emission. That's a bit odd, because black-hole jets usually go off in two different directions. It's possible that the jet-feeding gas on the other side — the one opposite the detected cavity — was less abundant and the radio emission there dissipated more quickly as a result, the researchers said.

The new study was published in the Feb. 27 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. You can read a preprint of the paper for free via arXiv.org. 

• Our X-Ray universe: Amazing photos by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory
• The strangest black holes in the universe
• The history and structure of the universe (infographic)

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life.

Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

A Key Ingredient for Life Has Been Found on an ‘Extraterrestrial Source,’ Scientists Report

This is the first time a complete protein has been discovered on an object from space, if the study's results are confirmed.

By Becky Ferreira

IMAGE: TRIFONOV_EVGENIY VIA GETTY IMAGES

Scientists have reported the discovery of “the first protein from an extraterrestrial source,” marking the only time that this important component of life has ever been found in a meteorite.

Tiny traces of a novel protein called “hemolithin” were detected inside the meteorite Acfer 086, according to a study recently published on the preprint archive arXiv and spotted by Futurism. The find could have big implications for understanding the origins of life on Earth or elsewhere in the universe, though it must be corroborated by other researchers first.

“At this point, we need other scientists to employ our careful methods to repeat our results,” said study co-author Julie McGeoch, a molecular biologist at Harvard University, in an email. McGeoch’s team has submitted the study to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, but it has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Though other teams will need to confirm the results, it’s worth noting that the new detection of a “meteoritic protein,” as it is described in the study, is the culmination of more than a decade of research.

In 2007, McGeoch and her frequent collaborator Malcolm McGeoch, who is CEO of a company called PLEX that supplies the semiconductor industry, were studying interactions between water and proteins. The experiments got McGeoch thinking about possible water-protein reactions that might have occurred inside the interstellar clouds that eventually coalesced into our solar system.

These early chemical reactions and presolar ingredients are essential clues about how Earth came to host life, and how common habitable conditions might be in other star systems. Meteorites, which are space rocks that land on Earth, are godsends for scientists studying these problems because they are time capsules that often date back to the infant solar system.

Meteorites have been known to contain amino acids, organic compounds that make up proteins, for decades. But to figure out whether meteorites can contain full proteins, as opposed to just amino acids, McGeoch’s team needed to isolate potential proteins from samples, analyze their chemical makeup, and characterize their molecular structure.

This required access to “the very best mass spectrometry,” McGeoch said, which was provided by the company Bruker. With that data, the team was able to characterize a protein they call hemolithin in the Acfer 086 meteorite, which was found in Algeria in 1990.

To make sure that the protein wasn’t simply contamination from an earthly source, the researchers calculated its deuterium/hydrogen (D/H) ratio, which is a value that contextualizes the origins of materials. The results revealed “very high extraterrestrial D/H ratios,” according to the study, suggesting that the protein was formed in the proto-solar disc or perhaps even earlier, in interstellar molecular clouds that existed long before the Sun’s birth.

Given that some meteorites contain stardust grains that are older than our solar system, it is not outlandish to imagine that they could also preserve proteins that date back billions of years. Hemolithin is a particularly intriguing example because it might be able to split water into its constituent oxygen and hydrogen parts, which is a process that played a major role in the development of life on Earth.

Hemolithin’s water-splitting behavior “is only speculation at this point,” McGeoch noted. “If true, this could be a chemical energy source, which is the most important ingredient for a biochemical process leading on to life.”

To that end, McGeoch and her colleagues plan to continue testing hemolithin’s properties, while also trying to pin down the protein’s exact crystal structure. Those lines of research, combined with any confirmed detections of meteoritic proteins by other teams, will shed light on the extraordinary conditions that led to life on Earth.

{ https://www.vice.com/en_us }

Looking at sightings reports, it seems people have encounters with UFOs all of the time, and sometimes they even see occupants of these mysterious craft. Yet rising above even this weirdness are those cases in which individuals have claimed to have actually communicated wit and even literally sat down and had a chat with these enigmatic entities. What did they have to say? Well, here we will look at a few of the more bizarre cases of people claiming to have talked with alien beings, and they are really quite outlandish to say te least.

A few surreally bizarre cases come to us from the 1950s, and one of the more colorful and memorably absurd accounts comes from someone who is actually probably what one would consider to be the most traditionally reliable witness on this whole list. In 1954, we have the very curious encounter of an Air Marshal Sir Peter Horsley, who had quite a long, illustrious military career and who would eventually be the deputy commander-in-chief of RAF Strike Command, of the United Kingdom. Horsely would write in his autobiography Sounds From Another Room, which actually talks a lot about UFOs and also tells of a bizarre chance encounter he had one day in a London waiting room while waiting to meet with a Mrs. Markham. As he sat there, Horsley says that he met the acquaintance of a man calling himself “Mr. Janus,” and who was partially obscured by shadows at another end of the room. This Mr. Janus seemed to be very interested in Horsely’s knowledge of UFOs, and he would write:

Mr. Janus dived straight into the deep end by asking me to tell him all I knew about UFOs. He listened patiently… At the end I thought I might be equally as direct and asked Janus what his interest was? He answered me a quite simply, ‘I would like to meet the Duke of Edinburgh.’

Sir Peter Horsley

OK, then. Weird for sure, but it would get weirder when he began talking about humankind’s desire to reach the stars and ow their technology was bringing them closer to this goal. He said since humans were moving along so rapidly, we were bound to discover the true mysteries of the universe awaiting us, saying:

Just as tribes found other tribes and Christopher Columbus discovered on his travels unknown centers of ancient civilizations so Man in his journeys through the universe may find innumerable centers of culture far more ancient than his own…He will discover a wealth of experiences infinitely more startling and beautiful than can be imagined: and infinite variety of agencies and forces as yet unknown: great fields of gravity and anti-gravity where objects are accelerated across space like giant sling shots, even other universes with different space and time formula. Why does Man reach for the stars? His energies have never been solely directed towards material benefits alone. From the beginning of Man’s history he has striven… towards a spirituality and grace of which he was aware but could not fully comprehend.

However, he also warned that humanity was in a sort of “Dark Age,” and that if we continued in our ways we would never live to see that achievement fulfilled. Mr. Janus would apparently say, “In his greedy quest for more complex machines Man is prepared to sacrifice almost anything – his natural environment, animals and even his fellow humans. The dreadful specter of blowing up his world hardly makes him falter in this headlong rush,” and it all seemed quite dire. Mr. Janus also complained about mankind’s nuclear weapons, and through it all he apparently displayed an incredibly deep knowledge of the military. Horsely seemed to think that he had actually met a real alien in that waiting room, and would credit his rise through the ranks to this chance encounter.

Another off-the-wall case is the story of Italian mechanic Luciano Galli. On July 7, 1957, Galli was allegedly on his way back to his small, humble workshop on his lunch break when he was approached by an enigmatic stranger in the streets, who had “piercing eyes” and asked if the business man remembered him. Galli realized that he did indeed recognize the man, recalling seeing him several times around town staring at him only to melt away. The man, who was described as “a rather tall gentleman of the dark type, with regular features and very dark eyes,” spoke perfect Italian, and invited Galli to take a ride with him in his fancy black Fiat 1100. Someone apparently never gave Galli the memo to not just go off getting into the cars of strangers they’ve just met on the street, and he accepted.

Fiat 1100

They then rode in silence in the car, where Galli claims he felt remarkably calm, until they came to an isolated place called the Croara ridge, where Galli claimed a large saucer-shaped UFO was hovering. Galli was invited aboard, and presumably figuring why not, he accepted and walked up into the craft via a metallic cylinder that descended down from it. He was then taken to a “pilot’s cabin,” which was described as “spacious” and filled with flashing lights and myriad instrument panels, and told to sit on a seat that was firmly bolted to the floor. He then noticed that a good portion of the floor was actually a window looking down, and he could see that they were rising rapidly through the atmosphere, until he could actually see the earth shrinking into the distance. Galli himself would say of this all in an interview with Italian journalist Renato Albanese:

The pilot’s cabin was spacious and round with a lot of instruments around, panels with many lights. There were also hatches, and the seats were fixed somehow to the floor. In the middle of the floor was a kind of circular window, about one meter wide. Through it we could see the earth fall away from us. First the earth looked like from one of our own planes, then – when we were already in the dark zone – it looked like the moon and later like Venus or Mars.

It only gets weirder from there. Galli would claim that they approached an immense, cigar-shaped “mothership,” reminiscent of a blimp, which dwarfed the craft they were on, and as they approached he could see hundreds of people walking about in the hangars dressed in some sort of shiny one-piece outfits. They would actually board this mothership, where Galli learned that they had come from the planet Venus, and he was shown through a massive hall to the commander’s area. After this tour was finished, he was once again asked to board the smaller craft and was taken back to where they had started, where he saw that the whole thing had lasted approximately 3 hours and 10 minutes. Galli would swear an oath that all of this was true, insisting that he was not making it up, and whether it is true of not it is still a more interesting lunch break than most people have.

We seem to have had a lot of visitors from Venus in the 1950s, because that very same year there was another rather far-out account, this time from a journalist named Hubert Lewis. He claims that he was out cycling in the countryside of Church Stretton, in Shropshire, England when he came across a metallic disc floating not far away and a very tall, human looking being approaching him. The stranger told Lewis not to be afraid, and the two began to chat for around a half an hour while that mysterious craft hovered in the background. The being told him during this conversation that he was from Venus, and that there were many of his kind living on Earth among humans, and after their talk this stranger got into the disc to shoot off into the sky. In the days after, Lewis claimed that he had been approached by mysterious military personnel who told him to forget about what had happened and to not tell anyone. It is an interesting account, given that Church Stretton is considered to be a UFO hotspot.

Coming along into the 60s, we have the insane story of German businessman Ludwig Pallman. His weird tale begins in 1966, when he was in the jungles of Peru looking for medicinal plants, operating in a very remote area south of the Colombian River port of Leticia on the Amazon River. It was here in this mosquito choked untamed wilderness that he claims to have been brought to an area that was unexplored even by the native peoples, who told him that there were savages that lived in that jungle, as well as a mysterious group of white men. This was very intriguing to Pallman, and although his native guides refused to travel further up the river, he continued on alone, thus entering a new chapter of oddness.

He soon came across the “savages” he had been told about, but rather than attack him as he had been led to believe, they instead took him to their village. Here he found some very strange dwellings, reminiscent of upside down cones and made of an unusual smooth plastic-like material. Pallman then saw that among the Natives were others who were very white looking and wearing clothing that resembled togas. Thinking they might be Americans Pallman tried speaking English to them but they showed no comprehension of what he was saying, and he got the same response when he tried Spanish and German. One of the light-skinned strangers then produced a small device and handed it to Pallman. It turned out to be some sort of translator device, and with it he could understand what they had to say, and what they had to say was bonkers.

They allegedly explained that they were from the planet Itibi, and were here to cultivate and experiment with earth plants in order to cross breed with those of their home world to create hardier species. According to them, this site was sort of like a plantation, and they hoped to take some samples for mass production on their own planet. Pallman explains that he lived with these aliens for a whole month, during which time he learned that these aliens had been living on earth since 1946, moving there when they had heard of the planet from another alien race, and that they had other such plantations as well. He also apparently saw them using disc-shaped shuttle craft to come and go. He claims that they also gifted him a ring that would glow when their kind was present. Eventually he left to head back to civilization, sadly with no evidence whatsoever other than his wild tale.

We have the weird tale of Walter Rizzi, of Bolzano, Italy just a few years later. In 1968 he says that he stopped his car after a long drive to take a nap, but would wake to the startling sight of a UFO hovering nearby and some humanoid beings approaching his car, described as being smaller than a human being, with grey skin, round hairless heads and slanted eyes. These entities communicated with him telepathically, and told him that they were there to collect samples of various species of Earth plant life, as well as tracking the evolutionary progress of the planet. They also explained that they could not stay on Earth for too long, because our planet made them somehow age faster, and oh yeah, that we were going to all die in the near future because of a cataclysmic polar shift that would cause extinction level climatic catastrophes. Was any of this real? Who knows?

There are certainly other cases of people claiming to have had communications with actual alien beings, and this is by no means a comprehensive listing of them, just some of the more curious that I have found. Were any of these beings real, and if so what did they want? Why did they choose to reveal themselves in such strange ways? Are these aliens, interdimensional travelers, or just the ravings of the imagination? Whatever the case may be, they are certainly entertaining at the very least.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Why Are More People Seeing UFOs?

Why Are More People Seeing UFOs?

In recent times we have seen more UFO sightings reported around the world. This is becoming a very serious issue for all of us in terms of the impact this phenomenon has on our future plans and technologies. No one wants to see events that will cause the world to end, so it is imperative that we take a look at what is happening in this sector of the world.

For instance, many people believe that people have been seeing these things for decades, but no one has seen anything until now. If you do the math, it only takes about one minute per day in this world to have many sightings. The best proof of the fact that UFO sightings are actually happening is when thousands of people report something.

There are many recent and modern day incidents that have all occurred close to the same point. Many people believe that this happens because they are being broadcast via satellites to the people in space. These people claim that they are able to see the different UFO’s that appear in the sky and feel as if they are watching someone else in the control of an aircraft or spacecraft.

While there are those who believe that there are UFOs that are landing, they don’t know what they are yet, since the system hasn’t been released. Perhaps the best piece of evidence for this is when there are people who claim to be in contact with aliens and are able to communicate. Of course, this would be difficult if these visitors were still in the primitive stages of construction, as they would need to communicate somehow using telepathy and other means.

There are many other witnesses that have reported strange lights that look like stars in the sky that have been out for hours and did not leave. There are also witnesses who claim to have seen vehicles that they can’t explain in many cases. These individuals also claim that they have been on several different flights and haven’t seen anything yet.

All of these UFO sightings are being coordinated by the extraterrestrial groups and are proof that there is something out there and humans are participating in it. They may not be aware of what they are doing, but there is some type of intelligence that is involved and they are calling for help. So far, there is no evidence of communication between the alien groups and humans, but this is just another discussion for another time.

At the moment, we need to get more information that will lead us to where the truth is, on the UFO topic. Many of these witnesses are already in on the mystery behind what is happening and there are many that have never even seen a UFO. We have to start asking the right questions that will lead us to the truth.

Once this comes out, then we will know for sure if they really have landed, are they piloting them or are they using them for some other purpose. It doesn’t matter what the answers are, it is important that we at least find out what is going on and learn from it. Hopefully, we all learn from this and our civilization progresses further.

Source: 

• http://footageofufos.com/2020/02/why-are-more-people-seeing-ufos/

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Linda Moulton Howe: Antarctica Incredible Secret Discoveries Beneath The Ice

Linda Moulton Howe: Antarctica Incredible Secret Discoveries Beneath The Ice. What do you think? Let us know in the comments section.

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Snake-like UFO Comes Back to Florida

A cigar-shaped UFO, which is similar to several ones seen across the US in 2019, has been observed over Florida.

The clip was taken in a hotel in the city of Kissimmee on February 10.

It shows a bright white object flying into the clouds, having a resemblance to another UFO spotted back in October 2019.

It seems to flash at one point and then disappear moments later.

The video was shared by u/vinker1 to Reddit, revealing that his daughter took the video.

Viewers offer a variety of suggestions in the comment section.

Some believed the extraterrestrial theory, saying the UFO was a grey spaceship.

Others thought it could be a rocket launch, but experts dismissed it as there should have been cloud plumes nearby.

Another touted explanation was that it could be a Mylar weather balloon, and the flashing could be the sun reflecting off the metal structure.

Similar UFOs were reported across eight states in the US in 2019, with a range of explanations from military craft to space alien technology.

Back in October last year, a video showing what seems a USAF hybrid air, land, and sea craft had made the rounds online. It came after another set of lights was seen hovering over Arizona, in what conspiracy theorists believed the Space Force training.

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

Mars lander reveals new details about the Red Planet's strange magnetic field

By Elizabeth Howell

It's really weird.

An artist's impression of the effect of a solar storm on Mars, as charged particles strip away it atmosphere.

(Image: © NASA/GSFC)

The magnetic field in one zone on Mars is about 10 times stronger than scientists expected, and it's changing rapidly.

New data gathered from NASA's InSight lander, which has been on the Red Planet for a little over a year now, shows that the planet's magnetic field fluctuates rapidly. InSight is the first landing mission to carry a magnetic sensor, which allows it to measure these fields from up close.

"The ground-level data give us a much more sensitive picture of magnetization over smaller areas, and where it's coming from," lead author Catherine Johnson, a professor at the University of British Columbia and senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, said in a statement. "In addition to showing that the magnetic field at the landing site was ten times stronger than the satellites anticipated, the data implied it was coming from nearby sources."

• Related: Mars lost atmosphere to space as life took hold on Earth

InSight is designed to collect data that helps scientists to reveal more about how rocky planets form by looking at the planet’s interior. Before the lander touched down in November 2018, magnetic fields were measured by satellite and often averaged a distance from the epicenter that was more than 90 miles across.

Billions of years ago, Mars used to have a global magnetic field, but it shut down for reasons that are still unknown, about 4 billion years ago, leaving the atmosphere unshielded to radiation and causing it to bleed over time into space. Any residual fields are likely coming from older rocks buried several feet or miles underneath the planet's surface, these new results from InSight suggest. The team plans to continue to study Mars using InSight to better identify what different types of rocks there are and where they are.

These observations from InSight also showed that the sun influences the Martian magnetic field. The sun sends out charged particles across the solar system in a phenomenon known as the solar wind. These particles carry an interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) that can cause fluctuations in the local magnetic field when it hits the Martian atmosphere. That's because Mars, unlike Earth, has no global magnetic field to act as a buffer against these solar storms.

There is also some strange data that InSight has collected, revealing things like fluctuations in the magnetic field around midnight, which are likely related to how the solar wind and IMF move around Mars, inducing electrical currents and magnetic fields on the planet. Future observations will help to inform researchers exactly why this is happening, with InSight providing data from the surface at the same time that NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) examines the atmosphere above the landing site.

"Because all of our previous observations of Mars have been from the top of its atmosphere or even higher altitudes, we didn't know whether disturbances in solar wind would propagate to the surface," said Johnson. "That's an important thing to understand for future astronaut missions to Mars."

• Occupy Mars: History of robotic Red Planet missions (infographic)
• Measuring marsquakes: How NASA's InSight lander will peer inside Red Planet
• Earthquakes and tsunamis: Causes and information

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/news }

Astronomers on the U.S. East Coast used the 1970 solar eclipse (shown) as a chance to learn more about the sun’s superhot corona, which becomes visible when the moon blocks the most of the light from the sun.

NASA

By Jonathan Lambert

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

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

{  https://futurism.com/ }

Nasa films mystery UFO following the International Space Station for 20 minutes

Jeff Parsons

The strange ‘cone-shaped’ UFO following the ISS

(YouTube/ET Data Base)

Cameras on board the International Space Station (ISS) have picked up a strange, cone-shaped object in orbit around Earth.

The unexplained object seemingly keeps pace with the space station as the cameras remain locked on it for over 20 minutes.

Naturally, the footage has been picked up and circulated around parts of the internet dedicated to discussing alien technology. Fanning the conspiracy flames even further, the camera zooms in on the object at one point suggesting that Nasa is aware of its presence.

For the bus-sized object to keep pace with the ISS, it would need to be travelling at around 7.8 kilometers-per-second.

The footage was picked up and shared on a YouTube channel called ET Data Base hosted by noted UFO-watcher Scott C. Waring

‘That is NASA zooming in on the UFO, not me,’ Waring notes of the footage. ‘They are as baffled by it as I am. They don’t know what it is or why it is there.’

The object appears to keep pace with the ISS

(YouTube/ET Data Base)

• MORE: Earth now has a second moon (sort of)

‘During the feed, they mention coordinates, and that could be secret code as to the location of the object. They don’t want to be too obvious.’

Describing the footage, Waring added: ‘It looks like its in a cone-shaped. I’ve never seen a module in this shape.

‘It doesn’t like any kind of object I have seen before. If it is military, then it is a top-secret US air force technology.’

• MORE: Antarctica is turning red near a former British research station

While it’s highly unlikely to be evidence of any kind of alien encounter, the idea of it being military technology isn’t that far fetched.

The US Air Force has a small, autonomous plane called X-37B that conducts intelligence operations from orbit. Built by Boeing and flown remotely, the craft – also known as Orbital Test Vehicle – is on a mission the U.S. will only describe as ‘classified’.

It is able to stay aloft for months at a time and comes down infrequently for servicing.

Personnel in self-contained atmospheric protective ensemble suits conduct initial checks on the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle

(Reuters)

In Britain, the RAF took the decision to wind up its UFO unit in 2009, after concluding that in more than 50 years, no received report had ever disclosed any evidence of a potential threat.

{ https://metro.co.uk/ }

Nothing scares the powers that be who create the power that’s being consumed by everyone more than free power for all. Well, if you’re one of those powers, get ready for the non-electrical shock of your life … engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have invented a generator that runs on air. Air is still free … right? Better start filling up some balloons, just in case.

“It’s the most amazing and exciting application of protein nanowires yet.”

Who knew there were ANY applications for protein nanowires? This is truly a ‘making something from almost nothing’ story from the very beginning. As described in an article in the journal Nature, electrical engineer Jun Yao and microbiologist Derek Lovely were actually working on something else two years ago when a graduate student working with protein nanowires in their lab noticed that nanometer-width rod-shaped proteins called Geobacter sulfurreducens (created by the bacteria Geobacter) seemed to be emitting electrical current without being connected to a power source. These Geobacter sulfurreducens had a truly humble beginning – they were first isolated in Norman, Oklahoma, from materials found around the surface of a contaminated ditch.

After further experimentation, Yao and Lovely determined that the nanowires were pulling moisture from the air and pushing it through a film of nanowires pressed between two electrodes. That push varied the amount of electrical charge in the film, which generated a charge that the electrodes picked up. The team found that between 40-50 percent relative humidity is ideal for the nanowire generators, but they can produce detectable voltages between 20-100 percent relative humidity (even the Sahara Desert falls in that range). According to their summary in Device & Materials Engineering, one pair of electrodes generates .5 volts and a string of five puts out 2.5 volts. Would that scale hold true if thousands or even millions were chained together?

Yes … provided that could find sufficient amounts of Geobacter sulfurreducens nanowires. There aren’t enough contaminated ditches in Norman, so Lovely is leading separate research to use E. coli for something good for a change – growing protein nanowires. So far, the E. coli nanowires are as conductive as those produced with G. sulfurreducens. With E. coli everywhere, how far are we from giant air-sucking generators?

“The ultimate goal is to make large-scale systems. For example, the technology might be incorporated into wall paint that could help power your home. Or, we may develop stand-alone air-powered generators that supply electricity off the grid. Once we get to an industrial scale for wire production, I fully expect that we can make large systems that will make a major contribution to sustainable energy production.”

Lovely predicts this will happen soon. The team is so confident, they’ve already named the environmentally-friendly nanowire device “Air-gen.” All they need now is funding for the development, funding for the marketing and funding for the inevitable lawsuits by the conventional non-renewable energy power companies.

Did the whale oil makers sue when oil was discovered? Probably.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

It hasn’t been six months since the fiasco that was Storm Area 51 – even if you personally enjoyed the music portion of what was originally (albeit satirically, at least in its initial form) supposed to be a mass human mob crashing the gates of the secret base in numbers that the military could not deal with nor exterminate without raising some suspicions. The movement’s mission was to free captive aliens, but there didn’t seem to be much of a plan as to what to do after getting past the first gate/fence – the only person to actually “storm” was a 60-year-old woman who was arrested, charged with trespassing and released. Well, stormers, you now have some secret entrances to target for your next gate-crashing. Who’s bringing the alien beer this time?

Google Earth (Area 51 Facility) Coordinates:
• 37°14′0″N 115°48′30″W

Google Earth (Area 51 Mountain Entrances) Coordinates:
• 37.1916478725, -116.17319725
• 37°10’23.7″N 116°11’39.4″W
• 37°10’21.17″N 116°11’31.16″W

Those coordinates come from Google Earth by way of the YouTube site FindingUFO, which didn’t find any UFOs but did locate three suspicious spots that appear to be secret tunnel openings near the main grounds of Area 51. However, it didn’t just post and run – the folks at FindingUFO did some serious digging and located previous satellite images of the three mysterious sets of openings and put together a reverse time-lapse video showing their evolution from today back to 1998. (Watch it here.)

“Yep, there are a lot of those underground hangers or storage bunkers out there around Area 51 and S4. The cover story is that they are openings to large industrial mines.”

Uploaded on February 21, the video, entitled “Hidden Underground Area 51 Base Entrances Discovered in Mountains (Google Earth),” immediately generated comments ranging from the subterranean to the ridiculous. It seems reasonable to suggest that this former mining area could still have open entrances which would save the government the trouble of digging more tunnels for … what? Nuclear waste storage (one suggestion) doesn’t make sense in an area so close to large manned facilities.

An “underground transport network” is an interesting idea, considering there are vehicles parked around the openings. Quick escape routes in case of some catastrophe in the secret hangars or labs? If that’s the case, these would be more recent projects, not repurposed mines. And wouldn’t the openings be much larger to possibly handle experimental aircraft? The apparent size of the openings suggests they’re not for large-scale escapes or secret launches either.

Could these tunnels be used for another Storm Area 51 event … assuming the masses get past the main gate? (BTW — we’re not promoting a storming, just asking questions.) The photos don’t seem to show any external protection or guards, but anyone with imagination or cable TV knows that they’d probably encounter massive doors of super-strong metals and security systems that locksmiths, dynamite or AI-generated fake IDs wouldn’t likely allow them past.

So, not good openings for storming, but definitely good openings for discussions on what else they might be … not to mention more searches of Area 51 with Google Earth. Which leads to the obvious question … if the lace is so secret, why let Google Earth satellites take pictures of it?

Begin “it’s a decoy to lure eyes away from Site S4” discussion here. Paging Bob Lazar. And thanks again to FindingUFO.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

In November of 2004, the U.S. Navy USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group was on combat training maneuvers in the Pacific Ocean, just about 100 miles off the coast of San Diego, California, in order to prepare for upcoming deployment to the Persian Gulf. This was not unusual in and of itself, and it was a perfectly normal series of operations they were engaged in, but things would soon get very weird indeed, and would launch one of the strangest and most talked about military UFO encounters on record.

It was all supposed to be a routine combat training exercise, but things would soon get strange when over a period of several days the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Princeton began picking up frequent radar signatures of unidentified aircraft of some sort on their cutting edge AN/SPY-1B passive scanning phased array radar. These objects were very odd in that they were numerous and seemed to be travelling at an altitude of up to 80,000 feet, far beyond what any normal aircraft would be operating at. The radar hits were very persistent and happened often, with well over 100 of the objects supposedly tracked over the course of the week, usually in formations of up to 8 to 10 at a time, and it was so odd that the radar operators at first thought it had to be some sort of equipment glitch, yet they recalibrated everything and it was all found to be in working order. At times the crew would try and get some sort of visual confirmation of what they were picking up but it was difficult to make out clearly even with binoculars. Whatever it was, it was certainly strange, and one of the radar operators, Petty Officer 3rd Class Gary Voorhis, would later say of the objects:

Once we finished all the recalibration and brought it back up, the tracks were actually sharper and clearer. Sometimes they’d be at an altitude of 80,000 or 60,000 feet. Other times they’d be around 30,000 feet, going like 100 knots. Their radar cross sections didn’t match any known aircraft; they were 100 percent red. No squawk, no IFF (Identification Friend or Foe). When they’d show up on radar. I’d get the relative bearing and then run up to the bridge and look through a pair of heavily magnified binoculars in the direction the returns were coming from. I couldn’t make out details, but they’d just be hovering there, then all of a sudden, in an instant, they’d dart off to another direction and stop again. At night, they’d give off a kind of a phosphorus glow and were a little easier to see than in the day.

The crew continued to keep their eye on the phenomena until they were alarmed to see that some of the objects seemed to at times carry out rapid descents in altitude that took them well into commercial airspace, and this was where things would get weird. On November 14, 2004, it was decided that some sort of action should be taken, and two F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jets from the USS Nimitz piloted by Commander David Fravor and Lt. Commander Jim Slaight were told to break off from their training maneuvers in order to go investigate an object that had appeared to drop towards the ocean surface on radar. Although they were not carrying live weaponry, the fighters were told to fly by and see if they could make visual confirmation of anything out there and report back. It was clear, calm weather, and the pilots were certain that if there was anything to this then they would soon figure out what the mysterious object was, and they were not wrong. The problem is, it was far from what any of them had imagined.

As they scanned the area the pilots allegedly saw something causing a disturbance in the water, where it seemed as if the waves were breaking over an oval shape under the surface. At precisely the time they noticed this odd sight, a bright, white object shaped like a “Tic-Tac” reportedly suddenly appeared nearby, hovering around 50 feet over the water. This startling object was estimated as being around 30 to 46 feet long, and oddest of all was that it had no noticeable ports, windows, rotors, wings, or any visible method of propulsion. The pilots attempted to approach the craft, after which it launched into a breathtaking display of maneuvers and erratic movements which seemed to defy physics, of which Fravor would say, “This thing would go from one way to another, similar to if you threw a ping-pong ball against the wall.” It then sped away with a rate of acceleration that left the experienced pilots in awe.

The pilots tried to pursue the “Tic-Tac,” but it accelerated at an astronomical rate, and according to Fravor “was just gone.” Oddly, the object soon after appeared around 60 miles away near the combat air patrol (CAP) rendezvous point “within seconds,” suggesting that it was travelling at speeds twice as fast as the F-18s and an estimated three times the speed of sound, the whole time demonstrating what was called “an advanced acceleration, aerodynamic, and propulsion capability.” Other fighters were launched in response, but the object soon sped away again to disappear. Fravor was so impressed by the object that he would later say, “I have no idea what I saw. It had no plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s. But I want to fly one.” Another wingman who was with them at the time would comment, “It was so unpredictable—high G, rapid velocity, rapid acceleration. So you’re wondering: How can I possibly fight this?” Other witnesses to the event were equally as baffled as the pilots, with one Petty Officer 3rd Class Jason Turner later saying of the object and its physics defying display:

This thing was going berserk, like making turns. It’s incredible the amount of g forces that it would put on a human. It made a maneuver, like they were chasing it straight on, it was going with them, then this thing stopped turning, just gone. In an instant.

The whole incident was causing a big stir at the time, and making it all even more impressive was that one of the fighters in the second wave of pilots had managed to capture footage of the object with an infrared camera system, called a FLIR pod, but this would be kept under wraps for years. In fact, the USS Nimitz UFO encounter would largely be buried and kept from the public until 2017, when a clip of the footage was acquired and leaked by a UFO organization called the To the Stars Academy, which co-founded by Blink-182 frontman and kajor UFO buff Tom DeLonge, followed by an article the New York Times ran on the incident, and it all immediately caused a firestorm of debate and discussion. Was it real, was this a hoax? No one knew, but everybody seemed to be talking about it.

The footage made major waves at the time, and this was all ramped up when the U.S. Navy finally admitted that the footage was indeed real, that it had indeed been taken by infrared cameras aboard their aircraft, and even released further clips of the incident, complete with audio of the pilots marveling over what they are looking at. The Navy also said that they were putting new protocols into effect for dealing with unidentified craft encountered by pilots in incidents such as this and others like it, as well as that they were funding a program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

Even with this official release of information the conspiracy theories swirled that this was only the tip of the iceberg, and that they were in possession of longer video footage and other data on the incident. This would only be fanned by an investigation into the incident carried out by Popular Mechanics, which interviewed numerous people who had been involved in the event and uncovered evidence that there were some shady things going on in the wake of the incident. One anonymous witness they managed to track down identified as an Operations Specialist aboard the USS Princeton at the time would give a comment on the incident and explain that much of the data was suddenly seized and whisked away, saying:

I do remember the events of 2004 very well. The decision was made to scramble two fighter jets to investigate. From what the pilots described, the movement of the UFO was defying the laws of physics. What really made this incident alarming was when a Blackhawk helicopter landed on our ship and took all our information from the top secret rooms. We were all pretty shocked and it was an unspoken rule not to talk about it because we had secret clearances and didn’t want to jeopardize our careers.

A still from the USS Nimitz footage

This was corroborated by others who were present, such as the radar operator Voorhis, who also said that a helicopter landed and he was told to hand over all the data recordings for the AEGIS system. Others have also insisted that a substantial amount of the 8mm footage of the incident was confiscated by this unknown party, and insist that what was released is only snippets. This has only furthered conspiracy theories and discussion surrounding the event, and the USS Nimitz UFO encounter is just as mysterious as it has ever been, the Navy very tight-lipped about offering any official statement on what is seen in the videos and wary of any speculation on the matter, merely saying that what is seen in the videos is unidentified.

This of course has not stopped widespread speculation on the incident, and various theories have been proposed for the mysterious object and what the pilots experienced. One idea is that this is indicative of perhaps some sort of top-secret aircraft or advanced reconnaissance drone test, utilizing never-before-seen technology. This seems plausible on the surface, but if that were the case why would it be tested so close to where a carrier fleet was in the middle of performing military combat exercises? There is also the fact the most researchers, journalists, and military personnel willing to talk about it are adamant that no one has technology anywhere near what was reported and what is seen in the videos. Other ideas are that this was all due to equipment malfunction, pilot error, or even weather balloons or some misidentified natural atmospheric phenomena, but this is all still unsatisfactory as the incident was witnessed by numerous highly qualified personnel and pilots and was observed both visually and with corroborating radar. It is this perfect blend of photographic evidence and highly reliable witnesses that has made the case so persistent. What happened out there during that training mission? Was this drones, experimental aircraft, pilot error, or something not of this world? No matter what the real answer may be, the USS Nimitz UFO encounter remains one of the most spectacular, well-documented military accounts there is, and has remained very much discussed.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Spooky 'blood snow' invades Antarctic island

The year 2020 has not started off well for the continent of Antarctica. In early February, the highest temperature in recorded history was reached 64.9 degrees Fahrenheit (18.3 degrees Celsius). A few days later, an iceberg the size of the U.S. city of Atlanta broke off of the Pine Island Glacier – one of the most watched chunks of ice on the planet because it has been calving frequently and these plus future icebergs are raising the ocean level. If that weren’t enough, this week the Ukrainian Antarctic station “Academician Vernadsky” was hit by the classic Fortean phenomena of blood red snow. Are these signs? Should we be worried? Who do we believe?

“For a few weeks, the Ukrainian Antarctic station “Academician Vernadsky” has been otočena… raspberry snow!” (Google translation)

The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine posted pictures and information about the red snow on its Facebook page on February 24. (Other pictures here.) To prevent any panic or misinterpretation of the “raspberry” snow and ice, the Ministry gave the biological explanation for the phenomena.

“Our scientists have identified them under a microscope as Chlamydomonas nivalis chlamydomonas.”

“Because, besides green pigment – chlorophyll, their cells contain also a red carotene layer, red spots occur on snow as if from raspberry jam. By the way, this layer protects algae from ultraviolet radiation.”

Chlamydomonas nivalis chlamydomonas

Yes, red snow is a good thing … at least for the algae giving it that color. Summer is nearing an end in Antarctica, so the algae needs all the red color it can generate to protect itself. That’s especially true this summer with the record high temperatures. Climate change?

“”Blossom” of snow contributes to climate change. Because of red-raspberry coloring, snow less hitting sunlight and melts faster. As a result, it forms more bright seaweed.”

It’s both a cause and effect of climate change. If anyone would know this, it’s the scientists at Vernadsky Research Base, the only Ukrainian Antarctic station, whose mission is research geophysics, meteorology, and ionospherics using meteorology, upper atmospheric physics and studies of geomagnetism, ozone, seismology, glaciology and more. The 12-person base was opened by the UK in 1947 as Faraday Station and is a center for long-term temperature studies. According to a 2013 report on daily observed temperatures from 1947 to 2011, we’ve got bigger problems than raspberry snow.

“Faraday/Vernadsky is experiencing a significant warming trend of about 0.6°C/decade (1.1°F) over the last few decades. Concurrently, the magnitude of extremely cold temperatures has reduced.”

So yes, the red snow is biological, not Fortean, and it’s a sign.

Is anyone watching?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

De aarde heeft er een maan(tje) bij, maar ze is weer weg in april - HLN.be

Bron: Belga

Astronomen Kacper Wierzchos en Teddy Pruyne, van het door de NASA gefinancierde project Catalina Sky Survey, stootten in de nacht van 15 februari op een object met een grootte van 1,90 op 3,50 meter dat rond onze planeet draait. “GROOT NIEUWS. De aarde heeft een nieuw gevangen/mogelijke minimaan met de naam 2020 CD3”, twitterde Wierzchos. Het zou kunnen gaan om een koolstofhoudende asteroïde.

Nationale Sterrenkijkdagen in het verschiet

Voor de astronoom is de vondst belangrijk, want “het gaat om slechts de tweede asteroïde waarvan bekend is dat ze rond de aarde draait”, na 2006 RH120, een object dat ook dankzij het Catalina Sky Survey werd gevonden en tussen september 2006 en juni 2007 rond de aarde draaide. Het nieuwe object zou drie jaar geleden door de zwaartekracht van onze planeet zijn gevangen, zegt de astronoom.

Volgens het Centrum voor Planetoïden van het Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory is er geen enkele link met een gekend artificieel object gevonden, waardoor het wel zeker een object moet zijn dat we met onze zwaartekracht hebben ingepalmd.

Weg in april

De baan van onze nieuwe maan is niet stabiel en 2020 CD3 is zich al aan het verwijderen uit het systeem aarde-maan. In april zou de maan alweer moeten verdwenen zijn, zegt Grigori Fedorets van de Queen’s University in Belfast tegenover het populair-wetenschappelijke magazine New Scientist.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

What if Planet X Enters Our Solar System? Mysterious Lights Around World, Aliens or Plasma? Astrophysicist, Dr. Massimo Teodorani

Dr Massimo Teodorani, Astrophysicist, Best Selling Author & Electronic Artist is Our Guest Today at Leak Project, We discuss the Electric Universe, Plasma, Mysterious Lights Around the World, Such as the MARFA lights, Brown Mountain Lights and More. UFO’s and the Paranormal. Dr Massimo Teodorani is a plethora of knowledge, make sure to listen to the full series, for even more incredible, cutting edge information.

Totemtag is the pseudonym in music of Dr. Massimo Teodorani, who is an Italian Ph.D. astrophysicist. He is strongly inspired by the Berlin School of classical electronic music. Lastly he attempts to approach Ambient and Chillout music. At present he plays three hardware professional synthesizers/sequencers and five software synthesizers. That is during his free time, which he tries to use in the most decent way, when life conditions permits. Thanks for your listening.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

Erich Von Daniken Explains Why the Ancient Aliens Never Left Us

COAST TO COAST AM -

Erich von Däniken updated his theory of ET contact with the ancient world, first explored in his bestselling book “Chariots of the Gods,” which has had a far-reaching influence on entertainment and science. His newest work,a sequel, called The Gods Never Left Us,talks about how with current scientific advancements in biotechnology and other fields, humanity is embarking on the same trajectory of interplanetary colonization that our ET ancestors did when they initially visited Earth.

He reminisced about his first visits to Nazca, Peru in 1960-61, when he saw the Nazca Lines, large ancient geoglyphs (the Nazca Spider is pictured) that take shape when seen from above. He proposed that these might have have been used as airstrips for the ETs.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

Unique Non-Oxygen Breathing Animal Discovered

Researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) have discovered a non-oxygen breathing animal. The unexpected finding changes one of science’s assumptions about the animal world.

A study on the finding was published on February 25 in PNAS by TAU researchers led by Prof. Dorothee Huchon of the School of Zoology at TAU’s Faculty of Life Sciences and Steinhardt Museum of Natural History.

The parasite’s anaerobic nature was an accidental discovery. While assembling the Henneguya genome, Prof. Huchon found that it did not include a mitochondrial genome. The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell where oxygen is captured to make energy, so its absence indicated that the animal was not breathing oxygen.

Until the new discovery, there was debate regarding the possibility that organisms belonging to the animal kingdom could survive in anaerobic environments. The assumption that all animals are breathing oxygen was based, among other things, on the fact that animals are multicellular, highly developed organisms, which first appeared on Earth when oxygen levels rose.

“It’s not yet clear to us how the parasite generates energy,” Prof. Huchon says. “It may be drawing it from the surrounding fish cells, or it may have a different type of respiration such as oxygen-free breathing, which typically characterizes anaerobic non-animal organisms.”

According to Prof. Huchon, the discovery bears enormous significance for evolutionary research.

“It is generally thought that during evolution, organisms become more and more complex, and that simple single-celled or few-celled organisms are the ancestors of complex organisms,” she concludes. “But here, right before us, is an animal whose evolutionary process is the opposite. Living in an oxygen-free environment, it has shed unnecessary genes responsible for aerobic respiration and become an even simpler organism.”

Source: 

• http://www.ineffableisland.com/2020/02/unique-non-oxygen-breathing-animal.html

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Border Patrol Officer Talks About the High Strange Encounters on the Border

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

Surviving the Toba Super-Eruption 74,000 Years Ago

New archaeological work supports the hypothesis that human populations were present in India by 80,000 years ago and that they survived one of the largest volcanic eruptions in the last two million years

View over the Middle Son valley in the north of India from the archaeological site Dhaba. The archaeological excavation can be seen on the left side of the picture.

Credit: © Christina Neudorf

Professor Chris Clarkson of the University of Queensland, lead author of the study, added: “The stone tools used in Dhaba are similar to the tool sets used at the same time by Homo sapiens were used in Africa. The fact that these tool sets neither disappeared at the time of the Toba super outbreak, nor changed significantly shortly afterwards, indicates that the human population survived the so-called catastrophe and continued to create tools for changing their environment. “This new archaeological evidence underpins fossil fuels Evidence suggests that humans emigrated from Africa earlier than 60,000 years ago and spread across Eurasia, and it is in line with genetic evidence that humans crossed archaic hominin species like the Neanderthals more than 60,000 years ago ,

Stone tools from the Dhaba archaeological site. They were found in the layer that corresponds to the eruption of the Toba volcano. The molds typical of the Middle Paleolithic are shown here.

Credit: © Chris Clarkson

Toba, climate change and human resilience

Although the Toba super eruption was a gigantic event, only a few climatologists and geoscientists continue to represent the previously formulated scenario of a “volcanic winter”. This suggests that the cooling of the earth was less serious and that the Toba eruption may not have caused the subsequent cold period. Recent archaeological research in Asia, including the findings reported by this study, does not support the belief that the hominin populations died out due to the Toba Super Outbreak.

Instead, archaeological evidence suggests that the human population in the region survived and coped with one of the most violent volcanic events in human history. This proves that small groups of hunters and gatherers were able to adapt to environmental changes. Nevertheless, the population groups that lived in the region around Dhaba more than 74,000 years ago do not seem to have contributed significantly to the gene pool of today’s population groups. It is likely that these hunters and gatherers faced a number of challenges for their long-term survival, including the dramatic environmental changes that followed over the millennia.

Contacts and sources:

• Michael PetragliaMax Planck Institute for Human History

Publication: 

• Human occupation of northern India spans the Toba super-eruption ~ 74,000 years ago
• Chris Clarkson, Clair Harris, Bo Li, Christina M. Neudorf, Richard G. Roberts, Christine Lane, Kasih Norman, Jagannath Pal, Sacha Jones, Ceri Shipton, Jinu Koshy, MC Gupta, DP Mishra, AK Dubey, Nicole Boivin, and Michael Petraglia

Nature Communications

• source
• DOI

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Mysterious Objects Flying in Japan, United States, Brazil and Mexico

The topic of mysterious objects flying is one on which everyone has an opinion. From the strong believer to the condescending skeptic, everyone has deep rooted beliefs regarding the subject. Some believe UFOs are travelers from other planets or dimensions. Others believe them to be experimental military aircraft. Mystics are claiming it to be an angels. Some are meteorites.

Below strange flying objects caught on tape: What is it?

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

In my latest post from February 26, 2020, I wrote about the several rectangular shaped UFOs in wing formation flying at high speed through space and wondered whether these UFOs are man-made or extraterrestrial.

Now again such a mysterious craft has been captured on February 25, 2020 while another footage from November last year shows similar crafts flying in formation at an incredible speed through space.

I have no explanation for these strange objects, but perhaps someone can provide more clarity about these 'ghosts' UFOs.

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

Triangular UFO Over Texas Makes a Comeback After a Month

Online alien hunters and conspiracy theorists had debates over a video showing a mysterious, shining triangular object over Houston, Texas. The footage was reportedly taken on New Year’s Day. Some suggested alien interference, while others believed the strange object had something to do with a secret military program.

Just recently, the UFO apparently made a comeback after a month of a similar sighting. A video, which reportedly captured in the sky over the city of Bogata by a motorist, shows three flashing lights moving in a geometric formation toward the cameraman before zooming off.

The sighting was first reported to Mutual UFO Network along with the clip of it. According to the report, the UFO was flying at the reporting witness at around 75mph and then it hovered over his car for a second and disappeared. YouTube conspiracy channel UFOmania posted the video on the video-sharing site.

While the footage’s authenticity has not been confirmed, some conspiracy theorists believe it shows an alien UFO. Others suggested the UFO could be a supersonic stealth surveillance plane of the US Air Force. A few also provided a mundane explanation saying that it was nothing more than a drone.

The latest video surfaced a month after the same clip showing what seems to be a large triangle UFO over Houston, Texas, on New Year’s Day. The bizarre object appeared to have three lights dancing in the dark sky and maintaining formation. It prompted conspiracy enthusiasts to offer alien and military-related theories as an explanation as well

VIDEOS, selected by peter2011

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

12 trippy objects hidden in the zodiac

The Helix Nebula, deep in the Aquarius constellation.

(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Ariz.)

1. Aries: an alien world with four sunsets

Aries love competition, and the gas giant 30 Ari Bb — nestled about 146 light-years from Earth in the constellation Aries — is no exception. The massive exoplanet has not one, not two, but four suns in its sky. Take that, Tatooine! 

How does one planet score four suns? In this case, 30 Ari Bb orbits a star in a binary system, a star system where two stars orbit around a common point. It turns out that this binary system orbits the same center of gravity as another binary system about 100 million miles away, making all four stars part of one big quadruple-star system. Astronomers have discovered only one other quadruple-star system like it in the universe, making 30 Ari Bb extremely rare… not that it's a competition or anything.

2. Taurus: a supernova graveyard

It's fortunate that Taurus and Cancer are such compatible signs, because there's a big, gassy crab nipping at the space bull's horns.

The Crab Nebula (aka Messier 1, or M1) is the remnant of a thousand-year-old supernova explosion — the violent death of star that can no longer support its own mass — located over the southern horn of Taurus. Beauty-loving bulls will be happy to know that such explosions create bright blasts of gas that can linger in the sky for tens of thousands of years or more; even now, the gas in M1 is expanding outward at about 3 million mph (4.8 million km/h). 

3. Gemini: the great clown in the sky

Geminis are youthful, curious and fun. Add "horrific and menacing" to that list, and you've got a pretty apt description of the Clownface Nebula, a cackling gas cloud located in Gemini about 5,000 light-years from Earth.

Also known as the Eskimo Nebula, the Clownface Nebula is a planetary nebula (a bright cloud of ionized gas surrounding a dying star) made of two enormous, concentric rings. The rings are rimmed with furry filaments that stretch on for light-years, making the nebula resemble a tiny head wrapped in a parka hood — or a clown's creepy, painted visage. Laugh (or cry) if you like, but those fuzzy puffs of gas are so complex that scientists struggle to explain why they exist (much like real clowns).

4. Cancer: a world of diamond (or lava)

Cancers can be hard to get to know, and astronomers are having the same problem with the constellation's most famous exoplanet. Located just 40 light-years away, 55 Cancri E's is roughly twice as large as Earth and orbits its home star every 18 hours or so. That means the planet is superhot — thousands of degrees Fahrenheit on its night side alone — and probably has a pretty extreme composition. How extreme? Nobody really knows. Prior studies have hypothesized that the inscrutable planet is made completely of diamond, or else has only half an atmosphere, or maybe a surface perpetually oozing with lava. Alas, we'll just have to get closer to the planet before it opens up to us.

5. Leo: a runaway star

Stubborn like a true Leo, this runaway star in the lion constellation is literally shoving space aside as it tries to escape its neighborhood at 204,000 mph (329,000 km/h). The star, named CW Leonis and located about 310 light-years from Earth, is moving so fast, you can see it creating a bow shock (a wave of energy that pushes interstellar matter aside like the front of a boat cutting through water) in this satellite image taken in ultraviolet light. Where are you going, little star? Astronomers are too intimidated to ask, but they think CW Leonis has been charging forward for about 70,000 years now. It shows no signs of stopping.

6. Virgo: the biggest hat in the universe

It's not often that you see a Virgo making a scene ... or a black hole wearing a hat. Well, behold Messier 104, the Sombrero Galaxy. This quirky galaxy is a bright bulge of stars surrounded by a perfectly symmetrical ring of dust reminiscent of a sombrero's rim. This dust serves as an enormous nursery for baby stars (aww), but the real hotspot is at the sombrero's center, where a black hole with 1 billion times the mass of the sun constantly spills electromagnetic radiation into space. It's rare to see a Virgo spill anything without cleaning it up, but at least this galactic mess is 29 million light-years away.

7. Libra: two mirages of Earth

Two Earth-like worlds circling the distant star Gliese 581 could have the right stuff to sustain life. Or, they could be illusions. Gliese 581 is a red dwarf about 20 light-years into the constellation Libra, and may have as many as six planets spinning around it. Two of those potential planets — Gliese 581d and 581g — appear to sit in the star's habitable zone, or the Goldilocks sweet spot where a planet is neither too hot nor too cold to have liquid water. Worlds like these are rare, and some astronomers believe the pair of planets may not exist at all. According to one 2014 study, Gliese 581d and 581g might just be a mirage caused by flickering sunspots on their local star's surface. 

So, these two worlds are either hugely exciting or hugely disappointing. Let's settle this like a Libra and just agree they're hugely something.

8. Scorpius: the nonstop nova 

Passionate and persistent, a Scorpio does not give up on a relationship. Nor do the stars of U Scorpii, a stellar partnership where one star is endlessly giving — and the other star is dead.

U Scorpii is a recurrent nova, a rare class of double-star system where a white dwarf (the shriveled husk of a dead star) continuously pulls in matter from a neighboring star, then sneezes it out again in a brilliant blaze every few decades or so. The result is a constantly brightening and dimming twinkle in the sky that's easily mistaken for the birth of a new star but is actually just the perverse dance of a stellar corpse and its captive mate. U Scorpii is an especially active romance, lighting up the sky at least seven times in the past 150 years, most recently in 2010.

9. Sagittarius: the monster at the center of the galaxy

Sagittarians like to keep a tight circle of friends, and there's no tighter circle than the black hole at the center of the Milky Way — also known as Sagittarius A*.

Nestled deep in the hunter constellation, our supermassive black hole is sort of like the glue that holds the galaxy together. The region around the galactic center is about 1 billion times denser with stars than our corner of the Milky Way, and all that gas and dust makes Sagittarius A* impossible to see directly from Earth. However, scientists can see the structure's throbbing energy signature as it gulps down surrounding matter at near light speed. Sometimes it eats too fast and burps up gargantuan bubbles of radiation. Sometimes it plays with its food and returns it to the kitchen, pulling stars in just close enough to transform their composition and then sending them on their way. Like many Sagittarians, the hole is fickle and uncompromising — and we'd be very sad without its company.

• Related: 11 fascinating facts about our Milky Way galaxy

10. Capricorn: three self-destructing siblings 

If you're expecting order from a constellation that's half-goat and half-mermaid, prepare to be disappointed. Consider Capricornus's most handsome galaxy group, HCG 87. The cluster of three gravitationally bound galaxies looks nice and tidy in family portraits like this one, but astronomers know that the familial harmony is only temporary. Within the next billion years, the three figures will rip each other to bits in a chaotic pileup, turning the galactic trio into one giant mess of stars. After a billion years staring at the same galaxies every day, there could be worse outcomes.

11. Aquarius: the Eye of God/Sauron

Aquarians are an observant lot. A crafty Aquarian could probably look at this photo of the Helix Nebula, for example, and see an enormous, terrifying eye staring into the depths of their souls. (Don't feel bad if you don't see it.)

The Helix Nebula (located 700 light-years away, in Aquarius) has been compared to the Eye of Sauron and the Eye of God. It's actually just a dead star cloaked in dust, and it takes on a fearsome pupil shape thanks to the star's infrared glow. It's spooky, though not nearly as spooky as the Skull and Crossbones Nebula lurking in the Puppis constellation. (Are you observant enough to guess what that one looks like?) 

12. Pisces: a perfect whirlpool

A romantic Pisces will probably try to woo you with a line about how you are made of stardust. That's very nice (nothing is sexier to an astronomy fan than dust), but for a more rewarding cosmic encounter, we suggest turning your attention to the Phantom Galaxy — aka M74 — nestled 32 million away in the constellation Pisces.

The Phantom Galaxy has been described as the perfect spiral galaxy, but really it's just the perfect view of one. From Earth, astronomers can see the galaxy's golden center and graceful spiral arms head-on, offering an unobstructed look at the galaxy's 100 billion stars. It's a gorgeous sight ... but not nearly as gorgeous as you. ;)

• 9 epic space discoveries you probably missed in 2019
• The 15 weirdest galaxies in our universe
• The 12 strangest objects in the universe

Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

What can the coronavirus outbreak teach us about bringing Mars samples back to Earth?

By Leonard David 

Scientists are still trying to figure out whether Mars shows any traces of life.

(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech)

A new virus called SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus that has caused an outbreak of a disease called COVID-19.

Public health groups, such as the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are still learning about the virus, monitoring the disease it causes, and researching potential ways to stop it. You can read all about the coronavirus and COVID-19 at our sibling site, LiveScience.

But me being me, my mind went straight to Mars. I have long been aware of science fiction's vision of Earth receiving space souvenirs that carry organisms that might be dangerous to Earth's fragile biosphere — that's me, and you, too! Such arrivals could be accidental, or they could be purposeful.

• Related: How NASA's next Mars rover will hunt for alien life

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump's budget request for NASA supports the development of the Mars sample return mission, a robotic program that would haul back the goods from the Red Planet.

What if such samples turned out to be dangerous, and contagiously so? Are there some Mars-oriented lessons to be learned from COVID-19 and other major infectious diseases? 

In 1973, Carl Sagan published "The Cosmic Connection — An Extraterrestrial Perspective," offering this view of Martian pathogens:

"Precisely because Mars is an environment of great potential biological interest, it is possible that on Mars there are pathogens, organisms which, if transported to the terrestrial environment, might do enormous biological damage — a Martian plague, the twist in the plot of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, but in reverse. This is an extremely grave point. On the one hand, we can argue that Martian organisms cannot cause any serious problems to terrestrial organisms, because there has been no biological contact for 4.5 billion years between Martian and terrestrial organisms. On the other hand, we can argue equally well that terrestrial organisms have evolved no defenses against potential Martian pathogens, precisely because there has been no such contact for 4.5 billion years. The chance of such an infection may be very small, but the hazards, if it occurs, are certainly very high."

Concern and ignorance 

What might happen if such an infection does occur? "I think that it might be instructive to consider the climate of concern that accompanies the current situation with coronavirus," John Rummel, a senior scientist at the SETI Institute in California and NASA's planetary protection officer from 1986 to 1993 and 1997 to 2006, told Space.com.

For example, the diagnostic tests available for coronavirus right now aren't perfectly accurate, and it can take more than a week after infection for symptoms to develop. And while a terrestrial infection might be limited by the change of seasons, that wouldn't necessarily hold true for a foreign disease vector.

"I think that the challenge for a Mars sample return activity is to be open about precautions taken in the face of ignorance," Rummel said, "which is what we have … when we discuss life on Mars."

Schools of thought 

Scientists have various schools of thought on hauling Mars samples back to our planet, Rummel said. But the planned, precautionary approach, based on strict containment and testing for life and biohazards, is compatible with the potential to discover life in a sample, or elsewhere on Mars by other means, as it would still allow for a sample to be returned.

"If one finds life in the sample, one has a good chance of being able to study it in containment," Rummel said. "The downside of this approach is that it is more expensive [in terms of establishing the containment facility], up-front, than ignoring life on Mars."

As the recent report to NASA from the Planetary Protection Independent Review Board stated, this approach requires that a sample-handling facility dedicated to analyzing and testing Martian samples be developed up-front.

Rummel said that, if something like the coronavirus situation pops up, then any other containment facility may not be available in a timely way, and may not be able to meet the cleanliness requirements that will ensure that any organisms discovered in the sample came from Mars, and not from Earth after the sample arrives.

Precautionary steps 

Is the emergence of a new epidemic here on our planet a cue about taking precautionary steps regarding planetary protection?

Catharine Conley was NASA's planetary protection officer from 2006 until November 2017. "As with historical infectious disease epidemics, the coronavirus that's spreading currently is another example of why it's so important to understand the consequences of interacting with environments humans rarely contact and then distributing widely whatever [they] picked up," she said.

"In the case of Mars exploration, it's most likely that Earth organisms transported to Mars could cause problems for future inhabitants," Conley said. "If Mars life exists and is brought to Earth, it's more likely to cause effects on the environment, like the algae recently found to be warming the ice in Greenland, than that it would be a virulent human pathogen."

However, if Mars life is related to terrestrial life, Conley said, "that makes it much harder to distinguish from Earth contamination — and also, just like diseases that jump species, more likely to affect us, too."

•  Everything you need to know about the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 
•  A Mars sample-return mission is coming. Scientists want the public to know what to expect 
•  This picture is from Mars. It's probably not what you think. 

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

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Mars lander reveals new details about the Red Planet's strange magnetic field

By Elizabeth Howell 

It's really weird.

An artist's impression of the effect of a solar storm on Mars, as charged particles strip away it atmosphere.

(Image: © NASA/GSFC)

The magnetic field in one zone on Mars is about 10 times stronger than scientists expected, and it's changing rapidly.

New data gathered from NASA's InSight lander, which has been on the Red Planet for a little over a year now, shows that the planet's magnetic field fluctuates rapidly. InSight is the first landing mission to carry a magnetic sensor, which allows it to measure these fields from up close.

"The ground-level data give us a much more sensitive picture of magnetization over smaller areas, and where it's coming from," lead author Catherine Johnson, a professor at the University of British Columbia and senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, said in a statement. "In addition to showing that the magnetic field at the landing site was ten times stronger than the satellites anticipated, the data implied it was coming from nearby sources."

• Related: Mars lost atmosphere to space as life took hold on Earth

InSight is designed to collect data that helps scientists to reveal more about how rocky planets form by looking at the planet’s interior. Before the lander touched down in November 2018, magnetic fields were measured by satellite and often averaged a distance from the epicenter that was more than 90 miles across.

Billions of years ago, Mars used to have a global magnetic field, but it shut down for reasons that are still unknown, about 4 billion years ago, leaving the atmosphere unshielded to radiation and causing it to bleed over time into space. Any residual fields are likely coming from older rocks buried several feet or miles underneath the planet's surface, these new results from InSight suggest. The team plans to continue to study Mars using InSight to better identify what different types of rocks there are and where they are.

These observations from InSight also showed that the sun influences the Martian magnetic field. The sun sends out charged particles across the solar system in a phenomenon known as the solar wind. These particles carry an interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) that can cause fluctuations in the local magnetic field when it hits the Martian atmosphere. That's because Mars, unlike Earth, has no global magnetic field to act as a buffer against these solar storms.

There is also some strange data that InSight has collected, revealing things like fluctuations in the magnetic field around midnight, which are likely related to how the solar wind and IMF move around Mars, inducing electrical currents and magnetic fields on the planet. Future observations will help to inform researchers exactly why this is happening, with InSight providing data from the surface at the same time that NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) examines the atmosphere above the landing site.

"Because all of our previous observations of Mars have been from the top of its atmosphere or even higher altitudes, we didn't know whether disturbances in solar wind would propagate to the surface," said Johnson. "That's an important thing to understand for future astronaut missions to Mars."

• Occupy Mars: History of robotic Red Planet missions (infographic)
• Measuring marsquakes: How NASA's InSight lander will peer inside Red Planet
• Earthquakes and tsunamis: Causes and information

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

An Object from Deep Space Has Entered Earth's Orbit

The possible 'mini-moon' quietly started orbiting Earth three years ago, and was just detected by astronomers.

By Becky Ferreira

IMAGE: CATALINA SKY SURVEY 

Earth has picked up a tiny asteroid hitchhiker, according to astronomical observations made this month.

Called 2020 CD3, the space rock was captured from deep space by our planet’s gravity, making it only the second temporary “mini-moon” that astronomers have spotted orbiting Earth.

Kacper Wierzchos@WierzchosKacper

BIG NEWS (thread 1/3). Earth has a new temporarily captured object/Possible mini-moon called 2020 CD3. On the night of Feb. 15, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Teddy Pruyne and I found a 20th magnitude object. Here are the discovery images.

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1:20 AM - Feb 26, 2020

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The asteroid was discovered on February 15 by Theodore Pruyne and Kacper Wierzchos, a pair of astronomers based at the University of Arizona. On Tuesday, Wierzchos described the find as “a big deal” on Twitter and revealed that the object appears to have been tugged into orbit around Earth about three years ago.

The newly identified asteroid is only a few meters wide, but Pruyne and Wierzchos were able to detect it thanks to the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey (CSS), which is specially designed to flag and track near-Earth objects (NEOs). CSS was also the facility that spotted the first captured asteroid, called 2006 RH120, which got sucked into Earth orbit in 2006 and was ejected back out into heliocentric orbit in 2007.

The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, which manages the official catalogue of small celestial bodies, confirmed that 2020 CD3 is a temporary satellite on Tuesday.

Though only two of these captured asteroids have been imaged so far, there are likely more of them out there that are simply too faint and small to be detected. A 2012 study in the journal Icarus predicted that, statistically, there is at least one meter-scale asteroid orbiting Earth at any particular time.

For more than a century, skywatchers have claimed to have spotted these temporary satellites but CSS is the only facility so far that has captured definitive observations of them. The introduction of next-generation telescopes, such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, will likely lead to many more detections of these orbital stowaways.

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GOOGLE LEGT ONYVOERING VLIEGTUIG DOOR UFO VAST ( VIDEO )

Door de jaren heen zijn er verhalen geweest van vliegtuigen die spoorloos verdwenen.

Soms zijn daar ufo’s bij betrokken en het lijkt alsof Google per ongeluk zo’n moment heeft vastgelegd.

Hij heeft in zijn lange carriere als ufo onderzoeker naar eigen zeggen duizenden verhalen gehoord van mensen die dingen hebben meegemaakt en daarnaast bestudeert hij ook zelf dagelijkse allerlei mogelijke bronnen om iets bijzonders te ontdekken.

En dit keer wordt hij op zijn wenken bediend door Google waar via hun Maps of Earth iets bijzonders te zien is bij de Fiji Eilanden.

Het ziet er zo uit:

Het is een vliegtuig dat volgens Scott heel laag boven zee vliegt, net voor de kust van één van de eilanden. Hij denkt dat dit misschien wel één van de vliegtuigen is die voor drugssmokkel wordt gebruikt, omdat het zo laag vliegt.

Recht voor het toestel zie je iets waarvan Scott 100 procent zeker is dat het een ufo betreft. Scott denkt dat we hier te maken hebben met een ontvoering van dit vliegtuig door de betreffende ufo. Dat wil dan niet zeggen dat het toestel compleet verdwenen is, hoewel dat ook voor komt, maar het kan ook zijn dat ze het als het ware “bevriezen” in de tijd, waarna de bemanning later opeens een x aantal uren tijd kwijt is en zich niets kan herinneren.

Hierna volgt het verhaal van Scott en zijn gedachten en bedenk dat deze man heel veel ervaring heeft in het beoordelen van de dit soort situaties, ook al klinken ze soms wat vergezocht voor sommigen.

Via deze link kun je zelf het object bekijken via Google Maps.

Om aan te tonen dat wat Scott beschrijft niet zo ongeloofwaardig is, hierna een eerder door ons gepubliceerd waar gebeurd verhaal over een piloot in Australië die met vliegtuig en al is verdwenen en waar nooit meer iets van is vernomen.

Fredrick was die dag vertrokken van het vliegveld van Melbourne in zijn blauw witte Cessna 182, voor een vlucht naar het eiland Tasmanië. De trip verliep rustig voor het eerste uur tot 6 minuten over 7 uur 's avonds toen Frederick de verkeersleiding opriep met de mededeling dat hij een groot vliegtuig in zicht had, wat op een hoogte vloog van ongeveer 1500 meter.

Om een goed beeld te krijgen, van wat er precies gebeurde volgt hier het laatste gesprek tussen de verkeersleiding (Control) en het vliegtuig van Frederick (Delta Sierra Juliet, DSJ).

7.06
Control: Wat voor type vliegtuig is het?
DSJ: Dat weet ik niet. Ik zie vier heldere.... uh, het lijken wel landingslichten.

7:07
DSJ: Melbourne, dit is Delta Sierra Juliet. Het vliegtuig is net over mij heen gevlogen; het bevond zich zeker tweeduizend voet hoger dan ik.
Control: Delta Sierra Juliet, begrepen. Kunt u bevestigen dat het een groot vliegtuig was?
DSJ: Eh.. weet ik niet, vanwege de hoge snelheid. Is de luchtmacht soms actief in deze omgeving?

7:08
DSJ: Melbourne, het komt nu vanuit het oosten op mij af.... het lijkt wel alsof het een soort spelletje speelt. Het vliegt nu over mij heen... twee, drie keer... snelheid moeilijk in te schatten.

7:09
DSJ: Melbourne, Delta Sierra Juliet. Het is geen vliegtuig. Het is.....
Control: Delta Sierra Juliet, kunt u het eh... vliegtuig beschrijven?
DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, wanneer het voorbijvliegt heeft het een langwerpige vorm.... kan het niet beter identificeren vanwege de hoge snelheid..... het is nu vlak voor me Melbourne.

7:10
Control: Delta Sierra Juliet, en hoe groot is dit... object ongeveer?
DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne. Het lijkt nu stil te hangen. Ik draai nu rondjes en dit ding boven mij doet precies hetzelfde. Het heeft een groen licht en lijkt een soort metallic. Het glinstert helemaal aan de buitenkant.
Control: Delta Sierra Juliet. DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet (er is een pauze van 5 seconden). Het is verdwenen.
Control: Delta Sierra Juliet.

7:11
DSJ: Melbourne, hebben jullie enig idee wat voor soort vliegtuig dit kan zijn? Is het een militair toestel?
Control: Delta Sierra Juliet, kunt u bevestigen dat.. eh.. het vliegtuig is verdwenen?
DSJ: Kunt u dit herhalen?. Control: Delta Sierra Juliet, is het vliegtuig nog steeds bij u?
DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, het nadert nu vanuit het zuidwesten.
Control: Delta Sierra Juliet.
DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet: Mijn motor draait maar net stationair (dit komt overeen met ongeveer 700 toeren). Ik heb drieëntwintig- tot vierentwintighonderd toeren geselecteerd en het ding sputtert.
Control: Delta Sierra Juliet, "roger". Wat gaat u doen?
DSJ: Mijn bedoeling is... eh... om naar King Eiland te gaan... eh... Melbourne. Dat vreemde vliegtuig hangt weer boven mij. (twee seconden pauze). Het hangt boven mij en het is geen vliegtuig.
Control: Delta Sierra Juliet.
DSJ: Delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne (de microfoon bleef 17 seconden open en daarna werd het radiocontact verbroken).

Er werd zeven dagen lang door de luchtmacht gezocht boven het gebied met twee Orion vliegtuigen; er werd geen enkel spoor gevonden. Noch het vliegtuig, noch Frederick Valentich werden ooit gevonden.

Hierna volgt een video met daarin een gesprek met de verkeersleider van die avond en zie je wat er precies gebeurde.

{ https://niburu.co/ }

Those pesky “greys” – only two movies, but lots of sightings anyway

Copyright 2020, InterAmerica, Inc.

RR

http://ufocon.blogspot.com – The UFO Iconoclast(s)

Source: 

• https://ufocon.blogspot.com/2020/02/those-pesky-greys-only-two-movies-but.html

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

UFO Reports, Early and Contemporary: Interview with Peter DavenporT

Richard interviews Peter Davenport, who since 1994 has been the Director of the National UFO Reporting Center, a repository on the web for UFO reports numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Peter is one of the most knowledgable (and reasonable) students of UFOs, having experienced a dramatic childhood sighting in the 1950s and investigated countless cases. Here they discuss a combination of very early reports dating back to the 1930s, as well as 21st century cases of orbs, triangles, and more.

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

Life Form Found On Mars, Proof That NASA Hides The Truth, Video, UFO Sighting News.

• http://gigapan.com/gigapans/184854

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

THIS GIGANTIC NEPTUNE-SIZED EXOPLANET IS INCREDIBLY CLOSE

NASA

{ https://futurism.com/the-byte }

Tucked away among rolling hills in the quaint countryside of western Wiltshire, England, about two hours west of London, is the sleepy, historical town of Warminster. It is a typical quiet rural English town, with charming little streets and not much typically going on, but starting from the 1960s this would become ground zero for a series of intense UFO phenomena and high strangeness that has never fully been explained and which remains a bizarre mystery talked about to this day.

While various UFO phenomena had already been reported from the area for years, it would all begin in earnest in 1961, when there was a report by four witnesses who claimed to have observed a cigar shaped object fly across the sky leaving a trail of sparks in its wake, and there would be a steady stream of reports over the ensuing years of similar phenomena in the sky, but things would really begin to get strange towards the end of 1964. On Christmas day of that year, residents were alarmed at a cacophony of strange, eerie noises that took different forms depending on the witnesses but which were rather frightening in every case. Some reported a loud booming noise, while others complained of sounds that sounded like twigs or branches being dragged across their roof or of something pounding on the top of their homes. One local named Mildred Head would say of her own experience, “Our ceiling came alive with strange sounds that lashed our roof… as if twigs were brushing the tiles… ended up with a noise [like] giant hailstones.” Some cases were rather dramatic, such as that of local woman Marjorie Bye, who heard booming noises on her way to church that were so intense she felt paralyzed and complete helpless. At least 30 people would hear these eerie aural phenomena and there was no discernible cause for any of it.

Warminster, England

The strangeness would continue on into the new year, with a glowing cigar-shaped object seen by at least 17 residents on June 3, 1965, and on August 10 a local woman known as Mrs. Atwell would claim to have seen a bright object like a “brilliant star” travelling across the sky after being woken by a deafening droning noise. On August 17, 1965 there was a frightening incident when a thunderous boom echoed out across the country side, described as sounding like a massive bomb going off, after which scared locals saw in the sky “a monstrous orange flame was seen in the sky, crackling and hissing.” At the time there were other reports of sporadic booming noises, with some rumors saying that at times the shockwaves of these were so potent that they had actually killed off flocks of pigeons or other birds, causing them to simply drop dead from the air to flutter down lifeless, and in some cases even human beings had suffered negative physical symptoms or had even been knocked down by the blasts. Some people were also claiming that their cars had stopped operating in the presence of the phenomenon, or that it had damaged buildings, and it was all very dramatic.

The frightened residents would actually call a town meeting on August 27, 1965, to discuss what to do about all of this oddness, and the town hall would be packed with hundreds of spooked locals and town officials. Here the panic and fear would be fanned by a man named David Halton, who verified that pigeons were mysteriously dying and also claimed that rats had been turning up mutilated without any explanation. It was at this meeting that we make the acquaintance of local news reporter and editor for Warminster Journal Arthur Shuttlewood, who would become instrumental to really launching the phenomena, now being called “The Warminster Thing,” into the public consciousness at large. He would claim to have gathered reports from dozens of people who had heard the noises or seen strange things in the sky since the early 1960s, and as soon as his articles began hitting the papers there would be a deluge of new reports as people wrote or called in with their own stories. Within the coming year there would eventually be around 1,000 reports gathered of all manner of UFO activity in the skies of Warminster, and most of these were compiled and kept in a dossier by Shuttlewood himself.

Through all of this there was even a photo of one of the UFOs offered up to Shuttlewood by a man named Gordon Faulkner, after which it gained wide publicity when it was printed in an issue of The Daily Mirror in September of 1965, and this would truly catapult the local phenomena to worldwide attention. Unfortunately, Shuttlewood would become a quite obsessed with it all and not a little unhinged as the months went by. He began giving increasingly bizarre, possibly embellished accounts of the phenomena and he really derailed into the realm of bizarre when he made the claim that he had actually been contacted and subsequently met up with the aliens responsible.

The whole weird affair apparently began on September 25, 1965, when Shuttlewood claimed that he had received a call from an individual calling himself “Karne,” and who claimed to be an alien from the planet Aestsa. Shuttlewood then apparently told the individual to prove it, and almost at that very instant there was a knock at the door. Shuttlewood claimed that the person at the door was Karne, and that he had blotchy skin and unnerving eyes without pupils. The two had then allegedly had a chat, during which Karne warned of an impending catastrophic war and warned that humankind was on the fast track to doom. The conversation would apparently come to an end when Karne, who was having an increasingly tough time breathing and had been fidgety from the start, looked at a gold device on his wrist, excused himself, and then left to never be seen again. Oddly there would be other reports of mysterious figures in the area at the time, including a hodgepodge of faceless humanoids, very tall humanoids dressed in white, strangers wearing balaclavas, helmeted figures, and a grey-clad figure with “streaming fair hair,” making it all even weirder still.

In the meantime, many curiosity seekers and UFOlogists had flocked to the region and were engaging in “sky watches,” mostly concentrated on Cradle Hill, Starr Hill and Cley Hill, where most of the sightings had occurred, and through it all Arthur Shuttlewood was reporting and spinning tales. By all accounts he had devoted his life to the phenomena, and was the one largely responsible for keeping the hysteria going. He would go on to write two books on the Warminster Thing, and he would also insist that he had met the aliens on several other occasions, making it unclear if he was honestly reporting all of this stuff or had gone off the deep end, how much of his reporting was based on actual sightings and how much he made up. Whatever one may think, Shuttlewood would stand by his stories and insist it was all true right up until his death in 1996.

Arthur Shuttlewood

The Warminster UFO flap would remain strong right up into the 1970s, during which time the town added crop circles to its long list of oddities, after which it seems to have died down, although there have been sporadic UFO sightings right up into the present. Although it has faded with time and slipped somewhat into obscurity, the whole affair Warminster Thing affair is still remembered locally and by UFOLogists. In 2015 there was a conference held in Warminster to mark the 50-year anniversary of the original sightings, during which several prominent researchers were in attendance, and later that same year a wall coated with murals was erected to commemorate the incident. To this day the name Warminster has been closely linked to UFOs, with the region still considered to be one of England’s premiere hotspots for UFO sightings.

What happened in this quiet rural town and why did it attract so much activity? There have been lots of ideas, the most popular of which is that this all had something to do with the nearby military base on Salisbury Plain, although why an Army barracks would have anything to do with unexplainable aerial activity or the testing of experimental aircraft is anyone’s guess. Other ideas include that it all has something to do with Stonehenge or of course that this was really aliens, drawn here because of the base or for any number of inscrutable reasons we may never understand and are perhaps not meant to. It is unclear what could have been going on here, or how credible Shuttlewood or any of the other witnesses ever were. Was this the doing of aliens, military experiments, or simply the product of panic and mass hysteria? There is no way to know, and the area of Warminster remains a place steeped in mystery and with a reputation of having one of the most intense UFO flaps England has ever seen.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

What can the coronavirus outbreak teach us about bringing Mars samples back to Earth?

By Leonard David 

Scientists are still trying to figure out whether Mars shows any traces of life.

(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech)

A new virus called SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus that has caused an outbreak of a disease called COVID-19.

Public health groups, such as the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are still learning about the virus, monitoring the disease it causes, and researching potential ways to stop it. You can read all about the coronavirus and COVID-19 at our sibling site, LiveScience.

But me being me, my mind went straight to Mars. I have long been aware of science fiction's vision of Earth receiving space souvenirs that carry organisms that might be dangerous to Earth's fragile biosphere — that's me, and you, too! Such arrivals could be accidental, or they could be purposeful.

• Related: How NASA's next Mars rover will hunt for alien life

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump's budget request for NASA supports the development of the Mars sample return mission, a robotic program that would haul back the goods from the Red Planet.

What if such samples turned out to be dangerous, and contagiously so? Are there some Mars-oriented lessons to be learned from COVID-19 and other major infectious diseases? 

In 1973, Carl Sagan published "The Cosmic Connection — An Extraterrestrial Perspective," offering this view of Martian pathogens:

"Precisely because Mars is an environment of great potential biological interest, it is possible that on Mars there are pathogens, organisms which, if transported to the terrestrial environment, might do enormous biological damage — a Martian plague, the twist in the plot of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, but in reverse. This is an extremely grave point. On the one hand, we can argue that Martian organisms cannot cause any serious problems to terrestrial organisms, because there has been no biological contact for 4.5 billion years between Martian and terrestrial organisms. On the other hand, we can argue equally well that terrestrial organisms have evolved no defenses against potential Martian pathogens, precisely because there has been no such contact for 4.5 billion years. The chance of such an infection may be very small, but the hazards, if it occurs, are certainly very high."

Concern and ignorance 

What might happen if such an infection does occur? "I think that it might be instructive to consider the climate of concern that accompanies the current situation with coronavirus," John Rummel, a senior scientist at the SETI Institute in California and NASA's planetary protection officer from 1986 to 1993 and 1997 to 2006, told Space.com.

For example, the diagnostic tests available for coronavirus right now aren't perfectly accurate, and it can take more than a week after infection for symptoms to develop. And while a terrestrial infection might be limited by the change of seasons, that wouldn't necessarily hold true for a foreign disease vector.

"I think that the challenge for a Mars sample return activity is to be open about precautions taken in the face of ignorance," Rummel said, "which is what we have … when we discuss life on Mars."

Schools of thought 

Scientists have various schools of thought on hauling Mars samples back to our planet, Rummel said. But the planned, precautionary approach, based on strict containment and testing for life and biohazards, is compatible with the potential to discover life in a sample, or elsewhere on Mars by other means, as it would still allow for a sample to be returned.

"If one finds life in the sample, one has a good chance of being able to study it in containment," Rummel said. "The downside of this approach is that it is more expensive [in terms of establishing the containment facility], up-front, than ignoring life on Mars."

As the recent report to NASA from the Planetary Protection Independent Review Board stated, this approach requires that a sample-handling facility dedicated to analyzing and testing Martian samples be developed up-front.

Rummel said that, if something like the coronavirus situation pops up, then any other containment facility may not be available in a timely way, and may not be able to meet the cleanliness requirements that will ensure that any organisms discovered in the sample came from Mars, and not from Earth after the sample arrives.

Precautionary steps 

Is the emergence of a new epidemic here on our planet a cue about taking precautionary steps regarding planetary protection?

Catharine Conley was NASA's planetary protection officer from 2006 until November 2017. "As with historical infectious disease epidemics, the coronavirus that's spreading currently is another example of why it's so important to understand the consequences of interacting with environments humans rarely contact and then distributing widely whatever [they] picked up," she said.

"In the case of Mars exploration, it's most likely that Earth organisms transported to Mars could cause problems for future inhabitants," Conley said. "If Mars life exists and is brought to Earth, it's more likely to cause effects on the environment, like the algae recently found to be warming the ice in Greenland, than that it would be a virulent human pathogen."

However, if Mars life is related to terrestrial life, Conley said, "that makes it much harder to distinguish from Earth contamination — and also, just like diseases that jump species, more likely to affect us, too."

•  Everything you need to know about the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 
•  A Mars sample-return mission is coming. Scientists want the public to know what to expect 
•  This picture is from Mars. It's probably not what you think. 

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

One of the games that the both the mainstream and the conspiracy theory media play is connecting the dots. One of the biggest dots today is the spread/epidemic/pandemic of the coronavirus. Some of the connections make sense, other make you go “Hmm,” like a recent story that the virus was brought to Earth by a meteorite which dropped it (accidentally or intentionally – different dots) over Wuhan before crashing elsewhere in China. Today’s story may be a little beyond “Hmm” to the realm of “Wha-at?” before coming back to settle between “You know …” and “Uh-oh.” A video of the feed from the live cam on the International Space Station shows 22 minutes of what appears to be a large UFO parked nearby. One thought offered by the person who uploaded it is that it could be aliens fleeing Earth because of the coronavirus. Where does that push YOUR Needle to … “Hmm,” “Wha-at?”, “Uh-oh” or “I thought aliens were supposed to be protecting us from destroying ourselves”?

Meanwhile, are they watching the ISS?

“I was watching the NASA live space station cam when I noticed the camera zooming in on a strange object coming from below the space station. At first I thought it was a capsule or satellite, but its speed increased and after 22 minutes it shot up and into deep space.”

Those quotes are from the video (watch it here) uploaded by Scott C. Waring, the always controversial owner of the YouTube Channel and website ET Data Base. Waring is well known for seeing aliens in every UFO sighting, ISS feed or Mars rover video he posts, but this latest ISS feed video has a few twists that make it a little unusual. For one thing, it’s much longer than most ISS videos of strange anomalies (22 minutes). That’s primarily because NASA doesn’t cut it off or cut away as is normally the case in these situations. In addition, at one point the camera zooms in on the UFO, an action Waring says was NASA’s doing, not his. There is no recognition of any of this on the accompanying audio feed. While Waring offer thoughts on the shape, it’s tough to imagine this is a spaceship. However, it acts like one at the end as it seems to suddenly fly off, out of the camera’s range.

“Also … this coronavirus is spreading like a wildfire out of control, it’s possible that aliens know what going to happen and they decided abandon the earth. The virus may be very dangerous to aliens too. If this is true, expect to see a big rise in UFO sightings as they appear from underground bases and leave Earth’s atmosphere.”

We’re outta here!

While the astronauts don’t seem to have any comments about the UFO, Waring has a great one connecting UFO sightings in general with the coronavirus. Aliens fleeing Earth is a seldom-heard theory in comparison to the more popular ones like the zoo theory (aliens are observing without interfering) and the benevolence theory (UFOs around nuclear plants are protecting us from destroying ourselves). In fact, the more common virus theory is that the aliens would infect Earth and its inhabitants with something they’ve already developed an immunity to – like the diseases brought by Europeans that nearly wiped out the indigenous people of the Americas. It’s much more believable that an advanced civilization capable of interplanetary or intergalactic space travel would be better prepared to deal with viruses and diseases in the places they visit than vice versa.

On the other hand … who knows?

Thank you to Scott C. Waring at ET Data Base for the thought-provoking dot connection.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

In the late 1950s and early 1960s the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union was in full effect, with each of these superpowers pushing the limits of technology and rushing to be the first one to put a man into this new frontier of the unexplored. The Soviets had had some issues in their pursuits, plagued by a series of tragedies that seemed to have left them grounded. On one occasion in October of 1960 a Soviet rocket exploded upon take off, killing around 150 people, and this was followed by a cosmonaut who was immolated within his space capsule during a fire, but despite these setbacks on April 12th, 1961, the Soviets were proud to announce that they had put the first man in space. 27-year-old Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had been put into orbit, becoming the first man to circumnavigate Earth orbit in an artificial craft, the Vostock 1, and he became a media sensation because of it, making headlines all over the world. However, there has long been talk that there were others up there before even this, and that they managed to vanish into a dark history of conspiracies and cover-ups, with the ultimate fates of these lost cosmonauts swept under the carpet to fall between the cracks of history.

There has long been talk that the Soviets had actually managed more excursions into space before and after Gagarin’s flight than they have let on. Indeed, not long before Gagarin’s launch there had been rumors that a successful space flight had already been made, with a news crew allegedly even on the ground covering it, but this story oddly just sort of disappeared and never aired, with focus instead directed solely to Gagarin’s mission. According to the news source that had been set to cover it, they insisted that a flight had been successful, piloted by decorated ace pilot and cosmonaut Vladimir Ilyushin, but that it had gone off course upon re-entry, leading to his capture by the Chinese government and was therefore unsuitable for showing the world the technological mastery of the Soviet Union. This was backed up by several journalists, most notably Denis Ogden of the British Daily Worker and French journalist Eduard Bobrovsky.

Yuri Gagarin

Ilyushin was soon being unofficially deemed the first man in space, but curiously the pilot himself was completely silent, according to official reasons because he was recovering from an automobile accident. The Soviet government was having none of it, denying that he was even a cosmonaut at all, and all the while details of the Illyushin incident were being changed all the time, making it all murkier. The Soviet government would also change its stance on the pilot’s absence, changing its story on several occasions, saying he was in a coma or other tales, and no one had any idea what was going on. In the end skepticism would be laid squarely on Ogden’s shoulders, as his article in the April 11 edition of the British communist The Daily Worker is the origin of every other article on the matter, and although he claimed that he was being provided information by an “inside source” there is no concrete verification as to who this could have been, and it may have all been pure stipulation and speculation for all we know.

There were also several reports from as early as 1959 that seemed to point to some amount of secrecy from the Soviets in relation to their space program. In one case, an alleged high-ranking Czech Communist created a stir when he leaked supposed top secret information concerning several unofficial space forays carried out by cosmonauts Alexei Ledovsky, Andrei Mitkov, Sergei Shiborin and Maria Gromova, all ending in tragedy, although the Soviets would not admit to this. There was also a report from space theoretician Hermann Oberth, who claimed that the Soviets had put someone in suborbital flight as early as 1958, but that the cosmonaut had died in the process, and he also related several other Soviet pre-Gagarin failed space missions, apparently from information kept by intelligence agencies. In 1959 there was also an article that appeared in the news publication Ogoniok, which claimed that high altitude parachutists Colonel Pyotr Dolgov, Ivan Kachur, and Alexey Grachov had all been involved with testing high altitude space flight equipment when they either died or mysteriously vanished to never be heard from again.

More well known are the allegations made by famed science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein in 1960. According to Heinlein, on May 15, 1960 he was informed by members of the Soviet Army that a man had been put into space on that day aboard what was called the Korabl-Sputnik 1, which had experienced mechanical problems to leave the cosmonaut stranded in orbit, but that officials had quickly shut the story down, backtracking to claim that it had been an unmanned flight. If there was a cosmonaut aboard, then whoever it was is forever lost in space without even being officially recognized, more or less erased from history.

Adding weight to such claims was a pair of Italian brothers by the names of Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordiglia, who were ham radio enthusiasts and had supposedly been monitoring Soviet and American space transmissions since 1957. According to them they would eventually record thousands of hours of communications from Sputnik, Vostok, Explorer, and many other Soviet and American missions over the years, but some of these were more chilling than most. In 1960 they came forward to make the claim that they had picked up Morse code transmissions from outer space which they believed conclusively proved that the Soviets had someone up there, in a craft they deemed to be moving away from the Earth, suggesting that something had gone wrong to send the poor cosmonauts hurtling out into the far reaches of cold space. The brothers would claim to have captured at least nine separate emergency transmissions from various doomed cosmonauts, with one supposedly of a cosmonaut asphyxiating during his final transmission, one of cosmonaut seemingly in the midst of a cardiac arrest, and another of an alleged unidentified female cosmonaut who apparently burned up on re-entry. Her haunting last transmission would reportedly say:

Come in… come in… come in… Listen! Come in! Talk to me! I am hot! I am hot! Come in! What? Forty-five? What? Fifty? Yes. Yes, yes, breathing. Oxygen, oxygen… I am hot. This… isn’t this dangerous? Transmission begins now. Forty-one. Yes, I feel hot. I feel hot, it’s all… it’s all hot. I can see a flame! I can see a flame! I can see a flame! Thirty-two… thirty-two. Am I going to crash? Yes, yes I feel hot… I am listening, I feel hot, I will re-enter. I’m hot!

This particular recording is notable because it would have not only been a cosmonaut who had beaten Gagarin to space, but would have also been the very first woman in space, and yet if she was real we do not know her name or who she was. Indeed, at the time the brothers’ recordings made headlines and were widely publicized despite continued Soviet statements that they were false. Over the years there would be much doubt cast on the recordings of “lost cosmonauts” made by Judica-Cordiglia brothers, with much of the skepticism based on the fact that not only were the transmissions blatantly not conforming to usual communications protocols and were often inaccurate with relation to technical and operational details, but these transmissions were not picked up by the numerous audio monitoring arrays set up by the Americans, British, French, and Germans, and additionally often featured Russian that was sloppy and not grammatically correct, suggesting that it was all an elaborate hoax or that the brothers had been tricked.

Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordiglia

Stories of mysterious lost cosmonauts continued well into later years as well, with the most famous of these perhaps being the claims that the Soviets were the first to put someone on the moon, or at least try. A long running rumor and conspiracy theory is that just before the historic Apollo 11 landing on the lunar surface the Soviets had desperately thrown together their own mission to beat the Americans to the punch. Allegedly, on July 3, 1969, the Soviets attempted to launch a crewed Soyuz 7K-L3 craft, but it would spectacularly explode on the launch pad, killing all aboard and quickly covered up by the government and officially explained as an unmanned test of lunar hardware. More mysterious is a claim that in early 1969 cosmonaut Andrei Mikoyan and another crew member had been successfully launched towards the moon, but that technicl glitches and miscalculations had conspired to make sure that they had then overshot their target to go hurtling out into the blackness of space.

There have also allegations made by Russian fiction writer Pelevin that the Soviet unmanned Luna, Korabl-Sputnik 1, and Lunokhod rover missions were actually crewed by cosmonauts on suicide missions, which would have technically put cosmonauts on the moon before the Americans, although there is no evidence whatsoever of this ever happening, and the craft involved were not designed to hold hman beings. In 2001, a senior engineer on the Soviet space program came forward to allege that the Judica-Cordiglia brothers had been on the mark, and that pilots named Ledovskikh, Shaborin and Mitkov were launched from the Kapustin Yar cosmodrome in 1957, 1958 and 1959 only to vanish off of the face of the earth. Is there any truth to this all?

This is the problem with most of these reports, a lack of any real confirmed evidence, plus the fact that the United States would have been very quick to jump any any such Soviet failures yet there is nothing to suggest they ever did. In the meantime, the first official man in space would remain Yuri Gagarin, who in later years would spiral into alcoholism and before dying in 1968 in a jet crash he would for his part deny the rumors that anyone had been put into actual space by the Soviets before him. Interestingly, Gagarin would also make some rather odd claims along the supernatural, saying that had had a weird space encounter in April of 1961. At two points during his spaceflight aboard the Vostok-1, Gagarin allegedly had inexplicably gone silent and lost contact, and when he was asked about it later he was not sure what had happened, thinking he may have just briefly lost consciousness. In later years during hypnotic regression, Gagarin would come out to claim that he could remember seeing an enormous, mysterious figure floating in space in front of him, and that he had heard a voice in his head saying, “Do not worry, everything will be fine. You’ll come back to Earth,” before the apparition vanished into thin air right before his eyes. Had he lost his mind or was this just one more strange oddity to add to the rest?

In the end we are left with quite a mess of conflicting reports and allegations concerning the darker side of the Soviet’s space program. Were there really all of these cosmonauts who perhaps predated Gagarin and beyond who just sort of were erased from the records, in some cases with their identities never known at all? On the face of it it certainly seems plausible that such things might get buried under the copious amount of secret files and hidden documents from the Cold War era. It would also make sense that the Soviet Union would want to erase their missteps and mistakes, after all, this was a time of intense back and forth bravado and competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, when there were certainly instances when nothing could be taken at face value. Yet, there has been nothing truly concrete dug up on lost cosmonauts or any evidence of cover ups of their deaths or disappearances. If they ever really did make history, then it is buried history, they are perhaps forever lost to the mists of time, with no posthumous awards or recognition and faded away and forgotten. Whatever the truth may be, the story of the lost phantom cosmonauts has been discussed and debated to this day, and shows no signs of going anywhere.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

One of the lesser-known aspects of the UFO subject is that which revolves around what we might accurately call “UFO impostors.” As a perfect example of more than a few, Brad Steiger told me the following bizarre story just a few years before he died: “On a unfortunate number of occasions, I received letters complaining of my outrageous and insulting behavior while speaking at a conference. There were claims that I had openly berated my audience, calling them stupid for accepting the very premise of UFOs. A close friend happened to arrive on the scene after one pseudo-Steiger had departed and tried his best to assure the sponsors of the event that the rowdy, disrespectful speaker could not have been the real Brad.  In his letter, my friend warned me that he had visited a number of lecture halls where the impostor had damned his audiences. ‘Someone seems out to damage your reputation,’ he advised.”

Steiger continued on with his story: “In a most bizarre twist, dozens of men and women have approached me at various lectures and seminars, congratulating me about the manner in which I bested Dr. Carl Sagan in debate. The event allegedly occurred after a lecture when I happened to bump into the great scientist in a restaurant.  The eatery, according to the witnesses, was crowded with those who had attended the seminar, and they egged on a debate between myself and Dr. Sagan.  I mopped up the floor with him, countering his every argument against the reality of UFOs. The truth is that I never met Dr. Sagan, therefore, neither had I ever debated him. But from coast to coast, there are those who claim to have witnessed my triumphal bout.”

That a number of people claimed to have seen Steiger debating with Sagan suggests that this mysterious man was not just an impostor, but a downright doppelganger! Now, there is the mysterious matter of John Keel’s secretary – who turned out to be nothing of the sort at all. Keel found himself reluctantly dragged into the mysterious mix of UFO impostors in a very weird fashion. Of the turbulent times from 1966 to 1967 – when his research in and around both West Virginia and Ohio, in relation to the Mothman mystery, was at its height in the town of Point Pleasant – Keel had some very interesting things to say:

“A blond woman in her thirties, well-groomed, with a soft southern accent, visited people in Ohio and West Virginia whom I had interviewed. She introduced herself as ‘John Keel’s secretary,’ thus winning instant admission. The clipboard she carried held a complicated form filled with personal questions about the witnesses’ health, income, the type of cars they owned, their general family background, and some fairly sophisticated questions about their UFO sightings. Not the type of questions a run-of-the-mill UFO buff would ask. I have no secretary. I didn’t learn about this woman until months later when one of my friends in Ohio wrote to me and happened to mention, ‘As I told your secretary when she was here …’ Then I checked and found out she had visited many people, most of whom I had never mentioned in print. How had she located them?”

How, indeed? There really was no definitive answer to that question. It’s worth noting, however, that Keel uncovered additional cases that involved clipboard-carrying characters who would turned up at people’s homes in Point Pleasant, all asking the same kinds of questions that Keel’s “secretary” asked, but this time posing as census takers. They were nothing of the sort. But, you knew that, right? Of course you did.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Over the years I’ve had a number of weird phone calls revolving around the UFO phenomenon: strange electronic noises, crazy threats; the list goes on. Somewhat related to this is the issue of phone interference, which is a regular phenomenon in the field of UFO research. A perfect example concerns my June 2011 book, The Real Men in Black.  When I was promoting the book on radio shows, one of the things I discussed with the hosts was the matter of UFO encounters and telephone interference. We’re talking about strange voices on the line, odd buzzing and bleeping noises, and hang-up calls. Several people contacted me to report they were experiencing the exact same thing – but only after they had read the book back in 2011. The number of such cases I have on file (some involving me, but with most of them coming from UFO witnesses and other researchers) is so many that I could write an entire book on the  phenomenon of UFOs and phone calls of the strange type. Today, however, I will share with you the saga of a strange situation that occurred back in the summer of 1968.

The story  tells of UFO researcher “Dan O.,” who told the story to the late writer on all-things paranormal, Brad Steiger. It was the night of July 13, 1968 when Dan crossed paths (or lines) with a mysterious woman on the other end of his phone At the time, Dan was on the phone, speaking with a colleague in the UFO field, when their phone call was suddenly, and mysteriously, interrupted. Dan told Steiger: “The third party identified herself as a Mrs. Slago, who, as she said, was accidentally connected with our line. She had been listening to our conversation strictly out of curiosity.”

Despite the fact that Mrs. Slago was a complete stranger and had, according to her, intruded upon the conversation by mistake, Dan decided to tell her about his UFO research, since she had at least heard snippets of what he and his friend had been talking about. As the conversation between Dan and Mrs. Slago progressed, however, the likelihood that her intrusion was all a big mistake, and nothing else, quickly evaporated. Dan’s words make that extremely clear. He told Steiger that Mrs. Slago suggested investigating UFOs was not a wise thing to do, and that the matter of UFOs possibly being of alien origin was a matter Dan should steer well clear of. Dan continued: “She also stated that UFO organizations should not attempt to further the investigation and study of UFOs, because as she put it, ‘Earth people do not understand.’ She suddenly stopped short of what she was about to say, as if she caught herself about to say something that I should not hear.”

Things then got even odder, and somewhat troubling: the woman warned Dan that he should cease his UFO investigations, that it was not wise to speak on the phone about such matters, and that her name was not Slago, after all. It was Nelson, and she worked as a “researcher” for the local police. At that point. Mrs. Slago – or Nelson – abruptly left the conversation. The story wasn’t over, however, as Dan demonstrated to Brad: “When we checked with the police headquarters, the officers told us that they had no knowledge of either a ‘Mrs. Nelson’ or a ‘Mrs. Slago’ being connected with any phase of police research. Following this incident, we had a complete check made on our telephone lines, but the check revealed no evidence of wire-tapping or anything of that sort. A check with the telephone company revealed that a misconnection of this type could not possibly have been made.”

This is just one example of many that connect UFO researchers and curious phone calls. For those who want to find out more about the story of Dan O. and Mrs. Slago, you can do so in the pages of Timothy Green Beckley’s book, UFO Silencers, which tells the whole story.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Robot van NASA registreert ‘marsbevingen’ - HLN.be

Bron: Reuters

Wetenschappers hebben op maandag laten weten dat de InSight sinds november 2018, toen de robot landde op de rode planeet landde, 450 bevingen op Mars heeft geregistreerd. 

De bevingen komen door de afkoeling van de planeet, die 4,5 miljard jaar geleden startte. “Als de planeet afkoelt, trekt hij samen waardoor de buitenste lagen breken”, aldus Bruce Banerdt van Jet Propulsion Laboratory van NASA in Californië. De bevingen zijn verschillend van de onze op de Aarde, omdat de buitenste laag van onze planeet uit tektonische platen bestaat, die Mars niet heeft. 

Het bestaan van de marsbevingen werd al lang verondersteld maar is nu pas voor de eerste keer ook gedetecteerd. 

video's peter2011

{ https://www.hln.be/ }