Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
31-07-2021
Canadian Sponges Nearly a Billion Years Old May Be Earth’s First Animals
GETTY IMAGES
An ancient sea sponge - a bit like this one - could be the oldest proof of early animal life
Canadian Sponges Nearly a Billion Years Old May Be Earth’s First Animals
Fossils belonging to very ancient sponges dating back nearly a billion years have been discovered in northwest Canada and may be the oldest ever evidence of animal life on our planet.
Geologist Elizabeth Turner made an incredibly significant discovery on rocks located in a very remote area in the Northwest Territories that is only accessibly by helicopter. However, about a billion years ago, this area which is now covered with steep mountains was a marine environment.
In the thin layers of rock, she noticed the fossilized remains of what looked similar to sponges from modern times but they were much older than that. Analysis of the rock layers revealed that the fossils date back approximately 890 million years. This is absolutely jaw-dropping as the previous oldest sponge fossils were 350 million years younger.
Close-up of a sponge.
A lot of scientists think that the first groups of animals that were present on our planet included soft sponges or sponge-like creatures that didn’t have any nerves or muscles but did have cells with numerous functions as well as sperm. Unfortunately, there isn’t much animal evidence that dates back close to a billion years and that’s why this recent discovery is so fascinating and important.
It is believed that life first appeared on our planet approximately 3.7 billion years ago and that the first animals only showed up many years later but the exact date is still unknown and highly debated.
Since the previous oldest sponge fossil dated back about 540 million years during the Cambrian Period and this new specimen is around 890 million years old, it means that it was around for hundreds of millions of years longer than first estimated and possibly even longer (perhaps a billion years). Since sponges didn’t have any hard shells or skeletons that would have remained preserved over time, evidence of them dating back 890 million years is astonishing.
Another close-up of a sponge.
Paco Cardenas, who is an expert on sponges at Sweden’s Uppsala University but wasn’t involved with the study, stated, “This would be the first time that a sponge fossil has been found from before the Cambrian, and not only before, but way before — that’s what’s most exciting,” adding, “To have discovered sponge fossils from close to 900 million years ago will greatly improve our understanding of early animal evolution.”
Further analysis needs to be conducted on the fossilized sponge, but if it is confirmed to be 890 million years old, it would mean that the first animals to have inhabited our planet would have survived during a time when scientists didn’t think anything would have been able to live based on the small amount of oxygen that was in our oceans and atmosphere. (Pictures of the sponge’s remains found in the Northwest Territories can be seen here.)
Researchers believe they have pinpointed the location in space where the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago originally came from and it’s not where you’d expect.
According to researchers from Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, the asteroid probably came from a “safe” location in the outer area of the main asteroid belt that orbits between Mars and Jupiter. While the theory was that there weren’t as many impacting asteroids in that location, it’s not as “safe” as previously believed as the researchers now claim that large asteroids from that specific area have been sent to our planet much more often than what was previously theorized.
They came to this conclusion by studying the composition of space rocks from that “safe” area in the asteroid belt and compared their findings to the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and left the Chicxulub crater in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. More specifically, they analyzed rock samples from the crater and compared them to computer models of 130,000 asteroids that came from the main asteroid belt.
Asteroid belt
As for how the asteroids ended up leaving the belt, they were sent to “escape hatches” by thermal forces and were ultimately sent flying out towards Earth. In fact, large asteroids similar to the 6-mile one that destroyed the dinosaurs were “at least 10 times more often” to impact our planet than previous studies have estimated.
Asteroids that were around 6 miles in width have impacted Earth at an average of once every 250 million years and about half of them were carbonaceous chondrites which are believed to be the same type of asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and have been described as being “some of the most pristine materials in the solar system”.
In a statement, Dr. Simone Marchi noted, “This result is intriguing not only because the outer half of the asteroid belt is home to large numbers of carbonaceous chondrite impactors, but also because the team’s simulations can, for the first time, reproduce the orbits of large asteroids on the verge of approaching Earth.”
Dr. David Nesvorný weighed in by stating, “This work will help us better understand the nature of the Chicxulub impact, while also telling us where other large impactors from Earth’s deep past might have originated.”
Their study was published in the scientific journal Icaruswhere it can be read in full.
ALL RELATED VIDEOS; selected and posted by peter2011
A video interview with the Navy pilot who coined the name “Tic-Tac” for the UFO he saw off the coast of San Diego in 2004 has finally been released in its entirety and it reveals why he picked that name and much more. The pilot is Commander Chad Underwood and the interviewee is documentary filmmaker Jeremey Corbell, who has been slowly revealing the videos he has found through his own efforts and with the help of government insiders since the story broke in 2017. The 25-minute video is well worth watching in its entirely (see it here) but here are a few of the more interesting highlights if you need convincing.
Then-Lieutenant Underwood’s F/A-18 Super Hornet was in the air with Black Aces commanding officer David Fravor, who has become the face of the pilots reporting the encounter due to his many media appearances. However, Underwood’s plane was the one that took the famous FLIR (Forward Looking InfraRed) video. Actually, we now know there was also an 8mm radar video taken, but Underwood reveals that it probably won’t be seen by the public.
Still image from the footage of the “tic-tac” UFO
“No, and they’re probably not going to see it for a long time. Because the radar tape is are … there’s two types of sensors that we record on the aircraft, active sensors and passive sensors. The FLIR is a passive sensor, the radar however, is what we call an active sensor. So it’s shooting emissions out and receiving data in and an active sensor can be exploited by our enemies if they can see the data that’s on that screen.”
That’s disappointing, because Underwood says the active radar recording would show his initial contact with the UAP. Speaking of contact, Underwood also gives more details on the report that his radar was jammed – that would be an act of war, yet there was no military response to it, leading some to believe Underwood was mistaken or there was no jamming.
“I was not consulted for that report. I have been interviewed 1/10 of 1% from the government, as I have from yourself. I did get jamming cues on my radar tape, and you can see cues of jamming on both your radar and your FLIR tape. You know when Commander Fravor described on your FLIR tape, when you see like 99.9 range to target. That means you’re being jammed.”
Of course, the best part of the video is Underwood’s explanation for how he came up with the Tic Tac description. He was talking about the encounter to other personnel on the USS Nimitz after landing.
“And so we popped the tapes in and they were like, what would you describe this as? And my thoughts going through my head where the scene from Airplane where the reporters are asking that guy Johnny, one of the ground controllers, “Can you describe this plane? And he’s like, Oh, it’s a big white shiny plane with wheels. And you know, it looks like a big Tylenol.””
“And I knew if I described it as a big Tylenol that that’s too much not taking it seriously. And anyone who knows me, I don’t take a whole lot of things seriously, but I was like, ah, I probably shouldn’t say that. It’s just it’s too on the nose. And so I was like, well, it looks like a big Tic Tac, you know, and it did. Like just kind of this white, oblong, featureless thing. It looks like a Tic Tac and it just kind of became the name for it for the next few days, little did I know that 17 years ago, it would still be a thing.”
The interview gets serious as Underwood gives a minute-by-minute account of what he saw, the actions he took, the conversations he had with on-ship personnel and the unbelievable actions of the “Tic Tac.” His radar and FLIR should have been able to track it, but didn’t.
“And so once it shot off to the left, immediately aggressively maneuver my fire to the left to try to require and it moved with a velocity that I’ve not seen, I should be able to reacquire that aircraft, or whatever it was. And that’s just, I mean, we’re talking an $80 million fighter, you know.”
He saw no exhaust or heat.
“And my estimation at this point is that was about 10 to 15 miles off my nose, I should be able to see an exhaust plume on my FLIR, you should be able to see that heat, I should be able to tell that it’s an aircraft, it’s got wings, I should be able to tell what type of aircraft it is, I should be able to know that. And I wasn’t seeing any of that.”
Underwood also makes an interesting observation about the possibility that the UAP was our own secret technology – a “black project.”
“What happens is, when you’re in the Intelligence Center, CVIC, you describe what you saw, they describe what you’ve seen, they make you sign a nondisclosure agreement or an NDA. And they say, this is the project name. They don’t describe what it is or what it does, or, you know, anything like that. It’s just, you know, you shall not speak of this again.”
That didn’t happen with Underwood or Fravor, so he feels it was not ours – especially since it would have had to have been kept secret for 17 years. So, what was it?
“I have no idea. Like, it was just this weird thing that I should normally be able to identify or identify with characteristics. Yeah, it had no flight characteristics, you know, a method of lift, propulsion, things like that. And it was at a range where I should be able to distinguish flight characteristics, and that just just didn’t happen.”
Aliens? See for yourself what Cmdr. Underwood thinks of that question in the video or read the transcript at Mystery Wire. Kudos as always to Cmdr. Chad Underwood for continuing to address the famous and still unexplained sightings, and to Jeremy Corbell for his uncanny ability to obtain the videos and the interviews.
There are a few places on this green earth that you should not dare visit even if you get a free ticket and an all-expenses paid trip. Some of these are caves that will kill you in minutes, caves that will have your temperature at boiling point, radioactivity enough to melt you as well as rats that will give you plagues. This belief might make you put your passport very far away.
11 UFO ORBS MAKE PATTERN NEXT TO MOON : This is MUFON CASE : 117120 New Hartford, NY, July 31, 2021 : Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS
Long Description of Sighting Report
I had second thoughts about releasing this video but later decided the world needs to see it. Maybe somebody can figure out what the sign means. This sighting was witnessed by 2
Date Submitted : 2021-07-31 Date of Event : 2021-07-25 MUFON SUBMITTER FILE : 11ORBS.mp4
NASA Deep Web Images Show Human Cities On The Moon in 1968
In December 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first humans to leave Earth orbit and head for the moon.They also became the first to look : NASA Deep Web Images Show Human Cities On The Moon in 1968
YOU HAVE THE BEST OPINION
credit : Portal Siniestro : 20 october 2020
Pulsating UFO Sighted Over Săceni, Romania ( July 1, 2021 )
Pulsating light over Săceni village, Teleorman, Muntenia, Romania. The video was received by Mr. President Dan D. Farca ș on messenger from Nu țu Ion from Rosiori de Vede, ASFAN member. What information does Mr. Nu țu give us about the video : ′′ The video was taken by a friend of mine, Gabriel B. Agent from the Local Police, on 01.07.2021, at 21.37 o'clock, from the right of Satu Vechi. The object filmed was stationary and was under the cloud layer above the village of S cceni, located 15-16 km. by the Rosary of Vede At some point he disappeared, but he became visible again shortly and started moving slightly to the left, after which, he accelerated to the right and disappeared!!! Gabriel took the movie below and two photos." I got a photo but the image is moved and the object is not showing well. Thank you to Mr. Nu țu for your information.
credit : ASFAN
UFO Sighted From A Plane Over Germany ( July 28, 2021 )
Impressive UFO sighted Over Germany on July 28, 2021
STATEMENT : Recorded from a plane by a German tourist with Nikon P900 camera
credit : U.S.F
note : no audio
Morphing UFO Sighted Over Quincy, Massachusetts ( July 27, 2021 )
Morphing or Shapeshifting UFO was sighted over Quincy, Massachusetts
STATEMENT : Ufo in Quincy Massachusetts July 27 , 7:00pm
credit : Santiago Sawyer
Massive UFO Sighted Over The Moon ( July 29, 2021 )
Massive UFO was sighted flying over the moon. Filmed by Homero Soto Lozoya from Chihuahua City, Mexico live on July 29, 2021
STATEMENT : Flying object when watching the moon, speed reduced to 20 % and repeat again freezing the image 1 sec. : Objeto volador al observar la luna, velocidad reducida a un 20% y vuelto a repetir congelando la imagen 1 seg.
MUFON CASE : 117064 Lake Tapps, Washington ( July 25, 2021 )
Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : We were walking on the street and we suddenly stopped just to see at least eight objects floating through the sky. This event lasted for just about over four minutes.
Long Description of Sighting Report - Case 117064
We were walking on the street and we suddenly stopped just to see at least eight objects floating through the sky this event lasted for just about over four minutes.
Date Submitted : 2021-07-25 Date of Event : 2021-07-24 / 9:44 PM MUFON SUBMITTER FILES :
This image from video posted Dec. 23, 2020, shows an object flying through the air off the coast of California. Sling Pilot Academy/YouTube
Iron Man might be dead in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but he appears to be very much alive in the real-world vicinity of the Los Angeles International Airport, where pilots have reported seeing a sky-high individual with a jetpack.
The mystery man or woman was spotted cruising around the airport at a high altitude on Wednesday evening, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and air traffic controller recordings from LAX.
“A Boeing 747 pilot reported seeing an object that might have resembled a jetpack 15 miles east of LAX at 5,000 feet altitude,” the FAA said.
“Out of an abundance of caution, air traffic controllers alerted other pilots in the vicinity.”
Audio recordings from the airport suggest there was a person flying that jetpack, though his or her identity remains unknown.
“Skywest 3626, use caution. The jet man is back,” an air traffic controller can be heard saying on Wednesday evening, in audio obtained by CBS Los Angeles. “Let me know if you see him.”
The controller then presses the pilot for more info. “SkyWest 3626, did you see the UFO?”
“We were looking,” the pilot responds, “but we did not see Iron Man.”
Jetpacks are experimental, expensive, noisy and hard to find on the commercial market. However, someone appears to have figured out how to build and fly one at high altitudes in California, where he or she has been spotted at least four times to date.
Pilot sees man in jetpack while approaching LAX airport – Sep 1, 2020
The sightings date back to last August, when two commercial airline crews reported seeing a person with a jetpack. One crew said that he or she came dangerously close to their aircraft, which was carrying passengers at the time.
A China Airlines flight later reported seeing “someone in a jetpack” at 6,000 feet in October.
“We just saw a flying object like a flight suit that’s passing by us,” the crew said.
The FBI and the FAA have been investigating the sightings for months, though they’ve been unable to determine the origin of the jetpack.
The FBI suggested last November that the object might be a drone designed to look like a man in a jetpack, and that it’s unlikely that an actual person might be piloting it.
However, the reports have persisted for over a year.
An L.A.-area flight school claimed to have captured actual footage of the “jetpack man” in December, when he or she was spotted at around 3,000 feet off the coast of Palos Verdes.
The object in the video strongly resembles a human figure with a jetpack on their back, but it remains unverified.
The FAA says it’s still investigating the strange jetpack phenomena and has yet to identify the person behind it.
Perhaps they’re simply waiting for the person to come forward and say what all the Marvel fans want to hear: “I am Iron Man.”
In a report submitted to the United Nations in January 1979, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) classified the objects as "UFOs until identified", but said the "prospect of extra terrestrial intervention being proved is regarded as extremely remote".
The document is one of a large group of declassified documents regarding "Unidentified Flying Objects" at Archives New Zealand, which came from New Zealand's post at the UN between 1977 and 1982.
In the briefing, DSIR debunks one film of the famous event, but has trouble in doing the same with TV1's footage.
What we learned from the United States UFO Report
The United States released a report on UFOs earlier this year.
"Both Crockett's and TV1's films are highly distorted," the briefing reads.
ADVERTISEMEN
"Crockett's film now considered unmeritous because of visual discrepancies produced by filming through an argosy window. DSIR have actually duplicated Crockett's results by shining a torch light onto the plane's window.
"TV1's film proving more interesting as it was a straight shot free of any distortion produced by filming through glass and plastic.
"However, aberrations are apparent in the film which is making it difficult to analyse. DSIR are now converting the film to computer readout and are hopeful that distortions can be erased."
DSIR said atmospheric conditions could explain false radar readings at the time of the sightings, where both Christchurch and Wellington air traffic control registered signals.
They said the readings weren't consistent with the sightings of pilots, or ground sightings.
"DSIR are not willing to make definite statements yet but their conjecture is that the objects filmed will turn out to be no more than general illumination (possibly produced by Jupiter or Venus) on the horizon.
"The objects remain classified as UFOs until identified. Prospect of extra terrestrial intervention being proved is regarded as extremely remote."
UNCREDITED/AP
UFO sightings have received significant media coverage in recent months. This 2015 image from video provided by the US Department of Defense shows anunexplained object as it soars high along the clouds, travelling against the wind.
Other documents show the lobbying New Zealand received from the nation of Grenada, which wanted the United Nations to "initiate, conduct and co-ordinate research into the nature and origin of unidentified flying objects and related phenomena".
New Zealand was chairing the Western European and Other States Group in November, 1978, when Grenada wanted to table their suggestion, and was not too pleased at the suggestion.
"We are disenchanted with Grenada resolution and would hope that the item can be disposed of without vote," one document reads.
"If put to the vote our inclination would be to vote against."
UNSPLASH
A report to the United Nations in 1979 said the "prospect of extra terrestrial intervention being proved is regarded as extremely remote".
Another document said: "A number of countries who were members of the Outer Space Committee (particularly Austria) were unhappy at the proposal. They felt it would damage the Committee's credibility and divert resources from more imporant work."
New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it shared the opinion of the committee.
"The matter is not appropriate for discussion in a United Nations context.
"We would hope, therefore, that the matter would be disposed of without vote.
"If put to the vote a negative vote would be appropriate though the delegation has discretion to abstain in appropriate company."
Grenada eventually pulled its pursuit of an UFO investigations unit in the UN, at the urging of the United Kingdom.
This story was originally published on RNZ.co.nz and is republished with permission.
New York UFO sighting: 11 ORBs make pattern next to the Moon
New York UFO sighting: 11 ORBs make pattern next to the Moon
Here’s one new footage filmed on 25th July 2021 and it was just published on MUFON’s website. It shows these unknown bright orbs making a “V” pattern over New Hartford, New York.
Witness report:
I had second thoughts about releasing this video but later decided the world needs to see it. Maqybe somebody can figure out what the sign means. This sighting was witnessed by 2
ANUNNAKI KINGS 2021 | The Devil. War Of The Gods – Dragons & Serpents In The Bible
ANUNNAKI KINGS 2021 | The Devil. War Of The Gods – Dragons & Serpents In The Bible
Do the Bible and many ancient narratives around the world tell a story of humanities contact with Ancient Aliens? Why is the serpent of Genesis 3 so often equated with evil, with the Devil or Satan. Nothing in the Genesis story makes that equation. So where does that association come from?
Stanford astronomers discover light from back of black hole for 1st time
Stanford astronomers discover light from back of black hole for 1st time
Scientists at Stanford say they've made a breakthrough discovery about light and black holes that startled even seasoned astrophysicists. And their work appears to prove Einstein's theory about gravity over a century ago was right.
Black holes deep in space continue to fascinate scientists, their gravity so powerful that matter and light get sucked in and can never escape. Even at 800 million light years away, orbiting telescopes have been able to see x-ray spectrum light from the front side, but never from the back side.
Stanford astrophysicist Dan Wilkins and his research colleagues are reporting they witnessed and recorded a series of bright flares for the first time, coming from the far side.
In a video, they saw a band of yellow light in the x-ray spectrum that's invisible to humans. The black hole's gravity causes those x-rays to bend around it. The telescopes captured a secondary flash, which is emanating from behind the black hole. Einstein predicted this phenomenon in 1916 in his theory of general relativity.
"The color of these flashes, the color of those echoes as well as the time that they were delayed after the original flare told us that these were the echoes coming from the gas that's hidden from our view behind the black hole," said Dr. Wilkins, a research scientist at Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford.
"Some of it will shine back down onto the gas that's falling into the black hole, and this gives us really quite a unique view of this material in its final moments before it's lost into the black hole," he explained.
Two aging telescopes helped with this breakthrough: the European Space Agency's 22 year old XMM-Newton and NASA's nine-year-old NuSTAR. Wilkins is on the team building the next-generation x-ray telescope Athena.
"It's a key part of the puzzle to understanding how the galaxies formed and how the universe as we know it became how it is," Dr. Wilkins said.
Wilkins says modestly they were lucky. Perseverance also plays a role.
Russian module mishap destabilises International Space Station
Russian module mishap destabilises International Space Station
Nauka (centre) joined the ISS high above the border between Mongolia and China
The International Space Station (ISS) was destabilised after engines of a newly arrived Russian module inadvertently fired up.
"Mission control teams corrected the action and all systems are operating normally," US space agency Nasa said.
This was done by activating thrusters on other modules of the ISS. An investigation is now under way.
US and Russian officials stressed that the seven crew members aboard the space station were never in any danger.
The malfunction happened three hours after the Nauka module docked with the ISS on Thursday, following an eight-day flight from Earth.
Nasa officials said Nauka's jets started firing uncommanded at 12:34 EDT (16:45 GMT) "moving the station 45 degrees out of attitude".
The Russian Zvezda segment and a Progress freighter then responded to push the station back into its correct pointing configuration. The incident was over by 13:29 EDT.
"What we saw today was just an awesome job by the mission control flight teams," said Joel Montalbano, Nasa's ISS programme manager.
"Those guys were rock stars again and got us back in attitude control. That also shows you what a robust vehicle we have, and our ability to take these contingencies, recover from them and move on," he told reporters.
Communications with the ISS crew were lost for two periods, of four minutes and seven minutes, during the incident. However, the US agency said that the astronauts were safe. They "really didn't feel any movement", it added.
The mishap forced Nasa and Boeing to push back Friday's uncrewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner capsule, a vehicle intended to carry astronauts in the future.
"We wanted to give the ISS programme time to assess what had happened today, to determine the cause and make sure that they were really ready to support the Starliner launch," explained Steve Stich, the manager of Nasa's commercial crew programme.
"Right now the earliest opportunity would be Tuesday, 3 August, which would be a 13:20 EDT (17:20 GMT) launch.
IMAGE SOURCEESA
image captionThe delay for Nauka has also affected the European robotic arm
The 13m-long, 20-tonne Nauka was earlier attached to the rear of the orbiting platform, linking up with the other major Russian segments on the station.
The module should have launched in 2007, but the vessel suffered repeated slips in schedule, in part because of budget difficulties but also because engineers encountered a raft of technical problems during development.
Even after it launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan a week ago, it experienced propulsion issues that required workarounds from controllers in Moscow.
In the end, however, it docked with the station on the planned date.
The new module will result in a significant boost in habitable volume for the ISS, raising it by 70 cubic metres.
Cosmonauts will use the extra space to conduct experiments and to store cargo. They'll also use it as a rest area, and it has another toilet for crew to use on the station.
In addition, the module carries with it a large robotic arm (ERA) supplied by the European Space Agency (Esa).
This 11m-long device will be able to operate all around the Russian end of the ISS. With the aid of an "elbow" joint, it will shift position by moving hand over hand.
Nauka's installation comes just as Russia has been questioning its future role in the ISS project.
Moscow officials recently warned about the more-than-20-year age of some of their on-orbit hardware and intimated the country could pull out of the station in 2025. And Russia has shown little interest in joining the US-led lunar platform, known as the Gateway, which will be assembled later this decade.
300,000-Year-Old Nanostructures in the Ural Mountains: Alien Technology?
300,000-Year-Old Nanostructures in the Ural Mountains: Alien Technology?
A team of archaeologists was surprised during an investigation to find strange microscopic objects; a mysterious nanostructures in the Ural Mountains in Russia.
Ural Mountains, in Russia.
During a geological investigation for the extraction of gold in 1991 , a group of archaeologists found themselves on the banks of the Balbanyu, Narada and Kozhim rivers , in the Ural Mountains. In the process, they found nanostructures. Some extremely strange microscopic objects.
Nanostructures in the Ural Mountains
Due to the minute dimensions of the structures, various theorists suggest that they were made by a very ancient advanced civilization .
This civilization could have, approximately 300,000 years ago , the capacity to develop nanotechnology.
They found metallic coils and spirals axes that make up the list of rare nanopiezas. These were found embedded in a rock over 100,000 years old .
This nanotechnology, in addition, was classified as an Oopart, or an object out of time. The scientists agreed that it is impossible for such technology to be around 300,000 years old.
For an object to be considered an Oopart, it must be unique and little known in historical or paleontological archaeological records. Scientists classify it as something “anomalous”, since they are found when and where they ” should not be “. Hence, it contradicts the traditional story.
Mainstream research regarding these objects is usually looking for a logical explanation . For archeology it is ” impossible to affirm” that there existed a degree of technology and culture more advanced than that known to the academic world.
However, alternative researchers are convinced of the existence of ancient astronauts . Or extraterrestrial beings that visited Earth in the past.
The strange pieces are the same ones used in rockets and spaceships.
Discovery investigation
The study was originally conducted by the Russian Academy of Sciences in Syktyvkar. After conducting different tests on the nanostructures, the experts found strange characteristics .
The larger pieces are made of pure copper , the smaller ones were made of molybdenum and tungsten . These metals have been used in the manufacture of missiles and spacecraft due to their high resistance to high temperatures.
The length of the smallest object is only one tenth of an inch.
Subsequently, they underwent intensive investigations at facilities in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Helsinki in order to find clues about their origin.
The scientists concluded that these components were not a product of nature , but that their origin is artificial. In short, they were built.
Experts said the nanostructures were the rocket parts from the Plesetsk launch base.
However, a report that was made in 1966, excluded this possibility, since the analysis showed that they were found in great depth .
As if the discovery of these objects was not mysterious enough, the Ural Mountains have always been the subject of theories and strange events.
One of the most enigmatic events to take place in the region was the Dyatlov Pass incident . A group of Russian hikers were found dead in strange circumstances.
Many theories were created from the event, from UFOs , secret experiments. Even even from a Yeti or unknown tribes.
Could they be alien technology? If so, these nanostructures would confirm the visit of ancient astronauts in the remote past.
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So far, over 4,000 exoplanets have been found and they come in all different sizes, temperatures, orbits, etc… For example, some exoplanets are gas giants that are larger than Jupiter, while others are rocky worlds about the same size as Earth. They can be exceptionally hot or have very cold temperatures. They can complete a full orbit around their star (or stars) injust a few days or much longer, and some don’t even have a host star.
Some exoplanets have been described as “hot Jupiters” and recent studies have revealed new and surprising facts about them. First of all, the fact that scientists have found hot Jupiters is amazing as they once believed that they were so unlikely that they probably didn’t even exist. These are exceptionally hot giants that orbit their star at an incredibly close range.
So far, astronomers have detected over 700 hot Jupiters in our Milky Way Galaxy and the data collected by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope allowed experts to focus in on a specific number of them. In fact, 49 hot Jupiters were chosen to be extensively studied for the new research project.
Jean-Michel Desert, who is an astronomer at the University of Amsterdam, stated, “Hot Jupiters – all of them are quite peculiar,” adding, “But we do see families of [these] exoplanets.” To better understand this, they are grouped into three families – “cooler” hot Jupiters with atmospheric temperatures as high as 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (704 degrees Celsius); “hot” hot Jupiters with temperatures between 1,300 and 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit (704 to 1,704 degrees Celsius); and ultra-hot Jupiters with temperatures hotter than 3,100 Fahrenheit (over 1,704 degrees Celsius).
As for what the researchers found, one surprise was that the “cooler” hot Jupiters didn’t have any methane in their atmospheres as stated by Claire Baxter from the University of Amsterdam, “To not find methane in any of the planets [at temperatures lower than about 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit] was surprising with the basic assumptions we had made.”
On the ultra-hot Jupiters, carbon monoxide and methane were mixed together in their atmospheres. “Seeing the evidence for vertical mixing in a statistical sense is an important step because it is predicted by models and was also previously seen in brown dwarfs [a kind of failed star],” Baxter explained, “Now we have collected evidence that this effect is also seen in exoplanet atmospheres.”
Another thing they discovered was that hot Jupiters have approximately the same amount of metal content as their stars which contradicts previous theories that they had a much higher amount.
This is a very important step in learning more about hot Jupiters and with future observations from the James Webb Space Telescope as well as the European Space Agency’s ARIEL mission, astronomers will be able to gather even more data regarding these giant exoplanets.
If there’s one thing you can say about aliens, it’s that most of them don’t really look like us. Okay, there’s the head, the torso, the arms and the legs, but largely that’s where things come to an end. For example, the small “Greys” have huge heads, large black eyes and emaciated bodies. The “Reptilians” are hardly human-looking. The lesser-known “hairy dwarfs”and the Flatwoods Monster of 1952 were nowhere near human-like. That said, however, there are a number of reports of non-human entities that look almost identical to us. There’s no doubt this applies, chiefly, to the “Space Brothers” and “Space Sisters” of the 1950s. They were encountered, usually, in desert locations and near the West Coast of the United States. The females were practically identical to us. The males, too. That is, apart from their 1980s-era-style, heavy-metal-band hair. They had fun and memorable names, such as “Rondolla” of the Fourth Density; “Zolton;” of Vela; “Ah-Ming” of Tarr; and “Numa” of Uni. Much better than the nameless Greys, right? Right! Then, there was Aura Rhanes, the ultimate alien uberbabe of the 1950s and a proud citizen of the planet Clarion, which, by the way, has never been found. Until his death in 1969, Contactee Truman Bethurum was totally entranced by Captain Rhanes. There are, however, other aliens that look just like us and who can pass for us on the streets, in the malls, and at the Friday night game. Whether or not they bet on the game, I don’t know.
Giant Rock, California, where human-looking ETs with stupid-but-fun names loved to hang out in the 1950s
(Nick Redfern)
Giant Rock, California, where human-looking ETs with stupid-but-fun names loved to hang out in the 1950s (Nick Redfern) have friends who fully believe the Black Eyed Children are aliens. Personally, though, I think that is what we call in the U.K. “complete and utter bollocks.” In my view the BEC are something supernatural, rather than extraterrestrial. I have to admit, however, that those strange black eyes and the pale, sickly-looking faces do suggest that the BEC just might be ETs. Give them some human-like contact lenses, and, yes, they certainly could pass for us. Just maybe. Now, let’s take a trip to a store. UFO authority, and author, Denise Stoner told me the following: “At least three times here in Florida at a particular combination health/grocery/restaurant I have been observed by a strange character. This is a good place to blend as many folks who shop here are ‘odd characters’ to begin with or ‘hippie like,’ gone back to nature types. So, the person who has observed me is wearing a gauzy outfit, thin hair, woven straw Panama type hat and sun glasses fits right in.” Denise continued:
No way these guys are going to pass for us
“His skin, hair, and clothing are all almost the same beige color. The difference is he has a drink in front of him, a notebook, stares at me the whole time as we eat at a table on the sidewalk. He never has food of his own nor does he touch the drink. It seems he knows when we are almost finished eating, he gets up, walks slowly past our table, rounds the corner that is clearly visible but must pass a pillar on the corner of the shopping plaza by our table. Once he goes behind that pillar, he never comes out the other side. There is literally nowhere for him to go but out the other side, then down the sidewalk or out to the parking lot – but no, he is gone. I cannot get up to follow thinking I am going to bump in to him on the other side of the pillar. He lets me know in no uncertain terms that he is watching me or letting me know he is there.”
Captain Aura Rhanes. Now, that’s more like it.
For his book Selected by Extraterrestrials, William Tompkins wrote: “The time was 1:30 p.m. It was an afternoon in late 2010. The location was an exclusive neighborhood in Oceanside, California. I needed some things from our local store. Walking fairly close to the rear entrance, I spotted an expensively dressed, tall, blonde, vision that immediately reminded me of the first day I met Jessica, my Nordic alien. She stopped and turned, facing me. With a sincere, deep, penetrating look, this vision said, ‘My father is several levels above 32 Mason, and I’m going to help you with your book.’ We talked for about ten minutes, outside of the door. She gave me her phone number and said, ‘Meet me tomorrow, in the coffee lounge at 1:30.’ Obviously, I was extremely impressed and in total confusion about her remarks, because I never met her and didn’t know who she was. How could she have known I was writing a book? And what did her Freemason father have to do with the subject matter in my book?” Don’t ask me. I’m just the messenger.
There’s no doubt, whatsoever, this story is a bizarre one. How could it not be when supermarkets, UFOs and aliens become integral parts of it all? Aliens that look so much like us they can wander the aisles, get stuck in the check-out lines for twenty minutes (just like me and you!), choose the shopping cart with the fucked-up front-wheel, and not be outed for what they really are? Now, that’s impressive!
Aliens thinking about invading Earth need to be ready to start hearing cries of “Semper Fi!” now that a select group of “space Marines” have commenced training at the Army’s Space and Missile Defense School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where they will prepare to fight our country’s battles from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tranquility … on the Moon and beyond. Someday soon, if extraterrestrials ever look on heaven’s scenes, they will find our skies are guarded by United States Marines.
“We are in our initial building stage of SOPs (standard operating procedures) and TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) and force structure. Right now this is a capability that doesn’t exist in the Marine Corps. It’s always us reaching out to the joint force to provide it.”
It wouldn’t be a military announcement without acronyms, so the press release quotes Marine Capt. Jacob Loya, a communications officer with a background in satellite communications working with 1st Space Brigade to train the Marines, had a few to say. The Marines are part of the newly activated Marine Corps Forces Space Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, and after training will embed with Army Space Support Teams. The training will include, situational awareness of space capabilities, space assets, space products, and the impact of space on operations. According to the press release, the goal is from the Marines to eventually establish their own autonomous Marine Space Support Teams.
What about the Space Force?
“With the renewed emphasis on space and the standing up of the Space Force and Space Command, the Marine Corps needs to have skin in the game. We want to be able to operate independently and that starts by learning all the TTPs built out by 1st Space Brigade. It’s a knowledge base we just don’t have.”
The Space Force is a separate branch of U.S. uniformed services, although it’s considered to be a sister-branch of the U.S. Air Force. It’s responsible for organizing, training, and equipping space forces, which are then deployed by the United States Space Command. So, according to the chain of command and distribution of responsibilities, it appears the Space Force trained the Army’s Space and Missile Defense School personnel which then trains its own Army and Marine space support teams, which in this case are the Space Marines – although that’s not their official designation.
According to Task and Purpose, the space Marines will be a part of the Army Space Support Team (ARSST) providing enhanced “intelligence and operation planning capabilities” for units in the field, especially in the area of space-based military capabilities like satellite intelligence and communications. They will also be able to jam enemy communications and take part in “navigation warfare.”
John Glenn
It’s the 100th anniversary of his birth, so we’ll salute the most famous space Marine – John Glenn. Glenn trained as a Navy pilot, but accepted a transfer to the Marines and flew missions in World War II and the Korean War before becoming a test pilot and eventually one of the first U.S. astronauts – the first American to orbit the Earth. (That’s real space travel, Bezos and Branson.)
Would John Glenn be interested in becoming an official Space Marine and fight alien invasions? He never hesitated to serve when his country called, so it’s easy to answer that question.
“From dawn to setting sun; We have fought in every clime and place Where we could take a gun.”
Since the dawn of time human beings have moved forward through resourcefulness, invention and technology. It is what brought us up from mere apes cowering in the dark, to the advance being we are today, travelling to the stars and unravelling the secrets of the universe. Discovery and innovation have driven us to be the most advanced species the world has ever known, and all of this comes from the discoveries and inventions of those who have managed to unfurl the layers from what we do not understand. But discovery and invention are hard. It takes a lot of work and trial and error, and so for as long as amazing discoveries have been around there have been those who have just tried to fake it. Here are some of the boldest, cunning, and most baffling technological hoaxes from the annals of history.
A very early hoax involved a type of robot before robots were ever even really a thing. In 1769, a Hungarian nobleman by the name of Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen built what he claimed to be a fully-functioning, chess playing robot, which at the time were typically referred to as “automatons.” It appeared as a large wooden box filled with gears, cogs, wires, and other fancy looking technological stuff, and atop this box sat a wooden mannequin dressed in Turkish clothes for some reason, and with maneuverable arms and hands. There was a large handle on the side, which Kempelen would dramatically wind up to activate the automaton, after which it would creepily spring to life to play chess. It had dexterous hands, could pick up and move chess pieces on its own, and not only that, it was touted as having the ability to “think,” planning strategies and studying and reacting to its opponent’s moves.
When Kempelen first unveiled his creation it caused a major stir, as no one had ever seen any automaton that could do anything other than merely mimic humans and animals at the most rudimentary level. By all appearances, this was an actual thinking robot able to interact with an opponent, which was mind-blowing at the time. Kempelen then toured all over the place giving demonstrations of his wondrous machine. A typical show would be for him to crank up the robot, which was affectionately nicknamed “The Turk,” and then invite someone from the audience to come up and try to play chess with it, and they almost always lost to it. He was always very willing to show that it was not an illusion, opening the side of the machine to allow spectators to see that there was not a man hidden inside, and no one could quite figure out how it all worked. Before long, these demonstrations were immensely popular, bringing in nobles, aristocrats, and even Benjamin Franklin, who lost a chess match to it. Everyone was held in awe.
Kempelen’s chess-playing robot
These demonstrations would go on until 1790, when Kempelen would have his creation taken apart and put into storage. Upon his death in 1805, it was sold by his family to a German by the name of Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, who put it back together and began touring it around America. As it began to gain more fame, speculation on how it worked began doing the rounds again, with many skeptics surmising that there had to somehow be a person, maybe even a dwarf, hidden within the box or even the wooden Turk itself. It would not be until 1837 that the secret would finally come out, when those involved with the scam came forward to tell how it was done. It would turn out that various chess masters had been hidden inside the box as many had suspected, and that a series of sliding panels, mirrors, and a rolling chair had been used to conceal them while audience members inspected the inside of the box. It was then just a matter of using magnetic pieces over the hidden player’s head to gage where the opponent had moved, and then use a system of levers to move his own pieces. In the end, it was quite a simple explanation for a device that had baffled and delighted audiences for the better part of a century, and it caused great disappointment. The Turk itself would be put back into storage, and its days were finally put to an end by a warehouse fire in 1854.
At the same time that Maelzel was touring the chess-playing robot, another inventor was widely promoting what he claimed to be an actual, fully functioning perpetual motion machine. The concept of what has become known as “perpetual motion” is simple at its core. It basically describes an object or body that remains in continuous motion forever without any external energy source. If a machine were to be built using some sort of perpetual motion technology, it would theoretically run forever without any need for fuel, batteries, or power of any kind. This means basically unlimited energy, freeing us from the tethers of finite sources of fuel and giving us devices that will never wind down or die out. It has become a sort of holy grail for certain individuals, who continue to plug away at this seemingly unobtainable dream, and it is just amazing how much the idea of perpetual motion has enthralled people over a large portion of history. One of these was first unveiled in 1812 by an until then rather unknown man named Charles Redheffer, who began exhibiting his invention in his home in Philadelphia, in the United States.
His fantastical machine featured a gravity-driven pendulum with a large horizontal gear on the bottom, and a smaller gear that interlocked with the larger one, with the large gear and the shaft able to rotate independently. On the gear were two ramps that held weights, and it all supposedly worked by these weights pushing the large gear away from the shaft, which would create friction that would cause the shaft and gear to spin. This spinning gear would then power the interlocked smaller gear, and on and on it would go, supposedly forever unless the weights were removed. The machine was put on display and immediately became a smash sensation, drawing in droves of amazed spectators and scientists alike, all of whom were charged a hefty admission fee by Redheffer and none of who could figure out how it all worked. It was largely whispered that he had finally cracked perpetual motion, that he had achieved the seemingly impossible dream. Before long Redhefer was getting quite rich off of his oddball machine, and there was much excited speculation that he had actually done it and achieved true perpetual motion, despite raised eyebrows from the scientific community.
Diagram of Redheffer’s machine
Redheffer, emboldened by the response to his device, actually requested funding from the state of Pennsylvania to build a much larger version, and on January 21, 1813, state inspectors were sent to take a look at the machine before any money would be paid. Unfortunately for Redheffer, he had never let anyone ever take a good, close look at his device, and it would soon become apparent why. The inspectors arrived and were immediately suspicious when it turned out they could only view it through a window into a locked room. Even so, there were cracks appearing in Redheffer’s claims when it was noticed that the gear cogs were worn down in such a way as to suggest that the weights, shaft, and large gear were not powering the smaller gear, as Redheffer claimed, but rather the other way around. To them this was an obvious hoax, but the way they dealt with it is rather amusing. Rather than call out Redheffer on his scam, inspector Nathan Sellers hired a local engineer by the name of Isaiah Lukens to build a replica that was more compact and set within a solid baseboard with a square piece of glass at the top. There was no discernible way as to why it could work, yet concealed within the machine was a wind able motor that was wound through the covert use of a wooden decorative finial. With a little sleight of hand, the illusion was nearly perfect, and when he saw it Redheffer himself was so incredibly surprised to see what he took to be a real perpetual motion machine that he allegedly secretly offered Lukens a large amount of money to know the secret. After this, the news did the rest of the work and Redheffer was undone and exposed through a taste of his own medicine.
Amazingly, this did not put a stop to Redheffer. Undeterred, he simply moved to New York to set up shop there where his reputation hadn’t been as tarnished, once again enjoying some amount a fame and drawing in droves of curiosity seekers. One of these was an engineer by the name of Robert Fulton, who noticed something fishy as he observed the mysterious device in action. He could see a slight wobble to it, and also noticed a very slight unevenness to its speed and the sounds it made, both things that should not be present in a real perpetual motion device. A real device of this type would need to be frictionless and perfectly silent because friction and sound would be a loss of energy, so these were glaring clues that something was off, especially to his trained eye. Realizing that it was obviously being somehow powered by crank motion, Fulton confronted Redheffer on the spot, but the inventor amazingly held his ground, insisting that the machine was real.
Fulton then challenged Redheffer to allow him to search for any possible source of outside power, to which Redheffer foolishly agreed. After this, Fulton simply tore out a section of wall in full view of a gathered audience to find a concealed cable that led to an upstairs room, where an old man was found operating a crank. The spectators, who had all paid good money to see the amazing “perpetual motion machine,” were less than thrilled. They reportedly immediately took out their frustrations on the machine itself, smashing it to pieces, and might have done the same to Redheffer if he hadn’t already hi-tailed it out of there to later skip town. Unbelievably, Redheffer would claim several years later that he had created another machine, and that it was totally, for sure real this time, and he even got a patent for it in 1920, but since it was never put on display or examined and the patent was lost in a fire who knows if there was any truth to it.
Such an invention would be groundbreaking, completely changing our world, and it is a fascinating thing to think about it, yet according to our current knowledge of physics it simply just isn’t possible, as such a machine would violate one or more of the laws of thermodynamics. To put it in simple terms, the First Law of Thermodynamics basically is about the conservation of energy, and says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed from one form to another, making the idea of a machine constantly creating its own energy without any outside influence impossible. There is also the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which in simple terms more or less says that an isolated system will always move toward a state of disorder, for instance heat will always dissipate and energy will be lost on any number of variables, including moving parts, friction, even sound, with the more energy formed meaning the more energy wasted. It is all much more complicated than this very basic explanation, but the gist is, a perpetual motion machine is impossible according to our current understanding of the universe and the laws of the conversation of energy. Alas, all of the many supposed perpetual motion machines have proven to be hoaxes.
In 1875 we have the strange story of John Worrell Keely, who founded the Keely Motor Company. Keely made the rather bold claim that he had invented what he called a “vibratory generator” that could purportedly wrest enough power out of a quart of water to pull a fully loaded train. He would give some seemingly successful demonstrations of this amazing device, and soon had investors throwing money at him to develop it. He would keep taking their money and stalling as he fine tuned his device, but after more than a decade of this suspicions began to arise. Nevertheless, it was such a potentially ground breaking marvel that there was still hope it might all be real. Sadly, when Keeley died in 1898 it was discovered that he had been pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, with him having merely used a clever ruse of having a compressed air machine hidden away that would provide power to the engine. This would not be the last time someone would try to fool everyone into thinking they could turn power into fuel, and we will get to another case later.
John Worrell Keely
Not all bogus inventions were for benevolent purposes. In 1876 a self-proclaimed “Professor” by the name of James C. Wingard, of New Orleans, came forth with what he claimed to be a weapon that he had designed that could utterly destroy Naval vessels. It was supposedly essentially a death ray that he said projected a “nameless force,” and which could devastate any vessel “so as to leave no trace of them in their former shape” from a range of up to 5 miles. Wingard heavily promoted his device as the future of warfare, and promised that any one who had possession of it would rule the seas and be unstoppable, able to annihilate any enemy. This obviously had the attention of the military, and he went about arranging a demonstration on June 8, 1876 at Lake Pontchartrain. As a large crowd looked on, Wingard engaged his device, aiming it at a large wooden schooner. There was apparently a lag of around a minute before the schooner exploded into a rain of fire and smoke, after which the vessel rapidly sank.
It would soon be found that the schooner had been completely obliterated, with one statement saying “even the small timbers aft of the mainmast were broken all to pieces,” and the test seemed to have been a resounding success. Wingard then formed a stock company in Boston and continued his work on refining his groundbreaking weapon, attracting many investors. As with Keeley, they were soon demanding results, so he set up another demonstration in Boston Harbor. However, when he activated the device, there was an explosion far from the target vessel, and an investigation would find a disintegrated rowboat and two bodies in the water. Wingard cancelled the demonstration and that was all highly suspicious, with skeptics now suggesting that he was merely sending a crew out on a rowboat to secretly plant explosives on the target vessel and then using a triggering mechanism to ignite it. Wracked with guilt, Wingard would come clean and admit that this was the case, and that his team had died when the explosives had accidentally gone off. The death ray had been a sham all along.
Moving onto 1896 we have the bizarre story of Rev. Prescott Ford Jernegan, of Middletown, Connecticut, who claimed to have developed a way to extract gold from sea water with a device he called the “Gold Accumulator.” It was not a new idea at the time, but no one had ever even come close to accomplishing it. He first came to a jeweler named Arthur Ryan with this amazing invention, and offered to perform a demonstration. The machine itself looked like a simple wooden box with holes that water could pass through, with the inside containing mercury that would be electrically charged to activate a “secret ingredient.” The box was to be lowered into sea water, left overnight, and when it was pulled up the next day it would be filled with gold due to some mysterious chemical process. When Ryan agreed to see a demonstration, Jernegan simply gave him the box and told him he could do it on his own.
In February of 1897 Ryan went about testing the device on a wharf outside of Providence, Rhode Island, along with several colleagues. They used it as its inventor had instructed them to, lowered it into the water, and the next morning sure enough there were flecks of gold within it. It wasn’t as much as they had been expecting, but it was still over $100 dollars of gold in today’s money so it was seen as promising. If a collection of such machines could be set up running day and night, it could prove to be quite lucrative indeed. Jernagan said he could churn out a further 1,000 devices within the year, and there were dollar signs dancing through Ryan’s eyes. Jernegan, Ryan, and a team of investors founded the Electrolytic Marine Salts Company, and got to work on getting stinky filthy rich.
They set up an array of accumulators in Maine and Boston, and began pulling in more gold from them, “proving” it worked and attracting people wanting to buy stock in the company. Investors were pouring in money, interest was high, and it seemed to be too good to be true, and sadly, it was. In July of 1898, Jernegan suddenly vanished without a trace, later found to have hi-tailed it to Europe under a fake name. Not long after they were gone, the accumulators stopped producing gold, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that they had all been scammed. It would turn out that Jernegan had an assistant named Charles Fisher, who also happened to have been a trained diver. It turned out that he had been secretly diving into the sea to load the accumulators with gold, a small price to pay considering how much they were pulling in from investors. As soon as the orders for their machines had gone up, they had taken all of the invested money and made a run for it, making a cool $200,000 each, about a bajillion dollars in today’s money. The two scam artists were never caught, but the idea of extracting gold from sea water remained for quite some time.
In 1909, we have the clever hoax of an inventor named Wallace Tillinghast, from Worcester, Massachusetts, who claimed that he had built an amazing new type of airplane. This was only a few years after the Wright Brothers had made their first flight, and aircraft were still in their infancy, slow and only capable of short stints with little extra weight. Indeed, the longest flight up to then was Louis Blériot’s solo flight across the English Channel, which had gone only 22 miles. In comparison, Tillinghast claimed that his own design could hold three passengers and fly over 300 miles at an average speed of 120 miles an hour, which might as well have been magic at the time. He further claimed that he had performed several test flights of his aircraft that confirmed these numbers, and excitement was high.
Through all of this, Tillinghast was very secretive as to how his airplane worked, claiming that he did not want the plans to get into the wring hands, but he assured the public that he would come forward with his amazing invention. In the meantime, there were alleged sightings of the new airplane all over New England, with thousands of witnesses and many claiming that it often shot a searchlight below it. However, there were many skeptics. Wilbur Wright himself dismissed Tillinghast’s claims as “too palpably absurd from the first to take seriously,” and reporters who had been following him and even staking out his home could find no evidence that he had any such plane or workshop where he claimed to be working on it.
As this was going on there were still numerous sightings of a mysterious airship the like of which no one had ever seen, and Tillinghast insisted that he was telling the truth. Eventually, a local man named C.D. Rawson admitted to causing the sightings with lights and reflectors attached to owls as a hoax, but Tillinghast did not budge from his adamant position that his invention was real. 1910 came and went with no further word on the amazing new airplane, and the public ended up merely shrugging their shoulders and moving on. It would largely be looked at as a huge hoax, with no evidence that Tillinghast had any such aircraft or had ever made a flight at all, and he would just sort of fade away into the background.
Moving on into more modern times, we have still more mysterious supposed inventions that could have had world changing implications. In the 1970s, a man named Thomas Ogle claimed to have developed a new type of car carburetor that supposedly could make gasoline into a pressurized vapor and utilize it on the engine’s firing chambers in an incredibly super efficient manner, allowing vehicles to allegedly run over 100 miles to the gallon. In addition, Ogle claimed that any car could be modified to use the new system easily and for not much additional cost, making the whole thing seem almost too good to be true. Ogle himself showed off a Ford Galaxie that had supposedly been fitted with the new miracle carburetor and was clocked at around 113 miles to the gallon.
Unfortunately we will never know. Ogle died in 1981 without ever having divulged just how the vapor carburetor worked, and even his death has sparked controversy, with some saying he was intentionally poisoned by someone within the big gasoline companies who stood to lose the most from such an innovative product. Considering that no one has ever been able to replicate the process, it has been speculated that the whole thing could have been a hoax, with Ogle simply showing an illusion utilizing hidden fuel tanks, but other have defended his invention as having been real, and in the end the fact is we simply don’t know. All we know is that it would have been a revolutionary development way ahead of its time.
Thomas Ogle
Getting back to perpetual motion machines, one was unveiled in 1979 by American inventor Joseph Newman. The machine was called the DC motor, and according to him worked by using “energy in a magnetic field consisting of matter in motion,” and which he claimed could produce more energy than was put into it. He even went about seeking a patent for his invention, but it was denied as the Patent Office could not see how it could feasibly work. When Newman appealed this decision, it was found in an investigation by the National Bureau of Standards that the device’s power output was never above 100% of the power supplied to it, which was not promising. Newman would continue to adamantly insist that his machine really worked, but he sort of fell into obscurity after making all manner of other crackpot claims over the years. Whether his supposed perpetual motion machine ever really worked or not remains unknown, but everything we know about science says probably not. For now, the notion of a real working perpetual motion machine really does sit in the realm of science fiction, and it has mostly been a pursuit abandoned by most real scientists. It has come to be relegated to mad inventors working in their garages against all odds to try and make the impossible possible.
Our species is always going to reach towards the horizon and penetrate into the mysteries that we don’t understand, further opening up new discoveries and propelling our progress. This is an innate feature of our kind, and to be sure there will be leaps and bounds made over the coming decades that will bring true progress. Yet looking back at cases such as these it seems that for as much progress as we make, there will always be those willing to fake it for fame or money.
In my latest article on the strange world of the Collins Elite (a small group in the U.S. government that believes aliens are really demons) I told the story of how the group began and how I came to meet a few of the people involved. My key source for the story was Ray Boeche, both a priest and ufologist. In 1991, Ray was approached by two members of the group, both of whom were physicists working for the U.S. Department of Defense. They wanted guidance on how to handle some of the weirder aspects of their investigations into the world of all things demonic. It’s a little-known fact, though, that Ray’s two informants didn’t just speak with him. Linda Howe had contact with them, too, three years after Ray Boeche met them. They particularly wanted to read Howe’s book, Glimpses of Other Realities, Volume 1: Facts & Eyewitnesses. In June 1994, they provided a statement for Howe that revealed much about the group’s belief-systems and the kinds of things they were into. With that said, I’ll let you read what they had to say. Their words began as follows:
“Dear Ms. Howe: Your book is an excellent, thought-provoking work. Overall many salient points are covered quite well. Following are some random notes for your consideration. Study David Bohm’sWholeness and the Implicate Order. Much insight into the mechanics of the NHEs (non-human entities) can be gained from study of his ideas. He [was] on target with his concepts, and our program is attempting, unfortunately to exploit them. Perhaps a better description might be that the mechanics of the NHEs ability to interact with our physical reality is what Bohm’s work details, and the contact with the NHEs has occurred, and will continue to occur, regardless of our understanding of the mechanism of the contact. Our misguided program directors cling to the false belief that we can control or manipulate the NHEs, when in actuality, the reverse is occurring – we are the ones being manipulated and deceived. Cellular changes in plants from within genuine crop circle formations are due to the same sort of energy release/exposure as that used in the so-called ‘negative healing’ experimentation. Once again, [the] forces being utilized by NHEs, to interact with us in a bizarre, confusing manner, designed to divert us and draw our attention from the true purpose of their actions: manipulation and deceit.”
They continued: “The penultimate diversion in this whole area is the mutilation of thousands of animals. The NHEs, with the ability to work unseen (read invisibly), and to create incisions and excise tissue in manners which seem humanly impossible (because they are) and to either remain totally undetected, or to create the illusion of extraterrestrial beings (the apparent UFO/phantom helicopter sightings, and concomitant occupant sightings often associated with the events), provide an extremely effective smoke screen. People are now busy chasing secret government projects, satanic cults, and UFOs, while the actual perpetrating agents go unsuspected. Regarding the phantom helicopters, while many are direct NHE ‘productions’ (craft is not an appropriate term as they do not need to travel via a propulsion device), many are related to our program, especially regarding running checks and surveillance on mutilation sites and so-called abduction victims. The comment left on your telephone answering machine referenced on Page 194 (Glimpses, Vol. 1) may very well have been made by someone within the government hierarchy who has been convincingly fed the false ET scenario propagated as disinformation by those who are in charge of the NHE projects. Many variations of this exist, and all who are privy to a particular variation are convinced they have ‘the answer.’ With our society as it is now, the core truth of the situation is such that the public really could not handle it.”
There was more to come: “The ultimate diversionary tactic to this point (and diversions will begin to increase in frequency, degree of strangeness, and in a more overt fashion, visible to greater numbers of observers) is the UFO abduction scenario. The concept of these events, real though they are, being the result of extraterrestrial beings is a masterful piece of disinformation to divert attention away from the real source of the NHEs. Our information as to the true nature of these events does not negate the possibility of extraterrestrial life. But the causal source of the UFO and UFO abduction phenomena is not extraterrestrial. The so-called Roswell crash of 1947 did indeed occur and debris of a non-earthly type was found, as were non-human bodies. Although in our position we cannot speak with authority, we believe that there is a basis in truth for Bob Lazar’s story of government-held ‘craft.’ However, the origin is not extraterrestrial. The NHEs being dealt with in our psi (mind control) weapons development, and who are apparently allowing themselves to be used, for a time, are neither benevolent nor neutral. It was our feeling that very few could understand or accept this. That is the reason we approached our mutual friend (Ray Boeche). His theological training, his acceptance of orthodox Christian thought, and his obvious abilities as an astute researcher, seemed to indicate to us that we might effectively communicate our concerns through him, and still maintain our positions, which would enable us to accurately monitor the ongoing work. He has made some blunt statements which run counter to the positions of his peers, and has been roundly criticized by many for his position, but we desperately hope that at least some are listening.”
Things got even more intriguing: “Your comments and thoughts (in Glimpses of Other Realities) concerning ancient civilizations and their contacts with the NHEs need to be considered in light of the bigger picture of the deception of mankind as a whole. If this grand deception is taking the course it seems to be, then it makes complete sense to analyze the false gods of ancient civilizations in light of the current level of deception. It is only logical that given their non-human, other-dimensional nature, the NHEs would be able to foresee the need to establish a foundational base, the facts of which could be slightly twisted, or distorted, by the fog of antiquity and forgotten cultural distinctiveness, to seemingly establish themselves as the bringers of all good things to humanity. Explore [Jacques] Vallee’s Passport to Magonia again, for more close parallels between the ‘faerie’ manifestation of the NHEs, and current events. Dr. Vallee was so close to the truth of the situation, with the exception that the ultimate manipulators are not human.”
Finally, there were these words from the two Deep Throats: “You have created a remarkable piece of work which helps to begin to point to the final truth behind the phenomena. Our mutual friend could be most helpful to you in explaining details of the deception. We, on our part, will be happy to answer specific questions you may wish to put to us. You must understand, however, that some things simply can’t be discussed. Please transmit your questions and or concerns via our friend. We believe you can understand our need for discretion, and the wisdom of limiting the number of direct contacts we make. We applaud your efforts, and we look forward to your next volume. You are a very bright and obviously courageous woman who seems to remember the maxim, ‘You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.’ With our sincerest best wishes.”
Another piece of a strange story that continues to grow.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Bad News. Those Underground Lakes on Mars? They’re Probably Just Frozen Clay
Bad News. Those Underground Lakes on Mars? They’re Probably Just Frozen Clay
If you were planning an ice-fishing trip to the Martian south pole and its sub-surface lakes observed by radar in 2018, don’t pack your parka or ice auger just yet. In a research letter published earlier this month in Geophysical Research Letters by I.B. Smith et al., it seems that the Martian lakes may be nothing more smectite, that is, a kind of clay. Should the findings of the paper, titled A Solid Interpretation of Bright Radar Reflectors Under the Mars South Polar Ice (a solid title if you ask me), turn out to be correct, it would be a significant setback for those hoping to find life on the red planet. So why were these supposed lakes so critical for the search for life on Mars? How were they discovered in the first place? Why have our dreams of Martian ice-fishing turned to dust (or, more correctly, clay)?
The bright white region of this image, captured by Europe's Mars Express spacecraft in December 2012, shows the icy cap that covers Mars’ south pole, composed of frozen water and frozen carbon dioxide. (Image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/Bill Dunford)
Lake Vostok, roughly the size of Lake Ontario, is buried under several kilometers of ice in Antarctica yet has been found to support life. Credit: Nicolle Rager-Fuller / NSF
Like Mars, Antarctica had a warm and wet past. As geological and tectonic processes migrated the great continent to the south pole, it underwent extreme glaciation. Microbes adapted to the radical climate change and eventually gave rise to the ecosystem that thrives there today. While the glaciation of Antarctica was driven by the tectonic action of continental drift, the climate change on Mars was global and likely due to the loss of the atmosphere from erosion by the solar wind. It is not unreasonable to imagine microbes adapting to this extreme climate change and clinging stubbornly to life in subsurface lakes at the Martian poles.
Computer-generated image depicting ESA’s Mars Express in orbit above the surface of Mars. The MARSIS instrument on Mars Express famously showed evidence of subsurface lakes in the southern polar region of Mars in 2018. Credit: NASA/JPL/Corby Waste
Mars Express utilized Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument or MARSIS. The radar was pulsed and carefully measured, revealing reflectivity data for the surface and below to a depth of 1.5 kilometers. An exceptionally bright area, roughly 20 kilometers wide, was consistent with what would be expected if a large body of liquid were present.
The authors of the recent paper disputing the validity of the claims of Martian lakes raise some questions that cannot be answered by radar reflectivity alone. They claim that the required amounts of salt and heat needed to sustain the supposed lake are not plausible. Mars is too cold, and while there is salt present on the planet, there is no known mechanism that would concentrate it to the salinity levels necessary for liquid water to persist. They also estimate that the local geothermal flux (would Mars-thermal flux be a more appropriate term?) is one-sixth that is required to maintain liquid as well.
The south pole of Mars as seen by Mars Express. Credit ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
In science, especially when the stakes are as high as identifying possible biomes for extraterrestrial life, it is crucial to seek out the simplest explanation for an observation. The authors posit that rather than a portion of the south pole exhibiting highly anomalous salinity and heating levels, a particularly reflective clay called smectite that is abundant on Mars is the more likely culprit for the radar results seen by MARSIS.
Somewhat ironically, the formation of the smectite is thought to have been formed by various weathering processes that involve groundwater, hydrothermal systems, or surface water bodies. The clay also likely contains water, but critically, frozen solid and distributed throughout the layer of extremely cold smectite. The mineral is common on Mars and has even been detected by the Curiosity rover!
This is not the first time in Martian history (or rather in the history of Earthly observation of Mars) that a tantalizing feature has turned out to be non-existent. Famously, late 19th and early 20th century observers like Giovanni Schiaparelli and Percival Lowell observed so-called canals on the planet’s surface. These were imagined to be works of engineering constructed by a civilization of highly advanced Martian life forms. The widespread belief in Martian life from this time inspired countless works of science fiction, including the HG Wells work The War of the Worlds.
Illustrations showing supposed canals on Mars made by Percival Lowell. These features were later found to beoptical illusions and are not present on the planet. Credit: Percival Lowell
While it is easy to get swept away in the excitement of imagining alien civilizations or even just subsurface lakes on Mars, it is critical to do good science in our explorations of the solar system. Discovering Mars as it truly is, in reality, is an extraordinary achievement and our findings inform us of the nature of the solar system. Despite crushing our hopes of bodies of liquid water, there’s no understating how extraordinary Mars Express is, and the incredible sophistication required to analyze the data displayed by the team in this recent paper is out-of-this-world.
Lead image: Radar imagery provided by Mars Express showing a supposed body of liquid water in the subsurface. This is now thought to be a mineral layer of smectite clay. Credit Context map: NASA/Viking; THEMIS background: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State University; MARSIS data: ESA/NASA/JPL/ASI/Univ. Rome; R. Orosei .et al. 2018
The colored dots represent sites where bright radar reflections have been spotted by ESA’s Mars Express orbiter at Mars’ south polar cap. Such reflections were previously interpreted as subsurface liquid water, but their prevalence and proximity to the frigid surface suggest they may be something else. (Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech)
"My daughter and her aunt were traveling southbound on the I-101 Southbound near Fair oaks exit #394 in Santa Clara, CA. On or around 5:33pm. My daughter caught footage of the event with her cell phone camera. The object seemed to hover or wobble and was traveling very swiftly (see video) object disappeared and could not be seen anymore".
Mi hija y su tía viajaban hacia el sur por la I-101 en dirección sur cerca de la salida de Fair Oks # 394 en Santa Clara, CA. Alrededor de las 5:33 pm. Mi hija captó imágenes del evento con la cámara de su teléfono celular. El objeto parecía flotar o tambalearse y viajaba muy rápido (ver video) el objeto desapareció y ya no se podía ver.
UFO sighted over Herriman, southwestern Salt Lake County, Utah, on July 29, 2021
STATEMENT : Herriman, UT
credit : U.S.F
Strange Events On Earth ( July 2021 )
The planet is waking up with Record Breaking Natural Disasters : July has seen some crazy events. : The planet waking up, but most of the population is still fast asleep
UFO Sighted Over Sobral, Ceará, Brazil. ( July 29, 2021 )
UFO sighted over Sobral municipality in the state of Ceará, Brazil on July 29, 2021
STATEMENT : Região de Sobral, Ceará-Brasil : Sobral Region Ceará-Brazil
credit : U.S.F
UFO Sighted Over Tbilisi, Georgia ( July 28, 2021 )
Amazing UFO sighted over Tbilisi, Georgia on July 28, 2021
STATEMENT : Has been shot yesterday in Tbilis Country of Georgia. Just an UFO watching for parking place
Here I present the original and approach.
More evident everyday
credit : Lev Kc
UFOs Sighted Over Louisville, Kentucky ( July 24, 2021 )
Amazing UFOs captured in Louisville, Kentucky on the night of 24/07/2021 : Here I present the original and in the wake with approach.
Witness captured an unknown object that moved smoothly and steadily. There were no visible wings or other directional or control surfaces; no vapor trails or sound.
Bright shining object flying over Santa Clara, California.
Witness while traveling near Santa Clara captured an unknown object flying very swiftly until it could not be seen anymore.
This bright unidentified flying object was seen flying over Crediton, UK on 28th July 2021.
Witness report:
It was late evening and we were outside the front of the house with the dogs. The sun was low but it was still daylight with good visibility. The sky was mostly clear blue with very high thin cloud in places and broken cumulus to the west. I looked up to the south where a bright object in the sky caught my attention. It wasn’t bright like a star, but appeared to glow. It moved smoothly and steadily, passing over our heads, from the south to the north. It was difficult to make out its size or altitude; but it appeared to be below the high level thin haze. To me, it appeared to be a similar height to that maintained by the light aircraft that fly from the local airport. So, not very high. There were no visible wings or other directional or control surfaces; no vapour trails or sound. My girlfriend, who had the presence of mind to start filming it, thought she saw a flashing light above it at one point, but I did not observe any flashing, flickering or strobing. The object continued to head north until it our view was obscured by our house roof. We then moved indoors and upstairs to where we could observe it again from our landing window. We watched it continue north at the same steady pace, with the same brightness, until we lost sight of it. We cannot be sure if it just winked out, or moved off at great speed; but it was there one minute and gone the next.
These unknown lights were maneuvering in the sky above Louisville, Kentucky on 24th July 2021. Don’t forget to check out new private Telegram group about UFOs: https://t.me/joinchat/rrN8h_ZVrsljMDNk
The Event Horizon Telescope Zooms in on Another Supermassive Black Hole
The Event Horizon Telescope Zooms in on Another Supermassive Black Hole
On April 10th, 2019, the world was treated to the first image of a black hole, courtesy of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Specifically, the image was of the Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) at the center of the supergiant elliptical galaxy known as M87 (aka. Virgo A). These powerful forces of nature are found at the centers of most massive galaxies, which include the Milky Way (where the SMBH known as Sagittarius A* is located).
Using a technique known as Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), this image signaled the birth of a new era for astronomers, where they can finally conduct detailed studies of these powerful forces of nature. Thanks to research performed by the EHT Collaboration team during a six-hour observation period in 2017, astronomers are now being treated to images of the core region of Centaurus A and the radio jet emanating from it.
Image of the Centaurus A galaxy, combining optical, x-ray, and infrared data. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: Rolf Olsen; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech
For decades, astronomers have known that SMBHs reside at the heart of most massive galaxies surrounded by massive rings of dust and gas. These rings are caused by the SMBHs tremendous gravitational pull, which accelerates the dust and gas to relativistic speeds (a fraction of the speed of light) and triggers the release of massive amounts of electromagnetic energy (including radio waves).
This process is what leads to galactic nuclei becoming “active” – aka. an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) or quasar – where the core region vastly outshines the galactic disc many times over. Whereas matter on the edge of the black hole is accreted onto its face, some of the surrounding matter escapes into space moments before it is captured in the form of relativistic jets – one of the most energetic features in the known Universe.
As they indicate in their study, the data obtained from the 2017 EHT observation campaign allowed the team to capture images that were ten times higher in terms of frequency and sixteen times sharper in resolution. This was made possible by the EHTs resolving power, which is the result of eight radio observatories that – when combined – make up a virtual telescope with an aperture the size of Earth.
Located over 13 million light-years from the Milky Way, Centaurus A is the closest radio galaxy to our own and (when imaged in radio wavelengths) is one of the largest and brightest objects in the night sky. Using the same interferometry technique that allowed for images of M87 to be taken, the team to observe Centaurus A with incredibly sharp resolution at a wavelength of 1.3 mm.
Close-up images of the relativistic jet emanating from Centaurus A. Credit: M. Janssen, H. Falcke, M. Kadler, E. Ros, M. Wielgus et al.
As study co-author Heino Falcke, an EHT board member and professor for Astrophysics at Radboud University, said in a NOVA press release:
“This allows us for the first time to see and study an extragalactic radio jet on scales smaller than the distance light travels in one day. We see up close and personally how a monstrously gigantic jet launched by a supermassive black hole is being born…
“These data are from the same observing campaign that delivered the famous image of the black hole in M87. The new results show that the EHT provides a treasure trove of data on the rich variety of black holes and there is still more to come.”
Previously, the task of monitoring Centaurus A at radio wavelengths was overseen by Tracking Active Galactic Nuclei with Austral Milliarcsecond Interferometry (TANAMI), a multiwavelength program that consists of nine radio telescopes located on four continents. Since the mid-2000s, TANAMI has been studying the core region of Centaurus A with VLBI at centimeter wavelengths, as well as other relativistic jets and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) in the Southern Sky.
However, the new image was not only much higher in terms of resolution, but it also revealed features of Centaurus A that were never before seen. For example, the EHT team noticed that Centaurus A is brighter at the edges compared to the center, a phenomenon that has been observed with other jets but never as pronounced. These observations will inform astrophysicists’ attempts to model how matter behaves in the presence of SMBHs, which is still unclear.
In particular, astrophysicists are still trying to figure out exactly how relativistic jets are launched or how they can extend for light-years without dispersal. “We found it challenging to explain with the same models we used for M87,” Said Sera Markoff, the Vice-Chair of the EHT Science Council and a co-author on the study. “Something different must be happening, like helical magnetic fields, which gives us new clues about how they may ‘squeeze’ the jets.”
Thanks to the new EHT observations of the Centaurus A jet, it is believed that the launching point of the jets conforms to the likely location of the SMBH. Based on this, the research team predicts that future observations at even shorter wavelengths and resolutions would be able to photograph the SMBH at the center of Centaurus A – similar to what was done in 2019 with M87.
This will likely require space-based observations, which will allow for more precise baseline interferometry (being free of atmospheric distortion). The ongoing study of this phenomena, made possible thanks to arrays like the EHT, is also letting astronomers observe how the laws of physics work in the most extreme environments in the Universe.
A black horny sponge (Scalarispongia scalaris) growing off the coast of France. Some types of horny sponge are today harvested for bath sponges.
Credit: Biosphoto/Alamy
Most major groups of animals — including arthropods, molluscs and worms — first appear in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion, 541 million years ago. But according to a paper published today in Nature1, sponge fossils from northwestern Canada could be 350 million years older, significantly pushing back the date of Earth’s earliest-known animals.
The ancient discovery is igniting debate among palaeontologists, who have long contested when complex animal life first evolved.
“If I’m right, animals emerged long, long before the first appearance of traditional animal fossils,” says study author Elizabeth Turner, a sedimentary geologist at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada. “That would mean there’s a deep back history of animals that just didn’t get preserved very well.”
Weird and wonderful shapes
Some scientists, however, are not convinced that the microscopic patterns in Turner’s 890-million-year-old fossils indicate an ancient sponge, given the evidence provided in the study.
“It’s such a big claim that you really have to eliminate all the other possibilities,” says Rachel Wood, a geoscientist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, who researches fossil reefs. “Microbes, for example, produce weird and wonderful shapes and forms.” Sometimes crystals also grow in a way that looks like patterns formed by living organisms, she says, meaning that the rock samples Turner found might not be fossils at all.
Crystalline tubes seen in rocks (left) might have been formed when the collagen-like skeleton of an 890-million-year-old sponge decayed and fossilized. Some modern sponges have internal scaffolding (right) that resembles the shapes in the rocks.
Credit: Elizabeth C. Turner
Turner counters that none of the known reef-building organisms that existed 890 million years ago, such as cyanobacteria or algae, can explain the complex structures in her samples.
She collected the purported fossils from ancient microbial reefs preserved in the rocks of Canada’s remote Northwest Territories, starting during her graduate studies in the 1990s.
When Turner examined slices of the rock under a microscope, she saw branching networks of crystalline tubes. She later realized that these structures resemble the internal scaffolding of modern horny sponges, and line up with the expected decay and fossilization patterns of spongin, a collagen protein that forms their scaffolding.
“These rocks are beautiful, but you don’t expect to find something that complicated or weird in them,” she says.
Early history of animal life
It wasn’t until the past few years, when she saw studies that described similar structures in much younger rocks — from a time when sponges were known to exist — that Turner felt confident in publishing her results. But those studies, too, are disputed on the grounds that they might not be actual sponge fossils.
The authors of one of these papers2 took photographs of many thin slices of their rock sample and used them to generate a 3D model of the purported sponge. Wood says that a similar piece of evidence would have strengthened Turner’s claim.
If Turner’s structures do prove to be sponge fossils, says David Gold, a geobiologist at the University of California, Davis, “it would be very exciting, and help us nail down the early story of animal evolution”, a subject that has been hotly debated for decades.
But although “it’s easy to find things that look like sponges in the fossil record”, he says, it’s more difficult to back them up with other evidence. He and other researchers, for instance, have supported3 fossil claims by pointing to rock samples containing traces of biological molecules that are linked to sponges. Unfortunately, given the sheer age and type of Turner’s rock samples, this type of preservation isn’t really possible, he adds.
It’s not inconceivable that sponges could have pre-dated the Cambrian explosion, says Phoebe Cohen, a geobiologist at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Scientists estimate how long ago the ancestors of groups of living animals diverged using ‘molecular clocks’, which measure the rate of mutation in DNA and proteins over time.
The majority of these estimates suggest that the last common ancestor of all animals alive today evolved before the Cambrian explosion, but not by as much as 350 million years, says Cohen. Nevertheless, she says she could be convinced that Turner’s samples are sponge fossils if she saw more evidence, including studies on how horny sponges fossilize.
Molecular-clock estimates
The palaeontological community is split on whether the dearth of animal fossils from before the Cambrian period is because the creatures that lived then rarely survived as fossils to the present day, or because molecular-clock estimates of animal origins are wrong. Gold is convinced there were sponges before the Cambrian, but says that exactly how far back is a big, unresolved question.
Ancient worm fossil rolls back origins of animal life
If the ancestors of modern sponges really were alive 890 million years ago, then it means early animals survived through very trying conditions for life, such as extremely low levels of oxygen and ‘snowball Earth’ periods during which the surface of the planet almost entirely froze over, says Gold.
Turner argues that sponges could have survived the low-oxygen environment by eking out a living in cavities and crevices in the microbial reef next to photosynthetic cyanobacteria, which release oxygen. The sponges might also have been nourished by organic ooze that the bacteria produced. “There was probably a delicious and very copious supply of ‘snot’ for these filter-feeding organisms to have eaten,” she says.
Scientists are passionate about their views of when animal life started on Earth. The paper could reinvigorate the debate that has been quietly simmering for decades, says Gold. “But I suspect it’s not going to change a lot of minds for those who have made a decision about how old animals are.”
For the first time on camera... Commander Chad Underwood clarifies and informs what happened when he encountered and recorded what is now the most famous modern UFO footage of all-time. Cmdr. Underwood is a badass Navy Weapon Systems Officer from VFA-41 (the legendary Black Aces). He was flying in an F/A-18 Super Hornet - and was responsible for fighting the aircraft. Underwood’s testimony represents the first time in history a military “whizzo” recorded a UFO during operations - and the encounter footage has been confirmed directly by the United States Government as being ACTUAL footage of an Advanced Aerospace Vehicle of unknown origin - a real UFO.
Cmdr. Underwood’s account and footage also represents independent corroborating evidence to accompany the experience of Cmdr. David Fravor - the man who CHASED a TIC TAC shaped UFO with his fighter jet for our military.
The advanced and unidentified craft they observed and engaged that day - was able to outpace & outmaneuver our nation's most advanced war planes. It did in-fact “zoom off” to the left of Underwood’s wing - and it broke the lock on his ATFLIR targeting pod. It had no typical aeronautics or aerospace propulsion signatures - no tail, no wings, no exhaust plumes - and it also was able to Offensively Jam our fighter plane's radar & weapons systems. This is NOT an isolated event - quite the opposite.
Under the circumstances of this encounter - this is considered an ACT OF WAR by the United States Department of Defense. And typically - there are consequences. However - nothing about Cmdr. Underwood’s & Cmdr. Fravor’s experiences - were typical.
What you are about to hear in this interview is important. It has historic value. It’s evidence - of advanced and unknown aerospace vehicles operating in our restricted airspace - with impunity. Displaying instantaneous acceleration and impossible speeds - technology, we simply do not have. If this is not a National Security issue - I don’t know what is. Certainly, this is an existential conundrum - and it’s time we face the UFO reality head on - whatever it might represent.But let’s hear what Commander Underwood has to say about it - after all - he is the man that filmed it… and he was there.
Impressive clear footage of a UFO that was recorded over a Temple in Thailand on July 28, 2021
STATEMENT : ประเทศไทย : Thailand
credit : U.S.F
UFO Sighted Over Samara, Russia
This is a UFO Institute Special : The amazing UFO from Samara Russia : This footage was captured by the camera of an automobile on 25/02/2020 stationed in Russia in Samara, Michurina Street / Ovrag Podpolschikov area : Here I present the original and approach.
credit : Mikhailovich.
note : no audio
Strange Phenomena Sighted In The Skies ( July 28, 2021 )
This extraordinary video shows a Strange Phenomena causing a flashing light to come from behind a cloud. The strange flashing was sighted in the skies on July 28, 2021 video :
submitted : no location
related video
UFO Sighted Inside Apocalyptic Cloud Over Mendoza, Argentina ( July 28, 2021 )
Stunning apocalyptic cloud was sighted with a UFO inside. This was recorded in the skies of Mendoza, in Argentina’s Cuyo region on July 28, 2021
credit : Giezon Patricio
UFO Sighted Over Fontana, California ( July 28, 2021 )
STATEMENT : Dude my neighbor and i finally saw a UFO... it disappeared and kept coming back ... it looks like the extraterrestrials "RECONNAISSANCE"... [I think it was a interdimensional vehicle of some kind]... not a space ship but their "RECONNAISSANCE".... If you don't know what "RECONNAISSANCE" mean or is plz look it up... this is truly FASCINATING to me ....❤
credit : Nyce Rockwell
UFO Fleet Sighted Over Atlanta, Georgia ( July 24, 2021 )
Amazing record of this UFO fleet held in Atlanta Georgia on 24/07/2021 Here I present the original and following with embossed filter application for better observation. They are already here
Telescope Mount Assembly at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, currently under construction. Credit:Rubin Obs/NSF/AURA(CC BY 4.0)
Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist who doesn’t hesitate to swim in the shark-infested waters of controversy, is proposing a major effort to find aliens in our solar system, perhaps even in our airspace. He has raised $1.7 million in private funding to launch something he calls the Galileo Project, an initiative to bring the rigor of experimental science to ufology.
Loeb’s plan is to use a telescope now under construction, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, to study interstellar objects that come into our solar system. In addition, the project envisions building a network of small telescopes, in groups of two, that can photograph and determine the distance to anything they see in our atmosphere.
Is this project something to be lauded, or laughed at? Although academe may dismiss the Galileo Project as nothing more than pandering to a gullible public, such prejudice is unhelpful and myopic.
Even critics acknowledge that Loeb has credentials and talent. Nonetheless, he is regarded by some in the astronomy community as a knight-errant, tilting at windmills. That’s largely because of his unorthodox views about the object ‘Oumuamua. Roughly the size of a strip mall, ‘Oumuamua was first seen as a dot on a telescope image four years ago. Its orbit tells us that it comes not from the outer reaches of our own solar system, but from somewhere else in the galaxy. While many astronomers say that ‘Oumuamua is either a comet or an asteroid, eroded and encrusted thanks to its lengthy journey through space, Loeb has suggested that it might be a chunk of alien hardware—perhaps a solar sail.
Clearly, that’s a radical hypothesis. It’s also a rebuff to Occam’s razor. The latter would caution against invoking extraterrestrial engineering when more conventional explanations suffice for understanding ‘Oumuamua.
But Loeb stands by his suggestion, and he’s recently weighed in on another puzzle, one produced by the recently released report to Congress about UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena). This study was the result of a bill passed last December instructing government intelligence agencies to put on the table all they know about UAP (also known as UFOs). In particular, the report was to address the experiences of some Navy pilots who’ve seen and photographed mysterious objects in the sky. That report, delivered in late June, said nothing about alien spacecraft (at least not in the publicly released version), but did admit that of 144 intriguing incidents, the intelligence agencies could explain only one.
So, the Galileo Project is stepping in to say “Enough already.” Let’s try and nail down such enticing phenomena with legitimate science.
The public has been whipsawed by these stories. For seven decades, the UFO believers have been belittled by serious scientists for making extraordinary claims without offering any extraordinary evidence. Now a credentialed researcher seems ready to step in to help.
That will cause some folks to roll their eyes and conclude that Loeb has gone over to the dark side. But that’s too easy. The subject is obviously important, and it should be addressed without preconceived notions or opinions based on the poor UFO evidence of the past.
But while it may be tough for Loeb to find support from his peers, those are the very people who should be grateful for his effort. The SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) community, has so far failed to find either a radio or light signal from other star systems. Yes, this type of SETI experiment is getting faster all the time, and its practitioners (including myself) are hopeful that when a substantially larger number of targets has been scrutinized, an unequivocal alien signal will be found.
But an alternative SETI strategy is to search for artifacts that highly advanced societies may have constructed. That’s certainly a legitimate approach to uncovering aliens, and one that doesn’t rely on a signal reaching us just as we’re looking for it. It also takes note of the fact that the universe is three times the age of the Earth. Consequently, there should be intelligence in the galaxy at a level that is millions or billions of years beyond our own. Maybe that intelligence really does have an interest in sending hardware to other star systems.
So, it’s at least possible that we are being visited, and the Galileo Project says it will perform observations to check that out.
Still, the project is a long shot, motivated by phenomena that only a few scientists think are worthy of study. The feeling among most astronomers is that ‘Oumuamua is simply a well-traveled rock. The three tantalizing videos released by the Navy can be understood by invoking aircraft and balloons. And as for that network of telescopes put in place to record extraterrestrial hardware cruising our cluttered skies … well, the 700 orbiting satellites that already surveil our planet haven’t seen anything that humans didn’t put there.
In other words, none of the phenomena that have spurred the Galileo Project is likely to be the handiwork of aliens.
But is that good enough reason to dismiss Loeb’s exercise? In his defense, one must admit that the road less traveled occasionally leads to something interesting.
Loeb has secured private funding and has the intellectual chops to ensure the project’s scientific rigor. Anyone with lesser credentials would have difficulty getting it off the ground.
Free from the banal consideration of tenure, and with a willingness to ignore side-eye from peers, Avi Loeb is able to bet on a dark horse. As a SETI scientist, I’m grateful that he has the freedom, and the guts, to sidestep the barrier of conventional wisdom and boldly go where few would dare to go.
This is an opinion and analysis article; the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
Telescope Mount Assembly at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, currently under construction. Credit:Rubin Obs/NSF/AURA(CC BY 4.0)
Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist who doesn’t hesitate to swim in the shark-infested waters of controversy, is proposing a major effort to find aliens in our solar system, perhaps even in our airspace. He has raised $1.7 million in private funding to launch something he calls the Galileo Project, an initiative to bring the rigor of experimental science to ufology.
Loeb’s plan is to use a telescope now under construction, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, to study interstellar objects that come into our solar system. In addition, the project envisions building a network of small telescopes, in groups of two, that can photograph and determine the distance to anything they see in our atmosphere.
Is this project something to be lauded, or laughed at? Although academe may dismiss the Galileo Project as nothing more than pandering to a gullible public, such prejudice is unhelpful and myopic.
Even critics acknowledge that Loeb has credentials and talent. Nonetheless, he is regarded by some in the astronomy community as a knight-errant, tilting at windmills. That’s largely because of his unorthodox views about the object ‘Oumuamua. Roughly the size of a strip mall, ‘Oumuamua was first seen as a dot on a telescope image four years ago. Its orbit tells us that it comes not from the outer reaches of our own solar system, but from somewhere else in the galaxy. While many astronomers say that ‘Oumuamua is either a comet or an asteroid, eroded and encrusted thanks to its lengthy journey through space, Loeb has suggested that it might be a chunk of alien hardware—perhaps a solar sail.
Clearly, that’s a radical hypothesis. It’s also a rebuff to Occam’s razor. The latter would caution against invoking extraterrestrial engineering when more conventional explanations suffice for understanding ‘Oumuamua.
But Loeb stands by his suggestion, and he’s recently weighed in on another puzzle, one produced by the recently released report to Congress about UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena). This study was the result of a bill passed last December instructing government intelligence agencies to put on the table all they know about UAP (also known as UFOs). In particular, the report was to address the experiences of some Navy pilots who’ve seen and photographed mysterious objects in the sky. That report, delivered in late June, said nothing about alien spacecraft (at least not in the publicly released version), but did admit that of 144 intriguing incidents, the intelligence agencies could explain only one.
So, the Galileo Project is stepping in to say “Enough already.” Let’s try and nail down such enticing phenomena with legitimate science.
The public has been whipsawed by these stories. For seven decades, the UFO believers have been belittled by serious scientists for making extraordinary claims without offering any extraordinary evidence. Now a credentialed researcher seems ready to step in to help.
That will cause some folks to roll their eyes and conclude that Loeb has gone over to the dark side. But that’s too easy. The subject is obviously important, and it should be addressed without preconceived notions or opinions based on the poor UFO evidence of the past.
But while it may be tough for Loeb to find support from his peers, those are the very people who should be grateful for his effort. The SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) community, has so far failed to find either a radio or light signal from other star systems. Yes, this type of SETI experiment is getting faster all the time, and its practitioners (including myself) are hopeful that when a substantially larger number of targets has been scrutinized, an unequivocal alien signal will be found.
But an alternative SETI strategy is to search for artifacts that highly advanced societies may have constructed. That’s certainly a legitimate approach to uncovering aliens, and one that doesn’t rely on a signal reaching us just as we’re looking for it. It also takes note of the fact that the universe is three times the age of the Earth. Consequently, there should be intelligence in the galaxy at a level that is millions or billions of years beyond our own. Maybe that intelligence really does have an interest in sending hardware to other star systems.
So, it’s at least possible that we are being visited, and the Galileo Project says it will perform observations to check that out.
Still, the project is a long shot, motivated by phenomena that only a few scientists think are worthy of study. The feeling among most astronomers is that ‘Oumuamua is simply a well-traveled rock. The three tantalizing videos released by the Navy can be understood by invoking aircraft and balloons. And as for that network of telescopes put in place to record extraterrestrial hardware cruising our cluttered skies … well, the 700 orbiting satellites that already surveil our planet haven’t seen anything that humans didn’t put there.
In other words, none of the phenomena that have spurred the Galileo Project is likely to be the handiwork of aliens.
But is that good enough reason to dismiss Loeb’s exercise? In his defense, one must admit that the road less traveled occasionally leads to something interesting.
Loeb has secured private funding and has the intellectual chops to ensure the project’s scientific rigor. Anyone with lesser credentials would have difficulty getting it off the ground.
Free from the banal consideration of tenure, and with a willingness to ignore side-eye from peers, Avi Loeb is able to bet on a dark horse. As a SETI scientist, I’m grateful that he has the freedom, and the guts, to sidestep the barrier of conventional wisdom and boldly go where few would dare to go.
This is an opinion and analysis article; the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
Alien invaders will ‘crack this planet open like a nut’ warns UFO expert
Alien invaders will ‘crack this planet open like a nut’ warns UFO expert
Nick Pope is a UFO expert who formerly worked at the Ministry of Defence (Picture: File images)
If alien visitors ever arrived to take over planet Earth, humans wouldn’t stand a chance.
In fact, they’d ‘crack this planet open like a nut’, according to one famed UFO expert.
Nick Pope, who investigated UFOs for the Ministry of Defence, says humans are toast if E.Ts invade because their weapon technology will probably be billions of years ahead of ours.
He says sci-fi flicks where humans vanquish hordes of invading little green men are unrealistic, as their weapons would be so advanced they’d seem like ‘magic’ to us.
It concluded that 143 unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) sightings by US military pilots since 2004 remained unexplained, fuelling further fears of alien invasion.
The report added: ‘UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to US national security.’
But Mr Pope slammed the ‘idea we would suddenly pull something out of the bag and defeat an alien invasion’.
He added: ‘Just to put this in context, the universe is nearly 14 billion years old, and there might be civilisations out there with a billion year head start on us.’
Alien invaders would have sufficiently advanced weaponry to defeat humankind without much trouble (Credits: Getty Images)
‘Now if you think about the difference in technology, think how far we’ve come in the last two three hundred years, basically from horse and cart and ships sailing across the ocean using the wind, we have come from that to stealth fighters, space probes and smartphones in just that short period of time.
‘Now imagine that hypothetical civilisation or rather civilisations, look, the chances of there being just one other civilisation in the universe are as vanishingly small as the chances of being alone, it’s going to be very crowded out there.
‘The chances that we will encounter a civilization and it will be 20/30 years ahead of us in scientific understanding and technological advancement, that’s not going to be the situation.
‘They will be, like I say, millions, maybe a couple of billion years ahead of us and their technology will be indistinguishable from magic.
‘Again, people say we have a space program so we’re doing it too, well, yes and no,
‘Our fastest space probes that we have ever built, if we had pointed them at the nearest star aside from our own sun, they would take 75,000 years to get there.
‘So if we are being visited, a civilisation that has figured out viable interstellar travel is going to be able to crack this planet open like a nut, if they wanted to.’
Baroness Goldie told the House of Lords last month that while the MoD doesn’t hold information on UAPs, it ‘constantly monitors UK airspace to identify and respond to any credible threat to its integrity, and is confident in the existing measures in place to protect it’
She added: ‘The MoD deals with actual threats substantiated by evidence. The government continues to take any potential threat to the UK seriously.’
Infrared cockpit-camera footage taken by the U.S. Navy squadron showing Unidentified Aerial Phenomena mystery flying objects (Picture: U.S. Department of Defense)
Lady Goldie also told the Lords: ‘The MoD has no plans to conduct its own report into UAP because in over 50 years no such reporting had indicated the existence of any military threat to the United Kingdom.’
One Tory peer, Viscount Ridley, said: ‘Unidentified does not mean suspicious. Does the minister recognise the US report referred to says there is no clear indication that there is any non-terrestrial explanation for the 144 sightings?’
‘The idea that in an era of mobile phone cameras, drones and frequent travel there could possibly be alien spaceships whizzing about undetected in our atmosphere on a regular basis is not I think very plausible.
‘It’s much more likely that these blurred images have boring explanations, alas.’
Lady Goldie said in response: ‘The UK air defence community detect and monitor all flying air systems 24 hours a day to provide an identified air picture as part of the UK’s national security posture and our commitment to the integrity of Nato airspace.’
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Alien invaders will ‘crack this planet open like a nut’ warns UFO expert
Alien invaders will ‘crack this planet open like a nut’ warns UFO expert
Nick Pope is a UFO expert who formerly worked at the Ministry of Defence (Picture: File images)
If alien visitors ever arrived to take over planet Earth, humans wouldn’t stand a chance.
In fact, they’d ‘crack this planet open like a nut’, according to one famed UFO expert.
Nick Pope, who investigated UFOs for the Ministry of Defence, says humans are toast if E.Ts invade because their weapon technology will probably be billions of years ahead of ours.
He says sci-fi flicks where humans vanquish hordes of invading little green men are unrealistic, as their weapons would be so advanced they’d seem like ‘magic’ to us.
It concluded that 143 unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) sightings by US military pilots since 2004 remained unexplained, fuelling further fears of alien invasion.
The report added: ‘UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to US national security.’
But Mr Pope slammed the ‘idea we would suddenly pull something out of the bag and defeat an alien invasion’.
He added: ‘Just to put this in context, the universe is nearly 14 billion years old, and there might be civilisations out there with a billion year head start on us.’
Alien invaders would have sufficiently advanced weaponry to defeat humankind without much trouble (Credits: Getty Images)
‘Now if you think about the difference in technology, think how far we’ve come in the last two three hundred years, basically from horse and cart and ships sailing across the ocean using the wind, we have come from that to stealth fighters, space probes and smartphones in just that short period of time.
‘Now imagine that hypothetical civilisation or rather civilisations, look, the chances of there being just one other civilisation in the universe are as vanishingly small as the chances of being alone, it’s going to be very crowded out there.
‘The chances that we will encounter a civilization and it will be 20/30 years ahead of us in scientific understanding and technological advancement, that’s not going to be the situation.
‘They will be, like I say, millions, maybe a couple of billion years ahead of us and their technology will be indistinguishable from magic.
‘Again, people say we have a space program so we’re doing it too, well, yes and no,
‘Our fastest space probes that we have ever built, if we had pointed them at the nearest star aside from our own sun, they would take 75,000 years to get there.
‘So if we are being visited, a civilisation that has figured out viable interstellar travel is going to be able to crack this planet open like a nut, if they wanted to.’
Baroness Goldie told the House of Lords last month that while the MoD doesn’t hold information on UAPs, it ‘constantly monitors UK airspace to identify and respond to any credible threat to its integrity, and is confident in the existing measures in place to protect it’
She added: ‘The MoD deals with actual threats substantiated by evidence. The government continues to take any potential threat to the UK seriously.’
Infrared cockpit-camera footage taken by the U.S. Navy squadron showing Unidentified Aerial Phenomena mystery flying objects (Picture: U.S. Department of Defense)
Lady Goldie also told the Lords: ‘The MoD has no plans to conduct its own report into UAP because in over 50 years no such reporting had indicated the existence of any military threat to the United Kingdom.’
One Tory peer, Viscount Ridley, said: ‘Unidentified does not mean suspicious. Does the minister recognise the US report referred to says there is no clear indication that there is any non-terrestrial explanation for the 144 sightings?’
‘The idea that in an era of mobile phone cameras, drones and frequent travel there could possibly be alien spaceships whizzing about undetected in our atmosphere on a regular basis is not I think very plausible.
‘It’s much more likely that these blurred images have boring explanations, alas.’
Lady Goldie said in response: ‘The UK air defence community detect and monitor all flying air systems 24 hours a day to provide an identified air picture as part of the UK’s national security posture and our commitment to the integrity of Nato airspace.’
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Little appetite in Japan to search for E.T. following U.S. UFO report
Little appetite in Japan to search for E.T. following U.S. UFO report
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
A video image of an unidentified flying object taken by American filmmaker Jeremy Corbell
(Captured from Twitter)
Though the U.S. government has released video and a report concerning unidentified flying objects, the Air Self-Defense Force and Japanese scholars are only slowly moving to catch up with research efforts in the West on the phenomena.
The official position of the Defense Ministry is that no eyewitness sighting of UFOs has yet been confirmed, but some of those connected with the ASDF admit seeing objects they could not identify.
A few years ago, a pilot of a surveillance plane was puzzled when the plane's infrared detection device found something making irregular movements.
“What is that?” a member of the radar crew asked.
The object was about 10 kilometers in front of the plane and was not only not visible to the naked eye, but also didn't show up on radar.
Less than a minute later, the object “disappeared” from the infrared detection device so the crew verbally reported they had lost sight of it.
No official report of the sighting was made by the plane crew.
In response to questions from The Asahi Shimbun, the pilot said, “I felt no one would believe us and so it was difficult to say we saw something. But there are a number of colleagues who claim to have seen similar objects.”
Other SDF members also said they had heard about similar experiences from their colleagues.
Gen. Shunji Izutsu, the ASDF chief of staff, revealed at a July news conference that 30 years ago a senior ASDF member told him about sighting a large object that remained stationary in the air.
“The fact that we are here does not mean we can deny intelligent life similar to us exists somewhere different and very far away,” Izutsu added.
After the U.S. Department of Defense released the videos last year, the SDF also compiled measures for dealing with similar encounters.
The objects in such encounters were defined as “any flying unidentified object that could have an effect on Japan’s defense and security.” The compiled measures stated that efforts should be made to photograph the object so that further analysis could be conducted.
But the measures, despite being quite broad, contain no specific steps to be taken should a UFO be spotted.
Ordinarily, ASDF jets are scrambled whenever a suspect plane is spotted near territorial airspace. The jets call on the plane to not enter Japanese airspace and if no response is received, one option is to fire warning shots.
But as there is no telling what a UFO might do in return, the most realistic response would be to leave the scene if an ASDF jet came under attack, an official in charge said.
INTERNATIONAL PLAN JUST FOR RADIO SIGNALS
The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) in 1989 compiled a set of principles in the event that signals from extraterrestrial intelligence were detected.
The three major steps are to first verify and confirm with other researchers before actually announcing the detection; inform the United Nations secretary-general and other international organizations about the confirmation of detection of such signals; and release the findings to the world through the mass media.
But the principles were meant to deal with radio signals rather than actual encounters with UFOs.
Since the 1960s, research under the acronym of SETI, or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has been taking place around the world using radio telescopes.
SETI researchers in Japan met in 2009 to discuss how to proceed with their research, according to Shinya Narusawa, a senior researcher at the University of Hyogo Nishi-Harima Astronomical Laboratory.
One agreement reached should a signal be detected in Japan was to report the matter to the Cabinet Office, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the Science Council of Japan.
While researchers at a number of prominent Western universities are engaged in SETI research, there is no similar enthusiasm in Japan, given that many scholars do not want to spend their entire careers trying to detect extraterrestrial intelligence when the possibility of finding it is astronomically small.
Narusawa, however, said, “SETI is an opportunity to think about the future of humans living on Earth and is a journey in search of oneself.”
(This article was written by Yu Miyaji, Yoshitaka Ito and Kaigo Narisawa.)
Alien, angel or shapeshifter? New viral footage of some strange aerial phenomenon is the choose-your-own-adventure story of the conspiracy theory hive right now.
In a video that reportedly first appeared in June on Facebook, a UFO — for lack of a better term — was spotted by an air traveler against a clear blue sky backdrop, with characteristics that looked more like something seen in a biology book, according to some who saw the clip.
YouTuber Neal “Grimreefar” Evans, whose channel Disclose Screen regularly publishes sightings of UFOs and other “bizarre” phenomena, soon picked up on the new footage, which has even skeptics scratching their heads.
“This one has me stumped. No clue,” one said.
Is this shapeshifting phantasm just an optical illusion?
“People are going to call this a UFO,” Evans narrates in a voiceover, heard by over 42,000 on YouTube so far. “Well, technically, it is, but I’m leaning more towards this being a biological entity or a plasma-based life form living in our upper atmosphere.”
However, one viewer’s plasmodial mirage is another’s heavenly glow, while others have suggested the phantasm could be a “portal” to other worlds.
“It is real close to the huge Angel type sightings by some of our Astronauts,” said one viewer, referring to the story of Russian cosmonauts aboard the Salyut 7 in 1984 who saw what the men later described as angelic beings.
Those disseminating the footage claim the ghost-like apparition was captured with a high-resolution Nikon P900 camera, from the window of a plane flying between 10,000 and 30,000 feet in the air.
“Nice hoax,” said one viewer, who blamed the reflection on a double-paned airplane window for the optic trickery, along with others who proposed that moisture at high altitudes could also fool the eyes. “Ice crystals in the double-glazed windows….. They jump and move around and shift shape in an instant,” another hypothesized.
Perhaps the most convincing theory is even simpler than that: “It’s a high altitude balloon, used by organizations like NASA, NOAA and the military.”
Indeed, giant balloons are often used by scientific and government agencies for a variety of research purposes, and they don’t always look like the floating rubber orbs we see at birthday parties. As with those sometimes used in weather research, they can instead resemble a formless plastic bag caught in the wind.
Air officials have yet to weigh in on the mysterious shapeshifting phenomenon. However, the pursuit of truth remains a priority for astronomy researchers as controversial Harvard professor Avi Loeb has recently announced the launch of the Galileo Project, which aims to search for extraterrestrial life by developing new algorithms to parse data from astronomical surveys and a global network of telescopes.
Loeb has decried those who stigmatize his study as hurdles to “the scientific method of unbiased, empirical inquiry.” He told Live Science in a statement this week, “Science should not reject potential extraterrestrial explanations because of social stigma or cultural preferences … We now must ‘dare to look through new telescopes,’ both literally and figuratively.”
This Harvard Astronomer says Aliens Are Real and he thinks you should believe that too!
This Harvard Astronomer says Aliens Are Real and he thinks you should believe that too!
When an object called Oumuamua was detected flying through our solar system in 2017, scientists were baffled by its strange behavior.
Many said it was just a bizarre space rock, but Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb believes it was most likely a relic of an alien civilization. And he thinks you should believe that too.
Now, astrophysicist Avi Loeb has started up The Galileo Project for the Systematic Scientific Search for Evidence of Extraterrestrial Technological Artifact.
According to the official website of the Galileo Project: The Galileo Project is dedicated to the proposition that humans can no longer ignore the possible existence of Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations (ETCs), and that science should not dogmatically reject potential extraterrestrial explanations because of social stigma or cultural preferences, factors which are not conducive to the scientific method of unbiased, empirical inquiry.
The goal of the Galileo Project is to bring the search for extraterrestrial technological signatures of Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations (ETCs) from accidental or anecdotal observations and legends to the mainstream of transparent, validated and systematic scientific research.
The US government has released a highly anticipated UFO report. The Pentagon studied more than 140 incidents reported by navy pilots of UAP seen over the last two decades for the report. Many were seen from the summer of 2014 into the spring of 2015. The report said that some incidents could be the result of technical errors in sensors or observers, but it noted that most of the UAP reported: “probably do represent physical objects” since they were registered across multiple sensors. UFO researcher Prof Tim Murithi spoke to SABC News about the report explaining how significant this first-of-its-kind report is.
The US government has released a highly anticipated UFO report. The Pentagon studied more than 140 incidents reported by navy pilots of UAP seen over the last two decades for the report. Many were seen from the summer of 2014 into the spring of 2015. The report said that some incidents could be the result of technical errors in sensors or observers, but it noted that most of the UAP reported: “probably do represent physical objects” since they were registered across multiple sensors. UFO researcher Prof Tim Murithi spoke to SABC News about the report explaining how significant this first-of-its-kind report is.
Borgs seem to be associated with single-celled microorganisms known as archaea, shown in this scanning-electron microscopy image.
Credit: Eye of Science/SPL
The Borg have landed — or, at least, researchers have discovered their counterparts here on Earth. Scientists analysing samples from muddy sites in the western United States have found novel DNA structures that seem to scavenge and ‘assimilate’ genes from microorganisms in their environment, much like the fictional Star Trek ‘Borg’ aliens who assimilate the knowledge and technology of other species.
Borgs seem to be associated with single-celled microorganisms known as archaea, shown in this scanning-electron microscopy image of Sulfolobus sp. archaea.
These extra-long DNA strands, which the scientists named in honour of the aliens, join a diverse collection of genetic structures — circular plasmids, for example — known as extrachromosomal elements (ECEs). Most microbes have one or two chromosomes that encode their primary genetic blueprint. But they can host, and often share between them, many distinct ECEs. These carry non-essential but useful genes, such as those for antibiotic resistance.
Borgs are a previously unknown, unique and “absolutely fascinating” type of ECE, says Jill Banfield, a geomicrobiologist at the University of California, Berkeley. She and her colleagues describe their discovery of the structures in a preprint posted to the server bioRxiv1. The work is yet to be peer-reviewed.
Unlike anything seen before
Borgs are DNA structures “not like any that’s been seen before”, says Brett Baker, a microbiologist at the University of Texas at Austin. Other scientists agree that the find is exciting, but have questioned whether Borgs really are unique, noting similarities between them and other large ECEs.
In recent years “people have become used to surprises in the field of ECEs”, says Huang Li, a microbiologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. “However, the discovery of Borgs, which undoubtedly enriches the concept of ECEs, has fascinated many in the field.”
Their vast size, ranging between more than 600,000 and about 1 million DNA base pairs in length, is one feature that distinguishes Borgs from many other ECEs. In fact, Borgs are so huge that they are up to one-third of the length of the main chromosome in their host microbes, Banfield says.
Banfield studies how microbes influence the carbon cycle — including the production and degradation of methane, a potent greenhouse gas — and, in October 2019, she and her colleagues went hunting for ECEs containing genes involved in the carbon cycle in Californian wetlands. There, they found the first Borgs and later identified 19 different types from this and similar sites in Colorado and California.
Borgs seem to be associated with archaea, which are single-celled microorganisms distinct from bacteria. Specifically, those Banfield and her team have discovered are linked to the Methanoperedens variety, which digest and destroy methane. And Borg genes seem to be involved in this process, says Banfield.
Researchers found Borgs at this site on the East River, Colorado.
Credit: Jordan Hoff
Scientists can’t yet culture Methanoperedens in the laboratory — an ongoing challenge for many microbes — so the team’s conclusions that Borgs might be used by the archaea for methane processing are based on sequence data alone.
“They’ve made an interesting observation,” says systems biologist Nitin Baliga, at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington. But he cautions that when researchers sift through fragments of many genomes and piece them together, as Banfield’s team has done, it’s possible to make errors. Finding Borgs in cultured Methanoperedens will be necessary for the finding to be considered definitive, he adds.
Costs and benefits
Assuming Borgs are real, maintaining such a massive ECE would be costly for Methanoperedens, Banfield and colleagues say, so the DNA structures must provide some benefit. To learn what that might be, the researchers analysed the sequences of hundreds of Borg genes and compared them with known genes.
Borgs seem to house many genes needed for entire metabolic processes, including digesting methane, says Banfield. She describes these collections as “a toolbox” that might super-charge the abilities of Methanoperedens.
So what makes a Borg a Borg? In addition to their remarkable size, Borgs share several structural features: they’re linear, not circular as many ECEs are; they have mirrored repetitive sequences at each end of the strand; and they have many other repetitive sequences both within and between the presumptive genes.
Individually, these features of Borgs can overlap with those seen in other large ECEs, such as elements in certain salt-loving archaea, so Baliga says the novelty of Borgs is still debatable at this stage. Borgs also resemble giant linear plasmids found in soil-dwelling Actinobacteria, says Julián Rafael Dib, a microbiologist at the Pilot Plant for Microbiological Industrial Processes in Tucumán, Argentina.
Banfield counters that although the individual features of Borgs have been seen before, “the size, combination and metabolic gene load” is what makes them different. She speculates that they were once entire microbes, and were assimilated by Methanoperedens in much the same way that eukaryotic cells gained energy-generating mitochondria by assimilating free-living bacteria.
Now that scientists know what to look for, they might find more Borgs by sifting through old data, says Baker, who used to work in Banfield's lab. He thinks he might already have discovered some candidates in his own genetic database since the preprint was posted.
Resistance is futile
When analysing the Borg genome, Banfield and colleagues also saw features suggesting that Borgs have assimilated genes from diverse sources, including the main Methanoperedens chromosome, Banfield says. This potential to ‘assimilate’ genes led her son to propose the name ‘Borg’ over Thanksgiving dinner in 2020.
Banfield’s team is now investigating the function of Borgs and the role of their DNA repeats. Repeats are important to microbes: differently-structured repeats called CRISPR are snippets of genetic code from viruses that microbes incorporate into their own DNA to ‘remember’ the pathogens so they can defend against them in the future.
CRISPR and its associated proteins have been a boon for biotechnology because they have been adapted into a powerful gene-editing technique — hinting that Borg genomes might also yield useful tools. “It could be as important and interesting as CRISPR, but I think it’s going to be a new thing,” says Banfield, who is collaborating on future investigations with her preprint co-author, Jennifer Doudna, a pioneer of CRISPR-based gene editing at the University of California.
One potential application that the researchers see for Borgs could be as an aid in the fight against climate change. Fostering the growth of microbes containing them could, perhaps, cut down the methane emissions generated by soil-dwelling archaea, which add up to about 1 gigatonne globally each year. It would be risky to do this in natural wetlands, Banfield says, but it might be appropriate at agricultural sites. So, as a first step, her group is now hunting Borgs in Californian rice paddies.
A mysterious crop circle has appeared on a field in Dorset.
These striking drone images captured from the skies show the geometric pattern on a field at Okeford Hill, near Blandford.
Incredible aerial shots clearly show the geometric pattern
Picture: Droning On (Echo Camera Club)
The images were taken after a heavy mist yesterday evening by a member of the Echo Camera Club, 'Droning On,' who said: "Whatever your views of such formations, I have to say this was an impeccably chosen location, made all the more stunning by the weather.
"The passing thunder storm and rising mist made for some great shots."
The pictures were made all the more dramatic by the weather Picture: Droning On
(Echo Camera Club)
Crop circles, or crop formations, are patterns produced by flattening crops.
Experts agree they are man-made although some people claim there are mysterious forces behind the patterns.
In May 2015 the Echo reported that an impressive crop circle, in a Celtic design, had appeared in a field at Thornicombe, near Blandford.
Farmers have reported finding strange circles in their fields for centuries. The earliest mention of a crop circle dates back to the 1500s.
Mentions of crop circles were rare until the 20th century, when circles began appearing in the 1960s and '70s in England and the United States.
The crop circle close up Picture: Droning On
(Echo Camera Club)
But the phenomenon didn't gain attention until 1980, when a farmer in Wiltshire county, England, discovered three circles, about 60 feet (18 meters) across each, in his oat crops.
UFO researchers and media descended on the farm, and the world first began to learn about crop circles.
The coronavirus sports a luxurious sugar coat. “It’s striking,” thought Rommie Amaro, staring at her computer simulation of one of the trademark spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2, which stick out from the virus’s surface. It was swathed in sugar molecules, known as glycans.
“When you see it with all the glycans, it’s almost unrecognizable,” says Amaro, a computational biophysical chemist at the University of California, San Diego.
Many viruses have glycans covering their outer proteins, camouflaging them from the human immune system like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. But last year, Amaro’s laboratory group and collaborators created the most detailed visualization yet of this coat, based on structural and genetic data and rendered atom-by-atom by a supercomputer. On 22 March 2020, she posted the simulation to Twitter. Within an hour, one researcher asked in a comment: what was the naked, uncoated loop sticking out of the top of the protein?
Amaro had no idea. But ten minutes later, structural biologist Jason McLellan at the University of Texas at Austin chimed in: the uncoated loop was a receptor binding domain (RBD), one of three sections of the spike that bind to receptors on human cells (see ‘A hidden spike’).
Source: Structural image from Lorenzo Casalino, Univ. California, San Diego (Ref. 1); Graphic: Nik Spencer/Nature
In Amaro’s simulation, when the RBD lifted up above the glycan cloud, two glycans swooped in to lock it into place, like a kickstand on a bicycle. When Amaro mutated the glycans in the computer model, the RBD collapsed. McLellan’s team built a way to try the same experiment in the lab, and by June 2020, the collaborators had reported that mutating the two glycans reduced the ability of the spike protein to bind to a human cell receptor1 — a role that no one has previously recognized in coronaviruses, McLellan says. It’s possible that snipping out those two sugars could reduce the virus’s infectivity, says Amaro, although researchers don’t yet have a way to do this.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists have been developing a detailed understanding of how SARS-CoV-2 infects cells. By picking apart the infection process, they hope to find better ways to interrupt it through improved treatments and vaccines, and learn why the latest strains, such as the Delta variant, are more transmissible.
What has emerged from 19 months of work, backed by decades of coronavirus research, is a blow-by-blow account of how SARS-CoV-2 invades human cells (see ‘Life cycle of the pandemic coronavirus’). Scientists have discovered key adaptations that help the virus to grab on to human cells with surprising strength and then hide itself once inside. Later, as it leaves cells, SARS-CoV-2 executes a crucial processing step to prepare its particles for infecting even more human cells. These are some of the tools that have enabled the virus to spread so quickly and claim millions of lives. “That’s why it’s so difficult to control,” says Wendy Barclay, a virologist at Imperial College London.
It starts with the spikes. Each SARS-CoV-2 virion (virus particle) has an outer surface peppered with 24–40 haphazardly arranged spike proteins that are its key to fusing with human cells2. For other types of virus, such as influenza, external fusion proteins are relatively rigid. SARS-CoV-2 spikes, however, are wildly flexible and hinge at three points, according to work published in August 2020 by biochemist Martin Beck at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt, Germany, and his colleagues3.
That allows the spikes to flop around, sway and rotate, which could make it easier for them to scan the cell surface and for multiple spikes to bind to a human cell. There are no similar experimental data for other coronaviruses, but because spike-protein sequences are highly evolutionarily conserved, it is fair to assume the trait is shared, says Beck.
Cryo-electron tomography images of SARS-CoV-2 virions. (Scale bar: 30 nanometres.)
Credit: B. Turoňová et al./Science
Early in the pandemic, researchers confirmed that the RBDs of SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins attach to a familiar protein called the ACE2 receptor, which adorns the outside of most human throat and lung cells. This receptor is also the docking point for SARS-CoV, the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). But compared with SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2 binds to ACE2 an estimated 2–4 times more strongly4, because several changes in the RBD stabilize its virus-binding hotspots5.
Worrying variants of SARS-CoV-2 tend to have mutations in the S1 subunit of the spike protein, which hosts the RBDs and is responsible for binding to the ACE2 receptor. (A second spike subunit, S2, prompts viral fusion with the host cell’s membrane.)
The Alpha variant, for example, includes ten changes in the spike-protein sequence, which result in RBDs being more likely to stay in the ‘up’ position6. “It is helping the virus along by making it easier to enter into cells,” says Priyamvada Acharya, a structural biologist at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute in Durham, North Carolina, who is studying the spike mutations.
The Delta variant, which is now spreading around the world, hosts multiple mutations in the S1 subunit, including three in the RBD that seem to improve the RBD’s ability to bind to ACE2 and evade the immune system7.
Restricted entry
Once the viral spikes bind to ACE2, other proteins on the host cell’s surface initiate a process that leads to the merging of viral and cell membranes (see ‘Viral entry up close’).
The virus that causes SARS, SARS-CoV, uses either of two host protease enzymes to break in: TMPRSS2 (pronounced ‘tempress two’) or cathepsin L. TMPRSS2 is the faster route in, but SARS-CoV often enters instead through an endosome — a lipid-surrounded bubble — which relies on cathepsin L. When virions enter cells by this route, however, antiviral proteins can trap them.
SARS-CoV-2 differs from SARS-CoV because it efficiently uses TMPRSS2, an enzyme found in high amounts on the outside of respiratory cells. First, TMPRSS2 cuts a site on the spike’s S2 subunit8. That cut exposes a run of hydrophobic amino acids that rapidly buries itself in the closest membrane — that of the host cell. Next, the extended spike folds back onto itself, like a zipper, forcing the viral and cell membranes to fuse.
An animation of the way SARS-CoV-2 fuses with cells.
The virus then ejects its genome directly into the cell. By invading in this spring-loaded manner, SARS-CoV-2 infects faster than SARS-CoV and avoids being trapped in endosomes, according to work published in April by Barclay and her colleagues at Imperial College London9.
The virus’s speedy entry using TMPRSS2 explains why the malaria drug chloroquine didn’t work in clinical trials as a COVID-19 treatment, despite early promising studies in the lab10. Those turned out to have used cells that rely exclusively on cathepsins for endosomal entry. “When the virus transmits and replicates in the human airway, it doesn’t use endosomes, so chloroquine, which is an endosomal disrupting drug, is not effective in real life,” says Barclay.
The discovery also points to protease inhibitors as a promising therapeutic option to prevent a virus from using TMPRSS2, cathepsin L or other proteases to enter host cells. One TMPRSS2 inhibitor, camostat mesylate, which is approved in Japan to treat pancreatitis, blocked viral entry into lung cells8, but the drug did not improve patients’ outcomes in an initial clinical trial11.
“From my perspective, we should have such protease inhibitors as broad antivirals available to fight new disease outbreaks and prevent future pandemics at the very beginning,” says Stefan Pöhlmann, director of the Infection Biology Unit at the German Primate Center in Göttingen, who has led research on ACE2 binding and the TMPRSS2 pathway.
Deadly competition
The next steps of infection are murkier. “There are a lot more black boxes once you are inside the cell,” says chemist Janet Iwasa at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, who is developing an annotated animation of the viral life cycle. “There’s more uncertainty, and competing hypotheses.”
After the virus shoots its RNA genome into the cell, ribosomes in the cytoplasm translate two sections of viral RNA into long strings of amino acids, which are then snipped into 16 proteins, including many involved in RNA synthesis. Later, more RNAs are generated that code for a total of 26 known viral proteins, including structural ones used to make new virus particles, such as the spike, and other accessory proteins. In this way, the virus begins churning out copies of its own messenger RNA. But it needs the cell’s machinery to translate those mRNAs into proteins.
How a rampant coronavirus variant blunts our immune defences
Coronaviruses take over that machinery in many ways. Virologist Noam Stern-Ginossar and her team at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, zoomed in on three mechanisms by which SARS-CoV-2 suppresses the translation of host mRNA in favour of its own. None are exclusive to this virus, but the combination, speed and magnitude of the effects seem unique, says Stern-Ginossar.
First, the virus eliminates the competition: viral protein Nsp1, one of the first proteins translated when the virus arrives, recruits host proteins to systematically chop up all cellular mRNAs that don’t have a viral tag. When Stern-Ginossar’s team put that same tag on the end of a host mRNA, the mRNA was not chopped up12.
Second, infection reduces overall protein translation in the cell by 70%. Nsp1 is again the main culprit, this time physically blocking the entry channel of ribosomes so mRNA can’t get inside, according to work from two research teams13,14. The little translation capacity that remains is dedicated to viral RNAs, says Stern-Ginossar.
Finally, the virus shuts down the cell’s alarm system. This happens in numerous ways, but Stern-Ginossar’s team identified one clear mechanism for SARS-CoV-2: the virus prevents cellular mRNA from getting out of the nucleus, including instructions for proteins meant to alert the immune system to infection. A second team confirmed this finding, and again pointed to Nsp1: the protein seems to jam up exit channels in the nucleus so nothing can escape15.
Because gene transcripts can’t get out of the nucleus, the infected cells don’t release many interferons — these are signalling proteins that alert the immune system to the presence of a virus. SARS-Cov-2 is particularly efficient at shutting down this alarm system: compared with other respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV and respiratory syncytial virus, SARS-CoV-2 infection induces significantly lower levels of interferons16. And this June, researchers reported mutations in the Alpha variant that seem to enable it to subdue interferon production even more efficiently17.
“It’s clear that SARS-CoV-2 is a very fast virus that has a unique ability to prevent our immune system from recognizing and combating infection in the first stages,” says Stern-Ginossar. By the time the immune system does realize there is a virus, there is so much of it that immune-response proteins sometimes flood the bloodstream at a faster rate than normal — which can cause damage. Doctors saw early in the pandemic that some people with COVID-19 who become very ill are harmed by an overactive immune response to SARS-CoV-2, as well as by the virus itself. Some proven treatments work by dampening down this immune response.
Renovation station
Once the virus has taken over host translation, it starts a home makeover, extensively remodelling the interior and exterior of the cell to its needs.
First, some of the newly made viral spike proteins travel to the surface of the cell and poke out of the host-cell membrane. There, they activate a host calcium-ion channel, which expels a fatty coating onto the outside of the cell — the same coating found on cells that naturally fuse together, such as muscle cells. At this point, the infected cell fuses to neighbouring cells expressing ACE2, developing into massive individual respiratory cells filled with up to 20 nuclei.
Fused cell structures (syncytia) seen in cells expressing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (green). Nuclei are in blue and the cell skeleton is in red.
Credit: Mauro Giacca
These fused structures, called syncytia, are induced by viral infections such as HIV and herpes simplex virus, but not by the SARS virus, says molecular biologist Mauro Giacca at King’s College London, who led the team that published the finding in April18. He hypothesizes that forming syncytia allows infected cells to thrive for long periods of time, churning out more and more virions. “This is not a hit-and-run virus,” he says. “It persists.” A second team, led by researcher Qiang Sun at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing, found that some COVID-19-infected cells even form syncytia with lymphocytes — one of the body’s own immune cells19. This is a known mechanism of immune evasion by tumour cells, but not by viruses. It suggests that infected cells avoid immune detection by simply grabbing on to and merging with nearby immune scouts.
On the inside of the cell, even more change is occurring. Like other coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2 transforms the long, thin endoplasmic reticulum (ER), a network of flat membranes involved in protein synthesis and transport, into double-membrane spheres, as if the ER were blowing bubbles. These double-membrane vesicles (DMVs) might provide a safe place for viral RNA to be replicated and translated, shielding it from innate immune sensors in the cell, but that hypothesis is still being investigated.
Proteins involved in making DMVs could be good drug targets, because they seem to be necessary for viral replication. For instance, a host protein, TMEM41B, is needed to mobilize cholesterol and other lipids to expand the ER membranes so that all the virus parts will fit inside20. “When you take TMEM41B out, it has a major impact on infection,” says Vineet Menachery, a coronavirus researcher at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, who was involved in the research. The coronavirus transmembrane protein Nsp3 could also be a target: it creates a crown-like pore in the walls of the DMVs to shuttle out newly made viral RNA21.
Most viruses that have an outer wrapping, known as an envelope, form this feature by assembly directly at the edge of the cell, co-opting some of the cell’s own plasma membrane on their way out. But newly made coronavirus proteins take a different path.
For years, evidence has suggested that coronaviruses are transported out of the cell through the Golgi complex, an organelle that works like a post office, packaging molecules in membranes and sending them off to other parts of the cell. There, the virus forms a lipid envelope from the Golgi complex’s membrane; newly formed virions are then carried inside Golgi vesicles to the cell surface, where they are spat out of the cell, says virologist and cell biologist Carolyn Machamer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who has studied coronaviruses for 30 years.
But in December, cell biologist Nihal Altan-Bonnet at the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and her colleagues reported that they had detected coronaviruses leaving the cell through lysosomes — cellular rubbish bins full of enzymes that break down cell parts22. Blocking the Golgi-based secretory pathway didn’t seem to affect the amount of infectious virus being released, says Altan-Bonnet. Her team’s evidence22 suggests that viral proteins form an envelope by budding into the ER, then take over lysosomes to get out of the cell. The researchers are currently testing inhibitors that block the lysosomal exit process as potential antiviral candidates.
Leaving a cell through either the Golgi or lysosomes is slow and inefficient compared with budding out of a plasma membrane, so scientists don’t know why SARS-CoV-2 does it. Machamer suspects that the lipid composition of a Golgi- or lysosome-derived envelope is somehow more beneficial to the virus than one from the plasma membrane. “If we understood this part a little bit better, there would be great opportunities for novel antiviral therapeutics,” she says.
Last slice
On the way out of the cell, one more event makes this virus into an infectious juggernaut: a quick snip at a site of five amino acids prepares the virus to strike its next target.
Where other coronaviruses have a single arginine amino acid at the junction of the S1 and S2 subunits of the spike, SARS-CoV-2 has a line of five amino acids: proline, arginine, arginine, alanine and arginine. “Because the site was unusual, we focused on it, and it turned out that, yes, the site is essential for invasion of lung cells,” says Pöhlmann. In May 2020, he and his colleagues reported that a host-cell protein called furin recognizes and clips that string of amino acids — and the cut is “essential” for the virus to enter human lung cells efficiently23.
It’s not the first time that researchers have identified a furin cleavage site on a virus; highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses also have it, says Barclay. When a colleague sent Barclay a strain of SARS-CoV-2 in culture that had spontaneously lost the furin cleavage site, her team found that ferrets infected with this strain shed viral particles in lower amounts than did those infected with the pandemic strain, and did not transmit the infection to nearby animals9. At the same time as Barclay’s team reported its results in a September 2020 preprint, a study in the Netherlands also found that coronavirus with an intact furin cleavage site enters human airway cells faster than do those without it24.
Furin is suspected to cut the site at some point during virion assembly, or just before release. The timing might explain why the virus exits through the Golgi or lysosomes, says Tom Gallagher, a virologist at Loyola University Chicago in Illinois. “The virus, once assembled, moves into an organelle where it can be bathed in the presence of the furin protease.”
By snipping the bond between the S1 and S2 subunits, the furin cut loosens up virion spike proteins so that during cell entry they respond to a second cut by TMPRSS2, which exposes the hydrophobic area that rapidly buries itself in a host-cell membrane, says Gallagher. If spikes are not pre-clipped by furin —and they aren’t always — they bypass TMPRSS2, and enter through the slower endosomal pathway, if at all.
The race for antiviral drugs to beat COVID — and the next pandemic
Two coronavirus variants, Alpha and Delta, have altered furin cleavage sites. In the Alpha variant, the initial proline amino acid is changed to a histidine (P681H) ; in the Delta variant, it is changed to an arginine (P681R). Both changes make the sequence less acidic, and the more basic the string of amino acids, the more effectively furin recognizes and cuts it, says Barclay. “We would hypothesize that this is the virus getting even better at transmitting.”
More furin cuts mean more spike proteins primed to enter human cells. In SARS-CoV, less than 10% of spike proteins are primed, says Menachery, whose lab group has been quantifying the primed spike proteins but is yet to publish this work. In SARS-CoV-2, that percentage rises to 50%. In the Alpha variant, it’s more than 50%. In the highly transmissible Delta variant, the group has found, greater than 75% of spikes are primed to infect a human cell.
Known unknowns
The scientific community is still scratching the surface of its understanding of SARS-CoV-2. Key unknowns include the number of ACE2 receptors needed to bind to each spike protein; when exactly the S2 site is cleaved by TMPRSS2; and the number of spikes needed for virus–cell membrane fusion, says McLellan — and that’s just for entry. In April 2020, a team at the University of California, San Francisco, identified at least 332 interactions between SARS-CoV-2 and human proteins25.
It is not easy to keep pace with the quickly mutating virus. Most mutations so far are associated with how effectively the virus spreads, not with how much the virus damages the host, experts agree. This month, a study reported that the Delta variant grew more rapidly and at higher levels inside people’s lungs and throats than did earlier versions of the virus26.
But it is not yet certain how Delta’s mutations have supercharged the variant in this way, says Stern-Ginossar. “This is something many labs are trying to figure out.”
9,350-year-old structure found in the Mediterranean “could rewrite history”
9,350-year-old structure found in the Mediterranean “could rewrite history”
In 2015 a strange 11.88 meter high monolith was discovered off the coast of Sicily, 39 meters deep. This structure is very similar to Stonehenge and could rewrite history.
The Stonehenge was found off the coast of Sicily.
The Stonehenge found in the Mediterranean Sea is at least 9,350 years old . Studies revealed that it weighs about 15 tons and is divided into two parts.
An underwater Stonehenge?
Emanuele Lodolo , an oceanographer at the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics in Italy, along with Zvi Ben-Avraham, from the University of Haifa and Tel Aviv, were responsible for finding the monolith.
“The monolith is made of stones other than those that make up all the neighboring outcrops, and is quite isolated from them.”
The stones that compose it are chalcirudites, from the late Pleistocene age , as determined from radiocarbon measurements.
The structure was found on the Bank of Panteleria Vecchia, an ancient island in the Sicilian Channel. This island, according to archaeologists, was submerged during a flood 9,300 years ago.
This time chronologically squares with the beginning of the Mesolithic of Europe and the Middle East. The discovery of this monolith fully expands the knowledge of the first civilizations of the Mediterranean basin and the knowledge about their technology and development.
The structure required a cutting, extraction, transportation and installation system that undoubtedly demonstrates advanced engineering skills and techniques.
“The belief that our ancestors lacked the knowledge, skill and technology necessary to exploit marine resources or make sea voyages must be progressively abandoned.
The recent findings of submerged archeology have definitively dismantled the idea of technological primitivism that is usually attributed to the hunter-gatherer coastal settlers ”, the archaeologists concluded.
Radar view of the monolith.
Who built the monolith?
While it is true that the monolith of Sicily is very similar to Stonehenge, this could explain more about the civilizations that inhabited the Mediterranean basin.
To date it is not known if the structure was alone and if it was part of a group, like the monument in England , which is much younger.
Currently, little or nothing is known about the inhabitants of Pantalleria Vecchia some 10,000 years ago . However, this construction demonstrates his skill for construction.
Experts believe that this town traded with the fish they caught, with other islands. The stone may have served as a primitive “lighthouse” , even as a place to moor or anchor ships.
Although, its enormity does not convince much that it was used for that purpose. If so, the boats must be huge.
All this information suggests that a prehistoric civilization not only prospered, but was much more advanced than is believed. This could change the history of the region completely. Here is an interesting video of submerged cities.
Osirians: the “advanced civilization” that lived in Egypt before the pharaohs
Osirians: the “advanced civilization” that lived in Egypt before the pharaohs
The Osirians, a civilization that comes from the Mediterranean and predates Dynastic Egypt. Many researchers have discovered vestiges of the advanced of this civilization, showing that they had ships similar to the Vimanas.
Evidence has been found that the Osirians inhabited the Mediterranean.
Years of research have revealed that the Mediterranean was an immense fertile valley . Specifically in times where Atlantis existed. During that time, another possible civilization existed , known as the Osirians.
It is believed that they were extremely advanced , having inappropriate technology for the time. Making use of ships equivalent to the Hindu Vimana .
The Osirians: Ancient Technology
During the existence of the Osirian civilization, the Nile was known as the Stix River , and it traveled a different course.
Instead of emptying into the Mediterranean Sea, it continued to the Osirian Valley and then turned west, to flow into the deepest part of the Mediterranean Valley, where it created a large lake.
It then flowed between Malta and Sicily and south to Sardinia, reaching the Atlantic at Gibraltar. This immense valley, together with the Sahara, was the territory where the Osirians inhabited.
The archeology agree that there are in the Mediterranean Sea, to the least 200 sunken cities . The Egyptian civilization, along with the Minoan and Mycenaean of Crete and Greece are, in theory, remains of the Osirian culture.
This civilization erected earthquake-proof buildings , they possessed electricity and other common technologies in the time of Atlantis.
“They also had flying craft similar to Vimanas and other means of transportation, usually powered by electricity . One of the great proofs of this are the car tracks found in Malta, which cross large cliffs until they are lost under the water ”.
The Osirians are believed to have used these routes to transport stones from quarries to cities that are now submerged .
The Ba’albek platform , in Lebanon, has been one of the main mysteries of archeology, and is believed to be Osirian technology .
This platform is made of the largest carved rocks in the world ; the ashlars of Ba’albek. Some of these pieces are more than 24 meters long and 4 meters long . They are believed to weigh between 1,200 to 1,500 tons .
The Ba’albek platform Osirian technology?
Birth and end of the Osirian civilization
According to mythology, this civilization was created by the god Osiris . According to Egyptian legends, Osiris is the son of Nut, goddess of the sky and Geb, god of the Earth.
Osiris married Isis and from that union, the god Horus was born. Osiris is the brother of Nepthys, goddess of death and of Set, god of chaos and disorder.
It is even believed that the name Osiris comes from the Greek corruption of the word Asar or Uso, which means “the force of the Eye” or “He who sees the throne.” This translation is based on the hieroglyphs used to represent Osiris: a throne and an eye.
As for his disappearance, it is also a mystery. It is believed to have existed about 15,000 years ago and was “one of the most sophisticated civilizations of the time of Atlantis.”
They had magnificent cities and roads, ports, trade routes, and more. It was home to sailors and merchants. In addition, he built megalithic structures with unique earthquake-proof technology.
However, during the destruction of Atlantis, it is believed that there was a colossal change in the Atlantic Ocean. This caused the Stix River to completely change its course, and the Mediterranean basin began to flood.
The churning of the water destroyed most of the Osirian cities, forcing them to move to higher ground.
This theory would explain the mysterious megalithic remains that have been found throughout the Mediterranean. This has caused thousands of sailors, archaeologists and researchers to venture each year in search of the ruins of the Osirian civilization.
With billionaire Jeff Bezos joining billionaire Richard Branson in almost-space, and billionaire Elon Musk raking in more money transporting NASA astronauts to space, winning NASA contracts to put humans on the moon and planning – with or without NASA – to send humans to Mars, it’s no wonder a popular meme making the rounds asks the question, “What if UFOs are just billionaires from other planets?” Unlike many memes, it’s a serious question … and one reason why space travel may be just for billionaires is a main reason why NASA’s budget is so high – the cost of space food. Is a new NASA study researching bacteria that eat rocks actually creating a future menu?
Food — $2000 per person, per day Rate for food and beverages from NASA (free-flight and/or docked). Upmass and trash disposal not included.
That doesn’t sound so bad, does it? What’s upmass?
Upmass/Disposal — $88,000 – $164,000 per person, per day Estimated rate for pre-staging food and crew provisions on ISS, as well as disposing of pre-staged items on NASA vehicles. Cost will vary depending upon quantities of items flown and disposed of on NASA vehicles.
View of Astronaut Peggy Whitson, flight engineer (left) and Cosmonaut Valery Korzun, commander (right), eating a meal in the Service Module (SM)/Zvezda. Tomato and hamburger are floating. Photo was taken during Expedition Five on the International Space Station (ISS).
(NASA)
NASA recently updated its prices for “private astronaut missions” to the ISS and the cost of food and waste disposal alone may be the real hidden reason why Bezos and Branson only spent a few minutes in near-space and didn’t serve snacks to their passengers. NASA isn’t competing with either company for the space tourism business – those prices are for corporations interested in conducting scientific and research missions on the ISS. As it explains:
“The new pricing for private astronaut missions reflects full reimbursement for the value of NASA resources that are above the space station baseline capability.”
“Due to the complexity of private astronaut missions and differing mission concepts, reimbursable values for these missions may vary.”
Of course they will. NASA knows that government contracts never go down in price – only up. To put these prices in layman’s terms, Space Daily looked at the cost of sending an item that most people travelers want to take along with them on a flight.
“The cost of a single 16-ounce bottle of water ranges from $9,100 to $43,180.”
$43,800! Can you go with water from Costco instead of the truffle-infused, gold-flaked artisan stuff from the Alps? Of course, when you’re on an expense account and someone else is paying for it, money is no object. An Italian astronaut who took an espresso machine with him to the ISS set the Italian government back $1.9 million.
Perhaps we should just wait for a Star Trek-style replicator which fictionally turned pure energy into food, complete with plates and utensils. Physicists from Imperial College London’s Blackett Physics Laboratory proved in 2014 that it’s possible to create matter from light, and Cemvita Factory Inc. in Houston is said to be developing a photobioreactor that converts carbon dioxide into nutrients and pharmaceutics. However, most current projects use 3D printers that merely turn matter into different forms of matter. No wonder NASA is still recycling urine into water.
Astronaut Brian Duffy, STS-92 mission commander, samples a beverage during a crew food evaluation session in the food laboratory at the Engineering and Applications Development Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center (JSC).
(NASA)
If all else fails, NASA’s BRAILLE Project is studying life in volcanic caves as an analog for possible life on Mars and found bacteria that lives by consuming rocks. Is it any wonder Elon Musk is now saying Tesla’s new Cybertruck’s may cost a million dollars each?
As Giorgio Tsoukalos might say:
“I’m not saying it’s billionaire aliens … but it’s billionaire aliens.”
Eduard “Billie” Albert Meier was born in the town of Bülach in the Zürcher Unterland of Switzerland in 1937, and from a very young age he would begin to have some very odd experiences. At the age of just 5, when in 1942 he claims to have met a gentleman by the name of “Sfath,” who was supposedly from a race of extraterrestrials he would call the Pleiadians, from the Pleiadian star cluster. Over the years he would make telepathic contact with other Pleiadians, in particular a woman named Asket, and they would purportedly teach him of their ways, culture, and life on their world, as well as instructing him on how to get humanity back on track after having lost our way long ago. This would continue until 1964, when Meier would claim that all contact with the aliens suddenly ceased. However, this seems to have not been the end of his strange adventures, and he would go on to become a very controversial figure in the field of UFOs.
In 1975, Meier claims that he was contacted once again by the Pleiadians, this time a woman named Semjase, who was apparently the granddaughter of Sfath. This contact would inspire Meier to start a program called the Freie Interessengemeinschaft für Grenz- und Geisteswissenschaften und Ufologiestudien (Free Community of Interests for the Border and Spiritual Sciences and Ufological Studies), and over the decades he would claim hundreds of telepathic meetings with these aliens, especially Semjase, and it was with her that he would start to churn out photographs that have been simultaneously iconic and controversial in Ufology to this day.
Eduard Albert Meier
According to Meier, the Pleiadians began allowing him to clearly photograph what he calls their “beamships,” and he would begin to release these photographs at a rapid clip, ultimately taking 1,476 photos and 34 films between the years of 1975 and 1981, all remarkable in their clarity. He even took photos of the aliens themselves, as well as those that were allegedly taken off world or even in the prehistoric past. In addition to this, he would take transcripts of his conversations with the aliens, as well as metal samples, sound recordings and film footage, often supposedly giving technological insights and predictions claimed to be well ahead of their time. Much of this has actively embraced by some in the field, with one article on the prnewswire, which refers to the research of UFO researcher Michael Horn and says:
Some of Billy Meier’s 1,200, were independently authenticated, pre-digital era UFO photos, taken 1975 – 1981, provided to Harvard professor Avi Loeb as the best evidence of extraterrestrial UFOs. During the course of researching thousands of pages of information Meier claims the extraterrestrials provided, Horn and other researchers have found over 250 examples of specific, previously unknown scientific information that Meier published up to more than 60 years before “official discovery.” Ironclad proof that Meier published the information first is established by internationally recognized copyrights. Conveyed in the clear language of science, and subsequently confirmed by NASA discoveries, is information about every planet in the solar system, as well as black holes, the speed of gravity, the impending threat posed by asteroid Apophis, and terrestrial environmental, seismic and volcanic events, etc.
The pictures themselves are iconic and instantly recognizable, even if you don’t consciously realize where they came from. For instance, Agent Mulder’s “I want to believe” UFO poster in his office in the hit show X Files is one of Meier’s, although only in the first three seasons and was changed in the 4th season due to an intellectual property suit brought by Meier, as the creators of the show never obtained permission to use the image. When the photos were first released, they made major waves, becoming the most highly publicized UFO photos of all time. You can see a selection of some of the photos here. No one had ever seen such clear photos of UFOs before, but it was this clarity and the prolific nature of them that immediately drew skeptics. For one, the photos have been pointed out as, well, looking pretty fake and staged, with sometimes even strings visible. There is also the fact that the aliens themselves conveniently look exactly like humans, and none of this was helped by Meier’s wife’s confession in 1997 that he had been making plastic UFO models to photograph, and that the aliens he had taken pictures of were merely photos of Michelle DellaFave and Susan Lund, members of the singing and dancing troupe The Golddiggers, which was later verified. Also fueling the skepticism was Meier’s group being increasingly seen as a creepy UFO cult, and his bold claims that he was the seventh reincarnation after six prophets common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
This all seems pretty damning for the veracity of Meier’s famous collection of photographs, but he has had those willing to stand up for him as well, and who continue to vouch for his authenticity. There have even been claims that the fake looking photos have been manipulated to seem that way in order to be dismissed as fake as part of a government cover-up and disinformation program. The 1988 booklet, The Truth About Billy Meier says of this:
UFO contact person, Billy Meier, is often attacked by uninformed people who do not have the slightest knowledge of Billy’s comprehensive contacts and his mission, and all the details. They have never even met Billy in person. Uninformed critics and untrustworthy people who feel Billy’s contacts and mission are impossible, discredit and accuse him of being a charlatan or worse, and try to ridicule him. However, generally speaking, they are ill-informed on the issues and contexts and, therefore, are in no position to pass any realistic and competent judgement on the mission, the contacts, or Billy’s person. Billy did not strive for these contacts with extraterrestrials. On the contrary, he was sought out by the Pleiadians, because of an ancient mission from thousands of years ago. Furthermore, it has been shown that Billy did not agree to these contacts for financial gain, publicity, or personal fame, which can be evidenced by his withdrawn lifestyle.
Many people still claim that Billy faked the hundreds of UFO photos he has taken to achieve some form of personal fame and/or monetary gain for himself, despite the positive analyses performed by several competent scientists and photo experts. In particular, they seem to be people who, because of some strange opinions concerning the rest of the world, politics, or religions, cannot bear the truth that may differ from their own beliefs. They are willing to suppress the truth with the aid of mean, dishonest methods, and to extinguish it, if possible, even if it means going over dead bodies, tarnishing and destroying the reputation of another human being. Most of these allegations are not even backed up by scientific research, or they contain false, distorted data. In addition, it is a known fact that numerous photos of Billy’s were carefully manipulated in the past to show strings and similar anomalies and were widely distributed in attempts to discredit him. However, the decision as to their authenticity ultimately lies with each and every individual.
One of Meier’s photos
There is also the researcher Horn, who has tirelessly stood up for Meier’s photographs and data, urging people to look deeper into the matter and not disregard this supposed “evidence.” He has said of it:
While Meier’s evidence is certainly extraordinary, the term itself is prejudicial. Wasn’t it once ‘extraordinary’ to claim that the earth moved around the sun? Testing any claims using scientific methodologies will determine the actual facts. The internet allows anyone to examine Meier’s evidence, check copyright dates, etc., and use today’s state-of-the-art software – not available until decades after Meier took his UFO photos – to analyze and authenticate his evidence. If deemed genuine, we are now confronted with the most important – and unexpected – discovery in science and human history, the confirmed existence of, and ongoing contact with, intelligent extraterrestrial life. Should that be the case, we will want to pay particular attention to the warnings they have provided about coming environmental, geopolitical and financial events that may threaten our future survival. And I think this may be the underlying…reason for the Meier contacts.
It’s all pretty sketchy reasoning, and the photos definitely look fake. Whatever one may think, the infamous Billy Meier photos have been largely debunked, although there are still plenty of people who hold them up as the real deal. Regardless of their pedigree, they are among some of the most well-publicized, instantly recognizable UFO photos there are, and have managed to reverberate through the UFO community to this day, for better or worse.
ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011
UFO Sighted Over Orlando, Florida ( July 9, 2021 )
STATEMENT : Fantastic Sighting in Orlando, Florida ; Huge glowing orange light sphere filmed rising from the sea. Orlando , FL on July 9th , 2021
This sphere shines so brightly that it could be mistaken for the sun if it wasn't for the logical reason it was filmed overnight. The powerful glow of orange light reflects off the ocean creating a trail much like the full moon in the clear night sky.
We can observe that the sphere that seems to have left the ocean, slowly ascends towards the layers of clouds and as soon as it crosses , its strong glow forms an imense orange colored disk that slowly disappears in the darkness of the night.
It's just extraordinary when the sphere touches the clouds and starts to cross it, an impressive and powerful orange disk of light is created as if the sky itself was melting and the intense glow spreads out completely illuminating the entire area over the ocean around Orlando. Quickly researchers literally rushed to get information if any spacecraft had been launched that night nearby or even anywhere in the United States...
... and researching government agencies and space programming on that particular night, neither NASA and SPACE X or any other private space companies launched any kind of spacecraft or rocket to space .
In addition , any kind of rocket would leave a huge trail in the night sky , as it happens all over the world . So any activity related to space missions or any other is totally ruled out and the huge orange ball of light emerged from the ocean near the beach and we can clearly see that it is slowly rising towards the clouds until it crosses and its glow disappears behind the clouds. Just as the coast of California is a hotspot of incredible sightings of extraterrestrial crafts and glowing lights underwater , Unidentified Submerged Objects ( USOs ) , the coast of Florida is also another place where hundreds if not thousands of UFO sightings have been properly recorded by both civilians as military .
I think it is not necessary to remember you all that right in front is the Bermuda or Devil's Triangle , one of the greatest mistery of world ufology until present day which has an overwhelming arsenal with the most bizarre UFOs sightings all time .
credit : Uillian Braga
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UFO Sighted Over Russia ( July 25, 2021 )
Impressive UFO making Strange lights was sighted over the skies of Russia on July 25, 2021 : what is this ?
credit : U.S.F
Shapeshifting UFO Sighted Over Newport, Rhode Island ( July 16, 2021 )
Amazing Shapeshifting UFO was sighted over Newport, Rhode Island on July 26, 2021
STATEMENT : Do ufo hide in clouds? This is in Newport
In October 2019, U.S. Navy Commander David Fravor, who was the subject of a New York Times articleabout his 2004 UFO sighting, discussed a spooky new sighting a fellow pilot revealed to him after they were both out of the Navy.
According to Fravor, the eyewitness was a former pilot of the MH-53E Sea Dragon, the Navy version of the Marine Corps’ CH-53E Sea Stallion, based at Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, on the island of Puerto Rico. Twice while recovering spent practice munitions out of the water, the pilot spotted a weird underwater object.
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In the first incident, the pilot saw a "dark mass" underwater as he and his team retrieved a flying practice drone. The pilot described the object as a “big” mass, “kinda circular,” and he was certain it wasn't a submarine. In the pilot’s second sighting, a practice torpedo that the pilot was sent to recover was “sucked down” into the depths of the ocean in the presence of a similar underwater object. The torpedo was never seen again.
Elsewhere in the interview, Fravor reveals that a 79-year-old woman contacted him after his sighting went public. The woman explained that her father, a naval officer, was at one time based at the naval station in San Francisco in the 1950s. When she was a child, her father showed her a telegram that stated unidentified objects had been sighted going in and out of the water at a now forgotten set of latitude and longitude coordinates. The woman’s father told her, “We get these all the time, and it’s always in the same area.”
A BQM-174 high performance target drone similar to that recovered according to retired U.S. Navy Commander David Fravor.
DAN KITWOODGETTY IMAGES
These sightings are similar to Fravor’s own sighting. According to the retired Navy pilot, the only reason he had seen the now-infamous "Tic Tac" UFO was because it was hovering above a mysterious larger object that was sighted underwater. Fravor describes the object as cross shaped and approximately the size of a Boeing 737 jetliner. He has further described the water above it as though it were "boiling" or "frothing," and said the object disappeared after it caught his attention.
United Airlines 737-924 airliner.
ICON SPORTS WIREGETTY IMAGES
In 1970, biologist Ivan Sanderson published the book Invisible Residents. Sanderson, a noted student of unusual phenomena, devoted the book to sightings of what were later called Unidentified Submerged Objects, or USOs. USOs are defined as unknown craft that are sighted in the water, sighted rising up out of the water, or diving into the water. Sanderson catalogued scores of reports of USOs:
On the 19th of April, 1957, crew members aboard the Kitsukawa Maru, a Japanese fishing boat, spotted two metallic silvery objects descending from the sky into the sea (original emphasis). The objects, estimated to be ten meters long, were without wings of any kind. As the hit the water, they created a violent turbulence. The exact location was reported as 31° 15’ N and 143° 30’ E.
Sanderson also reports an incident that reportedly took place off the coast of Puerto Rico in 1963 during an anti-submarine warfare exercise.
The maneuvers were conducted off Puerto Rico in the Atlantic some 500 miles southeast of the continental United States. All reports seem to agree that there were five “small” naval vessels concerned, but in more than one account the aircraft carrier Wasp is stated to have been the command ship…
A sonar operator on one of the small vessels, otherwise listed as a destroyer, reported to his bridge that one of the submarines had broken formation and gone off in what appeared to be pursuit of some unknown object. This operator did not, of course, know if this was a “plant”, since the maneuvers they were engaged in were exercises designed to train personnel in detection of enemy craft...However, this operator’s report was not all within the limits of any such simulation,. Trouble was that said subaqueous object was traveling at “over 150 knots”!
USS Wasp in 1964.
U.S. NAVY VIA NAVSOURCE
According to Sanderson, “no less than [13] craft,” including anti-submarine warfare patrol aircraft, tracked the high-speed, unknown object. Furthermore:
It is said that technicians kept track of this object for four days, and that it maneuvered round about, and to depths of 27,000 feet.
USS Wasp was indeed an anti-submarine warfare carrier in 1963 and served in the Atlantic Fleet until decommissioning in 1972. Unfortunately, Sanderson doesn't provide any sourcing for the incident nor is there any other information about it posted on the internet.
The National UFO Recording Center maintains a database of sightings reported to the NUFORC, both by email and hotline. There are many reports of UFO-type objects seen coming out of or going into the ocean.
Off the coast of Half Moon Bay, California, an eyewitness reported that in 2007 she observed three UFOs while aboard the cruise ship Dawn Princess (renamed in 2017 Pacific Explorer.)
“After about 5 minutes, three softly glowing objects came into view – three uniform, nearly spherical objects, evenly spaced in a line parallel to the ship’s hull and hovering just above the water surface… They appeared to stay in one place while the ship moved past them. They were hovering, but didn’t disturb the water below them. Just as they went out of my sight, the left one (toward the bow) splashed down into the water and disappeared."
The cruise ship Dawn Princess, Western Australia, 2013.
JAMES D. MORGANGETTY IMAGES
One report logged in April 2019 states that an object resembling a “small white boat” flew up out of the water near Imperial Beach, California, “at about [500] feet.” The object promptly “flew south at a very high rate of speed.”
Whatever USOs are—figments of the imagination, mechanical malfunctions, secret government craft, or even the work of extraterrestrials—there's a long history of sightings. Fravor’s anonymous helicopter pilot is just the latest in a long line of mysteries.
On June 25, 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a much-anticipatedreport on UFOs to Congress.
The military has rebranded unidentified flying objects as unidentified aerial phenomena – UAPs – in part to avoid the stigma that has been attached to claims of aliens visiting the Earth since the Roswell incident in 1947. The report presents no convincing evidence that alien spacecraft have been spotted, but some of the data defy easy interpretation.
I'm a professor of astronomy who has written extensively on the search for life in the universe. I also teach a free online class on astrobiology. I do not believe that the new government report or any other sightings of UFOs in the past are proof of aliens visiting Earth. But the report is important because it opens the door for a serious look at UFOs. Specifically, it encourages the U.S. government to collect better data on UFOs, and I think the release of the report increases the chances that scientists will try to interpret that data. Historically, UFOs have felt off limits to mainstream science, but perhaps no more.
Three videos from the U.S. military sparked a recent surge in interest in UFOs.
What's in the UFO report?
The No. 1 thing the report focuses on is the lack of high-quality data. Here are the highlights from the slender nine-page report, covering a total of 144 UAP sightings from U.S. government sources between 2004 and 2021:
“Limited data and inconsistent reporting are key challenges to evaluating UAP."
Some observations “could be the result of sensor errors, spoofing, or observer misperception."
“UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security."
Of the 144 sightings, the task force was “able to identify one reported UAP with high confidence. In that case, we identified the object as a large, deflating balloon. The others remain unexplained."
“Some UAP many be technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or non-governmental entity."
UFOs are taboo among scientists
UFO means unidentified flying object. Nothing more, nothing less. You'd think scientists would enjoy the challenge of solving this puzzle. Instead, UFOs have been taboo for academic scientists to investigate, and so unexplained reports have not received the scrutiny they deserve.
Another reason for the scientific hesitance is that UFOs have been co-opted by popular culture. They are part of a landscape of conspiracy theories that includes accounts of abduction by aliens and crop circles. Scientists worry about their professional reputations, and the association of UFOs with these supernatural stories causes most researchers to avoid the topic.
However, a review in 1998 by a panel led by Peter Sturrock, a professor of applied physics at Stanford University, concluded that some sightings are accompanied by physical evidence that deserves scientific study. Sturrock also surveyed professional astronomers and found that nearly half thought UFOs were worthy of scientific study, with higher interest among younger and more well-informed astronomers.
If astronomers are intrigued by UFOs – and believe some cases deserve study with academic rigor – what's holding them back? A history of mistrust between ufologists and scientists hasn't helped. And while UFO research has employed some of the tools of the scientific method, it has not had the core of skeptical, evidence-based reasoning that demarcates science from pseudoscience.
A search of 90,000 recent and current grants awarded by the National Science Foundation finds none addressing UFOs or related phenomena. I've served on review panels for 35 years, and can imagine the reaction if such a proposal came up for peer review: raised eyebrows and a quick vote not to fund.
Radio telescopes like the Allen Telescope Array seen here scan the sky looking for signs of intelligent life in the universe.
While the scientific community has almost entirely avoided engaging with UFOs, a much more mainstream search for intelligent aliens and their technology has been going on for decades.
The search is motivated by the fact that astronomers have, to date, discovered over 4,400 planets orbiting other stars. Called exoplanets, some are close to the Earth's mass and at just the right distance from their stars to potentially have water on their surfaces – meaning they might be habitable.
This confidence has fueled an active search for extraterrestrial intelligence, known as SETI. It has been unsuccessful so far. As a result, researchers have recast the question “Are we alone?" to “Where are the aliens?" The absence of evidence for intelligent aliens is called the Fermi paradox. First articulated by the physicist Enrico Fermi, it's a paradox because advanced civilizations should be spread throughout the galaxy, yet we see no sign of their existence.
The SETI activity has not been immune from scientists' criticism. It was starved of federal funding for decades and recently has gotten most of its support from private sources. However, in 2020, NASA resumed funding for SETI, and the new NASA administrator wants researchers to pursue the topic of UFOs.
In this context, the intelligence report is welcome. The report draws few concrete conclusions about UFOs and avoids any reference to aliens or extraterrestrial spacecraft. However, it notes the importance of destigmatizing UFOs so that more pilots report what they see. It also sets a goal of moving from anecdotal observations to standardized and scientific data collection. Time will tell if this is enough to draw scientists into the effort, but the transparency to publish the report at all reverses a long history of secrecy surrounding U.S. government reports on UFOs.
I don't see any convincing evidence of alien spacecraft, but as a curious scientist, I hope the subset of UFO sightings that are truly unexplained gets closer study. Scientists are unlikely to weigh in if their skepticism generates attacks from “true believers" or they get ostracized by their colleagues. Meanwhile, the truth is still out there.
This article has been updated to clarify that the report was produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Mysterious orbs and ray of light in the sky over Zhengzhou, China
Mysterious orbs and ray of light in the sky over Zhengzhou, China
Asuspected ray of light and two orbs appear in the clouds over Zhengzhou, China on July 24, 2021.
The video shows two bright orbs and a strange ray of light with blue lights flashing and moving around the two orbs. It is unknown what the phenomenon could have been.
Welcome to UFO Seekers℗ Radio. Tim explains what’s inside of AREA 51 and why you can’t take pictures of it. Disclaimer: The opinion(s) of the host do not represent the view(s) of UFO Seekers®. “Let’s see what’s out there.” UFO & Alien Investigators based in Bakersfield, California founded in 2016. Join us in the field as we sky-watch for UFO activity, talk to witnesses, investigate hot spots, visit locations, search for aliens, and more.
NASA’S CURIOSITY MARS ROVER IS DESIGNED TO TEAR OFF ITS OWN WHEELS
NASA’S CURIOSITY MARS ROVER IS DESIGNED TO TEAR OFF ITS OWN WHEELS
WHO NEEDS 'EM?
NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS
Body Mod
Over the course of its nearly decade-long stay on Mars, NASA’s Curiosity rover team has considered making a couple of unusual modifications to the robot’s structure.
Driving around on Mars for that long has been pretty rough on Curiosity’s wheels. And as the damage worsens over the coming years, the NASA crew might decide to steer Curiosity into a sharp rock in order to rip out its own wheels, IEEE Spectrum reports. That way, there’s less of a chance that the damaged pieces end up breaking Curiosity’s wiring or other components, bringing the whole mission to a halt.
Break a Leg
Thankfully, IEEE Spectrum reports that even the most damaged of Curiosity’s wheels could survive for another decade or more before they need to be removed. That’s based on NASA’s predictions for how much driving the rover will do over the coming years, coupled with a recent effort to stick to gentler terrain as much as possible.
“Since other mitigations that the team has put in place are extending wheel life predicts further and further into the future, it is unlikely that we will need to perform a wheel shed maneuver,” Curiosity team member Evan Graser told IEEE Spectrum. “There’s always a chance of reaching the end of a wheel’s life during the mission, but we’re many years away from even needing to make the decision whether to pursue shedding further.”
Lessons Learned
The big question is whether NASA’s newest Mars rover, Perseverance, will face the same risks. Graser told IEEE Spectrum that NASA was well aware of the damage to Curiosity’s wheels before Perseverance left Earth, so engineers were able to build far more resilient wheels that should last a lot longer.
But maybe, someday, if Perseverance happens to last for years and years as well, we may someday see it scooting along the Martian landscape with some shredded up wheels left behind in its dust.
When you’re in an unexplored wilderness, you’d better be quiet, because you never know whether there might be dangerous predators lurking. Unfortunately, Earth has not been following this cautionary principle so far: we’ve been broadcasting radio waves into space for more than a century. If there are technological civilizations within a hundred light-years that monitor their sky with radio telescopes similar to ours, then they may already know about our existence. We could hear from them in the future. Our saving grace might be that chemical rockets, similar to those used in the Voyager or New Horizons missions, would take a million years to traverse that hundred light years. And so, we might be out for prolonged suspense before encountering our cosmic neighbors.
If extraterrestrials eventually arrive at our doorstep, the question is: how should we respond? Clearly, interstellar affairs are not an imminent policy concern for any nation at this moment, so there is no international protocol issued by the United Nations for what to do. We should keep in mind that within a million years, humans might reside on the moon, Mars or free-floating space platforms, and each community might choose to respond differently. It is premature to contemplate a global policy long before it is required.
How much advance warning will we have? That depends on the size of the vehicle used by the ETs. Even without generating artificial light, any alien spacecraft would reflect sunlight. The Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii can detect reflected sunlight from objects bigger than a few hundred feet, the scale of a football field, that pass within the orbit of the Earth around the sun. The first interstellar visitor of such size was discovered by this telescope on October 19, 2017, and named ‘Oumuamua—“scout” in the Hawaiian language. The object showed many anomalous properties that made it different from any natural comet or asteroid that we had witnessed before in the solar system, allowing for the possibility that it is a product of alien technology, as discussed in my new book, Extraterrestrial.
If it is, the question arises as to whether it is likely to be a probe intended to spy on us. The chances are small, since it took ‘Oumuamua more than 10,000 years to traverse the entire solar system, and our civilization has obviously not been transmitting signals for that long. Even if ‘Oumuamua is an artificial craft, it is ancient and likely out of commission. Most stars formed billions of years before the sun, and the technological relics that their civilizations launched to space are probably too old to be functional. We can retrieve more information about technological relics by taking close-up photographs or by searching on the surface of the moon (or Mars) for unusual objects that have collected there over the past billions of years. The lack of an atmosphere or geological activity would make the moon’s surface, in particular, like a museum of extraterrestrial equipment.
Are we the smartest kid on our cosmic block? To find out, we should keep our eyes open and search through our telescopes for items from our nearest neighbors, taking proper precaution about a vessel masquerading as a Trojan Horse. There might be plenty of small, fast-moving objects that are constantly traveling through the solar system and that we fail to recognize given the limited sensitivity of our telescopes. It would be interesting to search for them in future data streams from the Large Survey of Space and Time (LSST) on the Vera C. Rubin observatory, which will start monitoring the Chilean sky in less than three years. In addition, my student Amir Siraj and I have shown that a global network of several hundred optical cameras on Earth can identify flares from interstellar meteors entering the Earth’s atmosphere at an unusually high speed of up to the speed of light.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) discovered gravitational waves only after the National Science Foundation (NSF) invested $1.1 billion in it. Similarly, we should expect to find extraordinary evidence for ETs only after we invest major funds in a search. It would be most appropriate to allocate taxpayer funds to the search for our cosmic neighbors, given the major impact that such a discovery would have on society—far exceeding the implication of discovering gravitational waves.
Putting our hands on a piece of alien technology would change the way we perceive our place in the universe, our aspirations for space and our philosophical and theological beliefs. Our psychological shock would resemble the one encountered by my daughters when they met kids smarter than they were on their first day in the kindergarten.
Or we could choose to stay ignorant about our neighbors until they show up. This would be equivalent to my daughters choosing to stay at home. The possible existence of ETs will not go away if we ignore them, just like the Earth continued to move around the sun after religious authorities refused to look through Galileo’s telescope. The dinosaurs dominated the planet for many millions of years, but their reign was abruptly ended 66 million years ago, when the giant Chicxulub rock showed up on the sky, on a collision course with Earth.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
UFO Leaves Aviation Authority Clueless As Blue Spaceship Passes Hawaii
UFO Leaves Aviation Authority Clueless As Blue Spaceship Passes Hawaii
Some people spotted a blue unidentified flying object (UFO) in the skies of Hawaii on Dec. 29, 2020. Several residents reported to have seen the blue spacecraft in the sky and that it had eventually landed on the sea. Another white light, according to eyewitnesses, took the same direction as the blue UFO and then vanished into the sea. They were taken aback by what they saw that they dialed 911. But they were still "at a loss" for words when officers arrived.
A few moments after, the Freedom of Information Act requested the Federal Aviation Administration to elucidate the mystery sighting. However, aviation authorities unveil that they are entirely unaware of the sighting. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, no planes were in the region when locals saw the mysterious object in the sky.
John Greenewald of Black Vault asked for the FAA's report on the incident via a Freedom of Information request. He received a response on Apr. 12. Authorities said that they are still "at a loss" to identify the UFO.
As the Hawaii sighting continues to confuse people, some internet users claim that these sightings may be genuine evidence of alien life. According to these alien hunters, advanced extraterrestrial civilizations from deep space have been visiting Earth in UFOs for hundreds of thousands of years, and governments and space agencies such as NASA are well aware of alien life.
A few weeks ago, Former Israeli space security chief Haim Eshed suggested that alien presence on Earth is possible. Eshed also confirmed that world forces such as the United States and Israel are collaborating with extraterrestrials. He also hinted that a galactic union may exist. According to the former space security chief, there is a deep underground base on Mars where aliens and humans collaborate.
"The Unidentified Flying Objects have asked not to publish that they are here, humanity is not ready yet," Eshed said. Former President Donald Trump knew the extraterrestrials' presence, according to Eshed. Trump, Eshed mentioned, was "on the verge of disclosing" facts. However, he was asked not to do so to avoid "mass hysteria."
Nobody beli eved him until he grabbed a cellphone and recorded the phenomenon.Shutterstock/Dennis van de Water
What Really Lies Hidden in the Vatican Secret Archives?
What Really Lies Hidden in the Vatican Secret Archives?
What Really Lies Hidden in the Vatican Secret Archives?
Mystery and intrigue are inherent to the Holy See. People will always wonder what religious authorities are conspiring to behind closed doors, what treasures lie within the vaults of the Vatican. Despite claims that the Pope has evidence of extraterrestrials and demons tucked away in his catacombs, the truth of the secret archives is much more realistic. Because of this, it is also much more interesting.
From handwritten letters of historic personages such as Mary Queen of Scots and Abraham Lincoln to papal bulls excommunicating Martin Luther, the contents of the archives are enough to make any scholar’s eyes go wide. Yet, the high-level nature that makes the contents so fascinating is also what makes them so closely guarded. For in truth, it is not evidence of aliens that the Vatican is hiding from the public eye but rather documents that may show the Church was complicit in Mussolini’s state-sponsored terror and, possibly, even in Hitler’s anti-Semitic pogroms.
Archivum Secretum
The truth behind the secret archives stems from a mistranslation of Latin. The actual name of the Vatican archives is Archivum Secretum Apostolicum Vaticanum . ‘Secretum’ in Latin does not mean ‘secret’ as some may suppose. It is more accurately translated to mean ‘personal’ or ‘private’. The archives are in fact made up of the private letters and historic records of past popes over the past four centuries.
The archives were established by Pope Paul V. The Pope clearly had a sense of the historic importance of papal correspondence and knew that such documents should be preserved. However, the 17th century was firmly of the mentality that common people should not be privy to words exchanged by kings and popes. So the archives were kept under lock and key.
It was not until 1881 that Pope Leo XIII allowed researchers to view some of the archive’s contents. However, it was no simple matter for one to view the documents and the procedure has not changed much over the last 200 years. First of all, journalists, students, and amateur historians are not given access.
Once an interested party has proven that he or she is a serious enough scholar, credentials are granted that must be renewed every six months. To enter the archives, a “scholars enter through the Porta Sant’Anna , pass Swiss Guards, walk through the Cortile del Belvedere , and present credentials” (O’Loughlin, 2014).
The Porta Sant Anna, where visitors must pass through to reach the archives.
Once admitted, scholars must request which specific documents they wish to review. They are only allowed to request three per day. So instead of being able to browse the contents of the archive, they must select articles from catalogs in which items are handwritten in Italian or Latin. These catalogs are quite imposing considering that the archives contain “50 miles [80km] of shelving and documents dating back to the eighth century” (Keyser, 2015).
“If in just a few minutes they realize that what they’re seeking isn’t in the requested folders, they’re forced to pack up for the day - a challenge for scholars on a deadline or those who have traveled long distances” (O’Loughlin, 2014). Computers are allowed but not photography, so scholars spend most of the sessions in reading rooms typing up notes.
The Vatican Archives Contain Historical Gems
If a person is fortunate enough to gain access to the Vatican Archives, he or she would be able to pursue such historical gems as:
The 197-foot-long (60 meters) scroll containing the minutes of the trials of the Knights Templar, which lasted for several years starting in 1307.
The Inter caetera , the papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI in 1493 that split the world between the Spanish and the Portuguese
The 1521 papal bull of Pope Leo X excommunicating Martin Luther
The 1530 petition Henry VIIIsent to Pope Clement VII in order to request an annulment of the king’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which includes the signatures and seals of over 80 English lords and clergymen (the Pope refused)
A letter to Pope Sixtus V from Mary, Queen of Scots begging the Church to intervene shortly before her execution
Notes relating to the 1633 trial against Galileo
A letter to Pope Innocent X from Grand Empress Dowager Helena Wang of China
A letter from Pope Clement XII to the Seventh Dalai Lama requesting protection for Franciscan missionaries in Tibet.
Letters from both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis (both written in 1863, neither man Catholic) in efforts to have Pope Pius IX come down in favor of the Union or the Confederacy
A letter from King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, held in the Vatican archive.
David Kertzer, a historian from Brown University, was able to examine documents from the reign of Pope Pius XII (1922 - 1939). He concluded that the pope “made deals with Mussolini to protect the Church’s interest in exchange for silence on state-sponsored anti-Semitism, a conclusion at odds with the Church’s account” (O’Loughlin, 2014). Groups pressured Pope Francis to make fully available the contents relating to Pope Pius XII (1939 - 1958) in order that the world may finally know for certain the man’s involvement with the Nazis.
Some say that he supported Hitler, either in a manner similar to the Church’s support of Mussolini or perhaps even more substantially. Others say that the Pope worked against the Nazis and helped to hide Jews and other targets of Nazi aggression. “People talk, scholars talk. Are there things that aren’t being made available because they’re seen as unflattering from a Church point of view?” said Kertzer. Still, Kertzer admits, the Secret Archives are staffed by professionals, and “there’s an appreciation of serious historical scholarship.” (O’Loughlin, 2014)
In March 2020, Pope Francis made “the fundamental documentation of Pius XII’s pontificate” available to historians, saying that that the church is “not afraid of history.” When researchers convened this year in a webinar to discuss their assessment of the archives so far they said, “it would likely take years to assess the material the Vatican has made available,” according to National Catholic Reporter .
Nonetheless, David Kertzer states, “I do not think there is going to be one smoking gun — in fact, I would despair of any evidence that's actually changing people’s minds these days.” However, Nina Valbousquet, a researcher at the Ecole Française de Rome, said that she found some Vatican correspondence from a time shortly after the war which suggests some officials had “a deep lack of understanding of what had happened during the Holocaust and harbored antisemitic sentiments.”
In 2012, in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the archives, 100 documents were made available for the public to see in an exhibit called Lux in Arcana . However the tradition of only granting permission for about 1,000 scholars to access the archives in-person per year continues.
Lux in Arcana - The Vatican Secret Archives Reveals Itself.
Credit: The Vatican
According to Pope Francis, the Vatican Archives are no longer ‘secret,’ instead they’re ‘apostolic.’ In 2019 he decided to change the centuries-old title of the Archivum Secretum Vaticanum , the Vatican Secret Archives , to the Vatican Apostolic Archives because, Vatican News reports, “in Latin both secretum (which means separate, private) and apostolicum (that is, belonging to the domnus apostolicus , who is only the pope) refer to the same reality, even juridical.”
The Pope made his decision based on the need to meet modern ‘sensibilities’, which often associate the word secretum with ideas of mysteries and hidden artifacts locked away in vaults.
Nevertheless, the Vatican Archives remain the Pope’s private archives – “subject to him alone and to his exclusive governance,” as Vatican News states.
Top image: Some of the 50 miles of bookshelves in the Vatican secret archive Photo: The Vatican
Just 7% of Human DNA Is Unique, Says Latest Large-scale Genetic Study
Just 7% of Human DNA Is Unique, Says Latest Large-scale Genetic Study
Among all the species of man that ever existed, Homo sapiens (modern man) is the sole survivor. But that doesn’t make us quite as special as we thought. A genetic study carried out by researchers at the University of California Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz) found that modern humans only possess a small fraction of fully unique human DNA. The vast majority of our collective genetic inheritance is something we shared with other species of ancient man, specifically our long extinct “cousins” the Neanderthals and the Denisovans
So how much of human DNA belongs exclusively to us, and was never carried by any other human species? Just seven percent, the researchers responsible for this research explain in their Science Advances journal study .
“That's a pretty small percentage,” UC Santa Cruz computational biologist and study co-sponsor Nathan Schaefer told the Associated Press . “This kind of finding is why scientists are turning away from thinking that we humans are so vastly different from Neanderthals.”
That seven percent is something we share with all modern humans who have lived and died over the past 200,000 years, the approximate time that has passed since Homo sapiens first evolved. Of this seven percent, the majority is present in some people but not others. Just 1.5 percent of their DNA is both unique to us and shared by everyone currently living on the planet.
Modern humans are not a singular or special creation of evolution. They are mostly a mixture of genetic materials taken from other ancient species, all of which developed long before Homo sapiens came into existence.
Fig. 2 from the Science Advances study: Performance of SARGE on SGDP and archaic hominin dataset: (A) Pairwise coalescence times for randomly sampled sets of up to 10 pairs of phased genome haplotypes per population in ka (thousands of years ago). Values are calibrated using a 13 million years ago (13 Ma) human-chimp divergence time. (B) Unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean trees computed using nucleotide diversity from SNP data (top and left) against similarity matrix from shared recombination events inferred by SARGE (Speedy Ancestral Recombination Graph Estimator).
Tracking The Shared Genetic Inheritance in Human DNA
To complete this study, the team of researchers from UC Santa Cruz examined genetic data collected from the fossilized remains of Neanderthals and Denisovans that lived between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago. They compared this ancient DNA to genetic material extracted from 279 people living today, searching for overlaps and differences.
Since ancient genomes taken from human fossils aren’t always complete, this is a difficult comparison to make. But the researchers developed a method that allowed them to fill in the blanks when information was missing from ancient genomes . As a result, they were able to identify all the genetic material shared between modern humans and Neanderthals or Denisovans, which represented 93 percent of the total found in the Homo sapiens genome.
It is important to emphasize that Neanderthals and Denisovans are not the direct ancestors of Homo sapiens (we didn’t evolve from them, in other words). Instead, they share common ancestors with us, which is why they are often referred to as our cousins. The 93 percent of our DNA that we share with Neanderthals and Denisovans was inherited from those ancestors, who lived on earth millions of years ago.
This shows how close the genetic relationship between these three species actually was and explains how humans could interbreed with the others despite their differences.
It is known that interbreeding occurred, since a small part of the human genetic code contains DNA inherited from Neanderthals and Denisovans (interbreeding with Neanderthals was far more common ). Modern humans began migrating out of Africa and spreading across the planet in significant numbers between 100,000 and 70,000 years ago. They would have lived side by side with the other two species for 50,000 years or so after that, until the Denisovans and Neanderthals became extinct ( the exact dates when that happened are disputed ).
It is possible to see the Neanderthal and Denisovan decision to interbreed with modern humans as a kind of survival strategy. By doing so, they guaranteed their species would never die out completely. They exist even now, as traces of DNA that are still shaping our development.
What is it then that makes humans unique? The answer is neural development and brain function. This modern woman's brain is "wired" differently than the brains of our prehistoric ancestors.
Human Uniqueness? Neural Development and Brain Function!
Some of the most eye-opening information obtained in this new study emerged from an analysis of the 1.5 percent of modern human DNA that is shared by everyone. Further study of this genetic material may help scientists understand what separates Homo sapiens from other species of man, since it never existed in those other species but is universal in us.
"We can tell those regions of the genome are highly enriched for genes that have to do with neural development and brain function ," explained UC Santa Cruz computational biologist Richard Green, a co-author of the Science Advances study.
The primary goal of this study was to uncover what genetic factors make modern humans unique. Homo sapiens is the only hominin (the biological group made up of modern humans, extinct humans, and all our immediate ancestors) that survived into the modern era, meaning it likely possessed some qualities that the others lacked.
It is presumed the advantage had something to do with cognitive abilities . This would seem to make the discovery of unique genes in humans that affect mental development and brain function highly significant.
Of course, it is possible that Homo sapiens survived by luck rather than skill. As the populations of all three species grew, maybe Homo sapiens just happened to be living in the right places at the right times, enjoying more favorable weather and more access to food and water when resources started to become scarce.
Most likely, good luck and evolutionary advantages both played a role in deciding the final outcome.
Top image: Neanderthal skull (left) compared with a modern human skull (right). A recent study has revealed that only 7% of human DNA is unique. The other 93% of human DNA is shared with our ancient “cousins” the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Source: procy_ab / Adobe Stock
Submerged Settlements And Roman Road Discovered Under Venice Waters
Submerged Settlements And Roman Road Discovered Under Venice Waters
An underwater sonar mapping project by archaeologists in Italy has determined that the bottom of the Venetian Lagoon was once dry land. The team of researchers have confirmed that an ancient Roman road and settlement once thrived in the area some 500 years before Venice was founded in the 5th century.
In the 1980s, surveys of the Treporti Channel in the northern part of Venice's outer lagoon identified what ‘looked like’ a submerged Roman roadwith structures aligned along its course. Recent archaeological dives revealed stones with a smooth upper face and ovoid undersides that were similar to “Roman basoli.” Now, it has been confirmed that an ancient Roman road was indeed submerged in the Venice Lagoon, and it was lined with “extensive settlements.”
Left) the reconstruction of the Roman Road in the Treporti Channel in the Venice Lagoon made on the basis of the multibeam data. Credit: Antonio Calandriello and Giuseppe D'Acunto. Right) the same area now submerged.
Professor Fantina Madricardo is a geophysicist with the Institute of Marine Science (ISMAR) in Venice, and last week she published her new study in the journal Scientific Reports about the recent sonar explorations of lagoon islands and waterways. Hoards of artifacts were discovered suggesting human occupation and even evidence of a structure that is suspected to be an ancient harbor, or dock.
These new investigations of the suspected ancient route were delayed by extensive industrial developments around the lagoon. But now, “12 archaeological structures” have been identified on a northeasterly alignment extending “1,140 meters” in an area of the lagoon known as the Treporti Channel,” according to the study.
The new discoveries at the bottom of the Treporti channel determine the structure was indeed a Roman road and the foundations clinging to its sides measure 2.7 meters (9 ft) tall by 52.7 meters (173 ft) long. Four additional structures measured four meters (13 ft) tall and 134.8 meters (442 ft) long which are thought to represent a harbor, or dock.
High resolution bathymetry of the Treporti Channel (The numbers 1 to 12 indicate the alignment of structures. The letters a to d identify other structures found in the area. The zoom-in pictures show the detail of some of the archaeological structures: the sites 3, 8-9 and 10 (bottom-right) and the structure a (top-left), with the profiles I-II and III-IV, that could possibly be possibly part of a harbour structure. The lower part of the picture represents the bathymetric profile extracted along all identified structures (white dashed line).
Professor Madricardo told Live Science that the Venice lagoon formed after the main sea-level rose at the end of the last Ice Age . She said that since Roman times, about 2,000 years ago, “the sea level there rose [up to] two and a half meters [8 feet].” This means what was once dry land is now underwater. It is thought the Roman road ran along the top of a sandy ridge where the outermost islands of the lagoon are located today. Water would have lapped both sides of the road with the eastern side facing the sea and the western side being an enclosed inland waterway, the researchers said in the study.
Reconstruction of the Treporti Channel paleobeach ridge and the Treporti Channel road (TC road) in Roman Times from an aerial perspective, with the Venice lagoon to the left and the Adriatic Sea to the right. The position of the TC road corresponds exactly to the position of the archaeological structures mapped.
Having waited since the 1980s, what these new archaeological confirmations mean is that a permanent settlement was established in the Treporti Channel during the Roman era . From this, the authors of the new study suggest the road “may have been linked to a wider network of Roman roads in the Italian Veneto Region.” The team speculate that the settlement might even have been a staging post for sailors and traders heading to and from the city of Chioggia in the Northern Venice Lagoon and the Roman trading center of Altinum in the north.
Now that the presence of the Roman road has been confirmed by sonar mapping and underwater divers, and that the structures have been measured, the next part of this underwater quest is to date when the road was built. Moreover, it is yet to be determined how long it took the skilled Roman road builders to create the route. And it is not yet understood how long the trade route was functional before it was reclaimed by the rising sea. Professor Madricardo says the lagoon sediment cores have been damaged over the last two centuries, but she is hopeful the floor of the lagoon can be radiocarbon dated , which might answer these big outstanding questions.
Top image: The Roman road detected under what is now the Treporti Channel in Venice Source: (Fantina Madricardo / Nature)
Did Japanese Population Originate with this Minatogawa Man?
Did Japanese Population Originate with this Minatogawa Man?
A new scientific report published in Nature has concluded that the modern Japanese descended from the Minatogawa people of the Paleolithic era. This is based on a DNA study of a 20,000-year-old human, codenamed Minatogawa 1, who was discovered in a limestone quarry in the Japanese Okinawa Prefecture back in 1970.
Replica of the Minatogawa man’s skeleton with DNA ties to modern Japanese population.
(National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo)
The Origins of Modern Human Japanese Population
Paleoanthropologists have long assumed that modern man ( Homo sapiens ) first migrated east out of Africa and into modern-day China about 50,000 BC. The popular belief is that the first humans on the Japanese Archipelago migrated from somewhere in southeast Asia. According to human migration models and archaeological evidence, people first reached Japan in the late Pleistocene, around 40,000 or 30,000 years ago, at a time when the archipelago was connected to the Asian continent.
The frequently told story of human history in Japan claims that the modern-day Japanese descended from two different groups of migrants. These were the historic ancestors of the Jomon people, hunter-gatherers who existed between 14,500 BC and 1,000 BC. Later they were followed by a second wave of farming human migrants from Northeast Asia known as the Yayoi who existed between 1,000 BC and 250 AD. Both cultures have been identified due to their distinctive pottery styles.
Forensic reconstruction and skull of a Jomon person in Japan.
In the late 1960s, amateur archaeologist Seiho Oyama purchased a series of stone blocks in which he observed fossilized bone fragments within. This unexpected discovery led to his near obsession with the Minatogawa quarry in the Okinawa Prefecture, on the Japanese Ryukyu Islands, from where they had been sourced. In 1968 Oyama reported the discovery of human remains to a Tokyo University professor who then proceeded to excavate the site up until 1974.
Digs at the site took place in a 1-meter-wide (3.28 ft) exposed fissure at the quarry. Archaeologists unearthed bone fragments belonging to between 5 and 9 individual skeletons, which they named the Minatogawa people. The Tokyo University professor who led the excavations, Hisashi Suzuki, argued that these Paleolithic individuals had been killed by arrows or spears and were then cannibalized.
The males were about 1.55 meters tall (5 ft) while the women were about 1.4 meters (4.6 ft) tall. “Narrow-shouldered, they had a sturdy lower-body skeletal build, which experts believe made them suited to running on barren land,” explains Archaeology News Network . Minatogawa 1 is the name given to a complete skeleton found at the site, a replica of which is now on display at the Tokyo University Anthropology Museum.
This discovery was very exciting for Japanese archaeology, due to the lack of skeletal remains and DNA unearthed to date on the islands. This is caused by the acidic soil composed of volcanic ash which creates “an environment which is detrimental to the preservation of ancient biomolecules,” explains the report in Nature. The 20,000-year-old remains discovered at the Okinawa quarry “are amongst the few Paleolithic humans whose remains have so far been discovered in Japan,” explains Archaeology News Network .
Reconstruction on display of a Minatogawa man in Japan.
Science Uncovers New Links to Explain the Origins of Japanese Population
Nevertheless, after the excitement subsided researchers were unable to uncover the link between these Minatogawa peoples and the story of human history in Japan as evidenced in the rest of the archaeological record. Were these Minatogawa peoples the ancestors for the Jomon? Had the Minatogawa died out? Or had they simply emigrated somewhere else at some point in ancient history?
Due to a lack of evidence to prove any direct connection, Archaeology News Network highlights that “the issue had remained moot, not least because the facial skeleton of the Minatogawa people bore little resemblance to Jomon people.” That is until a group of researchers from a selection of institutions, including the Graduate University for Advanced Studies and Toho University, came together to look at mitochondrial DNA.
Minatogawa 1, the male Paleolithic human found at the quarry, became the focus of the study after the team managed to extract a complete mitogenome sequence. Their hope was to trace the human origins of Japanese population further back than the Jomon. To understand why this was an important breakthrough, “Mitochondrial DNA is passed down from mothers to their children and contains region-specific vestiges due to mutations, which allows origins of populations to be traced,” highlights Archaeology News Network .
Through analysis of Minatogawa 1’s DNA, the team were able to identify a component common to the Jomon, the Yayoi and modern Japanese humans. While an analysis of about 2,000 modern-day members of the Japanese population did not find any direct descendants, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that Minatogawa direct ancestors will not be discovered in future studies.
In a nutshell, this means that the “modern Japanese likely have distant ancestral ties with Minatogawa people.” Nevertheless, to truly decipher the human history of Japanese populations, archaeology will need to keep digging to find more Paleolithic bones and do more tests on existing human remains. The lead author of the study, Jun Gojobori, stressed that they “hope to study the bones of more Paleolithic people to better understand the origins of the Japanese .”
Top image: The Japanese population is descended from the Minatogawa man, depicted here in an artistic reconstruction. Source: Teruya Yamamoto / National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo
The annals of UFO lore are peppered with accounts of alien encounters and abductions, these mysterious entities coming for us for inscrutable reasons we may never understand. Some such cases really serve to bring on the weird, with plenty of clues and details that cloak them in a thick layer of oddness and high strangeness, leaving us to wonder just what is going on. One such surreal account played out in a rural area of the U.S. state of Indiana back in 1983, and it has gone on to become a classic example of just how truly bizarre such encounters can be.
It was a hot summer night, on June 30, 1983, and Debbie Jordan-Kauble was going about her usual routines on what had until then been a very ordinary, mundane evening. At the time she was living in a rural area near a place called Copley Woods, outside of Indianapolis, Indiana, along with her two young sons and parents and on this evening her father was off at his second shift at an automobile factory. That night Debbie, her mother, and two sons ordered take-out fried chicken, and it couldn’t have been more normal, but as she washed the dishes and the grease off her hands things would begin to get weird, spiraling into a harrowing experience that would change her life forever. She would say of what happened:
I was washing the grease off my hands before I left to go to the neighbors house to cut some more patterns out. She lived one block over and one road behind us so I wouldn’t be far in case Mom needed help getting the boys to settle down. As I stood at the kitchen sink and looked aimlessly out the window, I noticed an odd light coming out of the swimming pool pump house. First of all, I knew the door SHOULD be closed because I remembered wrestling with the rusty slide lock. I had been out there just a few hours earlier, putting some more chlorine tabs in the pool floater. It was getting dark out so the strange light really caught my eye. It was not like the incandescent bulb that was in there. It looked more like florescent, white light. And it was very bright. I pointed this out to my mother and asked her if she wanted me to stay home. She thought it was odd but told me not to worry about it. She would lock the doors and if she needed me she would call me. In the five minutes it took me to get in my car and make a quick detour to the turnabout in back of the house, to check on the light before I left, the light was gone. And the door to the pump house was closed. But the pedestrian door to the side garage attached to the house was now open. I do not know why I didn’t stop then and go back inside. I should have but I didn’t. I headed on to our neighbors’ house.
Debbie reached her neighbor’s house without incident and called her mother to tell her she had arrived safely. At this point her mother was calm and sounded normal, but shortly after this, practically right after hanging up, there was a phone call from her mother, who now sounded frightened and urgently implored her to come back home right away. It would only later turn out that Debbie’s mother had seen a “basketball-sized ball of light” hovering around in the back yard, but at the time it was not clear why she was so panicked and scared, so insistently begging Debbie to come home immediately. Debbie then excused herself, apologizing to the neighbor and driving the short distance back home, where she found her mother cowering within and frantically looking through the window outside. Debbie says of what happened next:
Once I arrived, I pulled around to the back of the house again. This time I stopped at the sun room outside access door and found Mom standing there waiting for me. As I walked in, I went for the shotgun Daddy had behind the trash compactor. Mom made a comment about the gun not being loaded and I said to her that whoever was out there didn’t know that and I could always beat the crap out of them with it. I have to say, at this point, that I do not know what came over me. I am no fool and at that time in my life, I was the biggest chicken in the world. If I had know why mom called me back that night, I would have never gone out back. I would have gone in the front door, grabbed my mom and kids and high-tailed it out of there so fast it would make your head spin.
Making the whole situation even eerier and more surreal was that at the time Debbie’s mother not only had no idea why she was in a panic, but she didn’t even remember calling her daughter. At this point, they both thought it was just an intruder, and so Debbie crept outside with the shotgun and approached the pump house, ready to wave her empty gun to frighten any trespassers, but no one was in the pump house, nor was there any sign of an intruder anywhere. The only thing out of place was her dog cowering under a truck and growling uncontrollably. As she did her search of the yard, outbuildings, and garage, she was suddenly aware of a growing, burning sensation throughout her body, which she would later equate to being splashed with acid, and whish grew in intensity until she had the sudden, undeniable urge to get out of there immediately, that her life was in danger. She would say of what happened next:
I suddenly felt as if I was on fire. All the skin on my body started burning. It felt like I was covered with acid. And I thought, “I’ve gotta get out of here RIGHT NOW!” I turned to run out the pedestrian door and that is when I was hit in the chest by something VERY bright and electrifying. I have never been hit by lightning. But if I could imagine what it would feel like, I would say it was like this. It felt as if I had first been punched by a huge, electric fist, right in the gut. The burning, electrical feeling slowly moved down my legs to my feet, out my arms to my fingertips and around my head. Then, I could feel every molecule of my body vibrating. I couldn’t move. And I couldn’t see because the flash was so bright. I know I could not have tolerated more than a few seconds of this but I swear it felt as if this lasted for several minutes. I assume it couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds. I remember thinking, “I’m DEAD! This is what it feels like to die.” I was shaking and burning and I felt like I was vibrating to my very core. The brightness wore off fast. Then, the vibrating and shaking subsided. But I still couldn’t move. I was able to see bits and pieces. VERY much like having been ‘flashed’ in the eye by a camera flash. I had big blind spots in my vision but I could see some shadow and some movement in the yard in front of my. I can now feel someone pulling on my right shoulder, as if to pull me down a bit. Then, I felt a stabbing, burning sensation in my right ear. And I could hear someone telling me it was unfortunate that I had to feel pain.
After this, she suddenly and inexplicably found herself outside, with no idea of how she had gotten there, and above her hovered a bight light about the size and shape of a basketball. The light moved up and down, as if scanning her, and then slowly became an oval shape before disappearing. At this moment, Debbie saw another egg-shaped object, around which several humanoid figures could be seen. She explains:
I could see something about the size of the pool pump house. Maybe 8 to 10 feet tall and shaped like an egg. (Not very big as far as UFOs go.) And I could see 6 people in the yard in front of me. They are at various spots in the yard. At the same time, they all seemed to line up and slide to the left, back to this egg shaped thing in front of me. They were smaller than me. Shorter. I thought they looked like children. Bullet shaped children. Bigger in the head and getting narrow at the feet. I couldn’t see much detail, mostly just silhouettes. The rest of this event is still a blur after 20 years. The next thing I remember is hearing someone say. “It’s over.” I suddenly remembered my kids. I thought, “MY KIDS! Oh my God!” And immediately I heard the voice say that my kids were okay. I heard my name being called and I was able to move and I turned and began to walk up the lower porch steps, toward the back kitchen door. With each step I took, the memory of what had just transpired, faded until by the time I reached my mom at the back door, I did not remember anything after I entered the garage. I said to my mom, “Everything’s cool.” And with that, she became animated again. It was as if she was standing there, in a daze, until she heard my voice.
Debbie then went back to the neighbor’s house, where they told her she had been gone for 2 hours, despite the fact that to her only 15 minutes had passed. At this point, she rather oddly felt like going for a swim in the pool, inviting the neighbor and her daughter to join her. As they made their way to the pool, things would get even stranger still, of which Debbie says:
As we walked though the back yard to the swimming pool, my neighbors’ daughter suddenly jumped and yelled, “OUCH.” She said she had stepped on something that made her foot burn, and now her foot was getting numb. By the time we reached the pool, she said her foot felt numb all the way to the knee, but yet she could walk on it. We weren’t in the pool more than 10 or 15 minutes when we all started feeling nauseated, and my eyesight started getting real fuzzy, even though I had not had my head under water. I could see halos around all the outside lights and it was making me dizzy. The girls left and I went to bed. When I woke up the next morning, I could not open my eyes. They were swollen completely shut.
My mother took me to the emergency room. They, in turn, sent me directly to an eye specialist across the street from the ER because they didn’t have anyone on call in ER who was able to treat something like this. This doctor was just across the street and agreed to work me in and see me that morning. He was stunned at the extent of my injury. He kept asking me if I had looked into the arc of a welder’s torch or the sun. I had not. I was given several tubes of cream and some drops to try to heal my eyes. It took SEVERAL weeks for them to fully recover and to this day, my eyes are VERY sensitive to light. And my vision is very far-sighted. Sometimes my eyes will still suddenly burn and turn red, for no apparent reason. Fortunately, this only lasts for a few minutes.
The following week after the incident, they were having a BBQ in their backyard when one of the guests noticed an 8 foot circle with a 20 foot swath of wilted dead grass coming off of it, which for some reason instilled a sense of panic in her. This mark would prove to have some rather strange qualities, of which Debbie has said:
The mark in the yard remained there for nearly five years. Every year snow melted off of it. Animals would not walk on it. There were no bugs in the soil. Even when the grass finally did begin to grow back, the grass in that place was thick, rubbery and kind of a bluish green color. The dandelions that grew around the mark were three times the size of normal ones. The tomato plants my mom had out by the pool, were the size of grapefruits but when you tried to eat them, they were so acidic the skin on your lips would peel off. And the vines were as big around as my forearm. The leaves on a patch of trees behind the mark withered, turned brown and fell off. The power line above the mark shorted out and blew a transformer, melted the wiring and blew out the tubes on the Heathkit HAM radios in the basement of the house, which was right next to the place in the yard.
In addition to the strangeness with that mark in the yard, Debbie would over the years be plagued with inexplicable health issues, nightmares, and other odd incidents, of which she says:
The aftermath of this day was a nightmare for several years. I was ‘shell shocked’. I sat up at night, watching over my children and waiting. Waiting for something. But I didn’t remember what it was I was waiting for. I got sick and stayed sick for over a year. I developed life-threatening allergies, rashes, fevers, swollen glands, diarrhea, bleeding gums and my hair started falling out. My fingernails started growing thin, peeled and had horizontal ridges in them. I developed irregular heartbeats (PAC’s) I started having panic attacks. Almost daily for a long time.
And the dog that was out there with me that night? She had to be put to sleep about 2 and a half months later. All her hair fell out from the head down. She developed black, oozing sores all over her back, her eyes got milky white and she was obviously going deaf. Her teeth all fell out and her gums bled, as well. When we took her to the vet, he was shocked to see how quickly she had deteriorated. She was not that old (about 6 or 7 years) and the way she looked you would have thought she was 20 years old. He advised us to put her down because he felt she was suffering and he could not help her. He figured she was ‘eaten up’ with cancer of some kind. I think of my dog, and the fate she met. In my heart, I believe whatever she encountered that night was directly related to her untimely death. And there is a part of me that STILL worries I will eventually have some kind of cancer related to my experience of that night. There is nothing I can do about it right now, except take good care of myself and hope for the best.
It would also turn out that other people in the area had seen basketball-sized orbs of light flitting about at the time, and it was all weird enough that she reached out to UFO researcher Budd Hopkins, who would conduct a thorough investigation into the incident and write of it in his best-selling 1987 book Intruders – The Incredible Visitation at Copley Woods, after which it would hit the public consciousness and appear in a 1992 CBS mini-series of the same name. In 1993, Debbie’s sister would write a book on it as well, called Abducted! The Story of the Intruders Continues, and it has gone on to be one of the most shocking and intriguing alien encounter reports on record, being investigated by other notable UFO researchers such as Linda Moulton Howe. As for her own thoughts on the whole affair, Debbie herself has remained rather introspective on it all, rather bravely embracing what happened to her and looking at it as a defining moment in her life. She has said of this:
I often wonder what my life would have been like had I not had the experience. I can’t imagine. Truthfully, despite the obvious trauma, I don’t think I would change a thing. I have become a much stronger person. I don’t give credit to the experience or the ‘Intruders’, other than it FORCED ME to be strong, to survive and grow. And I kinda like that about me. That is the story of this day. You know when you can name the date and time of an event, it MUST have made quite an impression on you. June 30th, 1983, made such an impression on me that it actually crushed the old me while molding the new one. Now THAT’S a defining moment.
What was going on here? What forces came for this woman out in that remote location? Was this aliens, interdimensional interlopers, or something else altogether? What has come to be known as the “Copley Woods Encounter” has gone on to become one of the weirder bizarre incidents in UFO lore, and for good reason. It has many elements that are beyond bizarre, full of high strangeness, and while we may never get true answers it stands tall as a singularly weird account.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence just got two big boosts – a large influx of cash and a famous scientist and ET life proponent to spend it on a new project. The money comes from four rich donors inspired by the words of Harvard astronomy professor Avi Loeb – famous for his theories that the ‘Oumuamua interstellar object was a spaceship – and the new Galileo Projectit is funding will look for SETI with a network of new telescopes and cameras. Is Loeb pushing the SETI envelope to the point where he could end up like the real Galileo – declared a heretic and kept under house arrest for his own unconventional theories and discoveries?
“Science should not reject potential extraterrestrial explanations because of social stigma or cultural preferences that are not conducive to the scientific method of unbiased, empirical inquiry. We now must ‘dare to look through new telescopes’, both literally and figuratively.”
In the press release for the Galileo Project, Avi Loeb tackles the heresy potential head-on – it’s time to “dare to look” at exoplanets and space objects in a new way. He also addresses the type pf researchers that the UFO and ET community is in dire need of.
“After the recent release of the ODNI report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), the scientific community needs the determination to systematically, scientifically and transparently look for potential evidence of extraterrestrial technological equipment. The impact of any discovery of extraterrestrial technology on science, our technology, and on our entire world view, would be enormous.”
The three main objectives of the Galileo Project are to obtain high-resolution images of UAPs (UFOs) using a network of dedicated small-aperture telescopes; search for interstellar objects similar to Oumuamua; and search for extraterrestrial satellites orbiting the Earth. Loeb introduced a sizeable scientific research team at the project announcement. He’s surrounded himself with scientists from various fields and challenged them, other scientists, world leaders and the public to not treat this research the way Galileo’s was treated.
“Moreover, Galileo complained that some of the philosophers who opposed his discoveries had even refused to look through his telescope, e.g., to see the mountains on the Moon, or the four largest moons of Jupiter. Let us not repeat their mistake.”
Look and learn
They refused to look through his telescope. Does this sound like any prevailing practices and philosophies today? The Galileo Project is funding but looking for more financial support from individuals and foundations. In addition to open wallets, what the Galileo Project really needs is open minds. As the real Galileo once said:
“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered — the point is to discover them.”
Alien abductions come in all shapes and sizes. They range from the odd to the full-on absurd, and everything in between. Yet one assumption that many people might have is that the aliens always get their person, and this is simply not true. Through a series of missteps and and other forces of chance, it would seem that at times these aliens fail in their missions to abduct human beings. While rare, here are some of the more spectacular such accounts.
A very strange account comes to us from the year 1964, from California, in the United States. On September 4, 1964, 28-year-old Donald Shrum and his friends went out bow hunting at Cisco Grove, in Placer County, California, and at some point, he would become separated from his group. Since nightfall was approaching, he decided to sleep in a tree for the night and catch up with his companions the following day, but sleep would not be easy for him on this night. As he drifted in and out of a half-sleep daze and daydreams, his attention was captured by a bright white light zigzagging through the dim darkness of the trees, which he at first took to be a helicopter but would soon prove to be anything but when the mysterious light approached him to begin silently hovering nearby.
Shrum tried to stay out of sight, but it was obvious that it had noticed him, and not only that, three strange beings could be seen on the ground approaching the tree. He would describe two of them as humanoid in general shape, but the other as looking like some sort of outlandish robot, and he was startled when they began shaking the tree with great force, seemingly in an effort to dislodge him and make him drop out. As this was going on, the robot apparently exuded a white mist from its mouth that caused him to fall asleep. When he awoke not long after, the strange creatures were still seemingly trying to get him out of the tree, and he fought back by dropping lit matches on them, which caused them to back off a bit but did not stop them. He then resorted to shooting at them with his bow, noticing that his arrows caused sparks when they bounced off the robot.
As the night wore on, more of the robot-like creatures appeared, and the humanoids began trying to crawl up the tree towards him. Shrum claims that he shot arrows until he ran out, after which he began hurling anything he could find at the strange entities. At one point he was gassed again by that white smoke, but he would snap out of it again to find the creatures still unsuccessfully trying to reach him. He claims that this happened until sunrise, after which they finally gave up and left him alone. Somewhat corroborating his story is that his hunting companions would also later report having seen strange lights in the area at the time.
From 1967 we have an equally harrowing encounter, this time from the vicinity of town of Ririe, Idaho. On November 2, 1967, two Native American boys by the names of Guy Tossie and Will Begay were driving south on Highway 26 when they claim to have seen a small, glowing domed object appear in front of them in a flash of light, about eight feet wide and with humanoid entities of some sort observed within the transparent dome. As the two witnesses looked on in astonishment, their car suddenly came to a stop, the engine dying for no reason, after which the dome of the bizarre craft opened as if on hinges. After this, one of the entities within exited and floated to the ground as if defying gravity, and at this point the witnesses could see that it was only about 3 feet tall, with large black eyes and a hairless head.
This creature then apparently walked right up to their car and let itself in, taking a seat behind the wheel while pushing them out of its way, after which the car began to move forward towards the UFO, which was still hovering there about 5 feet over the road. The car then veered off-road into a field of wheat as the object followed it, the terrified witnesses unable to really comprehend what was going on. When the car rolled to a stop in the field, Tossie made a run for it, heading for the farmhouse of a local farmer named Willard Hammon. The whole way he was followed by the UFO, but it gave up and headed back to the car, where Begay was still with that enigmatic being at the wheel. The creature apparently turned to him to spew forth a barrage of unintelligible sounds “like a bird,” perhaps upset that Tossie had escaped, and then left the car to go floating back up to the waiting craft, which sped off in a zigzag path.
Tossie would later bring the farmer back to his friend, and they would both file a report with the police. Although authorities at first didn’t put much stock in the story, they would find several other witnesses who described seeing strange lights in the sky and their livestock acting bizarrely. Both of the witnesses would insist that these aliens had been trying to abduct them, and that Tossie’s break for freedom had probably saved them from an inscrutable fate. Coming to 1973 we have the od case of Lyndia Morel, who was a masseuse at the Swedish Sauna in Manchester, New Hampshire. On the evening of November 2, she finished a late shift at 2:45 AM and headed towards her home in nearby Goffstown, about eight miles west of Manchester. As she drove, she intermittently saw a strange light in the sky that flashed between yellow, blue, and green colors, but she at first thought it was either an aircraft or a planet. However, it kept blinking and moving about, appearing to get brighter as she drove along. At one point, it appeared right in front of her, so close that she could se that it was a glowing orb covered in hexagonal shapes “like a honeycomb.” At this point, her head was filled with a high-pitched squeal, and she found that she could not remove her hands from her steering wheel, even as her car began moving by itself towards the object. She could see through a window on the side of the object “a smallish humanoid figure standing behind a console of some sort,” which seemed to be trying to send her a telepathic message to calm down and not be afraid. She started to feel a sense of calm come over her, a sleepiness that she couldn’t resist.
It seems that she then suddenly snapped out of a sense of calm that had come over her and managed to regain control of her car, veering off to go speeding off towards a nearby house. She would stop the car and run to the residence to pound on the door even as the UFO hovered nearby as if watching her, that high pitched shriek still assailing her ears. When the residents of the house opened the door and saw the terrified woman, they let her in and called police. It was at this time that the mysterious craft gave up trying to get her and disappeared into the night.
A very spectacular case which may or not have been an attempted abduction, but which still seems worth mentioning, is that of an incident that allegedly went down at the Alsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota in 1977. On November 16 of that year, a security alarm was received at the base, which resulted in an A-1C Jenkins & A-1C Raeke dispatched to investigate the disturbance. When the two arrived at the location of the alarm, they spotted a bright light hovering over the fence line, and Raeke went to investigate. As he climbed a low hill towards the light, he then saw “an individual dressed in a glowing, green metallic uniform and wearing a helmet with visor,” who Raeke commanded to halt and surrender. The trespasser apparently ignored these commands, upon which Raeke aimed his M-16 and once again ordered the strange to stop. This entity then pointed some sort of object at Raeke and a beam of light allegedly struck the M-16 to disintegrate it and severely burn the airman’s hands.
This was an unambiguous sign of aggression, with Raeke taking cover and radioing for backup, and Jenkins soon came to his aid. Jenkins would see two further figures approaching, and he too ordered them to stop, but they came right towards them, prompting him to fire off two rounds from his own weapon. One of the bullets allegedly struck one of the intruders in the chest, while another hit its companion in the helmet, but this did not stop them. One of the figures emitted a beam from an object in its hand, which Jenkins dodged while taking cover. The two intruders then moved off and could be seen getting into a disc-shaped object measuring around 20 feet in diameter, after which they sped off. Raeke would later be found to have suffered second and third degree burns to his hands, as well as levels of radiation found on his person.
A more recent case was given to me personally by a witness who does not want to be named. This individual told me of a surreal experience that started off as just a night drive home from work one evening in an unspecified rural area of California. The story follows some familiar beats with this sort of case, with the car’s radio going haywire and the engine dying. It was at this point he saw a glowing disk around 50 feet in diameter bloom out of the night, and simultaneously felt numbed and paralyzed. He says there was a flash of light, after which he found himself inexplicably outside of his car in the desert night, with two large-headed entities dragging him towards the object. At this point, things would get very odd. He says:
One of these things was doing most of the dragging while the other had some sort of device trained on me. I had the suspicion that this was what was keeping me paralyzed and under control, and then something funny happened. I suddenly felt sensation returning to my limbs, and this creature looked surprised. It then started inspecting its device, and I kid you not, actually smacked its hand against it like you might do with a wonky remote control. I used this moment to kick out at them, knocking one to the ground, and I ran back to my car. The two creatures then seem to have given up. They just looked at me, went into their UFO, and sped off into the night. Although I was terrified at the time, in retrospect it is kind of funny that an alien should have an equipment malfunction like that.
Although the witness in this case provided me with the details very seriously, it is unknown how much veracity it has, and all attempts to get more information have failed. Nevertheless, it seems to belong here, and the thought of an alien having its equipment malfunction is too good to pass up. All of the cases such as these and others like them serve to show that these alien entities might not be as infallible as they are made out to be. Perhaps they are just as lost and at the whims of the fates as any of us, and that is perhaps a comforting thought the next time strange entities come for you in the night.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 27 - 07 - 2021
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Did the US Air Force actually build a flying saucer?
Did the US Air Force actually build a flying saucer?
Project 1794 is from the early 50’s, by the United States Air Force and AVRO Aircraft. It used to be secret, but in 2012 the information has been declassified. I was really hyped when I found these two reports online at the National Archives, placed a link on my IFO site so that others could find it, but it didn’t really get picked up. Kind of understand why: on the National Archives these pictures are not that easy to view, and they didn’t color correct the scans. The video I made here is in 4K, so you can read all the pages clearly. (more than 200 pages!)
So yes; a flying saucer! This was serious research, about how to build a real flying saucer, not a UFO of course, but disc shaped aircraft called: Silverbug, Y-2, and the prototype P.V. 704.
They were designed to be VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) fly supersonic and at extremely high altitudes. Up to Mach 3+ and a 100,000 feet. These specifications are not of a jet fighter. When flying this high and fast, think instead of what has been build in the 60’s: the Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird”.
The 2 original reports can be found at “the National Archives”.
We've entered an exciting new era in the hunt for aliens.
Jupiter's ocean-harboring moon, Europa, imaged here by NASA's Galileo spacecraft, is widely regarded as one of the solar system's best bets to host alien life.
The desire to know our place in the universe is a core human yearning, and people have pondered the question for thousands of years. Indeed, hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, Greek philosophers such as Anaximander and Epicurus speculated that the cosmos is teeming with planets, many of which may support life.
We couldn't move beyond mere speculation for a very long time, however — until we invented telescopes and developed a proper understanding of the scientific method. Humanity notched both of those milestones centuries ago, and scientists are now going great guns in the search for alien life.
Well, "going great guns" is a bit of an overstatement. But we've made considerable progress, especially in the last decade or so, and some big discoveries may be coming soon. Let's take a brief look at where the hunt for ET has been and where it's headed.
The "cosmic pluralism" theory espoused by Anaximander, Epicurus and their followers didn't take off, unfortunately; it was quashed by the ideas of heavyweights like Plato and Aristotle, who held that Earth is unique.
This latter view aligned nicely with the Christian doctrine that came to dominate Europe throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. So, for a very long time, it was considered strange and was often downright dangerous to hypothesize the existence of life-supporting worlds beyond our own.
The pendulum began swinging back the other way in the 16th century with the dawn of the Copernican Revolution.
"Once it was realized that all the planets go around the sun, it was not hard to imagine that the other planets could be like Earth," then-NASA Chief Historian Steven Dick told writer Michael Schirber back in 2009.
That momentum built as intellectual giants like Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton continued fleshing out how our solar system works, efforts that reached a near fever pitch during the Enlightenment.
In the 17th century, for example, Czech astronomer Anton Schyrleus considered what creatures on Jupiter might look like. And in the waning years of the 18th century, William Herschel, who discovered both Uranus and the existence of infrared light, postulated that life was widespread throughout the solar system — including on the surface of the sun. (Herschel thought the sun was a giant planet.)
Around this same time, scientists began thinking about how to communicate with our putative cosmic neighbors. One of the pioneers in this nascent field of messaging extraterrestrial intelligence (METI) was the famed German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. In the early 1800s, Gauss proposed carving huge geometric shapes into the Siberian forest to show "lunarians" living on the moon that we're here and know how to do some math.
At the same time, Austrian astronomer Joseph Johann von Littrow suggested digging giant trenches in the Sahara Desert, filling the ditches with water and topping that liquid layer with kerosene. The kerosene would then be lit, producing a fiery signal that would hopefully catch the eye of any aliens keeping tabs on Earth.
These particular ideas were never carried out. But a century later, scientists did start putting some of this alien-hunting talk into action.
One of the first actual life-searching projects took place in August 1924, when a team of scientists led by astronomer David Peck Todd used an airship to loft a radio receiver several miles above the ground — a good spot, it was thought, to listen for messages from creatures on Mars, which was making a particularly close approach to Earth at the time.
But the concerted search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) didn't really kick off until 1960. In that year, Cornell University astronomer Frank Drake used a radio telescope in West Virginia to listen for signals coming from the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. Called Project Ozma, this effort incorporated ideas from a seminal 1959 paper by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison.
Scientists have been scanning the heavens for "technosignatures" ever since then. Initially, they focused almost exclusively on radio signals, but flashes of light are in play now as well; these are the targets of increasingly common "optical SETI" efforts.
SETI scientists have to keep an open mind; after all, we don't know what sorts of messages an advanced alien civilization might beam out. So, astronomers in the field generally look for signals that appear weird and artificial, something coming from deep space that isn't produced by any known natural astrophysical phenomenon.
It would also be nice if the signal recurs, so it can be studied repeatedly and in detail. One-offs can remain forever and frustratingly mysterious, as 1977's famous "Wow!" signal shows. In that case, a radio dish operated by The Ohio State University picked up something so intriguing that astronomer Jerry Ehman wrote "Wow!" on the data printout. Researchers scoured that same patch of sky again and again, hoping to get another ping, but they never did.
The SETI hunt, it should be noted, has historically been a shoestring operation; finding enough money to keep the telescopes running has been a consistent problem. The U.S. Congress axed a planned NASA SETI project in 1993, and ever since then, ET hunters have mostly had to turn to the private sector for cash.
Without steady funding, progress was slow for several years. But private money has flowed more freely into the SETI field recently. Most of it comes from one man: tech billionaire Yuri Milner. Passionate about the search for alien life, Milner established an ambitious program in 2015 called Breakthrough Initiatives to seek out extraterrestrials.
Among the projects under the Breakthrough umbrella are the $100 million Breakthrough Listen SETI campaign and the $100 million Breakthrough Starshot, which aims to develop the technology required to send tiny robotic probes to nearby exoplanet systems at about 20% the speed of light.
There's also Breakthrough Message, which aims to both help humanity craft the best possible message to send out into the cosmos and encourage debate and conversation about SETI in general.
And there is considerable debate within the scientific community about SETI.
Some people, including the late physicist Stephen Hawking, have argued that it's unwise to advertise our presence to aliens, whose nature and intent are complete mysteries to us; these creatures may pillage our planet after picking up our ping, after all. But other researchers think any creatures advanced enough to travel to Earth to enslave or eat us would already know we're here anyway.
Breakthrough Message pledges not to actually broadcast any SETI signals until this debate has played itself out. But humanity has already beamed out messages on multiple occasions, most famously in 1974 with the Arecibo message. And those are just the intentional, directed missives; we're leaking radio signals in all directions at all times, providing cosmic bread crumbs for anyone close enough to find them.
Around the same time that SETI was getting off the ground, planetary scientists began getting their first good looks at alien worlds.
In 1964, Mariner 4 flew by Mars, returning the first up-close images of the Red Planet. Those photos revealed a dry, heavily cratered and seemingly desolate world, forcing many scientists to recalibrate previously optimistic notions of Mars' habitability. (Hopes of a life-supporting Mars had been famously stoked around the turn of the 19th century by astronomer Percival Lowell, who claimed that channels on the planet were actually canals built by intelligent creatures.)
But the optimists got some good news in 1969, after Mariner 9 arrived in orbit around Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to circle another planet in the process. This probe spotted river channels and other evidence of past liquid-water activity on the Martian surface. These discoveries helped spur NASA to develop two ambitious life-hunting Mars missions, Viking 1 and 2, which launched a few weeks apart in 1975.
The identical Viking landers each carried four biology experiments, which hunted for signs of microbial life in the red dirt. One of those experiments, called Labeled Release (LR), returned data consistent with evidence of microbial life. Indeed, LR principal investigator Gil Levin argued (and continues to argue today) that the Vikings found evidence of Mars life. However, most scientists who studied the data disagreed with Levin, determining that the data could be explained by abiotic (non-life-based) chemical reactions.
The Viking results taught NASA and astrobiologists some valuable lessons — chiefly, that they didn't know enough about Mars to mount a proper life hunt there. So, the space agency eventually embarked on a long-term "follow the water" exploration strategy, seeking to learn more about ancient environmental conditions on the Red Planet and how they changed over time.
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has been exploring Gale Crater since August 2012. The six-wheeled robot captured this selfie in front of a rock outcrop named Mont Mercou in March 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
This strategy gave us many prominent Mars missions over the past few decades, including the orbiters Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN); the rovers Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity; and the Phoenix lander.
These robotic explorers did their jobs well, finding lots of evidence that ancient Mars was quite wet and helping scientists better understand why, how and when the Red Planet transitioned to the frigid desert world it is today. Curiosity has taken this work the furthest, finding that its landing site, the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater, hosted a long-lived lake-and-stream system billions of years ago that could have supported Earth-like life.
Meanwhile, some scientists continued the hunt for Mars life, focusing on aliens that may have fallen fortuitously to Earth. Over the eons, billions of Red Planet rocks have made their way here, after being blasted into space by powerful asteroid or comet impacts. A lot of Earth material has ended up on Mars as well, but the ledger is decidedly unbalanced; the sun's powerful gravity pulls more stuff inward, toward Earth. (This extensive rock-swapping, by the way, has led some scientists to postulate that life actually arose first on Mars, then made its way to Earth later.)
In 1996, researchers announced that they'd found potential signs of life in one such Mars meteorite, known as Allan Hills 84001 (ALH84001). It was a very big deal; the result was published in the prestigious journal Science, and President Bill Clinton held a press conference about the news on the White House lawn.
The ALH84001 story ended up going down a Viking path. Other scientists picked at the claim, and a consensus emerged that the meteorite evidence was ambiguous at best. But, like Levin, the ALH84001 team held firm in its findings, and continues to do so today.
THE OCEAN MOONS
NASA and the broader exploration community weren't focused solely on Mars for all these years, of course. The Cassini-Huygens mission, which ended in September 2017, transformed scientists' understanding of the Saturn system and our solar system's potential to host alien life. That mission found that Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has a hydrocarbon-based weather system and that the frigid moon's surface harbors lakes and seas of liquid ethane and methane. Life could swim around in these seas, though it would have to be very different than the life we know here on Earth.
And the Cassini orbiter spotted geysers blasting from the south pole of another Saturn moon, the ice-covered Enceladus. This discovery, and other Cassini observations, revealed that Enceladus harbors a big ocean of salty liquid water beneath its shell.
The geysers produce a huge plume of water ice and other material, a cloud so substantial that it creates Saturn's E ring. Cassini flew through this plume on multiple occasions, gathering samples that scientists analyzed for clues about the moon's subsurface environment. The researchers found carbon-containing organic compounds and free hydrogen, the latter of which suggests the existence of a hydrothermal system in Enceladus' buried ocean. Undersea hydrothermal vents are one popularly invoked environment for the origin of life on Earth. (Cassini didn't look for signs of life in this plume material; the spacecraft wasn't equipped to do so, because nobody knew about the plume before that mission launched.)
Buried oceans are relatively common in the outer solar system, scientists have come to realize. Multiple ice-covered Jupiter moons seem to have these oceans — Ganymede, Callisto and, most intriguingly, Europa. Europa's huge subsurface sea seems to be in contact with the moon's rocky core, like the ocean of Enceladus is, making possible a range of complex chemical reactions that could theoretically have led to life. (Scientists think the oceans of Ganymede and Callisto are more boring, sandwiched between layers of ice.)
Titan seems to have a buried ocean of salty water as well, meaning the moon likely has two very different potentially habitable environments. Observations by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft indicate that liquid water may slosh beneath Pluto's surface, too.
And the list goes on. Indeed, the abundance of water worlds in the outer solar system suggests that looking for "Earth 2.0" may not be the best life-hunting strategy; most of the habitable real estate in the cosmos may be buried under ice.
These revelations about our celestial backyard have come in parallel with big news about the cosmos at large. Over the past decade or so, we have learned that our Milky Way galaxy is teeming with potentially life-supporting worlds, as Anaximander and Epicurus surmised so many centuries ago.
Much of this knowledge comes courtesy of NASA's pioneering Kepler space telescope, which operated from 2009 through November 2018. Kepler is responsible for nearly two-thirds of the 4,400 confirmed exoplanet discoveries to date, and mission data reveal that planets outnumber stars in our galaxy.
Many of those planets might bear more than a passing resemblance to Earth. Kepler found that at least 20% of Milky Way stars probably host rocky planets in their habitable zones, the just-right range of orbital distances where liquid water could persist on a world's surface.
Some of these potentially habitable worlds are just a stone's throw away in the cosmic scheme of things. For example, the nearest star to the sun — Proxima Centauri, which is about 4.2 light-years away from us — hosts a roughly Earth-size planet in the habitable zone. (This world, called Proxima b, is a prime Breakthrough Starshot target.) And the TRAPPIST-1 system, which lies 39 light-years from us, boasts seven rocky worlds, three of which may be capable of supporting life as we know it.
However, both Proxima Centauri and TRAPPIST-1 are red dwarfs, like 70% of the Milky Way's stellar population. Red dwarfs are small but very active stars, and their intense flaring may severely dampen their planets' habitability.
Kepler's legacy is being carried on by other exoplanet missions, such as NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is expected to find thousands more alien worlds circling nearby stars, and ESA's CHEOPS probe, which aims to characterize some of these neighboring worlds.
The avalanche of exoplanet discoveries, as well as finds much closer to home, have brought astrobiology from the scientific fringe firmly into the mainstream. NASA is openly prioritizing the search for alien life these days, as some current and coming missions show.
In July 2020, for example, the agency launched the Perseverance rover, which landed in February 2021 to hunt for signs of ancient Mars life and collect samples for eventual return to Earth. Finding evidence of long-dead microbes is expected to be a very tricky task, one ideally carried out by teams of scientists in well-equipped labs studying pristine pieces of Mars specifically selected for their life-preserving potential. (The European Space Agency had planned to launch its own life-hunting Mars rover, called Rosalind Franklin, in July 2020 as well, but technical issues pushed the launch back to the next window, the fall of 2022.)
In 2024, NASA's Europa Clipper mission is scheduled to launch toward the Jupiter system. Clipper will orbit the gas giant but make dozens of flybys of Europa, characterizing the moon's subsurface ocean and scouting out good touchdown sites for a future life-hunting lander, among other tasks.
And in 2027, NASA plans to launch Dragonfly, a probe that will fly through Titan's thick, smoggy skies. Dragonfly's main goals involve investigating the complex chemistry that could set the stage for life's emergence and assessing Titan's habitability, but the rotorcraft will also search for biosignatures.
The agency will also soon start hunting for aliens much farther afield. NASA's $9.7 billion James Webb Space Telescope, the oft-delayed successor to the iconic Hubble Space Telescope, is scheduled to launch in late 2021.
One of the many things the powerful new telescope will do once aloft is probe the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets for potential biosignatures — gases such as oxygen and methane, whose simultaneous presence in a world's air would provide a strong case for life.
Three highly anticipated megascopes will begin doing similar work from the ground in the mid- to late 2020s, if all goes according to plan. The Giant Magellan Telescope and the Extremely Large Telescope will do their observing from the mountains of Chile, whereas the Thirty Meter Telescope will sit atop Hawaii's Maunakea volcano, if the telescope team and the local community can come to an agreement.Controversy over giant telescope roils astronomy conference in Hawaii
SETI activities may ramp up considerably soon, too, and not just because of Breakthrough Listen. The biggest radio telescope ever built, China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), came fully online in early 2020, and searching for technosignatures is one of its many charges.
This is just a partial list of the coming life-hunting activities, of course. And the full list may eventually become gloriously ungainly, thanks to the continuing drop in the cost of building and launching spacecraft. This trend could eventually make astrobiology missions feasible for a variety of interested parties, from university groups to private citizens. Indeed, Milner has already mused about launching a life-hunting mission to Enceladus or Europa.
Some of this alien searching will continue to occur in Earth-based studies, and it won't just involve inspection of Mars meteorites. There's an ongoing search for a "shadow biosphere" on our planet — an entire tree of life separate from the one that includes bacteria, bats, birds and everything else we currently recognize as alive.
This pursuit isn't so crazy if you think about it. After all, life appeared on Earth about 4 billion years ago — very quickly, considering that our planet formed just 4.5 billion years ago and remained hot and inhospitable for a long time thereafter. So, life's emergence doesn't seem miraculous, which, in turn, implies that it could have happened here more than once.
Given the incredible abundance of potentially habitable real estate — and that's just for Earth-like life, to say nothing of the environments that could support "strange life" of various types — why haven't we found ET yet?
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi famously posed this question in 1950, specifically referring to intelligent aliens. Seven decades later, the answer to the Fermi paradox remains elusive.
"Answers" is probably a better formulation, however, because multiple factors are probably working together to keep us from finding intelligent aliens. Among the foremost is the vastness of space, which makes it difficult for two civilizations to touch base. Consider: Proxima b is just 4.2 light-years away, in a galaxy 100,000 light-years wide. But 4.2 light-years is about 26 trillion miles (42 trillion km), an expanse that would take humanity's current spacecraft tens of thousands of years to cross.
Contact with intelligent aliens would require temporal and temperamental alignments as well; their civilization would have to rise in sync with ours, no mean feat in a universe that's 13.82 billion years old. And ET would have to want to reach out. That's no given, either; there are many reasons some aliens may want to keep quiet, as the METI pessimists have pointed out.
Or maybe intelligence is rare throughout the cosmos, even if life isn't. Earth has been inhabited for about 4 billion years, after all, but we've been sending out radio waves for just a century or so and launching spacecraft only since 1957. And it's tough to find faraway microbes, which presumably have not yet invented the radio.
Our technological youth may be the biggest factor of all: We've just begun the search for our cosmic neighbors, after all. And that search has mostly been halting and haphazard, conducted by small teams of dedicated researchers who've had to scrounge money to keep the lights on.
But that's changing, as the exciting new missions and instruments currently in development show. So we may start getting some answers very soon.
Evidence of ancient life on Mars has been ‘erased’, scientists say, as Nasa’s Curiosity rover has found parts of the Red Planet’s rock record has been removed.
Mars has a huge number of ancient rocks and mineralscompared with the Earth, and in order to try and gather more knowledge about the history of the planet scientists sent Curiosity into Mars’ Gale Crater.
The crater has been dried out for billions of years, and scientists have evidence that supersalty water (brines) seeped through the cracks in the lake bottom and altered the minerals below it.
Using the CheMin (Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction) tool, scientists compared samples taken from two areas approximately 400 meters from each other. Surprisingly, they discovered that half of the clay minerals they expected to find in one area were missing; they were replaced with mudstones rich with iron oxides, which give Mars is red colour.
It is likely that the briny water filtered through overlaying sediment layers is the reason why the rock record has disappeared. The salty water likely originated from lakes that existed when Mars was drier, unlike the freshwater lakes which would have been present when the mudstones formed.
“We used to think that once these layers of clay minerals formed at the bottom of the lake in Gale Crater, they stayed that way, preserving the moment in time they formed for billions of years,” said Tom Bristow, CheMin principal investigator at Nasa’s Ames Research Center, in a statement. “But later brines broke down these clay minerals in some places – essentially resetting the rock record.”
Scientists believe these results show the impacts of Mars’ climate change, which took place eons ago. Nasa already knew that before Gale Crater’s lakes dried out its groundwater had moved beneath the surface, dissolving and hiding chemicals that scientists could study.
After these minerals were deposited the mudstone changed due to interactions with them in a process known as “diagenesis,” which complicates or erases scientists’ ability to understand the soil’s previous history. This also, however, creates an underground experience that could support microbial life – known on Earth as “deep biospheres”.
“These are excellent places to look for evidence of ancient life and gauge habitability,” said John Grotzinger, CheMin co-investigator at the California Institute of Technology. “Even though diagenesis may erase the signs of life in the original lake, it creates the chemical gradients necessary to support subsurface life, so we are really excited to have discovered this.”
The scientists said they were fortunate to be able to find both mudstones so close together, as they can use minerology to tell which part of the Martian rock will illuminate our search for alien life and which will not.
Amateur Astronomer Discovers New Moon Orbiting Jupiter
Amateur Astronomer Discovers New Moon Orbiting Jupiter
Kai Ly spotted the unnamed satellite using telescope images from 2003
Jupiter and its largest moon Ganymede are shown in this image. Ganymede is slightly larger than the planet Mercury. Meanwhile, Jupiter's new 80th moon is much smaller, likely only a few dozen miles in diameter. (NASA, ESA, and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona))
Amateur astronomer Kai Ly is on a roll. They rediscovered four “lost” Jupiter moons last year. Now, Ly has located a previously unknown moon orbiting the biggest planet in our solar system.
“I’m proud to say that this is the first planetary moon discovered by an amateur astronomer!” they posted June 30 in a message at the Minor Planet Mailing List (MPML), an online community of the world’s leading amateur astronomers.
Using old telescope images, Ly was able spot the unnamed satellite orbiting Jupiter, which is nearly 385 million miles from Earth. The distant planet has at least 79 moons—now 80—some so small and indistinct they can only be detected by a large telescope one month of the year. (Ly posted their data visuals in Imgur.)
To locate this satellite, Ly scoured images taken by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in 2003, reports Jeff Hecht of Sky & Telescope. This dataset was the same one they used to find the four “lost” moons last year. The barely discernable satellites disappeared from view until Ly was able replot their trajectories and identify them on the images.
The amateur astronomer found the missing moons in the Carme cluster, a group of 22 space rocks with similar orbits, reports Doris Elin Urrutia at Space.com. With an average radius of 14 miles, Carme is the largest of these satellites, which NASA scientists suspect was an asteroid that broke apart into smaller parts.
This group is also where the new moon was found. (The finding was submitted to scientific journals, but has not yet been published.) Ly observed an object originally spotted by NASA in 2003 and thought it was a satellite. Ly calculated its 22-day arc using data from another observatory, the Subaru Telescope, to verify the object was in fact a moon orbiting Jupiter, reports Aubrey Clarke for The Science Times.
A dozen new moons were discovered orbiting Jupiter in 2018. The latest find would add another satellite to the Carme group. (Carnegie Inst. for Science / Roberto Molar Candanosa)
“In the end, I measured a total of 76 observations spanning an arc of 15.26 years (5,575 days),” Ly writes in the MPML message. “The orbit of this Jovian moon is now well-secured for decades to come, so I hereby present to you: Jupiter’s 80th moon, EJc0061 = S/2003 J 24 (provisional designation pending)!”
Another amateur stargazer Sam Deen tells is “quite impressed” with Ly’s discovery, which was made possible because observatories post data online for everyone to see and use. “The main obstacle is just getting to know what you’re doing and having the tolerance to go looking through the data for hours before turning up anything worthwhile,” Deen tells Sky & Telescope.
Ly describes their search as “a summer hobby before I return to school,” they tell Sky & Telescope. They plan to review more images in hopes of making another discovery.
“I will continue my hunt for unidentified Jovian moons in the February 2003 dataset, so stay tuned for additional Jovian moon discoveries by me in the next coming months!” Ly writes at MPML.
NASA FINALLY KNOWS WHAT IS BENEATH THE SURFACE OF MARS
NASA FINALLY KNOWS WHAT IS BENEATH THE SURFACE OF MARS
“The fact that we recorded it confirmed that the core is liquid.”
IF YOU’VE EVER TAKEN a planetary science course, or maybe just cracked open a book on the Solar System, you may have seen diagrams of the internal structure of the planets, showing their crusts, mantles, and cores.
What you may not realize, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory geophysicist Mark Panning tells Inverse, is that those diagrams “are cartoons and guesses,” based on gravitational measurements. The only planet whose structure scientists actually understand in detail is Earth.
We know the innards of Earth through seismology measurements — something that hasn’t been available for other planets. Until recently, this was true: According to a trioofpapers published Thursday in Science, researchers can finally confirm Mars has a large liquid metal core.
Panning is the JPL project scientist for the NASA InSight mission, which landed a seismometer on the Red Planet in 2018 and has been recording Marsquakes ever since. NASA's InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) lander was designed to reveal the inner structure of Mars through seismological and thermal readings taken from a landing site on Elysium Planitia, a plain along the Martian equator.
Panning and colleagues used InSight seismometer data to establish the thickness and possible structure of the Martian crust, the temperature of the planet’s mantle and make the first direct seismological confirmation of Mars’ core.
“This goes from cartoons to our actually knowing what the inside looks like,” he says.
WHAT’S NEW
In the study of Martian crust, researchers used readings of two kinds of seismic waves — P-waves and S-waves — to determine the potential structure and thickness of the crust.
P-waves are faster than S-waves, Panning says, and measuring the difference in their arrival times at the InSight seismometer allows researchers to locate a Marsquake.
Importantly, when a P-wave crosses a physical transition, such as from the mantel to the crust, “most of the energy continues on as a P-wave, but a little bit gets turned into an S-wave,” Panning says. Measuring the difference in timing of those two waves tells researchers when the waves have crossed a layer.
This region of Mars is called Cerberus Fossae. This is where the two largest quakes detected by InSight likely originated. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
The researchers saw three “bumps” in the resulting data that can be explained equally well by two models.
In one model, the crust beneath InSight has two layers and is about 20 kilometers thick. In the other, the crust has three layers and is about 39 kilometers thick.
Extrapolated across the planet, this suggests the Martian crust averages between 24 and 72 kilometers thick, and “both of those are actually on the thin end of our pre-mission expectations,” Panning says. Some models had previously put the crust at 100 kilometers thick.
Meanwhile, the study examining Mars’s mantle found the structure looked at seismic waves bouncing off the surface multiple times to arrive later than P- and S-waves, Panning says, and measured their velocity to understand the consistency and temperature of the mantle.
“In order to match the velocities we observed, you have to keep the mantle relatively cool compared to the range of models we considered before we had data,” he said.
The findings mesh with the results of the crustal study since a hotter mantle under a thinner crust would result in more volcanism than is seen on Mars today, Panning added. The cooler mantle observations also drove the researchers’ estimate that the Martian crust is richer in heat-producing radioactive elements — by a factor of 13 to 20 — than the mantle.
The Martian core study used ScS waves — S-waves bouncing off the core — to define the core’s radius of around 1,800 kilometers while also confirming gravity measurements that suggested the core was liquid.
“A solid core would not have produced a strong enough reflection for us to have seen it,” Panning says. “The fact that we recorded it confirmed that the core is liquid.”
HOW THEY DID IT
The core measurements were the most difficult to obtain, Panning says, and scientists needed multiple measurements to confirm the tiny ScS-waves were real.
“None of these events are big. The biggest event we’re looking at is maybe a magnitude 3.8,” he says. “That’s a size that in California where I am, there’s a really good chance you wouldn’t even feel it, depending on how close you are.”
The measurements were made possible first by the extreme sensitivity of the seismometer, which Panning says can measure vibrations on the scale of a hydrogen atom, but also due to the measurements being done on a dry planet like Mars.
“On Earth, there’s always seismic noise that a seismometer records the oceans drive that,” he says. “Our seismometer on Mars is probably two orders of magnitude quieter than the best station on earth.”
WHY IT MATTERS
Earth is really why research on the deep interior of Mars matters.
Earth is a rocky planet, as are Mercury, Venus, and Mars, and understanding the formation and evolution of other rocky planets is key to understanding the one we call home.
“If you want to be a doctor and you only study one patient, you’re not going to be a very good doctor,” Panning says.
WHAT’S NEXT
The next steps for Panning’s team will be to dig deeper into the data they have now, but with InSight scheduled to keep operating into 2022, they are also continuing to record Marsquakes.
If they get lucky enough to measure some quakes at different ranges than their current measurements, it might even allow them to resolve whether the two or three-layer model of the Martian is correct.
“The story is not over,” he says. “We have to wait and see.”
Martian Crust Study abstract:
A planet’s crust bears witness to the history of planetary formation and evolution, but for Mars, no absolute measurement of crustal thickness has been available. Here, we determine the structure of the crust beneath the InSight landing site on Mars using both marsquake recordings and the ambient wave field. By analyzing seismic phases that are reflected and converted at subsurface interfaces, we find that the observations are consistent with models with at least two and possibly three interfaces. If the second interface is the boundary of the crust, the thickness is 20 ± 5 kilometers, whereas if the third interface is the boundary, the thickness is 39 ± 8 kilometers. Global maps of gravity and topography allow extrapolation of this point measurement to the whole planet, showing that the average thickness of the martian crust lies between 24 and72 kilometers. Independent bulk composition and geodynamic constraints show that the thicker model is consistent with the abundances of crustal heat-producing elements observed for the shallow surface, whereas the thinner model requires greater concentration at depth.
Martian Mantle Study abstract:
For 2 years, the InSight lander has been recording seismic data on Mars that are vital to constrain the structure and thermochemical state of the planet. We used observations of direct (PandS) and surface-reflected(PP, PPP, SS, andSSS) body-wave phases from eight low-frequency marsquakes to constrain the interior structure to a depth of 800kilometers. We found a structure compatible with a low-velocity zone associated with a thermal lithosphere much thicker than on Earth that is possibly related to a weak S-wave shadow zone at teleseismic distances. By combining the seismic constraints with geodynamic models, we predict that, relative to the primitive mantle, the crust is more enriched in heat-producing elements by a factor of 13 to20. This enrichment is greater than suggested by gamma-ray surface mapping and has a moderate-to-elevated surface heat flow.
Martian Core Study abstract:
Clues to a planet’s geologic history are contained in its interior structure, particularly its core. We detected reflections of seismic waves from the core-mantle boundary of Mars using InSight seismic data and inverted these together with geodetic data to constrain the radius of the liquid metal core to 1830 ±40 kilometers. The large core implies a martian mantle mineralogically similar to the terrestrial upper mantle and transition zone but differing from Earth by not having a bridgmanite-dominated lower mantle. We inferred a mean core density of 5.7 to 6.3 grams per cubic centimeter, which requires a substantial complement of light elements dissolved in the iron-nickel core. The seismic core shadow as seen from InSight’s location covers half the surface of Mars, including the majority of potentially active regions—e.g., Tharsis—possibly limiting the number of detectable marsquakes.
NASA investigates renaming James Webb telescope after anti-LGBT+ claims
NASA investigates renaming James Webb telescope after anti-LGBT+ claims
Some astronomers argue the flagship observatory — successor to the Hubble Space Telescope — will memorialize discrimination. Others are waiting for more evidence.
The James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch this year.
Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
NASA is considering whether to rename its flagship astronomical observatory, given reports alleging that James Webb, after whom it is named, was involved in persecuting gay and lesbian people during his career in government. Keeping his name on the US$8.8-billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — set to launch later this year — would glorify bigotry and anti-LGBT+ sentiment, say some astronomers. But others say there is not yet enough evidence against Webb, who was head of NASA from 1961 to 1968, and they are withholding judgement until the agency has finished an internal investigation.
The JWST, which will peer into the distant reaches of the cosmos, is NASA’s biggest astronomical project in decades, so the stakes are high. In May, citing Webb’s purported involvement in discrimination, four prominent astronomers launched a petition to change the telescope’s name. It has amassed 1,250 signatories, including scientists who have been awarded observing time on the telescope.
Coronavirus pandemic threatens launch of world's most-expensive telescope
NASA’s acting chief historian, Brian Odom, is working with a non-agency historian to review archival documents about Webb’s policies and actions, according to agency officials. Only after the investigation concludes will NASA decide what to do.
“We must make a conscious decision,” Paul Hertz, head of NASA’s astrophysics division, told an agency advisory committee on 29 June. “We must be transparent with the community and with the public for the rationale for whichever decision we make.”
Searching the archives
Former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe named the JWST after Webb in 2002, when the telescope was in the early stages of development. It was a unilateral decision that took many by surprise, because NASA’s telescopes are typically named after scientists. Webb, who died in 1992, was a bureaucrat who held several administrative roles in the US government.
James Webb was NASA's second-ever administrator, running the agency from 1961 to 1968.
Credit: NASA
O’Keefe chose the name because Webb had advocated that NASA keep science as a key part of its portfolio in the 1960s, even as the Apollo programme of human space exploration soaked up most of the agency’s attention and budget. O’Keefe tells Nature he was not aware of the accusations when he picked the name, and he supports keeping it unless more information surfaces. “Without James Webb’s leadership, there may have been no telescope or much of anything else at NASA noteworthy of a naming controversy,” he says.
As Webb was beginning his career with the US government in the late 1940s, gay and lesbian employees were being systematically rooted out and fired because of their sexual orientation — a campaign encouraged by several prominent members of Congress. The period is known as the lavender scare, echoing the anti-Communist ‘red scare’ with which it was often intertwined. During the lavender scare, gay people were cast, untruthfully, as perverts who might be desperate to keep their sexual orientation secret and thus be susceptible to revealing government secrets under blackmail. Its epicentre was the Department of State, which handles foreign policy.
The four astronomers leading the renaming petition say that when Webb worked for the state department in the high-ranking position of undersecretary from 1949 to 1952, he passed a set of memos discussing what was described as “the problem of homosexuals and sex perverts” to a senator who was leading the persecution. They point to records found in the US National Archives by astronomer Adrian Lucy at Columbia University in New York City. “The records clearly show that Webb planned and participated in meetings during which he handed over homophobic material,” the petition leaders wrote earlier this year in an opinion piece in Scientific American.
US astronomers plot wish list for the next decade
The four astronomers are Lucianne Walkowicz at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois; Chanda Prescod-Weinstein at the University of New Hampshire in Durham; Brian Nord at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois; and Sarah Tuttle at the University of Washington in Seattle. “We felt that we should take a public stand on naming such an important facility after someone whose values were so questionable,” they write in an e-mail to Nature. “It’s time for NASA to stand up and be on the right side of history.”
David Johnson, a historian at the University of South Florida in Tampa who wrote the 2004 book The Lavender Scare, says he knows of no evidence that Webb led or instigated persecution. Webb did attend a White House meeting on the threat allegedly posed by gay people, but the context of the meeting was to contain the hysteria that members of Congress were stirring up. “I don't see him as having any sort of leadership role in the lavender scare,” says Johnson.
Walkowicz and their colleagues note that as a leader, Webb bore responsibility for discriminatory policies enacted at his agency. They also note the case of Clifford Norton, who was fired from his job at NASA because he was suspected to be gay in 1963, when Webb was NASA administrator. “We believe the known historical record speaks clearly in favour of renaming the telescope,” they say.
NASA has given no estimate of when its investigation might be complete. Odom says that the COVID-19 pandemic has limited historians’ access to archival records.
A reflection of values
The push to rename the telescope falls into the broader reckoning over naming buildings, facilities and other objects after questionable historical figures. Last year, an aerospace executive began an as-yet unsuccessful effort to rename a NASA centre in Mississippi that is named after John Stennis, a senator who voted repeatedly in favour of racial segregation in the 1960s. In the past year or so, NASA has tried to address past discrimination against Black scientists and against women by naming its Washington DC headquarters after Mary Jackson, the first Black female engineer at the agency, and announcing that the flagship space telescope after the JWST will be named after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first chief astronomer.
Delays mount for NASA’s $8-billion Hubble successor
The JWST debate comes near the end of a long and exhausting push to launch the observatory into space. Originally conceived in 1989 as the successor to the iconic Hubble Space Telescope, the craft is many years and billions of dollars over budget.
To some, the telescope’s potential to transform astronomy makes it even more important that the JWST carry a name that reflects modern values. “For me, it really comes down to what kind of message we want to send to the more junior folks and students in our field,” says Peter Gao, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “The people we choose to celebrate by naming our telescopes after them is a reflection of our values.”
The final decision lies with NASA administrator Bill Nelson, who has not said anything publicly on the matter. There is no clear list of alternative names, although many people have made unofficial suggestions. Walkowicz and the other astronomers who are leading the petition suggest Harriet Tubman, after the formerly enslaved woman who fought to end slavery in the United States in the nineteenth century and used the stars to guide Black people to freedom. Saurabh Jha, an astronomer at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, suggests Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, whose work revolutionized astronomers’ understanding of the composition of the Universe in the early twentieth century.
Hubble telescope spies water raining on distant world
Some astronomers who plan to use the JWST are already thinking about what they will do if the telescope is not renamed. One idea is to acknowledge LGBT+ rights in the acknowledgements sections of papers published using JWST data, says Johanna Teske, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC.
Many are keen to see what the NASA investigation might unearth. “It’s important to look at what happened and what the facts are,” says Rolf Danner, an astronomer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who is chair of the American Astronomical Society’s committee on sexual orientation and gender minorities in astronomy. “And then really ask ourselves — would we make that choice again?”
They will look for evidence of technologies crafted by intelligent alien civilizations.
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
Are there intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations capable of building technologies that can travel between the stars? An international research project is poised to find out.
The Galileo Project, helmed by a multi-institutional team of scientists led by Avi Loeb, a professor of science in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University, will seek and investigate evidence that could represent defunct or still-active "extraterrestrial technological civilizations," or ETCs, project representatives said in a statement released on Monday (July 26).
The project will analyze data from astronomical surveys and telescope observations, and design new algorithms using artificial intelligence (AI), in order to identify potential interstellar travelers, alien-built satellites and unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), according to the statement.
"Science should not reject potential extraterrestrial explanations because of social stigma or cultural preferences that are not conducive to the scientific method of unbiased, empirical inquiry," Loeb said in the statement. "We now must 'dare to look through new telescopes,' both literally and figuratively."
Loeb, who is also director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has previously suggested that the oddball cosmic object 'Oumuamua — which passed by Earth in 2017 and was widely identified as a comet or asteroid — was an example of alien tech. 'Oumuamua was visible only briefly before it continued on its journey to distant stars, and its flattened, cigarlike shape and erratic motion stymied many astrophysicists; Loeb was one of several scientists who proposed that the object could be a type of spacefaring equipment made by extraterrestrials, Live Science previously reported.
"We can only speculate whether 'Oumuamua may be explained by never-seen-before natural explanations, or by stretching our imagination to 'Oumuamua perhaps being an extraterrestrial technological object, similar to a very thin lightsail or communications dish, which would fit the astronomical data rather well," Loeb said.
'Oumuamua was our solar system's first interstellar visitor (that we know of, at least), but that doesn't mean it'll be the last, and one of the Galileo Project's research branches will focus on developing strategies for finding and tracking such objects, from space and from ground-based telescopes. Other project research areas will include searching for small ETC satellites that may be observing Earth, and analysis of UAP sightings.
UAPs — also known as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs — are of particular interest now, following the recent release of an unclassified report by the Pentagon describing UAP sightings by members of the military, Loeb said. Of the 144 UAP sightings between 2004 and 2021 that were documented in the report, just one was identified with "high confidence" — as a deflating balloon. The rest remain unexplained, Live Science reported.
"Rigorously validated" evidence
The Galileo Project, not to be confused with Rice University's Galileo Project (an online resource for information on Galileo Galilei's life and work) likewise takes its name from the pioneering Italian astronomer, who lived from 1564 to 1642. Galileo used telescopes of his own design to observe celestial objects, leading to astonishing discoveries such as lunar craters, Saturn's rings and the four moons of Jupiter, according to a biography by Live Science sister site Space.com.
Galileo's observations and research also confirmed the then-controversial hypothesis of 16th-century astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus: that Earth — and all the solar system's planets — orbited the sun, rather than everything rotating around Earth. Should the Galileo Project discover "rigorously validated scientific evidence of extraterrestrial technology," the impacts would reshape scientists' perception of the cosmos, much as Galileo's discoveries did centuries ago, project representatives wrote in the statement.
Whether or not the Galileo Project will definitively settle the question about intelligent extraterrestrials' existence (and their purported technological prowess) remains to be seen. But actively searching for such physical evidence greatly improves the chances of finding the first examples of alien tech, according to the statement.
As the project's namesake Galileo wrote in "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems" in 1632: "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered — the point is to discover them."
An ancient road as well as the remnants of a dock and structures were found submerged in a lagoon located in Venice, Italy. While there is a lagoon there now, this proves that the location once had some dry land. The discoveries were located in the Treporti channel in the northern part of Venice’s outer lagoon.
A research team conducted sonar scans and archaeological dives in the channel and that’s when they discovered several stones that had an ovoid underside and a smooth upper face that were very similar to Roman basoli which were stones that were used to pave the upper surfaces of ancient roads.
Additionally, they found 12 archaeological structures within a distance of 1,140 meters (3,740 feet). They measured as high as 2.7 meters (9 feet) and 52 meters in length (171 feet) and could have possibly been part of a road-bed. Then they located other structures around 9 meters (30 feet) underneath the road that might have been part of a dock.
Remains of an old dock were found.
They even found the remains of what they believe were several settlements that were located along the ancient road such as bricks, roof tiles, and even pottery.
Based on what they found, the researchers think that the road connected the dock and settlements to several additional roads that connected other towns in the southern portion of the now-lagoon to the northern Roman trading center of Altinum. Although there would have been lots of dry land in that area during that time, there would have also been a decent amount of water – the sea coast would have been on the eastern side of the road while an enclosed waterway would have been on the other side.
As for when the road and settlements were constructed as well as how long they were in use for, the researchers aren’t entirely sure but they are hopeful that radiocarbon dating will help to answer those questions. (A reconstructive photo of the road can be seen here.)
Here, a reconstruction of the Treporti channel road in Roman rimes. The Venice lagoon would have been to the left of the road and to the Adriatic Sea to the right. (Image credit: Antonio Calandriello and Giuseppe D’Acunto/Scientific Reports, doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-92939-w)
(Not the old road found in Venice)
In an email to Live Science, Fantina Madricardo, who is a geophysicist at the Institute of Marine Science (ISMAR) in Venice, stated, “The Venice lagoon formed from the main sea-level rise after the last glaciation, so it’s a long-term process,” adding, “We know that since Roman times — about 2,000 years — that the sea level there rose [up to] two and a half meters [8 feet].”
The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports where it can be read in full.
Figure 1
(A) The study geographical setting in the North-East of Italy with the location of the Grado and Marano Lagoon (in the pink box, Figure A2 in Supplementary Material); (B) The bathymetry of the Venice Lagoon tidal channels and inlets120 and the study area in the northern part of the Venice lagoon. The yellow and green boxes represent the location of Figs. 2 and 6, respectively. Satellite image source: Esri DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, i-cubed, USDA,USGS,AEX,Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, swisstopo, and the GIS User Community, https://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/World_Imagery/MapServer.
Figure 2
The Venice Lagoon and the bathymetry of the tidal channels. High resolution bathymetry of the Treporti Channel (DTM horizontal resolution 0.2 m, vertical exaggeration 5 x). The numbers 1 to 12 indicate the alignment of structures whose properties are summarized in Table 1. The letters a to d identify other structures found in the area. The zoom-in pictures show the detail of some of the archaeological structures: the sites 3, 8–9 and 10 (bottom-right) and the structure a (top-left), with the profiles I–II and III–IV, described in the text. The lower part of the picture represents the bathymetric profile extracted along all identified structures (white dashed line).
Figure 3
Stratigraphy of cores extracted below the archaeological layer under the structures 8 and 9 (Fig. 2) and their position on the bathymetric map.
Figure 4
Upper part. Pictures of material discovered in the Treporti Channel in correspondence to the structure 8–9 (Figs. 2, 3) in 1985: (a) Basoli; (b,c) small amphora; (d) basoli on the seafloor; (e) Dressel 6A type amphora; (f) vase discovered in 1985; Lower part. Pictures extracted from the videos recorded by the divers of the Nucleo Sommozzatori della Polizia di Stato during the shooting of a documentary (see Supplementary Material) in different points along the structure 3, depicted in Fig. 3: (g) about 50 cm × 50 cm cubic stone found close to the flat stones; (h) preserved alignment of flat stones (basoli?); (i) inclined flat stone (basolo?) flanked by square stones in alignment; (j) detail of the square stone flanking the (basolo?).
Figure 5
RSL data points (red dots) extracted from the database by Vacchi et al.47 and their location in the Venice Lagoon plotted as calibrated age against sea level relative to the present. The error bars represent the elevation and age errors.
Figure 6
The position of the paleobeach ridge in the Treporti Channel in Roman Times (in yellow in transparency over the current satellite data) and the alignment of Roman lithic remains and levee road (red dots and lines), buildings (green squares) and brick walls (white pentagons); the map was modified from the Archaeological Map of the Venice Lagoon11. The pink solid line indicates the position of the structures reconstructed by this study (Fig. 2). Satellite image source: Esri DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, i-cubed, USDA,USGS,AEX,Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, swisstopo, and the GIS User Community,
Reconstruction of the Treporti Channel paleobeach ridge and the Treporti Channel road (TC road)in Roman Times: (a) from an aerial perspective, with the Venice lagoon to the left and the Adriatic Sea to the right. The position of the TC road corresponds exactly to the position of the archaeological structures mapped (Fig 2), whereas the extension of the TC paleobeach ridge is only hypothetical since the area has been radically modified over the centuries; (b) a zoom-in view and (c) section of the TC road based on the stratigraphy of the cores extracted under the basoli (Fig. 3).
Figure 8
(Left) Roman road and waterways network in the Augustan Venetia et Histria Regio in the North-East Italy. (Right) zoom on the Venice Lagoon showing the fossa Popilliola in blue (after Dorigo22) and the hypothetical path of the Roman road along the littoral in red, with the TC road segment in purple and the segment reconstructed from Canal11 (Fig. 6, 123), in yellow. Satellite image source: Esri DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, i-cubed, USDA, USGS, AEX, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, swisstopo, and the GIS User Community,
There has been a disconcerting habit in recent years of even credible, trusted news sources to report fake news. It may not always be explicitly on purpose, but these sources have been known to put forward amazing content which is only very loosely disguised as being anything but real. Chief among this worrying trend are TV shows that have sprung forth from traditionally educational outlets, which have served to confuse people, spread misinformation, and inspire debate as to their reality. Here are some of the worst offenders.
Perhaps one of the most famous hoax “documentaries” ever was one involving an alleged alien body. The stunt took the form of a video supposedly obtained from a retired military officer stationed at none other than Area 51 in Roswell, New Mexico, by a British music and video producer named Ray Santilli. Released in 1990, the footage is black and white and very grainy, purportedly showing a skinny alien body with large eyes and an oversized head being dissected by a team in biohazard suits at the top-secret facility. Santilli was very precise in the details he gave about the video, explaining how many rolls of film it had been on and even how much it cost him to procure them, and the video was widely taken to be the real deal. The “documentary” spread to over 30 countries, capturing the imaginations of the countless people who thought that this was finally the real evidence of what was going on at Roswell, and the “Alien Autopsy Film” became an absolute sensation at the time.
Although there were obviously skeptics, there were also enough testimonies by supposed photographic experts and special effects wizzes proclaiming how real it all looked and how difficult it would be to fake it that a lot of people believed. It would alas be proved to be a hoax once and for all when Santilli himself admitted to the fraud. In 2006 he came forward to explain that the “Alien Autopsy” was all faked and even how he had done it, but even then there was some mystery remaining, as he claimed that although the “documentary” he had released was bogus, it had been a re-creation based frame by frame on real footage that had simply been too deteriorated to release. Hmmm. Whether there was ever another “real” video or not, this hoaxed footage has not aged particularly well, and looking back on it seems almost absurd that so many people were taken in by it, believing this now admittedly very fake looking alien dummy to be real, but believe it they did. While the alien autopsy video was a supposed “leaked video” and perhaps does not meet the strict criteria of a documentary, it unfortunately set the stage for numerous faked documentaries throughout the years. Particularly notorious for these are what would normally be traditionally considered to be legitimate sources for credible documentary programming, namely the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and the National Geographic Channel. These are beloved channels that do indeed provide quality, very educational programming, yet in recent years there has been a tendency to release more and more spectacular programs of what are often referred to as “mockumentaries.”
These are programs which go through great lengths to pass as genuine documentaries, presenting realistic footage, evidence, interviews with eyewitnesses, and talks with various “experts” within the field. The programs are extremely convincing in their portrayal of events, and although they are usually marked as at least partially fictional in fleeting disclaimers at the beginning and end of the programs, to the causal viewer they seem to be the real deal, and indeed they are obviously meant to be taken that way. Mixed within the realistic depictions of various phenomena, these documentaries make heavy use of “expert testimony” which is often gained through less than reputable means. Real experts are often led along a manipulative, misleading line of questioning meant to draw out the answers that producers seek, which are then edited in such a way as to seem to be endorsements for whatever mystery the show is peddling. If an expert is not available, then the interview is simply faked with actors posing as professionals, with credentials that cannot be traced, and even the eyewitness testimonies can be faked with actors. “Found footage” and photographs are spruced up with clever CGI and spliced together to complete the ruse. The end result is a program that on the surface for all intents and purposes genuinely feels like an authentic documentary portraying real events and exhibiting honest expert opinions, yet which is at its heart a farce, with only very fleeting blink-and you’ll miss-it disclaimers labelling the programs as for entertainments purposes only.
One of the worst offenders in recent memory was in 2012, when the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet aired a show entitled Mermaids: The Body Found, which was created to seem like an actual documentary which followed the the research of a scientific team investigating the footage of a mysterious body purported to be that of a real mermaid. The scientists claimed that an autopsy had been performed on a dead mermaid and that the government had swooped in and covered the whole thing up. It was all done very convincingly. The show made it a point to make everything seem as realistic as possible, using serious, authentic looking interviews with “scientists” who were actually actors, a somber documentary tone throughout, facts seamlessly woven in with fiction, and realistic computer generated footage to give the implication that it was a factual documentary. For all appearances, the program seemed to be an authentic documentary program, and although there was a disclaimer at the end of the program alerting viewers to the fact that what they were viewing was a fiction based on “scientific theory,” this was not prominently shown, and was more of an easily missed tacked-on message. As a result, the vast majority of viewers went away believing that what they had seen was a legitimate documentary and that mermaids had been found to be real.
A follow-up program on Animal Planet in 2013 entitled Mermaids: The New Evidence, raised the stakes in sensationalism, and truly propelled the hoax into the stratosphere. The program was similarly made in a very realistic looking documentary style and opened with a bang. The first scene showed purported “new footage” of a mermaid taken by a cellphone, which shows the creature sliding off of a rock into the ocean. Upping the ante was another piece of footage which claimed to be of a mermaid encounter in the Greenland Sea. This clip shows a webbed hand touching the window of a submersible, as well as the ghostly face of a purported mermaid blooming out of the dark before the creature darts off. The footage was all fake, but looks quite convincing and is ostensibly presented as the real deal. The show adds in very professional looking interviews with the “biologist” Dr Paul Robertson, as well as a “former scientist” with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who talked about the existence of mermaids and both of which were actually actors. Topping off the whole illusion, the network actually made a spin-off website, which simply informed visitors that it had been shut down by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. The whole thing was so well done that Ed Stockly of the LA Times said of it:
It’s remarkable how well this fake documentary mimics actual programs claiming to reveal actual creatures. Substitute Mermaids for Bigfoot, Chupacabra, the Loch Ness monster, ghosts and aliens, and it’s hard to make a distinction between what’s real but faked, and what’s really fake.
The sensational program attracted 3.6 million viewers, by far Animal Planet’s largest audience ever. Unfortunately, although the network had included a fleeting, easy-to-miss disclaimer at the end, most of these viewers were convinced that it was all real. Immediately following the airing of Mermaids: The New Evidence, social networking sites such as Twitter were exploding off the charts with talk of the amazing footage, and clips of the videos were streamed at a phenomenal rate. In the end, millions of people were duped by the program, to the point where the real National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would go on to totally dismiss the whole thing, saying Mermaids: The New Evidence is just entertainment. No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found.” Many people expressed a good amount of anger when they found out they’d essentially been tricked, and social media came alive once again with those voicing their disappointment and frustration at the network.
Although there were the disclaimers announcing the shows as based on speculation and fiction, Animal Planet did very little to make sure that these were visible or prominent, and indeed did very little to let audiences know that the programs were bogus at all. In a press release for the program, the network went through great lengths to sound official and expound on “scientific facts,” pertaining mostly to the generally dismissed Aquatic Ape Theory, a theory that humans went through a phase of aquatic evolution, yet there were only two fleeting references to the show being science fiction in the entire 1,000 word statement. All of this has led to the idea that Animal Planet may have intentionally misled people on the nature of the programs. The show’s executive producer, Charlie Foley, even personally stated that they had wanted viewers to think of it as real, and that this was the reason they had chosen the documentary format. He would say to ABC News of the programs:
We wanted people to approach the story with a sense of possibility and a sense of wonder. Hopefully that’s what Mermaids allowed viewers to do…allowed them to suspend their disbelief.
Although it is unclear whether Animal Planet willfully intended to trick its audience and create a widely believed hoax, they probably weren’t too upset about the whole thing considering the record smashing ratings the shows generated for them. It is unfortunate that this success has ensured that other such fake documentary style programs have become popular and continue to be made, with Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel, two mostly well-respected wildlife networks, being the primary culprits. Another repeat offender in shamelessly sensationalist mockumentary programming is Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week.” In recent years, the network has increasingly upped the ante on turning up the spooky factor with its annual Shark Week episodes, becoming more and more brazen. During Shark Week, the Discovery Channel has released several of these mockumentaries, which have served to draw in viewers and have the unsuspecting masses buy the whole thing hook, line, and sinker.
For instance, the Discovery Channel released several high profile such programs for several years running concerning the continued existence of the Megalodon, and these often involved supposed stories of aggressive attacks by the beasts. In 2013 and 2014, the network released two programs entitled Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives and Megalodon: The New Evidence. The programs offered up several pieces of supposed photographic evidence for the continued existence of the Megalodon, such as one photo purportedly showing a monster shark cruising past a Nazi U-boat during World War II in what is advertised as a “declassified image.” The photo was claimed to show a shark estimated as being around 100 feet long, and at first glance seems to be genuine, but it turns out that according to many astute commenters it was very likely a complete fake or at least heavily doctored. Other photos presented showed half-eaten whales and extremely large sharks swimming off shore, all of which are of unknown and questionable authenticity. There are also presented sonar readings claimed to be of massive sharks far larger than any currently known to exist.
The same programs presented the harrowing tale of a South African vessel that was purportedly attacked by a Megalodon, killing four of its crew members. The footage is presented as a sort of “found footage” scenario from a crew aboard a charter fishing vessel on April 5, 2013 in Hout Bay, South Africa. The video purportedly shows a very large, unknown animal aggressively capsizing the boat either through ramming it or biting it, which allegedly had six people aboard. According to the show, the bodies of four of those aboard were never recovered. The video is presented as absolutely real, and the program goes through great lengths to reinforce the genuine feel of the whole incident, even showing purported news footage in the aftermath that seems to show a news conference with South African authorities speaking on the frightening incident. The problem with this whole amazing account is that follow up investigation has not been able to turn up any official reports or news items that the whole incident ever happened at all, and the South African media seems surprisingly silent on the matter, leading many to suspect the whole thing was a clever, well orchestrated fake. In an article called Megalodon — The Monster Shark Lives! (Not), dinosaur expert Bob Strauss criticized the whole alleged incident, saying:
What can you say about a TV documentary in which the suspiciously good-looking lead protagonist — “marine biologist” Collin Drake — comes up empty in a Google search? Or, for that matter, his equally attractive “marine biologist” pal Madelyn Joubert, who joins him halfway through the show, and whom a cursory web search easily demonstrates not to exist? And, not to belabor the point, a TV show that starts with suspiciously staged-looking video footage of a charter boat capsizing off the coast of South Africa, and no references can be found about this accident (in which three passengers were supposedly killed) from reliable online news sources? I don’t know much about charter boats, but I do know that people whose ship is in the process of sinking do not take the trouble to center their subjects on frame.
Another rather dramatic incident portrayed in the program is the tale of a group of marine biologists who claimed to have tagged a terrifyingly massive shark from a shark cage. The huge shark was tagged and is then said to have lurched at them and then to dive at great speed down to a depth beyond which any known shark is capable of. Although the team claims they did not get a good look at the creature, they are fairly certain it was a monstrous shark, perhaps a living Megalodon. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to tell how real any of this account is. Another Shark Week program aired in 2014 called Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine, outlines the tale of a colossal, 35-foot long shark, named Submarine, which is said to prowl the South African coast attacking boats and whales. The legendary shark was supposedly first spotted in 1970, after which it is said to have stalked these waters and frequently capsize fishing vessels or ravaged sea life. The program claims that Submarine is well known by locals, and provides interviews with eyewitnesses who have seen it, but it is unclear whether these witnesses are genuine or merely actors. The Discovery Channel attached to the show an easy-to-miss disclaimer noting that the material presented is “based on rumor and hearsay,” but does not actually admit to faking anything. Nevertheless, Submarine is supposedly still sighted to this day. Is it a real cryptid or something totally created by the program? It is hard to say.
In response to the outcry and accusations of misleading the public with these programs, the executive producer of Shark Week, Michael Sorensen, stated that three disclaimers had been aired with the shows, including one which read “none of the institutions or agencies that appear in the film are affiliated with it in any way, nor have approved its contents.” Other disclaimers stated “certain events and characters in this film have been dramatized,” and that “legends of giant sharks persist all over the world; there is still debate about what they may be.” However, these disclaimers still manage to cleverly avoid outright admitting any blatant fakery, and it is uncertain just what “dramatized” means in relation to the programs or to what extent it is used. Sorensen was similarly evasive when he commented on the shows, saying:
With a whole week of Shark Week programming ahead of us, we wanted to explore the possibilities of Megalodon. It’s one of the most debated shark discussions of all time, ‘can Megalodon exist today?’ It’s (the) ultimate Shark Week fantasy. The stories have been out there for years and with 95 percent of the ocean unexplored, who really knows?
Regardless, like the Mermaid mockumentaries, the Megalodon shows managed to smash ratings records, becoming the most watched episodes of Shark Week ever aired, so people are obviously interested in the topic. How much of the programs was true and how much is whole cloth fabrications? Is there any merit to what was presented in these shows concerning the Megalodon or is it all just pure made-up hogwash? It is difficult to tell, and the network remains quite ambiguous and evasive about the whole thing. Until a serious documentary that is more interested in informing than in sensationalism, entertainment, and getting ratings, it is probably best to take whatever is presented in these types of programs with a healthy grain of salt. Sadly, there was a time when the Discovery Channel was a place where one could usually rely on getting such genuine, educational documentaries.
Adding to the deceptive quality of such programming is the fact that these shows sometimes get real scientists to appear on them through false pretenses, trickery, and outright lies. When making a fake Shark Week documentary called Voodoo Sharks, about a legendary monster shark called the Rooken, which said to lurk in the swamps and bayous of Louisiana, Discovery Channel approached biologist and shark expert Jonathan Davis to appear. When Davis went to meet with the film crew out in the field, his inquiries as to what exactly the show would be about were continually deflected or even ignored. The frustrated scientist was only able to glean that they were supposedly making a program about shark research in Louisiana. When the show was finally aired, Davis was astonished to see that the program was about mythical cryptid sharks, which he had not been told of at all. Further adding to his shock was the fact that the show presented his interviews wildly out of context, things he had said were mixed and matched to make it seem as though he was endorsing the existence of the mystery shark, and that the interviews had been spliced together with other footage to make it seem as though he was in a race against another team to see who could find the mythical shark first. Davis would later lament that during his interviews with the crew, he had been led along certain routes and asked to say or rephrase things that would fit into what the producers wanted, including things that Davis admitted he would have never said on his own. The clever line of questioning also managed to glean responses to vague questions that could be used out of context to be responses for different questions. Indeed, this practice of deceiving and manipulating experts and their testimony has become commonplace on these cryptid “mockumentaries” and other cryptozoology shows in general.
Besides aliens, mermaids, and the Megalodon, we can’t forget about Bigfoot, and of course there is an equally misleading mockumentary about this cryptid as well. In 2015, the History Channel released Breaking History: Bigfoot Captured, which similarly used faked footage, paid actors, twisted expert testimony, and flat out lies to sell the idea that a Bigfoot had actually been caught. The program starts on the premise that a researcher has actually managed to capture a specimen, but really just follows a fake, paid actor posing as someone trying to capture one, and it really goes all out in sensationalizing Bigfoot in a major way. Predictably, the program brings in experts, in this case anthropologist Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, who would go on to very publicly denounce how badly his words were misrepresented in the show, and it also features a badly rendered CGI rendition of a Bigfoot actually captured and locked in a cage. The whole thing is really over the top, but actually created a Twitter storm of people wondering if it was real or not. The shamelessness of this show was very amusingly broken down by Jim Vorel, at the site Paste, who does not mince words when he says:
This style of BS programming has now been refined into a science of its own. The narrative elements are careful in going out of their way to not “tell you what to believe,” or at least not directly. Instead, they present you with mounds of fake evidence and rely on the impressionable viewer to “come to their own conclusion.” Ignorant, close-minded skeptic characters are used as straw men to shoot down any potential arguments before they’re raised. It all taps into the same desire that fuels conspiracy theorists in general—the desire to be a possessor of secret knowledge, to feel intelligent. The History Channel execs understand that the more ignorant portions of their audience desperately want to feel like they belong to a fraternity of people with knowledge that “they” (whoever the hell ‘they’ are in this scenario) DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW. Perhaps they already believe these sorts of things—in that case, Bigfoot Captured simply triggers their confirmation bias.
In order to be on History Channel in the first place, the program has to make some sort of claim toward veracity—hence, the fake documentary format. Simultaneously, in order to not be called charlatans, the official position of History Channel has to be “people are just watching to be entertained, no one is taking this seriously.” SIMULTANEOUSLY, the show has to be believable enough to still fool people, because if it didn’t, no one would be watching. Just writing that makes my brain want to gnaw its way out of my skull, seeking sweet freedom.
The problem is that no, not everyone knows it’s entertainment. And if you’re intelligent enough to know that, then you should also realize that it’s the impressionable people watching who most need a source they can actually trust in order to provide real information. These people don’t need entertainment. They need a network that’s actually serving their best interest—and for the record, their best interest is “Not having pseudoscientific beliefs that they’ll pass on to anyone in earshot.” This is the responsibility that History Channel claims it’s upholding when a two-hour long program is preceded by a disclaimer on screen for a few seconds saying that the program features “some dramatization.” At least, that’s what I’m told appeared, because I started watching 60 seconds after the program began. For me, and anyone else who joined at any other point during that ludicrous 120-minute runtime, there was zero other indication that you were seeing anything other than an (admittedly shitty) documentary. Not until the end credits, with its clear listing of actors in the “scripted story” segments, do they come close to admitting what you’ve been watching that whole time. Good thing that American audiences always closely monitor TV credits, right? Congratulations, History Channel. You’ve truly earned the title of “that network with less dignity than ABC Family.” Be proud.
Even if the networks are not intentionally trying to deceive audiences, there are obviously dishonest practices going on in the way they are presented for the purpose of generating maximum mystery and intrigue, provoking belief in the fantastic, and giving the audience what they want to see. Whether the ultimate goal is outright deception or not, these sly television programs do a lot of damage to the credibility of any potentially real discoveries or footage found. It seems at the very least that it would be helpful to make more of an effort to more prominently show that these programs are fictional, and to present interviews with scientists and experts in a more honest manner. It seems that in this day and age, with the blooming popularity of paranormal programming, it is probably best to view most shows on the matter with a grain of salt.
Mijlpaal voor Marshelikopter: meer dan 1,6 kilometer gevlogen over rode planeet
De Markshelikopter Ingenuity heeft een nieuwe mijlpaal bereikt. De helikopter heeft meer dan een mijl (1,6 kilometer) over de rode planeet gevlogen. Dat maakt NASA zelf bekend.
NASA meldt dat Marshelikopter Ingenuity intussen tien vluchten heeft gemaakt over de rode planeet. In totaal heeft het toestel meer dan één mijl (1,6 kilometer) afgelegd, een record. Volgens de ruimteorganisatie was de laatste vlucht de meest complexe tot nog toe.
De helikopter maakte een vlucht langs tien vooraf bepaalde punten op een hoogte van ongeveer twaalf meter. Die vlucht duurde bijna 3 minuten. Dat is een stuk langer dan de eerdere vluchten van ongeveer 40 seconden. De helikopter maakte beelden van een aantal bergkammen.
Voor de Marshelikopter, die vorig jaar aan boord van het NASA-wagentje Perseverance (Volharding) werd gelanceerd, zijn de omstandigheden op Mars extreem. De rotoren moeten door de ijle atmosfeer, ruwweg maar 1 procent van die op aarde, meer dan 2.500 omwentelingen per minuut maken om los te komen van de grond. Daarnaast is de zonne-energie geringer en hebben de accu’s te lijden onder de lage temperaturen ‘s nachts, wanneer het kwik kan zakken tot 90 graden onder nul.
Hoelang de Marshelikopter nog blijft vliegen, is momenteel ook voor de wetenschappers nog een verrassing. Normaal zou de missie eind november ten einde lopen. De Marshelikopter doet echter beter dienst dan verwacht en blijft dus verder ingezet worden. “We verwachten wel dat er een einde aan komt”, zei projectmanager MiMi Aung eerder. “Het blijft een verrassing hoelang de onderdelen blijven werken.”
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LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 26 - 07 - 2021
LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 26 - 07 - 2021
UFO Sighted Over Sandusky, Ohio ( July 20, 2021 )
STATEMENT : I seen a strange light in the Sky while on the balcony at the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, Ohio on July 20, 2021 around 11:30 pm. It came just after a heavy rain. Wish I could have got video the first time I seen it because it was doing some pretty exceptional moves. I was so amazed that by the time I thought to take a video and phone ready, it was gone. It came back about 20 minutes later and I got a short recording.
credit : Joel Bob
UFO Sighted Over Madisonville, Kentucky ( July 24, 2021 )
Fast moving UFO was sighted over Madisonville, Kentucky on July 24, 2021
STATEMENT : I seen this last night, western KY...thoughts??
credit : Jacob Beeny
UFO Sighted Over Brighton, Colorado ( July 24, 2021 )
STATEMENT : We saw this last night! It was flying back and forth, then stopped when we all pulled our phones out. After about 10 min, it started flying up and down in one area, then back and forth again before vanishing.
credit : KaRin Joy Gecobe
UFOs Sighted Over Irajá, Brazil ( July 24, 2021 )
UFOs Sighted Over Irajá, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
STATEMENT : Hoje fui sair para jantar fora com minha família quando olhei para o céu e vi isso que experiência eu nunca tinha visto Josi Gomes
RIO DE JANEIRO BAIRRO DE IRAJA ...... Today I went out to dinner with my family when I looked at the sky and saw this what experience I had never seen Josi Gomes
RIVER OF JANUARY IRAJA BAIRRO....
credit : Thiago Silva
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UFO Sighted Over Russia ( July 25, 2021 )
Impressive UFO making Strange lights was sighted over the skies of Russia on July 25, 2021 : what is this ?
credit : U.S.F
UFO Sighted Over Houston, Texas ( July 20, 2021 )
Amazing display of UFOs were sighted over the skies of Houston, Texas on July 20, 2021 : UFOs were sighted by the Interstate 10 : I-10
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Closer every day
UFO Sighted Over Paraná, Brazil ( July 25, 2021 )
STATEMENT : estava no litoral do paraná quando fiz essa gravação hoje aproximadamente 13h não acredito que seja um balão primeira vez que vejo um nesse formato.. TRANSLATE : was on the coast of paraná when I made this recording today approximately 13 pm can't believe it's a balloon first time seeing one in this format..
credit : Mylenna Stica
UFO Immerses From Sabaneta, Colombia ( June 21, 2021 )
STATEMENT : ovni durante tormenta en sabaneta? : ocurrió en sabaneta estuve filmando tremendo aguacero y solo me percaté del objeto durante la edición de cámara lenta. es ... extraño pero fascinante!
TRANSLATE : UFO during storm in Sabaneta? : it happened in sabaneta i was filming a tremendous downpour and i only noticed the object during slow motion editing. it's ... strange but fascinating!
STATEMENT : This was filmed on July 24 2021 Bayville New Jersey at around 9 pm. We have no idea what we are looking at. I thought it was 3 drones but it appears they are moving away and never do we see them come down. Please disregard the drunken banter lol . Let me know what you think
Possible Flying Saucer with Dome half buried in Antarctic Snow
Possible Flying Saucer with Dome half buried in Antarctic Snow
Apossible crashed UFO half buried in the snow found 6 km from an unknown station in the middle of nowhere in Antarctica.
The upper part of the disc measures 30 meters whose dome appears to have broken off during the crash.
It is said that NAZI UFO craft have been stationed in Antarctica before, during and after World War II and since the dome of the disc seems to have been built in the last century, we may wonder whether it is a NAZI UFO eg a Glocke as well as could it be that this station has served as air traffic control for NAZI UFOs in the past?
WHAT DO A MIGHTY morphing dinosaur, several children in a trench coat, and a swarm of smiling robots have in common? They know there’s power in numbers — at least when it comes to their constituent parts.
Megazord from the Power Rangers franchise and the Teselecta from Doctor Who are examples of superstructures, or a structure in robotics made up of tinier robots. And they’re not just science fiction anymore.
In a new paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics, a team of physicists from the University of Bordeaux designed a new kind of superstructure that uses mindless mini-robots to power a seemingly intelligent superstructure that can squeeze through obstacles, pull things, and even battle other superstructure bots.
“We made them play games — we played billiards — and they do it so well that you're like, ‘The hell with it, they are intelligent!’” Hamid Kellay, a professor of physics at the University of Bordeaux and a senior author on the paper, tells Inverse. “But they’re not.”
WHAT’S NEW
When it comes to the mini-robots themselves, which Kellay calls “bugs,” he says they’re not too different from what you find in similar studies on this subject. And in fact, they’re the same kind of small, vibrating toy you might give a child or a cat. They’re roughly 1.7 inches long and less than an inch tall and colored orange and red with tiny, non-functional legs.
Using these off-the-shelf toys helps the lab cut down on time and money in 3D printing something of their own, Kellay explains.
With no intelligence to be found, these bots are still capable of working together to overcome obstacles.Boudet et al. / Science Robotics
The true significance of their studies lies in the collaborative motion they observed when a collection of the robot bugs were set loose in a thin, flexible shell — similar to putting a wind-up toy inside a rubber band. Even though these bugs are truly mindless (i.e., they’re just a plastic shell and a vibrating motor), they appear to move intelligently within the flexible scaffold.
Studying how these superstructures move through different obstacles will help the research team understand the new kinds of forces these superstructures exert, says Kellay. In other words, how they interact with the world around them.
WHY IT MATTERS
These kinds of superstructures are still in the early stages of development. Still, Kellay says they could have several practical applications in the future, including cleaning hard-to-reach or dangerously infected areas of your house.
And if they were to be scaled down much smaller in the future, these bots might one day also play an important role in the future of internal drug delivery.
The same toy bug your kid loves to play with is powering nearly intelligent superstructure robots.H. Kellay and collaborators / University of Bordeaux
HOW IT WORKS
Unlike complex speaking or dancing robots that might seem standard today, Kellay says that these robots and driven purely by “physics and chance.”
Here’s how they work in a nutshell:
The robot bugs are painted with small lines to help the researchers keep track of their orientation
These bugs are then let loose in a flexible scaffold on a flat surface
Turned on, these bugs vibrate and move randomly until they run into one another
Running into each other then creates a “clustering” movement where the bugs align together at a barrier
This collaborative movement at the barrier then propels the entire scaffold, or superstructure, forward
The team put these superstructures through many trials, including climbing through small openings, cleaning up obstacles, and even battling each other for supremacy.
The robot bug wearing its modified light-sensing backpack. Courtesy of Hamid Kellay
In later trials, the team also outfitted a group of the bugs with what Kellay describes as a tiny backpack containing an extra motor, light sensor, and battery. When exposing this group of bugs to bright light, the researchers found they would change their motion from a straight line to a small orbit.
“If you have no lights, they will go straight, but if you turn the light on and turn the second motor on, they start orbiting,” explains Kellay. “This orbiting actually turns out to be very nice because when you put a bunch of these things into this scaffold when they're turning like this, they generate more collisions... and cluster faster.”
This means you need fewer bugs to accomplish the same result.
WHAT’S NEXT
In the future, Kellay says he’s interested in exploring more options for controlling these structures using flashing lights to maneuver individual bots at a time.
And as a professor, Kellay says he’s also excited for the learning opportunity these “idiotic” little bugs offer for students just getting interested in the field of physics.
“Things like this are of really of high educational value,” says Kellay. “Show this to kids, and you get them immediately interested... As a university professor, that’s very important to me.”
Abstract:
A swarm of simple active particles confined in a flexible scaffold is a promising system to make mobile and deformable superstructures. These soft structures can perform tasks that are difficult to carry out for monolithic robots because they can infiltrate narrow spaces, smaller than their size, and move around obstacles. To achieve such tasks, the origin of the forces the superstructures develop, how they can be guided, and the effects of external environment, especially geometry and the presence of obstacles, need to be understood. Here, we report measurements of the forces developed by such superstructures, enclosing a number of mindless active rod-like robots, as well as the forces exerted by these structures to achieve a simple function, crossing a constriction. We relate these forces to the self-organization of the individual entities. Furthermore, and based on a physical understanding of what controls the mobility of these superstructures and the role of geometry in such a process, we devise a simple strategy where the environment can be designed to bias the mobility of the superstructure, giving rise to directional motion. Simple tasks—such as pulling a load, moving through an obstacle course, or cleaning up an arena—are demonstrated. Rudimentary control of the superstructures using light is also proposed. The results are of relevance to the making of robust flexible superstructures with nontrivial space exploration properties out of a swarm of simpler and cheaper robots.
The Sombrero galaxy likely merged with a relatively massive galaxy several billions years ago. In a new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, astronomers analyzed wide-field deep images of the Sombrero galaxy’s outskirts obtained with a small amateur telescope with the purpose of detecting any tidal structures — such as stellar streams and tails — from the possible ancient merger.
This Hubble image shows the Sombrero galaxy.
Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA.
The Sombrero galaxy is located approximately 28 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo.
Also known as Messier 104, M104 or NGC 4594, the galaxy was discovered on May 11, 1781 by the French astronomer Pierre Méchain.
It has a diameter of approximately 49,000 light-years, about 3 times smaller than our Milky Way Galaxy.
“The Sombrero galaxy shows characteristics of both of the dominant types of galaxies in the Universe, the spirals and the ellipticals,” said Dr. David Martínez-Delgado, an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía – CSIC, and his colleagues.
“It has spiral arms, and a very large bright central bulge, which makes it look like a hybrid of the two types.”
The recent discovery of extremely metal-rich stars in the halo of the Sombrero galaxy suggested that the galaxy had undergone a recent major merger with a relatively massive galaxy.
“According to the latest cosmological models, large spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way grew by absorbing smaller galaxies, by a sort of galactic cannibalism,” the astronomers said.
“Evidence for this is given by very large structures, the tidal stellar streams, which are observed around them, which are the remains of these satellite galaxies.”
“But the full histories of the majority of these cases are hard to study, because these flows of stars are very faint, and only the remains of the most recent mergers have been detected.”
An artist’s impression of the tidal stream around the Sombrero galaxy.
Image credit: Jon Lomberg / Stellar Tidal Stream Survey.
In the new study, the researchers observed the ring-like tidal structure in the inner halo region of the Sombrero galaxy.
“It is remarkable that thanks to these advanced photometric techniques we have been able to do front line science with a Messier object using only an 18-cm-diameter telescope,” said co-author Dr. Javier Román, a postdoctoral researcher in the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía – CSIC, the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, and the Universidad de La Laguna.
The team’s result is in agreement with the hypothesis that the galaxy was created by a ‘wet major merger’ event more than 3.5 billion years ago that heated up the stellar population.
“A ‘wet merger’ is a scenario in which a large elliptical galaxy is rejuvenated by large quantities of gas and dust from another massive galaxy, which went into the formation of the disk which we now observe,” they said.
“In our search, we have been able to trace for the first time the complete tidal stream which surrounds the disk of the Sombrero galaxy and our theoretical simulations have let us reconstruct its formation in the last 3 billion years, by cannibalism of a satellite dwarf galaxy.”
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David Martínez-Delgado et al. A feather on the hat: Tracing the giant stellar stream around the Sombrero galaxy. MNRAS, published online July 20, 2021; doi: 10.1093/mnras/stab1874
This image shows seven of the ultraviolet wavelengths observed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on board NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The top row is observations taken from May 2010 and the bottom row shows observations from 2019, without any corrections, showing how the instrument degraded over time. Credit: Luiz Dos Santos/NASA GSFC
A group of researchers is using artificial intelligence techniques to calibrate some of NASA's images of the Sun, helping improve the data that scientists use for solar research. The new technique was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on April 13, 2021.
A solar telescope has a tough job. Staring at the Sun takes a harsh toll, with a constant bombardment by a never-ending stream of solar particles and intense sunlight. Over time, the sensitive lenses and sensors of solar telescopes begin to degrade. To ensure the data such instruments send back is still accurate, scientists recalibrate periodically to make sure they understand just how the instrument is changing.
Launched in 2010, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, has provided high-definition images of the Sun for over a decade. Its images have given scientists a detailed look at various solar phenomena that can spark space weather and affect our astronauts and technology on Earth and in space. The Atmospheric Imagery Assembly, or AIA, is one of two imaging instruments on SDO and looks constantly at the Sun, taking images across 10 wavelengths of ultraviolet light every 12 seconds. This creates a wealth of information of the Sun like no other, but—like all Sun-staring instruments—AIA degrades over time, and the data needs to be frequently calibrated.
Since SDO's launch, scientists have used sounding rockets to calibrate AIA. Sounding rockets are smaller rockets that typically only carry a few instruments and take short flights into space—usually only 15 minutes. Crucially, sounding rockets fly above most of Earth's atmosphere, allowing instruments on board to to see the ultraviolet wavelengths measured by AIA. These wavelengths of light are absorbed by Earth's atmosphere and can't be measured from the ground. To calibrate AIA, they would attach an ultraviolet telescope to a sounding rocket and compare that data to the measurements from AIA. Scientists can then make adjustments to account for any changes in AIA's data.
There are some drawbacks to the sounding rocket method of calibration. Sounding rockets can only launch so often, but AIA is constantly looking at the Sun. That means there's downtime where the calibration is slightly off in between each sounding rocket calibration.
"It's also important for deep space missions, which won't have the option of sounding rocket calibration," said Dr. Luiz Dos Santos, a solar physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author on the paper. "We're tackling two problems at once."
Virtual calibration
With these challenges in mind, scientists decided to look at other options to calibrate the instrument, with an eye towards constant calibration. Machine learning, a technique used in artificial intelligence, seemed like a perfect fit.
As the name implies, machine learning requires a computer program, or algorithm, to learn how to perform its task.
The top row of images show the degradation of AIA’s 304 Angstrom wavelength channel over the years since SDO’s launch. The bottom row of images are corrected for this degradation using a machine learning algorithm. Credit: Luiz Dos Santos/NASA GSFC
First, researchers needed to train a machine learning algorithm to recognize solar structures and how to compare them using AIA data. To do this, they give the algorithm images from sounding rocket calibration flights and tell it the correct amount of calibration they need. After enough of these examples, they give the algorithm similar images and see if it would identify the correct calibration needed. With enough data, the algorithm learns to identify how much calibration is needed for each image.
Because AIA looks at the Sun in multiple wavelengths of light, researchers can also use the algorithm to compare specific structures across the wavelengths and strengthen its assessments.
To start, they would teach the algorithm what a solar flare looked like by showing it solar flares across all of AIA's wavelengths until it recognized solar flares in all different types of light. Once the program can recognize a solar flare without any degradation, the algorithm can then determine how much degradation is affecting AIA's current images and how much calibration is needed for each.
"This was the big thing," Dos Santos said. "Instead of just identifying it on the same wavelength, we're identifying structures across the wavelengths."
This means researchers can be more sure of the calibration the algorithm identified. Indeed, when comparing their virtual calibration data to the sounding rocket calibration data, the machine learning program was spot on.
With this new process, researchers are poised to constantly calibrate AIA's images between calibration rocket flights, improving the accuracy of SDO's data for researchers.
Machine learning beyond the Sun
Researchers have also been using machine learning to better understand conditions closer to home.
One group of researchers led by Dr. Ryan McGranaghan—Principal Data Scientist and Aerospace Engineer at ASTRA LLC and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center—used machine learning to better understand the connection between Earth's magnetic field and the ionosphere, the electrically charged part of Earth's upper atmosphere. By using data science techniques to large volumes of data, they could apply machine learning techniques to develop a newer model that helped them better understand how energized particles from space rain down into Earth's atmosphere, where they drive space weather.
As machine learning advances, its scientific applications will expand to more and more missions. For the future, this may mean that deep space missions—which travel to places where calibration rocket flights aren't possible—can still be calibrated and continue giving accurate data, even when getting out to greater and greater distances from Earth or any stars.
AT SEA - JANUARY 18: An F/A-18E Super Hornet fighter aircraft descends to land on the flight deck ... [+]
GETTY IMAGES
After weeks of media speculation about the U.S. government’s potentially revelatory recent report on so-called unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) —- which your grandparents likely called flying saucers and your parents likely called UFOs (unidentified flying objects) —- the report itself was frustratingly inconclusive.
Arguably, its most interesting admission was that “UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security.” The report primarily covered UAP incidents that occurred between 2004 and 2021 and concludes that most UAP reported probably do represent physical objects and a limited number appeared to exhibit unusual flight characteristics.
Whether these phenomena are the result of technologies wholly of this earth remains unclear, however. That’s a mystery that won’t be settled anytime soon, but here are several points to consider.
—- Astronomers are far from experts on the UAP-UFO phenomena
Astronomers are quite adept at observing and analyzing everything from passing near-Earth objects to galaxies forming near the dawn of time. But they are no more equipped to make educated judgements about potential alien spacecraft operating within our atmosphere than proverbial pig farmers in Iowa.
Such discussions are best left to the professional aerospace community as well as atmospheric scientists. The people who actually work day-in and day-out designing and building all manner of flying vehicles —- from drones to hypersonic weaponry. And the people who have spent their lives researching earth’s meteorology and atmosphere.
Astrobiologists and astronomers are really not the right people to turn to with such questions. Yet continually, the mainstream media does just that.
—- If they are not ours and they represent some sophisticated surveillance technology from one our potential adversaries like Russia or China, then we are in bad shape.
That would mean that Russia and China are much further along than anyone could have dreamed. But given the power-hungry nature of their past and present leadership, surely, this technology would have already been used to basically subdue any nation they choose.
—- Why the sudden interest in publicizing this phenomena?
Why release 15-year-old gun-camera footage of bizarre objects now? Especially, when through the decades the U.S. military has never had any qualms about keeping secrets. Is this sudden UAP concern merely a disinformation smokescreen to provide cover for new technologies of which even our own fighter pilots are unaware?
—- Full disclosure. I’ve never seen a UFO nor a wayward alien.
I’d rather run across a pack of angry rattlesnakes than to ever come face to face with extraterrestrials. Consider the miserable fate of this continent’s own indigenous populations. Time and again, when primitive societies have come into contact with a civilization that is more technologically advanced, the outcome is mostly catastrophic.
—- The idea that technological civilizations a minimum of 10,000 years ahead of us could not have found a way to circumvent the laws of physics to get here in record time is unfathomable.
We earthlings do little or nothing to research interstellar propulsion. This is a subject that I’ve covered for the past 25 years and less is being done to research advanced propulsion technologies today than a quarter century ago. This is obviously not a priority for any of the major space agencies.
But even $500,000 to facilitate the research of refereed papers probing the possibilities of how to make a warp drive that doesn’t violate Einstein’s axiom about the speed of light would help. Give some postdoctoral researcher a $10,000 grant to take time to write a paper that would then be submitted to a refereed astrophysics and/or applied physics journal. If someone would even donate $100,000 to generate ten such papers per year, then you would start to see real progress in out-of-the-box propulsion technologies.
—- Don’t forget that in 1910, vaunted Harvard University astronomer William Henry Pickering declared that transatlantic airplane travel was something “wholly visionary…”.
Thus, my advice is not to turn to the professional astronomical community for answers about whether or not aliens could visit us or whether we will eventually be able to visit the aliens. I think both are possible, but if we want to get out beyond our own solar system, then we are going to have to start taking interstellar propulsion more seriously than we have in the last half century.
It took six decades after NASA astronaut Alan Shepard’s first suborbital flight before the first private commercial entity was able to send its founder into sub-orbit in his own spaceship. I applaud Richard Branson for doing so, but I’m astounded that this wasn’t done in 1980. I’m continually at a loss for why humanity is so backward and unimaginative in its thinking.
—- If interstellar travel is truly not possible, perhaps there is an advanced civilization that is already in our solar system and they originated here.
Astrobiologists go on forever and a day about the possibility of complex life evolving in oceans underneath the frozen surfaces of Europa and Enceladus. If such putative life evolved and became truly intelligent and technological, then perhaps they found a way to dig out of their frigid home oceans and develop a civilization that could build spacecraft. Admittedly, this sounds far-fetched. But, if so, perhaps they’ve been visiting earth for thousands of years, even though they still call these moons of Saturn and Jupiter home.
—- We also need to drop the assumption that a longlived civilization will inherently be altruistic.
Although our presence is likely known to anyone with half a brain within thirty light years of Earth, I’ve never been one to advocate making active contact via radio signals intentionally sent into the cosmos. The idea that our relatively primitive hundred-year-old technological society would somehow benefit from an encounter with sentient creatures from parts unknown is shocking and misguided. For the same reason, i would not thrash around like some sort of maniac in shark-infested waters.
As for me, I personally don’t have a dog in this hunt. To paraphrase Jill Tarter of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute who I first interviewed three decades ago, if our civilization ends up being the only technology-bearing species in the cosmos, that’s a philosophically humbling result.
But I don’t expect us to be the only spacefaring civilization in the cosmos. The views from any number of remote mountaintops in northern Chile are simply too thick with stars to bet against astrophysics and evolution.
Filmmaker Reuben Langdon spoke to RT about how the government is controlling the messaging around the new information around UFOs to keep justifying its bloated military budget and terrify Americans.
For my ninth birthday, my brother got me a telescope. In rural Northern Wisconsin, on my family’s farm, I would look at the stars across the night sky with no light pollution to block the waves of patterns webbing across the dark. Michael, my older brother, patiently set up my telescope and showed me the constellations and told me their ancient names; we would also wonder about possible other worlds and UFOs.
The first time I could find the constellations on my own, I was lit up and forever transfixed by stars. My brother explained the history, “This is the Ursa major and Ursa minor, the bears, the protectors.” I looked up at him, strong and tall, Michael, like the bear constellation, was my constant protector until his death took him somewhere beyond the stars.
Recently, international media began reporting more and more stories about Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) sightings, following the release of American government information relating to secret projects on the subject. For a long while, UFOs weren’t taken seriously by mainstream media, they featured them only as clickbait for ‘cranks’ on the internet. But now, as more and more credible people have come forward with their experiences, a shift has occurred in public perception.
There was a movement for the American government to release under the Freedom of Information Act documentation relating to projects involving UFOs. Former Navy pilots and civilians have since come forward for interviews about what they witnessed in the skies and the way the military chose to conceal sightings of the advanced technology demonstrated by UFOs. Yet, for all the supposed transparency there was a message of fear creeping into the narrative.
As the American empire always seeks to justify its bloated weapons spending to the tune of trillions of dollars, the sudden release of these CIA documents seems at best suspect and at worst diabolical with a view to blaming the presence of this unrecognized technology on Russia or China. Unfortunately, instead of seeing the opportunity to expand awareness for humanity the framing of the new information became one with a thread of distrust and war.
In the words of filmmaker and actor Reuben Langdon, the corporate media gives us
“fear porn.”
He added:“The people doing the work (researching UFOs) seem to have the best of intentions. It comes down to the media and forcing their hand. We have a media that is so focused on the negative news with very few positives. A lot of the researchers in the field have trouble to even bring forth the information. Like, Chris Mellon who said, first we have to have the conversation and unfortunately many will not listen unless it has that negative spin.”
Reuben began his career as a stuntman and has featured in Hollywood blockbusters including Avatar and Pirates of the Caribbean, as well as numerous video games, and became interested in UFOs following an experience he had while filming the James Cameron sci-fi epic. For over a decade he has been researching extraterrestrial phenomena amongst other things and entered a successful documentary making career.
Is the CIA controlling the messaging around this using the media to justify some other agenda? As we hear more stories about the phenomenon, the American government defaults their messaging to fear.
Several years ago, Reuben was involved in a citizen congressional hearing including former members of Congress discussing the history of UFOs and the coverup by the American government. Several high-ranking military intelligence figures shared information at this mock hearing to show what a real investigative Congressional hearing could be like if it were ever allowed. The hope was that it would raise enough awareness to force a public inquiry.
One of the highlights was watching the late Senator Mike Gravel demand that information that was hidden from the public by the US intelligence about UFOs and the history be released for everyone. As I discussed this project with Reuben Langdon, he described what it was like to coordinate the emulated hearing, quite unique in its approach.
He added: “I disagree with projecting fear with the UFO stories. It is an approach to get it in the media but not my approach to this phenomena. The national (American) media seems to be about selling fear and scaring as many people as possible because… fear sells.…”
One of the biggest challenges regarding the UFO coverage is getting it to be taken in a serious way at all. Reuben described the challenge of bringing forth information.
“I think that the Government may see this as an opportunity to put forth their agenda which is one of control of power…taking a bird’s eye, how it is approached by media… be prepared for false flags in the media, like an alien invasion.… We can choose to support people with a fear based narrative or support people with a non-fear based narrative. There is no reason to be in fear, if you are aware of it.”
Reuben had also made a documentary exploring alternative energy sources and the inventors who created them. The documentary was ultimately rejected by top executives for distribution. Undaunted, Reuben outlined how with his own equipment he embarked on the journey of two seasons of his show, Interviews with Extra Dimensionals, which ended up being a top show on the network GAIA. Reuben’s tenacity is driven by a curiosity based on his own personal experiences.
He said:“To some it may seem like the end of the world when in actuality it is humanity waking up to our true potential. The realization we are sovereign, independent beings that can create our own reality and not rely on others to do it for us.”
Reuben’s new project is a film about the adventurer F.A. Mitchell Hedges (the man Indiana Jones character was based on) and the crystal skull. It was discovered in the 1920’s at a Mayan temple, by his daughter. Reuben explores the mystique surrounding the object and its larger meaning to those who believe it has spiritual powers.
He added:“There seems to be an interaction between sacred spots and different places on the Earth, that indigenous hold in sacredness. The feature is setting up Hedges’ research and work. The film will also uncover the legend about the possibilities that there are 13 skulls around the Earth and if all found the legend says, humanity will enter a new era.”
The Crystal Skull is thought by some to be similar to an ancient computer that holds some sort of sacred knowledge like the Akashic records and other information available from ancient civilizations. People show up from all over the world to simply sit in the presence of the Crystal Skull to experience its power and report mystical attunement with multi-dimensional realms.
I imagine my brother Michael’s delight at watching the unfolding of all this new information. Near the end of my brother’s life, Michael gestured vaguely one night at the sky, took my hand in his and looked at me intently. Too weak to form all the words, I looked into his eyes and he turned his head upward to the night sky. I nodded and understood. “Look for me in the stars, I am with you.”I imagined him saying,“I will always be here to protect you. I love you.” Tears rolled down his face slowly as I kissed his hand.
Michael instilled in me the gift of wonder for discovering more about the Universe. I remain open and curious. Even now, I look up at night as I still search the same familiar constellations, I look for my protector, my brother, his smile now hidden somewhere behind the stars.
I am encircled with the thought of all the possibilities.
As Reuben Langdon suggests, “Instead of fear, why not be curious?”
The Ingenuity helicopter on Mars, sitting where the Perseverance rover dropped it, on April 5, 2021. NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter completed its 10th flight on Mars Saturday.
That's twice the number of flights that NASA originally planned for the little drone.
Engineers thought Ingenuity would crash much earlier, but it's now on an extended mission.
The "little helicopter that could" has done it again.
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on Mars, a tissue-box-sized rotorcraft that landed with the Perseverance rover in February, completed its 10th flight over the red planet on Saturday.
Each Ingenuity flight has been more daring than the last. So Saturday's flight was likely the helicopter's riskiest yet: If everything went according to plan, Ingenuity climbed 40 feet in the air, then headed south-by-southwest toward a collection of rock features called "Raised Ridges," before looping back around to a landing zone about 310 feet west of its initial takeoff spot.
Before Saturday, Ingenuity had already flown nearly one mile in total, so its 10th flight helped it hit that threshold.
The flight should have lasted about 2 minutes, 45 seconds. During that time, Ingenuity is expected to have visited 10 distinct waypoints, snapping photos along the way.
An annotated image of Mars’ Jezero Crater depicts the ground track and waypoints for Ingenuity’s 10th flight. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Flight 10 is a significant milestone, since Ingenuity has now flown twice as many times as NASA engineers originally planned. NASA expected Ingenuity to crash on its fourth or fifth flight as it tested the limits of its speed and stamina.
But Ingenuity has continued to exceed expectations. Even when a glitch led the helicopter to wobble mid-air in May during its sixth flight, it still managed to touch down safely.
The drone started out as a technology demonstration, but NASA gave Ingenuity a secondary mission in late May after its fourth flight. Since then, Ingenuity has started scouting new Martian terrain and testing operations that NASA might want to conduct with future space helicopters. In its recent flights, Ingenuity has explored unsurveyed areas of Mars' Jezero Crater — a 28-mile-wide impact basin that was filled with water about 3.5 billion years ago — landing in new spots each time.
The uneven landscape is a challenge for Ingenuity, since rocky or rippled land can distort its field of view, causing it to veer in the wrong direction. Ingenuity's ninth flight earlier this month was a "nail-biter," NASA scientists said, since the helicopter had to cross over particularly treacherous terrain.
The Perseverance rover captured footage of Ingenuity taking off and landing for its first flight on April 19, 2021. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
Ingenuity is still proving itself useful on Mars, but its future is uncertain
In Ingenuity's first four flights, the rotorcraft landed in the same spot it lifted off. Its fifth flight led it to touch down in a new airfield that it had previously flown over, photographed, and mapped. But these recent flights have sent Ingenuity traveling south over uncharted territory.
NASA engineers haven't said when Ingenuity's mission will end, but the helicopter could keep flying as long as it stays alive and doesn't interfere with the science work of the Perseverance rover.
Ingenuity captured a photo of its shadow during its seventh flight on Mars. NASA/JPL-Caltech
Perseverance is combing Jezero Crater in search of potential fossils of ancient alien microbes. Ingenuity's new operations can assist with that mission: The helicopter can scout and map terrain, spot promising areas for study from the air, and fly to spots the rover can't reach.
NASA scientists are particularly curious about "Raised Ridges," since water may have once flowed there. During its ninth flight, Ingenuity also snapped color images of intriguing rock outcrops that Perseverance might examine later.
"We're hoping the color images will provide the closest look yet at 'Pilot Pinnacle,' a location featuring outcrops that some team members think may record some of the deepest water environments in old Lake Jezero," NASA scientists wrote in a recent blog post.
It's possible, though, that Perseverance's tight schedule won't allow it to visit the rocks, "so Ingenuity may offer the only opportunity to study these deposits in any detail," the scientists said.
“Mysterious lights” on the Moon: extraterrestrial presence? (Video)
“Mysterious lights” on the Moon: extraterrestrial presence? (Video)
At the end of last year, in Indianapolis, astronomers filmed the moon and were surprised to discover that an object of unknown origin was floating near the Earth’s satellite.
A few months ago, Bruce, from the channel “Bruce Sees All”, offered us some amazing images of an intelligent object that was entering the far side of the Moon.
Years observing the moon to find oddities and inexplicable phenomena that do not have any logic for the knowledge of many scientists.
Recently, Dr. Robert Jastrow, the first chairman of the NASA commission , even called the moon the planet’s Rosetta stone, which means that it is on the moon or within the moon that the answer to the mystery of the origin of life on Earth.
“This means that perhaps we came from the same place on this rock.”
“As soon as people got the first telescopes, back in the 18th century, already at that time on the Moon, some kind of activity was constantly being observed, and it is clear that it was inhuman, that they were flying past the bottom of the moon.
In recent years, many inexplicable phenomena associated with the Moon have accumulated .
Recently, in the context of the Moon, incomprehensible lights were seen again, this time green and at other times as white and bright as the moon itself.
Astronomers around the world are lost in conjecture, they are trying to analyze incomprehensible flares and grasp some system, but they have not found a rational explanation.
One thing is clear, in the celestial body closest to Earth there is a certain technical device to generate intense light. and where it is located .. hard to say.
They can be both stationary beacons and installed in mobile machines or aircraft of some terrestrial or extraterrestrial space force. What do you think? Watch the following video for more information.
Denisova Cave DNA: Neanderthals, Denisovans and Humans Lived Together!
Denisova Cave DNA: Neanderthals, Denisovans and Humans Lived Together!
The deeply-ancient Denisova Cave in Siberia was at times home to Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans “at the same time” based on the latest Denisova Cave DNA research.
Nobody in the world had expected first-contact to come from a tiny, fossilized pinkie bone, but 10 years ago it was the discovery of such a bone that introduced us to the hitherto unknown and now extinct "Denisovans.
A new study of Denisova Cave DNA sampled from the floor of the Russian cave has revealed for the first time that the cave was also used by modern humans. But what was completely unexpected is that the new dating suggests the ancestors of modern humans lived “alongside Denisovans and Neanderthals.”
Researchers Zenobia Jacobs, Bo Li and Kieran O'Gorman collecting soil samples in the main chamber to test for Denisova Cave DNA.
Denisova Cave DNA Changes Everything And Proves More
“Aju-Tasch” is more famously known as the “ Denisova Cave ,” and this time capsule of anthropological treasures was found hidden in a cliff face in the Anui River valley in the Altai Mountains of Russia. The cave comprises 20 layers of excavated artifacts indicating occupation by hominins as long ago as 280,000 years before the present, and signs of habitation have been found all the way into the Middle Ages.
Up until recently, according to Britannica encyclopedia , researchers have suspected that the cave was inhabited by early modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) and Neanderthals ( H. neanderthalensis ). However, evidence of a previously unknown group of hominins, the Denisovans, who were neither modern humans nor Neanderthals, was also discovered at the site.
Researchers Zenobia Jacobs, Bo Li and Kieran O'Gorman in the south chamber of the cave taking sediment samples as they search for more Denisova Cave DNA.
The new research was published in the Nature journal and covered as well in a release from the Max Planck Institute . The research study’s lead author, Dr Elena Zavala, a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and her colleagues worked with a team of Russian DNA researchers. The primary goal was to test the soil floor of the three-chamber cave to try and gain a clearer picture of how and when modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans lived in the now famous Denisova Cave.
For four decades researchers have been studying artifacts and DNA gathered from soils within the cave. However, according to an article about the new research in Science Mag , only over the last 4 years has anyone found DNA from extinct humans in the ancient cave soil.
A Denisovan tooth found in Russia’s famous Denisova Cave in 2000.
Previous research highlighted in this Science Mag article stated that “728 soil samples” had been taken in the cave. And now, after almost 24 months, the researchers have published new research about their discovery of “ human DNA in 175 of the samples.”
An article about the paper published by the Max Planck Institute quotes Dr Katerina Douka, an archaeological scientist at the institute who said the new study represents the “largest and most systematic of its kind.”
The study concludes that the three different groups “moved in and out of the cave over time.” However, Dr Zavala’s work confirms that Denisovans were the cave ’s first inhabitants about 300,000 years ago and that they disappeared 130,000 years ago. A different group of Denisovans who “likely made many of the stone tools,” then moved into the cave shelter about 30,000 years later. It would be 170,000 years after the first inhabitants that Neanderthals used the cave, at times, “overlapping with the Denisovans,” and the first humans used the cave beginning around 45,000 years ago.
A reconstructed fossil skeleton of a cave hyena (Crocuta crocuta spelaea). Cave hyena bones were also found in the Denisova Cave, and this must have resulted in horrible attacks on the hominins living there.
DNA is like any organic matter, and it has a shelf life dependent on the environment in which it found. The Denisova Cave DNA covered all three human groups, and the researchers wrote in their paper that the time periods represented by each soil layer “are quite large.” According to Dr Zavala, this is the first time archaeologists have discovered an ancient site where Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans “lived together through time.”
The fossils of many ancient animals were also discovered in the cave which corresponded with times the climate became cooler. Over time, many different species of hyenas and bears use the cave to shelter from the harsh Russian winters, and it was for this reason it is known locally in Altay as “ Aju-Tasch” or “bear rock.”
Top image: The entrance to the Denisova cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia where the so-called new “Denisova Cave DNA” has proven, for the first time, the Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo sapiens occupied the same cave at the same time sometimes! Source: Professor Richard G. Roberts / University of Wollongong
The pandemic shutdown has taught us that it’s difficult to stay inside one’s home for an extended period with one’s immediate family. It was more difficult for those living with extended family and/or friends. Now, think of how challenging, frustrating and even murder-enticing it might be to have to live with people of other species – and the offspring of mixed-species marriages. That’s the new story of the famous Denisova cave in southern Siberia, where researchers previously discovered a new archaic hominin species, the Denisovans, living with another archaic hominin species, the Neanderthals, and now have found both shared the cave with a third hominin species – humans. All at the same time! How did they get along? Was the evidence discovered an archaic boxing ring?
“Denisova Cave in southern Siberia is the type locality of the Denisovans, an archaic hominin group who were related to Neanderthals. The dozen hominin remains recovered from the deposits also include Neanderthals, and the child of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan, which suggests that Denisova Cave was a contact zone between these archaic hominins.”
You can stay but you have to contribute.
The determination that Denisovans and Neanderthals occupied the Denisova cave at the same time came from the discovery of just eight fossils – including a Denisovan pinkie, three bones from Neanderthals and one from a child with one Neanderthal and one Denisovan parent. That’s the frustratingly tiny total after archeologists have combed through piles of animal bones and fossils mixed with stone tools and artifacts. As Science Magazine explains, researchers like Elena Zavala, a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, turned to analyzing the layers of sediment in the three-chamber cave and looking for DNA. What they found, as explained in a new study in the journal Nature co-authored by Zavala, has added crucial data to the history of humans.
“We detect a turnover in the mtDNA of Denisovans that coincides with changes in the composition of faunal mtDNA, and evidence that Denisovans and Neanderthals occupied the site repeatedly—possibly until, or after, the onset of the Initial Upper Palaeolithic at least 45,000 years ago, when modern human mtDNA is first recorded in the sediments.”
After 2 years of analyzing 728 sediment samples dating to the Pleistocene epoch, they found ancient hominin mitochondrial DNA in 175 of them. Human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is the DNA located in cellular organelles that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use. It’s part of the human genome and recognized by anthropologists as the next best thing to bone samples, and in this case the mtDNA samples far exceed the fossilized bone fragments found.
Yes, this discovery affects human history in a big way. It confirms that a first group of Denisovans occupied the cave about 300,000 to 130,000 years ago. A second came in about 30,000 years later. Neanderthals moved in around 170,000 years ago – again with different groups occupying and leaving the cave. What the newly discovered mtDNA shows is modern humans living there about 45,000 years ago and the soil layer from that period contains DNA from all three human groups. Katerina Douka, an archaeological scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History who was not involved with the research, puts it best:
“I cannot think of another site where three human species lived through time.”
Not only that, the existence of Denisovans was not known until 2010! The ability to identify mtDNA is the game-changer. The study concludes with that acknowledgement.
“High-resolution profiling of sediment DNA can therefore provide an effective means of filling gaps in our knowledge of human evolutionary history and palaeoecology, independent of the discovery of skeletal remains.”
It doesn’t matter what species you are.
Does this change our history? Of course not – our history already happened and there’s nothing we can do to change it. (Keep that in mind during your next political discussion.) All we can do is acknowledge that our records of it have huge gaps of reliable data and we must continue our search for more. Our history books should be looked at as constantly-updated, ever-growing chronicles, not stone tablets.
How long before our ancestry DNA tests go back to the Denisovan cave? It may be sooner than you think.
There are many strange tales that have made the rounds among UFO lore. Some are credible and have good evidence to support them, others are more nebulous, and others still lie somewhere in between. Back when the found footage style of filmmaking was pretty much non-existent, a curious video began to make the rounds, which would launch itself into the lore of UFOs and would manage to remain held up as real even as those who made it actively tried to debunk it.
Back in 1989 a rather unique VHS video began making the rounds. Called simply UFO Abduction, it was presented as a home video taken at the home of the McPherson family, who were celebrating the 5th birthday of their young daughter Michelle at their remote country house in the mountains of Northwoods, Connecticut, in the United States. The video, which is stated to have been taken on the evening of October 8, 1983, and was filmed by Michelle’s uncle, starts out normally, and just shows a mundane, very normal birthday party, with banter and bickering among the family members. It is actually almost rather boring until things start to get strange when the power suddenly cuts out. After a brief bit of panic and chatter, the men go out to check the breaker and it is then that they see a UFO sitting out in the field, complete with grey-type aliens milling about it. The camera goes shaky as the one filming tries to fight off his panic while filming, and when the aliens turn to them, they run inside and tell everyone what has happened in a chaotic exchange of panic and fear.
Once indoors they lock the door and things get intense very quickly. There can be heard movement outside, and what sounds like someone walking up on the roof, causing the men to grab shotguns to protect themselves. At one point one of them fires upon one of the aliens through the roof and they can hear it fall off to the ground below. One of the men dares to go outside to retrieve the body, despite the pleading from his family to not go outside, and he then puts the body into another room, from which it is later found to have disappeared. The rest of the film then follows the family trying to get through the alien siege upon their home, and the video ends with the rather ominous shot of the videographer, Michael, putting down the camera, which is still running, in the corner of the room, after which three aliens can be seen to stealthily file into the room. As the picture begins to shake with static and interference, one of the aliens turns to look right at the camera. Cut to black. After this there are no credits, just a title card that says the family all vanished without a trace and contains a number to call if anyone has any information on the family’s whereabouts.
At the time this undoubtedly creepy video made the rounds, found footage films weren’t really a thing. This was a full decade before the Blair Witch Project, so to people seeing it for the first time it was all very convincing. The natural unscripted banter between the family members, amateurish framing, overlapping voices, the shaky camera, the low lighting and genuine sense of palpable fear and utter confusion when the alien menace makes itself known, the number for people to call at the end, and the fact that the 60-minute film is largely shot in one take, all had not been done in film before, and served to be extremely realistic and give the impression that this was an actual video. There is even a title card in the beginning of the film announcing that the footage is authentic, and at no point is there any disclaimer that what is being seen is fiction. Considering that found footage films were not a thing at the time, the film had not been officially distributed on a wide scale, showing up mostly as bootlegs, and the sheer, uncompromising realism of the footage, people had no reason to not believe it was a real home video, and so soon what was being called “The McPherson Tape” was soon making the rounds within the UFO community as an actual film of a family being abducted by aliens. Many were convinced of the tape’s authenticity, with much discussion and debate devoted to picking apart the movie frame by frame looking for clues.
The film would even show up on an episode of the paranormal TV show Encounters, during which various experts came forward to vouch for the credibility of the film, including an Air Force Colonel who was convinced it was not faked. In reality, the film was a no-budget project put together by director and film school dropout Dean Alioto, after having read Whitley Strieber’s book Communion. He had scrounged together $6,500 to make it, and says of this:
All my favorite directors had made their debuts by that age and I didn’t want to be left behind. By that point, I had dropped out of film school and was just eager to make films. I made a producer who said he wanted to invest $6,500 and I kind of laughed it off and said the only thing I could do for that money is a home video. At the time I had been reading this memoir called Communion by Whitley Strieber, who described his own abduction by aliens. So, I decided to take the abduction storyline and embed it into a home video. I wrote out a 10-page beat sheet with the description of every scene. Everything outside of that was improvised. I gave the actors short backstories, but they filled in the blanks themselves. I thought I could just cue people by screaming ‘Oh my God, what is that?’ and pan the camera over and everyone would know to go to the next scene.
A still from the footage
Alioto then basically got a bunch of friends together to act in his movie, with even himself playing a role, and with children playing the aliens. Ironically, it was this shoestring budget that contributes to the convincingly realistic feel of the film, with the shifty dark lighting and shaky camera lending it a certain macabre credibility. Other factors also helped to launch the video into talk of being real. Shortly after the film was completed, the warehouse holding all of the copies had a fire, destroying almost all of them, as well as the master print, to ensure that the video only got a very limited release, mostly just a handful of advance copies sent out to a few mom-and-pop video shops, and largely appearing as bootleg copies. On top of this, the video contains absolutely no credits, meaning that no one linked it to Alioto. All of this made sure that the McPherson Tape was achieving a status akin to the The War of the Worlds broadcast, being taken as real, and Alioto was doing nothing to stop it. Indeed, he had no idea that rumors about his film were flying, and was just as surprised as anyone else when he learned that it was being taken as real within the UFO field. He would say of this:
I got a phone call for a guy saying that he just found this footage. I kid you not, he actually said that. Then he says that my name came up and describes the movie. I tell him that I didn’t find the movie, I made it. He tells me that he saw it at the International UFO Congress Convention, which is the biggest UFO convention in the world, and that the movie was presented with no credits. It gets better. The guy that told me all this then said that there are some TV shows that want to do a story on the movie, including Unsolved Mysteries, Hard Copy, and a FOX show called Encounters. I told him the first one was out because this mystery was pretty much solved. But we went with Encounters and they did this seven-minute segment that they did on ‘The world’s greatest UFO hoax’ for their program in the early ‘90s. I went on national TV and debunked my own movie.
He would essentially appear on Encounters again to debunk the original segment they did saying it was all real, and it is all rather bizarre. After his appearance on the show, he became an overnight celebrity, being given a larger budget to remake the original as a 1998 made-for-TV movie titled Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County, which changes names and location, as well as certain beats and adds a lot of new elements such as alien ray guns and cattle mutilation, and which is additionally often mistaken with the original. Unbelievably, all of this only served to make the original more popular and mysterious, and for conspiracy theorists to double down on their belief that the McPherson Tape was actually real. For instance, it was pointed out that the aliens shown are too thin and willowy even for children, and that the actors’ reactions are too authentic to be faked. Not only were people insisting it was real, but that Alioto was being used as a puppet to discredit it. Alioto would say of this:
Things got blown out of proportion. News channels did exposés on the movie, and people started believing that the original VHS footage was real, and that the government had hired me to make the TV remake as part of a disinformation campaign to discredit the original.
Indeed, Alioto has spent much of his time raiding forums on the film that are still debating the footage to this day, in order to debunk his own film, mostly in vain. Indeed, to this day there is a large number of people who are convinced that the McPherson footage is real, and that Ariolo’s debunking is part of a misinformation campaign to cover it all up. Whether real or not, the film has become a sort of cultural phenomenon within the field of Ufology, only furthered when the remake’s Blu-ray released in 2019 lined up with famous alleged Area 51 insider Bob Lazar’s appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast. Unfortunately, the original film has no surviving master copy, is extremely hard to find, and has been over the years tinkered with and interspersed with CGI clips. It has all gone on to take a life of its own, and it is at the very least the earliest found footage film to be taken as possibly real, cementing its place within the realm of weird stories within the UFO field.
Researchers in Tibet have uncovered 33 viruses — 28 of which were previously unknown to science — frozen up in glacier ice that formed up to 15,000 years ago.
The team from theOhio State University analysed two cores of ice from the Guliya ice cap on the far western Kunlun Shan on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau.
Employing a novel method of analysing microbes and viruses in ice samples without contaminating them, the researchers concluded the viruses lived in soil or plants.
The findings, the team said, may help scientists to better understand how viruses have evolved over the centuries.
Researchers in Tibet have uncovered 33 viruses — 28 of which were previously unknown to science — frozen up in glacier ice that formed 15,000 years ago. Pictured: the Guliya ice cap on the far western Kunlun Shan on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, in China, as seen in 1992
The study was undertaken by microbiologist and palaeoclimatologist Zhi-Ping Zhong of the Ohio State University and colleagues.
'These glaciers were formed gradually — and along with dust and gases, many, many viruses were also deposited in that ice,' said Professor Zhong.
'The glaciers in western China are not well-studied, and our goal is to use this information to reflect past environments.
In their study, the researchers analysed two core samples collected in 2015 from the Guliya ice cap — the summit of which, where the ice would have originally formed, lies some 22,000 feet (6.7 kilometres) above sea level.
As the ice accumulated in layers year-after-year, trapping material from the surroundings as it grew, the glacier has formed a record that allows scientists to learn more about atmospheric composition, climate and microbiota of the past.
With respect to the latter, the team's analysis revealed the genetic codes for 33 viruses from ice dating back as far as some 15,000 years — four of which were known to science, but at least 28 of which are novel.
The four familiar viruses belong to families that normally infect bacteria, and were found in far lower concentrations that they have been in oceans or soils.
Yet, according to the team, around half of the viruses appear to have survived at the time in which they were frozen not despite the ice, but rather because of it.
Employing a novel method of analysing microbes and viruses in ice samples (like the pictured core) without contaminating them, the team concluded the viruses lived in soil or plants
In their study, the researchers analysed two core samples collected in 2015 from the Guliya ice cap — the summit of which, where the ice would have originally formed, lies some 22,000 feet above sea level. Pictured: the topography of the ice cap, showing the core locations
As the ice accumulated in layers year-after-year, the glacier has formed a record that allows scientists to learn more about atmospheric composition, climate and microbiota of the past. With respect to the latter, the team's analysis revealed the genetic codes for 33 viruses from ice dating back as far as some 15,000 years — four of which were known to science, but at least 28 of which are novel. Depicted: cross sections of the two of the core sample, showing the locations and ages of some of the bacteria and viruses identified
'These are viruses that would have thrived in extreme environments,' explained paper author and microbiologist Matthew Sullivan, also of Ohio State University.
'These viruses have signatures of genes that help them infect cells in cold environments — just surreal genetic signatures for how a virus is able to survive in extreme conditions.'
Based on the environment and comparison to known viruses, the team believe that the newly-discovered viruses likely came from the soil or plants — rather than infecting animals or humans.
'These are not easy signatures to pull out, and the method that Zhi-Ping developed to decontaminate the cores and to study microbes and viruses in ice could help us search for these genetic sequences in other extreme icy environments.'
'These settings could included locations like Mars, for example, the moon, or closer to home in Earth’s Atacama Desert.'
According to the researchers, the study of viruses found preserved in glaciers is a relatively new field — their paper is only the third of its kind — but it is an area of investigation that will become more important as the Earth warms and glaciers melt.
'We know very little about viruses and microbes in these extreme environments, and what is actually there,' said paper author and earth scientist Lonnie Thompson, also of the Ohio State University.
'The documentation and understanding of that is extremely important: How do bacteria and viruses respond to climate change? What happens when we go from an ice age to a warm period like we’re in now?'
The full findings of the study were published in the journal Microbiome.
The team from the Ohio State University took two cores of ice from the Guliya ice cap on the far western Kunlun Shan on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, in China
HOW DO VIRUSES WORK?
A virus particle, or virion, is made up of three parts: a set of genetic instructions, either DNA or RNA; coat of protein that surrounds the DNA or RNA to protect it; a lipid membrane, which surrounds the protein coat.
Unlike human cells or bacteria, viruses don't contain the chemical machinery, called enzymes, needed to carry out the chemical reactions to divide and spread.
They carry only one or two enzymes that decode their genetic instructions, and need a host cell, like bacteria, a plant or animal, in which to live and make more viruses.
When a virus infects a living cell, it hijacks and reprograms the cell to turn it into a virus-producing factory.
Proteins on the virus interact with specific receptors on the target cell.
The virus then inserts its genetic code into the target cell, while the cell's own DNA is degraded.
The target cell is then 'hijacked', it begins using the virus' genetic code as a blueprint to produce more viruses.
The cell eventually bursts open to release the new, intact viruses that then infect other cells and begin the process again.
Once free from the host cell, the new viruses can attack other cells.
Because one virus can reproduce thousands of new viruses, viral infections can spread quickly throughout the body.
A melting glacier in Tibet has revealed over two dozen previously unknown viruses. The researchers found the viruses in 15,000-year-old ice from the Guliya ice cap of the Tibetan Plateau. They found a total of 33 viruses with 28 of them being completely new to science.
Zhi-Ping Zhong, who is a microbiologist from Ohio State University, went into further details, “These glaciers were formed gradually, and along with dust and gases, many, many viruses were also deposited in that ice.” The same microbes could have possibly been in the atmosphere during that time. “Melting will not only lead to the loss of those ancient, archived microbes and viruses, but also release them to the environments in the future.”
The viruses incredibly would have been thriving in that type of environment with “signatures of genes that help them infect cells in cold environments – just surreal genetic signatures for how a virus is able to survive in extreme conditions,” as explained by Matthew Sullivan who is a microbiologist at Ohio State University.
The researchers then found that the most common viruses found in the ice were bacteriophages that infect Methylobacterium. They were closely related to viruses in Methylobacterium strains that have been found in soil and plants. In other words, the team thinks that the viruses originated in soil and plants.
There are still many questions that need to be answered, such as “How do bacteria and viruses respond to climate change? What happens when we go from an ice age to a warm period like we’re in now?” asked Earth scientist Lonnie Thompson, adding, “We know very little about viruses and microbes in these extreme environments, and what is actually there.”
In other ancient virus news, analysis of 31,600-year-old baby teeth has indicated that the common cold has been around much longer than modern humans. The three baby teeth were found at an archaeological site called Yana “Rhinoceros Horn Site” (RHS) in Siberia and belonged to two different children who lost them between the ages of 10 and 12.
The DNA analysis of the teeth suggests that human adenovirus C (or HAdV-C), which is a virus that causes a mild cold, could have possibly originated hundreds of thousands of years ago (viruses can enter teeth from the bloodstream). Specifically, they believe that the HAdV-C split from other adenoviruses at least 700,000 years ago. The team noticed that the genomes found in the ancient teeth were similar to adenoviruses that were around between the 1950s and 2010s. That is one long-lasting virus.
A melting glacier in Tibet has revealed over two dozen previously unknown viruses. The researchers found the viruses in 15,000-year-old ice from the Guliya ice cap of the Tibetan Plateau. They found a total of 33 viruses with 28 of them being completely new to science.
Zhi-Ping Zhong, who is a microbiologist from Ohio State University, went into further details, “These glaciers were formed gradually, and along with dust and gases, many, many viruses were also deposited in that ice.” The same microbes could have possibly been in the atmosphere during that time. “Melting will not only lead to the loss of those ancient, archived microbes and viruses, but also release them to the environments in the future.”
The viruses incredibly would have been thriving in that type of environment with “signatures of genes that help them infect cells in cold environments – just surreal genetic signatures for how a virus is able to survive in extreme conditions,” as explained by Matthew Sullivan who is a microbiologist at Ohio State University.
The researchers then found that the most common viruses found in the ice were bacteriophages that infect Methylobacterium. They were closely related to viruses in Methylobacterium strains that have been found in soil and plants. In other words, the team thinks that the viruses originated in soil and plants.
There are still many questions that need to be answered, such as “How do bacteria and viruses respond to climate change? What happens when we go from an ice age to a warm period like we’re in now?” asked Earth scientist Lonnie Thompson, adding, “We know very little about viruses and microbes in these extreme environments, and what is actually there.”
In other ancient virus news, analysis of 31,600-year-old baby teeth has indicated that the common cold has been around much longer than modern humans. The three baby teeth were found at an archaeological site called Yana “Rhinoceros Horn Site” (RHS) in Siberia and belonged to two different children who lost them between the ages of 10 and 12.
The DNA analysis of the teeth suggests that human adenovirus C (or HAdV-C), which is a virus that causes a mild cold, could have possibly originated hundreds of thousands of years ago (viruses can enter teeth from the bloodstream). Specifically, they believe that the HAdV-C split from other adenoviruses at least 700,000 years ago. The team noticed that the genomes found in the ancient teeth were similar to adenoviruses that were around between the 1950s and 2010s. That is one long-lasting virus.
Are extraterrestrials selective about who on Earth they choose to have sex with? Not the usual ‘probing’ so often reported by abductees but close encounters of the twosome, threesome or moresome kind … that may or may not result in human-alien hybrids? If you’re British and this is on your bucket list, you may be in luck. A new poll found that hundreds of UK residents claim to have had sex with space aliens and identify the places it’s most likely to happen. In Buckingham Palace? Top of the Tower of London? Smack in the middle of Stonehenge?
Did someone say threesome?
“We were astonished to see how many people claim to have had intimate relations with aliens, particularly in the cities of Norwich and Bristol. There must be something about those spots which makes these experiences more common than in the rest of the UK.”
The recent survey was conducted by BuzzBingo.com (a bingo gambling site) and spokesperson David Abrams admitted to The Daily Star that they were astounded by the results. Nearly 300 people responding to the survey claimed to have had intimate (and, we assume, consensual) relations with an extraterrestrial. Of those, over 25% were from Norwich, which in another Buzzbingo.com survey was named the UFO capital of the UK, with 31% of the people living there claiming to have seen a UFO. Second in the ET sex survey was Bristol at 23%, with Liverpool coming in third at 22%. What (if the respondees are serious) is attracting ETs to these UK cities like guys on expense accounts to a Vegas strip club? What is causing ETs to fly in just to do the Norwich One Night Stand or the Bristol Stomp?
“It’s instinctive to fear the unknown but why shouldn’t aliens be friendly?”
Esteemed British ufologist Nick Pope points out that aliens could be friendly. Perhaps they’ve prepared for their Earth trip by reading some other recent polls which found that Americans have no plans made in the event of an ET encounter (other than be armed) while Brits say they’ll stock up on essentials and welcome them with a pot of tea and a freshly-baked cake. When receiving such a warm, open-armed greeting, it’s no wonder aliens would respond in kind by showing Earthlings what the “extra” in extraterrestrial really means.
“Maybe they really are out there and this is their way of communicating.”
David Abrams of Buzzbingo.com seems to be imagining space aliens as some sort of creatures who speak with their bodies rather than their mouths or minds. While that sounds like a sailor’s dream (and we know how those encounters with sirens and mermaids turned out) or the plot of a porn movie (when porn movies had plots), he may be on to something. Should NASA set up a special investigative committee to research this possibility? Or maybe it should just send a delegation to Norwich and Bristol?
She’ll be waiting for them.
Speaking of the alien sex recipients, are they telling the truth? Did they really have sex with ETs or are their subconscious desires manifesting into lucid dreams of close encounters of the ET kind?
Finally, the real question is: What would YOU do if an ET propositioned you?
My previous article was on the subject of cattle mutilations in the United States – largely in the 1970s – and why they actually had nothing to do with aliens and UFOs. The fact is, though, that many people in the UFO field are absolutely sure the phenomenon is tied to extraterrestrials. As I noted, the entire scenario of tales of alien-driven mutilations was carefully and quietly created to investigate and hide something else: (a) levels of radiation getting into the U.S. food-chain; and (b) the existence of a secret program keeping careful watch on the whole situation. With that said, now let’s get to today’s article, as it has its connections to the previous one. It’s focused on mutilations of another kind. Namely, human mutilations. But, mutilations that – just like with the cattle controversy – were part of an ingenious, grisly, piece of camouflage. And, it all revolved around vampires. To be specific, one particular type of vampire: the ferocious and deadly Aswang. Here’s a bit of background on this monstrous thing. Culture Trip say: “According to Philippine folklore, an aswang is an evil, shapeshifting creature that shares the grotesque characteristics of werewolves, vampires and ghouls. It has no consistent image or description because its appearance varies per region. People have often characterised them based on hearsay, which is why the term aswang has commonly been used as a catch-all description for most evil creatures that lurk in the night.” Culture Trip add: “What can be agreed on is how they kill. During daylight hours aswangs go incognito, taking on a human form to blend in with regular townspeople – all the while consciously observing who to target next.
Beware of the Aswang
Now, let’s see what Cryptid Wiki states: “An Aswang is a cryptid in Filipino folklore. The aswang is an inherently evil werewolf and vampire-like creature and is the subject of a wide variety of myths and stories. Spanish colonists noted that the Aswang was the most feared among the mythical creatures of the Philippines, even in the 16th century. The myth of the aswang is well known throughout the Philippines, except in the Ilocos region, which is the only region that does not have an equivalent myth. It is especially popular in the Western Visayan regions such as Capiz, Iloilo, Negros, Bohol, Masbate, Aklan, Antique. Other regional names for the aswang include ‘tik-tik’, ‘wak-wak’ and ‘soc-soc’, which is the noise it makes when chasing prey.” Whether you believe in the existence of the Aswang or not, the fact is that – in a very strange way – in the 1950s it certainly did exist And it all revolved around one Major General Edward G. Lansdale. Let’s learn a bit about him. As the U.S. Air Force shows us: “Major General Edward G. Lansdale was born in Detroit, Mich., in 1908, the second of the four sons of Sarah Frances Philips of California and Henry Lansdale of Virginia. After schooling in Michigan, New York and California, he attended the University of California at Los Angeles where he earned his way largely by writing for newspapers and magazines. He soon found his way into the better paying field of advertising in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Major General Edward Lansdale
“In World War II, he served with the Office of Strategic Services and later was commissioned as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1943, serving in various military intelligence assignments throughout the war. After several wartime promotions, he was transferred to Headquarters Air Forces Western Pacific as a major in 1945, where he became chief of the Intelligence Division. He extended his tour to remain in the Philippines…During this period, he helped the Philippine Army rebuild its intelligence services, was responsible for the disposition of unresolved cases of large numbers of prisoners of war involving many nationalities, conducted numerous studies to assist the U.S. and Philippines Governments in learning the effects of World War II on the Philippines, and later served as public information officer…”
One of the first things that Lansdale noted when he got to the Philippines was that the rebels there were deathly afraid of the Aswangs and their nocturnal, blood-drinking rampages. So, Lansdale came up with a very strange brainwave. It was a brainwave kept secret for decades, until Lansdale, himself, finally went public, long after his prestigious military career was finally over. As the major general recalled: “To the superstitious, the Huk battleground was a haunted place filled with ghosts and eerie creatures. A combat psy-war squad was brought in. It planted stories among town residents of an Aswang living on the hill where the Huks were based. Two nights later, after giving the stories time to make their way up to the hill camp, the psywar squad set up an ambush along the trail used by the Huks.” There was far more than that to the story, however.
That same psywar squad then did something that was very alternative, but that proved to be extremely effective. They silently grabbed one of the Hukbalahap rebels, snapped his neck, and then – using a specially created, metallic device – left two, deep, vicious-looking puncture marks on the neck of the man. But that was barely the start of things: they then quietly tied a rope around the man’s ankles, hung his body from a nearby tree, and let just about as much blood as possible drain out of the body. After several hours, the corpse was lowered to the ground and left close to the Hukbalahap camp, specifically to ensure it was found by his comrades. They did find it. The result, as Lansdale noted, was overwhelmingly positive, from the perspective of the Philippine government, at least. He said “When the Huks returned to look for the missing man and found their bloodless comrade, every member of the patrol believed that the Aswang had got him and that one of them would be next if they remained on that hill. When daylight came, the whole Huk squadron moved out of the vicinity.” This went on time after time.
This is a fascinating story: blood was drained from the bodies of the rebels who were targeted for death. The necks of the men were mutilated to make it look like they’d been attacked and killed by Aswangs. And, it was all achieved by the careful use of ancient folklore on the Philippines – and all at night. Now, consider the situation with cattle mutilations in the United States: cattle drained of blood. Usually late at night. And, the project worked for this reason: it required the manipulation of mysterious tales of supernatural beings. In one case, aliens. Aswangs in another. There’s no doubt there are parallels here. There were no Aswangs. And there were no aliens killing cows and sucking them dry. But, there was a need for certain people, at certain times, and under certain circumstances, to believe every bit of the cattle mutilation/UFO lore. That’s why, on so many occasions, mutilated cattle are left behind to be found on the ground: the cattle need to be seen to ensure the cattle mutilation/extraterrestrial legend continues on. Meanwhile, the real work – of trying to determine the extent to which the food-chain has been affected by God knows what – quietly goes on under a fabricated UFO banner.
Incredible! Astronomers see a Moon-Forming Disk Around a Newly Forming Planet
Incredible! Astronomers see a Moon-Forming Disk Around a Newly Forming Planet
Planetary formation is a complicated, multilayered process. Even with the influx of data on exoplanets, there are still only two known planets that are not yet fully formed. Known as PDS 70b and PDS 70c, the two planets, which were originally found by the Very Large Telescope, are some of the best objects we have to flesh out our planetary formation models. And now, one of them has been confirmed to have a moon-forming disk around it.
Artist's impression of the moon-forming disk surrounding PDS 70c
ESO/L. Calçada, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Benisty et al.
An ALMA image of PDS 70 with the location of the circumplanetary disk surrounding the exoplanet PDS 70c shown in the relief
ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Benisty et
That additional insight came from observations conducted by ALMA. Astronomers had long predicted that planet PDS 70c was surrounded by such a disk, but with the images they had captured previously they were unable to confirm its existence. Now, it has been physically confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt.
UT video discussing the formation of our own moon.
Moon formation is even less well understood than planetary formation at this point. Even the origins of our own Moon are still up for debate. But the PDS 70c discovery has the potential to illuminate the creation of at least one as we are watching. In fact, there is enough material in the disk to create three moons the size of our own around the Jupiter-like planet.
The moon formation process also plays a key part in planetary formation, with circumplanetary disks that can form moons also influencing the creation of the planet itself. Watching that disk evolve will help scientists with their models of both moon and planetary formation.
UT video discussing exomoons with Dr. David Kipping
That evolution is sure to take millions of years, but so far PDS 70c is the only known planet with any type of circumplanetary disk. The same data set confirming its existence showed that it’s Saturn-like twin, PDS 70b, does not have a disk that some scientists had previously suggested. Others might be found with more powerful telescopes, but until then this system is the best we have.
Given its uniqueness, the PDS 70 system will remain a focal point of plenty of observational firepower. Now there’s one more important detail to look into with those instruments – hopefully there will be more details to discover as well.
UFOs Sighted Over Gilan Province, استان گیلان, Iran ( July 23, 2021 )
UFOs Sighted Over Gilan Province, استان گیلان, Iran ( July 23, 2021 )
STATEMENT : می رود ، چراغ های عجیب و غریب در جاده گیلان ...:
TRANSLATE : Will go, Strange Lights on Gilan Road...
credit : ufo_earth
UFO Follows Qantas Plane Over Australia ( July 17, 2021 )
UFO Follows Qantas Plane Over Australia : July 17, 2021
STATEMENT : Partial Analysis by the AÀC part 2
credit : The AustrÀlien Community
Strange Lights Over Brecon Farm, Wales ( July 22, 2021 )
STATEMENT : We were camping on a farm it wasn't quite on the floor but wasn't as high as the stars either we stayed few days and nothing just that time. Hard to tell depth of stuff on video, so can't tell if it's just a tractor or anything or if you could properly see it was in the sky behind the hill or whatever..I have messaged the farmer he said he hasn't seen it before.
credit : Starr Cole
UFO Sighted Over Guatemala ( July 22, 2021 )
STATEMENT : A sphere above the plane.. zoom in. was yesterday live in Guatemala in the delivery of Vaccines. It's not drone because airports don't allow them.. it's not plane because very small according to the distance that is short..
credit : Luis Lopez
UFO Sighted Over Ecuador ( July 21, 2021 )
STATEMENT : This was seen in Ecuador by some coates if I believe it I've seen similar things we're not alone
Possible Flying Saucer with Dome half buried in Antarctic Snow
Possible Flying Saucer with Dome half buried in Antarctic Snow
Apossible crashed UFO half buried in the snow found 6 km from an unknown station in the middle of nowhere in Antarctica.
The upper part of the disc measures 30 meters whose dome appears to have broken off during the crash.
It is said that NAZI UFO craft have been stationed in Antarctica before, during and after World War II and since the dome of the disc seems to have been built in the last century, we may wonder whether it is a NAZI UFO eg a Glocke as well as could it be that this station has served as air traffic control for NAZI UFOs in the past?
UFOs flying over Lake Tapps in Washington 24-Jul-2021
UFOs flying over Lake Tapps in Washington 24-Jul-2021
These orange unidentified flying objects were recorded in the sky above Lake Tapps. a reservoir in Pierce County, Washington. Filmed on 24th July 2021.
Witness report:
We were walking on the street and we suddenly stopped just to see at least eight objects floating through the sky this event lasted for just about over four minutes.
One area of the greater UFO phenomenon that doesn’t seem to get as much attention as others is that of what are called USOs, which stands for “Unidentified Submersible Objects” or also “Unidentified Submarine Objects.” In such cases we have strange craft traveling beneath the waves through the water, and at other times seen to spectacularly enter the water or erupt from beneath, suggesting that these things are just as at home in the sea as they are in the skies above us. Here we will look at a collection of such exceptionally weird cases, pointing at an underseas dimension to the UFO phenomenon that has largely been ignored, but which has been gaining greater attention in recent years.
Our first odd report comes from 1947, off the coast of Malta. In June of that year, a fishing vessel was about 20 miles off the southern coast, engaged in the routine business of pulling in their nets. As the nets came up, one of the crew alerted the others to something strange bobbing about out on the water’s surface, which appeared to be what they described as a “black submarine” floating about in the waves. It was an unsettling enough sight that the crew finished hauling in their nets and went about starting up the engines to get out of there, and at that moment there was a bright flash of light from the anomalous black shape. This light was bright enough to illuminate the object and the surrounding vicinity, showing it to be smooth, black, and metallic, and there were also small figures now visible upon it, which seemed to be wearing some type of apparatus around their waists and were described as “little men.” As the frightened fishermen looked on, these diminutive figures, described as about the size of 10-year-old children, seemed to scramble into the craft, after which it began to glow so brightly that they could barely look directly at it. The object then quickly submerged and disappeared under the waves to not be seen again.
There are several similarly strange cases of UFOs entering or exiting the ocean from the 1970s. One of these comes from a reader submitted report to the site UFO Casebook, and apparently transpired in January of 1971 off the coast of Puerto Rico. The witness claimed that he frequently surfed, and that he and other surfers would often see strange things beneath the waves, glowing objects that would shoot about through the water at high speeds. One particularly interesting account would happen one morning, of which he says:
On one occasion, around 6.30. A.M. that is the best time to surf by the way, several silver-colored objects came out of the water about half a mile from where we were waiting to catch a wave. These objects were round and hovered in one position, then they took off straight up at a speed that I cannot explain, but they disappeared so fast it was incredible. About a half hour later, the objects came back, I think it was around 6 or 7 of them, and went into the ocean. We never reported it to anybody, we just thought it was a military practice or other things that we did not know about. This all happened in the year of 1971, January, I do not remember the exact date. I am only reporting this one event but we had many more sightings of this kind since we surfed in the west coast of Puerto Rico. By the way, this event happened in Rincon in a beach known to surfers as Tres Palmas, and there were about 8 to 10 surfers that day.
In 1973, we have the case of a UFO that seems to have come down to enter Rainbow Lake, in New Hampshire, in the United States. According to The Derry News, on October 4, 1973, several local residents saw multiple bright objects in the sky over the lake, “yellowish in color,” which hovered over the water. The size of the objects was given as several feet in diameter, and then one suddenly came down to crash into the waves while the other one shot straight up into the sky. The East Derry Fire Rescue Squad was notified, and actually sent a boat to search the lake, but nothing could be found. Whatever the objects were, they were apparently seen by numerous witnesses throughout the area, as the police department would receive a deluge of over 40 calls about them, which were persistent enough in insisting that something had come down into the lake that a team of divers was subsequently sent in.A follow-up report would read:
At the request of Chief (redacted), two divers descended into Rainbow Lake Friday afternoon in an attempt to resolve reports of an unidentified flying object that three witnesses claim splashed into the lake on Oct. 2. The divers swept the silty lake water with powerful searchlights, but their vision was impaired by the murky water, and they could not see more than a few inches ahead at any time. Said one of the divers, “The only way they’re going to get anything out of that lake is if they drag it. Chief (redacted) said he has no plans to drag the bottom and considers the matter closed.
A very weird series of events would play out in 1977 in the vicinity of Mayaquez, Puerto Rico, the country’s third largest city, where there was much talk of two massive glowing objects that would on many occasions enter and exit the ocean. It happened in September of that year, with a report of the two UFOs passing over the city to head out about a half a mile off shore and drop down into the water in a controlled manner. These two objects would on several occasions exit and then enter the water again, all while an estimated one thousand people looked on in astonishment. Many of them were superstitious, and were overcome by an intense terror that the world was coming to an end. One fisherman named Rafael Lopez and his half-brother, Arturo Rivera, were out in their boat that day and got a good look at the object coming down into the ocean, and he would explain:
It just appeared close to us. We didn’t see where it came from. We just all of a sudden noticed it close to us in the water, and when we first saw it, it looked small, and then it seemed to grow very large. In the beginning we weren’t afraid. We were glad because we thought there was another boat coming close to us. Then we realized it wasn’t a boat and we started to get frightened. We were hearing a sound like a cricket screeching. I had the impression it was a cricket inside the boat. I’ve had crickets in the boat before and all you have to do is pound on the sides of the boat and they usually shut up. But as much as we pounded, it didn’t quiet. It kept on making sounds.
As long as we didn’t move, the object stayed steady in the water and seemed to get smaller and then larger. And when it got larger, it got much brighter and then it would change colors. When it would grow brighter, it would get from like yellow to an orange color. Then we got frightened and decided to leave. But the boat had run out of gasoline. We had a little bit of gas in a bottle but we were really nervous by that time. We were trying to get the cap off the motor to put the gasoline in and we couldn’t because we were real nervous. And all this time the object kept getting closer and closer to us and we were getting more and more nervous. We finally got the cap off, and it finally started and we were able to start toward the beach. Once I got to the beach, I wasn’t even able to stand up at first because I was trembling. My whole body was trembling. I was pretty shook up. When I got back to my house, which is very close to the beach, I started to watch the object again. This time it was moving around real fast. It would seem to disappear and reappear again at a great distance from where it had disappeared from, darting back and forth. I’ve been a fisherman for a long time and I’ve been out on that water for a long time and I’ve never seen anything like what I saw that night. In my opinion, it was a UFO, a flying saucer.
Other witnesses were reporting the same thing, with one of the mystery objects coming down into the water. One local by the name of Luis Baez would say of what he saw:
I was playing pool and someone said, ‘Look!’ I came outside with my pool stick and I see this thing. It was something nice to see. It was round looking, like an apple. Nice, round, beautiful. It went toward the beach. I put my pool stick away and went down to the beach and looked. A friend said, ‘That thing that’s waiting over there is not a fishing boat.’ I said, ‘Sure it’s a boat’ and he said, ‘It’s not!’ So then the one that came by overhead was coming down near the other one. They stayed like that for three or four minutes maybe a thousand yards apart. The bigger one, the one that was waiting, tipped on its side and BLOOM! Into the water! The small one stayed for a while. After half an hour or so I went up to the roof of this garage and laid down and watched. I wanted to make sure if it moved or not. And I could see this thing goes up… down… this way to the right, back again and a few times it went this way into the water. You could see the water flashing. It never went all the way down in the water. It did that a few times, it goes up, comes down, moved toward the beach but not too close and it goes back. At one o’clock in the morning I went home to sleep. I have to be up early in the morning. So I slept, went to work and when I come back I asked a few friends of mine what happened to the one that was up there. Well at three o’clock in the morning it disappeared. There were about a thousand people at the beach where he was.
As all of this was going on, police were making sure that no one else headed out onto the water, prohibiting any vessels from going out to investigate. While they were doing this, there would be sightings made by police officers as well, and one of these was Mayagüez Police Lieutenant Cesar Grácia, who would say of his own sighting:
I saw something in the sky that I didn’t know what it was. It was over Highway Two about fifteen hundred feet, a large, lighted ball about six feet in diameter. It was going toward the beach very slowly. I was in the parking lot of the Hilton when they called me from the police department. They told me to go to the beach because a great many people were watching this object. When I got there, the object was already hovering over the water about two or three miles off the beach. There were about five hundred people watching. There are about four public housing areas right there and all the people from the housing areas were there. I saw one light coming down but when I got to the beach I noticed there were two objects in the water, not together but about a mile away from each other. They were hovering over the water, right about at the water level.
Because of the distance I couldn’t tell if it was a few feet over the water or if they were actually touching the water. The first object stayed about an hour but the second one lasted at least four hours. I wasn’t able to stay because I had other obligations, but I was there for quite some time. Later I returned again and it was still going on. And I left once more. When the first one disappeared, I saw it go. When the second one disappeared, I was no longer there. I stopped more than one time that evening for maybe five minutes at a time to watch. I couldn’t say exactly that it hadn’t moved but it was more or less in the same area. There were maybe five hundred people in the area where I was watching and all along the whole coast there were other people watching. A group of officers on duty that night also saw it, between five and ten. We called the Coast Guard but the Coast Guard didn’t come. The answer they gave us was that the police had to verify it first, that if there was a real emergency then the Coast Guard would be dispatched.
Other police officers would see the UFOs as well, and the whole area was experiencing a bit of a mass hysteria at the time. One Police Sergeant Ramirez would describe what he saw as follows:
I saw people gathering along the beach so I stopped my car. I was very curious, not only because there were people there but also because they were looking up. So I stopped and saw the light, which was very bright. When I got out of the car, I saw the object fall into the water, very bright and it like divided. It was pretty high, like an orange-yellow light. I don’t know exactly the size. As it came down it got larger. It was pretty good sized. First one sank into the water. About twenty seconds after, the other one went into the water also. It zigzagged a little before it went down and turned off. That was about nine thirty. I stayed around to keep traffic moving and see what the people were doing in case there was an accident or anything. Word got around and there were over a thousand people watching these things. People came out of their houses to see the view and people came in cars, parked on the side of the street and went to the beach to see what was happening. I stayed until midnight, mostly keeping an eye on the group so there wouldn’t be any problems. The police got many, many phone calls, all night. We called the Coast Guard but they didn’t come. They said it wasn’t an emergency.
There were numerous other reports along these lines, yet oddly the Coast Guard did little to act, and it seems like it was all mostly swept under the carpet. What was going on here and why were these objects repeatedly entering and leaving the ocean? We may never know. In 1990 another strange incident occurred in Turkey on the coast of the Aegean Sea. The encounter was reported by a Mr. Erol Erkmen, who was wreck diving with a friend at a site at 57 meters deep in the Saros Bay at approximately 2 PM. At one point they looked ahead to see a greenish glow in the water, which seemed to be emanating from an orb of light that appeared to be circling them and maneuvering around them. They observed it for around 3 minutes, during which time Erkmen took a photo with an underwater Kodak camera, which the object seemed to realize because it then went dark. Shortly after this, low oxygen forced the two divers to head to the surface. Upon examination, Erkmen would say that his photo had managed to capture a greenish glowing disc-shaped object, although what it is he cannot say.
Finally, we have a recent case from 2012, from Panama Beach Florida in a report filed with MUFON. On July 15 of that year, the witness says she was sitting out on the patio of her beachside residence where she was throwing a party, watching the sunset when she observed something very strange out in the water near the horizon. She explains:
I was sitting on my patio watching the sunset. On the horizon I saw this object that looked like it was coming out of the ocean. I made a comment to my customer to look. No one could figure out what it was. By now there are about 30 people outside looking. It came straight up out over the water very slowly, and made no sound. It was round looking and like it had windows with red lights in the middle and one solid white light under the bottom; they did not blink, but they were bright. When it got over the land it continued for another 7 to 10 minutes. It was almost dark. We wanted to get a picture but no one had a camera. One of my workers did take a picture with his cell phone but it just looked like a light and we could not make it out. Then the object took a right turn and flew for another 3 or 4 minutes, then in matter of seconds it was gone.
The phenomenon of these reports of UFOs entering and exiting the water are far rarer than those of the more conventional type, yet they add a layer of mystique to the lore of UFOs that is very intriguing to say the least. It hints at the possibility that these mysterious objects are not only using our skies, but also beneath the surface of our lakes and seas for inscrutable purposes we may never understand, and it all only furthers the mystery of UFOs in general, pushing it out into the far realms of the odd.
Today’s article is on a subject that has been around for decades and that peaked in the 1970s. It caught the attention of the FBI, the media, and the UFO research community. And, there are more than a few theories as to who, or what, is behind all of this. I’m talking about cattle mutilations. Since at least 1967, reports have surfaced throughout the United States of animals – but, chiefly, cattle – killed in bizarre fashion. Organs are taken and significant amounts of blood are found to be missing. In some cases, the limbs of the cattle are broken, suggesting they have been dropped to the ground from a significant height. Evidence of extreme heat, to slice into the skin of the animals, has been found at mutilation sites. Eyes are removed, tongues are sliced off, and, typically, the sexual organs are gone. As the FBI states at its website, The Vault: “Animal/Cattle Mutilation, In the mid-1970s, reports of scattered animal mutilations in western and mid-western states concerned many people. The FBI was asked to investigate, but was unable to do so because of a lack of jurisdiction (except when such mutilations were found on Indian lands). These files consist mainly of press clippings and correspondence concerning the issues between 1974 and 1978.” Now, let’s get to aliens.
It was 1967 when the UFO-mutes issue took off. There’s no doubt in my mind, at all, that the extraterrestrial angle was (and still is, now and again) carefully and secretly put into place by agencies to keep researchers and sleuths away from far more disturbing issues of a terrestrial nature. Consider these words: “On September 7, 1967, near the town of Alamosa in the San Luis Valley, Snippy, a 3-year-old Appaloosa, failed to return to the Harry King Ranch where she was stabled. Two days later, Mr. King (the ranch owner) discovered Snippy’s remains roughly a quarter-mile from the ranch house. According to his account, the neck and head had been completely stripped of flesh, leaving nothing but bare, seemingly sun-bleached, white bone, while the remainder of the mare remained unscathed.” Aliens and mutilations were now fused together – and to the careful plans of certain agencies that wanted things just like that.
When, at conferences, I bring up the issue of cattle mutilations not being the work of aliens, something happens time and again: arms quickly become folded in the audience, and in defensive fashion. I point in the direction of the true-believers and demonstrate to them that mutilations and cattle have had a long, secret history – and with not a single alien in sight. Sadly, so many people don’t want to hear that. Why? Because it’s not so exciting as UFO conspiracies, that’s why. Let me show you how and why the U.S. cattle herd has been secretly watched since the early part of the 1940s. Yes, that far back. Bacteriological Warfare in the United States is a fascinating FBI document – declassified into the public domain via the terms of the Freedom of Information Act – that covers the years 1941 to 1950. Notably, of the file’s original 1,783 pages, no less than 1,074 have been firmly withheld from declassification by the FBI. The file reveals a wealth of illuminating and disturbing data on cattle disease and death in the U.S., and their links to bacteriological warfare and sabotage by enemy nations and individuals.
The FBI documentation continues: “It has been brought to the attention of this division the possibility in the immediate future of an attempt on the part of the enemy to plant bombs containing germs or to endeavor to create an epidemic, such as hoof and mouth disease, among cattle and other livestock. It is requested that should any information concerning the above come to the attention of the Directors of Intelligence of the Service Commands or the A.C. of S. [Assistant Chief of Staff], G-2 [Army Intelligence], Western Defense Command, that the same be transmitted by the most expeditious means to the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2 War Department.” And what did the government do? I’ll tell you: they very carefully began to take a look at the cattle herd to determine who those “enemy nations and individuals” might be. And the secret investigations were undertaken whenever and wherever it seemed the cattle were being subjected to viruses by our enemies. In the 1940s it was the Nazis. And in the Fifties onward, during the Cold War, it was the Russians.
Now, let’s leap forward a couple of decades: In 1967, a contingent from the Atomic Energy Commission headed into Dulce, New Mexico and put into place what was called Project Gasbuggy. It was a sub-project of a much bigger program called Plowshare. The plan was to detonate – way below the surface – a small nuclear device, as a means to try and extract natural gas. The operation went ahead on December 10, 1967 – and it worked well. The bomb was detonated at a depth of more than 4,000 feet. Years later, certain paranoid figures in the UFO field suggested that the natural gas scenario was a cover for something else: to destroy a huge, underground “alien base” at Dulce with an atomic bomb. That, of course, is total garbage. There was no underground alien facility. Government agencies were, however, very concerned by the extent to which the radiation from Gasbuggy might have affected the cattle in the area – something that could have had significant repercussions. Not only that, a lot of beef from northern New Mexico got its way into the food-chain. Our food-chain. And, something had to be done about it. See what I mean?
So, from the late 1960s onward, a secret operation was put together to monitor the potential damage done to the herds in the area – and further areas, too. The result of the secret studies (much of it done by black helicopters, late at night on huge, darkened ranches) was the birth of the phenomenon of what became known as “cattle mutilations.” And, not just in New Mexico, but also in Colorado, Arizona and Utah. Hence the reason why the UFO issue was secretly inserted into the story: to keep people away from a terrifying, down-to-earth situation that had to be hidden. Tales of UFOs, aliens and extraterrestrial underground facilities proved to be the perfect, collective camouflage.
Approximately two months from now we’ll hit the 60th anniversary of the famous Betty and Barney Hill “alien abduction.” They were a husband and wife who, on the night of September 19, 1961, and while driving home from Canada to New Hampshire after completing a fun vacation, had a significant number of hours erased from their minds. It all happened near Indian Head, New Hampshire. It was there they saw a strange light in the sky that appeared to be carefully shadowing them from above. Concern and anxiety set in, which is no surprise. Finally, they made it home. Something very strange and disturbing happened to the Hills, but such was the state of their minds, they weren’t sure what it was. But, they certainly wanted to know. There’s no doubt that the case, itself, remains – to this day – the definitive alien abduction. But, was it really what it seemed to be? There’s a reason why I put that question forward. I suggest that with the sixty-year mark now looming large, someone ought to focus on one of the most controversial, alternative scenarios for the case: namely, that yes, Betty and Barney were abducted. But, maybe, not by extraterrestrials. The fact is this: a case can be made that something of a very “down to earth” nature occurred, rather than something from outer space.
Someone who recognized this alternative possibility was the late Philip Coppens. Had Philip not died at such a young age, there’s no doubt in my mind that he would have continued to pursue this angle and to try and find out what really happened to Betty and Barney – and to Delsey the dog, too. Let’s see what Philip had to say about all of this: “It is clear that the Hills were being monitored by USAF [U.S. Air Force] Intelligence before the encounter took place, through Major James MacDonald, who had befriended them some time earlier. Betty Hill wrote to [UFO researcher / author] Donald Keyhoe who, despite the fact that he received over a hundred letters a day, homed in on this initially unremarkable case. Within twenty-four hours, Keyhoe had arranged for the Hills to be visited by top-level scientists, including C.D. Jackson, who had previously (definitely not coincidentally) worked on psychological warfare techniquesfor President Eisenhower.. Stretching coincidence far beyond breaking point, Jackson already knew Major MacDonald, with whom he next interviewed the Hills.” Philip continued on: “It seems that Betty and Barney Hill were at the center of a web that involved USAF Intelligence and top military experts in psychological warfare. The evidence suggests that the Hills were the subjects – victims – of a psychological experiment[italics mine].”
Too extreme to believe? Nope, not at all. Check out the “alien abduction” story of Antonio Villas Boas in Brazil in 1957, and the very strange saga of Gerry Irwin (of 1959), the latter told in the pages of David Booher’s book, No Return. Strong cases can be made that both incidents were staged. And, all three cases were relatively close to each other in terms of the time-frames: 1957, 1959 and 1961. Although Betty and Barney didn’t look for professional help for what happened until sixty-three, just a handful days after the incident they shared the details they could remember with a man who was a good friend of Barney. His name was James MacDonald. More correctly, Major James MacDonald, USAF, Retired. It turns out that MacDonald did clandestine work with none other than the CIA. Betty Hill’s niece, Kathleen Marden, says of this curious affair: “[MacDonald’s] tie to the intelligence community has led to speculation among researchers that his presence at the meeting was more than social.” Betty rejected this theory, but it is, without doubt, worth noting.
Now, we come to the matter of John G. Fuller, the man who wrote the classic book on the Hill case: The Interrupted Journey, that was published in 1966. As for Fuller, he was an intriguing character. When he died in 1990, at the age of seventy-six, the New York Times ran an obituary on him. It was written by a Times journalist, Edwin McDowell, who stated: “Mr. Fuller was sometimes criticized by reviewers for not using footnotes in his books and for what they judged was the implausibility of his topics. But as Jeff Greenfield wrote in The New York Times Book Review in reviewing ‘The Poison That Fell From the Sky,’ Mr. Fuller ‘keeps raising the most unsettling of questions.’ Moreover, even before passage of the Freedom of Information Act, he had a facility for somehow obtaining Government documents, which he incorporated in some of his books.”
Back in 1957, Fuller had a decidedly clandestine meeting with a Dr. Karlis Osis. As now-declassified CIA documents on Osis show, he was deep into a wide range of fringe sciences and technologies, including out-of-body experiences, how to alter brain wave frequencies, the means to affect “various biophysical changes,” and mind manipulation. It’s no wonder that Osis was also secretly consulted by the CIA’s MK-ULTRA teams. Days after their first meeting, Osis introduced Fuller to a CIA man named Robert Lashbrook. It turns out that Lashbrook was the very last person to see scientist Frank Olson alive before he took a deadly, violent shove out of the Hotel Statler in Manhattan in November 1953. Osis also made Fuller an unforeseen, amazing offer: how would he, Fuller, like to be the very first investigative journalist to break at least a part of the MK-ULTRA story to the Unites States’ media? Clearly, Osis was recklessly playing both sides at the same time – the government and the media – for reasons that, today, are lost and not at all clear. Osis also made a way for Fuller to speak with one Andrija Puharich. He was an American of Yugoslavian extraction, someone who was deeply interested in the mysteries of the human mind, and who, in the 1950s, just happened to work at the Edgewood, Maryland-based U.S. Army Chemical Center. The Edgewood Arsenal being a place where controversial mind-manipulation-based experiments were undertaken on military personnel during the Cold War.
I should stress, there is no hard evidence to show that Betty and Barney were victims of a high-tech “MK-ULTRA“-type test. But, with the 60th anniversary of the case looming large, maybe someone will decide to get to the heart of all this and put the pieces together. And, maybe, surprises will be found. Big and shocking surprises.
Nasa kiest voor raket van SpaceX voor missie naar Jupiter-maan ‘Europa’
De NASA kiest voor SpaceX voor zijn reis naar Jupiter-maan Europa. Dat heeft de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie vrijdag bekendgemaakt. De beslissing is een grote overwinning voor het bedrijf van miljardair Elon Musk, dat zich verder in het zonnestelsel wil wagen.
De missie Europa Clipper is gepland voor oktober 2024 met een Falcon Heavy-raket vanaf het Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Het contract heeft een waarde van 178 miljoen dollar (151 miljoen euro).
Aanvankelijk zou voor de missie de raket Space Launch System (SLS) van de NASA worden gebruikt. Die genoot de voorkeur van veel Amerikaanse politici. Maar de ontwikkeling van de raket liep al vier jaar vertraging op, waardoor de deadline van de missie in gevaar kwam. Daarom kreeg de NASA in 2019 toestemming om ook naar commerciële alternatieven te kijken. Door de keuze voor de SpaceX-raket, waarvan al meerdere exemplaren de ruimte in werden gestuurd, zijn de risico's voor verdere vertraging flink lager en kan volgens experts tot wel 1,7 miljard euro worden bespaard.
Missie Europa Clipper
Het ruimtevaartuig van NASA zal 40 tot 50 omwentelingen rond Europa maken, om na te gaan of leven mogelijk is op deze ijzige maan. De orbiter zal uitgerust worden met camera’s en spectrometers (een soort van lichtmeters) om haarscherpe beelden te kunnen maken. Een radar wordt ingezet om te bepalen of er zich vloeibaar water onder de ijslaag van de planeet bevindt.
Koude douche voor Richard Branson en Jeff Bezos: miljardairs mogelijk toch geen astronaut
Miljardairs Richard Branson en Jeff Bezos kunnen mogelijk toch geen aanspraak maken op de titel van astronaut na hun ruimtevlucht eerder deze maand. De Amerikaanse luchtvaartautoriteit FAA heeft de regels verstrengd.
KVDS
Het was de eerste aanpassing van de regels sinds 2004, het jaar dat de FAA zijn Wings-programma lanceerde voor commerciële astronauten. Dat had tot doel de commerciële ruimtevaart te stimuleren. Aanvankelijk moest je alleen een trainingsprogramma doorlopen en op een hoogte van meer dan 80 kilometer boven onze Aarde vliegen - wat Branson en Bezos deden - maar daar is nu een vereiste aan toegevoegd.
Aspirant-astronauten moeten voortaan ook een bijdragen leveren aan de veiligheid van ruimtevluchten. Dat laatste is een belangrijke opdracht van de FAA. Ze moeten “tijdens de vlucht activiteiten uitvoeren die essentieel zijn voor de openbare veiligheid of bijdragen aan de veiligheid van menselijke ruimtevluchten”. Wat daar exact onder valt, is een beslissing van de FAA.
Dinsdag
De nieuwe regels werden dinsdag bekendgemaakt, de dag dat Jeff Bezos zijn ruimtevlucht maakte aan boord van een raket van zijn ruimtevaartbedrijf Blue Origin. Richard Branson had toen zijn vlucht al gemaakt aan boord van SpaceShipTwo van zijn ruimtevaartbedrijf Virgin Galactic. Dat gebeurde op 11 juli.
Branson zou alles bij elkaar nog de meeste aanspraak kunnen maken op de nieuwe titel van astronaut. Zijn vlucht was een test voor de start van de eerste commerciële vluchten door Virgin Galactic volgend jaar. De CEO van Blue Origin zei net voor de lancering van Bezos en zijn crew echter dat de bemanning “niets te doen had aan boord” omdat de ruimtecapsule van Blue Origin volledig autonoom is.
Los daarvan moet je ook genomineerd worden voor de Wings van de FAA en een woordvoerder van de Amerikaanse luchtvaartautoriteit vertelde aan nieuwszender CNN dat er momenteel geen inzendingen zijn.
NASA
Naast de FAA zijn er nog twee andere instanties die Wings uitdelen voor astronauten: de NASA en het Amerikaanse leger.
De Wings die Branson, Bezos en de andere bemanningsleden van hun ruimtevluchten opgespeld kregen na hun vlucht, waren zelfgemaakte pins van hun eigen bedrijven.
Scientists Have a new way to Predict the Most Damaging Solar Storms
Scientists Have a new way to Predict the Most Damaging Solar Storms
Space is full of hazards. The Earth, and it’s atmosphere, does a great job of shielding us from most of them. But sometimes those hazards are more powerful than even those protections can withstand, and potentially catastrophic events can result. Some of the most commonly known potential catastrophic events are solar flares. While normal solar activity can be deflected by the planet’s magnetic field, resulting in sometimes spectacular auroras, larger solar flares are a danger to look out for. So it’s worth celebrating a team of researchers from the International Space Science Institute which found a way to better track these potentially dangerous natural events.
Extremely large coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are relatively rare, and when they do happen they normally aren’t pointed at Earth. This was the case in 2012, when a massive solar flare missed Earth, but could have knocked out power grids and destroyed satellites on an entire hemisphere of the planet.
UT Video discussing the severity of solar storms.
Flares as large as the one in 2012 are relatively easy to detect using conventional sensing methods, because of their size but also their positioning. These sensors can watch for signs of brightening on the Sun’s surface that are indicative of a solar flare, or watch the flare itself as it passes out of the sun into the blackness of space. Unfortunately the same sensing techniques are not able to detect the most important kind of CMEs – those that are aimed right for us but don’t cause any brightening.
These CMEs, which don’t produce any telltale signs on the Sun’s surface, are known as “stealth” CMEs. Usually we only notice these when they actually hit the Earth, and don’t have a good indication of where they formed on the Sun. However, the researchers used data collected on four stealth CMEs by NASA’s STEREO spacecraft that did in fact track them back to their origins on the Sun.
Anton Petrov’s video discussing the 2012 solar flare. Credit – Anton Petrov YouTube Channel
When they subsequently analyzed those origin points with other data collected simultaneously, they noticed a changing brightening pattern that appeared for all four stealth CMEs. They believe these changes are indicative of the stealth CME’s formation, allowing scientists precious time to detect and prepare for a potential massive CME hit once similar patterns are detected.
Detecting the patterns themselves can prove tricky though. STEREO’s work in finding the source region of the CMEs used in the study was simply lucky – the spacecraft happened to be looking in the right place at the right time. To fully flesh out this technique, more data from an angle off-set from Earth will be needed to model the structure of the newly found CME and its origin region.
Twin STEREO spacecraft monitoring the Sun for solar storms in this artists’ impression. Credit – NASA
Help is on the way though – ESA launched the Solar Orbiter last year, which should be able to collect the necessary data as part of its mission. It can also help with an even more challenging problem – detecting “super-stealth CMEs”, which don’t show up on a coronagraph, a standard tool used to detect other types of solar flares.
Understanding is the key to defeating, or at least coping with, this potentially deadly environmental hazard. Now we have a tool to predict more of those hazards, and a path forward to detect even more of them.
TOKYO -- Gone are the days when UFO stories were dismissed as crackpot pseudoscience. Today, they are an emerging field of public policy debate.
A recent U.S. report on unidentified flying objects, or what the intelligence community calls unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), has brought these mysterious sightings into the realm of serious discussion on national security.
The world's powers need to take note. Japan and European allies of the U.S. should work on sharing information on UAP to learn more about them and assess potential security risks.
The report released on June 25 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence examines 144 incidents of UAP gathered since 2004, mainly by the U.S. military. Most of them are from the past two years.
For many readers, the nine-page document raised more questions than it answered. Of the 144 reported UAP sightings, the Pentagon task force that examined the episodes could offer a reasonable explanation for only one case, identified as "a large, deflating balloon." The rest remain unexplained.
In 18 incidents, unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics were observed. "Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion," according to the report. There are also 11 reports of near misses between the observing aircraft and a UAP.
The report is based on the work of the Department of Defense's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, set up in August 2020 in response to a flurry of UAP sightings in recent years. At a glance, the document seems to be a feast for UFO believers and conspiracy theorists. But far from being that, it reflects the growing interest in these phenomena among U.S. policymakers.
After the release of the report, some U.S. lawmakers and security experts called for redoubled efforts to determine the truth behind UAP. "The United States must be able to understand and mitigate threats" posed by UAP, said Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia who serves as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida concurred, saying, "The Defense Department and intelligence community have a lot of work to do before we can actually understand whether these aerial threats present a serious national security concern."
The Pentagon is willing to respond to such calls. In late June, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks directed the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security to develop a plan to formalize the UAP task force's activities.
A U.S. security expert with knowledge of discussions on this topic in the Biden administration said civilian and military officials are primarily worried that some aerial sightings may be linked to foreign countries or groups hostile to the U.S.
This is a more palpable threat than invading aliens. Even if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the vast universe, the sheer distances involved make it unlikely that such beings are visiting Earth at anywhere near the pace of reported UAP sightings.
Professor Hitoshi Murayama, a well-known theoretical particle physicist teaching at the University of California, Berkley, explained.
"Any planet with an environment similar to that of Earth is thought to be at least about four light years away from us," Murayama said.
"Shuttling between such a planet and Earth would take an incredibly long time even with extremely sophisticated technology," he said. "If extraterrestrial visitors are involved [in any of the UAP], it is hard to understand how they travel to the Earth so frequently."
Existing earthly spaceships would take about 30,000 years to travel to a planet four light years away. Even for civilizations with far more advanced technology, the distance would be a daunting hurdle. These scientific assumptions support the view that UAP are human in origin. If so, at least some of the sightings may involve unknown highly advanced technology from countries like Russia or China, possibly representing a serious security threat to the U.S.
Multiple military experts warn that objects capable of the otherworldly flight characteristics reported in some UAP were used for military purposes, intercepting or tracking them with existing weapons systems would be next to impossible. Some UAP reports by the U.S. forces exhibit high-level stealth capabilities that defy radar detection.
The report mentions the possibility of "technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or a nongovernmental entity." But it admits there is no solid evidence to support such claims.
The report also suggests some UAP observations could be attributable to classified programs undertaken by the U.S. government or industry. If this is the case, however, such programs have been going on without the knowledge of top U.S. intelligence and defense officials.
The report does not necessarily rule out the involvement of alien visitors. Christopher Mellon, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, argued for taking the alien theory seriously in a blog post on the UAP report.
"In my view, the UAP report's findings strengthen the case for the alien hypothesis by undermining the main alternatives and providing examples of capabilities we cannot emulate or even understand," Mellon said.
The topic should also raise security red flags for Japan and other U.S. allies that depend on the American military for their defense. Any technology unknown to the U.S. that defies responses by its military, whether human or extraterrestrial in origin, could pose a serious potential threat.
Closer cooperation between the U.S. and its allies on sharing and studying UAP sightings is essential. Most of the 144 UAP episodes covered by the report occurred in or around U.S. airspace.
If a foreign state or group is developing advanced weapons, chances are it will conduct more tests in other parts of the world rather than risk exposing its work to the Americans. If Russia or China were involved, Japan might be in a better geographical position than the U.S. to gather information about the technology.
Japan is beginning to take a minimum response to the challenge. Last September, one month after the U.S. set up the UAP task force, then Defense Secretary Taro Kono issued an unusual order to the Self-Defense Forces to take visual records and analyze such sightings.
During his meeting last summer with then-U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Kono raised the topic and agreed with the Pentagon chief to share information.
Traveling to space has become a thing among the world's multibillionaires. This month, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson rode into space aboard a rocket he helped fund, followed less than two weeks later by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.
But humans know only a sliver of the vast universe. While lawmakers and news media should still never feed wild alien conspiracy theories, the U.S. report has spelled the end of the taboo on discussing UFOs in the public policy sphere.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) receives dozens of uncrewed aircraft sighting reports every month. With incident reports coming in from pilots, citizens, and law enforcement officials alike, the FAA’s database of drone and unidentified aircraft sightings runs into thousands of Mandatory Occurrence Reports (MORs) today. So, now, an enterprising online publication is featuring these reports in an interactive map of the United States – thus making it easier for people to zoom into their neighborhood for details or explore hotspots of sightings more intimately.
To create the interactive map, The War Zone’s Adam Kehoe and Marc Cecotti combed through approximately 10,400 incident reports published online via a number of Excel spreadsheets. The data spans from November 2014 to December 2020.
Now, the FAA doesn’t offer too many details about how the reports are collected, or how they are ultimately selected for the public dataset. What is clear though is that a MOR must be generated whenever a pilot reports “unauthorized UAS activity or authorized UAS activity that is conducted in an unsafe or hazardous manner.”
Exploring the dataset
One of the biggest challenges before the reporters was to assign approximate locations using the city and state information provided in the report because MORs do not contain precise location information. Also, as Kehoe explains:
There are a large number of spelling errors and other issues in the original data, so not all locations have been matched to date. Currently, our mapping system has geocoded 9566 reports. We are working to resolve the location information on the remaining reports.
Nonetheless, you can use the interactive map to search for incidents either by keywords or by filtering a minimum altitude. Also, since drone incidents around strategic infrastructure are of special interest, the authors have marked the locations of active nuclear reactors in the United States on the map to help users better find incidents.
The degree of severity of the incidents in the dataset expectedly varies dramatically, the reporters note, adding:
Many of the reports describe common but nonetheless concerning safety hazards posed by errant recreational drones flown at low altitudes. Buried within the reports are also much more concerning incidents involving aircraft operating near sensitive facilities, such as nuclear installations and military bases, or at highly peculiar, and illegal, altitudes. The reports also vary considerably in terms of the type of aircraft described. Beyond the expected menagerie of commercial and recreational drones, a number of unusual vehicles are mentioned, including some balloon-drone hybrids, and a small smattering of references to what pilots described as UFOs.
Interactive map of drone safety incidents in the US
You can explore the map by either clicking here or on the picture below:
Meanwhile, a summary of some of the most bizarre and interesting cases can be found here. The reporters plan to make updates and improvements to the system over time.
How can I report a drone safety incident to the FAA?
Glad you asked. The FAA now uses NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System to encourage confidential, voluntary, and non-punitive reporting of drone safety incidents. The database not just allows you to submit reports, but you can also view other submitted incidents, hopefully, to learn from the mistakes of others. Colleague Scott Simmie has covered this reporting system in detail here and here.
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Until 2017 Luis Elizondo worked in the Pentagon where he headed the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Programme, which was meant to study unidentified aerial phenomena. He said he quit because US authorities have been underestimating the threat from UFOs. Since then he joined a UFO research group To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science.
The Pentagon has a 23-minute video showing multiple mysterious objects moving in strange patterns, says a former official from the Department of Defense Luis Elizondo. Speaking on YouTube channels Witness Citizen UAP and Fade to Black, Elizondo said he personally saw the video, which he described as "extremely compelling".
The former Pentagon employee mentioned the video when he was asked about his work as the director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). Speaking on videos of UFOs that may leave viewers rattled, Elizondo described the long video, which shows numerous eerie objects, which move in patterns humans "wouldn’t really understand".
"I sent [the video] to some highly trained experts in the ISR (Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) community. And when they came back to me, the title of the email was quote-unquote 'that UFO video'. It is definitive and it's perplexing, every time you think you are like 'that’s what I am looking at' - bang, it changes," he said.
The ex-Pentagon official said the UFOS in the video were big enough for "several" human-sized beings to fit inside. He declined to provide further details, saying he might get arrested if he said too much.
The development comes after the Department of Defense released the much-anticipated report on sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena. The dossier revealed that US authorities still have no explanation for more than 140 sightings of mysterious objects, including the Tic Tac UFO, spotted by civilians and servicemen.
However, the Pentagon has been admonished for what critics described was an uncomprehensive report, and UFO enthusiasts claimed that the DoD is unwilling to share truth about US forces’ encounters with extraterrestrial life. US lawmakers have since called on the Pentagon to hold hearings on the issues, which they consider to be of national security.
The UFO files: exploring the findings of the Pentagon’s report
The UFO files: exploring the findings of the Pentagon’s report
The report, released last month, examines mysterious phenomena in the skies. What does it tell us?
In 2017, The New York Times publicly revealed that the US Defence Intelligence Agency had, ten years earlier, established the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Programme – a secret $22m government project to examine military encounters with unidentified flying objects, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs), as they are officially known today.
By that time, details and footage of some particularly striking incidents had already been leaked and widely reported. There was growing interest among members of Congress, who called for greater transparency on the issue. The Senate’s intelligence committee demanded that the Pentagon – the Department of Defence – release a public report describing its findings.
What were these widely reported incidents?
In 2014 and 2015, US navy pilots from the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt described close encounters in the Atlantic off Virginia with what looked like flying spheres.
Pilots reported that the objects had no visible engine or exhaust plumes, but that they could reach altitudes of 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds. Some incidents were videotaped, including one in early 2015 that shows an object zooming over the waves as a pilot exclaims: “Wow, what is that, man? Look at it fly!”
In November 2004, two jets from the USS Nimitz were 100 miles southwest of San Diego when they encountered a white oval-shaped craft hovering above the sea. As one of the F-18 jets descended to look, the object ascended towards it, then zipped away. “It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen,” said David Fravor, one of the pilots. “It had no plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s.”
What did the report find?
The Pentagon examined 144 reports of UAPs made by US military pilots between 2004 and 2021. Although only nine pages long, it presents some interesting findings. One is that UAPs “probably do represent physical objects”, as opposed to technical anomalies or figments of pilots’ imaginations. Some 80 of the UAPs were observed with “multiple sensors”, for instance by radar, infrared and optical cameras as well as pilots’ visual observations.
Furthermore, in 18 of the incidents, the objects demonstrated “unusual flight characteristics”, such as manoeuvring abruptly or moving at intense speeds – potentially demonstrating advanced, as-yet unknown technologies. The report also identified 11 “near-misses” between UAPs and US pilots, concluding that they “clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to US national security”.
Plastic artist Peter Coffin's ‘Flying Saucer’, a seven-meter, LED-studded, SMS-controlled flying saucer which was lifted by a helicopter over Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
ANTONIO SCORZA/AFP via Getty Images
Did it offer explanations?
By and large, no. In one case, the Pentagon felt confident that the reported sighting of a UAP was in fact “a large, deflating balloon”. As for the other 143 sightings, it said it was unable to explain them definitively. But it did put forward five potential categories for sightings of UAPs: first, “airborne clutter”, such as birds, drones, balloons or debris; second, “natural atmospheric phenomena” such as thermal fluctuations, ball lightning or solar flares; third, classified technology operated by “US entities”; fourth, “foreign adversary systems”, i.e. secret technologies deployed by China or Russia; fifth, a catch-all “other”.
The fifth, of course, was taken by many as a code for “aliens”, but the word did not feature in the report. Essentially, the report amounts to a “giant shrug”, said The Economist, finding that the evidence on UAPs is “largely inconclusive” and that conclusions will require more data.
So was it a damp squib?
Not altogether. There was enough there to excite the UFO-watching community: “Some UAPs,” the report confirmed, “appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, manoeuvre abruptly or move at a considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion.”
It also signalled that security officials do now take UAPs seriously, and that, as Barack Obama recently put it: “there’s footage and records of objects in the skies that... we don’t know exactly what they are”. Most significantly, the findings are potentially deeply troubling from a national security perspective.
President Biden speaks at the Pentagon in February 2021
Alex Brandon/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Why are they worrying, security-wise?
If a “foreign adversary” is behind the aircraft seen by US pilots and radar, then the likes of Russia or China are developing craft with advanced flying abilities that not only exceed the US, but which are so far ahead that they are actually incomprehensible.
Marik von Rennenkampff, a former Pentagon analyst, said that in that case, foreign powers would have performed a breathtaking technological leap – and that US intelligence would have suffered an immense failure “orders of magnitude worse than 9/11” by failing to note and explain them. Other experts, however, questioned why a foreign adversary would risk their technological advantages being discovered by parading them in front of rivals.
What other possible explanations are there?
The Pentagon has not always been forthcoming where reports of UAPs are concerned. “There is a long history of the US government allowing UFO theories to develop to mask or hide classified programmes,” said Julian E. Barnes, an intelligence reporter at The New York Times.
Many historical UFO sightings in the US have been retrospectively explained as sightings of the Lockheed U-2 and its successors: top-secret high-altitude spy planes that the Pentagon did not wish publicly to discuss. The report is somewhat non-committal in this area, saying only: “We were unable to confirm” that classified US programmes “accounted for any of the UAP reports we collected”.
At any rate, this report is only the beginning: it advised more “consistent consolidation” and analysis of reports. Mystery objects in the skies above are now firmly on the radar of the US armed forces.
Here's What You Need To Remember: The Groom Lake facility at this time acquired the designation “Area 51” as it expanded and developed specialized facilities for the striking supersonic jets: larger additional hangars, a longer 10,000 foot runway, safer backup landing areas, over 130 housing units for personnel, and enlarged fuel stores for the exotic high-temperature JP-7 fuel used in the A-12.
Area 51, the highly secretive U.S. Air Force test facility in the deserts of southern Nevada, is enjoying a resurgence of popular interest thanks to an internet meme—as if being featured in X-File episodes, arcade shoot’em up games and films weren’t enough.
Despite the countless dubious conspiracy theories attributed to the site also known as “Dreamland” or “Groom Lake,” there’s no doubt that for over six decades the base hosted all sorts of “black project” aircraft whose existence was not formally disclosed by the Pentagon.
Though the CIA only obliquely admitted to the site’s existence in 2013, we actually know a fair bit about how Area 51 came to be—and even how it first became a subject of juicy UFO stories.
A Private Testing Ground for Eisenhower’s Top-Secret Spy Plane
In the early 1950s, the United States was super keen on monitoring the Soviet Union’s rapidly developing nuclear ballistic missile program. As the first spy satellites remained a few years away from being launched, the only way to reliably spy on these sights was to fly above them and snap pictures with giant cameras. But by the early 1950s, the Soviet Union’s new air defense system and high-flying jet interceptors made spy flights excessively risky.
To overcome these defenses, Lockheed engineer Kelly Johnson proposed a glide-liker spy plane that would simply fly too high to be intercepted at over 70,000 feet. This still involved illegally violating Soviet airspace—but as long as the spy planes couldn’t be shot down, Moscow couldn’t prove the spy flights were happening at all.
In November 1954, Eisenhower approved development of this U-2 spy plane in a program known as “Project Aquatone” to be operated by the CIA. While the plane would be built at Lockheed’s famous Skunkworks facility, an aircraft designed for illegal spy overflights needed to be tested somewhere more discrete.
Johnson asked Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier to find a suitably clandestine airfield. As described in the bookDark Eagles by Curtis Peebles, test pilot Tony LeVier departed from the Skunkworks facility in Palmdale, California flying a Beechcraft Bonanza light plane, ostensibly on a “hunting trip.” In reality, they proceeded to survey 50 decertified sites in Arizona, California and Nevada over two weeks—but none seemed sufficiently remote.
However, Air Force liaison Col. Osmond Ritland recalled an abandoned X-shaped landing strip that had served as a gunnery field during World War II.
CIA officer Richard Bissell, LeVier and Johnson flew down to inspect the strip, which lay next to a dry Nevada salt flat called Groom Lake. Bissell described the site as “…a perfect natural landing field… as smooth as a billiard table without anything being done to it.”
Johnson indicated “We’ll put it right there. That’s the hangar.”
A fake company called CLJ, created to obscure Lockheed’s involvement, recruited contractors to build up the facilities in the sweltering summer of 1955 at a cost of $800,000.
The desolate site, deceptively nicknamed “Paradise Ranch,” started out with a nearly mile-long runway, two hangars, a control tower, fuel and water storage tanks, an access road, and trailers for onsite personnel. LeVier personally road about the lakebed to clear it of debris and spent shell casings to make it safe for landing.
Finally, on July 24, 1955, the prototype U-2, dubbed Article 341, was disassembled and stowed into a hulking C-124 Globemaster transport plane, which transported it to the “Ranch”—landing with deflated tires so as not to break through the thin runway.
LeVier took the gawky aircraft around on taxi tests, hitting 80 miles per hour on the runway—only for the aircraft’s lengthy wings to lift his plane twenty feet into the air during his second run. The U-2 flew over a quarter-mile, before LeVier was able to get the lift-prone aircraft back down on the lakebed on his second attempt—though the hard landing caused one of the jet’s tires to burst and catch fire.
The U-2 went on to see several successful flight tests and in a matter of months was deployed on spy flights over the Soviet Union with CIA pilots.
Civilian airline pilots and air traffic controllers began spotting the silvery U-2s flying at supposedly impossible heights. Given that the Air Force couldn’t explain the sightings by telling the truth, it devised weather-related incidents to explain them away. These often unconvincing explanations only fed the fervor of conspiracy theorists.
The Blackbirds: A-12, D-21 and SR-71
When a Soviet S-75 surface-to-air missile blasted Gary Powers’s U-2 in 1960, and he subsequently confessed to performing espionage flights) it became clear that altitude alone would not provide an adequate defense. Kelly Johnson had already anticipated this vulnerability in 1958, when he began exploring a new spy plane concept: combining high altitude with sustained speeds exceeding three times the speed of sound, and radar-stealth—hopefully making the jet too high and fast to ever intercept.
This CIA-Lockheed “black project”—codenamed “Project Oxcart”—spawned the futuristic-looking A-12 single-seat spy plane, the progenitor of the famous (and unclassified) two-seat SR-71 Blackbird flown by the U.S. Air Force.
The Groom Lake facility at this time acquired the designation “Area 51” as it expanded and developed specialized facilities for the striking supersonic jets: larger additional hangars, a longer 10,000 foot runway, safer backup landing areas, over 130 housing units for personnel, and enlarged fuel stores for the exotic high-temperature JP-7 fuel used in the A-12.
The first A-12s arrived in 1962 along with elite military pilots temporarily discharged and placed in the employ of the CIA, a protocol known as “sheep-dipping.” Though the White House never dispatched A-12s on overflights of the Soviet Union, they did fly thirty-two missions over Vietnam and North Korea in Project Blackshield before being retired in favor of the Air Force’s SR-71s, which had side-looking cameras that didn’t require overflight of hostile airspace.
Lockheed also devised a D-21 spy drone that resembled a miniature, single-engined Blackbird, carried on top of a Blackbird-derived carrier aircraft called the M-21.
Tragically, one of the piggybacked D-21 drones collided with its M-21 carrier during a test launch. Though both of the M-21’s crew ejected, one drowned before he could be rescued, and Johnson canceled M-21 program.
However, the CIA did later try to make use of the D-21s by launching them from B-52 bombers to snap footage of Chinese nuclear test sites. However, a series of mishaps meant the Air Force was unable to recover footage from any of the five drone missions it dispatched.
Birthplace of the Stealth Jet
While the A-12 and Blackbird had limited stealth characteristics, by the 1970s, the Air Force was interested in taking another crack at a low-radar-observable jet, this time with combat application.
In 1977, the Skunk Works used new computer modeling technology to design and build two pale aircraft with diamond-like faceted surfaces coated with radar-absorbent iron ball paint. These “Have Blue” aircraft were disassembled and flown to Area 51 in a giant C-5 cargo jet November 16, then rebuilt and test flown.
Lo and behold, the Have Blues did exhibit drastically reduced radar cross-sections—but they were also highly aerodynamically unstable, and both crashed in 1979.
Lockheed evolved Have Blue into the F-117 Nighthawk attack jet, which used computer fly-by-wire systems to correct the aircraft’s inherent instability. A YF-117 prototype too made its first flight at Groom Lake on June 17, 1981. Production F-117s were then stationed at Area 51 before being redeployed to the nearby Tonopah Test Range.
Though the Pentagon admitted to the existence of a stealth jet in 1983, the secrecy surrounding the F-117 was so effective that the public never had any inkling of the Nighthawk’s true appearance, nor even its designation (widely believed to be the “F-19”) until was finally unveiled in 1988.
Meanwhile, Northrop, too, began refining its stealth technology with the Tacit Blue demonstrator, dubbed the “whale” or “alien school bus” for its decidedly unglamorous appearance. This made its first flight at Groom Lake in February 1982—the first of 135 in all before the demonstrator was retired in 1985.
Conceived as stealthy surveillance plane with a discrete Low Probability of Intercept Radar, Tacit Blue instead pioneered the use of computer-engineered curved-surfaces in stealth aircraft which heavily informed Northrop’s forthcoming B-2 stealth bomber.
Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring.
This article first appeared in 2019 and is being reprinted due to reader interest.
China’s space station is preparing to host 1,000 scientific experiments
China’s space station is preparing to host 1,000 scientific experiments
Researchers around the world are eagerly awaiting the completion of Tiangong, to study topics from dark matter and gravitational waves to the growth of cancer and pathogenic bacteria.
Chinese astronaut Nie Haisheng works inside the Tianhe module.
Credit: Jin Liwang/Xinhua/eyevine
China launched the core of its space station in April, and sent three astronauts up in June. But although it probably won’t be complete until late 2022, there is already a long queue of experiments from across the world waiting to go up. Scientists in China told Nature that the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) has tentatively approved more than 1,000 experiments, several of which have already been launched.
Before April, the International Space Station (ISS) was the only space laboratory in orbit, and many researchers say Tiangong (or ‘heavenly palace’) is a welcome addition for astronomical and Earth observation, and for studying how microgravity and cosmic radiation affect phenomena such as bacterial growth and fluid mixing.
China has landed its first rover on Mars — here’s what happens next
However, others argue that crewed space stations are costly, and serve more of a political than a scientific purpose.
“Increased scientific access to space is of scientific benefit globally, no matter who builds and operates platforms,” says Julie Robinson, chief scientist for human exploration and operations at NASA Headquarters, in Washington DC.
“We need more space stations, because one space station is definitely not enough,” adds Agnieszka Pollo, an astrophysicist at the National Centre for Nuclear Research in Warsaw, who is part of a team sending an experiment to study γ-ray bursts.
Open to the world
The ISS was launched in 1998, as a partnership between space agencies from the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada (see ‘Variations on a theme’). It has housed more than 3,000 experiments since then, but China is barred from it because of US rules that prohibit NASA from using funds for collaboration with China.
Although most experiments slated for Tiangong will involve Chinese researchers, China says that its space station will be open to collaboration from all countries, including the United States.
In June 2019, the CMSA and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), which promotes collaboration in space, selected nine experiments — in addition to the 1,000 that China has tentatively approved — to go up once the space station is complete. Simonetta Di Pippo, director of UNOOSA in Vienna, says these involve 23 institutions in 17 nations.
China previously launched two small space labs — Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2. These hosted more than 100 experiments, circling Earth for a number of years, but are no longer in orbit.
The space station offers brand new facilities, and China is encouraging experiments not attempted in space before, says Tricia Larose, a medical researcher at the University of Oslo, who is leading a project planned for 2026. “They’re saying, yes, build your hardware, make it brand new, do something that has never been done before, and send it up to us.”
Although most projects approved so far are led by Chinese researchers, many have international collaborators, says Zhang Shuang-Nan, an astrophysicist at the Chinese Academy of Science’s (CAS’s) Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing, who advises the CMSA.
‘The playrooms of scientists’
The first section of Tiangong to arrive was a core module known as Tianhe (‘harmony of the heavens’). In late May, a cargo ship named Tianzhou-2 (‘heavenly ship’) was sent up and docked, delivering fuel, space suits and experimental equipment. In June, three Chinese astronauts — or ‘taikonauts’ — aboard Shenzhou-12 (‘divine vessel’) also docked, entering the 17-metre-long chamber that will be their home for the next three months.
Over the next year or more, the CMSA will send another eight missions to Tiangong. Two will deliver the Wentian (‘quest for heavens’) and Mengtian (‘dreaming of heavens’) modules, which will mainly house scientific experiments (see ‘China’s first space station’).
Image credit: Adrian Mann/Stocktrek Images/Alamy
These will be “the playrooms of scientists”, says Paulo de Souza, a physicist at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, who develops sensors used in space.
The space station will have more than 20 experimental racks, which are mini-labs with closed, pressurized environments, says Yang Yang, director of international cooperation at the CAS Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization in Beijing. Outside, there will be 67 connection points for research hardware facing Earth or the sky, says Yang, and a powerful central computer will process data from experiments before beaming them back to Earth.
Organoids and dark matter
The experiments being sent up to the new space station encompass numerous fields. Zhang is the principal investigator for HERD (High Energy Cosmic-Radiation Detection facility), which is a partnership involving Italy, Switzerland, Spain and Germany, slated for 2027. This particle detector will study dark matter and cosmic rays, and will cost some 1 billion to 2 billion yuan (US$155 million to $310 million), says Zhang.
Zhang and Pollo are also involved in POLAR-2, which will study the polarization of γ-rays emitted from large and distant explosions, with the goal of clarifying the properties of γ-ray bursts, and possibly even gravitational waves.
Larose plans to send up 3D blobs of healthy and cancerous intestinal tissue, known as organoids. She wants to find out whether the very-low-gravity environment will slow or stop the growth of the cancerous cells, which might lead to new therapies.
'Taikonuat' Liu Boming performs Chinese second ever spacewalk after arriving at Tiangong in June.
Credit: Jin Liwang/Xinhua/eyevine
Other projects from scientists in India and Mexico will study ultraviolet emissions from nebulae and infrared data from Earth to study meteorological conditions and what drives intense storms.
Despite many of the projects being partnerships between Chinese and Western scientists, geopolitical tensions have made collaborations more difficult, notes Larose. She says Norway has yet to sign a bilateral agreement with China that would give her project the green light. Merlin Kole, an astrophysicist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, who is also working on POLAR-2, adds that stricter adherence to export regulations means there is added bureaucracy around sending electronic hardware to China.
But Di Pippo says that tensions have so far had no impact on the progress of projects selected by UNOOSA, adding that the agency is discussing with the CMSA to send more experiments to Tiangong by the end of next year.
Scientific bang for buck
Some scientists have argued that crewed space stations are a waste of money — the cost of Tiangong has not been made public, but the ISS cost some €100 billion (US$118 billion) to build and maintain for its first decade.
“You’d get a much bigger scientific bang for the buck with robotic missions,” says Gregory Kulacki, an analyst on China security issues for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Within China, as within the United States, there has been a tension between scientists who want to do the best science they possibly can, and who prefer robotic missions, and governments who want to use human space-flight programmes largely for political purposes.”
China’s daring mission to grab Moon rocks is under way
But other researchers point out that although satellites offer an alternative for some observations, for many experiments, particularly those requiring microgravity, crewed space stations are essential. They provide a home for long-term observations, data-processing capacity and access for astronauts who can perform maintenance tasks and run experiments.
Furthermore, as well as housing experiments from researchers, Tiangong is intended to test human space-travel technologies to support China’s space-exploration goals, says Zhang.
With current ISS funding only running to sometime between 2024 and 2028, it’s also possible that Tiangong will eventually become Earth’s only space station in operation.
Tiangong is projected to operate for at least a decade, and China already has plans to launch other spacecraft to work in tandem with it. The China Survey Space Telescope, or Xuntian (‘survey the heavens’), is a two-metre optical telescope that will rival NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and periodically dock with Tiangong for refuelling and maintenance. Set to launch in 2023, it will have a larger field of view for peering into the deep Universe than does Hubble.
There have been many UFO incidents over the years, involving a wide range of phenomena that cover the spectrum from the explainable to the full-on bizarre. Some of the more intriguing UFO incidents are those that involve reliable witnesses and radar and military confirmation, and these are the cases that really make the imagination go wild. One such case played out in 2017 over Northern California and Oregon, involving an airborne intruder that baffled pilots and radar crews, and which would actually be engaged by F-15 fighter jets.
On October 25, 2017, a very strange, almost surreal series of events would play out in the skies near the California-Oregon border, in the United States. At approximately 4:30 p.m. an object was picked up by radar operators flying at an altitude of 37,000 feet and travelling “very fast.” At the time it was broad daylight and whatever the aircraft was, it was dangerously zipping through an area with heavy air traffic, yet it was not emitting any transponder signals, did not respond to attempts to establish radio contact, was completely silent, and according to all records was not supposed to be there. It would later turn out that the Air Force had also been tracking the object as it sped southward, and eyewitnesses who saw it said it was a “large white object.” The object flew directly into heavy air traffic going the opposite direction, being sighted by numerous airline pilots who made panicked calls to ground control, before abruptly changing course to head northbound and disappear from radar altogether.
Although the thing had vanished from radar, for the next 30 minutes there were panicked calls from various airliners reporting the mysterious, fast-moving object, over a range of hundreds of miles, while both the FAA and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) were trying to figure out what to do. No one seems to have been able to get a good look at the thing, merely describing it as large, white, and very fast, but details such as what sort of aircraft it might be were elusive, and it moved too fast and never stayed in one place long enough for anyone to get a clear visual. However, it was obvious from the harried recordings that would later be released that these pilots did not think it was any normal aircraft, with one exclaiming “That looks crazy!” It would also be described as making maneuvers that were beyond what a normal airliner would have been capable of, making turns of which one witness would say were “Way harder/faster than what a commercial aircraft could handle at that speed/altitude without ripping the wings off.” One Southwest Airlines pilot remark that would be gleaned from audio recordings of the pilot accounts procured through Freedom of Information Act requests made by the site The War Zone, who first broke the story, would say of his own sighting:
If it was like a Lear (private jet) type airframe I probably would not have seen it this clear. This was a white airplane and it was big. And it was moving at a clip too, because we were keeping pace with it, it was probably moving faster than we were… It was a larger aircraft yeah.
Throughout all of this, although visual sightings were pouring in, radar operators could not get a lock on it. The object was also maintaining complete radio silence, ignoring all attempts to hail it, and also did not show up on crews’ digital traffic collision avoidance systems (TCAS). It was all very odd and unsettling, to the point that F-15s from the 142nd Fighter Wing based at Portland International Airport were scrambled to go investigate. From here it gets even stranger, because the fighters would first head south, despite the fact that the mystery object was reported as heading north, for reasons unknown. Also strange is that the F-15s would report not being able to find the object at all. The War Zone would say of the F-15 incident:
The F-15s first appear on radar as they climb out of Portland to the south at time index 33:33 as “Rock” flight—a common callsign used for the alert F-15s stationed at PDX. Alaska 439 asks for an update on the unidentified aircraft and the controller notes they still have nothing on him, saying colloquially that it must be in a kind of “stealth mode or something.” It’s also interesting that the F-15s first went south when it seems as if the object would have been north of PDX by the time they finally launched.
NORAD also said that the incident did result in F-15s from Portland being scrambled to investigate, but by the time they got up and “looked around” the mystery aircraft couldn’t be found. A quick note on the fighter jet aspect of this story—the 142nd Fighter Wing operates F-15Cs upgraded with the most capable air-to-air radar set in the world (AN/APG-63V3) and Sniper advanced targeting pods for long-rang visual identification. Their pilots are some of the best in the world and are highly trained in the homeland air defense mission. Once in the air the F-15s are capable of traversing the entire state of Oregon in just a matter of minutes if need be, so if they were launched promptly it seems unlikely they wouldn’t have been able to intercept the aircraft being pointed out by commercial pilots over Southern Oregon. The fact that they “didn’t find anything” is surprising to say the least. Maybe this was due to the nature of the aircraft being searched for, or the possibility that they launched long after it was first sighted, or that we simply aren’t being told the whole story.
The War Zone confirmed that all of this did indeed happen, with much recorded evidence of the conversations between the airliners, ground control, the FAA, and NORAD, as well as radio exchanges and pilot interviews, although there are parts of the audio that have been redacted, going mute in several places regarding responses to requests for information about the military’s activities, showing that indeed we may not be being told the whole story. Indeed, the FAA and NORAD have stated that they have nothing left to add, merely confirming that the incident happened and refusing to say much else on the matter, while the 142nd Fighter Wing has said nothing on the matter at all, neither confirming or denying anything. Clearly there had to have ben some follow up investigation, as this was an unidentified aircraft that does not show up on radar, acting very strangely in U.S. airspace in an area with heavy commercial air traffic for an extended period of time and able to evade F-15 fighter planes. It is a breach on national security at the very least, so it must have stirred the hornet’s nest among the military, but as to what this follow-up investigation turned up, it is currently unknown. It is all very intriguing, with tons of very reliable witnesses, with The War Zone saying:
Collectively these materials give us incredible insight not only into this incident, but also into how such an event is actually handled in real-time by those who are responsible for the safety of those in the air and those on ground below. What they don’t offer is any sort of an explanation for what happened on that fall evening. But really, the fact that all those involved, from air traffic controllers, to Air Force radar operators, to airline pilots, and even special FAA officials tasked with responding to all types of out of the ordinary incidents that occur in the sky on a daily basis seem just as puzzled with this event as we are makes the story all that much more intriguing.
Considering that there is not much more information to go on, we are forced to speculate on what could have been going on here, with all sorts of theories flying since the report broke. One idea is that the military was testing some sort of top-secret experimental aircraft, perhaps a next generation stealth bomber, but if that is true, then it seems like a strange choice to do it among heavy civilian airline traffic in broad daylight. If this was some sort of classified test, then why do that? Also, why allow it to show up on radar at all? Another idea is that this might have been illegal drug runners trying to move contraband across the Canadian border. This would explain the radio silence, but does not explain how they could perform the maneuvers they did, or how they could just disappear from radar. Drug runners would also be more likely to fly at lower altitudes, and it has been pointed out that it would probably be easier to conduct a drug run over land across the border rather than using an aircraft. Of course there is also the idea that this was aliens, and the case has been popular among UFO nuts. In the end, we just don’t know. All we know is that the incident did happen, something went speeding across the sky to baffle pilots, radar operators, and military officials, but what that might have been is anyone’s guess.
After a computer glitch caused the Hubble Space Telescope to turn off on June 13th, NASA engineers were finally able to repair it on July 17th and the new images that it captured of two very bizarre galaxies are spectacular.
The two galaxies that the Hubble was photographing are part of a program led by Julianne Dalcanton from the University of Washington in Seattle that surveys bizarre galaxies in the universe.
NASA released two photos with the one of the left showing a rare event called ARP-MADORE2115-273 of two interacting galaxies which are located in the southern hemisphere about 297 million light-years away from us. The fact that Hubble was able to capture high-resolution images of it is incredibly valuable as astronomers first thought that it was a “collisional ring” system that was formed by two galaxies merging in a head-on collision. However, Hubble’s recent observation revealed that the interaction between the two galaxies is a lot more complicated with dusty gas and countless stars.
The picture on the right is of a giant spiral galaxy named ARP-MADORE0002-503 that has very bizarre extended spiral arms that stretch out to a radius measuring 163,000 light-years. To put this into better perspective, it extends three times further than our own Milky Way Galaxy. Furthermore, the majority of disk galaxies contain an even number of spiral arms but ARP-MADORE0002-503 has three. This galaxy is located 490 million light-years away from Earth.
In a statement, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, “I’m thrilled to see that Hubble has its eye back on the universe, once again capturing the kind of images that have intrigued and inspired us for decades,” adding, “This is a moment to celebrate the success of a team truly dedicated to the mission.” The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in April of 1990 in a joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency.
Hubble Space Telescope
Now that the Hubble is back working again, we will hopefully see even more stunning photos as those galaxy pictures were only two of numerous test pictures that it took after being rebooted. “Everyone is incredibly grateful, and we’re excited to get back to science!” Dalcanton said. I know that I’m personally excited to see what more breathtaking photos the space telescope will send back to Earth.
Mural in the pyramids of Nubia depicts a ‘Giant’ carrying two elephants
Mural in the pyramids of Nubia depicts a ‘Giant’ carrying two elephants
The pyramids of Nubia are located in the city of Meroë, former capital of the Kingdom of Kush. In these structures there is an old mural where a giant is seen lifting two elephants.
Nubian pyramids.
In the royal cemetery of the ancient Kingdom of Kush , there is a group of 50 pyramids made of sandstone and red brick.
Many of these are dilapidated, the fault of time and looters. The decorations on these monuments speak volumes about how global the kingdom was. However, there is one that is especially striking.
The giant of the ancient mural
The different pyramids found in the city of Meroë make it coveted by tourists. Among these are the famous Nubian pyramids .
This deposit was discovered by Europeans in 1821, thanks to the French mineralogist Frédéric Cailliaud. The most interesting of these pyramids is in reliefs and paintings of the burial chambers.
The one that caused the most concern in the experts was the ancient mural that represents a giant of enormous proportions lifting two elephants .
The features of this character are not characteristic of the area, but Caucasian . Many theorists have hinted that this is proof that red and white giants inhabited Earth.
This theory has been around since 79 AD. C., when the Roman historian Josefo Flavio , wrote that the last race of Egyptian giants lived in century XIII a. C. , during the government of Josué.
Flavio wrote that these were huge, their faces evoked fear, as did their thunderous voice, which they compared to the roar of a lion.
This is assumed by the different paintings found in ancient Egypt , where the pyramid builders are depicted as giants.
Experts believe that these people were over 5 meters tall and could lift up to 4 tons of blocks.
Some of those paintings also showed giant kings ruling Egypt. Others show ordinary people, very small in comparison to such characters.
This theory could be confirmed with a discovery in 1988. Gregor Spoerri , a Swiss businessman and passionate about ancient Egyptian history, found a giant finger after meeting with grave robbers.
Mural found in the burial chamber of one of the pyramids.
White giants in other cultures
The appearance of “Caucasian giants”, such as that of the ancient mural of the pyramids of Nibua, is also mentioned in other cultures.
The Paiutes , an ancient North American tribe native to Nevada, have an oral tradition that they related to settlers.
These include a race of giant, white and red-haired individuals known to their ancestors as “Si-Te-Cah”, which inhabited an ancient cave.
The Choctaw Amerindian people also tell legends where their ancestors fought against a race of Caucasian giants that inhabited the territory that is now Tennessee.
Even the first settlers who arrived in South America, said that in the Patagonia region , they saw a town of tall, white and red-haired people.
All these legends, including that of the ancient Nubian pyramid mural, could have a common origin; the Atlantis .
Historians, theorists, and alternative researchers have suggested a hypothesis about the survivors of the cataclysm . These would have fled to different regions of the world, where they settled and created different civilizations, based on the ancient Atlantean knowledge.
The Pyramids of Mero in Bazarwia, Sudan
Is this ancient mural a representation of an Atlantean giant? It’s possible. Historians assure that all these stories are simple mythology, however, it is hardly credible that so many cultures around the world have such similar legends.
NASA Perseverance Mars Rover to Acquire First Sample
NASA Perseverance Mars Rover to Acquire First Sample
A light-colored “paver stone,” like the ones seen in this mosaic image, will be the likely target for first sampling by the Perseverance rover. This image was taken July 8, 2021, in the “Cratered Floor Fractured Rough” geologic unit at Jezero Crater. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
NASA is making final preparations for its Perseverance Mars rover to collect its first-ever sample of Martian rock, which future planned missions will transport to Earth. The six-wheeled geologist is searching for a scientifically interesting target in a part of Jezero Crater called the “Cratered Floor Fractured Rough.”
This important mission milestone is expected to begin within the next two weeks. Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater Feb. 18, and NASA kicked off the rover mission’s science phase June 1, exploring a 1.5-square-mile (4-square-kilometer) patch of crater floor that may contain Jezero’s deepest and most ancient layers of exposed bedrock.
“When Neil Armstrong took the first sample from the Sea of Tranquility 52 years ago, he began a process that would rewrite what humanity knew about the Moon,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters. “I have every expectation that Perseverance’s first sample from Jezero Crater, and those that come after, will do the same for Mars. We are on the threshold of a new era of planetary science and discovery.”
It took Armstrong 3 minutes and 35 seconds to collect that first Moon sample. Perseverance will require about 11 days to complete its first sampling, as it must receive its instructions from hundreds of millions of miles away while relying on the most complex and capable, as well as the cleanest, mechanism ever to be sent into space – the Sampling and Caching System.
Precision Instruments Working Together
The sampling sequence begins with the rover placing everything necessary for sampling within reach of its 7-foot (2-meter) long robotic arm. It will then perform an imagery survey, so NASA’s science team can determine the exact location for taking the first sample, and a separate target site in the same area for “proximity science.”
“The idea is to get valuable data on the rock we are about to sample by finding its geologic twin and performing detailed in-situ analysis,” said science campaign co-lead Vivian Sun, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “On the geologic double, first we use an abrading bit to scrape off the top layers of rock and dust to expose fresh, unweathered surfaces, blow it clean with our Gas Dust Removal Tool, and then get up close and personal with our turret-mounted proximity science instruments SHERLOC, PIXL, and WATSON.”
SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals), PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry), and the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera will provide mineral and chemical analysis of the abraded target. Perseverance’s SuperCam and Mastcam-Z instruments, both located on the rover’s mast, will also participate. While SuperCam fires its laser at the abraded surface, spectroscopically measuring the resulting plume and collecting other data, Mastcam-Z will capture high-resolution imagery.
Working together, these five instruments will enable unprecedented analysis of geological materials at the worksite.
“After our pre-coring science is complete, we will limit rover tasks for a sol, or a Martian day,” said Sun. “This will allow the rover to fully charge its battery for the events of the following day.”
Sampling day kicks off with the sample-handling arm within the Adaptive Caching Assembly retrieving a sample tube, heating it, and then inserting it into a coring bit. A device called the bit carousel transports the tube and bit to a rotary-percussive drill on Perseverance’s robotic arm, which will then drill the untouched geologic “twin” of the rock studied the previous sol, filling the tube with a core sample roughly the size of a piece of chalk.
Perseverance’s arm will then move the bit-and-tube combination back into bit carousel, which will transfer it back into the Adaptive Caching Assembly, where the sample will be measured for volume, photographed, hermetically sealed, and stored. The next time the sample tube contents are seen, they will be in a clean room facility on Earth, for analysis using scientific instruments much too large to send to Mars.
“Not every sample Perseverance is collecting will be done in the quest for ancient life, and we don’t expect this first sample to provide definitive proof one way or the other,” said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley, of Caltech. “While the rocks located in this geologic unit are not great time capsules for organics, we believe they have been around since the formation of Jezero Crater and incredibly valuable to fill gaps in our geologic understanding of this region – things we’ll desperately need to know if we find life once existed on Mars.”
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is the first step in NASA’s Mars Sample Return Campaign. Subsequent NASA missions, now in development in cooperation with the European Space Agency, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California.
Filmmaker Reuben Langdon spoke to RT about how the government is controlling the messaging around the new information around UFOs to keep justifying its bloated military budget and terrify Americans.
For my ninth birthday, my brother got me a telescope. In rural Northern Wisconsin, on my family’s farm, I would look at the stars across the night sky with no light pollution to block the waves of patterns webbing across the dark. Michael, my older brother, patiently set up my telescope and showed me the constellations and told me their ancient names; we would also wonder about possible other worlds and UFOs.
The first time I could find the constellations on my own, I was lit up and forever transfixed by stars. My brother explained the history, “This is the Ursa major and Ursa minor, the bears, the protectors.” I looked up at him, strong and tall, Michael, like the bear constellation, was my constant protector until his death took him somewhere beyond the stars.
Recently, international media began reporting more and more stories about Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) sightings, following the release of American government information relating to secret projects on the subject. For a long while, UFOs weren’t taken seriously by mainstream media, they featured them only as clickbait for ‘cranks’ on the internet. But now, as more and more credible people have come forward with their experiences, a shift has occurred in public perception.
There was a movement for the American government to release under the Freedom of Information Act documentation relating to projects involving UFOs. Former Navy pilots and civilians have since come forward for interviews about what they witnessed in the skies and the way the military chose to conceal sightings of the advanced technology demonstrated by UFOs. Yet, for all the supposed transparency there was a message of fear creeping into the narrative.
As the American empire always seeks to justify its bloated weapons spending to the tune of trillions of dollars, the sudden release of these CIA documents seems at best suspect and at worst diabolical with a view to blaming the presence of this unrecognized technology on Russia or China. Unfortunately, instead of seeing the opportunity to expand awareness for humanity the framing of the new information became one with a thread of distrust and war.
In the words of filmmaker and actor Reuben Langdon, the corporate media gives us “fear porn.”
He added: “The people doing the work (researching UFOs) seem to have the best of intentions. It comes down to the media and forcing their hand. We have a media that is so focused on the negative news with very few positives. A lot of the researchers in the field have trouble to even bring forth the information. Like, Chris Mellon who said, first we have to have the conversation and unfortunately many will not listen unless it has that negative spin.”
Reuben began his career as a stuntman and has featured in Hollywood blockbusters including Avatar and Pirates of the Caribbean, as well as numerous video games, and became interested in UFOs following an experience he had while filming the James Cameron sci-fi epic. For over a decade he has been researching extraterrestrial phenomena amongst other things and entered a successful documentary making career.
Is the CIA controlling the messaging around this using the media to justify some other agenda? As we hear more stories about the phenomenon, the American government defaults their messaging to fear.
Several years ago, Reuben was involved in a citizen congressional hearing including former members of Congress discussing the history of UFOs and the coverup by the American government. Several high-ranking military intelligence figures shared information at this mock hearing to show what a real investigative Congressional hearing could be like if it were ever allowed. The hope was that it would raise enough awareness to force a public inquiry.
One of the highlights was watching the late Senator Mike Gravel demand that information that was hidden from the public by the US intelligence about UFOs and the history be released for everyone. As I discussed this project with Reuben Langdon, he described what it was like to coordinate the emulated hearing, quite unique in its approach.
He added: “I disagree with projecting fear with the UFO stories. It is an approach to get it in the media but not my approach to this phenomena. The national (American) media seems to be about selling fear and scaring as many people as possible because… fear sells.…”
One of the biggest challenges regarding the UFO coverage is getting it to be taken in a serious way at all. Reuben described the challenge of bringing forth information.
“I think that the Government may see this as an opportunity to put forth their agenda which is one of control of power…taking a bird’s eye, how it is approached by media… be prepared for false flags in the media, like an alien invasion.… We can choose to support people with a fear based narrative or support people with a non-fear based narrative. There is no reason to be in fear, if you are aware of it.”
Reuben had also made a documentary exploring alternative energy sources and the inventors who created them. The documentary was ultimately rejected by top executives for distribution. Undaunted, Reuben outlined how with his own equipment he embarked on the journey of two seasons of his show, Interviews with Extra Dimensionals, which ended up being a top show on the network GAIA. Reuben’s tenacity is driven by a curiosity based on his own personal experiences.
He said:“To some it may seem like the end of the world when in actuality it is humanity waking up to our true potential. The realization we are sovereign, independent beings that can create our own reality and not rely on others to do it for us.”
Reuben’s new project is a film about the adventurer F.A. Mitchell Hedges (the man Indiana Jones character was based on) and the crystal skull. It was discovered in the 1920’s at a Mayan temple, by his daughter. Reuben explores the mystique surrounding the object and its larger meaning to those who believe it has spiritual powers.
He added: “There seems to be an interaction between sacred spots and different places on the Earth, that indigenous hold in sacredness. The feature is setting up Hedges’ research and work. The film will also uncover the legend about the possibilities that there are 13 skulls around the Earth and if all found the legend says, humanity will enter a new era.”
The Crystal Skull is thought by some to be similar to an ancient computer that holds some sort of sacred knowledge like the Akashic records and other information available from ancient civilizations. People show up from all over the world to simply sit in the presence of the Crystal Skull to experience its power and report mystical attunement with multi-dimensional realms.
I imagine my brother Michael’s delight at watching the unfolding of all this new information. Near the end of my brother’s life, Michael gestured vaguely one night at the sky, took my hand in his and looked at me intently. Too weak to form all the words, I looked into his eyes and he turned his head upward to the night sky. I nodded and understood. “Look for me in the stars, I am with you.” I imagined him saying, “I will always be here to protect you. I love you.” Tears rolled down his face slowly as I kissed his hand.
Michael instilled in me the gift of wonder for discovering more about the Universe. I remain open and curious. Even now, I look up at night as I still search the same familiar constellations, I look for my protector, my brother, his smile now hidden somewhere behind the stars.
I am encircled with the thought of all the possibilities.
As Reuben Langdon suggests, “Instead of fear, why not be curious?”
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Why the military should work with scientists to study the UFO phenomenon
Why the military should work with scientists to study the UFO phenomenon
By Chris Impey
The image from video provided by the Department of Defense labelled Gimbal, from 2015, an unexplained object is seen at center as it is tracked as it soars high along the clouds, traveling against the wind.
(Department of Defense via AP)
UFOs have been in the news a lot lately. I am a research astronomer who has written and edited books and created a free online course about the search for life in the universe. While I think we are making progress on detecting life beyond Earth, I view UFOs from a skeptical standpoint, since the evidence that they represent aliens visiting the Earth is unconvincing.
Last month, a report from the Office of the Director on National Intelligence dropped on Congress. It described 144 sightings by military personnel over a 17-year period, preferring to use the term UAP, for unidentified aerial phenomenon, in part to avoid the stigma attached to UFOs.
For those like me waiting for definitive statements, the report was a big disappointment. It declined to draw any conclusions, saying the available data is “largely inconclusive” and noting it is limited and inconsistently reported. The report worried about increased air “clutter,” and left open the possibility that some UAP sightings represent advanced technologies of foreign adversaries, with significant national security implications.
As for UFOs as alien spacecraft, the report was agnostic. It scrupulously avoided using the words alien or extraterrestrial. That will do little to discourage “true believers.” Nearly half of all Americans think aliens are visiting the Earth, and the UFO phenomenon has become enmeshed in a web of conspiracy theories that include accounts of abduction by aliens and crop circles. These conspiracy theories have undoubtedly been fueled in part by the fact that the military has been secretly investigating UFOs for decades. Any rational debate over UFOs must contend with the fact that they have taken deep root in the public consciousness.
Will the report, and increased transparency by the military, change anything? Will it help draw scientists like me into a serious study of the phenomenon?
Scientists will have to get over their reticence to engage with the sightings. We are in an awkward position. Rapid progress in finding planets orbiting other stars has led to a projection of300 million habitable planetsin our galaxy. There has been plenty of time for life on some of those planets to evolve intelligence and technology. We don’t deny the possibility of aliens traveling from their star system to ours. We are justunconvinced by the datapresented so far.Most sightingscan be attributed to weather balloons or astronomical phenomena such as meteors, fireballs, and Venus. There aremany resourcesgiving mundane explanations for UFO sightings.
There have been academic studies of UFOs before. In 1968, the Condon Report said that that no scientific knowledge had been gained from two decades of study of the phenomenon. But 20 years later, a review led by Stanford professor Peter Sturrock concluded that some sightings are accompanied by physical evidence that warrants investigation. It is telling that after decades of studies and hundreds of thousands of sightings, UFOs have not reached the gold standard in science for confirming any hypothesis: reproducible evidence.
For their part, the military and intelligence communities will have to more actively engage with scientists, and ask for their help and expertise in understanding the sightings in the report, and many others that have not been made public. There are signs that this might happen. Under Avril Haynes, the Office of the DNI has been drawing on its expert group of 500 scientists who consult with the intelligence agencies on scientific problems. A model for this type of collaboration is the two panels of scientists and medical experts that were recently set up to understand the “Havana syndrome” that has afflicted American diplomats since 2016.
What would a collaboration with scientists look like, and what kind of data would it take to “move the needle” on understanding the UAP phenomenon?
The recent report shows how difficult it is to interpret the sightings, even with expert observers and data from multiple sensors. In all but one of 144 cases, there was too little information to even broadly characterize the event. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks acknowledged this deficiency when she called for more timely and consistent data collection on UAPs. The Defense Department has just over two months to develop a new strategy and report back to Congress.
Sensors malfunction and even expert observers can be fooled when seeing something outside their realm of experience. With optical and infrared imaging, it is extremely difficult to gauge the distance, size, and speed of an object. For example, the three Navy videos that have been in heavy circulation on the Internet seem impressive and inexplicable, but they could easily be artifacts of camera optics and tracking systems.
The military should invite a select group of experts to examine all the evidence (with suitable clearance given when the sensor technology involved is classified). It should be an interdisciplinary team, comprised to address all the observational characteristics of the phenomena. Ideally, data should be shared among our allies, since UAP appear globally. Scientists can bring their assets to bear on the problem as well. For example, civilian satellites are being used to detect and monitor UAPs and machine learning can be used to sift the data for anomalous events.
Scientists are curious and they love a challenging problem. I would lend my hand to the effort if asked. Let’s hope the government will harness scientific expertise to shine light on this decades-long mystery.
Editor’s note: This is an Op-Ed and as such, the opinions expressed are those of the author. If you would like to respond, or have an editorial of your own you would like to submit, please contact Military Times senior managing editor Howard Altman, haltman@militarytimes.com.
The real truth on UFOs is out there — and it’s only 17 pages long.
The nine-page preliminary US government report released last month did little to satisfy those seeking answers on whether alien life exists — and the classified version isn’t likely to provide much more depth with just eight additional pages, according to a report by The Black Vault, a website operated by author and podcaster John Greenewald.
Days after the June 25 report was released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, US officials declined to comment on the length of the classified version, but told Greenewald it was “substantively consistent” and had the same conclusions as the public document.
Greenewald tweeted Thursday that he had confirmed the length of the classified report, which led to much speculation online, with estimates ranging anywhere from 70 to 400 additional pages.
An email from ODNI confirms the full US government report on UFOs is “17 pages in length.”John Greenewald / The Black Vault
“The classified version of the report is 17 pages in length,” Sally Nicholson, from ODNI’s office that handles Freedom of Information Act requests, wrote to Greenewald in an email Thursday.
Greenewald, who specializes in obtaining declassified documents through FOIA requests, bills his site as the largest private online collection of declassified government reports.
Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell released footage of UFOs off the coast of San Diego in 2019.Mystery Wire
Greenewald’s inquiry into the classified report, filed the morning after ODNI delivered it to Congress, initiated a “mandatory declassification review (MDR),” according to The Black Vault.
That’s a process in which an individual or entity can request any federal agency to review classified information for declassification, regardless of age or origin, with “certain limitations,” according to the Information Security Oversight Office.
The Black Vault also requested attachments to the classified report, “wherein members of Congress received additional videos or photographs outside of the seventeen pages and whether those are confirmed to exist,” Greenewald wrote.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has only reported 144 UFO sightings by government sources since 2004.Mystery Wire
“It must be stated that this answer may only come after the case is processed, closed, and a final determination is issued, since the current state of the report and/or attachments should they exist, are classified,” the report continued.
Greenewald said many MDR cases are ultimately denied, but have led to the unearthing of a CIA document that “supposedly justified the Iraq invasion” and a National Security Agency record revealing the list of classified documents aboard the USS Pueblo before its capture by North Korea in 1968.
Luis “Lue” Elizondo, the former head of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, told The Post last month that the ODNI report was merely the “first” of many to come.
UFO investigator John Greenewald has filed numerous FOIA requests in his pursuit for classified documents on UFO sightings.Mystery Wire
Elizondo, who claims the Department of Defense has tried to discredit him, told The Post on Friday that the classified report — funded as part of a $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief and spending package enacted by President Donald Trump in December — is considerably longer.
SEE ALSO
UFOs are real, feds’ cover-up fueled by fear: ex-Pentagon whistleblower
“Understandably, there is some confusion, but rest assured the complete report, including end notes, is over 70 pages,” Elizondo said in a statement to The Post. “I do not care to speculate about why there is confusion, nor involve myself in the debate, but the fact remains that the full and complete report is significantly longer than what is currently being stated for the record.”
Elizondo did not clarify how he knew the length of the classified report. He said last month’s public release — which didn’t find “firm conclusions” on the 144 UFO sightings reported by government sources since 2004 — left more questions than answers. Just one reported UFO was identified as a large, deflating balloon.
“This conversation is only beginning,” Elizondo told The Post late last month.
UFOs Sighted During A Plane Takeoff Over Korea ( July 20, 2021 )
This amazing video comes not only to reaffirm that ′′ they are already among us ", but that they act at such speed and reality very much beyond our senses and perceptions... Rus Choi made this extraordinary UFO activity record during a plane takeoff in Korea on July 20, 2021 Here I present the original and following with approximation and speed reduction so that you can understand the reality of a world we are not seeing. They're already here!!!
UFO Sighted Over Chile ( June 19, 2021 )
This impressive UFO was sighted over the skies of Chilie on the evening of June 19, 2021 : More evident every day
This UFO report is coming from Muan, a city located in south-west part of South Korea. On 22nd July 2021 at around 8 pm multiple cameras filmed this strange activity in the skies.
Some people consider Russell Brand to be a comedy god. Others consider the man who claims to have bedded 1,000 women to be a sexual god. Russell Brand would probably disagree (reluctantly) with both because he considers aliens to be gods and he’s not an alien. Or is he? After all, his popular 2013 comedy show was called “Messiah Complex.” Does Brand know something we don’t … or is this just another celebrity ploy for publicity?
“He says it ain’t advanced human tech, there is s**t in there that defies the laws of physics. The [US] government have known about it for ages and they are slowly making these releases.”
In an interview with The Mirror, Brand reveals that his enlightenment on the subject of aliens came after becoming friends with Jeremy Corbell – the now famous documentary filmmaker who has been slowly releasing U.S. government videos of military encounters with UFOs – encounters that the government admits it cannot explain. In the U.S., when in doubt about a subject of this magnitude, we turn to comedians and talk show hosts, so it’s no surprise that the British are doing the same with Brand, who is not only a comedy performer and media star but also a controversial and outspoken political activist.
“It is not a distraction from Covid, it is happening because there is no choice because there has been a whistleblower situation where a bunch of data is being released.”
Brand credits Corbell for pressuring the Pentagon to reveal more videos and forcing them to comment on them. At that point, he naturally turns the story back to himself.
“So it seems to me that life is out there somewhere with crazy creatures and new cultures that will come to you shortly.”
“New cultures” implies higher forms of intelligent life and, while he says they’re coming shortly, he believes they’ve “been communicating with us for years.” However, the big shocker is that Brand follows the ancient aliens theory that these communications influenced earlier humans enough to make them believe they were coming from “gods.” Is that a good thing or a bad thing, Russell?
“If you don’t choose heroes, heroes will be chosen for you, and they will not represent values that empower you, they will represent powers that will enslave you.”
Brand may have given us the answer in “Messiah Complex.” Perhaps early humans chose to make heroes or gods out of the mysterious beings communicating and possibly even inspiring them rather than the human leaders who were out to enslave them.
Far-fetched? Have you watched the news lately?
Russell Brand is certainly not someone many would consider to be a hero, a god or even just a wise sage. Then again, a sizeable portion of Americans admit they’d rather get their news and guidance from late night talk show hosts who are usually comedians. Is it time to start getting our UFO and extraterrestrial guidance from them as well?
In recent years there has been increasing coverage of military encounters with UFOs, with the U.S. government surprisingly acknowledging such incidents, and while avoiding saying these things are otherworldly, not denying it either. Yet while most people have their eyes trained to the skies, a lesser known aspect of this ongoing phenomenon is what seems to be going on underwater. One area of the UFO phenomenon that doesn’t seem to get as much coverage is that of what are called USOs, or Unidentified Submersible Objects, basically underwater UFOs, which are every bit as strange as their sky-going brethren and with which military submarines have had very bizarre encounters.
Some interesting cases of USOs have been reported by personnel within the US Navy, from which there has been footage released showing UFOs entering the water. Chief among the proposed evidence for this is a video taken off the coast of San Diego in July of 2019 by crew aboard the USS Omaha. The video, which was released by UFO researcher and investigative filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, shows a spherical object fly over the vessel before coming down to make a controlled descent into the water, with a crewmember heard to exclaim “Wow, it splashed!” The video caused quite a stir online, but it would become even more interesting when information would come out that at around the same time, US submarines were also picking up mysterious objects underwater that seemed to defy physics. The Navy confirmed that the footage was authentic and unexplained, and the Washington Examiner’s Tom Rogan has said of this in connection with the USS Omaha footage:
Relevant to this video, an area we will learn more about is the interaction between US Navy submarines – nuclear ballistic submarines and attack submarines – picking up sonar contact of things moving at hundreds of knots under the water. There is an undersea dimension to this, on top of what the pilots are seeing above water. Hundreds of knots under water? I don’t think people can even digest that. That is what I have heard from very good sources and that the US Navy has the data.
Another report concerning submarines came in the wake of the well-known USS Nimitz UFO incident, during which a fleet of US Navy vessels was constantly buzzed by unidentified flying objects. According to former United States Air Force intelligence expert Mike Turber, in one incident a US Navy submarine encountered a mysterious craft hurtling at 550mph through the water in 2008, which looked exactly like the tic-tac-shaped craft sighted by the crew of the USS Nimitz. Turber would say of the incident:
There was a submarine situation – that report will probably come out further down the line. It (the tic-tac object) was travelling at 550mph. As far as I know, it was a Los Angeles-class submarine. It was kind of in passing when someone mentioned it – I thought it was just a torpedo. But, apparently not.
Another incident came to light in 2017, when the former Blink-182 front man, avid UFO researcher, and founder of the UFO research group the To The Stars Academy, Tom DeLonge, released a previously unknown report that is allegedly a first-hand account of astronomer and UFO researcher Marc D’Antonio, who often works with the Navy and was granted a ride aboard a nuclear fast attack submarine in the North Atlantic and had a rather mysterious experience. He would say of this:
As a thank you for doing some work for them Navy asked me if I wanted to go for a ride in a submarine so I said yes. Once we got under I was sitting in the sonar station and the sonar operator was sitting right next to me. Submarines are loud – people think they are very quiet and it’s true they are on the outside because the sound doesn’t get out. But inside you hear fans, noise – it’s a constant din on a sub. I was sitting there zoning out a little because I was sea sick and all of a sudden the sonar kid shouts ‘fast mover, fast mover’ and I’m jolted awake – thinking ‘What’s happening? Is it a torpedo?’ The executive officer comes out and the operator shows him the path of the object and the officer says ‘How fast is that going?’ And the kid said ‘several hundred knots’. I start to lean forward to listen in – and the officer said ‘Can you confirm it?’ So he goes to another sonar machine and confirmed it wasn’t a machine anomaly – it was real. I thought ‘Wow that is incredible’. When the sonar guy said ‘What do I do with this?’ the officer said ‘log it and dog it’ – in other words log it and bury it.
According to DeLonge, multiple nuclear attack submarines would track the strange object through the North Atlantic for about a week. Not only this, he claims that there is a government organization devoted to tracking these underwater objects. When a few years later Marc spoke to a senior Naval officer about the incident, he was given the cold shoulder but he was able to confirm that what he calls the “Fast Mover Programme,” a military investigation of USOs, exists. He has said of this:
I asked him ‘Can you tell me about the Fast Mover Programme?’ He looked at me and said ‘Sorry Marc I can’t talk about that programme’. So he basically confirmed to me that the programme exists – he said everything without saying anything. What that told me was that USOs are common – we even have a programme in place to classify and log and determine the speed of them and it goes into a vault.
According to the site The Drive, they interviewed a veteran sonar operator and instructor turned pro gamer called ‘Jive Turkey’ and asked him about any strange experiences he had ever had with USOs, and he had this to say:
I don’t know what they are… We usually logged it as seismic or biologic. We were instructed that nothing is ever ‘unknown.’ That’s the thing, it’s so quick you can’t measure the speed. In the examples I am thinking of, it is a detection that lasts a few seconds on the towed array. There is no way to measure the speed accurately because there isn’t enough data…
The Drive is rather skeptical of the 2017 DeLonge report, though, citing that the Navy does not give out free rides aboard submarines to civilians and the release of the story was done in an amateurish way. While they come to the conclusion that Navy submarines do indeed have some unusual encounters and hear some strange things down in the deep, the 2017 DeLonge/ D’Antonio incident:
We talked with a number of sources during our investigation. What we learned is that yes, unexplained noises and even tracked contacts do pop-up on submarines’ sonars, some of which seem to move at incredible speeds, but it is rare and the data is often inconclusive as to what was actually detected. But maybe most interesting, and peculiarly so, is that the Navy doesn’t actually have a way to classify these strange sounds as unknown and tag them for further review. The biggest takeaway here is that mysterious sounds do emanate from the deep and are heard by the most talented sonar operators in the world working the most advanced underwater listening equipment ever created. But the Navy seems to have made it all but impossible to classify these events for further review as sonar operators aren’t allowed to ‘not know’ what something is. As for a quartet of American submarines pinning an impossible to identify craft down in the depths of the Atlantic, we are still waiting to see any evidence of anything like that occurring. It doesn’t do the To The Stars Academy or DeLong any favors teasing such information in such an amateurish way either. This is unfortunate considering the high aims of To The Stars Academy and the impressive brain trust they have amassed.
Americans are not the only ones who have had military submarine encounters with these mysterious USOs. British UFO investigator Philip Mantle has mentioned several such cases involving Soviet submarines in his book Russia’s USO Secrets, which is based on information coming from declassified documents and testimony from Russian military veterans. One such account comes from former nuclear submarine commander Yury Beketov, who says his submarine was doing maneuvers somewhere near the Bermuda Triangle when they had a strange encounter, of which he says:
We repeatedly observed that the instruments detected the movements of material objects at unimaginable speed, around 230 knots (400 km per hour). It’s hard to reach that speed on the surface – only in the air is it possible. The beings that created those material objects significantly exceed us in development.
A particular harrowing report mentioned in the book allegedly happened in 1951, when a Soviet submarine encountered a massive underwater object, which measured 200-250 meters long and was supposedly rising from the depths as it headed towards shore. According to the account, the captain actually ordered depth charges to be dropped on the object, which seemed to have no effect, but which nevertheless caused it to stop its ascent, change course, and head out to deeper water at great speed. What was going on here? Indeed, what is going on in any of these cases? It would seem that these craft, whatever they are, are just as active below the surface as they are above, and it leads us to wonder just what is going on. Are these some sort of misidentification, a top-secret new type of underwater vessel, or what? There is no way to tell, but it seems that whatever they are, they have baffled military officials and serve to show that the USO phenomenon is no joke, and is probably worth looking into further.
Ancient meteorite dating back 4.6 BILLION years is discovered in the imprint of a horseshoe and is likely a remnant of cosmic debris left over from the birth of the solar system
Ancient meteorite dating back 4.6 BILLION years is discovered in the imprint of a horseshoe and is likely a remnant of cosmic debris left over from the birth of the solar system
The astonishing charcoal-black meteorite was found earlier this year near Woodmancote in Gloucestershire
Scientists think it travelled more than 110 million miles from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter
It's likely a fragment of the same meteorite that left another chunk on the driveway of a home in Winchcombe
An ancient meteorite dating back 4.6 billion years that landed in England earlier this year is likely a remnant of cosmic debris left over from the birth of the solar system, experts say.
A fragment of the priceless charcoal-black object, no more than two inches wide, was found by chemist Derek Robson on the second day of a ground search back in March, near the village of Woodmancote in Gloucestershire.
The 'incredibly delicate' sample, which resembles loosely held-together concreted dust and particles, was found lying in the imprint of a horseshoe in a field.
Experts received special permission from Tewkesbury Council to organise the search in March this year during the Covid lockdown after the meteorite was seen shooting through the skies just before 10pm on February 28.
The fragment found in Woodmancote is thought to be part of the same meteorite that deposited another 300g chunk on the driveway of a family home in nearby Winchcombe, also in Gloucestershire, which has just been assessed and valued at £100,000 and donated to the Natural History Museum in London.
Scientists think the meteorite travelled more than 110 million miles from its 'primordial home' in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter – and that it may answer questions about how life began on Earth.
Image from Loughborough University shows the meteorite found in Woodmancote, Gloucestershire in March by chemist Derek Robson
The ancient rock is a rare example of a carbonaceous chondrite, a type of meteorite that often contains biological material. Fewer than 5 per cent of meteorites that fall to Earth belong to this classification.
'Carbonaceous chondrites contain organic compounds including amino acids, which are found in all living things,' said Robson, who found the meteorite on the morning of March 28 in muddy fields outside Woodmancote.
Robson is director of astrochemistry at the East Anglian Astrophysical Research Organisation (EAARO).
'Being able to identify and confirm the presence of such compounds from a material that existed before the Earth was born would be an important step towards understanding how life began,' he said.
The priceless charcoal-black fragment was found near the village of Woodmancote in Gloucestershire, England, which is close to Cheltenham
Scientists based at Loughborough University are analysing the small fragment from Woodmancote to determine its structure and composition, and will likely publish their results in an upcoming study.
They're using techniques including electron microscopy to survey the surface morphology at up the nanometre scale – equal to one billionth of a metre – and have released stunning new images showing its detail in high precision.
Vibrational spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction, which reveal information about chemical structure, crystallinity and molecular interactions, are helping to determine its structure and composition.
Secondary electron image of mineral chondrule embedded in the rare carbonaceous chondrite meteorite
(image taken using an electron micrograph)
So far, they have found that the meteorite never underwent the violent cosmic collisions that most ancient space debris experienced as it smashed together to create the planets and moons of our solar system.
But it possibly contains 'previously unknown chemistry' or a physical structure that's never before seen in other recorded samples.
'The internal structure is fragile and loosely bound, porous with fissures and cracks,' said Shaun Fowler, a specialist in optical and electron microscopy at the Loughborough Materials Characterisation Centre (LMCC).
Pictured is an optical micrograph of the carbonaceous chondrite meteorite, showing embedded mineral chondrules, according to Loughborough University
'It doesn't appear to have undergone thermal metamorphosis, which means it's been sitting out there past Mars, untouched, since before any of the planets were created meaning we have the rare opportunity to examine a piece of our primordial past.
'The bulk of the meteorite is comprised of minerals such as olivine and phyllosilicates, with other mineral inclusions called chondrules, which, for example, can be minerals such as magnetite or calcite.
'But the composition is different to anything you would find here on Earth and potentially unlike any other meteorites we've found.'
Secondary electron image of mineral chondrule in the meteorite revealing spherical mineral inclusions
(electron micrograph image)
Secondary electron image of the meteorite showing delicate layered leaf-like structures at 10,000x magnification.
(electron micrograph image)
Professor Sandie Dann at Loughborough University, who is involved with the analysis and has previously worked with Robson, called the meteorite 'a scientific fairy-tale'.
'First your friend tracks a meteorite, then finds it and then gifts a bit of this extra-terrestrial material to you to analyse,' she said.
'At this stage, we have learned a good deal about it, but we've barely scratched the surface.
'There is huge potential to learn about ourselves and our solar system – it's an amazing project to be part of.'
Explained: The difference between an asteroid, meteorite and other space rocks
An asteroid is a large chunk of rock left over from collisions or the early solar system. Most are located between Mars and Jupiter in the Main Belt.
A comet is a rock covered in ice, methane and other compounds. Their orbits take them much further out of the solar system.
A meteor is what astronomers call a flash of light in the atmosphere when debris burns up.
This debris itself is known as a meteoroid. Most are so small they are vapourised in the atmosphere.
If any of this meteoroid makes it to Earth, it is called a meteorite.
Meteors, meteoroids and meteorites normally originate from asteroids and comets.
For example, if Earth passes through the tail of a comet, much of the debris burns up in the atmosphere, forming a meteor shower.
Remnants of a 4.6-Billion-Year-Old Meteorite Found in a Horseshoe Imprint
Remnants of a 4.6-Billion-Year-Old Meteorite Found in a Horseshoe Imprint
Resting neatly inside of a horseshoe imprint in Gloucestershire, England, were the remnants of a 4.6-billion-year-old meteorite from the birth of our Solar System. In fact, the meteorite was around before the planets even began forming. The remnants of a charcoal-black object (approximately two inches in width) were discovered in a field close to the village of Woodmancote by a chemist named Derek Robson.
It is believed that the meteorite came from over 110 million miles away in its “primordial home” in the main asteroid belt that’s located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This is a very significant discovery as it is a type of meteorite called carbonaceous chondrite and belongs to an incredibly rare group of meteorites that have fallen to Earth (less than 5% of meteorites). “Carbonaceous chondrites contain organic compounds including amino acids, which are found in all living things,” explained Robson, adding, “Being able to identify and confirm the presence of such compounds from a material that existed before the Earth was born would be an important step towards understanding how life began.
Asteroid belt
Scientists at Loughborough University are analyzing the meteorite fragments with X-ray diffraction and vibrational spectroscopy in order to figure out its composition and structure. Additionally, they are using electron microscopy to analyze the surface morphology and they took some pretty interesting pictures in incredible detail and precision (the photos can be seen here).
Image from Loughborough University shows the meteorite found in Woodmancote, Gloucestershire in March by chemist Derek Robson
What they have discovered so far is that the meteorite wasn’t involved in powerful collisions when the Solar System was first born which is incredible as there were countless collisions that ultimately created the planets and moons. Furthermore, it could have “previously unknown chemistry” (or a physical structure) that is unique compared to previous meteorite samples.
Shaun Fowler, who is a specialist in optical and electron microscopy at the Loughborough Materials Characterisation Centre (LMCC), explained this in further detail, “The internal structure is fragile and loosely bound, porous with fissures and cracks.” “It doesn’t appear to have undergone thermal metamorphosis, which means it’s been sitting out there past Mars, untouched, since before any of the planets were created meaning we have the rare opportunity to examine a piece of our primordial past.”
He went on to explain the composition of the meteorite, “The bulk of the meteorite is comprised of minerals such as olivine and phyllosilicates, with other mineral inclusions called chondrules, which, for example, can be minerals such as magnetite or calcite,” adding, “But the composition is different to anything you would find here on Earth and potentially unlike any other meteorites we’ve found.”
For decades, there have been people in various locations around the world who claim to be able to perceive a strange, low-frequency throbbing noise of undetermined origin.
The debate over the cause of the sound—as well as whether it exists at all—had at one time been an item of frequent debate in the scientific community. One of the earliest instances involving the curious phenomenon had been reported in the English Sunday Mirror in 1977, which began with a single account of a UK resident who claimed to be annoyed almost constantly by such a low humming sound. After the account was published, hundreds of letters in response began to flood the offices of the Mirror, with additional accounts from people who said that they also could hear this maddening humming sound at all hours of the day.
The widespread public response resulted in doctors examining some of the individuals, which did lend to the possibility that some of the sounds people claimed to hear might have internal origins, which might involve afflictions like tinnitus. While tinnitus sufferers often hear an almost whining, high-pitched sound, several of the people that doctors spoke to described hearing something much different: this was described as a low-pitched droning hum, which many believed to have an external source. The doctors agreed, attributing the roughly 40 Hz hum, modulated at 1.6 kHz, to be the result of industrial noise; yet despite this, there was never any actual industrial source determined.
A variety of other possible sources that had been suggested ranged from jet stream noises to sounds emanating from the ocean. Another novel idea involved that small percentages of the population suffered from an unusually acute ability to perceive sounds at around 40 Hz! Soon, similar accounts from other places around the world that included the United States would also begin to surface, with descriptions of the anomalous low-frequency sound being popularly associated with areas like Taos, New Mexico, among other locations.
Welcome sign at Taos New Mexico, location of an unusual hum reported by residents for decades
(Billy Hawthorn / Wikimedia Commons 3.0)
The ongoing complaints about these unusual sounds resulted in an investigation into their possible causes in the 1990s, funded by the UK Department of Energy. “The move is seen as an acknowledgment that some sufferers at least are not imagining the noise which causes them so much misery,” New Scientist reported following the DoE’s announcement that it would fund the research.
Even prior to the DoE-funded studies in the 1990s, a physicist at Chelsea College in London had been investigating the similar phenomenon afflicting UK residents and found data on the phenomenon that dated all the way back to 1973, in which a university study had identified at least 50 individuals who had experienced similar problems with hearing ongoing humming noises.
As early as 1988, the DoE had already commissioned the University of Salford to begin collecting information about the hum that so many residents claimed to be troubled by. With an estimated 500 individuals complaining about the noise on an annual basis, in 1989 the Low-Frequency Noise Sufferers Association was formed, an organization of both the afflicted and those lobbying on their behalf, which began to place additional pressure on the DoE to take action and get to the bottom of whatever had been causing the unusual sounds.
Throughout the 1990s, a range of purported causes was explored, which ranged from the existing theories about industrial noise to vehicular noise emanating from highways, and even underground pipes used to pump gas from high power turbines, which it was suggested might be capable of causing pipe organ-like sounds (interestingly, unidentified sounds reported in a variety of locales over the years have been likened to almost “ethereal” organ music, which appears to arise from someplace underground).
Aerial view of Taos, New Mexico
( Billy Hawthorn / Wikimedia Commons 3.0)
Around the same time that UK studies were underway, similar investigations into the hum reported by residents near Taos, New Mexico were undertaken, which produced very similar results. Among the takeaways had been that around two percent of the population in either location claimed to be “hummers”, the name given to those in the UK who could hear the noise. Equal percentages of male and female sufferers were reported, and the phenomenon appeared to be most prevalent among middle-aged people. The noises appeared to occur at frequencies anywhere from 32 Hz to around 80 Hz, modulated from 0.5 to 2 Hz. In the case of the Taos hum, some residents claimed that they were able to move away from the source of the hum, stating that they could no longer hear it at a distance of more than 30 miles from Taos.
Since the studies that were undertaken in the 1990s, a few additional possible explanations for the strange humming sounds have been offered. One suggests that the movement of deep ocean currents may actually be the source of the noises, which are naturally “amplified” in certain regions, making these otherwise unnoticeable sounds evident at locations like Taos and in the UK.
However, to date, there is no single proposed solution that seems to fully account for the ongoing mystery of “hummers” around the world, or the unusual—and very annoying—audible plight they suffer from.
This image, taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, shows wide (left) and close-up (right) views of the moon-forming disc surrounding PDS 70c, a young Jupiter-like planet nearly 400 light-years away. The close-up view shows PDS 70c and its circumplanetary disc centre-front, with the larger circumstellar ring-like disc taking up most of the right-hand side of the image. The star PDS 70 is at the centre of the wide-view image on the left.Two planets have been found in the system, PDS 70c and PDS 70b, the latter not being visible in this image. They have carved a cavity in the circumstellar disc as they gobbled up material from the disc itself, growing in size. In this process, PDS 70c acquired its own circumplanetary disc, which contributes to the growth of the planet and where moons can form. This circumplanetary disc is as large as the Sun-Earth distance and has enough mass to form up to three satellites the size of the Moon. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Benisty et al.
Using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, astronomers have unambiguously detected the presence of a disk around a planet outside our Solar System for the first time. The observations will shed new light on how moons and planets form in young stellar systems.
"Our work presents a clear detection of a disk in which satellites could be forming," says Myriam Benisty, a researcher at the University of Grenoble, France, and at the University of Chile, who led the new research published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. "Our ALMA observations were obtained at such exquisite resolution that we could clearly identify that the disk is associated with the planet and we are able to constrain its size for the first time," she adds.
The disk in question, called a circumplanetary disk, surrounds the exoplanet PDS 70c, one of two giant, Jupiter-like planets orbiting a star nearly 400 light-years away. Astronomers had found hints of a "moon-forming" disk around this exoplanet before but, since they could not clearly tell the disk apart from its surrounding environment, they could not confirm its detection—until now.
In addition, with the help of ALMA, Benisty and her team found that the disk has about the same diameter as the distance from our Sun to the Earth and enough mass to form up to three satellites the size of the Moon.
But the results are not only key to finding out how moons arise. "These new observations are also extremely important to prove theories of planet formation that could not be tested until now," says Jaehan Bae, a researcher from the Earth and Planets Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science, U.S., and author on the study.
Planets form in dusty disks around young stars, carving out cavities as they gobble up material from this circumstellar disk to grow. In this process, a planet can acquire its own circumplanetary disk, which contributes to the growth of the planet by regulating the amount of material falling onto it. At the same time, the gas and dust in the circumplanetary disk can come together into progressively larger bodies through multiple collisions, ultimately leading to the birth of moons.
But astronomers do not yet fully understand the details of these processes. "In short, it is still unclear when, where, and how planets and moons form," explains ESO Research Fellow Stefano Facchini, also involved in the research.
"More than 4000 exoplanets have been found until now, but all of them were detected in mature systems. PDS 70b and PDS 70c, which form a system reminiscent of the Jupiter-Saturn pair, are the only two exoplanets detected so far that are still in the process of being formed," explains Miriam Keppler, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and one of the co-authors of the study.
"This system therefore offers us a unique opportunity to observe and study the processes of planet and satellite formation," Facchini adds.
PDS 70b and PDS 70c, the two planets making up the system, were first discovered using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2018 and 2019 respectively, and their unique nature means they have been observed with other telescopes and instruments many times since.
The latest high resolution ALMA observations have now allowed astronomers to gain further insights into the system. In addition to confirming the detection of the circumplanetary disk around PDS 70c and studying its size and mass, they found that PDS 70b does not show clear evidence of such a disk, indicating that it was starved of dust material from its birth environment by PDS 70c.
An even deeper understanding of the planetary system will be achieved with ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction on Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Atacama desert. "The ELT will be key for this research since, with its much higher resolution, we will be able to map the system in great detail," says co-author Richard Teague, a researcher at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, U.S.. In particular, by using the ELT's Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph (METIS), the team will be able to look at the gas motions surrounding PDS 70c to get a full 3D picture of the system.
This research was presented in the paper "A Circumplanetary Disk Around PDS 70c" to appear in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
UFOs sighted over Buckinghamshire, England on July 21, 2021
STATEMENT : Spotted just now over Buckinghamshire.. 4 ufos spotted.. All flying different speeds
credit : Sam Pearcey
UFO / TR3B Sighted Over New York ( July 20, 2021 )
STATEMENT : Is this the UFO video we all were looking for ???
Oh! This is not a Chinese lantern. In fact this is no lantern at all! This is not a weather balloon. Nor the Loon. This is not swamp Gas. This is not the ISS. And this is not a passenger aircraft landing at Heathrow. It's not a military flare and it's not a reflection. Oh ! You can hear the sound of an aircraft ? Wow ! Good for you. This is an Unidentified Flying Object. Okay that we can use the abbreviation now ? U.... F....O....! Okay... So this is an actual UFO captured on video by a New Yorker. Should this not be on major news headlines around the world ? Anybody want details ??? What are we waiting for ? Oh... the new Project Deep Blue hard cover book ? Oh! That's obsolete ? Gosh ! I didn't know! What's that ??? It's now the Pentagorphological report on the UAPs is it ??? Eh!?? Really ? WTF!!! A government agency investigation report on ... What ? UAP ? What's that now ??? No more UFO ? But this is a video of a UFO !!! Okay... I will calm down! I promise!!! But... wasn't the last investigative purpose by a government led million dollar project actually a state planned initiative to debunk genuine sightings and encounters according to the ... Mmmm ... Australian government? Oh! So what exactly do we do with this video now ?
credit : P.R.E.T
UFOs Sighted Over Spain ( July 20, 2021 )
Impressive display of UFOs were sighted over the skies of Spain from a field on July 20, 2021, Similar to the UFOs over England on July 8, 2021
credit : U.S.F
Intraterrestrial Being Sighted In Waterfall in Brazil ( July 19, 2021 )
Strange Creature Sighted In Waterfall in Brazil on July 19, 2021 is this a Alien
STATEMENT : Será um ser intraterreno?
Will it be an Intraterrestrial being? (ufology) Any of a race of sapient beings who live inside the Earth and operate UFOs. microbiology) Which lives deep underground.
MUFON CASE : 117004 Holiday, Florida ( July 21, 2021 )
Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : I think we saw an unidentified aircraft.
Long Description of Sighting Report
I think we saw an UFO in the evening sky. It was dusk, so there were no stars visible, the moon was not visible yet. I have photos and videos. I'm not sure what I saw
Giant Black Triangle On Suns Surface 1/5 The Size Of Earth! July 21, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
Giant Black Triangle On Suns Surface 1/5 The Size Of Earth! July 21, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: July 21, 2021
Location of sighting: Earths Sun Source: Helioviewer.org
I first reported this black triangle UFO about 2 years ago. It's still there today, but moves from one place to another. Its location about 5 years ago was in the upper left corner of the sun. Then suddenly it disappeared and reappeared in the lower right corner of the sun just 2 years ago. Since then...I have been watching it, asking about it in emails to astronomical organizations worldwide, yet have never once received a response.
This huge object appears to be a large black triangle craft. It stays black which means its has resistance against the heat of the sun. Normally if it was burning material from the sun, it would also be burning, but not this. It remains black 24/7.
Look at the Helioviewer earth sample next to it to measure the size of the triangle. Its 1/5 the size of Earth...and yet no astronomers have ever mentioned it. No scientific organization has ever acknowledged its existence. There is clearly someone of power trying to keep this knowledge out of the hands of the public. Perhaps someone so powerful, so rich that they themselves own the ship and left it there for a quick getaway one day. Got anyone in mind? Any billionaires getting your attention impressing you lately? I got a few on my mind...Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and of course...Jeff Bezos. At least one of them is an alien, but maybe more. In time we will find out the truth.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Cosmic, Earth and Underworld symbolism at ancient rock chambers in Hittite Yazilikaya, Turkey
Cosmic, Earth and Underworld symbolism at ancient rock chambers in Hittite Yazilikaya, Turkey
For almost two hundred years, archaeologists have been looking for a plausible explanation for the ancient rock sanctuary of Yazılıkaya in Central Turkey.
Over 3,200 years ago, stonemasons artfully cut more than 90 reliefs of deities, animals, and chimaeras into the limestone bedrock.
An international team of researchers now presents an interpretation that for the first time suggests a coherent context for all of the figures.
Accordingly, the stone-carved reliefs in two rock chambers symbolize the cosmos: the underworld, the earth, and the sky, as well as the recurring cycles of the seasons, the phases of the moon, and day and night.
Richard Dolan’s UFO Chronicles YouTube TV Series Announcement
Richard Dolan’s UFO Chronicles YouTube TV Series Announcement
Richard Dolan, presents the most concise and up to date examination of the UFO subject, in a brand new 32 part mini television series ‘Richard Dolan’s UFO Chronicles Ahead of premiere screening, Richard interviewed Steve Mera, the executive producer of the series.
View larger. | An image of a full moon, made entirely of words. They are the transcripts of the onboard voice transmissions of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Image via J-P Metsavainio.
Voices of Apollo 11
As we celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the first human footsteps on the moon – which took place on July 20, 1969 – we’d like to bring some new astronomy art to your attention. Finnish astronomy artist J-P Metsavainio collected all the Apollo 11 transmissions and used them to construct an image of a full moon. He did this as a tribute to lunar astronaut Michael Collins, who died this year, on April 28, 2021. Metsavainio described his new image on his blog.
He wrote:
I downloaded NASA’s original full transcript of Apollo 11’s onboard voice conversations. The idea was to turn this text into an image of the moon. After a few weeks of intense work at a feverish pace, my tribute was ready. Now the moon is made up entirely of Apollo 11 voice transcription letters.
This is also a tribute to the entire Apollo 11 team: CommanderNeil A. Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin E. [Buzz] Aldrin Jr.
Michael Collins died just nine days after tweeting about a previous work by Metsavainio (an incredible Milky Way image that took 12 years to make). Metsavainio recounted:
I was most gratified and deeply moved when Michael Collins – the Apollo 11 and Gemini 10 astronaut, author, explorer and artist – tweeted […] about my work on April 19, 2021. The news of his passing, just nine days later, hit me all the harder. It was a very emotional moment for me. Out of the blue, I got inspired to create this artwork. I absolutely had to do it right away, which I did.
Michael Collins was also an artist. His iconic photos made from moon orbit are true art and part of mankind’s greatest cultural heritage treasure.
View full image. | A close-up of the image of a full moon, made of words spoken by Apollo 11 astronauts while visiting the moon in 1969. Image via J-P Metsavainio.
The loneliest man in history
At the same time Neil Armstrong was making history as the first human to set foot on the moon, Michael Collins was all alone aboard a spacecraft orbiting the moon. He was the astronaut who stayed behind on the command module, Columbia, while his two crew mates were testing out the moon’s surface in person.
And that’s why many affectionately called Michael Collins the loneliest man in history.
When he flew solo behind the moon, he was without radio contact with anyone. Meanwhile, his colleagues, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, were making history with their first steps on the moon.
So, here at EarthSky, we think that this is a fitting image to celebrate the July 20 moon landing. Like most astronomical images, it is not only a beautiful image, but full of information. Apart from the Apollo 11 communications, Metsavainio also pointed out the landing site. If you zoom into the image far enough at the right spot, you can find it marked by two letters in red.
View larger. | Two red letters mark the spot where the Apollo 11 lander touched down on lunar soil. Image via J-P Metsavainio.
The Eagle as it has left the moon and is approaching Columbia. Image via M. Collins/ NASA.
Working in solitude
Metsavainio recounts how he connected to Collins’ lonely and otherworldly experience as he was working:
A similar solitude gripped me while I was creating this tribute image. For being an astronomical photographer and a visual artist often is a very lonely job. Especially this time as I was deeply emotional throughout my creative process for this artwork. Even though I never met him personally, the end of his Earthly mission meant more to me than I was prepared for. I needed to make this photo-based artwork to process the inner storm of my thoughts and feelings.
View larger. | A close-up of the artwork shows how the image is made up entirely of only letters, letters from the transcription of Apollo 11’s Command Module recorder data. Image via J-P Metsavainio.
Bottom line:Astronomy artist J-P Metsavainio has created an image of the moon, using all the words spoken to Earth by Apollo 11 astronauts, while on the moon. The image serves as a tribute to Michaels Collins, who died in April, 2021, as well as the entire Apollo 11 crew on this the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo moon landing.
View larger. | An image of a full moon, made entirely of words. They are the transcripts of the onboard voice transmissions of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Image via J-P Metsavainio.
Voices of Apollo 11
As we celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the first human footsteps on the moon – which took place on July 20, 1969 – we’d like to bring some new astronomy art to your attention. Finnish astronomy artist J-P Metsavainio collected all the Apollo 11 transmissions and used them to construct an image of a full moon. He did this as a tribute to lunar astronaut Michael Collins, who died this year, on April 28, 2021. Metsavainio described his new image on his blog.
He wrote:
I downloaded NASA’s original full transcript of Apollo 11’s onboard voice conversations. The idea was to turn this text into an image of the moon. After a few weeks of intense work at a feverish pace, my tribute was ready. Now the moon is made up entirely of Apollo 11 voice transcription letters.
This is also a tribute to the entire Apollo 11 team: CommanderNeil A. Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin E. [Buzz] Aldrin Jr.
Michael Collins died just nine days after tweeting about a previous work by Metsavainio (an incredible Milky Way image that took 12 years to make). Metsavainio recounted:
I was most gratified and deeply moved when Michael Collins – the Apollo 11 and Gemini 10 astronaut, author, explorer and artist – tweeted […] about my work on April 19, 2021. The news of his passing, just nine days later, hit me all the harder. It was a very emotional moment for me. Out of the blue, I got inspired to create this artwork. I absolutely had to do it right away, which I did.
Michael Collins was also an artist. His iconic photos made from moon orbit are true art and part of mankind’s greatest cultural heritage treasure.
View full image. | A close-up of the image of a full moon, made of words spoken by Apollo 11 astronauts while visiting the moon in 1969. Image via J-P Metsavainio.
The loneliest man in history
At the same time Neil Armstrong was making history as the first human to set foot on the moon, Michael Collins was all alone aboard a spacecraft orbiting the moon. He was the astronaut who stayed behind on the command module, Columbia, while his two crew mates were testing out the moon’s surface in person.
And that’s why many affectionately called Michael Collins the loneliest man in history.
When he flew solo behind the moon, he was without radio contact with anyone. Meanwhile, his colleagues, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, were making history with their first steps on the moon.
So, here at EarthSky, we think that this is a fitting image to celebrate the July 20 moon landing. Like most astronomical images, it is not only a beautiful image, but full of information. Apart from the Apollo 11 communications, Metsavainio also pointed out the landing site. If you zoom into the image far enough at the right spot, you can find it marked by two letters in red.
View larger. | Two red letters mark the spot where the Apollo 11 lander touched down on lunar soil. Image via J-P Metsavainio.
The Eagle as it has left the moon and is approaching Columbia. Image via M. Collins/ NASA.
Working in solitude
Metsavainio recounts how he connected to Collins’ lonely and otherworldly experience as he was working:
A similar solitude gripped me while I was creating this tribute image. For being an astronomical photographer and a visual artist often is a very lonely job. Especially this time as I was deeply emotional throughout my creative process for this artwork. Even though I never met him personally, the end of his Earthly mission meant more to me than I was prepared for. I needed to make this photo-based artwork to process the inner storm of my thoughts and feelings.
View larger. | A close-up of the artwork shows how the image is made up entirely of only letters, letters from the transcription of Apollo 11’s Command Module recorder data. Image via J-P Metsavainio.
Bottom line:Astronomy artist J-P Metsavainio has created an image of the moon, using all the words spoken to Earth by Apollo 11 astronauts, while on the moon. The image serves as a tribute to Michaels Collins, who died in April, 2021, as well as the entire Apollo 11 crew on this the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo moon landing.
“The stellar universe, as we know it … is a flattened, watch-shaped organization of stars and nebulae,” astronomer Harlow Shapley wrote in Science News Bulletin, the earliest version of Science News, in August 1921 (SN: 8/8/1921, p. 3). That sparkling pocket watch was the Milky Way, and at the time Shapley wrote this, astronomers were just beginning to conceive that anything at all might lie beyond it.
Today, spacecraft have flown by every one of the solar system’s planets, taking close-ups of their wildly alien faces. The solar system, it turns out, contains a cornucopia of small rocky and icy bodies that have challenged the very definition of a planet. Thousands of planets have been spotted orbiting other stars, some of which may have the right conditions for life to thrive. And the Milky Way, we now know, is just one of billions of galaxies.
The last 100 years have brought a series of revolutions in astronomy, each one kicking Earth a bit farther from the center of things. Along the way, people have not exactly been receptive to these blows to our home planet’s centrality. In 1920, the question of whether there could be other “island universes” — galaxies — was the subject of the Great Debate between two astronomers. In the 1970s, when Mars was shown to have a pink sky, not blue, reporters booed. Their reaction “reflects our wish for Mars to be just like the Earth,” said astronomer Carl Sagan afterward. And in the 1990s, astronomers almost missed extrasolar planets hiding in their data because they had tailored their search techniques to find planets more like those in our own solar system.
But turning our focus from Earth has opened our minds to new possibilities, new universes, new places where life might exist. The next century of astronomy could bring better views of our cosmic origins and new strategies for finding worlds that other creatures call home.
The misperceptions of decades past suggest scientists should be careful when predicting just what we’ll find in the future.
“You learn a lot of humility in this business,” says planetary scientist Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute, based in Tucson. “You always learn a lot more when you’re wrong than when you’re right.”
More than the Milky Way
At the turn of the 20th century, conventional wisdom held that the Milky Way stood alone. It contained stars, sometimes organized in clusters, and fuzzy patches of light known as nebulae. That was about it.
Some nebulae had spiral structures, “appearing in the telescope like vast Fourth-of-July pinwheels,” as Science News Letter, the predecessor of Science News, described them in 1924. In the 18th century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant had described nebulae as “higher universes,” or, “so to speak, Milky Ways.” But by the early 1900s, most astronomers thought that drawing that parallel was ridiculous.
“No competent thinker,” wrote historian of astronomy Agnes Clerke in 1890, can “maintain any single nebula to be a star system of coordinate rank with the Milky Way.”
By the 1920s, though, that view was already being challenged. As early as 1914, astronomer Heber Curtis of Lick Observatory in California argued that spiral nebulae are not part of the Milky Way, but rather “inconceivably distant galaxies of stars or separate stellar universes so remote that an entire galaxy becomes but an unresolved haze of light.”
Around the same time, Shapley, of Mount Wilson Observatory in California, began to prove that the Milky Way itself was inconceivably vast.
Shapley built on work by Henrietta Leavitt, one of a group of women “computers” at Harvard University who pored over photographic plates capturing the night sky. In studying photographs of the Magellanic Clouds, which we now know are two small galaxies that orbit the Milky Way, Leavitt noticed that certain stars varied in brightness over time, some of them in a peculiar way. “It is worthy of notice,” she wrote in 1908, that “the brighter variables have the longer periods.” In other words, brighter stars twinkled more slowly.
In the early 1900s, astronomer Henrietta Leavitt discovered a feature of certain stars, called Cepheid variables, that helped other astronomers measure cosmic distances. Those stars ultimately helped prove that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies.PHOTO BY MARGARET HARWOOD, COURTESY OF AIP EMILIO SEGRÈ VISUAL ARCHIVES, PHYSICS TODAY COLLECTION, SHAPLEY COLLECTION
That meant that these variable stars, called Cepheids, could be used to estimate cosmic distances. It’s hard to tell how far away a cosmic object truly is — bright-looking stars could be intrinsically dim but close, while faint-looking stars could be intrinsically bright but distant. But all the Cepheids within the same cloud should be roughly the same distance from Earth. That meant “their periods are apparently associated with their actual emission of light,” Leavitt wrote in 1912. To figure out any Cepheid’s true brightness, all an astronomer had to do was measure its twinkling speed. It was a short step from there to figuring out its distance.
Shapley put this fact to use just a few years later, measuring distances to Cepheids within globular clusters of stars to figure out the sun’s position in the Milky Way. To his surprise, the sun was not in the center of the galaxy but off to one side. The Milky Way’s starry disk was also about 10 times wider than previous astronomers had assumed: about 300,000 light-years across, according to his calculations. (He overshot a bit; modern astronomers think it’s somewhere between 120,000 and 200,000 light-years.)
He and Curtis took their opposing views to the public at a meeting of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., in April 1920, in an event that became known as the Great Debate. Each had 40 minutes to present their views on whether there is only one or several universes — what we now think of as galaxies.
Shapley, who was in his 30s and considered a rising star in the field, went first. A former journalist who reportedly was uncomfortable speaking to crowds, he read his argument from a typewritten script. He barely touched on the question of other universes, focusing instead on his new measurements of the Milky Way’s size. The implication was that the Milky Way was too large for other galaxies to make sense.
Curtis was an older, well-respected authority on spiral nebulae, as well as a gifted speaker. He argued for the then-standard view that the Milky Way was much smaller than Shapley supposed. But even a large Milky Way shouldn’t negate the possibility of other, equally large galaxies, he argued. The spectra of light coming from spiral nebulae was similar enough to that of the Milky Way that they could be similar objects, he maintained.
Both astronomers were partly right, and partly wrong.
Galaxies come into view
The Great Debate was resolved by a young astronomer named Edwin Hubble working at Mount Wilson. Hubble also used Leavitt’s Cepheid variable technique to measure cosmic distances, this time by finding the variable stars in the spiral nebulae themselves.
Hubble started observing the Andromeda nebula, one of the brightest nebulae on the sky, in the fall of 1923. He used Mount Wilson’s 60-inch telescope and its 100-inch telescope, then the world’s largest. Over the next year or so, he studied 35 Cepheids in Andromeda and a different nebula called Triangulum. Their periods were long enough that the nebulae had to be on the order of a million light-years away for the stars to appear so faint. (We now know it’s more like 2.5 million light-years to Andromeda and 2.7 million to Triangulum.)
Astronomer Edwin Hubble, shown here holding a drawing of a galaxy, proved that there are other galaxies outside of the Milky Way.HALE OBSERVATORIES, COURTESY OF AIP EMILIO SEGRÈ VISUAL ARCHIVES
“Measuring the distance to Andromeda was a big deal because it was the first evidence that there are galaxies beyond our own,” says astronomer Emily Levesque of the University of Washington in Seattle. “It changed what we thought of as the shape of our universe.”
A few hints that the Milky Way was not alone had cropped up before that, but Hubble’s finding clinched it. Even if the Milky Way was as big as Shapley claimed, Andromeda lay outside its borders. When Shapley received Hubble’s paper, he reportedly said, “Here is the letter that destroyed my universe.”
“It seems probable that many of the smaller spiral nebulae are still more remote and appear smaller on this account,” the story quotes Hubble as saying. “The portion of the universe within the range of our investigation consists of vast numbers of stellar galaxies comparable to our own, scattered about through nearly empty space and separated from one another by distances of inconceivable magnitude.” Here at last was the modern view of the universe.
By the end of the decade, Hubble had not only shown that the spiral nebulae were “island universes,” he also had begun to classify different galaxy types and think about how they evolved over time. What’s more, he showed that galaxies were flying away from each other at speeds proportional to their distance. In other words, the universe was expanding.
“Instead of these blurry blobs from even the best mountaintop observatories on our planet,” says planetary scientist Jim Bell of Arizona State University in Tempe, “all of a sudden the entire realm of solar system, galaxy, extragalactic … was opened up by getting above the atmosphere.”
NASA named the telescope after the scientist who opened astronomers’ minds to the existence of such a universe: the Hubble Space Telescope.
The images it has captured over 30 years of operations — star clusters, galaxies and nebulae — are so iconic they are printed on everything from socks and coffee mugs to high fashion runway designs. The telescope itself was recently immortalized in Lego form.
“It’s the one that literally everyone has heard of,” says Levesque. Most people today think Hubble was “the guy who built the telescope.”
One image from early on in the space telescope’s tenure stands out. In December 1995, the telescope’s director, Robert Williams, decided to train the observatory on a tiny, dark patch of sky near the handle of the Big Dipper for 10 consecutive days. The resulting portrait of this featureless bit of sky revealed thousands of previously unknown galaxies sending their light from farther away than astronomers had ever seen before (SN: 1/20/96, p. 36). The universe as Edwin Hubble had imagined it, chock-full of island universes, was captured in one hard look.
As for Henrietta Leavitt, she missed out on the recognition she deserved for helping knock the Milky Way from its central perch. A Swedish mathematician wrote to her in 1925 saying that her work “has impressed me so deeply that I feel seriously inclined to nominate you to the Nobel Prize in physics for 1926.” He received a reply from Shapley, by then director of the Harvard College Observatory: Leavitt had died four years earlier.
Bizarre beauties
In the 1960s, astronomer Halton Arp proposed that researchers use the weirdest-looking galaxies as natural experiments to learn what gives a galaxy its shape. To help researchers figure out what makes a galaxy spiral, blobby or some other shape, Arp published the 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, a compilation of 338 galaxies sorted by appearance.
Arp’s categories were spiral, elliptical, neither spiral nor elliptical, double and none of the above. At the time, some of the galaxies had no names or designations, and are still best known by their Arp numbers, like Arp 273 and Arp 147.
Despite their diversity, most of the peculiar galaxies are now thought to be going through a merger or interacting with another galaxy. But Arp never bought that explanation. He claimed for years that galaxies’ shapes come from material ejected from their luminous cores. Here are six of the most beautiful and bizarre galaxies, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope and others, which offer much greater detail than Arp had access to half a century ago. — Lisa Grossman
Tap images to enlarge
The blue ring galaxy on the right of this image of Arp 247 probably became ringshaped after the galaxy on the left passed through it. The collision created a density wave that propagated outward, like ripples through a pond. The pileup of gas produced by the wave helped spark the blue ring of star formation. The reddish knot at the bottom left of the ring may mark the galaxy’s original core.
NASA, ESA, M. LIVIO/STSCI
Arp 273 is an interacting pair of galaxies. The larger of these tangoing partners, UGC1810, is being distorted into a shape reminiscent of a rose by its companion, UGC1813, which makes the flower’s stem. A bridge of material connects the two galaxies across tens of thousands of light years.
NASA, ESA, THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM/STSCI AND AURA
Looking like a backward comma, Arp 244 is a pair of colliding galaxies in the constellation Corvus that began interacting a few hundred million years ago. The yellowish blobs are the cores of the original galaxies, blue marks star-forming regions and pink is glowing hydrogen gas.
HUBBLE/ESA AND NASA
The spiral galaxy NGC2276 is forming bright new stars along its upper right edge. That starburst could have been triggered by a previous collision, or by the galaxy’s motion through the hot gas that lies within galaxy clusters.
NASA, ESA, STSCI, PAUL SELL/UNIV. OF FLORIDA
NGC1569 is a dwarf galaxy in the constellation Camelopardalis that is undergoing a burst of star formation. Over the last 100 million years, it has formed stars at a rate 100 times that of the Milky Way. All that star formation eventually produced supernovas, whose strong stellar winds also sculpted the galaxy.
NASA, ESA, THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM/STSCI AND AURA
M51 is a classic spiral, with two curving arms of young blue stars reaching out from a yellowish central core of older stars. Some astronomers think the Whirlpool’s arms are so prominent because of the small galaxy at the tip of one of the arms, NGC5195 (yellow blob at right of image). Despite how close the galaxies look, NGC5195 has actually been passing behind the Whirlpool for hundreds of millions of years. Shock waves from the smaller galaxy’s passage may help sculpt the larger’s distinctive shape.
NASA, ESA, S. BECKWITH/STSCI, THE HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM/STSCI AND AURA
Steps to Mars
The first liquid-fueled rockets, precursors to the ones that later carried robots and people into space, launched in the 1920s. A century later, robots have flown past, orbited or landed on every planetary body that was known in 1920, and a few that weren’t. People have walked on the moon and have lived in space for more than a year at a time. And serious talks about sending people to Mars are in the works.
NASA used to explore other worlds in a clear order, first observing with telescopes and then carrying out increasingly complex missions: flybys, orbiters, landers, rovers, then people and sample returns. “We’ve taken that entire progression on the moon, in [the last] century,” Bell says. “Sometime in this new century, we’ll add Mars to that list. All the rest of the solar system, we’ve got large chunks of that matrix checked off.”
After the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957, space launches came fast and furious. Many were demonstrations of political and military might. But a lot of them had scientific merit, too. The Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft photographed the farside of the moon in 1959 — shortly after NASA’s founding. Spacecraft flew past Venus and Mars in the 1960s, sending back the first closeup data on their alien atmospheres and surfaces.
That same decade, humans landed on the moon and brought back rocks, opening a wide and detailed window into the history of the solar system. The lunar samples from the Apollo missions gave scientists a way to figure out how old planetary surfaces are around the solar system, taught us that the entire inner solar system was bombarded with impacts in its youth and gave us an origin story for the moon (SN: 7/6/19 & 7/20/19, p. 18).
“Until we started the space program, we really had no idea what the geology was on other places,” says Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute. “Early in the century, they were still debating whether the craters on the moon were impact craters or volcanic calderas. Even right there in our own backyard, we didn’t know what was going on.”
And extraterrestrial geology was surprising. Without meaning to, planetary scientists had based a lot of their expectations for other worlds on the Earth. The cover of Science News from June 1976, the month before NASA’s Viking 1 lander became the first long-lived spacecraft to land softly on Mars, showed Mars with a Cheez Whiz–colored desert under a clear blue sky. In the sleep-deprived rush to release the first color images sent back by Viking 1, scientists processed the image to produce a blue sky there, too.
Before NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft landed on Mars in July 1976, Science News and others envisioned the Red Planet with a blue sky. Mars’ sky is actually a dusty yellowish-pink.
But the day after the landing, James Pollack of the imaging team told reporters that the Martian sky was actually pink, probably thanks to scattered light from dust particles suspended in the air.
“When we found the sky of Mars to be a kind of pinkish-yellow rather than the blue which had erroneously first been reported, the announcement was greeted by a chorus of good-natured boos from the assembled reporters,” Sagan later wrote in the introduction to his popular book Cosmos. “They wanted Mars to be, even in this respect, like the Earth.”
Still, the Viking 1 and 2 landings brought Mars down to Earth, so to speak. “Mars had become a place,” Viking project scientist Gerald Soffen said in an interview for a NASA historical project published in 1984. “It went from a word, an abstract thought, to a real place.”
In some ways, the Viking landers’ views of Mars were disappointing. The mission’s central goal was explicitly to search for microbial life. It was “a long shot,” journalist Janet L. Hopson wrote in Science News in June 1976 (SN: 6/5/76, p. 374). But “even if no signs of life appear, [biologists] stand to gain their first real perspective on terrestrial biochemistry, life origins and evolution.”
The results of the Viking mission’s life-detection experiments were inconclusive, a finding almost worse than a true negative.
NASA subsequently pulled back from seeking life directly. The next 45 years of Mars missions searched for signs of past water, potentially habitable environments and organic molecules, instead of living organisms. All of those features turned up in data from the Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers in the 2000s and 2010s.
Now, NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed in February 2021, is hunting for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will cache rock samples that a future mission will bring back to Earth. And the joint Russian and European space agencies’ ExoMars rover — named Rosalind Franklin, after the chemist whose work was central to discovering DNA’s structure — aims to seek molecular signatures of life on Mars and just below the surface after it launches in 2022.
Sagan predicted in 1973 that if he had been born 50 years in the future, the search for life on Mars would have already been completed. Today, 48 years later, we’re still looking.
The first image taken on the surface of Mars, in July 1976, shows the footpad of NASA’s Viking 1 lander and the rocks of a basin called Chryse Planitia.NASA
Almost 45 years later, the small helicopter Ingenuity landed with the Perseverance rover and became the first robot to fly in the thin Martian atmosphere. Its blades span 1.2 meters.JPL-CALTECH/NASA, ARIZONA STATE UNIV.
Exotic moons
The year after the Vikings landed on Mars, another pair of spacecraft launched to check almost the entire rest of the solar system off scientists’ must-see list. Astronomers realized that in 1977, the planets would line up in such a way that a spacecraft launched that year could reach Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune one by one, stealing a little angular momentum from each world as it went along. The mission was dubbed Voyager (SN: 8/27/77, p. 132).
“There’s never been anything like it, and there never will be again,” says Bell, of Arizona State. “It was comparable to the voyages of Magellan or Darwin or Lewis and Clark. Just an absolutely profound mission of discovery that completely changed the landscape of planetary science in this century.”
Voyager’s views of the outer solar system forced scientists to think outside of the “Earth box,” says Hansen, who worked on the mission. “The Voyager imaging team, bless their hearts, they would make predictions and then they’d be wrong,” she says. “And we would learn something.”
Hansen recalls chatting with a member of the imaging team when the spacecraft was approaching Jupiter and its dozens of moons. “He said, ‘Candy, we will see craters on [moons] Io and Europa, because we know from the density that those are rocky worlds. But not on Ganymede and Callisto, because those are ice,’ ” she recalls. Instead, the images showed Ganymede and Callisto were covered in craters. “That was an aha moment — ice is going to act like rock at those temperatures.” Meanwhile, ocean-swathed Europa and molten Io had almost no craters.
The moons of Jupiter presented “a whole, previously unimagined family of exotic worlds, each radically different not only from its companions, but also from everything else in the planet-watcher’s experience,” journalist Jonathan Eberhart wrote in Science News in April 1980 (SN: 4/19/80, p. 251).
Before 1979, Earth was the only geologically active, rocky world scientists knew about. But Voyager changed that view, too. A member of Voyager’s optical navigation team, Linda Morabito, spotted an odd, mushroom-shaped feature extending off the edge of Io while she was trying to plot the spacecraft’s position on March 9, 1979. She consulted with the science team, and they soon realized they were looking at a gigantic volcanic plume. Io was erupting in real time.
Three planetary scientists had predicted Io’s fire before the plumes were discovered. The three suggested the moon was heated by a gravitational tug-of-war between Jupiter and one or two of its other moons, Europa and Ganymede.
But most of the planetary science community was stunned. “We take gravity for granted here. It keeps our feet on the ground,” Hansen says. “But gravity molds and shapes so many things in so many unexpected ways.”
Voyager and subsequent missions to the outer planets, like Galileo at Jupiter in the 1990s and Cassini at Saturn in the 2000s, transformed our view of the solar system in another profound way. They revealed several surprising parts of the solar system where life might exist today.
Voyager hinted that Europa might have a liquid water ocean beneath an icy shell. Galileo strengthened that idea, and suggested the ocean might be salty and have contact with the moon’s rocky core, which could provide chemical nutrients for microbial life. NASA is now developing a mission to fly past Europa. “I will not be surprised if life is somehow discovered on Europa in my lifetime, or in this century,” Bell says.
Spacecraft have revealed that some moons let their insides out. Jupiter’s moon Io (left) spurts plumes of magma as high as 390 kilometers into the air. Jupiter’s moon Europa (center) and Saturn’s moon Enceladus (right) both host subsurface seas and may vent water into space.FROM LEFT: JPL-CALTECH/NASA, UNIV. OF ARIZONA; JPL-CALTECH/NASA, SETI INSTITUTE; JPL-CALTECH/NASA, SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
Shortly after the Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004, scientists realized that the tiny moon Enceladus vents dramatic plumes of water vapor, dust and ice crystals into space from a hidden subsurface sea. That moon also looks like a good place for life.
If the last century of exploring the solar system was about coming to grips with alien geology, Hansen says, this coming century is going to be about oceanography — getting a grip on the strange seas in our own solar system.
“I think that’s going to shape a lot of the research going forward,” Hansen says. Now that it’s clear these moons have oceans, researchers will ask if they are habitable, and eventually, if they are inhabited.
Exoplanets detected
The first planet spotted outside our solar system — an exoplanet — was so different from anything in our solar system that astronomers weren’t hunting for anything like it.
“Knowing that there are actually planets around other stars now seems so trivial to say,” says exoplanet observer Debra Fischer of Yale University. “But we had arguments in 1995 about whether other stars have planets.”
So when astronomer Michel Mayor of the Geneva Observatory turned his spectrograph on the sky in April 1994, he kept quiet about his hopes of finding true exoplanets. He was more likely to find brown dwarfs, failed stars that never grew massive enough to burn hydrogen.
His instrument used a clever new way to hunt for other worlds, called the radial velocity technique. Previous exoplanet hunters had looked directly for a star’s motion in response to the gravity of an orbiting planet, watching to see if the star would move back and forth in the sky. That technique had led to several planetary claims, even dating back to 1855, but none of them had held up. Those motions are tiny; Jupiter’s influence moves the sun by just 12 meters per second.
Astronomers have hunted exoplanets with several techniques, some better than others. The earliest claimed exoplanet detections used the astrometry method, but almost none of them held up. Success came with the radial velocity method in the 1990s. But the transit method has proved most prolific.
Method
Description
Planets discovered
Transit
When a planet passes directly between its star and an observer, it dims the star’s light by a measurable amount.
3,343
Radial velocity
Orbiting planets cause stars to wobble in space, leading to an observable shift in the color of the star’s light.
866
Gravitational microlensing
Light from a distant star is bent and focused by a planet’s gravity as the planet passes between the star and Earth.
108
Direct imaging
Astronomers can take pictures of an exoplanet by removing the overwhelming glare of the star it orbits.
53
Astrometry
The orbit of a planet can cause a star to move visibly on the sky.
1
SOURCE: NASA
Instead, Mayor and others studied a shift in the wavelength of starlight as a star moved to and fro. As a star approaches us, the light shifts to shorter, or bluer, wavelengths; as it moves away, the light grows redder. Calculating the velocity of a star’s back-and-forth motion, astronomers could figure out the minimum mass and length of the year of whatever was tugging that star.
The shifts Mayor was looking for were still minuscule. The search was considered futile, and fringe — like looking for little green men. So astronomers who explicitly claimed to be searching for planets had a hard time scheduling observations at telescopes. Brown dwarfs, on the other hand, were considered legitimate science, and would be easier to detect.
So the world was astounded when, in October 1995, Mayor and his student Didier Queloz reported strong evidence not of a brown dwarf, but of a true planet orbiting the sunlike star 51 Pegasi, about 50 light-years from our solar system.
The new planet was weird. It seemed to be about half the mass of Jupiter, too puny to be a brown dwarf. But it orbited the star once every 4.23 Earth days, putting it incredibly close to its star. There’s nothing like that in our solar system, and astronomers had no idea how it could exist.
“The news flashed through the astronomical community like a lightning bolt,” wrote journalist Ron Cowen in Science News, in the first of threestories on the new planet he would write within a month (SN: 10/21/95, p. 260).
51 Peg b, as it came to be known, launched a new era. “It means planets exist around other sunlike stars, we can find them, and they might be the exciting ones,” says Yale anthropologist Lisa Messeri, who has studied how astronomers create worlds out of pixels and spectra. “Firsts are exciting because they promise there will be seconds and thirds and fourths.”
Big surprise
The first planet found orbiting a star similar to our sun fit nobody’s mold. Dubbed a “hot Jupiter,” 51 Pegasi b is bigger than Jupiter, but 20 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun (Earth is one astronomical unit, AU, or 150 million kilometers from the sun). 51 Pegasi b circles its star in four days; Earth’s orbit is a lengthier 365 days.
A tight orbit for a large planet
C. CHANG
SOURCE: M. MAYOR AND D. QUELOZ/NATURE 1995
The search was on. A group from San Francisco quickly found two more planets hiding in data the researchers hadn’t finished analyzing yet. Those next two planets, 70 Vir b and 47 UMa b, were also more massive and closer to their stars than expected.
The existence of these three worlds, which were named hot Jupiters because their close-in orbits should make them sizzle, upended the paradigm for what a planet could be like. Clearly, our solar system was not the template for the universe.
Yet for a few years after 51 Peg b was announced, astronomers debated whether the planet was really there. Maybe the star’s apparent back-and-forth was just its outer atmosphere breathing in and out. Those debates waned as more planets were discovered, but it took a new technique to really convince everyone.
Astronomers had predicted at least back to the 1850s that some planets would pass in front of their stars from the perspective of Earth. As it crossed, or transited, the face of its star, a planet could reveal its presence by blocking a little bit of the star’s light.
But if other solar systems are like ours, transits would be incredibly difficult to detect. Our planets are too small and too far from the sun to cast a large shadow. Hot Jupiters, on the other hand, should block way more of a star’s light than any planets in our solar system. With the discovery of 51 Peg b, transits seemed not only possible to detect, but almost easy.
The first transiting extrasolar planet revealed itself in 1999, when then-Harvard graduate student David Charbonneau drove to Colorado to do his thesis work with astronomer Tim Brown. Brown had built a tiny telescope on a friend’s farm north of Boulder, setting up the computers in a repurposed turkey coop, to search for transiting planets. By the time Charbonneau arrived, however, the farm had been sold and the telescope relocated to a lab site.
To practice the technique, Charbonneau aimed Brown’s telescope at a star, called HD 209458, that already had a suspected planet. The star’s light dimmed by about 1 percent, and then it shone bright again. That was a clear sign of a planet about 32 percent wider than Jupiter.
That discovery ended all doubts about the existence of exoplanets, says Fischer, who had worked with the exoplanet-hunting group in San Francisco. “It happened like that,” Fischer says, with a finger snap. The combined size and mass of the planet unambiguously ruled out brown dwarfs or other exotic explanations. “It walks like a Jupiter, talks like a Jupiter, it’s a Jupiter.”
There was another advantage to the transit method: It can show the composition of a planet’s atmosphere. Planets detected by the wobble technique were “little more than phantoms,” Cowen wrote in Science News in 2007. They were too small to be seen, and too close to the star to be photographed directly.
“Everyone had assumed that if you wanted to [detect] the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet, you’d have to image it,” Charbonneau told Science News. But starlight filtering through a transiting planet’s sky could reveal what gases surround the alien world without the need for a snapshot.
Hunt for habitable planets
Transits soon overtook wobbles as the most fruitful planet-finding strategy. That was mostly thanks to the launch of NASA’s Kepler space telescope in March 2009.
Kepler’s mission was explicitly about finding other Earths. For nearly four years, the telescope stared at 170,000 stars in a single patch of sky to catch as many transiting planets as it could. In particular, its operators were hoping for Earth-sized planets in Earthlike orbits around sunlike stars — places where life could conceivably exist.
The years that followed were a boom time for planet finders. By the end of its nearly 10-year run, Kepler had confirmed almost 2,700 planets and thousands more potential planets. Findings went beyond the hot Jupiters to worlds the size of Earth and planets in the “habitable zone,” where temperatures could be right for liquid water.
Discoveries came so quickly that a single new world stopped being a news story. Kepler’s data shifted from revealing new worlds one by one to taking an exoplanet census. It showed that hot Jupiters are not actually the most common type of planet; they were just the easiest ones to spot. The most common type makes no appearance in our solar system: worlds between the size of Earth and Neptune, which may be rocky super-Earths or gaseous mini-Neptunes.
And Kepler revealed that there are more planets in the galaxy than stars. Every one of the billions and billions of stars in the Milky Way should have at least one world in its orbit.
But the telescope never really achieved the goal of finding another Earth. Kepler required three transits to confirm a world’s existence. That means the telescope had to stare for at least three years to find a planet orbiting at Earth’s exact distance.
By 2013, after four years of observing, half of Kepler’s stabilizing reaction wheels had failed. The telescope couldn’t maintain its unblinking view of the same part of the sky. Mission scientists cleverly reprogrammed the telescope to look at other stars for shorter spans of time. But most of the planets found there orbited closer to their stars than Earth does, meaning they couldn’t be Earth twins.
Messeri recalls an exoplanet conference at MIT in 2011 where a lot of the conversation was about finding a twin of Earth.
“It was a peak of excitement — maybe we’re going to find this planet in the next three years, or five years. It felt close,” she says. “What’s interesting is, in the 10 years since then, it still feels that close.”
But astronomers had already realized they might not need a true Earth analog to find a planet where life could exist. Rocky worlds orbiting smaller, dimmer stars than the sun are easier to find, and might be just as friendly to life.
Charbonneau again was ahead of the curve, having started a program called MEarth in 2008 to hunt for habitable planets around puny M dwarf stars using eight small telescopes in Arizona (plus another eight in Chile that were added in 2014). Within six months, Charbonneau and colleagues had found a super-Earth dubbed GJ 1214b that is probably a water world — maybe a bit too wet for life.
The European Southern Observatory started the TRAPPIST, for TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope, survey from La Silla, Chile, in 2010. Another telescope, at Oukaïmeden Observatory in Morocco, came online to search for planets orbiting Northern Hemisphere stars in 2016. Among that survey’s discoveries is the TRAPPIST-1 system of seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a single M dwarf star, three of which might be in the habitable zone (SN: 3/18/17, p. 6).
The star TRAPPIST-1 hosts seven planets (shown in an artist’s illustration) that all probably have a rocky composition. At least three of the planets could have temperatures that are good for life.JPL-CALTECH/NASA
NASA’s successor to Kepler, TESS, or Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, has been scanning the entire sky since April 2018 for small planets orbiting bright nearby stars, including M dwarfs. It spotted more than 2,200 potential planets in its first full-sky scan, scientists announced in March 2021.
These days, astronomers are joining up with scientists across disciplines, from planetary scientists who study hypothetical exoplanet geology to microbiologists and chemists who think about what kinds of aliens could live on those planets and how to detect those life-forms. That’s a big shift from even 10 years ago, Messeri says. In the early 2010s, no one was talking about life.
“You weren’t allowed to say that,” she says. “Astronomers would whisper it to me during fieldwork, but this was not a search for aliens.”
Exoplanet astronomy is on firmer ground now. Its leading figures have won MacArthur “genius” grants. Pioneer planet finders Mayor and Queloz won the 2019 Nobel Prize in physics. The work is no longer hidden away in conferences that are actually about stars. “It doesn’t have to legitimize itself anymore,” Messeri says. “It’s a real science.”
The promise that transiting planets can reveal the contents of their alien atmospheres may soon be fulfilled. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope may launch this year, after many years of delays. One of its first tasks will be to probe the atmospheres of transiting planets, including those of TRAPPIST-1.
If anything is alive on those absolutely alien, unearthly worlds, maybe the next century will bring it to light.
Chinese Company Claims to be Working on a Starship-Like Rocket
Chinese Company Claims to be Working on a Starship-Like Rocket
Last weekend (April 24th), China celebrated its sixth “National Space Day” (aka. Aerospace Industry Achievement Exhibition) in Nanjing, an event that highlights advances China has made in space. Similar to Space Day that is held each year on the first Thursday in May (this year, it will be held on May 7th), the goal is to foster interest in space exploration and the STEMS so as to inspire the next generation of astronauts and aerospace engineers.
This year, the festivities focused on the Chang’e-5 mission (which showcased some of the lunar samples it brought back), and the name of China’s first Mars rover (Zhurong) – which will be landing on the Red Planet later this month. But another interesting snippet was a video presented by one of China’s main rocket manufacturers that showed demonstrated that they are working on a rocket similar to the Starship.
The animation was recorded and uploaded to the Chinese social network Weibo (video above), which was accompanied by the following description (translated directly from Mandarin):
“The promotional animation of “One-Hour Global Arrival in Space Transportation System” of the First Academy of Aerospace Engineering, compare? This afternoon was recorded from [2021 Chinese Astronomy Day] Booth of China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology at the Aerospace Industry Achievement Exhibition. If you want to make an appointment to visit Lunar Land, please go to the bottom of this blog.”
In the video, we can see two different concepts for achieving suborbital passenger flights that could be operational by the 2040s. The video came to the attention of Eric Berger at Ars Technica, which mirrored it on Youtube so that it could reach a wider audience. The animation begins by showing a spaceport with several launch pads nearby. On each, we see two-stage vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) rockets that look strikingly similar to the Starship and Super Heavy
Also similar to the Starship is the way the first stage booster returns to Earth after separation, indicating that it is a totally reusable system. We then see passengers scening views of Earth and experiencing temporary weightlessness before the spacecraft begins making a powered descent. The flight ends with the spacecraft landing in a major city clearly several time zones away (since it’s nighttime where they land).
In addition to its appearance and configuration, the animation is also similar to the “Earth to Earth” concept video released by SpaceX in September of 2017 (shown below). In that animation, a Starship ferries passengers from a platform at sea off the coast of New York and land on a similar platform off the coast of Shanghai in just 34 minutes.
The second point-to-point concept in the Chinese animation shows a horizontal takeoff and landing (HTOL) vehicle being launched via an electromagnetic rail. Once this “spaceplane” is catapulted into the air, it engages what appears to be a hybrid-propellant rocket engine to accelerate from Mach 2 to Mach 15 (supersonic to hypersonic) and achieve suborbital flight.
Both of these concepts incorporate technology and ideas that are widely popular right now with both space agencies and commercial space. Between NASA, the ESA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, Reaction Engines, and other federal and private programs, multiple reusable rocket and spaceplane concepts are currently under development.
What’s more, both are consistent with China’s long-term aim to become the world’s leading space power by 2045. According to the roadmap released by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation in 2017, China hopes to develop a “suborbital carrier vehicle” by 2025 that will eventually grow into a fleet, one which is capable of delivering cargo anywhere in the world by 2035 and passengers by 2045.
China’s HTOL spaceplane concept, presented at the . Credit: CALT/Eric Berger
However, the clear resemblance between CALT’s rocket concept and the Starship is also in keeping with the way China has monitored SpaceX’s progress practically from inception. As Eric Berger noted in his recently-published book Liftoff – which recounts the early struggles of SpaceX – a Chinese spy boat was stationed off the coast of Omelek Island (part of the Marshall Islands, South Pacific) in 2006 to watch the inaugural flight of the Falcon 1.
More recent examples include the incorporation of “grid fins” to the Long March 2C rocket (similar to the Falcon 9) for the sake of future reusability, as well as developing the Long March 8 to land on sea platforms. China’s long-term plan for the Long March 9 – which will be the country’s most powerful heavy-lift system once it is in service (slated for the 2030s) – includes making it partly reusable.
In the meantime, it is not clear if China plans to develop a Starship-like rocket would include equipping it for missions to the Moon and Mars (in addition to point-to-point suborbital flights). But since regular missions to the Moon and Mars were also part of the roadmap, it’s entirely possible China intends to adopt the Starship design and mission profile in its entirety.
One thing is for certain: China intends to be the superpower in space by the mid-21st century, and not merely one of several. While they have some catch-up to do before that can happen, their rate of growth is unparalleled.
Former worker reveals secrets about Area 51, aliens and “StarGate”
Former worker reveals secrets about Area 51, aliens and “StarGate”
A former Area 51 worker has released a wealth of revealing information about aliens, time machines, the plans of the elite, and a possible extinction of humanity.
Dan Burisch revealed all the secrets of Area 51.
Dan Burisch, is a Former Worker in the United States Military Forces . He has a doctorate in microbiology and was in the secret facilities of Area 51, where he was able to observe amazing things.
In 1986, Burisch received an unexpected visitor while at the University of Las Vegas. His visitor was the well-known “secret” government. They offered him to work on a classified project where he should put all his knowledge into practice.
The secret projects of the American government and Area 51
The following year, Burisch began working in a Nevada State Government office . It was related to the probation of inmates.
In 1989, tissue samples began to arrive , which he examined in a separate location and reported where they came from.
In 1994, Burisch was moved to an underground base known as ” Fourth Century ,” which was part of Area 51. The “Aquarium Project” began there .
It was there that he discovered that the government had spacecraft and extraterrestrial beings. In one of the departments there was information on a race known as ” Orions, ” from the Z Reticuli star system .
He was also able to read a copy of the treatise made by Eisenhower with beings known as P-50 and the Orions.
He learned that in a place called ” Galileo’s Bay “, there were different spaceships. One of them was the one described by Bob Lazar and the one that crashed in Roswell .
According to Burisch’s information, the concept of aliens is totally wrong . Aliens and aliens are not the same . The aliens are beings coming from other worlds, while the aliens are humans who come in the future.
The latter are the evolution of the human race over thousands of years.
Aliens: Humans of the Future
These aliens are divided into four groups and are classified with the letter P, which means ” present “, plus the years that take us into the future .
As an example, the Roswells are known as P-24 , which means ” present plus 24,000 years .” The others are known as J ROD P-45, J ROD P-52 and P-54.
The “J RODs” suffer from a very painful disease and he was a participant in the project trying to find a cure. He assured that he took blood samples from a female of this breed and that he worked on it for 2 years.
According to Burisch, the aliens are actually time travel masters.
He says that, during that time, he managed to establish a friendly relationship with her and that, in an act that violated all security protocols, that being hugged him.
At that time he telepathically transmitted much information about the future of humanity and a nuclear catastrophe .
In this event many people died, another part of humanity hid underground in order to survive. 24,000 years later, the most advanced beings on the planet had mastered time travel . It was for that reason that they traveled to Roswell.
Civilizations in our Galaxy
From this event, it was also learned that a part of the survivors settled on the Moon, Mars and Orion . From there come the P-52 or Orions that, despite having been terrestrial, came to colonize other worlds.
P-45s are hostile beings. They are responsible for the nuclear disaster and they are also the ones who do most of the abductions .
Eisenhower’s meeting was with these beings in an attempt to prevent the nuclear disaster from repeating itself. They were diplomatic pacts and the famous Abductions agreement in exchange for technology.
The Orions presented the president with a cube three inches long and wide that was able to predict the future . This instrument continues on Earth and is used by the most powerful.
Majestic 12 and the StarGates
Burish also made a statement that he worked under the Majestic 12. In this context, he also spoke of the ” StarGate “; devices built on Earth, but based on alien technology .
According to their statements, the instructions for its manufacture are found in the Sumerian tables. They were used to communicate with other civilizations outside of our Solar System. Through them a wormhole could also be made.
In this way, people or objects were teleported to other points in our universe instantly.
However, Burisch assures that these experiments are not very reliable, since he saw a person die . This device was also called “Looking Glass” since it was used to observe the probabilities of future events.
In this way they were able to verify that there was a high probability that the nuclear catastrophe occurred due to the StarGates. Currently, he assures that there are around 50 of these devices, although they have been disassembled.
It all looks like something out of a science fiction movie, but Dan Burisch has offered such detailed evidence and arguments that, at least, they cast doubt on what governments are hiding from us.
Jongste astronaut Oliver (18) in de wolken na ruimtetrip van 10 minuten: “Elke seconde van deze vlucht was onbeschrijfelijk intens”
Jongste astronaut Oliver (18) in de wolken na ruimtetrip van 10 minuten: “Elke seconde van deze vlucht was onbeschrijfelijk intens”
Oliver Daemen (18) mag zich sinds gisteren de jongste astronaut ooit noemen. De Nederlandse student bemachtigde een plek aan boord bij de ruimtevlucht van Amazonoprichter Jeff Bezos. De lancering in Texas vond plaats om 15.14 uur Belgische tijd, tien minuten later landde de capsule weer veilig terug op aarde. “Het was geweldig”, reageerde Daemen euforisch na de trip.
Daemen is vanaf nu dus de jongste astronaut ooit. De ruimtereis verliep zonder problemen, hangend aan parachutes landde de capsule met daarin de bemanning op Texaanse aarde. “Heel erg bedankt, het was geweldig!”, riep de Nederlander vanuit het vaartuig. Daemen werd tijdens de vlucht van het ruimtevaartbedrijf van Bezos (Blue Origin) vergezeld door drie anderen. Jeff Bezos zelf, diens broer Mark en de 82-jarige Amerikaanse Wally Funk, de oudste astronaut ter wereld. Hun raket haalde een topsnelheid van 3595 kilometer per uur.
In een latere verklaring noemde Daemen de vlucht een ervaring die zijn leven verandert. “Elke seconde van deze vlucht was onbeschrijfelijk intens. Het machtige effect van de G-krachten op je gestel, het epische moment dat je de dampkring verlaat. De blik op de aarde vanuit de ruimte is onvergetelijk. Terug op de grond besef je pas goed hoe enorm kwetsbaar onze planeet is in het onmetelijke sterrenstelsel. Ik realiseer me nu beter dan ooit dat we extreem zuinig moeten zijn op de aarde. Daar wil ik intensief aan bijdragen.”
100 kilometer boven de aarde
Het feit dat Bezos de oudste én jongste astronaut mee kon nemen op zijn eerste commerciële ruimtevlucht was doorslaggevend in de keuze voor de Nederlander. Daarnaast legde de steenrijke vader van Oliver vermoedelijk een bedrag van zeker zes nullen neer voor de ‘ruimtecheque’.
Het vaartuig passeerde de grens van 100 kilometer boven de aarde, volgens Bezos begint daar de ruimte pas. Na afloop viel de 18-jarige zijn vader in de armen. Ook de rest van de crew was door het dolle heen en noemde de vlucht een van de mooiste momenten van hun leven.
Het was de eerste bemande vlucht van het ruimtevaartbedrijf van Bezos, Blue Origin. Dat wil toeristische vluchten naar de rand van de dampkring verkopen. Bezos is verwikkeld in een hevige concurrentiestrijd met andere multimiljardairs als Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic) en Elon Musk (SpaceX), die zich ook op ruimtetoerisme hebben gestort. Zij proberen elkaar af te troeven. Eerder deze maand vloog Branson met zijn eigen ruimtevliegtuig naar ongeveer 86 kilometer hoogte.
Met de eerste vlucht wilde Bezos de aandacht op zichzelf en zijn bedrijf vestigen. Daarom zat Bezos ook zelf aan boord. Blue Origin verkocht het laatste plekje aan boord aan de hoogste bieder. Een onbekend persoon betaalde zo’n 28 miljoen dollar (ruim 23 miljoen euro) voor de reis, maar bleek niet te kunnen. Hij of zij gaat mee op een latere ruimtevlucht. Daarop mocht Daemen mee. Zijn vader, een belegger, had ook een bod op de vlucht uitgebracht. Blue Origin noemt Daemen “de eerste betalende klant”, maar het is dus niet bekend hoeveel de familie heeft betaald.
Reactie Kuipers
De Nederlandse ruimtevaarder André Kuipers vindt het mooi om te zien hoe de 18-jarige Oliver “na zo’n tien jaar dromen van de ruimte (heel herkenbaar) heeft genoten van het uitzicht en het zweven”, zo schreef hij op Twitter.
Kuipers was zelf twee keer in de ruimte. In 2004 en van 2011 tot 2012 verbleef hij in het ruimtestation ISS, zo’n 400 kilometer boven het oppervlak van de aarde. Daarmee was hij, tot gisteren, de laatste Nederlander die in de ruimte is geweest.
Daemen, die als kind Kuipers ontmoette, kwam tot 107 kilometer hoogte. De Brabander verliet daarmee de dampkring. en geldt nu als de jongste astronaut ooit. Hij wil in september in Utrecht natuurkunde gaan studeren.
People have described bizarre extraterrestrial encounters that take place in a dreamlike state.
Scientists guided lucid dreamers to emulate encounters with aliens and UFOs during REM sleep.
(Image credit: David Wall/Getty Images)
Lucid dreaming, in which people are partially aware and can control their dreams during sleep, could explain so-called alien abduction stories, a study suggests.
Claims of such abductions date to the 19th century; the circumstances of the kidnappings often sound dreamlike and trigger feelings of terror and paralysis. Certain dream states are also known to produce such feelings, leading Russian researchers to wonder if dream experiments could provide clues about alleged extraterrestrial experiences. The scientists prompted lucid dreamers to dream about encounters with aliens or unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and found that a number of sleepers reported dreams that resembled actual descriptions of alleged alien abductions.
During lucid dreams, sleepers are aware they are dreaming and can then use that awareness to manipulate what happens in the dream. About 55% of people experience lucid dreaming once or more in their lifetimes, and 23% have lucid dreams at least once a month, according to a 2016 study in the journal Consciousness and Cognition that analyzed five decades' worth of sleep research.
Recently, researchers with the Phase Research Center (PRC), a private facility in Moscow that researches lucid dreaming, conducted experiments with 152 adults who self-identified as lucid dreamers, instructing them to "find or summon aliens or UFOs" during a lucid dream, the scientists reported July 2 in the International Journal of Dream Research.
The researchers found that 114 of the participants reported dreaming about having some type of successful interaction with an extraterrestrial. Of those, about 61% described meeting "aliens" that resembled extraterrestrials from science-fiction novels and films, while 19% met aliens that "looked like ordinary people," according to the study.
Little blue men
One female participant spoke of seeing "little men" with blue skin, oversize heads "and huge, bulging eyes," the study authors reported. When the aliens invited her onto their spaceship, "I was blinded by a very bright light, like from a searchlight," she said. "My vision was gone, and I felt dizzy and light."
Another participant said that he dreamed he was lying in his bed when he felt as though he were being "dragged somewhere," ending up in a room with a white silhouette that reached into his chest and started "doing something inside with tools," the researchers wrote.
Conversations with dream aliens took place in 26% of the encounters, and 12% of the participants spoke with aliens in their dreams and interacted with them physically. UFOs showed up in 28% of the meetings, and 10% of the dreamers who saw UFOs described being brought inside an extraterrestrial spacecraft.
Of those who described their encounters as "realistic," 24% also experienced sleep paralysis and intense fear. Such emotions often accompany reports of supposed alien abductions, and though individuals who describe being kidnapped by aliens might truly believe that what they experienced was real, these people were likely experiencing an extraterrestrial meeting while in a lucid dream, the study authors reported.
Feelings of paralysis, fear and helplessness in vivid dreams can be so powerful that they blur the line between dreams and reality, so it's no wonder that people who may have unknowingly been dreaming instead insist that they actually met with aliens who stole them away and transported them to UFOs, said PRC head researcher and founder Michael Raduga.
For these unknowing dreamers, "abductions are real," Raduga told Live Science in an email. "They just don't know how to explain it."
note : welcome new Secureteam subs. Please send my kind regards to Tyler : I do not watch but is this his music ? : make you feel at home lol
UFO Sighted Over Hästveda, Sweden ( July 18, 2021 )
STATEMENT : UFO over "Hästveda" Northeastern Scania (18/07/2021) (06:42) Cylindrical UFO over the village of "Hästveda" in Northeastern Scania (18/07/2021) (06:42) This was the second of five cylindrical UFOs we saw that night between circa 05:30 to 09:30 We will try to get better footage if it returns tonight with multiple camera angles.
The image of Wrinkle ridge in Elysium Planitia on Mars was taken by the HiRISE camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft on April 2, 2008.
The image shows what looks like two hatches fixed to the surface of Mars.
The sun reflects off the first rectangular hatch, which may be metallic, while the opposite side shows a dark rectangular shadow where the sun's light is blocked by the second hatch.
The hatches of about 7 x 12 meters are slightly open. This is a doorway that gives access to an underground basement?
Suppose it's not about something natural but artificially, we may wonder, other than who built it, what was it used for?
Google Mars coordinates: 8°50'17.09"N 150°36'32.13"E
Researcher affirms that “UFOs come from the Moon” (Video)
Researcher affirms that “UFOs come from the Moon” (Video)
A “sky watcher” captured on video a surprising formation of UFOs on the Moon. Are they coming from our satellite?
We have learned that the Earth, from our perspective of smallness, seems flat, but, everything seems to indicate that it is round or at least that is what we were taught.
From there it is the starting point to come to understand that the universe is so big and vast that we cannot assure that we are alone in it.
Everything matches, when unknown objects appear in the sky.
The UFO phenomenon continues to speak, thus a construction of rational thought is being created, to elucidate and found spaces to try to know what we are watching happen in the sky.
The images in the video (below) show three flying objects in an apparently triangular formation, and gliding at a high speed so that later 2 more appear following the same trajectory.
“A trajectory that points to the earth if you can fix the exact moment well.”
Given the speed of the objects, it is unlikely that they are satellites, especially because of the movements they make and the loss of formation before disappearing into the darkness of space.
An organism adapted for this situation, since sudden movements would be impossible for our race, due to the gravitational forces that we can force.
As is known, the human body cannot support flights beyond a certain speed limit, which, in space, can be 32 thousand kilometers.
This is a very small limit for the evolutions made by these flying objects, which practically disappear very quickly.
Once the formation of the three objects or UFOs is located and recorded , after about 10 seconds later a fourth object appears on the screen, at 35 seconds a fifth UFO enters the scene in the same direction after the previous formation.
An impressive recording to which we would ask ourselves a question about it. Are they ships of another civilization from the moon? Or .. are they from the terrestrial space fleet?
A new study on DNA has revealed that people living today are only between 1.5% and 7% modern humans. No, this doesn’t mean that we’re over 90% alien (or are we…?), but it does indicate that we have very old DNA belonging to our ancient ancestors.
According to the study, only a very small percentage of our genome is uniquely human. Researchers extracted DNA belonging to skeletal remains of Neanderthals and Denisovans as well as from 279 people living in different parts of the world today. Then the experts took that information regarding sequenced genomes and developed a family tree for Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans.
They found two important factors that really stood out: the first bombshell was that between 1.5 and 7% of our genome is unique to our species which means that at least 93% of our genome is a result of a mixture between Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. The second discovery was that in the past 600,000 years, there were numerous bursts of genetic adaptations regarding brain development and function of humans.
By creating the evolutionary trees, the team of researchers were able to find very important times in history when Homo sapiens adapted and separated from our ancient ancestors. In order to find out how closely related we actually are to Neanderthals and Denisovans, experts had to study both the genes as well as when the genes were turned into proteins.
In an interview with Inverse, Nathan Schaefer, who is a bioinformatician at the University of California, San Francisco, explained this in further detail, “When you ask that question, we are very similar to Neanderthals.” “We have, you know, around 20,000 genes, and somewhere around 40 of them have these actual coding differences that all humans have one version, and the Neanderthals have the other version.” “That’s already like, ‘Wow, we’re really, really close to them.”
Fernando Villanea, who is a population geneticist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, but wasn’t involved with the study, told Inverse, “Their results support the most exciting new views on the interactions between humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans.” He went on to talk about the human brain development over the past several hundred thousand years, “These adaptation events which define our species possibly happened around [600,000] and [200,000] years ago in Africa.”
In other words, this new study seems to indicate that the most genetically unique difference between modern humans and Neanderthals and Denisovans is our cognitive development over the past several hundred thousand years as explained by University of California, Santa Cruz computational biologist Richard Green, “We can tell those regions of the genome are highly enriched for genes that have to do with neural development and brain function.”
As for the researchers’ next steps regarding their studies, Schaefer stated, “What I’m interested in doing now is trying to learn more about how genes work and what these genes do.” The study was published in the journal Science Advances.
One of the signs that a planet may have once supported life is the presence of methane gas. While it can have inorganic causes, it’s most often due to decaying organic matter as it is on Earth. That’s why scientists have been searching for it in Mars – the one planet where we have both landers and orbiters constantly scanning the surface. While methane has been detected on the Red Planet, its source has never been pinpointed … until now.
“During its five years of operation, the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) on board the Curiosity rover has detected six methane spikes above a low background abundance in Gale crater.”
Curiosity
While new rover on the block Perseverance and its ground-breaking (air-breaking?) Ingenuity helicopter have been getting all of the recent publicity, Curiosity has been trudging along and reliably doing its job since 2012. In that time, it has picked up six blips or ‘burps’ of methane in and around the Gale crater, a 96-mile impression in diameter impression dating back 3.8 billion years. However, it didn’t know the exact locations where the gas was emitted from the ground so it could rover over for a look. According to a new not-yet-peer-reviewed study published in Research Square, researchers at the California Institute of Technology decided to take a new approach – they modeled the methane gas particles where they were detected and split them into small groups. Using the wind speed and direction at the time of detection, along with geographic and topographical maps of the crater and its surrounding area, they were able to trace the methane ‘burps’ back to their belching points.
“Inside Gale crater, the northwestern crater floor casts the strongest influence on the detections. Outside Gale crater, the emission region with the strongest influence extends towards the north. The contrasting results from two consecutive methane measurements point to an active emission region to the west and the southwest of the Curiosity rover on the northwestern crater floor.”
Reviewing the data, Live Science points out that one of those locations is just a few dozen miles from Curiosity’s current location. While that may not seem very far, Curiosity has only traveled about 15.7 miles in total since it landed in 2012. The European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) is constantly looking for methane, but it has been unable to detect those recorded by Curiosity. This could change with these new coordinates. However, it would be ideal if Curiosity could get an up-close look or sniff. Methane has a 330-year lifespan, so this could be life existed just a few centuries ago … and perhaps is still there producing it today.
Curiosity roving
Before you ask, Perseverance is about 2,300 miles from Curiosity – to far to travel or send the Ingenuity helicopter. Perseverance has different instruments and missions, but Curiosity’s data can still help it find methane, if it’s being emitted nearby and hasn’t been blown away by Ingenuity. The first manned Mars mission can’t come soon enough.
And yes … the Alien Methane Burps would be a good band name.
Throughout the long history of planet Earth, our world has undergone several cataclysmic events of varying magnitude. Arguably the most widely recognized of these, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, involved an impact between Earth and a massive asteroid or comet estimated to have been as much as nine miles wide. The result of this impact had been the mass extinction of most life forms on the planet, with as much as three-fourths of all species on Earth at the time—both animals and plants—being wiped from existence.
Although the mass extinctions that occurred at the end of the Cretaceous period had long been recognized by scientists, confirmation of a large-scale impact event as its underlying cause did not begin to surface until the 1980s with the work of experimental physicist Luis Alvarez and his son Walter. The following decade, the discovery of the Chicxulub crater which forms much of the Gulf of Mexico, provided additional evidence that an asteroid impact had been responsible.
Smaller-scale impact events have also been proposed for other mass extinctions recognized throughout time, including the die-offs of megafauna that began to occur at the end of the last ice age. While some of these impact events remain disputed, the reality of cataclysms throughout time is something that many scientists have sought to understand, resulting in a variety of theories about what their various causes might be, and how often they occur.
Among the more unique theories in this regard had been first proposed by William Napier and Victor Clube in 1979, as detailed in their Nature paper titled “A Theory of Terrestrial Catastrophism.” The study took a novel approach, in that it looked at whether subtle gravitational disturbances in our Solar System might cause comets to occasionally become jostled from their positions in the Oort cloud, sending them hurtling toward the inner Solar System and thereby on a potential collision course with any number of our planetary neighbors, or even Earth itself.
In the 1979 paper, Napier and Clube theorized that galactic spiral arms containing small planets which our solar system passes through could account for the current locations of comets, as well as various transient objects in our solar system. They also noted that many apparent extinction events recognized in the fossil record appear to convey impacts with comets that collided with our planet. Napier and Clube concluded that such impacts likely occurred every 30 million years or so, sometimes resulting in large-scale impacts on par with the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.
The authors found additional support for their theory in locations other than Earth, too. One example had been evidence of the long-term frequency in appearances of craters on the moon, as well as inner planets within our solar system. The authors identified what they believed to be “brief periods of enhanced bombardment,” as well as a nearly constant rate of craters appearing on the moon and inner planets within the last three billion years. This, they attributed “the decay of primordial bodies and the capture of [small planets] into the Oort cloud upon the sun’s passage through Gould’s belt of the Orion arm.”
The authors considered a wide range of theories about the effects such impact events might have had throughout time, citing evidence in stratigraphic records that seemed to convey “patterns indicating transitions between geological periods, catastrophic extinctions and ice ages.”
Things might have ended there in 1979 as far as Napier and Clube’s idea goes, had it not been for the continuing interest it generated among a few scientists. In the middle 1980s, their original idea began getting a makeover when researcher Michael R. Rampino began to expand on it, who during the following decade teamed up with Bruce Haggerty and gave Napier and Clube’s concept an all-new name: the Shiva hypothesis.
Named for the Hindu god of destruction, the Shiva hypothesis as it is known today essentially entails intervals at which cataclysms occur and, in theory, might even be predictable on account of changes in the position of the Sun in relation to the Milky Way. As recently as 2020, Rampino has continued publishing evidence that may support this idea, which analyzed the ages of ten recognized extinction events involving tetrapods throughout time. According to his research, Rampino found “a statistically significant (99% confidence) underlying periodicity” of such events occurring roughly every 27.5 million years.
As Rampino and his colleagues noted in 2020, “These findings suggest that global cataclysmal events with an underlying periodicity of ~27.5 [million years] were the cause of the coordinated periodic extinction episodes of non-marine tetrapods and marine organisms.”
The Shiva hypothesis also appears to share certain elements with (or may have even inspired) other emerging theories about the causes behind extinction events that occur over time. One notable example involves the so-called “Nemesis hypothesis,” which entails the hypothetical existence of a red or brown dwarf which is responsible for extinction events that occur every 26 million years. The idea was first presented in 1984 by paleontologists David Raup and Jack Sepkoski in a paper titled “Periodicity of Extinctions in the Geologic Past” that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Today, there is still much work to be done as far as determining whether a periodicity or “cycle” of cataclysms that led to extinction events on Earth truly exists. Nonetheless, if ever proven, it could possibly do more than just explain what led to widespread die-offs throughout time; it might even help prevent future deadly impact events that may eventually return to threaten life on our planet.
82-jarige pilote en 18-jarige Nederlander samen met Jeff Bezos opnieuw veilig geland op aarde
De eerste bemande ruimtevlucht van Blue Origin, het ruimtevaartbedrijf van Jeff Bezos, is vanmiddag een succes geworden. Bezos ging zelf de ruimte in samen met zijn broer, een 82-jarige pilote en een 18-jarige Nederlander. Iets na 15 uur Belgische tijd vertrok van op een afgelegen site in het westen van Texas de New Shepard-draagraket van Blue Origin, het ruimtevaartbedrijf van Bezos (57), de rijkste man ter wereld. Na 10 minuten en 10 seconden landde de capsule opnieuw veilig op aarde.
De New Shepard draagraket, die al vijftien keer onbemand had gevlogen, vertrok om 15.12 uur Belgische tijd van op een afgelegen site in het westen van Texas. Dat was met wat vertraging, want om onduidelijke redenen was de aftelklok gestopt. De New Shepard zette daarop succesvol een capsule uit met daarin vier astronauten: Amazon-stichter Jeff Bezos zelf en zijn broer Mark, Wally Funk die met 82 jaar de oudste mens in de ruimte werd en de Nederlander Olivier Daemen, met 18 jaar de jongste.
Het viertal ervaarde enkele minuten gewichtloosheid en zag de sterren, de kromming van de Aarde en de rand van de atmosfeer. Vanuit de capsule was gejuich en gegil te horen. De eentraps-draagraket en capsule RSS First Step keerden daarop veilig naar Texas terug. De missie duurde hoop en al tien minuten. Bergingsteams waren snel ter plaatse, het viertal verkeerde in goede gezondheid en raakten veilig uit de capsule.
“De beste dag van mijn leven”, liet Bezos de vluchtleiding na de landing weten. “Heel erg bedankt, dat was geweldig”, waren de eerste woorden van de Nederlander die trouwens een brevet als piloot heeft.
New Shepard is bedoeld voor ruimtetoerisme en Bezos wil zijn onderneming met glans op de kaart zetten. Hij heeft beslist om zelf mee te vliegen bij de eerste bemande vlucht, waardoor hij meteen de rijkste mens in de ruimte wordt. Ook zijn broer Mark (53) vloog mee. Zo gingen voor het eerst twee broers samen de ruimte in.
Aanvankelijk zou een zitje gaan naar iemand die op een veiling 28 miljoen dollar had geboden voor de trip. Maar door een “agendaconflict” zal de onbekende pas later zijn of haar vlucht maken.
Blue Origin heeft concurrenten zoals Virgin Galactic van Richard Branson. De 71-jarige Brit heeft de 57-jarige Bezos afgetroefd, door op 11 juli de eerste bemande testvlucht van zijn VSS Unity mee te maken. De stichter van Amazon vloog echter hoger dan de stichter van het Virgin-imperium want die haalde "slechts" 86 kilometer. Wat het eigenlijk een suborbitale vlucht maakt, want 100 kilometer hoogte geldt als de grens van de ruimte.
In september wil ook SpaceX voor het eerst zijn Crew Dragon-capsule voor ruimtetoerisme aanwenden. Reeds lang een speler op de markt voor ruimtetoerisme is Space Adventures, dat ruimtetoeristen met Russische Sojoez-capsules naar het Internationaal Ruimtestation stuurt. De eerste was in april 2001 de Amerikaan Dennis Tito.
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Jeff Bezos Launches into Space on Blue Origin’s First Astronaut Flight
Jeff Bezos Launches into Space on Blue Origin’s First Astronaut Flight
Jeff Bezos Launches into Space on Blue Origin’s First Astronaut Flight
Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos launched into space on Tuesday, carried aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft in its first human flight. Bezos, the richest person in the world, was joined by his brother, Mark Bezos, female aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and a Dutch student, Oliver Daemen.
This UFO was found by Youtuber Terry's Theories and he found it in an old NASA archive from a 1967 Lunar orbiter mission. When he zooms in I see a detailed metallic ship over horizon. Its 100% clear to me that this is an alien craft that was sent to this location to both observe and to warn the astronauts that...this moon is taken. Humanity intrigues aliens, but only to a point. We also disgust aliens with our illogical and self destructive decisions and behaviors. Therefore they have not make worldwide contact yet. But the time is coming close, and I predict alien species will unite and agree upon a formal disclosure to humanity this decade.
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Ring UFO Over Ogden, Utah, USA On July 15, 2021, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Ring UFO Over Ogden, Utah, USA On July 15, 2021, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: July 15, 2021
Location of sighting: Ogden, Utah, USA
Source: MUFON
Donut UFOs or ring UFOs as I call them are not new. They have been documented throughout time. For instance in the Bible the famous Ezekiels Wheel comes down before him, rotating like a wheel and out steps a human like being. Also back in 1957 a US Army sergeant took many photos of a ring UFO as it made a white cloud slowly around itself at the US military base Fort Belvoir.
This my friends is a real UFO. It's flying like a disk, but can fly sideways like a wheel. It is unmanned and often controlled by an alien AI and sometimes controlled by an alien far away. This video below is undeniable proof that UFOs exist.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
Nearly flat, donut looking object traveled across the sky, looked almost like a balloon, but it was way faster and there was no wind; not even a breeze.
Donut-shaped UFO flying over South Ogden, UT 15-Jul-2021
Donut-shaped UFO flying over South Ogden, UT 15-Jul-2021
This daytime footage of a donut-shaped unidentified flying object was filmed over South Ogden, a city in Weber County, Utah. This happened on 15th July 2021.
Witness report:
Nearly flat, donut looking object traveled across the sky, looked almost like a balloon, but it was way faster and there was no wind; not even a breeze.
Hubble Space Telescope Is Back in Action After NASA Fixes Odd Glitch – The Wall Street Journal
Hubble Space Telescope Is Back in Action After NASA Fixes Odd Glitch – The Wall Street Journal
After a month of frantic tinkering, NASA said Friday that its aging Hubble Space Telescope was on the mend, recovering from a computer problem that crippled what many astronomers call the most productive scientific instrument ever built.
As the bus-size observatory circled Earth, space agency engineers worked by remote control to switch Hubble from its vintage electronics to backup hardware. In the final step, they powered up a payload computer that restored control of its six cameras and sensors, which peer through visible, infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths of light to the edge of space and the dawn of time.
“We are absolutely delighted that the observatory is up and running again,” said Kenneth Sembach, director of the Baltimore-based Space Telescope Science Institute, which handles the Hubble science operations. “All indications are that it’s doing well and we will get back to doing science again this weekend.”
In more than a million mind-expanding images of the universe snapped over the past 31 years, the solar-powered telescope has presented to astronomers and amateur stargazers alike a psychedelic tapestry of infant stars, dying supernovae, colliding galaxies, towering billows of stellar dust, dark matter and black holes feasting on spiral nebulae.
Hubble data has been used in more than 18,000 scientific papers that have documented the accelerating expansion of the universe, the evolution of galaxies and studies of planets beyond our solar system, NASA officials said.
“I think there’s a very credible case that the Hubble Space Telescope is the most scientifically productive instrument ever made,” said Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics division. “The output of peer-reviewed published papers from Hubble certainly exceeds any of its competitors in any field of science.”
But then on June 13, Hubble was hobbled—and not for the first time. Technical problems that threatened to end the mission have plagued the telescope since the moment it reached its orbital perch some 340 miles above our planet’s surface on April 25, 1990.
Since its launch in 1990, five space shuttle missions have repaired, upgraded and replaced systems on the telescope.
Photo: /Associated Press
Since its launch—with flawed optics causing its photos to be so blurry that the $4.7 billion observatory was initially deemed an embarrassing failure—five space shuttle missions repaired, upgraded and replaced systems on the telescope. All five of its main instruments were fixed, and a $50 million set of corrective lenses was installed to address its manufacturing flaws.
The latest trouble began when a voltage overload in an onboard payload computer built in the 1980s tripped a circuit breaker and shut down the telescope. It was the most serious technical failure that NASA project engineers had encountered in the 11 years since the last shuttle repair.
“We did a lot of debugging,” said James Jeletic, deputy project manager for the Hubble Space Telescope Project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. After three weeks of painstaking analysis, they decided to switch the telescope to its remaining backup systems.
“Every single thing worked as planned,” Mr. Jeletic said. “The computer came back up. All the backup hardware works fine. I don’t think we’re biting our fingernails anymore.”
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has found a mysterious population of 'free-floating' or 'rogue' planets that aren't bound to any host star.
Based on a technique called gravitational microlensing, researchers reveal there are four new rogue planets in total, which likely have similar masses to that of Earth.
Gravitational microlensing relies on chance events where from a certain viewpoint, one star passes in front of another star.
The planets may have originally formed around a host star before being ejected by the gravitational tug of other, heavier planets in the system, the experts say.
The host star is likely still burning brightly in space, but just with fewer planets in its orbit.
Scroll down for video
The four newly discovered planets that are consistent with planets of similar masses to Earth
(stock image)
'We don't know exactly how far away they are,' study author Professor Iain McDonald at the University of Manchester told MailOnline.
'They are not among the nearest stars, but closer than the centre of our Galaxy. So it's probably most accurate to say they are several thousand light years away.
Professor McDonald said they're not sure exactly what these planets are like, but are 'probably rocky' with frozen oceans.
'If a planet like the Earth was flung out into deep space, far from the heat of a star, we'd expect the oceans to freeze over and the atmosphere to condense out onto the surface,' he said.
'Life could still continue, but only in places like hydrothermal vents, where there is another energy source.'
This is an artist impression of the Kepler Space Telescope that was decommissioned by NASA in 2018 after nearly a decade of service
The now retired Kepler telescope spent nearly a decade in space looking for Earth-size planets orbiting other stars, but scientists are still analysing its data.
Kepler launched in 2009 and was decommissioned by NASA in 2018 when it ran out of fuel needed for further science operations.
It was launched specifically by NASA with the aim of identifying planets outside of our own Solar System, known as exoplanets.
For this project, researchers used data obtained in 2016 during the K2 mission phase of NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope – an extension of its original mission.
During its two-month K2 campaign, Kepler monitored a crowded field of millions of stars near the centre of our Galaxy every 30 minutes in order to find rare gravitational microlensing events.
Predicted by Albert Einstein 85 years ago as a consequence of his General Theory of Relativity, microlensing describes how the light from a background star can be temporarily magnified by the presence of other stars in the foreground.
This produces a short burst in brightness that can last from hours to a few days.
Roughly one out of every million stars in our Galaxy is visibly affected by microlensing at any given time, but only a few per cent of these are expected to be caused by planets.
During gravitational microlensing, a viewpoint, a close star and a brighter and more distant star come into close alignment for a few weeks or months.
Gravity from the closer star acts as a lens and magnifies the distant star over the course of the transit.
The study team found 27 short-duration candidate microlensing signals that varied over timescales of between an hour and 10 days.
Many of these had been previously seen in data obtained simultaneously from the ground.
However, the four shortest events are new discoveries that are consistent with planets of similar masses to Earth.
These new events do not show an accompanying longer signal that might be expected from a host star, suggesting that these new events may be free-floating planets.
'These signals are extremely difficult to find,' said Professor McDonald.
'Our observations pointed an elderly, ailing telescope with blurred vision at one the most densely crowded parts of the sky, where there are already thousands of bright stars that vary in brightness, and thousands of asteroids that skim across our field.
Artist's impression of a free-floating planet. Such planets may perhaps have originally formed around a host star before being ejected by the gravitational tug of other, heavier planets in the system
'From that cacophony, we try to extract tiny, characteristic brightenings caused by planets, and we only have one chance to see a signal before it’s gone.
'It’s about as easy as looking for the single blink of a firefly in the middle of a motorway, using only a handheld phone.'
Since its launch in 2009, Kepler spotted thousands of exoplanets outside our solar system, despite experiencing mechanical failures and being blasted by cosmic rays.
In 2013, Kepler's primary mission was concluded when a second reaction wheel broke, which meant that the space craft couldn't hold a steady gaze at its original field of view.
But Kepler was given a 'new lease on life' by NASA on its K2 mission, which required it to shift its field of view to new portions of the sky about every three months.
NASA initially assumed that K2 would only be able to conduct 10 campaigns with the remaining fuel, but it went on to complete an astonishing 16 campaigns.
Confirming the existence and nature of free-floating planets will be a major focus for NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and possibly the ESA's Euclid mission – both expected to detect microlensing events.
'Kepler has achieved what it was never designed to do, in providing further tentative evidence for the existence of a population of Earth-mass, free-floating planets,' said study author Eamonn Kerins at the University of Manchester.
'Now it passes the baton on to Roman that will be designed to find such signals, signals so elusive that Einstein himself thought that they were unlikely ever to be observed.'
The Kepler mission has spotted thousands of exoplanets since 2014, with 30 planets less than twice the size of Earth now known to orbit within the habitable zones of their stars.
Launched from Cape Canaveral on March 7th 2009, the Kepler telescope has helped in the search for planets outside of the solar system.
It captured its last ever image on September 25 2018 and ran out of fuel five days later.
When it was launched it weighed 2,320 lbs (1,052 kg) and is 15.4 feet long by 8.9 feet wide (4.7 m × 2.7 m).
The satellite typically looks for 'Earth-like' planets, meaning they are rocky and orbit within the that orbit within the habitable or 'Goldilocks' zone of a star.
In total, Kepler has found around 5,000 unconfirmed 'candidate' exoplanets, with a further 2,500 'confirmed' exoplanets that scientists have since shown to be real.
Kepler is currently on the 'K2' mission to discover more exoplanets.
K2 is the second mission for the spacecraft and was implemented by necessity over desire as two reaction wheels on the spacecraft failed.
These wheels control direction and altitude of the spacecraft and help point it in the right direction.
The modified mission looks at exoplanets around dim red dwarf stars.
While the planet has found thousands of exoplanets during its eight-year mission, five in particular have stuck out.
Kepler-452b, dubbed 'Earth 2.0', shares many characteristics with our planet despite sitting 1,400 light years away. It was found by Nasa's Kepler telescope in 2014
1) 'Earth 2.0'
In 2014 the telescope made one of its biggest discoveries when it spotted exoplanet Kepler-452b, dubbed 'Earth 2.0'.
The object shares many characteristics with our planet despite sitting 1,400 light years away.
It has a similar size orbit to Earth, receives roughly the same amount of sun light and has same length of year.
Experts still aren't sure whether the planet hosts life, but say if plants were transferred there, they would likely survive.
2) The first planet found to orbit two stars
Kepler found a planet that orbits two stars, known as a binary star system, in 2011.
The system, known as Kepler-16b, is roughly 200 light years from Earth.
Experts compared the system to the famous 'double-sunset' pictured on Luke Skywalker's home planet Tatooine in 'Star Wars: A New Hope'.
3) Finding the first habitable planet outside of the solar system
Scientists found Kepler-22b in 2011, the first habitable planet found by astronomers outside of the solar system.
The habitable super-Earth appears to be a large, rocky planet with a surface temperature of about 72°F (22°C), similar to a spring day on Earth.
4) Discovering a 'super-Earth'
The telescope found its first 'super-Earth' in April 2017, a huge planet called LHS 1140b.
It orbits a red dwarf star around 40 million light years away, and scientists think it holds giant oceans of magma.
5) Finding the 'Trappist-1' star system
The Trappist-1 star system, which hosts a record seven Earth-like planets, was one of the biggest discoveries of 2017.
Each of the planets, which orbit a dwarf star just 39 million light years, likely holds water at its surface.
Three of the planets have such good conditions that scientists say life may have already evolved on them.
Kepler spotted the system in 2016, but scientists revealed the discovery in a series of papers released in February this year.
Kepler is a telescope that has an incredibly sensitive instrument known as a photometer that detects the slightest changes in light emitted from stars
How does Kepler discover planets?
The telescope has an incredibly sensitive instrument known as a photometer that detects the slightest changes in light emitted from stars.
It tracks 100,000 stars simultaneously, looking for telltale drops in light intensity that indicate an orbiting planet passing between the satellite and its distant target.
When a planet passes in front of a star as viewed from Earth, the event is called a 'transit'.
Tiny dips in the brightness of a star during a transit can help scientists determine the orbit and size of the planet, as well as the size of the star.
Based on these calculations, scientists can determine whether the planet sits in the star's 'habitable zone', and therefore whether it might host the conditions for alien life to grow.
Kepler was the first spacecraft to survey the planets in our own galaxy, and over the years its observations confirmed the existence of more than 2,600 exoplanets - many of which could be key targets in the search for alien life
Kepler Data Reveal Four Earth-Mass Free-Floating Exoplanets
Kepler Data Reveal Four Earth-Mass Free-Floating Exoplanets
Using data from NASA’s Kepler/K2 mission, astronomers have detected four new microlensing events that are consistent with free-floating planets of similar masses to Earth.
An artist’s impression of a free-floating exoplanet.
Image credit: Sci-News.com.
Gravitational microlensing is an observational effect that was predicted in 1936 by Albert Einstein using his general theory of relativity.
When one star in the sky appears to pass nearly in front of another, the light rays of the background source star become bent due to the gravitational attraction of the foreground star.
This star is then a virtual magnifying glass, amplifying the brightness of the background source star, so astronomers refer to the foreground star as the lens star.
If the lens star harbors a planetary system, then those planets can also act as lenses, each one producing a short deviation in the brightness of the source.
Roughly one out of every million stars in our Milky Way Galaxy is visibly affected by microlensing at any given time, but only a few percent of these are expected to be caused by extrasolar planets.
“These signals are extremely difficult to find,” said Dr. Iain McDonald, an astronomer in the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester and Open University.
“Our observations pointed an elderly, ailing telescope with blurred vision at one the most densely crowded parts of the sky, where there are already thousands of bright stars that vary in brightness, and thousands of asteroids that skim across our field.”
“From that cacophony, we try to extract tiny, characteristic brightenings caused by planets, and we only have one chance to see a signal before it’s gone.”
“It’s about as easy as looking for the single blink of a firefly in the middle of a motorway, using only a handheld phone.”
Dr. McDonald and colleagues analyzed archival data obtained in 2016 during the K2 mission phase of NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope.
They found 27 short-duration candidate microlensing signals that varied over timescales of between an hour and 10 days.
Many of these had been previously seen in data obtained simultaneously from the ground.
However, the four shortest events are new discoveries that are consistent with planets of similar masses to Earth.
These new events do not show an accompanying longer signal that might be expected from a host star, suggesting that these new events may be free-floating planets.
“Kepler has achieved what it was never designed to do, in providing further tentative evidence for the existence of a population of Earth-mass, free-floating planets,” said Dr. Eamonn Kerins, an astronomer in the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester.
“Now it passes the baton on to other missions that will be designed to find such signals, signals so elusive that Einstein himself thought that they were unlikely ever to be observed.”
The results appear in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
_____
I. McDonald et al. 2021. Kepler K2 Campaign 9 – I. Candidate short-duration events from the first space-based survey for planetary microlensing. MNRAS 505 (4): 5584-5602; doi: 10.1093/mnras/stab1377
Zelfs vanuit ons beperkte perspectief hier op aarde weten we dat de ruimte een plaats van uitgestrekte leegte is. Die kennis maakt deze blik op NGC 6380 des te surrealistischer.
Bolvormige sterrenhoop
Deze nieuwste Hubble-opname laat de bolvormige sterrenhoop die sinds zijn ontdekking op 29 juni 1934, door de Britse astronoom John Herschel, vele (en, zoals NASA opmerkt, tamelijk saaie) namen heeft gekregen zien. Maar het uiteindelijke zicht op NGC 6380 is echter allesbehalve saai. Kijk maar naar deze prachtige sterrenfoto....
De bolvormige sterrenhoop NGC 6380, gefotografeerd door Ruimtetelescoop Hubble en de Wide Field Camera 3. - Foto: NASA
Die heldere, blauwe blikvanger bovenin de foto maakt geen deel uit van NGC 6380. De bolvormige sterrenhoop, een bolvormige formatie van sterren die bijeengehouden wordt door de zwaartekracht, staat op 35.000 lichtjaar van de aarde. Onze blauwe vriend, een ster die HD 159073 wordt genoemd, staat veel dichterbij op slechts (lol) 4000 lichtjaar van de aarde.
Zoals de meeste dingen die in de diepe ruimte te zien zijn, is onze kennis van NGC 6380 beperkt door wat we van grote afstand kunnen waarnemen. Hij maakt deel uit van het sterrenbeeld Schorpioen - ja, dit samenraapsel van sterren is slechts een enkel lichtpuntje voor onze nietige, blote mensenogen. Maar zoals je hierboven kunt zien, is hij absoluut adembenemend als we inzoomen voor een beter zicht.
Hubble's opvolger
Beelden als deze zijn alleen mogelijk omdat de Hubble nog functioneert. De meer dan 30 jaar oude satelliet nadert het einde van zijn leven, doordat eind dit jaar de James Webb-ruimtetelescoop gelanceerd zal worden: de grootste en krachtigste ruimtetelescoop die ooit is gebouwd. De werking van de Hubble-telescoop werd in juni zelfs onderbroken toen de boordcomputer van de satelliet niet meer werkte, maar dat probleem lijkt gelukkig te zijn opgelost.
A strange artifact known as the Aiud wedge has become one of the most controversial objects in recent years. This is because it could belong to a 20,000 year old UFO …
The shape of the piece puzzles archaeologists who do not know where it comes from.
The Aiud wedge is a piece of metal discovered in the year 73, about 10 meters deep. Strange mastodon bones were accidentally found . However, what caused the most controversy was a piece of metal.
The strange piece found in the city of Aiud, Romania, was donated to the Transylvanian History Museum and was hidden for years until it was rediscovered.
5 pounds and 20 × 12.5 × 7 centimeters in diameter were its characteristics. But what was that strange thing?1
What is the Aiud wedge?
The millimeter-thick oxide covered the entire block evenly, but this helped date its age to about 400 years .
But the geological layer in which it was found suggests that it must have been in the area about 20,000 years ago , in the Pleistocene .
Florin Gheorghita, a famous historian, managed to examine the analysis carried out on the Aiud wedge, ensuring that the metal alloy that made it up was extremely complex .
Gheorghita assured that the alloy is composed of 12 different elements; 89% aluminum, 6.2% copper, 2.84% silicon, 1.81% zinc, 0.41% lead, 0.33% lagoon, 0.2% zirconium, 0.11 % cadmium, 0.0024% nickel, 0.0023% cobalt, 0.0003% bismuth, 0.0002% silver and gallium in minute quantities.
Why was an object with these characteristics next to mastodon bones? It should be impossible, since aluminum in its pure state is not in nature and humanity managed to reach such a degree of purity only appeared in the nineteenth century .
An aeronautical engineer assured that the piece resembles that of an airplane landing gear.
Added to that are two perfect oval piercings, indicating that the Aiud wedge was undoubtedly made artificially .
The hypotheses behind the mystery
Some experts suggest that it is a man-made tool , which would not make sense at the time.
It has even been compared to the fulcrum of space modules , such as the Viking , but it has not had results either.
This and other reasons have led us to think about the possibility that it was part of some extraterrestrial spacecraft . What function would such a modern piece of technology have in the remote past?
Gheorghita, in an article published in Ancient Skies, stated that he asked an aeronautical engineer about the piece about the artifact and the results of his analyzes.
The engineer replied that, according to its composition and the hole in the jock, as well as a pattern of abrasions and scratches on the metal, it was a piece of an airplane landing gear .
How and why was such an advanced piece of technology found alongside such ancient fossils? How did it get there? It is possible that we are facing the remains of a UFO accident in our remote past or something else.
One of the things people who have alien and UFO encounters often hear is, “You must have been dreaming.” A team of Russian researchers decided to test if this could indeed be true in at least some cases and enlisted a group of proven lucid dreamers to conduct an experiment involving alien and UFO encounters (AUEs). The results were enlightening and thought-provoking, answering some questions while eliciting many more.
“Alien and UFO encounters (AUEs) have been a well-known part of human culture for centuries, but we are still unsure of their nature. Some studies suggest that in some such encounters, these phenomena could be related to dissociative REM sleep states, like lucid dreams (LDs), sleep paralysis (SP), and out-of-body experiences (OBEs). The present research focuses on the hypothesis that if some of AUEs are indeed the products of REM sleep, then they could be deliberately emulated by LD practitioners. Therefore, this experiment could help to explain the mystery of AUEs.”
Michael Raduga, Andrey Shashkov and Zhanna Zhunusova of the Phase Research Center in Moscow are experienced lucid dreaming researchers but this was their first attempt to link them to AUEs. They assembled a group of 152 proven lucid dreamers and instructed them to induce dreams about aliens and UFOs and report their results. Showing their amazing abilities, 114 managed to have alien dreams, with 70 (61%) dreaming of alien encounters. Breaking that down, 22 encountered humanlike aliens, 44 observed them talking, 22 saw them touching and 14 witnessed them doing both. In addition, 32 had UFO encounters, with 12 being inside one and 3 reporting flying.
The researchers next compared these lucid dream accounts to actual UFO and alien encounter reports to see how similar they were to ‘real’ experiences.
“Regarding the successful cases, 20% were close to reality in terms of the absence of paradoxical dreamlike events. AUEs can be emulated willfully and can be perceived as being very close to reality.”
How close? Lucid dreamers having alien encounters experienced fear and sleep paralysis – a common trait among people who report having alien encounters at night. Could this prove that nighttime abductions are actually dreams?
“The results of the present study show that bedtime AUEs can be deliberately emulated during REM sleep and can mimic reality. As such, ordinary people might spontaneously enter PSs, unintentionally have an AUE, and confuse it with reality. This might be the case every time an AUE starts during sleep or while in a state of relaxation.”
That seems to be the researchers’ conclusion. (More details and results of the study can read in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Dream Research.) Moreover, they propose that other unusual nighttime encounters — religious, paranormal, or mystical – could just be vivid dreams. They suggest as a follow-up training those with alien encounters to enter lucid dreams and attempt to recreate their experiences, thus allowing the researchers to compare ‘real’ and dream accounts from the same person.
This may be disappointing news to those believing their nighttime alien and UFO encounters were the real thing. On the other hand, it might be comforting to know they were just dreaming and not actually probed or chipped. What about daytime encounters? Can the experiments be done with lucid daydreamers? Can they prove they actually conducted this experiment and we didn’t just dream reading about it?
“Our findings aid the general understanding of the human brain, especially regarding the sleep process and its connection to consciousness. Therefore, our results help some irrational parts of our culture to become more reasonable and understandable.”
Anything that helps irrational parts of our culture become rational is most welcome. And THAT’S no dream.
Many years ago when Earth was in its young stages, numerous asteroids hit our planet – many of which were the size of a city. It’s hard to imagine such large rocks bombarding the planet, as the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and caused destruction to the Earth around 66 million years ago was about 6 miles across (almost 10 kilometers).
But now, based on new research, asteroids much larger than the one that killed the dinosaurs impacted Earth billions of years ago on a pretty steady basis. According to a recent statement, asteroids the size of a city – some even the size of a province – impacted Earth about every 15 million years. These impacts occurred between 3.5 and 2.5 billion years ago.
The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was about 6 miles across.
Researchers were able to determine these events by analyzing spherules which are tiny bubbles of vaporized rock that were sent flying into space during each impact but ultimately fell back down to Earth after they became solidified. These spherules were found in layers of bedrock. If the layer of spherules was thicker, it meant that a larger asteroid struck the Earth.
When the experts compared the ancient layers of spherules to modern estimates of previous impacts, they noticed significant differences as explained in the statement by Simone Marchi who is a principal scientist with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, “We found that current models of Earth’s early bombardment severely underestimate the number of known impacts, as recorded by spherule layers.” “The true impact flux could have been up to a factor of 10 times higher than previously thought in the period between 3.5 and 2.5 billion years ago.”
Additionally, the massive asteroid impacts could have potentially affected the planet’s ability to sustain life as well as the oxygen levels. “We find that oxygen levels would have drastically fluctuated in the period of intense impacts,” Marchi explained, adding, “Given the importance of oxygen to the Earth’s development, and indeed to the development of life, its possible connection with collisions is intriguing and deserves further investigation. This is the next stage of our work.”
As for what type of destruction these massive impacts would have had on Earth, it is hard to know for sure but it’s highly probable that some major damage would have happened. Rosalie Tostevin, who is from the University of Cape Town but was not involved in the study (she does specialize in ancient geology), reiterated this by stating, “These large impacts would certainly have caused some disruption.” “Unfortunately, few rocks from this far back in time survive, so direct evidence for impacts, and their ecological consequences, is patchy. The model put forward by Dr. Marchi helps us to get a better feel for the number and size of collisions on the early Earth.”
It’s a good thing that we don’t have any more of these city-sized asteroids impacting Earth as the destruction they would cause today would be catastrophic.
On May 14th, 2021, the China National Space Agency (CNSA) achieved another major milestone when the Tianwen-1lander successfully soft-landed on Mars, making China the second nation in the world to land a mission on Mars and establish communications from the surface. Shortly thereafter, China National Space Agency (CNSA) shared the first images taken by the Tianwen-1 lander.
By May 22nd, 2021, the Zhurong rover descended from its lander and drove on the Martian surface for the first time. Since then, the rover has spent 63 Earth days conducting science operations on the surface of Mars and has traveled over 450 meters (1475 feet). On Friday, July 9th, and again on July 15th, the CNSA released new images of the Red Planet that were taken by the rover as it made its way across the surface.
Since the rover deployed to the surface of Mars, it has been traveling southward to explore and inspect the terrain and has taken daily images of rocks, sand dunes, and other features using its Navigation and Topography Cameras (NaTeCam). Meanwhile, other instruments – like the Mars Rover Penetrating Radar (RoPeR), Mars Rover Magnetometer (RoMAG), Mars Climate Station (MCS) – have also been collecting data on Mars’ magnetic field, weather, and subsurface.
Whenever the rover came across notable landforms, it relied on its Mars Surface Compound Detector (MarSCoDe) and Multispectral Camera (MSCam) to carry out fixed-point scans to determine their composition. Among the new images were the two Martian rocks shown above (CNSA via Xinhuanet) that revealed the rocks’ texture features, the thick layers of dust covering them, and impressions left by the ruts of the rover.
Other images in the collection (see below) include a landscape shot that was taken by Zhurong on June 26th, the rover’s 42nd day on the Martian surface (Sol 42). On this day, the rover arrived in a sandy area and took images of a red dune located roughly 6 meters (~20 ft) away. As you can see (top gallery image), the dune has several rocks strewn about it, the one directly ahead of Zhurong measuring 34 cm (13.4 inches) wide.
The next image (bottom left) was taken on July 4th, Zhurong’s 50th day on the Martian surface (Sol 50), after the rover drove to the south side of the dune – which measures 40 m (~130 ft) long, 8 m (26.25 ft) wide and 0.6 m high (2 ft). The fifth and final landscape image (bottom right) was taken when the Zhurong rover was at a distance of 210 m (690 ft) from its landing site and 130 m (~425 ft) from the lander’s back cover and parachute.
These components were part of the Tianwen-1 mission’s Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) module. Whereas the back cover ensured that the rover and lander safely made it through deep-space and survived the turbulent ride through Mars’ atmosphere, the parachute was what allowed for their controlled descent through the atmosphere so they could make a soft landing.
These components are just visible in the upper right corner of the top image while a cluster of stones of various shapes is visible on the left. More recent images acquired by the rover were released on July 15th, 2021, which showed the rover inspecting the back cover and parachute more closely (see below). The first image (top left) was acquired three days prior and shows these two components on the rover’s left side as it continued on its southbound patrol.
As the CNSA indicated in a press statement that was released along with the images:
“The picture shows the full view of the parachute and the complete back after aerodynamic ablation. Cover structure, the attitude control engine diversion hole on the back cover is clearly identifiable, the rover is about 30 meters away from the back cover and about 350 meters away from the landing site during imaging.”
The second and third images (black and white) were taken by the front and rear obstacle avoidance cameras as the rover made its approach and departure from the back cover and chute. The fourth image shows the parachute after it was deployed during the lander’s descent over Utopia Planitia (where it landed) on May 15th. Yet another image was released by the CNSA the following day, which shows Tianwen-1’s landing site.
This image was taken by the orbiter element of the mission on June 2nd, days after the lander and rover element safely landed. The locations of the lander, the rover, the parachute, and back cover, and the heat shield are all indicated in white. The two white dots at the top right corner are the lander and rover, the parachute and back cover are almost directly beneath it (the elongated white mark being the chute) while the heat shield is at the bottom right.
The Tianwen-1 mission was quite the feather in the cap of the CNSA, and not just because it was China’s first mission to Mars. By successfully deploying this mission, China became the first nation to reach Mars with a mission that included an orbiter, lander, and rover element. Prior to this, every space agency that successfully sent a robotic mission to Mars began with orbiters, followed by surface missions – landers first, then landers with rovers.
On top of that, the Zhurong rover makes China the second nation in the world (after the US) to land and operate a rover on the Martian surface. This will be followed in the near future by the Rosalind Franklin rover (part of the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars program) which will launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome sometime this September and is expected to arrive at Mars on June 10th, 2023.
These missions will help pave the way for human exploration, which China is now hoping to do (alongside NASA) during the 2030s. Much like all the crewed lunar missions planned for the near future, the human exploration of Mars is expected to be a multinational affair!
This UFO or Unidentified Flying Object was sighted over the Japanese prefecture Hokkaido, Japan on July 18, 2021. Ron Watkins, known as CodeMonkeyZ, on the social medial platform Telegram, observed a 'Tic Tac' UFO in Hokkaido Japan on July 18, 2021.
credit : alienleaks.org
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David Adair – The Twelve Sites on the Moon Where NASA Told Us Not To Go To!
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David Adair in Manchester, UK: Awakening Expo Anniversary Triple – Feature Release Special: The Secret Life of an Astronaut, The Twelve Sites on the Moon Where NASA Told Us Not To Go To, and the Future of Space Fairing. David Adair is an internationally recognized expert in space technology spinoff applications for industry and commercial use. At age 11 he built his first of hundreds of rockets which he designed, and test flew. At age 17 he won “The Most Outstanding in the Field of Engineering Services” award from the US Air Force. David describes the life of astronaut Neil Armstrong from a personal view as he was close friends with the Armstrong family, reveals some of the secrets behind the moon landing and those famous words as Neil stepped onto the lunar surface. David also discloses some of the incredible technology utilized by space fairing agencies, and what we can expect in the future.
The more you look at ancient texts and stories from around the world, you can’t help but see surprising patterns. Some are so glaring that it takes real effort to ignore them, but that’s what many people do. One example is from the Hopi Native America tribe and their beliefs in “Ant People.” The Hopi of the American Southwest are sometimes referred to as “the oldest of people” by other Native American tribes.
Once you learn about the Ant People, you can’t help but compare them to the ancient Sumerian texts of the Anunnaki. Why? Let’s take a simplified look, respecting the truth that only members of the Hope tribe could fully explain.
In ancient cultures, there is a common thread of worshiping extraterrestrial beings from the stars who will one day return. Animals symbolic of these beliefs appear frequently in ancient art.
The Hopi have a reverence for ants, similar to the way the Egyptians and Sumerians and other cultures had a special reverence for cows. The cows may have represented our Milky Way galaxy, and in the case of the ants, they described beings from the stars known as the Ant People.
Priests of the Two-Horn Society via Wikipedia, Photograph of two “priests” of the Two-Horn Society sitting inside a kiva.
Photograph by H.R. Voth, as seen in Book of the Hopi by Frank Waters, New York: Penguin, 1963.
The Hopi words for the Ant People or Ant Friends (Anu Sinom) create a direct link to the stories of the Anunnaki. It could be coincidental, but it is quite striking. The Babylonian sky god was named Anu, which is the Hopi word for ant.
The word, Naki translates to “friends.” Thus, Anu-Naki translates to “ant friends” in Hopi. In both languages, they are describing extraterrestrial beings, but the Hopi say these Ant People came from under the ground.
Another strikingly similar word is the Hopi word sohu, meaning “star,” and the Egyptian word sahu means “stars of Orion.” This constellation is seen repeatedly across the globe. Ancient Astronaut theorists observe Orion and other systems such as the Pleiades appearing over and over in the layout of the pyramids and ancient structures. Another coincidence?
In the Hopi legend, these Ant People were their saviors, taking them underground and teaching them how to survive two extreme cataclysms. Once again, we see stories of a great flood like that described in Sumerian texts and the Bible.
Surviving underground with the Ant People, the Hopi ancestors learned how to grow food with little water and build dwellings in the rocks. They learned about the stars and mathematics and would put those skills to use when they founded a new civilization.
When it was safe to return to the surface, the Ant People instructed the building of incredibly complex habitations such as what is seen today at Chaco Canyon. From above, they might appear like a giant ant mound. The structures included Kivas, a Hopi word for round semi-subterranean ceremonial rooms that were entered by ladders from above.
“During ceremonies today, the ritual emergence of participants from the kiva into the plaza above represents the original emergence by Puebloan groups from the underworld into the current world.”
Petroglyphs depicting the Ant People appear still appear today, and the Hopi continue to tell the story in dances and rituals.
Below are some intriguing images of Hopi ceremonies taking place inside the kivas.
Two-Horn Society image via U.S. History, Fewkes, Walter.
“Fire Worship of the Hopi Indians.” Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institute. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1920.
“One of the most intriguing Hopi legends involves the Ant People, who were crucial to the survival of the Hopi — not just once but twice. The so-called “First World” (or world-age) was apparently destroyed by fire — possibly some sort of volcanism, asteroid strike, or coronal mass ejection from the sun. The Second World was destroyed by ice — Ice Age glaciers or a pole shift.
“During these two global cataclysms, the virtuous members of the Hopi tribe were guided by an odd-shaped cloud during the day and a moving star at night that led them to the sky god named Sotuknang, who finally took them to the Ant People — in Hopi, Anu Sinom. The Ant People then escorted the Hopi into subterranean caves where they found refuge and sustenance.”
Stories that giants and other strange beings have lived deep inside the Earth are seen around the globe. In the Hopi legend, these beings were benevolent and helped the tribe even to their own detriment.
“In this legend, the Ant People are portrayed as generous and industrious, giving the Hopi food when supplies ran short and teaching them the merits of food storage. In fact, another legend says that the reason why the ants have such thin waists today is because they once deprived themselves of provisions in order to feed the Hopi.”
The thin waisted ants with their elongated heads and antennae resemble some of the ancient petroglyphs. Across the globe, an African species of Ant called the Pharaoh Ant remind some of a tiny version of Pharoah Akhenaten, famous for his strange alien appearance.
Pharoah Ant, Monomorium pharaonis via Wikimedia Commons CC BY 4.0 by www.AntWeb.org
The History Channel’s Ancient Aliens series covers this subject in Series 4, episode 9 (See a clip below). In addition to depictions of the Ant People are wall paintings that show an unmistakable similarity to cuneiform symbols from ancient Sumeria. These symbols are associated with the “WingMakers,” according to the show.
Just as in ancient Egypt, there were matriarchal dynasties, DNA findings from Chaco Canyon show a possible maternal dynasty that ruled for hundreds of years between A.D. 800 and 1250. Scientific American published a story on this in 2017 after researchers examined the remains of 14 people found a burial crypt that ended up at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
The Chaco Canyon settlement had thousands of Anasazi inhabitants, who believed in protecting Mother Earth. However, the ancient Puebloans mysteriously disappeared, along with any signs of the Ant People. Today researchers believe that climate change drove them away as the growing population couldn’t sustain itself.
The Anasazi integrated with tribes like the Hopi, Zuni, and Rio Grande Pueblo. As the modern world faces extreme challenges from climate change today, the teachings of these tribes are more important than ever. Can we learn to respect the natural world and live in harmony with Mother Earth? Or are we headed for inevitable disasters, like those described in the Hopi legends?
Ancient Astronaut theorists often speculate if extraterrestrial beings could play a part in helping humans overcome impending future disasters. In the case of the Hopi legends, it appears they did just that. Could the Ant People return from deep in the Earth or from their home in the stars in our time of need?
For another Hopi origin story watch this beautiful video from PBS:
Changes in the ice surface of the Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica reveal the rapid draining of a lake deep below in 2019.
(Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory)
Scientists have discovered two new lakes buried deep beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet.
These hidden gems of frigid water are part of a vast network of ever-changing lakes hidden beneath 1.2 to 2.5 miles (2 to 4 kilometers) of ice on the southernmost continent. These lakes fill and drain over and over again in largely mysterious cycles that may influence how fast the ice sheet moves and how and where meltwater reaches the Southern Ocean. This flow, in turn, can change the currents in the Southern Ocean and potentially affect ocean circulation worldwide.
"It's not just the ice sheet we're talking about," study leader Matthew Siegfried, a geophysicist at the Colorado School of Mines, said in a statement. "We're really talking about a water system that is connected to the whole Earth system."
The lakes sit at the bottom of the ice sheet, where the ice meets the rocky Antarctic continent. Unlike in Greenland, where meltwater flows from the ice surface through crevasses and holes called moulins, Antarctica's lakes form from beneath the ice, probably as a result of pressure, friction and perhaps geothermal heat.
This water system was largely invisible until the advent of NASA's ICESat mission in 2003. The ICESat satellite used lasers to precisely measure the elevation of Antarctic ice. In 2007, Scripps Institution of Oceanography glaciologist Helen Amanda Fricker connected the elevation changes measured by ICESat to the dynamics of the lakes deep beneath the ice surface. As the lakes drain and fill, the ice above rises and falls, offering hints as to what's happening below.
Fricker's breakthrough opened up the possibility of tracking the lake system over time. ICESat, however, collected data for only six years. Its European Space Agency equivalent, CryoSat-2, collected similar data starting in 2010 but over a broader area and with less precision. In September 2018, NASA launched a new satellite, ICESat-2, which collects the highest-precision data yet.
"ICESat-2 is like putting on your glasses after using ICESat: The data are such high precision that we can really start to map out the lake boundaries on the surface," Siegfried said.
A dynamic system
In the new study, Siegfried and Fricker combined data from ICESat, CryoSat-2 and ICESat-2 to trace changes in the subglacial lake system from October 2003 to July 2020. They focused on three areas with good satellite coverage and known active lakes: the boundary between the Mercer and Whillans ice streams in West Antarctica; the lower MacAyeal Ice Stream, also in West Antarctica; and the upper Academy Glacier in East Antarctica.
At the Mercer and Whillans boundary, the researchers found two new lakes, which they dubbed the Lower Conway Subglacial Lake and the Lower Mercer Subglacial Lake. They also found that what was thought to be one lake under the MacAyeal ice stream was actually two.
Over time, these lakes experienced major change. The lakes beneath the Mercer and Whillans ice stream boundary are currently undergoing their third period of drainage in 17 years. Meanwhile, all of the lakes beneath the MacAyeal ice stream have followed their own patterns of draining and filling. The lowermost lake went through four fill-drain events during the study period, each taking only about a year to complete. The second lake drained between 2014 and 2015 and is currently filling up again, while the third lake drained just slightly between 2016 and 2017. Meanwhile, the lakes beneath Academy Glacier drained between 2009 and 2018.
All of these changes are puzzle pieces in scientists' understanding of the speed and direction of Antarctica's ice sheet flow. Already, researchers are finding the links between the under-ice lakes and the ocean: In January, a study co-authored by Fricker found that the drainage of one lake on the Amery Ice Shelf in East Antarctica flushed as much as 198 billion gallons (750 billion liters) into the ocean in only three days, Live Science reported at the time.
Antarctica may seem like a static environment: a still, white landscape frozen motionlessly into place.
But much more is going on under the ice than we realize – even if you have to travel all the way to space to tell for sure.
Over a decade ago, scientists made just such a discovery, when an analysis of data from NASA's ICESat satellite revealed that variations in ice elevation in West Antarctica reflected a vast mass of subglacial water movement underneath the ice sheet.
Prior to the discovery, it had been thought that hidden meltwater lakes – deeply concealed at the bottom of the ice sheet, where the ice meets the continental bedrock underneath – existed in isolation, cut off from one another.
But in 2007, researchers found that fluctuations in the height of Antarctica's surface ice signified the movement of water flowing between a hidden network of subglacial lakes, which alternately fill and drain before their water escapes to the Southern Ocean.
The new lakes discovered.
(Siegfried et al./NASA Goddard/YouTube)
Now, the ICESat mission's follow-up – ICESat-2, launched in 2018 – is giving scientists an even keener glimpse at this mysterious, deeply buried lake network, while revealing two lakes never before discovered.
"The discovery of these interconnected systems of lakes at the ice-bed interface that are moving water around, with all these impacts on glaciology, microbiology, and oceanography – that was a big discovery from the ICESat mission," says glaciologist Matthew Siegfried from the Colorado School of Mines.
"ICESat-2 is like putting on your glasses after using ICESat, the data are such high precision that we can really start to map out the lake boundaries on the surface."
In a new study, Siegfried and fellow researchers compiled altimetry data from ICESat-2 and the original ICESat mission, along with measurements taken from CryoSat-2, an ice-observing satellite operated by the European Space Agency (ESA).
By combining the datasets – encompassing the period from 2003 to 2020 – the researchers are able to monitor active subglacial lakes at timescales shorter than ICESat-2's repeat cycle (the 91-day gap before it can observe the same region again).
"Surface deformation due to active subglacial lakes filling and draining provides one of the few remotely accessible windows into the evolution of basal water systems; these systems are otherwise hidden beneath up to 4 km [2.5 miles] of ice and remain one of the major physical uncertainties on projections of future ice sheet dynamics," the researchers write in their paper.
"ICESat-2 laser altimetry can not only extend the record of subglacial lake activity but also provides better understanding of hydrological processes by capturing denser and more precise spatial detail."
In addition to giving us a more detailed look at the activity and outlines of known subglacial lakes in Antarctica – of which there are over 130 already documented – the analysis found two anomalies that appear to be hidden lakes, previously undetected.
These potentially active lakes – called Lower Conway Subglacial Lake (LSLC) and Lower Mercer Subglacial Lake (LSLM), lie near previously discovered lakes, and may have been missed by the original ICESat mission, falling within the narrow gaps between its observations.
In this region – underneath the Mercer and Whillans ice streams in West Antarctica – the lake system, which is dominated by two large active subglacial lakes (Conway Subglacial Lake and Mercer Subglacial Lake), appears to be in the midst of its third drainage event since ICESat observations began in 2003.
Just a few weeks ago, one of the same researchers involved here – glaciologist Helen Fricker from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography – co-authored a related study, detailing a dramatic lake drainage event in East Antarctica, where a surface lake on a floating ice shelf vanished in the space of days.
Far below the ice sheet in West Antarctica, the water draining from subglacial lakes is also thought to eventually flow into the ocean, although the concealed escape route is much harder to visualize.
"These are processes that are going on under Antarctica that we wouldn't have a clue about if we didn't have satellite data," Fricker says.
"We've been struggling with getting good predictions about the future of Antarctica, and instruments like ICESat-2 are helping us observe at the process scale."
Susan Sheppard was someone I first got to know in 2014at that year’s annual Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. I next caught up with Susan at the 2016 gig and had a great time. That was the last time I saw Susan. Tragically, Susan passed away in April of this year. In part, her obituary read as follows: “Susan Sheppard, noted poet, author, artist and creator of the Haunted Parkersburg Ghost Tours, died at her home on Monday, April 19, 2021, after a brief but courageous battle with cancer…In the 1990s, Susan started researching and presenting talks about hauntings and the history of downtown Parkersburg and the surrounding areas. Eventually, these talks evolved into the ‘Haunted Parkersburg Walking Tours,’ which she and her helpers presented on weekends during the Halloween season for the past 25 years. Susan’s Tours became some of the most popular in the US, according to several websites that rank them. She also appeared on many nationally-broadcast TV shows about the hauntings in the Mid-Ohio Valley on the Travel Channel, Syfy Channel and others.” Susan gave me one of her reports that made for fascinating reading. And, she very generously let me share it with anyone else who might have liked to read it, too. So, that’s exactly what I’ve done. It’s surely one of those cases that put Susan on the path to try and solve the mysteries in the areas right around her.
Susan Sheppard (Nick Redfern, 2016)
In Susan’s own words: “In late winter of 1967 a church bus was driving over Route 50 that then went directly through the small town of West Union, where I was raised. The occupants of the bus noticed on nearby Shannon’s Knob that a UFO was hovering over my family’s home. Shannon’s Knob was the hillside I grew up on and the highest point in the town. A woman who was a passenger on the bus called my parents to tell them about the spacecraft suspended over our home but my parents were disbelieving. The following spring my friend Regina Ball and I were playing on the hillside above my family’s house. At the peak of Shannon’s Knob was the entire power source for the town of West Union. We walked up a hill near a clearing to play “Indians” like we always did. As Jeanie and I played, we suddenly heard men’s voices. Turning, we saw two men dressed in black near the rise above us. We were frolicking near the bushes but when we noticed the Men in Black we became scared and hid. We watched silently as the two men measured a spot on the hillside.”
Susan continued: “The men exuded an uncanny energy which I immediately sensed. They also looked differently from each other. One man appeared to be of European descent while the other one had an East Asian appearance. The one with the Asian appearance had what looked to be dyed blond hair that was cut very short. Neither was wearing a hat, nor did they wear a suit and tie. They simply had on a black shirt and black pants. The men seem interested only in the landscape and spoke to each other in low voices. Jeanie and I spied on the two men until they left. There was no vehicle anywhere close. Where they came from, we did not know. Jeanie and I went home and forgot all about them. In years to come, we would both suffer from migraine headaches and just overall poor health. We never linked the Men in Black up on the hill with our headaches.”
Mothman statue (Nick Redfern, 2016)
There was more to come from Susan: “A few days after some boys were playing on the same hillside. The boys noticed a circular impression in the grass that was about 15-20 feet wide in a treeless area on Shannon’s Knob. They went home and reported it to their parents. My brother came home from school relaying the story from his friends. In my child’s mind, I made the connection. It was almost like a secret that only I was privy to. To my knowledge, no one ever followed up on the circular impression on Shannon’s Knob nor the UFO sighting over our house. In the winter and spring of 1967, when my grandfather was hit and killed by a train and we witnessed the Men in Black up on Shannon’s Knob, we had other bizarre happenings. Our home became an epicenter for poltergeist activity. Ceramic birds flew off our living room mantle. Pictures fell off the walls. A heavy iron was tossed from my bedroom into the bedroom of my parents and slid under the bed where my Dad was sleeping.”
Continuing from Susan: “But nothing was quite as strange as the footsteps I heard walking on the roof at night. This was the winter of 1967 and for the most part, appearances of these footsteps went on for as long as up until 1970. On certain nights, around 2:00 a.m. a loud bang would punctuate the stillness of my bedroom. It originated from the roof above me. It sounded like someone had jumped out of a helicopter onto our roof with a boom. There would be a pause of a few moments, and then, whoever it was, began to walk on the roof. The roof would creak under the weight. If I would scream for my parents, which I did often, the footsteps would pause until it grew quiet again and they would start right back up. At first my parents did not believe me. However, one morning I heard them talking amongst themselves. My parents had heard the footsteps on the roof as well.
Nick Redfern (2016)
And, finally from Susan: “I began to sleepwalk. Sometimes I would wake up to hear the radio playing what sounded like a Catholic Mass but there were no active Catholic churches in my town. I reached over to turn off the radio and found that the radio wasn’t on. Then I would lie there and listen to a ‘broadcast’ of an ‘angel choir’ with no source for the music until the cords faded as the sun finally came up. One morning I woke up in a different bedroom that my family never used with a sheet pulled over my head like I was a dead person on a gurney ready to be taken to the morgue. As I stirred from sleep, I felt my skin had grown cold against the clammy air and realized every stitch of my clothing had been removed. I had no idea how I got there nor why my clothes had been taken off me. Embarrassed, I jumped from the bare bed, put my clothes on and never told a soul. My parents were sleeping normally in theirs. I was seven years old. Perhaps the strangest tale of all was one about our house more than a decade before we moved in. A young woman was babysitting at what would later be our home. She thought she heard something attempting to climb up the side wall of the house. Too frightened to go check for herself, the girl called the West Union city police. When cops came to check the house, they were shocked when their flashlights shone up the side of the wall. There were muddy footprints traveling up the side of the house. Whether they were human or something else, that part I don’t know. From then on our house became known as one that was ‘haunted’ in town. But by what?” What, indeed.
Something Huge is melting out of the Antarctic Ice Sheet
Something Huge is melting out of the Antarctic Ice Sheet
Something Huge located between Prince Olav Coast and Prince Haraid Coast is melting out of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.
An enormous structure hidden under the ice sheet of Antarctica has become visible possible due to climate changes.
The structure which is not something natural or a crack in the ice sheet is 300 meters long, width measures between 30 – 50 meters, including huge walls and a tower of 10 meters high.
Could it be an ancient settlement, base or a shipwreck built a long time ago when Antarctica was not yet a frozen contingent or is it something extraterrestrial?
Google Earth coordinates: 69°53'40.85"S 38°42'18.25"E
20th anniversary of the Disclosure Project National Press Club press conference
20th anniversary of the Disclosure Project National Press Club press conference
20th anniversary of the Disclosure Project National Press Club press conference. April 25, 2021 – Scottsdale, AZ Dr.
Steven Greer– Introducing the program.
Dr. Carol Rosin – Founder of the Institute for Security and Cooperation in Outer Space, and Wehner von Braun’s spokesperson. Dr. Rosin discusses her involvement with Von Braun and highly influential Russians working for Peace in Space.
– retired Col-General and President of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems. Via pre-recorded video discussing the importance of Peace in Space.
This handout picture released on March 15, 2021 by Roland Bacon, David Mary, ESO/NASA shows one of the hydrogen filaments discovered by the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field Photograph:( AFP )
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Now, Japanese astronomers have developed an astounding technique to measure the universe. Using artificial intelligence, scientists were able to remove noise in astronomical data which is caused by random variations in the shapes of galaxies. What does this mean? What is its significance? Read here
The universe comes off as a vast and immeasurable entity whose depths are imperceptible to Earthlings. But in the pursuit of simplifying all that surrounds us, scientists have made great strides in understanding the space we inhabit.
Now, Japanese astronomers have developed an astounding technique to measure the universe. Using artificial intelligence, scientists were able to remove noise in astronomical data which is caused by random variations in the shapes of galaxies.
What did the scientists do?
Scientists used supercomputer simulations and tested large mock data before performing the same on real data from space. After extensive testing, scientists used the tool on data derived from Japan’s Subaru Telescope.
To their surprise, it worked! The results that followed remained largely in sync with the currently accepted models of the universe. If employed on a bigger scale, the tool could help scientists analyse expansive data from astronomical surveys.
Current methods cannot effectively get rid of the noise which pervades all data from space. To avoid interference from noise data, the team used the world’s most advanced astronomy supercomputer called “ATERUI II”.
Using real data from the Subaru Telescope, they generated 25,000 mock galaxy catalogues.
All data from space can be distorted by the gravity of what’s in the foreground eclipsing its background. This is called gravitational lensing. Measurements of such lensing is used to better understand the universe. Essentially, a galaxy directly visible to us could be manipulating data about what lies behind it.
But it’s difficult to differentiate oddly-looking galaxies from distorting ones that manipulate data. It’s called “shape noise” and regularly gets in the way of understanding the universe.
Based on these understandings, scientists added noise to the artificial data sets and trained AI to recover lensing data from the mock data. The AI was able to highlight previously unobservable details from this data.
Building on this, scientists used the AI model on the real world, covering 21 square degrees of the sky. They found that the details registered about the foreground were actually consistent with existing knowledge about the cosmos.
Why the military should work with scientists to study the UFO phenomenon
Why the military should work with scientists to study the UFO phenomenon
Chris Impey
The image from video provided by the Department of Defense labelled Gimbal, from 2015, an unexplained object is seen at center as it is tracked as it soars high along the clouds, traveling against the wind. (Department of Defense via AP)
UFOs have been in the news a lot lately. I am a research astronomer who haswritten andeditedbooks and created a free online course about the search for life in the universe. While I think we are making progress on detecting life beyond Earth, I view UFOs from a skeptical standpoint, since the evidence that they represent aliens visiting the Earth is unconvincing.
Last month, a report from the Office of the Director on National Intelligence dropped on Congress. It described 144 sightings by military personnel over a 17-year period, preferring to use the term UAP, for unidentified aerial phenomenon, in part to avoid the stigma attached to UFOs.
For those like me waiting for definitive statements, the report was a big disappointment. It declined to draw any conclusions, saying the available data is “largely inconclusive” and noting it is limited and inconsistently reported. The report worried about increased air “clutter,” and left open the possibility that some UAP sightings represent advanced technologies of foreign adversaries, with significant national security implications.
As for UFOs as alien spacecraft, the report was agnostic. It scrupulously avoided using the words alien or extraterrestrial. That will do little to discourage “true believers.” Nearly half of all Americans think aliens are visiting the Earth, and the UFO phenomenon has become enmeshed in a web of conspiracy theories that include accounts of abduction by aliens and crop circles. These conspiracy theories have undoubtedly been fueled in part by the fact that the military has been secretly investigating UFOs for decades. Any rational debate over UFOs must contend with the fact that they have taken deep root in the public consciousness.
Will the report, and increased transparency by the military, change anything? Will it help draw scientists like me into a serious study of the phenomenon?
Scientists will have to get over their reticence to engage with the sightings. We are in an awkward position. Rapid progress in finding planets orbiting other stars has led to a projection of 300 million habitable planets in our galaxy. There has been plenty of time for life on some of those planets to evolve intelligence and technology. We don’t deny the possibility of aliens traveling from their star system to ours. We are just unconvinced by the data presented so far. Most sightings can be attributed to weather balloons or astronomical phenomena such as meteors, fireballs, and Venus. There are many resources giving mundane explanations for UFO sightings.
There have been academic studies of UFOs before. In 1968, the Condon Report said that that no scientific knowledge had been gained from two decades of study of the phenomenon. But 20 years later, a review led by Stanford professor Peter Sturrock concluded that some sightings are accompanied by physical evidence that warrants investigation. It is telling that after decades of studies and hundreds of thousands of sightings, UFOs have not reached the gold standard in science for confirming any hypothesis: reproducible evidence.
For their part, the military and intelligence communities will have to more actively engage with scientists, and ask for their help and expertise in understanding the sightings in the report, and many others that have not been made public. There are signs that this might happen. Under Avril Haynes, the Office of the DNI has been drawing on its expert group of 500 scientists who consult with the intelligence agencies on scientific problems. A model for this type of collaboration is the two panels of scientists and medical experts that were recently set up to understand the “Havana syndrome” that has afflicted American diplomats since 2016.
What would a collaboration with scientists look like, and what kind of data would it take to “move the needle” on understanding the UAP phenomenon?
The recent report shows how difficult it is to interpret the sightings, even with expert observers and data from multiple sensors. In all but one of 144 cases, there was too little information to even broadly characterize the event. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks acknowledged this deficiency when she called for more timely and consistent data collection on UAPs. The Defense Department has just over two months to develop a new strategy and report back to Congress.
Sensors malfunction and even expert observers can be fooled when seeing something outside their realm of experience. With optical and infrared imaging, it is extremely difficult to gauge the distance, size, and speed of an object. For example, the three Navy videos that have been in heavy circulation on the Internet seem impressive and inexplicable, but they could easily be artifacts of camera optics and tracking systems.
The military should invite a select group of experts to examine all the evidence (with suitable clearance given when the sensor technology involved is classified). It should be an interdisciplinary team, comprised to address all the observational characteristics of the phenomena. Ideally, data should be shared among our allies, since UAP appear globally. Scientists can bring their assets to bear on the problem as well. For example, civilian satellites are being used to detect and monitor UAPs and machine learning can be used to sift the data for anomalous events.
Scientists are curious and they love a challenging problem. I would lend my hand to the effort if asked. Let’s hope the government will harness scientific expertise to shine light on this decades-long mystery.
Editor’s note: This is an Op-Ed and as such, the opinions expressed are those of the author. If you would like to respond, or have an editorial of your own you would like to submit, please contact Military Times senior managing editor Howard Altman, haltman@militarytimes.com.
Possible spacecraft could be “rescued” by world powers
Possible spacecraft could be “rescued” by world powers
Satellite images of Mars have revealed a strange anomaly more than 182 meters wide on the surface of Mars that could be “recovered.”
Images of the spacecraft on Mars.
Through satellite images, researchers have discovered a mysterious anomaly in the Martian soil. This anomaly exceeds 182 meters in diameter and, it is believed, could be an extraterrestrial spacecraft .
However, the most unusual thing about it is that some theorists claim that the world powers could “get it back.” In this way, it is possible to bring it to Earth and take advantage of its technology.
Spaceship “found” on Mars
It is not the first time that artificial structures have been observed on Martian soil or on the lunar surface. For years there has been speculation about who this technology is , but above all, if the world powers have not taken it over.
Obviously, in order to achieve that, the technology necessary to get a crew to Mars must exist on Earth . That is why it is believed that these advances are not only a fact, but have been used to bring UFOs to the planet and apply reverse engineering.
The object with a peculiar shape similar to a heart appears to be in perfect condition . Only a few scratches and dents are observed on its casing.
This would make the object a “valuable prize” for the power that is made with it. The UFO was unveiled thanks to YouTube user UFOvni2012.
In the video, he assures that the original photograph was taken on October 16, 2000 , thanks to NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor. One of the rovers with the highest quality images. So pareidolia is ruled out.
NASA cover-up?
Steve Wingate, the main popularizer of the UFO on Mars.
Another of the observations given by the user is that the long and overturned runways where the ship landed were left behind. This only indicates that the ship did not crash, but landed softly .
Its location could be Medusae Fossae , one of the largest and strangest geological formations to date.
It is believed to extend more than 965 kilometers across the equator of Mars. Also, constant winds along with periodic storms have eroded the landscape, giving the surface a smooth appearance.
Obviously, it is difficult to understand why the spacecraft ended up on the Martian surface, half buried under a dune of fine sand.
That is why experts have wondered if this spaceship, which appears to be in perfect condition, could be saved. And if so, you could also find out about its technology and who were its crew.
The image was found in the pile of photos that MGS was sending to Earth, which piqued the interest of Steve Wingate , one of NASA’s imaging specialists.
Wingate did his best to publicize the strange image, but for whatever reason, it hasn’t gotten the notoriety it deserves.
In fact, the image has been removed several times from its website and the original is archived on NASA’s servers.
So far, the space agency has not commented on the matter. Theorists keep speculating about the spacecraft and whether one of the world’s powers will go for it.
When an asteroid struck Earth near Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula around 66 million years ago that killed off the dinosaurs, tons of destruction was left behind, such as the huge Chicxulub crater, a blanket of dust that blocked out the sun, lowered temperatures, and a massive tsunami. While it was previously known that a tsunami would have happened after the impact, new research has provided more details such as its massive size.
The tsunami would have occurred in the Gulf of Mexico and was thought to have sent a huge tidal wave into North America. The tsunami was believed to have been almost a mile in height (1,500 meters) that was followed by several smaller pulses.
The tsunami was almost a mile in height.
A discovery of fossilized megaripples from the massive tsunami that were found in sediments in the central part of Louisiana has shed new light on this highly debated topic as noted by Sean Gulick who is a geophysicist at the University of Texas, Austin, but was not involved with the study, “It’s great to actually have evidence of something that has been theorized for a really long time.”
Over ten years ago, seismic imaging data was collected by Gary Kinsland who is a geophysicist at the University of Louisiana. After studying the data – specifically a layer that was approximately 1,500 meters beneath the ground – he and his colleagues discovered the fossilized megaripples. Incredibly, the ripples were each separated by about a kilometer (0.62 miles) and had an average height of 16 meters (52.5 feet).
It is believed that the megaripples were left behind when the waves of the tsunami came near the shore in 60-meter-deep water which ultimately disrupted the sediments on the seafloor. He backed this up by drawing a perpendicular line that ended up exactly at the Chicxulub crater. “The water was so deep that once the tsunami had quit, regular storm waves couldn’t disturb what was down there,” he explained. (A picture of the megaripples can be seen here.)
This is just the latest information regarding the devastating impact that killed off the dinosaurs and caused massive amounts of damage to Earth. Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, who is a paleontologist at the University of Vigo but was not involved with the study, weighed in by stating, “We have small pieces of the puzzle that keep getting added in.” “Now this research is another one, giving more evidence of a cataclysmic tsunami that probably inundated [everything] for thousands of miles.”
There seem to be many places interspersed throughout the world that serve as beacons for UFO phenomena. For whatever reasons these places seem to attract strange things in the skies, and this can be found from New Mexico’s Roswell to Australia’s Wycliffe Well, very often with local economies springing up to take advantage of the weirdness. One similarly strange place lurks off in the country of Japan, involving a mysterious mountain which has become a hotbed of UFO phenomena, and which has spurred on the creation of a UFO museum and UFO lab.
Fukushima is the capital city of Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, and tragically the name is known to many as the location of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, which was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan and led to a massive tsunami. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami devastated vast swaths of area, killed an estimated 19,747, with a further 2,556 people missing, caused hundreds of thousands to lose their homes, many of them still displaced to this day, and led to immeasurable economic damage. The tsunami also caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, which was the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Yet while to many Fukushima may be synonymous with death and tragedy, many both outside and even within Japan may not be aware that it is also the “UFO Capital of Japan,” and also has what is claimed to be Japan’s only research institute for unidentified flying objects.
Located within the Date District, Fukushima Prefecture, is what was once the town of Iino, now incorporated into the larger Fukushima City. It is a picturesque, mountainous rural area on the very outskirts of Fukushima City, and is known for the prominent Mt. Senganmori, which looms over the landscape and has a long history of being regarded as an enigmatic place. The mountain has the rather strange quality of being shaped like an almost perfect pyramid, giving it a very mystical ambience that have helped launch plenty of local legends and lore. One of the legends is that the mountain is actually artificial, holding within it a system of tunnels and bases. Other stories tell of the habit of electrical equipment to stop functioning here, as well as tales of people disappearing into thin air, or hikers coming back with stories of missing time. The mountain is also a UFO hotspot, with sightings of strange things going on in the skies here going back decades, only furthering the idea among many that there is an underground alien base here.
Because of this reputation as a UFO magnet, in 1992 the “UFO Fureaikan” was built right on the side of Mt. Senganmori. The UFO Fureaikan is a public facility built with funding from a regional development fund, which serves as a museum for all things UFO. Within the hexagonal building, which itself looks like a UFO that has come down to land on the mountainside, are numerous exhibits on UFOs, including about their history, notable UFO incidents, photo panels, a 3-D virtual theater, and approximately 5,000 items related to UFOs on display, many of them donated from the collection of Kinichi Arai, who was a pioneer in Japanese UFO research, founder of Japan Flying Saucer Research Association (JFSA), and one of the most prominent UFO researchers Japan has ever seen. Among the many photos and other items is the museum’s prized possession, a collection of classified documents claimed to be from the CIA and outlining all manner of top secret sightings and research done by the agency. Arai claimed to have gotten the documents from an American on the inside, and the fact that there are seals and CIA symbols on them adds to the idea that they are authentic. These priceless documents are only very rarely put on display, just one day a year on June 24, which happens to be World UFO Day. On all other days of the year they are mostly kept in the museum’s vault to keep them safe from theft. Toshio Kanno, 70, director of Iinomachi Promotion Corporation, which funded the building of the UFO Fureaikan, has said of this place:
There are many ways, even for the non-enthusiasts, to enjoy the museum. There are those who deny the existence of UFOs and there are those who see the romance and dream in them. It’s okay to have different opinions. Isn’t that what’s nice about it? I think they do exist. I believe in UFOs. Senganmori is no joke. They (UFOs) really show up in the area.
Mt. Senganmori
After the Tohoku disaster the area doubled down on its reputation for UFOs in order to stay afloat in all of the mayhem. The museum and UFOs of Mt. Senganmori were heavily promoted to bring in tourists, with the UFO Fureaikan presently drawing over 30,000 visitors a year. The museum has also expanded, and one of the newer additions is a facility called the International UFO Lab. Founded by on World UFO Day, June 24, 2020, and directed by UFO researcher and editor-in-chief of the popular Japanese paranormal magazine “Mu,” it claims to be the first full-fledged Japanese research institute for UFOs, located right at Japan’s premiere location for UFO sightings. The purpose of the lab, which was set up at the museum’s UFO Interactive Hall, is to “collect, analyze and disclose information on sightings of unidentified flying objects around the world,” and is staffed by locals, officials of a local chamber of commerce and industry, and UFO researchers, as well as accepting online applications for additional researchers, both scientists and UFO nuts alike, to join the team. Mikami has recently said of the International UFO Lab:
Until now, even if UFOs were discovered, the information was shared only on an individual level. I hope the research lab will serve as a base receiving information, and lead to new discoveries. I’d like to get to the bottom of their identity. Particularly during quarantine, look up at the sky and see if you can see anything. I hope the research institute will be a base for receiving more information on UFOs so we can get to the bottom of what they are.
It is all a very mysterious place that has attracted great attention in Japan. It is unclear what is going on here, or why such forces might be drawn to this place. It there something about the mountain itself that holds some power that makes these UFOs gravitate towards it? Is there perhaps an alien base under it as it widely thought? Or is this all just misidentifications and local lore? Whatever the case may be, you can be sure that the UFO Fureaikan and its International UFO Lab will be on the case.
New Theory: UFOs Belong To Aliens From Venus Who Live In The Oceans
New Theory: UFOs Belong To Aliens From Venus Who Live In The Oceans
There are three planets in the solar system in the “habitable zone”. Mars and Venus are believed to have conditions similar to those on Earth.
Scientists believe Mars has had habitable conditions for hundreds of millions of years, probably not long enough for intelligent life to emerge. Venus, on the other hand, has had surface water and habitable conditions for over 3 billion years, and 700 million years ago it may have been still habitable.
Recently, astrobiologists also found out groundbreaking potential evidence of life in the upper clouds of Venus. This announcement pointed to the presence of phosphine, a rare and often poisonous gas that on Earth is often associated with living organisms.
Venus
The theory is that intelligent life originated on Venus earlier than on Earth, and they had enough technology to travel short distances within the solar system.
Therefore, groups of Venusians left their planet and came to Earth to study it.
Venus was able to maintain a stable temperature between a maximum of about 50 degrees C and a minimum of about 20 degrees Celsius for about three billion years.
The problem was that the Earth at that time was a frozen snowball, so the conditions for their life here were not the best.
However, under the frozen layer of ocean water there was liquid water, and some of it was quite warm in the area of geothermal springs. Therefore, the Venusians developed the technology and went to live in the seas.
At this time, there was no animal life on Earth, only microorganisms. For hundreds of millions of years, these intelligent and evolved beings have watched the evolution of life on Earth, some researchers speculate.
We can only guess about their anatomy and why they did not come out of the oceans onto land once the Earth warmed up. But over time, their technology has evolved, and they probably didn’t need it.
In addition, they might have a moral code that instructed them not to interfere with natural life developing on Earth.
According to the National Oceanic Survey, a shockingly small percentage of the ocean has been studied. Just 5 percent of Earth’s oceans have been explored and charted – especially the ocean below the surface. The rest remains mostly undiscovered and unseen by humans.
This theory also explains why some of the technologies displayed by UFOs are similar to magic. It’s not magic, it’s just technology that is hundreds of millions of years more advanced.
This theory makes more sense than interstellar travelers or lost civilizations or time travelers. It is able to explain why, despite the obvious presence on our (we think so) planet – flying and underwater vehicles with “magical” technologies, they are in no hurry to come into contact with us.
The Venusians have lived on earth for millions of years. They colonized the Earth long before humans appeared on it. Imagine what humanity will be capable of in terms of technology in 700 million years, and you will receive an answer about the level of technology of aliens-earthlings living in the world’s oceans.
This theory also gives an answer to the question – why should aliens worry so much about people, warn them about the dangers of nuclear weapons and sometimes send messages about the need to reduce the population and stop the destructive attitude towards the planet on which people live.
People – received the planet in the process of natural evolution, as science says, but if the Venusians received this same planet before any life appeared on it, not to mention the appearance of intelligent life, then they have the same rights to the Earth as and indigenous earthlings.
And what people do with the planet they cannot be indifferent, since this is our common planet and when a person kills it, he kills the habitat and the home of alien colonists, for whom the Earth has become a real home, since their home planet has long ceased to be suitable for life.
This theory can also explain who and why at certain points in human history – helped people in development. Who taught them agriculture and helped them get the basic technologies that ensured the development of human civilization. Many peoples have legends and there are written sources saying that the “Gods” came from Venus.
It’s difficult to speak of ʻOumuamua, is the first known interstellar object detected passing through our Solar System, without mentioning Abraham ‘Avi’ Loeb, the first scientist (he’s a theoretical physicist who works on astrophysics and cosmology) to propose that the oblong object could conceivably be a spaceship with living beings on it or an autonomous exploration vehicle checking us out before returning home. ʻOumuamua is gone, but Avi Loeb is still here and keeping his name in space and UFO news with various interesting theories on the search for alien life that excite enthusiasts while frustrating other scientists. His latest one, published in Scientific American, involves what we should do if we encounter alien life forms up close and personal. Shake hands? Run? See if it’s holding a cookbook?
Can we outrun them?
“Despite the naive storylines about interstellar travel in science fiction, biological creatures were not selected by Darwinian evolution to survive travel between stars. Such a trip would necessarily span many generations, since even at the speed of light, it would take tens of thousands of years to travel between stars in our galaxy’s disk and 10 times longer across its halo. If we ever encounter traces of aliens, therefore, it will likely be in the form of technology, not biology.”
Science fiction is naïve? Avi is obviously not interested in making friends and doesn’t seem to accept the idea of time-and-space-spanning wormholes. In this paper, he refines his ʻOumuamua idea down to the alien being level – the creatures he thinks we’ll encounter from other solar systems will be technological … the alien equivalent of AI robots. In his techno-Darwinian world, these ‘aliens’ would be able to survive time and aging – they would be equipped with self-repair mechanisms with self-learning that allows them to adapt as they travel in a kind of robotic survival-of-the-fittest evolution. With ʻOumuamua gone, Loeb uses the Tic-Tac UFOs as his example of something humans are encountering right here on Earth that could be an autonomous techno-being from another solar system. That leads him to the real ‘big question’ of the article.
“How could we tell whether an autonomous extraterrestrial AI system is a friend or a foe?”
Look them in the ‘eye’?
goes from the near future to the ancient past for an example – the story of the Trojan Horse – to illustrate that it’s not an easy task. He suggests a three-step process – study the behavior of the probes to determine what they are seeking, examine how they respond to our actions, and engage with them in a way that would promote our interests. Let’s see … the Tic-Tac UFOs are flying and diving around Navy jets and ships, they seem to be toying with both as they evade and escape with ease, and we’ve engaged by not engaging. Does this sound like a good plan for future techno-alien encounters? Loeb says no.
“Ultimately, we might need to employ our own AI in order to properly interpret the alien AI. The experience will be as humbling as relying on our kids to make sense of new content on the internet by admitting that their computer skills exceed ours. The quality of expertise and AI might be more important than physical strength or natural intelligence in determining the outcome of a technological battlefield.”
He proposes forming an international team of top techies in the areas of computing, physics and strategy (finally – gamers get some recognition) to sell the ‘AI to AI’ response to world leaders who would rather use force first and ask questions later – the way we’ve always dealt with adversaries and invaders … successfully or not. That just what Loeb warns against – we can’t use brute force against alien AI (sorry, Will Smith). We have to rely on scientists and advanced and evolved AI to overcome threats from alien technological equipment.
Are you sure about this, Avi?
Rely on science? Depend on autonomous machines? Based on what’s going on in the world today, perhaps Avi Loeb should have recommended the international team of techies include a few top salespersons too. Topic for your next theory, Avi?
UFO Sighted By The Eiffel Tower, Paris, France ( July 15, 2021 )
UFO Sighted flying beside the Eiffel Tower, Paris, France on July 15, 2021 : Sighted from a car beside Champ de Mars
credit : UFOCHANNEL1
UFOs Sighted Over Baltimore, Maryland ( July 13, 2021 )
Impressive Display of UFOs were sighted over the skies of Baltimore, A City in Maryland on July 13, 2021
credit : U.S.F
UFOs Sighted Over Oaxaca, Mexico ( June 11, 2021 )
Impressive UFO record was sighted over the skies of the city of Oaxaca de Juárez, or Oaxaca, on June 11, 2021
credit : U.S.F
UFO Sighted Over Phoenix, Arizona ( July 15, 2021 )
A massive UFO was sighted over the hills of Phoenix Arizona on July 15, 2021
STATEMENT : Phoenix, Arizona July 15, 2021
credit : U.S.F
2; Me here chilling in my room.
UFOs Vs Planes ( July 15, 2021 )
UFO Institute Special : UFOs x Planes UFOs follow military planes. This is the newest record of an UFO that follows an airplane, passes through it and flies away, showing us that there is an unknown technology and far superior to ours.
UFO filmed in the woods of Siberia, Russa – July 2021
UFO filmed in the woods of Siberia, Russa – July 2021
Here’s one possible sighting of a triangle UFO hovering in the sky above Noyabrsk in Siberia, Russia. Author said those lights were gone after about 30 minutes.
Mysterious “300 km metallic object” under the ice of Antarctica (Video)
Mysterious “300 km metallic object” under the ice of Antarctica (Video)
Antarctica has always had a lot of mysteries and secrets, from hosting the supposed entrance to the hollow Earth, to being part of a “barrier” that would delimit the supposed flat Earth.
Today all its secrets are under the ice, although it begins to reveal some clues that amaze geologists, archaeologists, scientists, popularizers and even great world personalities.
A scientific group led by Professor Ralph Von Frese in 2006 found a huge crater. It contained an incomprehensible dense mass, the width of which was about 300 kilometers.
Scientists believe that under miles of ice in Antarctica lie the remains of a giant asteroid.
But at the same time, it remains a mystery how the Earth remained intact after colliding with such an incredibly large object.
Other experts believe that there is definitely a space body in Antarctica, but so far there is no way to get to it and start studying. An expedition of this nature requires many resources.
If we talk about the cost of the expedition, then the price will be approximately the same as the price of a manned flight to the Red Planet.
While scientists have not received any precise information about a strange object, conspiracy theorists offer their versions.
Many are sure that a huge alien spacecraft crashed in this place. However others believe that a base was built in that place by extraterrestrial beings.
For many of those who know the characteristics of Antarctica, this is a frozen “time capsule” that contains lost clues about life, long before humans appeared as we know them today.
I have written about this before, but this story just got a whole lot stranger. In previous years, most Americans haven’t been too concerned when giant swarms of insects have devoured crops on the other side of the globe, but now this is actually happening right here in the good old United States of America on a massive scale. The hot, dry conditions in the western half of the nation have created ideal conditions for grasshoppers to flourish, and millions upon millions of them are now wreaking havoc wherever they go. In fact, the National Weather Service says that some of the grasshopper swarms are so large that they are showing up on radar…
The National Weather Service (NWS) Glasgow says the radar is lighting up, but not with rain.
Instead, the radar is picking up “countless” grasshoppers in the area according to a post from the NWS.
The grasshoppers are flying as high as 10,000 feet above the ground and are being picked up by the radar the NWS said.
I have never heard of such a thing happening in this nation in my entire lifetime.
They’re arriving in swarms so dense it can appear the earth is moving. They’re covering roads and fields, pelting ATV riders, and steadily devouring grains and grass to the bedevilment of farmers and ranchers.
A massive population of grasshoppers is proliferating in the sweltering American west, where a deep drought has made for ideal conditions for grasshopper eggs to hatch and survive into adulthood.
Agricultural production in the western half of the country was already going to be below expectations because of the endless megadrought, and now these grasshoppers are “steadily devouring” fields that farmers have meticulously cultivated.
Not only that, grasshoppers are also eating much of what our cattle herds were supposed to be eating as well…
Grasshoppers, which thrive in hot, dry weather, have been defoliating trees and competing with cattle for food — and the bugs are winning. Ranchers are selling cattle “due to poor forage conditions and a lack of feed,” according to the latest US drought monitor.
This is not a small problem that we are talking about.
Around 93% of the West is in some level of drought this week, and a bizarre impact of this pernicious dry condition is the explosion of the grasshopper population. Grasshoppers have devoured so much vegetation that many ranchers fear rangelands could be stripped bare.
A 2021 grasshopper hazard map from the US Department of Agriculture shows each square yard of land contains at least 15 grasshoppers in parts of Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, Colorado, and Nebraska.
That is nuts. I knew that this crisis was bad, but I didn’t know that it was this bad.
From the moment that they are born until the moment they die, these grasshoppers are constantly eating.
In the past, I have used the term “voracious” to describe them, and that is precisely what they are. They are never satisfied, and they are always looking for new fields to ravage.
One rancher in southern Oregon is absolutely horrified that they have shown up in his area in such massive numbers this year…
“I can only describe grasshoppers in expletives,” said Richard Nicholson, a cattle rancher in Fort Klamath, a small community in southern Oregon, who once recalled seeing grasshopper bands eat 1,000 acres a day and cover the ground like snow. The insects cause innumerable headaches for farmers and ranchers, competing with cattle for tough-to-find wild forage and costing tens of thousands of dollars in lost crops and associated costs. “They are a scourge of the Earth … They just destroy the land, destroy the crops. They are just a bad, bad predator.”
Needless to say, this is yet another factor which will have a huge impact on agricultural production this year.
Food prices have already been rising quite aggressively in recent months, and this certainly isn’t going to help matters.
Just when you think that things can’t possibly get any worse in the western half of the country, somehow they do, and many believe that what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.
Scientists are telling us that there is no end in sight for the endless megadrought that is affecting so many western states right now, and that means that the grasshoppers will be with us for the foreseeable future as well.
The summer of 2021 is only a couple of weeks old, but already there have been so many problems. Hopefully things will start to return to “normal” soon, but personally I have a feeling that a whole lot more chaos is just around the corner.
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UFO Sightings Are Reported around the World Every Year
UFO Sightings Are Reported around the World Every Year
Human Wrongs WatchBy William Becker*Why we should take extraterrestrial intelligence seriously
Speculation about extraterrestrial presences has been around a very long time | Image from Wall Street International
Horatio upon seeing the ghost of his father: “O day and night, but this is wonderous strange.” Hamlet: “Therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
(Shakespeare in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5)
15 July 2021 (Wall Street International)* — If someone wanted to ruin his career, taking UFOs seriously has been a good way to do it. In polite circles, the idea that nonhuman species are visiting Earth from distant civilizations has ranked high on the kook scale. Now that might be changing.
Speculation about extraterrestrial presences has been around a very long time, from theories about crop circles to speculations that advanced civilizations have intervened in human affairs occasionally to help us avert crises or boost our intelligence.
What’s new is that straight-laced military officials in the United States have just added a hint of credibility to encounters with UFOs.
At the request of the United States Congress, the Pentagon1 has issued the results of an investigation into UFO encounters with military aircraft. It turns out that military leaders have started taking these encounters seriously because highly trained and disciplined fighter pilots are not known for flights of fancy.
Thousands of UFO sightings are reported around the world every year. They became more frequent in the United States in the 1940s after it detonated the first atomic bomb.
The U.S. military began investigating in 1947, but suspended the program in 1969 after looking into more than 12,600 sightings. Its investigators left about 700 incidents they could not explain.
Then, in December 2017, the venerable New York Times published a front-page story that the Pentagon was still conducting a secret program to investigate its pilots’ encounters with airborne objects that displayed unearthly speed and maneuverability.
The popular television news program 60 Minutes recently interviewed two of the pilots and showed their videos. That reignited persistent rumors that the U.S. government knows much more about alien spacecraft than it admits.
The Pentagon was to give Congress the results of its investigations on June 28. According to pre-release leaks to the media, it concluded that neither the military nor the U.S. government was responsible for most of the 120 UFOs pilots observed.
Investigators found no proof that these were alien spacecraft, but they did not rule it out. Parts of the report to Congress were to remain classified.
The Pentagon has issued the results of an investigation into UFO encounters with military aircraft
Scientists have been trying for more than a century to find intelligent life somewhere else in the universe. They began searching our solar system for radio transmissions from other planets in the early 1900s. The search eventually expanded to our galaxy, the Milky Way, and became international in the 1980s.
Enormous radio telescopes have pointed skyward and listened for a signal from planets among the galaxy’s 100 billion to 400 billion stars.
Now, we may want to pay more to what’s happening on our own planet. Thousands of seemingly normal people claim they have experienced physical contact and communications with alien species. It would not be the first time governments have investigated phenomena that challenged our understanding of the world.
In this case, the search for persuasive evidence of extraterrestrial life on Earth seems as important as listening for intelligent life many light-years away or deploying our own spacecraft to scoop up evidence of life on Mars.
What are the odds?
According to Gallup, one in three Americans, regardless of their political views, believe UFOs are visiting from other planets or galaxies. A separate survey in 2017 found that half the people in the world believe in alien life and want to make contact.
Prominent scientists agree the odds are pretty good that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. Astronomers confirm there are at least 4,000 “exoplanets” revolving around stars in the Milky Way. They think there may actually be trillions. Some are in “habitable zones” where conditions are right to support intelligent life, as we understand intelligence and life.
The late astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in 1997, “There can be little doubt that civilizations more advanced than the earth’s exist elsewhere in the universe.”
Researchers at the University of Nottingham’s School of Physics and Astronomy concluded last year that at least 36 intelligent and communicative civilizations likely exist in the Milky Way, and there could be hundreds. Six years ago, NASA’s chief scientist at the time, Ellen Stofan, predicted we will discover alien life by 2025.
Their optimism is backed by math. Earth did not form until billions of years after the universe and the Milky Way. Humans emerged 200,000 years ago; our civilization is only about 6,000 years old. So, there were many billions of years for extraterrestrial life to evolve and create advanced civilizations before homo sapiens arrived.
If alien beings exist and are capable of interplanetary travel, their intelligence and technologies are obviously much more advanced than ours. If they have visited Earth, they’ve found a relatively primitive and barbaric civilization.
One in three Americans regardless of their political views believe UFOs are visiting from other planets or galaxies
Shortly before he died in 1996, Carl Sagan told an interviewer that he had been “captured by the notion of extraterrestrial life, and especially extraterrestrial intelligence, from childhood.”
But as the most important discovery in human history, “the stakes are so high on whether it’s true or false that we must demand the more rigorous standards of evidence.” Sagan encouraged us to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism until those rigorous standards are met.
However, for the sake of responsible risk assessment and interesting conversation, let’s assume that alien species are present on Earth. Why would they be here? In the military, intelligence, and national security communities, the understandable first reaction is that an alien presence threatens the human species.
On one hand, other species sufficiently advanced for interstellar travel undoubtedly are able to obliterate humanity with little effort. On the other hand, if that were their intent, they would have done it long ago.
Although governments have investigated contacts with UFOs, it’s less clear they have scrutinized the reports of individuals who claim to have had physical contact with alien species.
There are many such reports, ranging from alien abductions to aliens that have healed illnesses. Some “contactees” say aliens told them they are here to advance human consciousness because the Earth is important in the cosmic scheme, and we humans are dangerously close to destroying it.
Noted astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson points out that most movies about extraterrestrials depict them as monsters wanting to obliterate or control us. Tyson believes these are projections of how we humans treat each other.
“In our own civilization we know the consequences of a more advanced culture coming upon a less advanced culture; they get enslaved, they get disease-ridden, they get put in camps or they get slaughtered,” Tyson said.
“So it disturbs me a bit as an astrophysicist to have we humans portray aliens based on how we know we would treat one another rather than on how they might otherwise treat us given our highest and noblest causes…Maybe aliens are beyond us in every way including their capacity to treat one another kindly.”
The idea that aliens want to save us from ourselves comports with the increase in UFO sightings after the first detonation of an atomic bomb, the frequency of UFO sightings around naval ships and military installations, and the account of retired Air Force Captain Robert Salas, who commanded an intercontinental ballistic missile installation in Montana. Salas says the installation’s nuclear missiles were mysteriously deactivated after witnesses saw a UFO hovering nearby.
Some type of extraterrestrial intervention also comports with the fact that humanity is on a slippery slope to massive species exterminations, nuclear annihilation made more likely by the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the catastrophic deterioration of climate conditions that made our planet livable.
Imagine human scientists collaborating with vastly more advanced beings to develop limitless clean energy, reverse global warming, disarm nuclear weapons, end hunger and poverty, and heal illnesses ranging from cancer and Covid to the common cold.
So far, we humans have proved unwilling or unable to solve those problems ourselves.
Thousands of seemingly normal people claim they have experienced physical contact and communications with alien species
It would be surprising if security-conscious governments were not already investigating the many reports of physical and mental contacts with extraterrestrials. If they are not, they should, transparently with international involvement.
For example, we could create an Intergovernmental Panel on Extraterrestrial Intelligence modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)2.
An IPEI could combine the resources and work of several organizations already involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It could include astronomers, astrophysicists, ethnologists, anthropologists, linguists, social scientists, physicians, psychologists and other experts qualified to evaluate any credible evidence of encounters between humans and aliens.
In the United States, the newest branch of the military, the Space Force, should be renamed the Space Corps to replace the connotation of conflict with that of collaboration.
The Corps’ mission should be peaceful operations in space as well as protecting America’s assets there. Among other things, it could monitor, document and attempt to communicate with further UFO activity.
We can ridicule these reports of close encounters and dismiss them as fantasy, overactive imaginations, psychosis, mass hysteria, too many video games, psychedelics, or “deep state” conspiracies. Or we can do what science does best: Turn speculation into knowledge.
We have nothing to lose and much to gain by treating this seriously. In fact, we should hope for the benign presence of extraterrestrial intelligence here. We humans clearly can use all the help we can get.
Notes
1 The Pentagon is the name of Defense Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is often used as a collective noun for America’s military commanders.
2 The IPCC was created by the United Nations in 1988 to foster collaboration among the world’s climate scientists.
Marshall McLuhan told us the medium is the message and philosopher Jacques Derrida reminded us that the message is the message.
What both forgot to highlight is the messenger.
My company – IA – provides surveys to TV owners and managements about how their staffers, on-air and to-be, fare when it comes to viewer acceptance. We use social demographics and psychometric data in our analyses of who is liked and disliked visually.
I find myself doing the same when it comes to seeing or reading UFO material, much of it online or via television programming.
Let me note that Facebook has been a revelation…
While I (and others: Diana Pasulka, fraudster Kal Korff, von Däniken, nowadays, et al.) use publicity shots of a kind to present ourselves as relatively vibrant and unugly, many UFO long-timers do not.
The now infirm, many in ill-health (which shows), scruffy (unshaven or bearded), sloppy and unattractive, even homely showcase themselves as if looks don’t matter.
They don’t matter, really, but when one is presenting a message, they do. (The studies, listed at our site offer bona vides.)
Jacques Vallee and J. Allen Hynek always maintained their credibility by offering a façade of dignity and well-kempt propriety, no sleaziness in their presentations.
Online photos of bedraggled persons, offering what they hope are messages with credibility and cachet offset their intent and wish by packaging that message with homely wrapping.
You can suggest that what I’m making a case for – augmented UFO presentations since the phenomenon is intrinsically iffy itself – is without merit: no one cares about how one looks, or shouldn’t care.
But that’s not how the psychology of acceptance works.
RR
http://ufocon.blogspot.com – The UFO Iconoclast(s)
Woman Terrified by Nighttime UFO Encounter and Tells Husband to "Come Inside, Now" They Heard It!
Woman Terrified by Nighttime UFO Encounter and Tells Husband to "Come Inside, Now" They Heard It!
Woman Terrified by Nighttime UFO Encounter and Tells Husband to “Come Inside, Now” They Heard It!
We are living in very unique, changing times and during these times I have become more than intrigued by these changes and what is causing them. I’m referring to the earth changes, changes in our sun and how the earth’s atmosphere manages this what I believe to be a much different sunlight.
Over the last 10 years I have become very familiar with our planet, the mechanics of it and how it reacts to many different aspects of space weather and many other things as well. I monitor everything from the sea floor to the cosmos and everything in between. I am a full-time Watchman and as these uncertain times move forward I’ve got your back. When you really need to know…you’ll know.
UFO Sighted Over Wellington, New Zealand ( July 14, 2021 )
Impressive UFO Sighted over Porirua, Wellington, New Zealand
STATEMENT :Witnessed and recorded near Wellington, New Zealand last evening!
Have i just seen UFO? I went back to the same spot this morning and saw the hill lookalike is actually a roof top and Colonial Knob lookout behind that rooftop. I think it could be just cars on that Colonial Knob lookout.
: July 14, 2021 : 18:47
credit : Harry Nguyen
UFO Transported and Escorted ( July 15, 2021 )
UFO Transported and Escorted on July 15, 2021 : Eyewitness watch as a UFO is seen being transported by a police convoy on the back on a truck at night
Strange Skies Over Tianjin, China ( July 12, 2021 )
Video compilation of Strange Skies, Strange Clouds, Lenticular clouds, Sand Storms, Shelf Clouds, Tornados : June - July 2021
VIDEO 1 : Tianjin, China : July 12, 2021 VIDEO 2 : Sumatra, Indonesia. July 7,.2021 : By: Muhamm Daqil. VIDEO 3 : Inner Mongolia, China : June 28, 2021 : From eatlovepray21 VIDEO 4 : Coolidge, Arizona : July 10, 2021 : By : Jessica Sanchez. VIDE0 5 : Long Island, New York : July 7, 2021 : By: Erika Mthr.efr. VIDEO 6 : From Cody Alcorn VIDEO 7 : Georgia : July 12, 2021 : By Eli Brown VIDEO 8 : Iowa : July 10, 2021 : credit : WeatherNation : no audio VIDEO 9 ; Brasil : July 9, 2021 ; By U.S.F VIDEO 10 : New Zealand : July 14, 2021 : by 𝓑𝓮𝓽𝓱&𝓑𝓾𝓭𝓭𝓮𝓻𝓫𝓾𝓭
I found a huge alien base on the surface within a crater on earths moon. The structure is found in Delisle crater which is 27km in diameter. That makes this structure above to be more than 10km by 10km across! Thats a city! This photo is original and was inserted into a scientific PDF document from a NASA book. Its on a NASA official link so yes it they posted it online. It's on page 191 of the document.
The walls in the above structure are over 1km tall and over 20km long in total. Any archaeologist would say this is an ancient structure, but of course the youth will lack the experience, practice and focus that it takes both to find these structures and to see them. This is 100% proof that alien cities sit on the moons surface right in front of us!
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
DO YOU NOTICE THE HUGE OPEN DOORWAY IN THE STRUCTURE ON THE FAR LEFT?
ITS AN ENTRANCE TO AN UNDERGROUND ALIEN BASE.
FULL PHOTO BUT I ADDED YELLOW COLOR TO HELP YOU SEE WHAT I SEE.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
UFO sightings reports MUFON 2020
9-11 UFO Sightings - MUFON Special Report 2020
Mufon TV Special Reports of the 911 sightings in 2020.
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These are reports that come our way, we are not promoting any viewpoint as to their nature unless noted.
Case 111396
A. N.Y witness at Whitesboro was quite shaken on Sept 11th to see 100's of orbs falling rapidly from the sky, While descending, many of the orbs broke out with a reddish orange glow around their aura The witness states that she found it strange that it happened on 9/11. What also was strange is one night later in Whitesboro N.y Case 111412 , which we are going to see shortly, was reported also describing orbs falling from the sky with giant fireballs coming out of the top of them. Take a look at our first report on Sept 11th.
Case 111448
During the 9/11 tribute in Harrisburg N.Y. a witness at 9:12 pm reported strange lights appearing around the bright blue spot light over the freedom tower. He shared 4 different photos with us to prove he was not crazy, all of them showing the same thing “. Well actually no, we don’t think this is crazy. You may be interested to know this was the almost the exact same that was reported out of Petersburg Florida in case 111386 also on 911. Take a look at the video we have out of Harrisburg N.Y. then stay tuned for the next case in Petersburg.
Case 111386
A Florida witness at Petersburg reported a very similar case as 111448 in N.Y. on 911 During the tribute the city dedicated two bright blue beam spot lights . The witness states “I looked up towards the 9/11 tribute lights and saw what looked like rips in the darkness. 3 almost portal-like orbs surrounding the 9/11 lights. After about 15 minutes of observing them, the witness states they literally morphed into on amazing ball of light to then take off with movements and speeds that defy any modern physics. Here is the video we have on this.
Case 111412
A N.Y witness at Whitesboro N.Y reported a very similar case as case 111396 where we see 100's of orbs falling from the sky.on Sept 11th. The following night on Sept 12th another witness filmed several orbs falling from the sky in Whitesboro ejecting giant fireballs shooting out of the top of the orbs. A couple minutes later.the witness states that all the orbs flew away at the same time to the south at the speed of light. Take a look at the video
Scientists have long suspected that extra-terrestrial life exists out there, but could more of these alien life forms be getting closer to Earth year on year?
An interesting report in the New York Times might believe so, as it stated that last year saw a surge in UFO sightings recorded in the U.S. New Yorkers alone reported 300 UFO sightings — the highest number to date.
This raises a number of questions. For instance, are there just more UFOs? Or, were they always there but are they now flying closer to Earth? Or, did people just have more time during lockdowns? And finally, were the night skies clearer during the pandemic?
Unfortunately, no clear cut answer can be given. However, if we look at the numbers recorded by the National UFO Reporting Center in the U.S., the number of reported sightings last year was 7,263. That number is up from 6,277 in 2019, and jumps up radically from just a decade earlier in 2010, which saw 4,809 sightings reported.
The numbers vary over the years, but if you go down the fascinating list of reportings, they do trickle down, with some years even just recording one sighting. So there is a clear upwards trend.
Why are there more UFO sightings?
Another musing is that as more official agencies like the CIA share their official UFO documents, more people become interested in the topic and pay closer attention to what might be lurking above their homes at night. The Pentagon also recently confirmed that a recent leaked Navy UFO footage was real, adding fuel to the UFO fire.
Combine these factors with people having more time on their hands in lockdowns and clear skies, you have more opportunities for UFO sightings.
Interestingly, we may count more and more UFO sightings as time goes by, as companies and agencies keep sending more satellites to orbit, while others focus their time on building enormous cargo airships that truly could pass for UFOs. We suspect there may be a peak in UFO sightings in 2024, when this particular airship is due to soar to the skies.
In the meantime, to keep you occupied during lockdown you can have a little fun by checking out exactly where they've been seen through a cool UFO sightings map. Unless, of course, you prefer to take out your binoculars and look up at the starry sky directly.
Declassified Australian UFO report involves 'cat-faced' & dwarf aliens
Declassified Australian UFO report involves 'cat-faced' & dwarf aliens
A declassified report on UFO's encounters between 1957 and 1971 mentions recorded encounters with cat-faced and dwarf aliens.
Jak Connor @Jak_ConnorTT
The 58-page document outlines several interesting pieces of information surroundings Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), such as old reports that are relevant today and the United States' involvement with conducting research.
Page 24 features an introduction that states a list of three "weapon systems" that were extracted from data analysis of 1,000 reports of UFO landings or near-UFO landings. The report states that the creatures or objects outlined in the cases possess "a device to interfere with electrical circuits," "a device to induce paralysis," and a "heat ray."
Under the "Stalled Engines," it reads on page 27 that a vehicle stalled within the vicinity of a transparent mushroom-shaped object that had occupants inside with "cat-like" faces. Page 32 features Case 144, France, which states that two individuals came into contact with two "dwarfs" who used an object to paralyze one of the individuals. The paralyzed individual was unable to move or talk until the light was shut off.
This process will eventually see the 'dead' white dwarf star reignite and explode as a supernova, although the team say that this will not occur for 70 million years.
Until then, the pair will continue to orbit each other at the dizzying rate of one revolution every 100 minutes while the white dwarf consumes the subdwarf.
HD265435 is rare in that it represents one of only a few binary systems we have found to date that appear destined to go supernova.
In addition, the team said, the findings will improve our understanding of how supernovae form and could also help with studies of the expansion of the universe.
Scientists have identified a supernova in the making — two stars (pictured), some 1,500 light years away from the Earth, that are spiralling towards each other and certain doom
HOT SUBDWARFS
Hot subdwarfs are also known as 'extreme horizontal-branch stars'.
They are formed when red giant stars lose their outer hydrogen layers before the core begins to form helium.
The exact reason behind this mass loss is unclear, but astronomers believe that such can occur in binary systems — HD265435 — as a result of interactions between the two starts.
Single hot subdwarfs are thought to form from either the merger of two white dwarfs, or from the influence of smaller, sub-stellar companion bodies.
'We don't know exactly how these supernovae explode, but we know it has to happen because we see it happening elsewhere in the universe,' said paper author and astrophysicist Ingrid Pelisoli of the University of Warwick.
'One way is if the white dwarf accretes enough mass from the hot subdwarf, so as the two of them are orbiting each other and getting closer, matter will start to escape the hot subdwarf and fall onto the white dwarf.
'Another way is that because they are losing energy to gravitational wave emissions, they will get closer until they merge.'
Regardless, Dr Pelisoli explained, 'once the white dwarf gains enough mass from either method, it will go supernova.'
In their study, the researchers detected the hot subdwarf in data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS for short.
The team did not observe the white dwarf directly — instead, they were able to infer its precense based on how the subdwarf's brightness varied over time in such a manner that suggested a massive object was distorting the star's shape.
The astronomers next assessed the radial and rotational velocities of the hot subdwarf using measurements taken from the Palomar Observatory in California and the Echellette Spectrograph and Imager (ESI) at Hawaii's Keck Observatory.
This allowed them to confirm that the 'hidden' white dwarf, despite being smaller than the Earth, is as heavy as the sun.
Moreover, added to that of the hot subdwarf — at 0.6 solar masses — the stars together have the mass needed to cause a supernova, crossing the so-called 'Chandrasekhar mass limit' of 1.4 solar masses.
This, explained paper author and physicist Thomas Kupfer of the Texas Tech University in Lubbock, 'makes HD265435 one of the very few supernova Ia progenitor systems known.'
In their study, the researchers detected the hot subdwarf in data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or 'TESS' for short. Pictured: an artist's impression of TESS
Type 1a supernovae — those created in white dwarf binary systems — are important for cosmologists, as they can be used as 'standard candles'.
These are bodies who emit a specific type of light at a constant brightness, meaning that by comparing their predicted luminosity with how they appear when viewed from Earth, experts can accurately measure how far away they are.
In this way, studies of supernovae in distant galaxies allows astronomers to calculate the rate of expansion of the universe.
'The more we understand how supernovae work, the better we can calibrate our standard candles,' said Dr Pelisoli.
'This is very important at the moment because there's a discrepancy between what we get from this kind of standard candle, and what we get through other methods.
'The more we understand about how supernovae form, the better we can understand whether this discrepancy we are seeing is because of new physics that we're unaware of and not taking into account.
'Or simply because we're underestimating the uncertainties in those distances.'
The astronomers assessed the radial and rotational velocities of the hot subdwarf using measurements taken from the Palomar Observatory in California and the Echellette Spectrograph and Imager (ESI) at Hawaii's Keck Observatory, pictured
'There is another discrepancy between the estimated and observed galactic supernovae rate, and the number of progenitors we see,' said Dr Pelisoli.
'We can estimate how many supernovae are going to be in our galaxy through observing many galaxies, or through what we know from stellar evolution, and this number is consistent.
'But if we look for objects that can become supernovae, we don't have enough.
'This discovery was very useful to put an estimate of what a hot subdwarf and white dwarf binaries can contribute.'
However, Dr Pelisoli noted, this 'still doesn't seem to be a lot. None of the channels we observed seems to be enough.'
The full findings of the study were published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
SUPERNOVAE OCCUR WHEN A GIANT STAR EXPLODES
A supernova occurs when a star explodes, shooting debris and particles into space.
A supernova burns for only a short period of time, but it can tell scientists a lot about how the universe began.
One kind of supernova has shown scientists that we live in an expanding universe, one that is growing at an ever increasing rate.
Scientists have also determined that supernovas play a key role in distributing elements throughout the universe.
In 1987, astronomers spotted a ‘titanic supernova’ in a nearby galaxy blazing with the power of over 100 million suns (pictured)
There are two known types of supernova.
The first type occurs in binary star systems when one of the two stars, a carbon-oxygen white dwarf, steals matter from its companion star.
Eventually, the white dwarf accumulates too much matter, causing the star to explode, resulting in a supernova.
The second type of supernova occurs at the end of a single star's lifetime.
As the star runs out of nuclear fuel, some of its mass flows into its core.
Eventually, the core is so heavy it can't stand its own gravitational force and the core collapses, resulting in another giant explosion.
Many elements found on Earth are made in the core of stars and these elements travel on to form new stars, planets and everything else in the universe.
Impending Supernova Doom: Astronomers Rare Sighting of a Teardrop-Shaped Star
Impending Supernova Doom: Astronomers Rare Sighting of a Teardrop-Shaped Star
ByUNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
Artist’s impression of the HD265435 system at around 30 million years from now, with the smaller white dwarf distorting the hot subdwarf into a distinct ‘teardrop’ shape.
Credit: University of Warwick/Mark Garlick
International team led by University of Warwick makes rare sighting of a binary star system heading towards supernova
Star system’s fate was identified from its unusual light variations, a sign that one star has been distorted into a teardrop shape by a massive white dwarf companion
Supernovas from such star systems can be used as ‘standard candles’ to measure expansion of the universe
Astronomers have made the rare sighting of two stars spiraling to their doom by spotting the tell-tale signs of a teardrop-shaped star.
The tragic shape is caused by a massive nearby white dwarf distorting the star with its intense gravity, which will also be the catalyst for an eventual supernova that will consume both. Found by an international team of astronomers and astrophysicists led by the University of Warwick, it is one of only very small number of star systems that has been discovered that will one day see a white dwarf star reignite its core.
New research published by the team on July 12, 2021, in Nature Astronomy confirms that the two stars are in the early stages of a spiral that will likely end in a Type Ia supernova, a type that helps astronomers determine how fast the universe is expanding.
This research received funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council, part of UK Research and Innovation.
HD265435 is located roughly 1,500 light years away and comprises a hot subdwarf star and a white dwarf star orbiting each other closely at a rate of around 100 minutes. White dwarfs are ‘dead’ stars that have burnt out all their fuel and collapsed in on themselves, making them small but extremely dense.
A type Ia supernova is generally thought to occur when a white dwarf star’s core reignites, leading to a thermonuclear explosion. There are two scenarios where this can happen. In the first, the white dwarf gains enough mass to reach 1.4 times the mass of our Sun, known as the Chandrasekhar limit. HD265435 fits in the second scenario, in which the total mass of a close stellar system of multiple stars is near or above this limit. Only a handful of other star systems have been discovered that will reach this threshold and result in a Type Ia supernova.
Lead author Dr. Ingrid Pelisoli from the University of Warwick Department of Physics, and formerly affiliated with the University of Potsdam, explains: “We don’t know exactly how these supernovae explode, but we know it has to happen because we see it happening elsewhere in the universe.
“One way is if the white dwarf accretes enough mass from the hot subdwarf, so as the two of them are orbiting each other and getting closer, matter will start to escape the hot subdwarf and fall onto the white dwarf. Another way is that because they are losing energy to gravitational wave emissions, they will get closer until they merge. Once the white dwarf gains enough mass from either method, it will go supernova.”
Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), the team were able to observe the hot subdwarf, but not the white dwarf as the hot subdwarf is much brighter. However, that brightness varies over time which suggested the star was being distorted into a teardrop shape by a nearby massive object. Using radial velocity and rotational velocity measurements from the Palomar Observatory and the W. M. Keck Observatory, and by modeling the massive object’s effect on the hot subdwarf, the astronomers could confirm that the hidden white dwarf is as heavy as our Sun, but just slightly smaller than the Earth’s radius.
Combined with the mass of the hot subdwarf, which is a little over 0.6 times the mass of our Sun, both stars have the mass needed to cause a Type Ia supernova. As the two stars are already close enough to begin spiraling closer together, the white dwarf will inevitably go supernova in around 70 million years. Theoretical models produced specifically for this study predict that the hot subdwarf will contract to become a white dwarf star as well before merging with its companion.
Type Ia supernovae are important for cosmology as ‘standard candles’. Their brightness is constant and of a specific type of light, which means astronomers can compare what luminosity they should be with what we observe on Earth, and from that work out how distant they are with a good degree of accuracy. By observing supernovae in distant galaxies, astronomers combine what they know of how fast this galaxy is moving with our distance from the supernova and calculate the expansion of the universe.
Dr Pelisoli adds: “The more we understand how supernovae work, the better we can calibrate our standard candles. This is very important at the moment because there’s a discrepancy between what we get from this kind of standard candle, and what we get through other methods.
“The more we understand about how supernovae form, the better we can understand whether this discrepancy we are seeing is because of new physics that we’re unaware of and not taking into account, or simply because we’re underestimating the uncertainties in those distances.
“There is another discrepancy between the estimated and observed galactic supernovae rate, and the number of progenitors we see. We can estimate how many supernovae are going to be in our galaxy through observing many galaxies, or through what we know from stellar evolution, and this number is consistent. But if we look for objects that can become supernovae, we don’t have enough. This discovery was very useful to put an estimate of what a hot subdwarf and white dwarf binaries can contribute. It still doesn’t seem to be a lot, none of the channels we observed seems to be enough.”
Reference: “A hot subdwarf–white dwarf super-Chandrasekhar candidate supernova Ia progenitor” by Ingrid Pelisoli, P. Neunteufel, S. Geier, T. Kupfer, U. Heber, A. Irrgang, D. Schneider, A. Bastian, J. van Roestel, V. Schaffenroth and B. N. Barlow, 12 July 2021, Nature Astronomy. DOI: 10.1038/s41550-021-01413-0
The science historian recently discussed how society’s perception of UFOs has changed over the years.
The idea of aliens and that other worlds might be inhabited actually goes back to ancient times. The question was a matter of real debate among philosophers, scientists and theologians in the Western world by the 18th century and it was widely accepted that alien civilizations existed.
But something changed in the 19th century. That’s when you first start to see these reports of people seeing what they say were flying ships overhead.
The things people describe back then sound a lot like the things they were familiar with – they literally saw ships and vessels that would normally float on the sea in flight. Some people would see steam-powered ships.
But it’s really not until the summer of 1947 that people began to regularly speak of seeing flying objects that some attributed to extraterrestrials.
What happened in 1947?
A pilot by the name of Kenneth Arnold was flying his small plane near Mount Rainier in Washington state. As he was flying around he said he saw some sort of glimmer or shine that caught his eye and was concerned that maybe he was going to have a collision with another aircraft.
When he looked, he saw what he described as nine very odd-shaped vessels flying in formation.
After Arnold landed, he reported his sightings to authorities at a nearby airport and eventually talked to some reporters. When a reporter asked Arnold to describe how the things moved, he said, “they flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across water.
Some very clever enterprising journalists came up with the headline “flying saucers” and from that point forward they were flying saucers – even though Arnold never uttered the phrase himself.
A Gallup poll six weeks after the event discovered that 90% of Americans had heard the term flying saucer. This was the beginning of the phenomenon that some call the flying saucer era and the contemporary idea of UFOs.
Within days other people in the country began reporting having seen similar things in the sky. Within weeks the U.S. Air Force decided to look into the reports. Arnold’s story also triggered a lot of press interest and soon the international media were covering this story. It was a worldwide phenomenon within months.
Who starts to look into UFOs?
Two things happened in parallel: First were government-sponsored investigations in the U.S., specifically within the Air Force.
Starting in 1947 the Air Force set in motion a number of different projects all basically interested in one question: Do UFOs represent a national security threat? The government wasn’t interested in a deep scientific analysis of these things.
On the other hand, from 1947 to 1950 you had a lot of the general public who were just utterly fascinated with the mystery of flying saucers. What are they? Are they real?
If they are real, who’s behind them? Some people threw around the idea of aliens, but that’s not really the major theory that people bought into. Most people – if they thought the sightings were real – believed they were either secret weapons of the U.S. military or secret weapons or secret aircraft of the Soviets.
So out of this fascination developed what you could call the equivalent of fan groups – flying saucer clubs. Those became the seeds of growth in the 1950s and 1960s for UFO organizations first at the local, then the national and then the international level.
How did government programs fit into the UFO ecosystem? A lot of what the Air Force did was behind closed doors and supposed to be clandestine.
The government has released files over many years that show that a considerable number of UFO sightings were people seeing secret airplanes like the U2. It’s no surprise that the Air Force would try to keep strict control over what’s revealed to the public.
But that strict control is one of the many things that fed conspiracy theories over the years. The idea among UFO believers became “The government isn’t shooting straight with us. Somehow we’ve got to get these people to disclose all the information they know.”
What is the modern American perspective on UFOs?
Up until the ’90s the Cold War played a really fundamental formative role in how people in the U.S. imagined UFOs – both in terms of how we think about humanity’s prospects technologically, but also relating to the fears and anxieties surrounding the Cold War.
But when the Cold War ended, interest fell off. From the late 1990s into the early 2000s media coverage was nominal.
That all changed with the 2017 revelations about the secret UFO project in the Pentagon. This spurred on a resurgence of interest in UFOs.
The way the media were talking about UFOs had lot of the same elements from before: Are these things alien? If they’re not alien, are they from our military or somebody else’s military? Are the people who were pushing the narrative and stories of sightings operating in good faith or are these con men?
In so many ways this was all really reminiscent of the 1940s and 1950s.
Do you see a shift in how scientists think of UFOs?
In my conversations with scientists I’ve been seeing some movement toward a willingness to say, “This stuff is maybe worthy of looking into more seriously.”
The important change since the 1990s – specifically for astrophysicists and astronomers – has been the discovery of so many planets around other stars that could possibly support life.
I’m excited by the prospect of deeper study – both as a phenomenon that needs to be investigated by physical scientists but also as a social and cultural phenomenon. Mystery breeds speculation, and the UFO phenomenon is not a puzzle that can be easily solved.
The mystery part gives people an opportunity to ask big questions about not just humanity’s place in the universe, but about the limits of technology and knowledge. I think that’s why people keep returning to the question of UFOs.
China's Zhurong images its own parachute from a distance of 30 meters, July 12, 2021. Credit: CNSA/PEC
HELSINKI — China’s Zhurong rover has approached and imaged the parachute and backshell which helped the vehicle land safely on Mars.
The 240-kilogram solar-powered Zhurong captured the image of the discarded items on July 12 Beijing time at a distance of 30 meters away.
Zhurong landed on Mars May 14 after three months in orbit making preparations for its landing attempt.
The rover has now driven 450 meters in Utopia Planitia as of July 15 Beijing time, according to the China Lunar Exploration Program. The parachute and backshell are located around 350 meters south of the rover’s landing platform.
The heat shield from the landing sequence is located hundreds of meters further to the southwest. China has not announced a plan for Zhurong’s drive route. NASA’s Opportunity rover imaged its own heat shield back in December 2004.
Zhurong’s supersonic parachute deployed during the EDL sequence. Credit: CNSA/PEC
Zhurong has been operating for 60 sols and has a primary mission of 90 sols (92 Earth days). It is currently unknown if Zhurong’s mission will be extended beyond this.
China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter—which carried Zhurong and entered Mars orbit Feb. 10—is currently in an 8.2-hour orbit, allowing a pass over Utopia Planitia once per sol to help relay data to Earth across hundreds of millions of kilometers of space.
Zhurong is equipped with six science payloads, including a laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy instrument for analysing surface elements and minerals, panoramic and multispectral imagers, a climate station, magnetometer and a ground-penetrating radar.
Peter Grindrod at the Natural History Museum, London, told SpaceNews early June that orbital images of the immediate landing area show nearby bright, linear features that are probably a type of feature called Transverse Aeolian Ridges (TARs) which would be of interest to scientists. Zhurong visited one of these features June 26 (Sol 42) according to CLEP.
Grindod notes that there are numerous interesting raised mounds in the region, which could be inverted impact craters or possibly small volcanic domes, while some other features could be the result of tectonic activity. Zhurong’s route and ability to access these areas will however depend on science objectives and priorities and the duration of its mission.
An image returned by Zhurong showing a dune and the distant backshell. Credit: CNSA/PEC
Meanwhile China’s Yutu-2 rover is expected to complete its 32nd lunar day July 16 as the sun sets over Von Kármán crater on the lunar far side. The 140-kilogram solar-powered rover has covered 738.6 metres since landing in January 2019.
A Chinese science outreach account noted July 13 that Zhurong has covered ground much more quickly than Yutu-2 due to greater autonomy and ability to negotiate obstacles. Yutu-2 is also required to power down for the deep cold of lunar nights and high solar radiation of lunar noons.
Some have theorized that we made contact with a form of intelligent life but they aren't from outer space, they are ultraterrestrials from other dimensions.
AMR IMAGE/GETTY IMAGES
People have been looking for signs of intelligent life in our universe for decades to no avail. Many believe the reason we haven't been successful is because our universe is just too vast for us to find extraterrestrials.
But others say we're just not looking in the right place. Meaning we shouldn't even be focusing on searching for life on other planets — but we should instead be searching for life in other dimensions. Stuff They Don't Want You To Know hosts Ben Bowlin, Noel Brown and Matt Frederick tackle particle physics, superstring theory and parallel dimensions in this podcast What are Ultraterrestrials?
Particle physics seeks to explain the origins of the universe and the fundamental building blocks of matter by studying the irreducibly small particles that make up atoms. It's often called the theory of everything, working toward one single elegant solution to explain how matter and energy work.
In the Standard Model of physics, particles are understood to be point-like, like impossibly tiny dots. The Standard Model is still theoretical because there's still a lot we don't understand about the force of gravity. String theory is another model of physics, where instead of dots, particles are actually tiny strings, all vibrating together to create size and mass.
But for string theory to be accurate, it means there could be more than 10 dimensions, instead of the four we're used to experiencing: length, width, depth and time. Some of these dimensions could theoretically be places where the Big Bang never happened and the universe had an entirely different starting point. What would a creature from a dimension like that look like to humans from the fourth dimension? Lovecraftian monsters? Demogorgons?
Or maybe demons, or fairies from folklore? The late ufologist John Keel was a believer in extraterrestrials, but moved away from that after a time. He began to think that all the stories from folklore and religious texts were actually proof that humanity has indeed made contact with another form of intelligent life, but that they weren't from outer space. Instead, they were beings from other dimensions: Ultraterrestrials. Keel theorized that these beings could shape shift to look like anything, and attributed them to stories of demons, monsters, angels, ogres and changelings. He thought these ultraterrestrials likely had a sense of right and wrong, and that they were capable of manipulating mankind.
But why? If there are ultraterrestrials, what would be the motivation of a fifth, sixth or seventh dimension creature coming to the fourth dimension to make mischief? And how do they move between dimensions? Keel thought there were magnetic anomalies that made it easier for ultraterrestrials to materialize, but wasn't sure how they got to the fourth dimension.
What do you think? Does it make sense — or sound like nonsense? To hear all about the complex science and infinite possibilities of utraterrestrials and fifth, sixth and seventh dimensions, listen to the entire podcast as Ben, Noel and Matt delve deep into the strange theory of ultraterrestrials.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Podesta-Fish Leaked Emails: UFOs Had Landing & TakeOff Spot In Ocean Near Bermuda
Podesta-Fish Leaked Emails: UFOs Had Landing & TakeOff Spot In Ocean Near Bermuda
The US government spent $22 million from the $600 billion annual Defense Department budget on the secret UFO investigation program known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATI). It ran from 2007 to 2012 by former U.S. Army intelligence official Luis Elizondo. This clearly states that although the Project Blue Book was shut down in 1969, the US Air Force continued its investigation into the UFOs.
In the recent UFO disclosure reports by the Pentagon, there was a continued debate on USS Nimitz “Tic Tac” UFO incident and the navy pilots’ encounter. Some experts claimed that the UAPs could have been some advanced aircraft made by Russia or China. Apart from it all, there are the Podesta-Fish emails that contain the shocking details about the UFOs.
In 2016, Wikileaks revealed thousands of emails that were allegedly linked to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta. The tranche of emails thrilled the Internet when reporters associated with the New York Times were working on the groundbreaking story entitled “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program.”
What was in the emails? To understand it, let us take a brief note on John Podesta and Bob Fish.
Podesta was a political consultant who served as the White House Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton from 1988 to 1995 and as a counselor to Barack Obama from 2014 to 2015. He is a famous personality among UFO enthusiasts for his constant interest in UFOs.
John Podesta
He admitted that his biggest failure in 2014 was not to ask the government in the Obama administration for the release of UFO files. During Hilary Clinton’s election campaign in 2016, he declared he would convince Clinton to declassify as many UFO files as possible.
During the 1990s, Laurance Rockefeller took an initiative encouraging the government to release classified information about UFOs. The matter was already common in the White House. In 1998, The Post quoted Press Secretary Mike McCurry.
“John can get totally maniacal and phobic on certain subjects,” McCurry said. “He’s been known to pick up the phone to call the Air Force and ask them what’s going on in Area 51.”
Back in 2016, some emails between Podesta and a former IT contractor Bob Fish were leaked. Fish worked as Director of Advanced of Programs in Network Equipment Technologies from 1984 to 1993. He had been managing a highly classified, global network for a major DoD intelligence agency. Besides, he was involved in several “national interest” activities such as Desert Storm / Desert Shield and Operation Just Cause.
Bob Fish. Image source: Linkedin
The information leaked in the emails might change our perspective on UFOs. On March 5, 2015, Fish wrote an email to Podesta where he suggested that fuzzy photographs, crop circles, and witnesses accounts would not help to prove the existence of the UFOs.
“What was needed, he continued, was “hard scientific data collected from instruments that are known to be accurate and reliable.” Which, he added, was available “if one knows ‘where to look’ and ‘what to look for.”
He claimed that the federal government had been collecting data on UFOs since the 1970s, using the Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites.
In his next email to Podesta, Fish shared an incident that happened with him in El Segundo, a city in California. After the Project Blue Book was shut down, Fish met with a USAF official who worked on the program.
He told Fish that “there were times when they were diverted from these missions to track UFOs off the east coast of Florida. His claim was the UFOs had a landing and takeoff spot in the ocean east of Miami, north of Bermuda. He also claimed there was a specific electronic signature (frequency) emanating from them when they were going into or coming out of the water, so they were easy to track. On several occasions, they filmed the UFO as it transitioned from water to air or vice versa.”
This encouraged Fish, reaching to the conclusion that the Project Blue Book was never dismantled, just disappeared from the public eyes in 1970. The AATI is a good example that the Pentagon’s interest in UFOs has never vanished.
Ufologists and representatives of traditional sciences continue to argue over whether rumours of the implantation of mysterious mini-transmitters in human bodies have any real basis.
UFO researchers talk of an evil alien conspiracy. So much evidence for such implants has accumulated that it is becoming more and more difficult for serious researchers to brush them aside. Pravdareport.com sums up fantastical explanations.
As confirmed by ufologists, for some time now, tiny objects capable of implanting themselves in various parts of the body have been discovered in people: in mucous membranes, under the skin of one’s scalp, in the bones of one’s arms or legs – on any part of the human body.
As a rule, they do not cause significant discomfort and are discovered by chance, for example, in x-ray images, but once brought out into the light, they invariably throw researchers into confusion. These things, it seems, contain mini-transmitters.
This discovery was first reported a few years ago by therapeutic doctor Maddy Nolan. She was treating patients on the island of Whidbey (Washington State, USA), when she came across a whole group of adult men and women, every one of whom had these transmitters in their body.
In each case, it was the same type of subcutaneous implant on the inner leg, just above the knee. They were shaped like tiny cylinders and were so close to the surface of the skin that the affected area had become mildly inflamed and reddened.
When the doctor rubbed the area, the little objects began to decrease in size and disappear. Nevertheless, these implants remained under the skin of each of the patients she studied. “I realized,” wrote Maddy, “that each of these implants was emitting (or receiving) some sort of tracking signal or something of that sort.”
According to her survey, each of these people remembered the same thing. Whilst in their room, the person had suddenly heard a loud noise like a clap of thunder (some testified that they had seen a light), and following this, the person became aware that two hours had somehow passed.
These factors allow researchers to suppose that the event could not have occurred without the intervention of pilots or the technological methods of a UFO.
There is less basis for attributing this to fraud by earthly special services, firstly because of the lack of explicable aim for such a control and secondly, the structure of the implants itself clearly supersedes a terrestrial level of technology.
Ufologists have decided to analyze the mysterious implants with the help of laser-emitting spectroscopes. Darrel Sims, surgeon Roger K. Lear and others are involved in conducting this research.
D. Sims has created a new organization in the USA: the Fund for Interactive Research and Space Technology (FIRST) to elaborate rules for the realization of such operations as the microanalysis of the contents of substances implanted and the correct protocol for results.
Dozens of operations have been carried out here and the elemental composition of the implanted micro-mechanisms has been clarified. The results of a chemical analysis of these mysterious objects are astonishing.
They reveal a whole factory of elements created on a maximum area of 4×5 mm. The following list shows the composition of one implant, studied by Dr R. G. Lear: Al, Ca, Fe, Ba, Cu, Mg, Mn, Na, Ni, Pb, Zn, Si, Ti…
Ufologists have drawn attention to the fact that this is very similar to the composition of microchips used in information technology. Perhaps their function is also similar: to track people’s whereabouts, control their physical condition, complete an essential connection…
Or perhaps they influence the way of thinking and the actions of the subject, at the X hour. After all, we use tracking mechanisms on several animal species: birds, dolphins…
The possible aims of such tracking on humans remain unclear.
Official science and traditional medicine are completely ignorant with regards to this phenomenon. No-one has publicized anything or made any research proposals about the implants.
Furthermore, such scepticism has been expressed in the National Health Service with regard to UFOs and aliens that some enthusiasts have even come to suspect a successful cover operation.
Many explanations exist as to the purpose of the implants. For example, one theory is that the implant is some sort of energy block, capable of extracting all sorts of information from a person. Another is that it pumps out psychic energy from a person and perhaps even programmes his behaviour.
The theory that there are worlds controlled by parasitic alien energies in this universe is not new. According to this belief, crime and the never-ending wars on Earth are, in their own way, a giant line production of fear energies, on which parasitic worlds feed. Of course, traditional science rejects the idea of even discussing such a possibility.
If you could travel back in time and you wanted to warn Native Americans that invaders were coming to change their lives forever, how much lead time would you give them? A month? A year? A decade? How much warning would you give Polish Jews before Hitler arrived? That’s one question which needs to be asked of @futuretimetraveller – a self-proclaimed “Time Traveller From The Future” who posted on TikTok (the new preferred method of mass communication by time travelers – sorry, YouTube) that 7-foot-4-inch aliens with large yet familiar scary heads are on their way to Earth. How much lead time do you think he gave us?
“What you call Aliens will make their first appearance on Earth next year. The exact date they’re first sighted – May 24th, 2022.”
That’s less than a year away! Should we be preparing a welcome wagon or convincing Richard Branson to put lasers on his new spaceship?
“They are about 7 foot 4 and have long shaped skulls, dark grey and distorted appearance.”
Long shaped skulls, dark grey and distorted appearance — like this?
That doesn’t sound benevolent, even in the Shaquille O’Neal sense. However, he says they’re the good kind. Of course, the powers that be have seen “Independence Day” and “War of the Worlds.”
“This group of Aliens are called Nirons and come in peace and don’t mean harm but the U.S. attack them and begin the first of many interdimensional wars.”
“Nirons” … if that name sounds familiar, you may remember a different time traveler — @thatonetimetraveler — who claimed to be from the year 2485 and warned us on TikTok in April that the Nirons are coming from Neptune in five years and a war with them will cause a pandemic called the “Nozic virus.” Hmmm. Another TikTok time traveler talking Nirons. Wonder if they know each other. Care to comment, @futuretimetraveller?
“I am from the year 2491 and I was born on Saturn (I’m still human).”
“I met with an undisclosed man claiming he was from the future. He told me I have to be silent about this stuff or I will be silenced so I did. But he was never in my database so I figure he is lying so now I’m back to inform you about the future.”
Are they dueling TikTok time travelers competing for the right to save the world and become a hero in the 2400s?
“Q: Do we win the first Interdimensional War?
A: No.”
OK, if he’s not here to stop the war and save humanity, why is @futuretimetraveller (and @thatonetimetraveler for that matter) here? Do they know TikTok time traveler @authentictimetraveler, who revealed (incorrectly) that astronauts would discover a planet exactly like Earth (only a mirror-image) in our solar system on May 8, 2021? Or how about TikTok time traveler @timetraveler2582 who revealed that “Starting at 00h00 UTC on the June 6, 2026, the Earth will enter into three days of darkness.”
Don’t say we didn’t try to warn you.
Do you notice any common threads connecting all of these TikTok time travelers? Obviously, they’re all on TikTok and concerned about view totals. That sounds trivial for someone powerful enough to travel in time, doesn’t it? They all claim to be from the late 2800s. At least two of them refer to the Nirons. And, most importantly, not one of them offers any proof of their revelations nor any visible sign from the future … they don’t even reveal their pixelated faces like some other ‘time travelers’ in the past have done.
Could all of these TikTok time travelers be the same present time prankster? Perhaps it’s time to agree with the skeptical meter whose needle is firmly planted in the “Are you kidding me?” quadrant and send these TikTok time travelers back to the planet NFW. Or is reading their ‘reveals’ too much fun?
One more thing. If you really ARE a time traveler, can you give us a little more advance warning? If you really are what you say you are, that should be easy, right?
Just a couple of days ago, I wrote an article here at M.U. titled: “Retrieved UFOs and Dead Aliens: Have Their Ever Been Any? Nope.” One of the things I pointed out was that the famous Kingman, Arizona UFO Crash of May 1953 had nothing to do with little aliens, but everything to do with little monkeys. In that same article, I wrote the following: “If you read the early, 1970s, material on the Kingman ‘case,’ you’ll see that [alleged witness Arthur] Stansel (while wasted on drinks, I should stress, and now dead) changed his description of the shape of the ‘UFO.’ One minute it was small and shaped like an aircraft fuselage. Then, he altered it to the shape of a classic Flying Saucer. Make up your mind, man. U.S. Air Force files demonstrate that in the same, precise time frame of the Kingman crash – specifically, during the Atomic Energy Commission’s Upshot-Knothole tests that Arthur Stansel played a role in – the military was secretly test-flyingdrone aircraft in the Nevada/Arizona area with monkeys on board. While the image of an unmanned drone aircraft packed with a crew of monkeys flying across the deserts of the Southwest might sound laughable and bizarre in the extreme, official papers establishing that such tests were indeed undertaken have surfaced.” Now, let’s move on…
I found the files on this story at the U.S. National Archives. So, I thought that today I would expand on what I know. The relevant U.S. government documents begin as follows: “Office of Information Services Air Force Special Weapons Center, Air Research and Development Command Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico re: Early Cloud Penetration, 1/27/56…In the event of nuclear warfare the AF is confronted with two special problems. First is the hazard to flight crews who may be forced to fly through an atomic cloud. Second is the hazard to ground crews who maintain the aircraft after it has flown through the cloud. What are the dangers to be encountered by the personnel who fly through the cloud?–How much radiation can they stand?–How much heat can the aircraft take? — Can the ground crews immediately service the aircraft for another flight?–If so, what precautions are necessary to insure their safety? The answers to these problems are part of a continuing research program conducted by the AFSWC.”
Whoa!
The documentation continues: “The program was originally started during the 1951 Nevada Proving Group atomic tests called Operation Greenhouse. At that time rats and mice were placed aboard B-17 drone aircraft which were then flown through the cloud. Upon return of the plan to its base the occupants were removed and subjected to test to determine the amount of radiation they had absorbed. In the 1953 Upshot-Knothole tests, monkeys were used so that experiments could be conducted on larger animals nearer the size of man[italics mine]. drone aircraft were used to these experiments, their speed more nearly approximating that of current operational aircraft. As a result of all these studies and experiments the scientists behind the scenes felt their knowledge of the radiation hazards had progressed to a point where they were sure manned aircraft could safely fly through a radioactive cloud.”
It should be noted that Arthur Stansel – who claimed to have seen the remains of a small alien body in 1953 outside of Kingman, Arizona – worked on the very same Upshot-Knothole project, at the very same time monkeys were being remotely-flown in radioactive clouds in the skies of Arizona. There’s more to come in regards to the document: “They proceeded cautiously at first, and the first manned aircraft to fly through a cloud penetrated the radioactive mass 45 minutes after bomb burst. The aircraft itself was filled with equipment to measure the amount of radioactivity inside and outside the plane, the temperature of the gasses inside the cloud, and other data needed by the scientists to make calculations and compare actual results with their earlier predictions.
The occupants of the plane were also rigged with various devices for registering the amount of radioactivity received by them. Some wore various types of protective clothing, others film badges designed to register varying degrees of radioactive intensity, and still others swallowed pills of wax-coated film attached to strings to show the amounts of radioactivity absorbed internally. The strings were used to suspend the pills in the center of the scientists’ stomachs and to retrieve the pills for later study.”
There’s this from the National Archives, too: “From the defensive point of view it is imperative that we know how soon our fighters can fly through a cloud in pursuant to energy bombers if the latter succeed in penetrating our outer defenses to bomb their assigned target in this country. Also, should two or three enemy bombers get through our defensive network, the second and third, or succeeding bombers may fly through the cloud resulting from the bomb burst of the first, and by knowing how soon our fighters can enter, the ADC can then plan on intercept procedures to try and prevent the remaining bombers from reaching their targets. At the same time these experiments to determine how soon our aircraft could safely enter a radioactive cloud were being conducted, other and equally important tests were being made to determine how soon these same aircraft could be reserviced and made ready to fly again.” And, finally: “While their achievements failed to receive the widespread acclaim accorded the flight crews who actually made the cloud penetrations, the soldier-scientists of the Air Force Special Weapons Center’s Biophysics Division were the real heroes behind the scenes. Without their knowledge and painstaking research we would still be in the dark ages concerning radiation and its effects on the human body.”
There’s no doubt in my mind that Arthur Stansel – who worked directly on Upshot-Knothole – saw a small body that came down from the skies. He didn’t see the remains of a dead alien, though. Rather, he saw a dead monkey, dressed in its little, silver outfit. Sadly, it was pulverized as a result of the crash of one of those aforementioned drone aircraft. The crash was hidden, but eventually leaked out and became a UFO legend. All “thanks” to Stansel exaggerating the truth.
My previous article was titled “Retrieved UFOs and Dead Aliens: Have Their Ever Been Any? Nope.” I was focused on why I don’t think there have ever been any real, crashed UFOs. In that same article I made a brief reference to deceased ETs. Like the cases that I think were actually “crashed UFOs that never were,” the same can be said for tales of dead aliens and extraterrestrial autopsies. Of course, the most well known alien autopsy saga was that of Ray Santilli that surfaced in 1995. Such was the interest in Santilli’s story (and film-footage, too), it still interests some people in Ufology to this very day. It was in the heady, X-Files-dominated days of 1995 that Ray Santilli let loose upon an unsuspecting world the infamous “Alien Autopsy” film. More than a decade later, and after a seemingly never-ending period of controversy and debate, Santilli finally ‘fessed up to the fact that the controversial footage was nothing more than a, ahem, “restoration.” So Santilli’s highly convoluted story went, he really did have in his possession 1947-vintage U.S. military film that showed the secret autopsy of a bald-headed, pot-bellied alien who had had the unfortunate bad driving skills to crash to earth deep in the harsh deserts of New Mexico. Ironically, however, Santilli elaborated, the real footage had supposedly degraded to the point where it was both unwatchable and unusable from a broadcasting perspective; and so he enlisted the expert help of special-effects chums to work on that aforementioned restoration. Hmm. There are, however, other – lesser known – tales of alien autopsies.
A still from the “Alien Autopsy” video
For decades, the now-late Ufologist Leonard Stringfield collected reports of crashed UFOs. One such case involving an alien autopsy (or, rather, an alleged alien autopsy) reached the eyes and ears of Stringfield in 1980. The story came from a typical “unknown source.” Ho-hum. In Stringfield’s case, the source was a Mr. “T.E.” The story told to Stringfield went as follows: it was 1953 when T.E., only twenty at the time, held a military position in the New Jersey-based Fort Monmouth. On one day at the base, T.E. and his buddies were ordered to go a specific room. They did so, then sat down,. A piece of black-and-white footage began to play. According to Stringfield, “Without any briefing, the 16mm movie projector was flicked on and the film began to roll on the screen…the film showed a desert scene dominated by a silver disc-shaped object embedded in the sand.” And, then, suddenly, “…there was a change of scenes. Now in view were two tables, probably taken inside a tent, on which, to his surprise, were dead bodies. T.E. said the bodies appeared little by human standards and most notable were the heads, all looking alike, and all being large compared to their body sizes…They looked Mongoloid.”
What I find particularly interesting about this story is that T.E. and his friends were advised to “think about the movie.” Not long later, the guys were told the footage “was a hoax.” It was added that: “The 5-minute long movie certainly was not a Walt Disney production. It was probably shot by an inexperienced cameraman because it was full of scratches, and had poor coloring and texture.” Then, there is the little-known story of Pennsylvania-based UFO researcher Joan Jeffers who – having read the “T.E. Report” – stated in a letter to Stringfield on February 6, 1979 that she, too, had spoken with a military source who claimed to have seen what sounded suspiciously like the same film – but, at a “radar facility” in Maine, USA around 1956. I have to say that T.E.’s story of the footage being a hoax – and that the guys should think about it – makes me think of the National Security Agency “plant” story relative to an alleged crashed UFO off Spitsbergen, Norway in 1952 that was mentioned in my previous article. Someone in the intelligence community, I suspected, wanted these stories to get out into the world for reasons that, so far, are unclear.
Two years after the T.E. story reached Stringfield, there was another development, as Stringfield said: “On a tip from Bill Hamilton of Phoenix, Arizona, at the MUFON Symposium in Houston, June, 1980, I was soon in communication with Ms. C.M. of Los Angeles, a successful freelance writer who knew about a secret movie allegedly showing a freshly recovered alien craft with occupants, filmed inside an Air Force hangar. The movie, in color with sound, and of 17 minutes duration, said CM, was in the possession of a person formerly in government service, whom she did not identify…one scene showed the removal of five alien dead bodies.” We now have to turn our attentions to the terrible Challenger Space Shuttle disaster that occurred in January 1986. Aboard the shuttle was astronaut Ellison Onizuka. He said that back in 1973, he’d seen film footage – at McClelland Air Force Base – that showed “alien bodies on a slab.”
Also in 1986, U.K.-based ufologist Jenny Randles was told of an alien autopsy. In the latter part of the year, Randles was approached by a man she referred to as “Robert.” He was on his way out of the military, so the story went, so he wanted to share with Randles what he knew. Supposedly, Robert had seen photos, rather than footage. And there was more than just one dead alien. There were several of them. When I interviewed Randles about all this in the 1990s, she said the following to me: “…there was a very detailed account that was mostly filled with medical jargon about the autopsy which he didn’t understand, and there was a photograph of this entity with a slit right down the middle from the neck to the navel.” Randles had more to say to me:
“One of the things Robert said was that the aliens were very human-looking. He said that the head was completely bald, but the most unusual feature of the face was the nose, which was almost flush into the face – almost unnoticeable. He couldn’t tell from the photographs, but the autopsy report made it clear that the beings were slightly smaller than average human size – about five feet in height. Bearing in mind, 1986 was years before the autopsy film [from Ray Santilli] surfaced. In fact, the connections with the autopsy film and with what Robert told me are chillingly similar. One of the impressions that you get from the alien autopsy footage is that the body is very human-like; and is around five foot in height. I have to say it struck me as soon as I saw the footage that this was very similar to what Robert had described.”
What I find intriguing about this whole saga is the fact that these incidents all seemed to have been staged. For example, “T.E.” was told to think about the footage he’d seen, but was later informed it was a hoax. Onizuka said he’d seen footage of dead aliens back in the early 1970s. No reason was made as to why Onizuka was allowed to see the film. And, as far as the 1986 affair of Jenny Randles goes, that, too, smacked of a staged event. Someone, I suspect, wanted Randles to spread the story here and there. To her credit, Randles chose to stay quiet for a number of years. I say we’re not looking not at any real autopsies. I say: models, films and dummies created by U.S. intelligence to freak out the Russians during the Cold War. Such a thing would not surprise me at all.
Mission: Apollo 9, 179 Nautical Miles above Earth, or 324km in orbit.
Camera: HB Hasselblad, 80mm,
Film: Kodac Ektachrome, Frame 23
UFOs that were over 2-3 km long have been seen and reported by pilots and other eyewitnesses, I myself have reported UFOs on the moons surface that were about 10km across in comparison with the nearby crater who's diameter is known.
Here again are three UFOs, long and giant in size flying past the moon and recorded by none other than NASA! Its a glitch, a scratch, a cheap lens on your scope...sorry boys, NASA buys only the best quality and highest performance parts for its observations, but thank you for playing. The original photo appears greenish, but I added light to bring out its natural color which I often do when I find a NASA photo thats unnaturally dark. It makes me think NASA is trying to hide something from us...and when I added light...the truth came out! 100% proof that NASA not only covers up alien evidence, but also knows about the existence of huge space fleets traveling in our own solar system.
All About Space magazine takes you on an awe-inspiring journey through our solar system and beyond, from the amazing technology and spacecraft that enables humanity to venture into orbit, to the complexities of space science.
On April 28, 2020, two ground-based radio telescopes detected an intense pulse of radio waves. It only lasted a mere millisecond but, for astonished astronomers, it was a major discovery, representing the first time a fast radio burst (FRB) had ever been detected so close to Earth.
Located just 30,000 light-years from our planet, the event was firmly within the Milky Way, and it was, to all intents and purposes, almost impossible to miss. The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) and the Survey for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission 2 (STARE2) certainly had no problems picking it up. "CHIME wasn’t even looking in the right direction and we still saw it loud and clear in our peripheral vision," said Kiyoshi Masui, assistant professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "STARE2 also saw it, and it’s only a set of a few radio antennae literally made out of cake pans."
Until that point, all FRBs had been observed outside our galaxy. "They’ve been billions of light years away, making them a lot harder to study," said doctoral candidate in physics Pragya Chawla from McGill University in Canada. April 2020’s discovery was also notable for being the most energetic radio blast that astronomers have ever recorded in the Milky Way, but what made it most exciting is that scientists are now closer to determining the origin of FRBs than at any point since they were first discovered.
That happened in 2007, when Duncan Lorimer and David Narkevic were studying data taken by the Parkes radio dish in Australia. Discovering an FRB so close to home has been the breakthrough astronomers have wished for ever since. "We can learn more from a source that’s 30,000 light-years away than one that’s a billion or more light-years’ distance," Masui affirms. "We finally have a nearby source to study."
One of the major problems with detecting FRBs, aside from most of them having been so far away, is that they are so fleeting. They’ve been and gone in the blink of an eye despite being 100 million times more powerful than the sun — they can release as much energy in a few thousandths of a second as the sun in 100 years. Ideally, astronomers would discover an object and focus one or more different telescopes at it, but the ephemeral nature of these bursts removes any such opportunity.
But despite these challenges, astronomers have succeeded in building up a bank of knowledge about FRBs, most of which has been based on the dozens of recorded events from beyond our own galaxy. For starters, we know they are bright flashes of radio light lasting for microseconds to milliseconds. "All-sky searches for them also suggest that thousands of these bursts occur in the sky every day," Chawla added.
We also know that most of them come from billions of light-years away. But while dozens of models have been proposed to explain the origins of FRBs — with progenitors ranging from neutron stars to white dwarfs to cosmic strings — have any theories really prevailed? "Well, we know that they come from very small sources — no more than a few hundred kilometres in size," Masui said. "And the most likely sources are neutron stars since they are both very small and very energetic."
The FRB discovered in the Milky Way is now helping astronomers to firm up such theories, and it’s become something of a breakthrough for scientists trying to get to the bottom of what is causing them.
Thanks to some nifty cosmic detective work involving the data of other telescopes monitoring the same patch of sky, observational evidence is now suggesting that the origin of FRBs is very likely a magnetar, a type of young neutron star born from the embers of supernovas with a magnetic field 5,000 trillion times more powerful than Earth’s, thereby making them the universe’s most powerful magnets.
But how has this conclusion been drawn? To explain, we must consider the work that has gone into studying FRBs in relation to magnetars, which are known to emit high-energy electromagnetic radiation, notably gamma rays and X-rays. Both of these erupt in short-lived flares, and there has been speculation that radio waves could be emitted in such a process that would pinpoint magnetars as the source for FRBs.
When this latest FRB was discovered in our galaxy — known by astronomers as FRB 200428 — it was found to have originated in the constellation of Vulpecula, which just so happens to be where the galactic magnetar SGR 1935+2154 is located. It was also accompanied by a burst of X-rays that further excited astronomers.
The first detection of X-rays from that sky region came the day before CHIME and STARE2 discovered FRB 200428. The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected multiple X-ray and gamma-ray bursts coming from SGR 1935+2154, which was known to exhibit transient radio pulsations.
Other telescopes were also found to have observed an X-ray burst from SGR 1935+2154 — crucially, at the same time as the fast radio burst. These included the Konus-Wind detector on board NASA’s GGS-Wind spacecraft and the European Space Agency’s INTEGRAL space telescope, both picking up an X-ray burst at the moment CHIME and STARE2 recorded the FRB.
How CHIME is used to discover fast radio bursts
Located in Okanagan Falls, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment picked up on FRB 200428.
For another check, attention turned to the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) located in southwest China. This fixed-diameter dish telescope detected a fast radio burst in the direction of FRB 200428 and put its location somewhere around SGR 1935+2154, which further cemented the association between the X-ray source and fast radio bursts. The latter was comparable to other FRBs found outside the Milky Way, adding to the body of evidence.
"What this means is that the FRB came from the direction of a known magnetar within our galaxy and the radio burst happened at exactly the same time as an X-ray burst coming from the same magnetar," Masui said. "It’s a clue as to how magnetars produce FRBs, but the community is still trying to work out what it all means."
What has become clear is that FRB 200428 is the first observed fast radio burst to send out emissions other than radio waves, and scientists have benefitted hugely from having discovered an FRB so close to home. The detection of the X-ray burst at the same time as the radio burst confirmed a magnetar as the origin, and it’s the evidence astronomers have been looking for.
"The discovery of an FRB in our galactic neighborhood is significant because the proximity makes it a lot easier to follow up the source with telescopes observing at other wavelengths," Chawla said. "None of the FRBs ever discovered have been known to emit at any other wavelengths, and this is the first detection of an FRB at a different wavelength. These observations can probe the source environment in greater detail, providing clues about the origin of FRBs."
CHIME in particular has proven to be an essential tool. Based at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in Canada, it’s a novel radio telescope with no moving parts, and it has a high mapping speed thanks to its 200-square-degree field of view and broad frequency range of between 400MHz and 800MHz.
"Most radio telescopes aren’t able to pinpoint the location of an FRB well enough to associate it with a known object. Those that are able to localize FRBs with great precision usually look at small patches of sky, and can only observe a patch about the size of the full moon. They are not able to monitor several known magnetars at once," Chawla said.
"CHIME, however, observes an area about 500 times larger, and it can therefore monitor all magnetars located in the northern sky every day, allowing us to detect a burst as rare as this one. It combines its localization capabilities with the large sky area, and that has allowed us to both detect this burst and associate it with a known object."
It’s been revolutionary and has quickly become the main observer of FRBs, with a correlator supercomputer processing 13 terabits of raw data per second to produce a radio map of the sky. "Our ability to detect far-off FRBs has improved dramatically over the past few years," Masui said. "Between 2007 and 2017 roughly 50 FRBs were detected. In the last two years, CHIME has seen several hundred. This is possible because of CHIME’s digitally driven design, where the light is focused using digital signal processing, making it able to see large swathes of the sky at once."
But the case is not entirely closed on this mystery.
The DIY approach to space discovery
STARE2’s trio of radio detectors were cobbled together by a student using household items.
As Chawla tells us, young, extragalactic magnetars form only one of the proposed models of FRBs. Bursts from known magnetars in our own galaxy have never been observed to be as powerful as extragalactic ones, and, for the purposes of the study into FRB 200428, astronomers inferred that the burst they detected was 3,000 times brighter than any burst previously observed, thereby making the magnetar model for FRBs more plausible.
"The burst we saw was still less energetic than most extragalactic FRBs, so we cannot say for sure whether magnetars can explain all FRBs," Chawla said of a burst that was a thousandth of the energy of any equivalent found outside the Milky Way.
It may be the case that weaker bursts are more prevalent and that it’s simply a matter of this one being close enough to detect. But when it comes to pinning the source of FRBs on magnetars, astronomers need to remember that they come in two guises: those that have repeating signals, which means they frequently generate the outbursts over and over again, and others that, like FRB 200428, generate more infrequently.
It could be the case that infrequent FRBs are caused by magnetars and the frequent ones are caused by a different phenomena. On the flip side, it could also mean that two types of magnetars may exist, causing the two different types of fast radio bursts, or even that the brightest FRBs are caused by objects other than magnetars. Only further research will shed light on the answer, since all we can really say for sure is that at least some fraction of FRBs come from magnetars
"It’s been suspected for some time that magnetars might be the sources of FRBs, but this confirms it for at least some fraction of them since we’ve seen it happen once," Masui said. "But we still don’t know how magnetars create them — we know the ‘what’ and next is the ‘how’: How do magnetars do it?"
As such, it remains important to discover what powers an FRB to emit such energy — perhaps electrons interacting with magnetic fields creating an ‘engine’ of sorts. "We would be interested in determining how extreme the properties of these magnetars need to be to allow a burst from it to be seen across the universe," Chawla said. "But the most interesting application of FRBs would be to use them as cosmological probes to study the distributions of electrons and magnetic fields in the universe with unprecedented detail."
Astronomers will also continue to look at how X-ray emissions and these bright bursts of energy are able to occur at the same time. "Whether or not all FRBs are created through the same mechanism is an outstanding question, and it’s subject to much debate among astronomers," said Masui. Given that, it’s clear astronomers will be delving into the ongoing mystery of fast radio bursts for some time.
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NASA has released a beautiful close-up shot snapped by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the globular cluster NGC 6380.
This Hubble image shows NGC 6380, a globular cluster some 35,500 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius. The very bright star at the top of the image is HD 159073, which is only around 4,000 light-years from Earth. The color image was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and near-infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Three filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / E. Noyola.
Globular clustersare densely packed, spherical collections of hundreds of thousands or even millions of stars.
They are among the oldest known objects in the Universe and are relics of the first epochs of galaxy formation.
About 150-180 such clusters are known to exist around our Milky Way Galaxy.
One of them, NGC 6380, is located approximately 35,500 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpio.
“NGC 6380 is not a particularly exciting name, but it indicates that this cluster is catalogued in the New General Catalogue (NGC), which was originally compiled in 1888,” Hubble astronomers said.
“This cluster has, however, been known by many other names.”
“NGC 6380 was originally discovered by the Scottish astronomer James Dunlop in 1826, and he rather immodestly named it Dun 538,” they added.
“Eight years later, in 1834, it was independently rediscovered by the British astronomer John Herschel and he — similarly immodestly — went on to name it H 3688.”
“The cluster was re-rediscovered in 1959 by the Armenian-Mexican astronomer Paris Pişmiş, who catalogued it as Tonantzintla 1 — and who, to continue the pattern, also referred to it as Pişmiş 25.”
“In addition to its colorful history of rediscovery, up until the 1950s NGC 6380 was thought to be an open cluster,” the astronomers said.
“It was the British astronomer A. David Thackeray who realized that it was in fact a globular cluster.”
“Nowadays, this cluster is reliably recognized in widely available catalogues as a globular cluster, and referred to simply as NGC 6380.”
Was Pentagon researching on alien and UFO-related incidents?
A mysterious UFO video uploaded to YouTube by a user named MrMBB333 is now the hottest debating point among conspiracy theorists and alien enthusiasts. In the video, a swarm of UFOs can be seen screeching across the space near the International Space Station (ISS), and the uploader claimed that these visuals were spotted from the space station's live feed.
UFO mystery continues
The YouTuber has titled the video ''Armada of Bright Lights "Swarm" the ISS on Dark Side of Earth! Hundreds of Them.'' In the footage, the dark space can be seen continuously interrupted with pinpricks of light flying past the space station. These objects appeared in different sizes, and it is still unclear what are they.
Alleged UFOs spotted near ISSYOUTUBE: MRMBB333
"It's not every day you see a swarm like this, in fact, I have never seen a swarm like this. I don't know what these are, there is no meteor shower ongoing, there have been no meteors... these bright lights are going in all different directions," said the uploader of the video.
Netizens suspect alien visit
The UFO video uploaded by MrMBB333 has now gone viral, and it has already racked up more than 48,000 views on YouTube. After watching the clip, several netizens also put forward various theories to explain this bizarre event.
Most of the people who watched the clip suggested that these UFO sightings could be irrefutable proof of alien existence. They even claim that governments and space agencies like NASA are hiding the realities surrounding the existence of extraterrestrials.
"Tonight (July 10th) I was sitting outside and noticed lots of these little lights in the sky. They looked exactly like the ones on the ISS video and moved the same. They were definitely not satellites or aircraft. Completely silent too," commented Lilli Pops, a YouTube user.
"That's gotta be the most impressive display of outer space visitations I think I've ever seen," commented No Pointing, another YouTuber.
If habitable worlds exist around certain stars, they’d have just the right vantage point to spy on Earth.
A view of the Earth and sun from thousands of miles above our planet. The stars that would be in position to see Earth transiting around the sun are brightened, and the Milky Way is visible.
PHOTOGRAPH: OPEN SPACE/AMNH
IN THE SEARCH for extraterrestrial life, we’re usually the ones doingthesnooping. But Lisa Kaltenegger, an astronomer at Cornell University, wanted to know who out there might be watching us. “For whom would we be the aliens?” she asks.
So Kaltenegger enlisted the help of Jackie Faherty, an astrophysicist who works at Hayden Planetarium, part of the American Museum of Natural History, in New York City. Together, they took on the task of identifying stars that might host alien worlds where the residents—past, present, or future—would have a chance of detecting Earth as a transiting exoplanet. That means their planet would have just the right vantage point to observe a slight dip in the brightness of our sun as Earth crosses, or transits, in front of it. This is the most successful method we Earthlings use to find planets beyond our solar system as they orbit around their own host stars, creating tiny blips in the light we can see with astronomical instruments.
In June, Kaltenegger and Faherty announced their results in Nature with an extensive inventory of stars that have either had, or will later have, the proper orientation to discover our planet. They identified over 2,000 stars, using a time range from 5,000 years ago, when civilizations on Earth first began to bloom, to 5,000 years into the future. Not only does the study provide a resource to exoplanet hunters by pinpointing which stars they should pay attention to, it also gives a unique—and arguably, unsettling—viewpoint of our visibility to the rest of the universe. “I felt spied on a little bit,” Faherty says, remembering the uncanny sensation of being overexposed. “Do I want to be on a planet that can be found?”
“It’s a lovely piece of scientific poetry, to think about the way all of these objects are moving through space in this elaborate ballet,” says Bruce Macintosh, an astronomer at Stanford University who was not involved in the work. As the first study of its kind to take into account the changing vantage points of stars as they have shifted over time, it builds upon previous research that used only their current positions in the cosmos. “We can now construct movies of how the universe will look 5,000 years from now in the future, imagining all of the stars winking out as planets get in their way,” he says.
The new result was made possible thanks to the latest data release from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, an orbiting observatory with the ambitious goal of creating a three-dimensional map of the positions and velocities of a billion stars. Combined with the planetarium software Faherty uses to visualize stellar motions, she and Kaltenegger found exactly 2,034 stars within Earth’s transit zone. For nearly all of them, any alien beings living on planets circling these stars would, with mature enough technology, be able to detect Earth’s presence for at least a thousand years. “In the cosmic time scale, that’s a blip on the radar,” says Kaltenegger.
But for human lifetimes, she says, it gives astronomers ample time to develop the tools necessary to peer into other worlds. Kaltenegger and Faherty hope astronomers will use the catalog to find new planets, especially around stars that aren’t very well known or well studied. From there, large-scale missions like NASA’s future James Webb Space Telescope, set to launch by the end of the year, can be used to study planetary atmospheres and look for signs of life. “This is a treasure trove of planets just waiting to be discovered,” Kaltenegger says. “I’m looking forward to what people find.”
The scientists identified 75 stars that were, or still are, close enough for any nearby planetary residents to detect the signals we have been unintentionally sending into space for the past 100 years via television and radio broadcasting. Another 42 stars will enter this zone in the future, with one reaching this vantage point in the next three decades. Of these stars, the researchers conservatively estimate that 29 have rocky planets like our own existing within the star’s “habitable zone” that is temperate enough for liquid water to exist. (Four of these stars have planets that have already been discovered.)
That begs the question: Should we be actively trying to make contact, or hide? John Asher Johnson, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, says that hiding is not an option—if intelligent life exists, they could find us. “We are a civilization that relies very heavily on the radio transmission of information across the globe,” he says. These signals aren’t limited to Earth-bound antennae, but “can be picked up by receivers across the galaxy” up to a hundred light years away. That range will only grow with time as the signals keep traveling further through space, making us even more susceptible to being found. Alien seekers on Earth have been using the same technique for the past 20 years at the SETI Institute, analyzing data from radio telescopes in search of civilizations on other worlds that might be transmitting similar signals into space.
Macintosh agrees that it’s too late to shield proof of our existence, especially across the span of 10,000 years, because any society with technology comparable to—or better than—ours would have seen Earth’s atmosphere change as we pumped carbon dioxide into the air. (Earlier this year, other researchers published a paper arguing that we could find advanced civilizations by looking for their smog.) But Macintosh also says that it’s a very human-centric approach to assume that aliens would use the same tools we do to explore the universe. “At this instant, transits are the way we’ve discovered most exoplanets,” he says. “But that wasn’t true 20 years ago, and it’s probably not true all the way into the future, either.”
In his own work, Macintosh uses direct imaging, in which researchers attempt to block out the host star’s light, and then take infrared pictures of the faint dot of a planet next to it. Direct imaging is difficult, and at times impossible, to achieve because stars are so much brighter than the planets around them. But when it can be done, it’s a much more flexible approach, since, unlike detecting transits, it doesn’t require a special orientation between star, planet, and observer. Despite the popularity of the transit method, Faherty says the chances to “hit that bull’s-eye” with just the right vantage point between all three objects is slim.
And while transits are great for detecting planets orbiting close to lower-mass stars, it doesn’t mean those are the only places worth looking. With proposed advancements in telescopes over the next couple of decades, Macintosh thinks direct imaging would be better suited to find Earth-like planets with distant orbits around more massive stars, like ours. “Transits are a bit like the ‘looking for your keys under the streetlight’ joke,” he says, in that they work well for places that are easiest to see.
One underexplored location in the search for habitable worlds is around white dwarfs, the dense, stellar corpses left over when a star explodes. Last year’s discovery of a Jupiter-sized planet circling a white dwarf made scientists reconsider the possibility of finding life in unlikely places. “If life could survive even the death of its star,” Kaltenegger says, “then the future of the universe would be a lot more interesting.” She and Faherty have identified over a hundred white dwarfs in their star catalog for astronomers to study.
Plans are already set for the two researchers to expand upon this work, as they anticipate the next Gaia data release in December 2022, which will fill in missing information about the movement of the stars toward and away from Earth. With this precision, Kaltenegger and Faherty will be able to reach across cosmic time even further, up to a million years in either direction. Someday, Kaltenegger hopes, scientists will be able to cover a 2 billion-year span, stretching all the way back to when life on Earth first started to alter our atmosphere.
Faherty also dreams of eventually sharing this work at the Hayden Planetarium with something like an immersive three-dimensional flight simulation, where visitors can “take off” on a spaceship and experience the motion of the stars that they otherwise could never see. “This is how we can tell the stories of astrophysics, of what we’re doing as researchers, by bringing it to the public and really showing people how we do our science,” she says.
In the meantime, Kaltenegger and Faherty continue to chart out which of our galactic neighbors may also be searching for us, and how their vantage points would shift across time. They liken the nearest stars to ships passing in the night; those with the shortest windows for detecting us might zip right by without a trace. But faraway spectators, ones with a higher chance of catching a transiting Earth, would find a very different world than the one we live on—and given the interstellar distances signals have to travel to reach them, they may not spot us until we are gone.
“This is a reminder that we are all in motion,” Faherty says. Our planet continues to move around the sun, the sun moves around the galaxy, and nothing in the cosmos stays the same. “Perspective,” she says, “is everything.”
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Pentagon admits that military planes had an encounter with a UAP
Pentagon admits that military planes had an encounter with a UAP
Documentalist Jeremy Corbell posted on a night vision video that was captured by a United States Navy destroyer. In which UFOs appear flying over warships. Now, the Pentagon has confirmed that meeting.
In the video confirmed by the Pentagon, a pyramid-shaped UFO is clearly visible.
The Pentagon admitted that a US Navy destroyer captured UFOs with its night vision camera.
Sue Gough , a spokeswoman for the Department of Defense, stated that the photos and videos Corbell referenced were taken by Navy personnel .
Pentagon confirmed UAP (UFO) encounter
UFO sightings by officials, at least in the United States , have become so relevant that they can no longer be hidden. Like the last case that has been confirmed by the Pentagon.
Gough also said the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Working Group, or UAPTF , is already working on its investigation.
This group is the one who is currently in charge of investigating and confirming the encounters that the US military have had with UFOs.
The Pentagon spokesman mentioned that, to maintain the security of operations and avoid “revealing information that may be useful to its adversaries,” the Department of Defense does not publicly discuss the details of the investigations.
The UFO topic has become extremely controversial in recent years. The amount of news and disclosures made by former officials of the government of the United States has initiated a “new boom.”
However, the images captured by different means still do not have a clear origin . In addition, official sources do not finish clarifying the matter either , so these could have different explanations.
The New York Times, during the pandemic, published an article mentioning the incredible increase in UFO reports . These sightings doubled in New York City, compared to previous years.
Jeremy Corboll, in charge of filtering the video.
Pyramid-shaped objects
The green hue video that UAPTF picked up was leaked into the documentary “Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers.” Those responsible for this film were filmmaker Jeremy Corbell and KLAS TV news director George Knapp , according to The New York Post and The Sun.
The small video from a night vision camera shows pyramid-shaped objects , flying low over the deck of a Navy destroyer.
Corbell, in an interview with the Mystery Wire portal, stated that the video was captured during a USS Russell deployment .
“This is not something foreign military, since they behaved in a way that we did not expect. And they had a non-streamlined shape. Like pyramids, they are flying pyramids! “
The filmmaker also said that the video was taken in 2019 and that he himself was in charge of verifying the veracity of it.
This he did, after obtaining data, from a Pentagon intelligence briefing. There, officials confirmed that the images were filmed thanks to the Navy, but they did not say much more.
One more sample that strange events are happening in our skies and it is increasingly difficult to hide the truth. Is the reveal coming? It is very possible and we must be prepared.
"Kepler has achieved what it was never designed to do, in providing further tentative evidence for the existence of a population of Earth-mass, free-floating planets," co-author Eamonn Kerins, a researcher at the University of Manchester in the U.K., said in a statement.
In the study, which was published July 6 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the team used data that Kepler collected during a two-month stint in 2016 during the space telescope's K2 mission phase.
During this two-month period, Kepler observed a field of millions of stars near the center of our galaxy every 30 minutes. In analyzing this data, the team hoped to see signs of rare gravitational microlensing events, which occur when the gravity of a massive foreground object bends the light of a more-distant star or quasar, acting like a cosmic magnifying lens that allows scientists to see objects that might otherwise be too far to spot.
Over the course of the study, they found 27 short-duration signal candidates of varying lengths, from an hour all the way up to 10 days long.
Some of these signals had been seen previously in other data captured from the ground on Earth. However, the data from the four shortest of these microlensing events is consistent with the presence of planets with roughly the same mass as Earth.
If the microlensing events spotted with Kepler were to reveal a host star, or a star that has planets in its orbit, scientists might expect a longer signal. So, by finding evidence for these planets but without the longer signal typically associated with a host star, the team suspects that the planets might be free-floating.
It's possible that if these are, in fact, rogue, starless planets, that they may have originally formed around a host star and were pulled away by a gravitational force by a more massive planet or object, according to the statement.
But spotting these signals was no easy feat, especially seeing as Kepler wasn't designed to detect planets using microlensing, and it wasn't designed to study such a crowded field of stars. (Kepler, which was decommissioned in November 2018 after nearly a decade of in-space work, hunted for planets using the "transit method," looking for stellar brightness dips caused when a planet crossed its host star's face.)
"These signals are extremely difficult to find," lead author Ian McDonald, a researcher at the University of Manchester, said in the same statement. "Our observations pointed an elderly, ailing telescope with blurred vision at one of the most densely crowded parts of the sky, where there are already thousands of bright stars that vary in brightness, and thousands of asteroids that skim across our field."
"From that cacophony, we try to extract tiny, characteristic brightenings caused by planets, and we only have one chance to see a signal before it's gone. It's about as easy as looking for the single blink of a firefly in the middle of a motorway, using only a handheld phone," McDonald said.
To do this, the team had to develop new techniques to analyze their data. However, while their results are impressive and exciting, they do not confirm the existence of these rogue planets on their own. Future observations with missions like NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and possibly also the European Space Agency's Euclid mission, both of which will be able to spot signals of microlensing events, could be used to help confirm the existence of these strange planets, according to the statement.
Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
From the way These Stars Look, a Supernova is Inevitable
From the way These Stars Look, a Supernova is Inevitable
Sometimes loud explosions are easier to deal with when you know they’re coming. They are also easier to watch out for. So when astronomers from the University of Warwick found a rare tear-drop shaped star, known as HD265435, they knew they were looking at a potential new supernova waiting to happen. The only caveat – it might not actually happen until 70 million years from now.
That might be an absurdly long time in human terms, but in astronomical terms it is the blink of an eye. Luckily, TESS, the telescope used to capture the data for the paper describing the system, which was published in Nature Astronomy, doesn’t have to blink. Originally designed to capture transits of exoplanets, TESS is especially good at quantifying slight dips in a star’s brightness. Sometimes, these dips are caused by planets moving in front of the star. But there are other explanations for dips in brightness as well.
Actual picture of HD 265435 in the star field. Credit – Simbad / University of Strasbourg
One alternate explanation for varying brightness is if the star was deformed. In the case of HD265435, it resembles a teardrop rather than the spherical ball of fire traditional stars resemble. So what would make a star deform into such a shape? The answer appears to be – another star. The star that is visibly dimming in brightness is known as a “hot subdwarf” – a type of star that is slightly less bright than the sun. Calculations that Dr. Ingrid Pelisoli, the lead author on the paper, made using radial velocity data from Palomar and the Keck Observatory showed that the relatively bright hot subdwarf star was in fact probably hiding a much dimmer white dwarf companion.
Given the proximity of the two stars, it seems inevitable that they will eventually fall into each other. They’ve already begun spiraling around each other, rotating around each other every 100 minutes. But what makes this combination particularly interesting is the fact that one of the companions is a white dwarf.
UT Video discussing the what makes a supernova happen so quickly.
White dwarfs are thought to cause Type 1a supernovae when their core reignites, burning with a fire so bright and consistent that it helps astronomers determine the speed of the universe’s expansion. This can potentially happen when the total mass of white dwarf and its surrounding stars have a total mass greater than the Chandrasekhar limit, or about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun. The combined mass of the hot subdwarf (about .6 times the mass of our Sun) and the white dwarf (similar to the mass of our Sun) exceeds that limit. As such, the system should go supernova when the mass is gravitationally crushed in the core of the white dwarf.
This system is one of only a few that are expected to produce supernovae in the (relatively) near future. And this is the only one that contained a hot subdwarf and white dwarf binary system. Estimates for the total number of supernovae expected in a given area can be gleaned both from methods of looking at other galaxies and also at modeling stellar evolution. But given those estimates of how many supernovae researchers expect to happen in our own galaxy, there aren’t very many candidates system where we are expecting them to happen. That means, despite occasionally finding systems where it’s clear one will happen, we might get some unexpected explosions after all.
Multiple UFOs Sighted Over Durban, South Africa ( July 11, 2021 )
Multiple UFOs were sighted over Durban, South Africa at the Springfield Value Centre, Umgeni Business Park on July 11, 2021
STATEMENT : Value Centre, Durban
credit : South African Indians
RELATED VIDEO
UFOs Sighted Over Brasil ( July 12, 2021 )
Impressive sighting of UFOs ( Unidentified flying objects ) over the skies of Brasil on July 12, 2021
STATEMENT : Brasil Alien UFO…
credit : U.S.F
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UFO Fleet Sighted From ISS ( July 12, 2021 )
And once again it happened again...
UFO fleet sighted from ISS ( International Space Station ) on July 12, 2021
What's really going on ?
note : no audio
UFOs Merge Into the Moon Over Teignmouth, England ( July 6, 2021 )
UFOs Merge Into the Moon Over Teignmouth, England on July 6, 2021
The four strange lights were caught on camera over Teignmouth, sparking speculation that it could have been anything from a ship to a flying saucer. Matthew Evans, 36, took the picture above after looking out of the window in his top-floor flat in Teignmouth. The student said within seconds of taking the pictures, the object sped off into the distance.
credit : devonlive
UFO Sighted Over Hokkaido, Japan ( July 13, 2021 )
This UFO or Unidentified Flying Object was sighted over the Japanese prefecture Hokkaido, Japan on July 13, 2021.
credit : Al.
Crop Circle Found in Avebury, Wiltshire, England ( July 4, 2021 )
The Tenth Crop Circle : Starry Decagram On July 04, 2021 in Avebury, Wiltshire, England, the tenth Crop Circle of the season was found. This complex figure has more than 70 meters and forms a decagram or a ten-pointed star. By observing from above, their configuration and symmetry are perfect, combined in light and shadow. In geometry, the ten-pointed star is called polygon or starry decagon. Your reproduction on paper requires accurate measurements and calculations. This symbol in most of its interpretations by experts and scholars represents the union between ′′ heaven and earth ′′ and at the same time is synonymous with ′′ harmony between man and the universe that surrounds him ".
credit : Stonehenge Dronescapes
UFO Sighted Over U.S.Navy Base in Yokosuka, Japan ( July 10, 2021 )
Impressive UFO sighting over the United States Fleet Activities Yokosuka, Japan STATEMENT : 雷を撮影中に偶然UFOを発見しました⁉︎ 本物だと思います！
TRANSLATE : I happened to discover a UFO while shooting thunder ⁉︎ I think it's real!
UFO appears from 1 minute 21 seconds (^ ω ^) The location is over the Yokosuka US Navy base. The weather is cloudy, but there are thunderclouds in the northeastern direction of Tokyo Bay, and the wind power is about 0 to 1. It looks like it is flying at a fairly high speed while shining. The navigation light is not blinking because it is not an airplane or helicopter.
US pilot talks about UFO incident ahead of landmark report
US pilot talks about UFO incident ahead of landmark report
The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence will release a landmark report based on the work of a US Navy-led task force established by the Pentagon in August 2020 examining unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) incidents. US Senator Marco Rubio was instrumental in commissioning the report, ordered as part of broader legislation passed in 2020. Retired Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich experienced a UAP incident in 2004, and has spoken to the media about it and her thoughts on the upcoming report.
Argentina has plenty of cattle. Argentina has plenty of reports of mysterious, unexplained cattle mutilations. Argentina has plenty of UFO sightings. And now, Argentina has a case of a cattle mutilation followed by a UFO sighting. Can investigators of both paranormal phenomena get together and figure this one out?
“A person who was doing rural work about 30 miles south of Jacinto Arauz observed a couple of weeks ago the unusual commuting of a pair of unknown lights in the sunset sky, at very low height. ′′ The Solo Man ′′ was at the place where he had installed his camp. From there he could see a dim light moving beneath another brighter object that was suspended in the air. Shortly after both lights melted into one and walked away from the scene at high speed.” (Google translation)
That’s not it – it’s not moooving.
Jorge Gabriel Román uploaded this report to his Facebook page, where it was picked up by La Arena and other media sources. La Pampa is a sparsely populated province in central Argentina and Jacinto Arauz is a small town there that’s dependent on agriculture. The witness didn’t appear to have reported his UFO sightings to anyone at this point. However, what he saw the next day caused him enough concern to report both incidents.
“The following day he resumed his work and about 500 meters from the camp he found a mutilated animal, like so many others around the world. The man was accompanied by his dog, who at that time began to bark. He brought his pet closer to the body of the dead cow to eat some of his meat, but this one didn’t want to approach. Images give account of the typical cuts that are made in these mutilation cases.” (Google translation)
Román points out that the photos (see them here) resemble other mutilations he has seen, both in pictures and in person. Román appears to be a local, if not national, authority on cattle mutilations and he reiterates that these incidents and UFOs often go hand-in-hand (or hoof-in-hoof?), causing many to conclude aliens hare harvesting body parts for inspections. This is obviously difficult to prove and raises many questions. Why would ETs travel all this way and only take samples of cows? The UFOs in this case were bright lights, which can belong to helicopters and drones – the witness does not report hearing any sounds.
On the other hand, Román reminds us of the strangeness of these mutilation deaths – the animals appear to have simply fallen down dead, other animals show fear of the corpse (as the witness’ dog did). This case had another strange characteristic of animal mutilations.
“A few days later, following his activities in the surroundings, the worker was able to find that the animal’s body was still exactly the same.” (Google translation)
The corpse showed no decomposition from decay nor by scavengers or insects. That trait often puzzles veterinarians brought in to investigate, with no reasons given for it. It doesn’t appear that a vet checked this one, but Jorge Gabriel Román did.
“Returning to the field where “The Solo Man” met the enlightened sky, I imagine him waiting for the silent flight of another unknown light of go one to know who, choosing which animal to maim, go one to know why.” (Google translation)
He’s a poet too. Too bad that doesn’t help solve the mystery of cattle mutilations.
Of all the planets in our solar system, Uranus is arguably one of the most unique and mysterious. Its discovery by astronomer William Herschel in 1781 marked the first location of a planet using a telescope, although ironically, Herschel initially thought the planet had merely been a star, or perhaps a comet.
Subsequent observations by astronomer Johann Elert Bode would eventually confirm the planetary status of the mysterious celestial object, which Herschel proposed naming Georgium Sidus in honor of King George III. The idea was vetoed, and Bode’s choice of naming the planet after the Greek god of the sky won out in the end.
Astronomer William Herschel
(Public Domain).
Along with Neptune, Uranus is one of two planets known as ice giants—a planet composed of elements heavier than hydrogen or helium—whose mass is comprised of materials that include methane, ammonia, and water surrounding a rocky core. Despite its status as an “ice giant,” the composition of Uranus is mostly rather warm and fluid, and there is hardly anything about the temperature of its core, which clocks in at an estimated 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Despite this, Uranus remains a cold and windy locale. Possessing the third largest diameter in our solar system, the planet is also curious on account of its rotation at what is almost a 90-degree angle to relative to its orbit. Thus, the plant has the appearance of a “rolling” motion with its orbit, rather than the vertical spin of our own planet.
Uranus is host to 27 small moons, as well as 13 rings which, arguably, are its most curious feature. In fact, some astronomers have called the planet’s rings nearly invisible, and seemingly impossible on account of the way that they seemingly defy the expectations of astronomers.
Uranus and its rings, as seen through the Hubble Space Telescope, with both its rings and an aurora visible
(NASA/Public Domain).
The planet’s 13 rings are divided into two sets — the inner rings of which are mostly dark and narrow, while its two remaining outer rings are a striking rusty red ring encircled by an outermost ring resembling Saturn’s blue E ring. Belts of dust particulate also rest outside some of the planet’s larger rings.
Despite the fact that so much is known and can be observed about the rings of Uranus, astronomers have experienced ongoing difficulties accounting for their appearance and behavior. One problem has to do with their composition: if the rings are composed of tiny bits of matter, it would have been expected that within a mere few decades that these rings would have continued to spread into a series of much wider rings.
Of course, in the centuries since its discovery, the rings of Uranus appear to have remained intact, although they have only been officially known to exist since 1977 when a trio of astronomers, James Elliot, Jessica Mink and Ted Dunham, made the discovery from aboard the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, which at the time had been fitted with a special infrared telescope. Despite this being the occasion of the “official” discovery of Uranus’s rings, earlier observations date as far back to Herschel, who also claimed to have seen them. In an entry dated February 22, 1789, the astronomer had written of his observations of the planet that “A ring was suspected.” An additional claimed observation of rings encircling Uranus also occurred again in 1847, though this account remains somewhat more questionable.
The Uranian rings, photographed by Voyager 2 in 1986
(NASA/Public Domain).
Indeed, if observations of the rings of Uranus appear to have been made for more than two centuries, it would seem unlikely that they were a recent formation, at least by human standards of the passage of time. Another curiosity has to do with the fact that the rings are nearly invisible, as their “official” discovery required the use of an infrared telescope. Astronomers have long contended that the rings of Uranus should be brighter and easily visible like those of its neighbor, Saturn.
The peculiar darkness of the rings encircling Uranus have prompted some astronomers in the past to consider whether they might actually not be rings at all, but instead tiny single satellites (i.e. moons) producing trace amounts of gas as they coast along in their orbits. This idea, proposed in the later 1970s by Thomas Van Flandern, would seemingly have accounted for some of the curious features noted about the planet’s rings.
Notably, Van Flandern had also been an early proponent of the idea that the so-called “Face on Mars” had indeed been a construction of ancient extraterrestrials and other less conventional ideas related to modern astronomy, and following the Voyager 2 probe’s visit to Uranus in 1986, images clearly detailing the Uranian rings seemed to have confirmed their identity once and for all.
Color enhancement of the rings of Uranus, photographed by Voyage 2 in 1986
(NASA/Public Domain).
Today, astronomers believe that the rings are indeed a recent formation, celestially speaking. Sometime in the last 600 million years, the rings are likely to have originated from collisions that broke apart several of its past moons, the particulate remains of which are believed to constitute the faint rings that are visible today.
And yet, astronomers still can’t determine what, precisely, holds the rings in place. An early theory bearing some similarity to that of Van Flandern had involved the presence of so-called “shepherd moons” near each ring which exerted enough gravity to help them maintain their placement. However, by 1986 with the Voyager 2 probe’s visit to the planet, only one pair of shepherd moons were detected around the planet’s brightest ring.
Despite our growing body of knowledge about our solar system and its unique qualities, many characteristics of our planetary neighbors remain mysterious, and arguably, Uranus remains a very special case in this regard.
This footage was leaked via a Department of Homeland Security agent. What you are looking at is a legitimate leak of a genuine UFO buzzing and then following an A10 Warthog from the nearby, Davis Monthan AFB.
The object in question was analyzed and found to be an authentic UFO of unknown origin that exhibited advanced flight capabilities. The object in question came extremely close to the A10, during its routine flight, and began following and even catching up to the jet before changing direction.
The A10 seemed to have taken notice of the object as it eventually turned and circled the same area again. The unknown craft once again buzzed the A10 dangerously close before taking off in the opposite direction at high speeds.
Towards the end of the footage, as the FLIR operator was observing the craft, it suddenly accelerates at high speeds and flies out of sight.
Filer’s Files 28 2021 Astronaut confirms Extraterrestrials Exist - PART I
Glendale, Arizona and Texas on July 3, 2021
Filer’s Files 28 2021 - Astronaut confirms Extraterrestrials Exist - PART I
Major George A. Filer III ret. USAF
New Jersey State Director
MUFON Eastern Region Director
In special reports, this week’s files cover: Astronaut confirms Extraterrestrials Exist, Joe Foster UFOs, New Hampshire Erects Marker for Betty and Barney Hill, Awake Abductions, Pliny the Elder Wrote About UFOs,Mutilations in the UK, Aurora 33a,
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas,.
New Weapons of Stealth War, C-60 and Strange Craft.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over, Canada, China, Columbia, Germany, and England in the United Kingdom.
The Filer Research Institute feels the scientific study of UFOs is for the benefit of humankind and is an important endeavor. The US Air Force investigated UFOs publicly for more than twenty years under Project Blue Book; and I continue this advanced research. I believe the God of the universe has spread life throughout the cosmos and UFO’s are visiting us in ever-increasing numbers.
Forward these files to your friends and neighbors.
Special Projects
NASA Astronaut confirms Extraterrestrials Exist
Astronaut Dr. Story Musgrave
Clark C. McClelland, former Secondary Control Officer
(ScO), of U.S. Space Shuttle Fleet writes,
“Space Shuttle Columbia during STS-80 took a crew of five astronauts into a 17 day, 15 hour and 54 minute mission around the earth, the longest flight in the history of this vehicle. During this lengthy flight a very strange event occurred that even had crewman Dr. Story Musgrave unable to explain what he observed from the shuttle windows.
A large disc shaped object appeared below the Columbia.The shuttle was 190 Nautical miles high above the Earth.
UFO Shot from Shuttle
The disc was first observed to miraculously appear from out of nowhere, flying through the clouds below and progressing from right to left as the astronauts stared in utter amazement. The outer rim of the craft appeared to be rotating counter-clockwise. It was very large (compared to common space junk and breakaway ice), approximately 50 to 150 feet in diameter.
Astronaut Dr. Story Musgrave, a Payload Specialist on the STS-80 Mission, was interviewed following the flight. As he viewed a videotape of the incident which showed lightning flashes in the atmosphere, the city lights of Denver, Colorado and other earthbound sights, he stated: “I don’t know what it is. Whether it’s a washer, debris, ice particles, I don’t know. But it’s characteristic of the thousands of things which I’ve seen. What is not so characteristic is it appears to come from nowhere. You would think that if it’s facing the dark side or facing a side towards you which is not reflecting the sun, you would think that you would see something there. It’s really impressive.”
During an earlier interview, Dr. Musgrave stated he attempted to communicate with ET life forms during each of his six missions. Now that’s an astronaut with a lot of courage. Dr. Musgrave retired after this flight from NASA. Since then he’s been spreading his considered opinion that alien life exists. When Musgrave speaks of this, it’s no great leap for one to assume he’s admitting knowledge of alien life. As the final slide of a “Grey” ET was shown during a recent astronomy presentation by Dr. Musgrave, he made this surprising comment: “These guys are real… I guarantee it!” Dr. Musgrave does know the truth. This author guarantees it!
About the author:
Clark C. McClelland, former ScO, Space Shuttle Fleet, 1958 to 1992. Former Director, NICAP Unit-3 at Cape Canaveral and KSC, former MUFON Assistant Florida State Director, KSC. stargate-chronicles.com
Joseph Foster reports Thousands of UFO Sightings
Ocean Station Victor USCGC Mellon
Joe Foster tells of his experience aboard Mellon Coast Guard ship in Southeast Asia. In May of 1970, our ship was anchored several miles off the southeast coast of Vietnam. The Captain authorized swim call. So the crew not on watch could swim off the main deck. I was on the watch on the bridge 44 feet above the water line. I observed a large, dark; teardrop shaped Unidentified Submerged Object (USO) that passed directly under the ship where the crew was swimming. Knowing the size of the ship we had a good idea about the size of the object. It was about 100 feet long and 30 feet wide.
Fifty years ago while in the Coast Guard, I made a contact with a Navy enlisted man who worked in a data processing Intel facility on Ford Island, Pearl Harbor. I told the Navy Man several UFO/USO events that occurred while I was assigned on board a CG cutter. OSV (Ocean Station Victor) at 34.0N by 165.0E) during the Apollo 11 mission. He started laughing.
Disc Leaving Ocean Pulling up Water
He went on to explain that he was laughing because ” the Navy received thousands of such reports every year and that the objects were seen flying out of the ocean, into the ocean and through the atmosphere as well as maneuvering at high rates of speed and making impossible course changes “This gentleman (a YN3) worked for FICPAC (Fleet Intelligence Central Pacific). I met him while going through several Navy “A” schools on Ford Island. Thanks to Joe Foster.
New Hampshire Erects Marker for Betty and Barney Hill
The final wording approved by the state agency reads as follows:
I spoke with Betty Hill and her aunt Kathleen Marden at a UFO Conference and Betty showed me the dress she wore when abducted. She also mentioned she met with numerous Air Force personnel that were interested in abductions
Betty has been successful in immortalizing or Aunt Betty Hill. She writes, “Many states might shy away from immortalizing its UFO history. But the State of New Hampshire is known for its fiercely independent people and its “live free or die motto. On July 20, 2011, it erected a historical marker to .commemorate the September 19-20, 1961 close encounter and “lost time of Portsmouth residents Betty and Barney Hill.
Betty Hill
I, as the Hills’ niece and trustee of Betty’s estate, then worked with the state over the next 3-4 years to complete the process. Employees at the Department of Cultural Resources called upon me to suggest appropriate text for the marker—a challenge in and of itself. Every statement had to be footnoted and supported by ample evidence that it was true and accurate. In all, the wording for the 12 line plaque had 20 footnotes and 28 sources listed in its bibliography.
The final wording approved by the state agency reads as follows:
On the night of September 19-20, 1961, Portsmouth, NH couple Betty and Barney Hill experienced a close encounter with an unidentified flying object and two hours of “lost time while driving south on Rte 3 near Lincoln. They filed an official Air Force Project Blue Book report of a brightly-lit cigar-shaped craft the next day, but were not public with their story until it was leaked in the Boston Traveler in 1965. This was the first widely-reported UFO abduction report in the United States.www.kathleen-marden.comThanks toState of New Hampshire Erects Historical Marker for Betty and Barney Hill The UFO Chronicles
Fully Awake Abductees
UFO over Abductee
Chris Holly writes, I have been writing about a group of people I refer to as ‘Real Time Abductees’. By real time I am referring to lost time abduction cases that take place when the people being abducted are fully awake. The real time abductions take place while they are going about their daily life when without permission they are taken against their will. I do not interview or write about abductions that take place in a sleep state or while in a trance or encounters that involve telepathic communications. My main interest concerns the real time abduction cases. The abductee woman I call the angry abductee as she is the one who has shown the most furry and raw anger at her predicament.
Woman in 50s with Blonde Curly Hair
The other abductees are also frustrated and full of rage however this woman is the most vocal and open about her anger. This abductee is now in her late 50’s. She is a typical woman of her age with a family and life similar to many women of her generation. To meet this woman you would not notice anything different about her- not at first glance. She appears normal in most every way. She has learned how to blend in to a crowd.
She has long blond curly hair that never seems to find a comb, loves her jeans and tee shirts, and walks around lost in her own daily routine like everyone else. She is thin and athletic who loves riding horses and swimming all of which keeps her in good shape. You may notice that in public no matter how hot it maybe she will be wearing jeans or long pants. If the heat is extreme you will find her in gauze pants or long flowing sundresses but never shorts. Only those close to her have seen her as she exists. Shorts and swimsuits are reserved for the privacy of her home only. The reason for her choice of fashion is due to the abnormal skin condition on her legs from the knee down. She is careful of the sun as well as she can only tolerate it for about 20 minutes. Like the other abductees’ she suffers from the sunlight and is blinded by it. She cannot be outside without dark sunglasses. She has tinted windows in her vehicles and lives on a heavily shaded property. This woman has learned to adapt her life to fit her conditions. Her house and pool is securely hidden from her neighbors. . She manages to live a normal life despite her special needs. She is surrounded by family and friends and does not live alone. She keeps to herself living her life with her family and a selected handful of friends. She is friendly and happy and hides her secrets well.
This woman has endured strange events since she was three years old. She has diluted memories from her childhood but can recall being returned down from a long funnel of neon green light as early as age three. She has had lost time events all her life.
Rays of Light Probably Taking Her to Craft
She remembers little of her childhood events other than strange rays of light or suddenly feeling light headed with little recall of what took place until she would find hours had passed and she was late to dinner without a reason why or a explanation of where she had been. She recalls often feeling confused on what took place during her day as a child. Her family considered the events a willful child who simply did not want to stop what she was doing and would often return home late for dinner. When she could not explain cuts and bruises on her body she would be punished for not telling the truth about where she had been. She had a difficult childhood. She remembers complaining about dreadful pains in her legs as a child.
Crying Girl
The pain would be so severe she would lay on the floor and cry. Her parents gave her an aspirin and a hot bath and thought little of it. Her encounters changed at age 12 when she and a group of teens had a clear sighting of a UFO that flew over the town where she lived on Long Island. The year was 1969 and the UFO sighting was seen by others as well as the group of teens who lived in her town. This sighting was also an abduction case as the group of teens who reported the event had a time loss of three hours that they could not explain. This woman continued having strange encounters with odd bright colored orbs and strange lost time events her entire life.
Aboard Craft She was Operated on to Have a Fetus
The events continued until her late 40’s. At that point she became determined to stop the events and went about changing her lifestyle making it difficult for her to be taken by her abductors. She demanded that her abductors leave her alone. She would become loud and act wild and absolutely insane if she sensed an event was about to begin, she would scream and throw things to draw as much attention to her as possible. She found this crazed behavior seemed to stop or startle her abductors which would give her time to escape. She recalls one event in the late 80’s where she was alone in a wooded area. She was on her way to join a group of friends for an outside party located on a friend’s farmland and needed to cross an open field to the picnic area where they were waiting for her. As she headed across the open land towards the picnic area. Suddenly she could feel the strange dizzy sensation coming over her that she knew well and became furious. She threw her belongings on the ground and started to scream out to the field and woods around her.
“Enough, enough – You cannot take me, I do not want to be hurt – you have no right to take me, no more- no more.”
She became angry and kept yelling in a rage “no no no “She threw her fists into the air cursing and screaming in a wild outburst. To her amazement her rage seemed to stop this abduction. It was the last time she had a lost time abduction experience attempt – however not the last of other strange events that continue in her life. This woman has spent her life trying to avoid alien kidnapping. The strangeness has not stopped only changed as she finds strange objects placed in her pocket book, home, car and yard. She and or family member come across odd objects that do not belong to anyone in the home they quickly remove them, destroy or bury them. Once they offered an object to the authorities to investigate and were treated with insult so they simply bury most items far away where they can do no harm or be handled by anyone. They fear at times they may have more than one paranormal problem at hand involving the unknown. This abductee shares the ability to absorb knowledge quickly and has a large appetite for learning.
She also suffers from numerous health problems that cannot be explained. She too has surgery scarring and has been told she has damage to her internal organs yet has never had an operation. She too has exhibited the body of a woman who has had numerous pregnancies yet only has had one child. She has had an eye color change from a gray to a very vivid bright blue as well as other odd physical oddities she is not able to explain. Like the other abductees all attempts she and her family have made for help or understanding in the medical community have failed leaving her to deal with her problems on her own.
Most of the encounters she has endured have all started with her remembering when they begin, and when they end with little recall of the lost time in-between. As far as what took place during her time being taken she has only limited flashes of recall. She does know she is given insight or messages during her lost time events. She tries to understand what it is that she needs to do with the information. She has found little interest from the public including those in the paranormal community. Although she has limited memory of her abductions she knows that those taking her had a human form but seemed to be wrapped in very tight skin like protective suits that were a white blue gray in color. She knows that they memory wiped her as she also has many events that occurred around the time of her abductions that were going on in her life wiped away as well.
UFO Abduction
After one particular lost time event she endured at age18 she seemed to have lost memory of most of her 15th year of life as well. She can clearly remember her life up until hitting the 15 year mark but there is a large gap of memory until the end of her 15th year. This has been a ongoing problem following most of her lost time events. This abductee feels very strongly about the direction that has been taken with the subjects concerning the UFO alien agenda. She is disgusted with the ‘free- for- all’ that surrounds the abduction issue and refuses to join in with those who combine the fantasy crowd of fools and frauds with those having real lost time encounters.
She feels angry at the large number of people who spend their time making up ridiculous claims about events that may fill a lonely gap in their life while doing great harm to those who are enduring difficult kidnappings. Of all the abductee lost time event people I have talked to this woman is by far the angriest at society and the treatment she has endured due to ignorance. This woman thinks we are completely off base on most of our thinking about the alien UFO subject.
She wants the public to grasp what is real from the fantasy bringing a new light to this subject that is presently lost in darkness. She has hope one day those who have had to go it alone and suffer in silence will find compassion and help. This woman feels those who have taken her in the past and who have interfered in her life are alien however she believes they work hand in hand with some fraction of the human race. She feels her government betrayed her and has always known what was going on and why. I found this abductee to be strong and determined to continue to keep her abduction experiences at arm’s length. She is one of the lucky ones as she has a secure base of those who believe and help her. Be careful out there and always pay attention to your surroundings. NOTE: The above images are renderings. Thanks to Ken Pfeifer MUFON NJ Website. THANKS TO PHANTOMSANDMONSTERS AND CHRIS HOLLY Website
Pliny the Elder Wrote About UFOs in 60
Pliny the Greatest Scientist Wore UFO like Brooch
Pliny (Gaius Plinius Secundus, (23 – 79) was the foremost Roman authority on science, writing extensively on mystery, geography, nature, and various sciences. His great encyclopedia, Historia Naturalis (Natural History) consisted of 37 volumes derived from about 2000 sources and contained an estimated 20,000 facts are findings regarding such topics as astronomy, zoology, botany, medicine, and the metallurgy. It was an encyclopedia of data for a thousand years until the Middle Ages.
He noted the spherical shape of the earth, oceans, and the circum-navigation of the world, sunrise and sunset, the sun’s altitude, the hours of daylight, sundials, climate and race, earthquakes, historical earthquakes, fire, petroleum, naphtha, volcanoes, the circumference of the earth. For instance, discussed are how linen and paper were manufactured.
Flying Shield
He is perhaps one of the earliest scientific authors to acknowledge what are known in modern times as UFOs. He described such craft as strange flying shields, and a fiery shield, stating a burning shield rushed across the sky. He also described what modern UFO researchers call angel’s hair, a sublime substance with the appearance of cotton candy that was often found around locations of reported UFO sightings, referring to such material as heavenly wool. http://www.livius.org/pi-pm/pliny/pliny_e3.html
Editors Note: Pliny like most Romans wore a toga that was held up with a brooch usually in the shape of a disc that looks like a standard flying saucer. Only citizens of Rome were allowed to wear these togas. The disc shape then gradually became buttons we wear today.
In Roman times many Roman soldiers carried shields that had the likeness of a disk shaped UFO carved on each one. Magnificently well-preserved rectangular shields known as scutum found at Dura-Europos were colored red and emblazoned with geometric patterns and winged figures. Usually with disc in the center. In Roman mythology, Victoria was the personification/Goddess of victory. She is the Roman version of the Greek goddess Nike, which is now a US missile system. Her name in Latin means victory and was a major part of Roman society and multiple temples were erected in her honor. She was normally worshipped by triumphant generals returning from war. Roman soldiers often carried shields that depicted winged figures, lightning bolts and flying shields.
The shields had designs reflecting eagle-wings, thunderbolts, or discs.
Victoria was a symbol of victory over death and determined who would be successful during war. Appearing on Roman coins, jewelry, architecture, and other arts, winged Victoria is often seen flying chariot encouraging the soldiers in battle? The sky God Mithras was worshipped in Persia and the religion spread to Rome. Mithras was the Mediator between heaven and earth controlled the rain and also had a flying boat in the sky.
Mutilations in the United Kingdom
Tony Todd a former British police detective and Sergeant wrote the excellent book, “Alien Investigator.” He states, “Being in charge of a huge patch of North Yorkshire, my police work brought me plenty of opportunities to see animals which had been attacked by predators. Dogs chasing and killing sheep was not uncommon, and farmers usually kept the offending dog evidence. The farmer’s livestock is his living, and he has the right to defend it. Death at the hands of a predator animal is instantly recognizable. The photos I saw from the late eighties onwards were clearly not the work of dogs. They showed cows, horses, pigs, cats, deer, badgers, fox’s etc. which had been systematically mutilated, with a suggested ritual element way ahead of any technology known to man. Mutilations were happening in the US and Britain in large numbers with the evidence piling up. The mutilations had several factors and common:
Broken Back Probably Dropped
An absence of blood. Sometimes a small puncture hole was found in the jugular vein, through which the blood appeared to have been drained, possibly with the animals still conscious.
Sophisticated anatomical knowledge. The cuts on the bodies, through which the organs were removed, were made neatly and in precisely the right places.
The use of advanced surgical instruments with sealed or cauterized cuts. There was no blood, and where bones were severed, no evidence of bone splinters or dust.
The removal most often of the brain, the rectum and the sex and reproductive organs.
Sometimes evidence that the animal had been sedated.
Occasionally, evidence of radiation around the scene of the mutilation.
Usually, no sign of disturbance, not even the animals own hoof prints.
Reports of UFOs occasionally seen picking up or dropping animals.
Sometimes, the animals would have broken legs and backs, as if they had been dropped to the ground from a great height.
Often, the mutilations happened on nights when UFOs were spotted in the vicinity
Blacked out helicopters or unmarked planes would be seen after the mutilation, and there were often large white vans spotted in the area, perhaps used for transporting the helicopters.
I became involved in animal mutilation research. There was obviously a definite link with UFO and the alien activity. There were a few reports from Britain, but Many more in America and Canada. But I also suspected the mutilations were not being reported or vanishing into local police files. The report of a mutilated horse or cow would not be a top priority for the police.
Some cases had come into me without prompting, but as soon as it became known that I was interested, a steady stream of mutilation reports began that has never abated
Mysterious holes in Head
I have collected a huge file of photographs of wild animals which have been found with the in the front of their skulls. The bodies of dead badgers, foxes, deer, etc. are not normally sent examination, so the extent of the mutilation is rarely realized because people assume they have been shot. But these marks are not consistent with a bullet hole, with no evidence of bullets. Remarkably, through the small hole the brain, and often the spinal column, has been removed. I also realized the rectum, sexual organs and the major internal organs being removed. The rectal passage is usually cored out with a special instrument that cleanly take the whole passage.
I do not know why the rectum is taken as the digestive system does not seem to be of interest that animal predators like. here are some clear general conclusions I can draw:
The female of any species is mutilated 3 times more often than the male.
There are differences between the mutilations of large and small animals. Larger animals, like cows and horses, have attracted the most interest, large areas of flesh are clearly removed; the head, or part of it is stripped to the bone; there is total blood loss.
Smaller animals from deer down to a mouse, will have a small hole in the front of its head, above the eyes, through which the brain will have been removed. Removal of organs such as genitalia, tongues, ears and feet can be found in both large and small animals.
Seven animals mutilated
The mutilations, in clusters, either with individual cases in the same area over a matter of a few weeks, or several animal corpses being found together. Often a group of animals which would never be together in nature: e.g., badgers, sheep, and fox’s all dead in the same field. This makes the possibility of natural predators even more unlikely, and also means human vandals becomes implausible.
Whenever the subject of animal mutilations is aired in the press, two culprits are routinely offered: vandals, or weird Satanic cults. As neither group is likely to have teams of surgeons with state-of- the-art laser technologies. No one ever gets caught. If they are carrying out mutilations, why are they not being arrested or shot by angry farmers?
Not only are they precision surgeons, but they are also expert at arriving and disappearing without leaving a trace. The night surgeons have never been caught. Thanks to Tony Dodd
Aurora 33a
Joe Barren writes, “Our money in the Black Budget is buying a series of great aircraft. The Aurora SR-33A A moderate-sized space-faring vehicle can operate on both conventional fuel and anti-gravity field propulsion systems and theoretically travel to the Moon.
This classified antigravity craft using back-engineered ET Technology operates out of Area 51, (Groom Dry Lake Air Force Station), at the northeast corner of the Nellis AFB Range, north of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Lt. Colonel Donald Ware, USAF (ret.) said that he had recently learned from a three-star General that the Venture Star X-33 has an electrogravitics (anti-gravity) system onboard. This virtually assures that the unacknowledged military anti-gravity version, the X-33 A, must surely also have electrogravitics on board. It is possible that what he has called the X-33A is the Aurora craft. http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread29169
The Lockheed-Martin X-33A is a military space plane is a prototype of Lockheed’s other space plane, the single-stage-to-orbit reusable aerospace vehicle, the National Space Plane. Lockheed-Martin does not say too much about its winged, delta-shape X-33 Venture Star, except to say that it is being built. The ‘A’ suffix stands for anti-gravity.
New Weapons of Stealth War
Brigadier General Robert Spalding shares how China took over while America’s Elite Slept. He was interviewed about his book, “Stealth War” that not all wars are violent. General Spalding told how Chinese Communist Party worked behind the scene to undermine the United States by co-opting our elite people and paying large sums of money to many like Hunter Biden. Brigadier General. Robert S. Spalding III lived in and spoke Chinese for three years and assumed the duties of Special Assistant to the U.S. Air Force Vice Chief of Staff in February 2018. .Why China has no intention of following through on the trade deal with the United States and included an escape clause. How the Trump administration has stopped China from taking advantage of the United States like they’ve done for over 40 years.
Why the Chinese during COVID-19 did not allow domestic travel from Wuhan, China but allowed over 5 Million people to travel from Wuhan to all other parts of the world which allowed the CDVID- 19 virus to spread worldwide killing millions, and to kill a half million Americans.
We have already provided them with our advanced technology in aviation, missiles, nuclear weapons, economic leadership; military, economic with Confucius Institutes was a Chinese philosopher. There is shocking success in infiltrating American institutions and major news media compromising our national security. Brigadier General Robert Spalding Shares How China Took Over While America’s Elite and made many billionaires and millionaires…
Understanding what the Chinese Communist Party is and how they operate is crucial to fully grasping their intentions to destroy American democracy.
– Why China has no intention of following through on the trade deal with the United States that Trump made.
Chinese Communist Party Headquarters
The Chinese State Run News Media tells the people of China regularly that they are at war with the United States and everything should be done to defeat the US.
Pillow CEO Mike Lindell has a new documentary out, pushing his brief that the election was a fraud carried out by a massive China cyber attacks. He claims lower level Intelligence personnel from several agencies have informed him of the massive cyber attack but high ups will not reveal it.
Current Burring Fires with fifty out of Control
In a non shooting war the Communist Chinese are very resourceful and appear to be controlling the jet stream to keep the United States burring with high temperatures and wild fires in forests and towns on fire with arson and direct energy weapons.
Chicago Homicides 3.6 times Afghanistan War
year deaths year deaths
2011:433
2012:532
2013:415
2014: 416
2015: 468
2016:771
2017:653[
2018:561
2019: 518
2020: 769
2019 500 2020 775 2021 346
Chicago has seen at least 346 homicides for the first six months of the 2021 .
5078 Total mostly black deaths in Chicago 2011 until now. War started in October 2001 but unable to obtain Chicago murders from 2001 to 2010 they are estimated to be another 5000 deaths.’
5078 Total mostly black deaths in Chicago 2011 until now.
Total Chicago deaths 10,076 estimated from October 2001 to July 2021
In Afghanistan war 1,856 of these deaths result of hostile action 2001 until now.
5.4 times more dangerous in Chicago than was in Afghanistan
Strange Craft
The True Story of an Air Force Intelligence Officer’s Life with UFOs
Many claim this is the best UFO Book ever written.
U.S. Air Force Major George Filer belongs to the generation of pilots and airmen who first became aware of the strange aircraft showing up in the Earth’s atmosphere after World War II. These men – military professionals who flew planes, served as radar operators and air traffic controllers at air fields around the world – began to whisper amongst themselves about encounters with suspected extraterrestrial aircraft.
During secret debriefings at U.S. bases, pilots and air crew told their commanders of seeing UFOs off their plane’s wings. Award-winning investigative author John Guerra spent four years interviewing Filer, a decorated intelligence officer.
From objects in the skies over Cold War Europe to a UFOs over during the Cuban Missile Crisis to lights over the DMZ in Vietnam Filer leaves nothing out about his Air Force UFO encounters,
Filer’s most memorable case – the shooting of an alien at Fort Dix Army Base in 1978 – is fully recounted for the first time in this book. As a member of the Disclosure Project, military experts, astronauts, and scientists urge the U.S. government to release all it knows about UFOs to the public.
Filer describes his UFO encounters in this incredible book. By John L. Guerra. https://amzn.to/2SK3SIQ
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Filer’s Files 28 2021 - Astronaut confirms Extraterrestrials Exist - PART II
Glendale, Arizona and Texas on July 3, 2021
Filer’s Files 28 2021 - Astronaut confirms Extraterrestrials Exist - PART II
Major George A. Filer III ret. USAF
New Jersey State Director
MUFON Eastern Region Director
In special reports, this week’s files cover: Astronaut confirms Extraterrestrials Exist, Joe Foster UFOs, New Hampshire Erects Marker for Betty and Barney Hill, Awake Abductions, Pliny the Elder Wrote About UFOs,Mutilations in the UK, Aurora 33a,
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas,.
New Weapons of Stealth War, C-60 and Strange Craft.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over, Canada, China, Columbia, Germany, and England in the United Kingdom.
The Filer Research Institute feels the scientific study of UFOs is for the benefit of humankind and is an important endeavor. The US Air Force investigated UFOs publicly for more than twenty years under Project Blue Book; and I continue this advanced research. I believe the God of the universe has spread life throughout the cosmos and UFO’s are visiting us in ever-increasing numbers.
Forward these files to your friends and neighbors.
UFO Sightings in the United States
Sightings are from MUFON CMS
Arizona Light
Glendale– on July 3, 2021, I took my dog for a walk after the storm. I am a plane enthusiast, and F35s out of Luke AFB and commercial flights to Sky Harbor go over all the time. I saw a bright red, fiery orb came over the trees. I recorded it travelling west quietly with no flashing lights. This was not a plane.
California Object
Mountain View– on July 1, 2021, I saw a stationary disc like object in sky. White on top of a black bottom. No wings. No banner and no propeller.
Colorado Lights
Morrison– on June 26, 2021, while attending a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater I took a picture of the crowd, I noticed two anomalies in the sky both had four lights and a structure behind them. Other photos did not have this anomaly.
Connecticut Light
Brookfield– on July 4, 2021, they starts going straight up but change direction occasionally, ultimately heading up and to the left for4-5 minutes. The orange glow sometimes is more intense almost red and changes size multiple times. The silent, glowing ball-shape disappears multiple times
Florida Lights
Davie – on July 4th, 2021, at 10:15 PM, I observed a very strange object hovering silently in the sky. It was white at first with at least two separate sections of 6 large tubes connected together appearing vertically, roughly 5-10 feet apart from one another. A single object each connected to 12 total tubes that was like a Native American flute.
Illinois Object
Mascoutah –on July 7, 2021, I noticed a dark object in the southern sky that started descending through the edge of a cloud then flew off quickly to the southeast.
Kentucky Light
Shelbyville– on July 4, 2021, UFO was stationary observing fireworks from lower right. It began to change color from red, green, blue. This object was also seen in Virginia. The object then turned white and sped off southbound.
Louisiana Light
Natchitoches– on July 6, 2021, Please tell me what you feel this is
Nevada Light
Mesquite – January 17, 2021, video attached to our telescope of rotating and changing colors. Visible to the naked eye for quite awhile.
New Jersey Lights
Ridgeland— On June 22, 2021 I went outside and noticed a colorful rainbow like object in the sky south of me. I told my wife about it and she came outside and took a couple pictures. It disappeared and reappeared below. The object stayed 2 minutes then disappeared again and reappeared back where it was originally. My wife started videotaping a separate green light.
New Mexico Object
Belen– on July 1, 2021, round object headed north along interstate 25 at 8:47 AM. Object was round and flying in a straight path. The speed was too fast to be an air balloon and had no blades, no wings, or string attachments. It was gray with no lights flying just below low clouds at 800 feet above ground flying at air balloon height.
New York Objects
New York City – on June 30, 2021, I just received a new phone the day before so I decided to take a picture and later that night I blew the photo up and saw the object running along the left side flying by pretty fast.
Oklahoma Lights
Sapulpa– on July 5, 2021, I saw a bright orange light that was bigger and a lot brighter than a star. It didn’t move like an airplane and the fireworks fizzled out another light just like the first hovered in the sky. A third light made a triangle. I started filming it again as they hovered in an L shapes moved southeast.
Pennsylvania Object
Philadelphia – on June 23, 2021, oval shaped light in photo of storm cloud.
Tennessee Lights
Germantown – on March 7, 2021, I caught sight of these orbs outside our window moving in formation and individually. Sometimes one would dip down, but could still barely make out the outline. They were moving NNE.
Texas Object
Lewisville – on May 2, 2021, my name is Nate Sullivan. The reason for me trying to get in touch with you is that I haven’t had luck anywhere else. I have made a discovery of UAP’s. I have figured a way to see multiple UFOs. Feel free to contact my phone. 218-298-1103.
Worldwide UFO Sightings
Canada Object
Neebing — on June 27, 2021, as part of my son’s property over rainbow.
Columbia Object
Santa Maria – on July 2, 2021, during a commercial flight over the Andes. The co-pilot and I were intrigued by the very unusual shape of the cloud we saw in front of us. A horizontal shape with an intense bright light in the middle that resembled a space portal. We took our phones and started recording and taking pictures. After landing I spotted the UFO coming out of the portal and flying in front of us and flying south until disappearing. The event lasted 3 minutes on our scheduled flight
Germany Light
Mülheim an der Ruh – on July 4, 2021, at 12:50 PM I noticed an oval shaped, metallic object ascending diagonally that looked strange, steady, no sound, no visible propulsion… When the object flew behind trees, I rushed to the 10th floor to shoot pictures and videos. The object was reflecting the sun visible on iPhone X 2020 Model video. There is a small airport nearby but the object did not come from there.
Switzerland Light
Uster– on May 22, 2021, an object apparent size was much larger than any star was moving down from high above the clouds before hovering. Sudden fast horizontal movements and disappearance after5 Minutes.
UK/England
Somersham, Englandon June 10, 2021, the day of partial eclipse, I went out, to capture it on my phone camera. (I believe the peak of the eclipse was about 11.14am. on reviewing the pictures, something was odd beneath the sun. I found the same thing, in thick cloud, and seemingly not in the same position. I have attached 13 photos. if you blow them up and look beneath the sun, you’ll see something odd, and some with ‘lights.’
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Filer’s Files salutes our fighting men and women, Georgie Filer and Eddie Pedrick, my grandsons who both drowned. These files could not be published without the help of my beloved wife who cooks, cleans, washes, etc., and handles the finances. We pray that God will bless those who read these files spiritually!
When it comes to the matter of UFOs, there’s one thing that could solve the entire riddle in a moment. I’m sure you can guess what it is. It’s a crashed UFO and its crew (dead or alive). Over the decades, dozens of claims of such secretly retrieved craft and bodies by military personnel have been made. Unfortunately, no hard evidence of this type has ever been found. No corpses. No ship. Even the world’s most famous crashed UFO story – Roswell, of course – has nothing but testimony and claims to support it. The fact is that we have no evidence that any UFO has ever fallen to Earth and been recovered. Over the years, I’ve pointed out why I don’t believe that any kind of UFO ever crashed outside of Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. Like it or like it not, the Roswell event was a top secret military experiment. That’s all. If the “best” crashed UFO case has fallen (as it has) then what does that say about all of the others? The answer is “Not a lot!” With that all said, let us take a look at some more reports of what have become known as “UFO crash-retrievals.” Let’s begin with the Aztec, New Mexico totally-non-event of March 1948.
Much of the story was pushed and prompted by a notorious character who was well-known to the FBI: Silas Newton. At its website, The Vault, the FBI says of Newton: “Silas Newton (1887-1972) was a wealthy oil producer and con-man who claimed that he had a gadget that could detect minerals and oil. He was cited as an authority in Frank Scully’s book Behind the Flying Saucers, a work that claimed to report on several UFO crashes in the area of New Mexico. In 1950, Newton said that a flying saucer crashed on land he leased in the Mojave Desert; however, he revised his claim in 1952, saying he never saw a flying saucer but had only repeated comments he heard from others. These files detail the FBI’s investigations into Newton’s fraudulent activities between 1951 and 1970 [italics mine].”
The so-called “FBI Hottel memo” that allegedly revealed a cover-up of the Aztec UFO crash, but that was just nonsense.
How about the 1953 Kingman, Arizona case? Over the years, the case has surfaced time and again – with several researchers believing that the case had merit. It didn’t then and it doesn’t now. The story of the crash of an alleged UFO in May 1953 – on the fringes of the town of Kingman, Arizona – is one of the most controversial of its kind. But, how many people really know how the “crashed saucer” saga began? I thought today I would share with you just how the whole thing took off, so to speak. The genesis of the story can be traced back to early February of 1971. At the time, Jeff Young and Paul Chetham were two new and enthusiastic UFO investigators who were digging into a truly sensational story that, if true, strongly suggested intelligent life existed outside of the confines of our own world. These amazing revelations came from a man named Arthur Stansel, who was a good friend of Young’s family and who claimed to have had personal, firsthand knowledge of a crashed UFO and alien body recovery near Kingman on May 21, 1953.
If you read the early, 1970s, material on the Kingman “case,” you’ll see that Stansel (while wasted on drinks, I should stress, and now dead) changed his description of the shape of the “UFO.” One minute it was small and shaped like an aircraft fuselage. Then, he altered it to the shape of a classic Flying Saucer. Make your mind, man. U.S. Air Force files demonstrate that in the same precise time frame of the Kingman crash – specifically, during the Atomic Energy Commission’s Upshot-Knothole tests that Arthur Stansel played a role in – the military was secretly test-flying drone aircraft in the Nevada/Arizona area with monkeys on board. While the image of an unmanned drone aircraft packed with a crew of monkeys flying across the deserts of the Southwest might sound laughable and bizarre in the extreme, official papers establishing that such tests were indeed undertaken have surfaced.
The papers were released into the public domain via the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, and are housed at the United States’ National Archives, where they can be viewed and studied by the general public and historians – which I have done. A document titled Early Cloud Penetration, dated January 27, 1956, and prepared by the Air Research and Development Command at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, states in part: “In the event of nuclear warfare the AF is confronted with two special problems. First is the hazard to flight crews who may be forced to fly through an atomic cloud. Second is the hazard to ground crews who maintain the aircraft after it has flown through the cloud…In the 1953 Upshot-Knothole tests, monkeys were used so that experiments could be conducted on larger “animals nearer the size of man. QF-80 drone aircraft were used, their speed more nearly approximating that of current operational aircraft.” There’s no doubt that the Kingman “UFO crash” was born out of rumors of what really happened: the crash of an aircraft with a poor, little monkey on-board. Now, there’s the “Spitsbergen” controversy.
If there are two things we can say for sure about reports of alleged crashed UFOs, it’s that (A) there are a hell of a lot of them; and (B) many are highly controversial in nature. And one of those cases that falls firmly into category B is alleged to have occurred off the coast of Norway on the island of Spitsbergen in mid-1952. It’s a case that a few UFO researchers accept as being genuine, but that a great many believe to be nothing less than a complete and outrageous hoax. There’s another possibility too, however: that the story was a deliberate, government-created “plant” to confuse the truth about tales of UFOs crashing to earth, whatever that truth might really be. By far the most intriguing aspect of this saga, however, came from none other than the National Security Agency. From the NSA I obtained a translation of a 1960s Russian media article on the UFO subject. Contained within the article, I was interested to see, was a passing reference to the Spitsbergen incident, which stated:
“An abandoned silvery disc was found in the deep rock-coal seams in Norwegian coalmines on Spitsbergen. It was pierced and marked by micro-meteor impacts and bore all traces of having performed a long space voyage. It was sent for analysis to the Pentagon and disappeared there.” This was certainly a new slant on the case; but what really caught my eye was the National Security Agency’s reaction to the mention of the Spitsbergen story. Instead of dismissing the matter as a hoax, a still-unidentified NSA agent circled the paragraph of the article referencing Spitsbergen, and wrote in the margin the intriguing word “PLANT” in bold capitals. In other words, someone in the NSA knew that the case was not real: it was a bit of well-placed disinformation to worry the Russians into thinking America had a crashed high-tech UFO (or more than one…) on its hands.
In conclusion, the following needs to be noted: all of the cases above are well-known in Ufology. Also, each and everyone of them are (a) problematic and (b) total garbage. Flying monkeys, the wild claims of an alcoholic storyteller, a government plant, and the words of a shady businessman watched by the FBI for his many and varied illegal activities: those are the real stories. It’s not looking good for Ufology. This tells us something about Ufology when, despite the fact that none of these incidents ever happened, they’re still considered “the real deal” by so many in the subject.
When it comes to the Tic-Tac UFOs, the USS Omaha and the USS Nimitz and their pilots and crews have gotten all of the publicity. However, there have been other ships in the same area with pilots and crew members having their own encounters, and one recently came forward with a new story concerning the crafts that have the Navy, the Pentagon and politicians in Washington most concerned – underwater and transmedium ships. Is it time for the rest of us to worry too?
“I was staring into the water from above when a large, fat, white ‘Tic Tac’ object, approximately twenty feet in length, suddenly appeared in my view below me, moving right and darted into the depths as fast as it appeared. I couldn’t really comprehend what I saw. It was definitely a solid object, but when it descended, its forward end rapidly collapsed in on itself and disappeared.”
A port side view of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS CARL VINSON
(CVN-70).
E-4 Petty Officer John Baughman was station onboard the USS Carl Vinson, a Nimitz-class supercarrier, in 2010 when the ship was in Haiti delivering humanitarian aid after that country’s devastating earthquake. At that time, Baughman was a Gunner’s mate on a break and doing what all sailor’s do on break – looking out across the main reason why they became sailors. He tells UFO researcher Ryan Sprague on the Trail of the Saucers web page that he expected to see the usual – ““Everything from sharks, dolphins and whales to giant squids, sea turtles, and swordfish.” Instead, he saw an unidentified submerged object. Being a well-trained crew member, he reported the sighting to his immediate supervisor, who told Baughman:
“Everyone sees weird shit in the ocean.”
Weird – yes, but this was not ‘shit’. While the 2004 Tic Tac encounters by the USS Nimitz were still a decade away from being exposed to the public, there’s little doubt that they were known among Navy personnel, especially crews and pilots on supercarriers. However, his superior’s response reflected the philosophy of the day – don’t talk about UFOs or you’ll be considered strange, ridiculed … or worse. Still cautious today, even after the Pentagon report confirming there are things about and below the surface that it can’t explain, Baughman told Sprague he’s not sure what it was but that shouldn’t stop anyone from reported unidentified flying or submerged objects and helping the military and private scientists and researchers figure out what they are and how to respond.
Still image from the footage of the “tic-tac” UFO
“It’s hard to come to grips with something like this, and I still feel somewhat insecure about it because it doesn’t make sense. But at the same time, more data points, even as basic as my story, could help solve the mystery of whether they’re foreign adversaries playing mind games, non-human entities, or the myriad of other possibilities.”
Kudos to Ryan Sprague for getting John Baughman’s story into print. He’s asking others – military, ex-military, private citizens – to report sightings and offers a place on his website to do so. As Baughman found out, “Everyone sees weird shit in the ocean” … but only the few and the brave report it.
When it comes to the Tic-Tac UFOs, the USS Omaha and the USS Nimitz and their pilots and crews have gotten all of the publicity. However, there have been other ships in the same area with pilots and crew members having their own encounters, and one recently came forward with a new story concerning the crafts that have the Navy, the Pentagon and politicians in Washington most concerned – underwater and transmedium ships. Is it time for the rest of us to worry too?
“I was staring into the water from above when a large, fat, white ‘Tic Tac’ object, approximately twenty feet in length, suddenly appeared in my view below me, moving right and darted into the depths as fast as it appeared. I couldn’t really comprehend what I saw. It was definitely a solid object, but when it descended, its forward end rapidly collapsed in on itself and disappeared.”
A port side view of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS CARL VINSON
(CVN-70).
E-4 Petty Officer John Baughman was station onboard the USS Carl Vinson, a Nimitz-class supercarrier, in 2010 when the ship was in Haiti delivering humanitarian aid after that country’s devastating earthquake. At that time, Baughman was a Gunner’s mate on a break and doing what all sailor’s do on break – looking out across the main reason why they became sailors. He tells UFO researcher Ryan Sprague on the Trail of the Saucers web page that he expected to see the usual – ““Everything from sharks, dolphins and whales to giant squids, sea turtles, and swordfish.” Instead, he saw an unidentified submerged object. Being a well-trained crew member, he reported the sighting to his immediate supervisor, who told Baughman:
“Everyone sees weird shit in the ocean.”
Weird – yes, but this was not ‘shit’. While the 2004 Tic Tac encounters by the USS Nimitz were still a decade away from being exposed to the public, there’s little doubt that they were known among Navy personnel, especially crews and pilots on supercarriers. However, his superior’s response reflected the philosophy of the day – don’t talk about UFOs or you’ll be considered strange, ridiculed … or worse. Still cautious today, even after the Pentagon report confirming there are things about and below the surface that it can’t explain, Baughman told Sprague he’s not sure what it was but that shouldn’t stop anyone from reported unidentified flying or submerged objects and helping the military and private scientists and researchers figure out what they are and how to respond.
Still image from the footage of the “tic-tac” UFO
“It’s hard to come to grips with something like this, and I still feel somewhat insecure about it because it doesn’t make sense. But at the same time, more data points, even as basic as my story, could help solve the mystery of whether they’re foreign adversaries playing mind games, non-human entities, or the myriad of other possibilities.”
Kudos to Ryan Sprague for getting John Baughman’s story into print. He’s asking others – military, ex-military, private citizens – to report sightings and offers a place on his website to do so. As Baughman found out, “Everyone sees weird shit in the ocean” … but only the few and the brave report it.
When it comes to the Tic-Tac UFOs, the USS Omaha and the USS Nimitz and their pilots and crews have gotten all of the publicity. However, there have been other ships in the same area with pilots and crew members having their own encounters, and one recently came forward with a new story concerning the crafts that have the Navy, the Pentagon and politicians in Washington most concerned – underwater and transmedium ships. Is it time for the rest of us to worry too?
“I was staring into the water from above when a large, fat, white ‘Tic Tac’ object, approximately twenty feet in length, suddenly appeared in my view below me, moving right and darted into the depths as fast as it appeared. I couldn’t really comprehend what I saw. It was definitely a solid object, but when it descended, its forward end rapidly collapsed in on itself and disappeared.”
A port side view of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS CARL VINSON
(CVN-70).
E-4 Petty Officer John Baughman was station onboard the USS Carl Vinson, a Nimitz-class supercarrier, in 2010 when the ship was in Haiti delivering humanitarian aid after that country’s devastating earthquake. At that time, Baughman was a Gunner’s mate on a break and doing what all sailor’s do on break – looking out across the main reason why they became sailors. He tells UFO researcher Ryan Sprague on the Trail of the Saucers web page that he expected to see the usual – ““Everything from sharks, dolphins and whales to giant squids, sea turtles, and swordfish.” Instead, he saw an unidentified submerged object. Being a well-trained crew member, he reported the sighting to his immediate supervisor, who told Baughman:
“Everyone sees weird shit in the ocean.”
Weird – yes, but this was not ‘shit’. While the 2004 Tic Tac encounters by the USS Nimitz were still a decade away from being exposed to the public, there’s little doubt that they were known among Navy personnel, especially crews and pilots on supercarriers. However, his superior’s response reflected the philosophy of the day – don’t talk about UFOs or you’ll be considered strange, ridiculed … or worse. Still cautious today, even after the Pentagon report confirming there are things about and below the surface that it can’t explain, Baughman told Sprague he’s not sure what it was but that shouldn’t stop anyone from reported unidentified flying or submerged objects and helping the military and private scientists and researchers figure out what they are and how to respond.
Still image from the footage of the “tic-tac” UFO
“It’s hard to come to grips with something like this, and I still feel somewhat insecure about it because it doesn’t make sense. But at the same time, more data points, even as basic as my story, could help solve the mystery of whether they’re foreign adversaries playing mind games, non-human entities, or the myriad of other possibilities.”
Kudos to Ryan Sprague for getting John Baughman’s story into print. He’s asking others – military, ex-military, private citizens – to report sightings and offers a place on his website to do so. As Baughman found out, “Everyone sees weird shit in the ocean” … but only the few and the brave report it.
When it comes to the Tic-Tac UFOs, the USS Omaha and the USS Nimitz and their pilots and crews have gotten all of the publicity. However, there have been other ships in the same area with pilots and crew members having their own encounters, and one recently came forward with a new story concerning the crafts that have the Navy, the Pentagon and politicians in Washington most concerned – underwater and transmedium ships. Is it time for the rest of us to worry too?
“I was staring into the water from above when a large, fat, white ‘Tic Tac’ object, approximately twenty feet in length, suddenly appeared in my view below me, moving right and darted into the depths as fast as it appeared. I couldn’t really comprehend what I saw. It was definitely a solid object, but when it descended, its forward end rapidly collapsed in on itself and disappeared.”
A port side view of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS CARL VINSON
(CVN-70).
E-4 Petty Officer John Baughman was station onboard the USS Carl Vinson, a Nimitz-class supercarrier, in 2010 when the ship was in Haiti delivering humanitarian aid after that country’s devastating earthquake. At that time, Baughman was a Gunner’s mate on a break and doing what all sailor’s do on break – looking out across the main reason why they became sailors. He tells UFO researcher Ryan Sprague on the Trail of the Saucers web page that he expected to see the usual – ““Everything from sharks, dolphins and whales to giant squids, sea turtles, and swordfish.” Instead, he saw an unidentified submerged object. Being a well-trained crew member, he reported the sighting to his immediate supervisor, who told Baughman:
“Everyone sees weird shit in the ocean.”
Weird – yes, but this was not ‘shit’. While the 2004 Tic Tac encounters by the USS Nimitz were still a decade away from being exposed to the public, there’s little doubt that they were known among Navy personnel, especially crews and pilots on supercarriers. However, his superior’s response reflected the philosophy of the day – don’t talk about UFOs or you’ll be considered strange, ridiculed … or worse. Still cautious today, even after the Pentagon report confirming there are things about and below the surface that it can’t explain, Baughman told Sprague he’s not sure what it was but that shouldn’t stop anyone from reported unidentified flying or submerged objects and helping the military and private scientists and researchers figure out what they are and how to respond.
Still image from the footage of the “tic-tac” UFO
“It’s hard to come to grips with something like this, and I still feel somewhat insecure about it because it doesn’t make sense. But at the same time, more data points, even as basic as my story, could help solve the mystery of whether they’re foreign adversaries playing mind games, non-human entities, or the myriad of other possibilities.”
Kudos to Ryan Sprague for getting John Baughman’s story into print. He’s asking others – military, ex-military, private citizens – to report sightings and offers a place on his website to do so. As Baughman found out, “Everyone sees weird shit in the ocean” … but only the few and the brave report it.
Using Saturn’s Rings to Figure out What’s Inside the Planet
Using Saturn’s Rings to Figure out What’s Inside the Planet
It’s tough to see inside of Saturn, because the atmosphere is opaque to all wavelengths of radiation. We have to rely on computer simulations and physics-based guesswork to try to understand the interior of that giant world. But researchers are becoming more adept at a different technique: looking for the slightest motions in the rings of Saturn.
The rings of Saturn are made of trillions of small bits of water ice, most small enough to fit in your hand. Each individual bit orbits Saturn in its own way, and each one is a tiny gravitational detector.
The planet Saturn isn’t just a simple, uniform ball of gas. It has complex layers and perhaps even a rocky core. Material moves up and down within the Saturnian atmosphere, and everything is in a constant state of motion.
Every time the interior of Saturn shifts, the particles of ice that make of the rings respond, affected by the new distribution of gravity. And different internal compositions of Saturn will make themselves known in the rings, because different arrangements of material will lead to different preferred orbits for ring material.
Sometimes entire waves can spread out inside the rings, or brief ripples appear in them. The analysis of the rings depends on having excellent observations of them, which we have thanks to NASA’s historic Cassini mission. That mission took countless high-resolution pictures of the rings, which astronomers can now use to try to reconstruct the interior of Saturn.
Already astronomers have used this technique, called ring seismology, to discover that the core of Saturn may be much fluffier than we previously thought. New research has found that the interior of Saturn is stratified in a stable way, meaning that it has clean, consistent boundaries between layers. Future analysis might even be able to reconstruct the entire interior structure and help explain the strange phases of matter found in that giant world.
Rex, man this was a great video! This guy is speaking of things I’ve never heard of. I will have to watch it again and take notes because he has referenced so many things that I want to learn about. Fascinating!!! Thank you Rex. Love you my brother. Rita Mills
UFOs Sighted Over Sevierville, Tennessee ( June 7, 2021 )
UFOs were sighted over Sevierville, Tennessee by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on June 7, 2021
STATEMENT : Sevierville, TN June 7, 2021
credit : FOUR EYES
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UFOs Swarm Mosque Over St. Louis, Missouri ( June 19, 2021 )
These UFOs were recorded flying over Mosque 28 of the Nation of Islam in St. Louis, Missouri on June 19, 2021 STATEMENT :
′′ I witnessed six others who flew before I started recording, and five more after the recording. The last five were black and no lights on. All of them were in training except for the group in this video, who seemed to know they were being recorded and decided to put on a show. I hope you like it and understand that we are not alone ′′
credit : C.M.R
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Cylinder UFO Sighted Over Mexico ( July 11, 2021 )
Cylinder UFO or two Cylinder UFOs were sighted Over Mexico on July 11, 2021
STATEMENT : Mexico
More evidence everyday.....
credit : jmhz71
UFO Sighted Over Brescia, Italy ( July 12, 2021 )
STATEMENT :The spacecraft moves from right to left, with regular movement. The actual shape of the shuttle is discoidal, the refraction of the energy flare makes it appear in spheroidal footage.
Sighted Over Brescia in the northern Italian region of Lombardy. On the eastern outskirts is the San Salvatore–Santa Giulia complex on July 12, 202
credit : Stellar Koko
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Strange UFO Sighted Over Ventura, California ( July 5, 2021 )
Recording a strange UFO or Unidentified flying object in the sky of Ventura, California on July 5, 2021
UFO spotted over Yokosuka, Japan US Navy base – JULY 2021
UFO spotted over Yokosuka, Japan US Navy base – JULY 2021
This unidentified object was filmed over Yokosuka, a city in central Japan earlier this month (July 2021).
Witness report:
UFO appears from 1 minute 21 seconds. The place is over Yokosuka US Navy base. The weather is cloudy, but there are thunderclouds in the northeastern direction of Tokyo Bay, and the wind power is about 0 to 1. It looks like it is flying at a fairly high speed while shining. The navigation light is not blinking because it is not an airplane or helicopter.
A group of researchers has solved a mystery that has lingered for 40 years of how Jupiter produces bursts of x-rays every few minutes. The team says the x-rays are part of Jupiter’s aurora, which are bursts of visible and invisible light occurring when charged particles interact with the atmosphere of the massive planet. On Earth, auroras happened as well and are more commonly known as the northern lights.
However, Jupiter’s aurora is much more powerful than the Aurora here on Earth. Jupiter releases hundreds of gigawatts of energy with its aurora, which is enough to power the entirety of human civilization briefly. The new study was published recently, and researchers combined close observations of Jupiter’s environment gathered by the NASA Juno satellite orbiting the planet with simultaneous x-ray measurements taken from the ESA XMM-Newton Observatory orbiting Earth.
The team discovered that x-ray flares were triggered by periodic vibrations of magnetic field lines. The vibrations create plasma waves that send heavy ion particles “surfing” along the magnetic field lines until they smash into the planet’s atmosphere. When they smash into the atmosphere, they release energy in the form of x-rays. Co-lead author Dr. William Dunn says that astronomers have seen Jupiter produce x-ray aurora for decades but didn’t know how it happened.
Previously, scientists only knew they were produced when ions crashed into the atmosphere of the planet. Thanks to the new study, they now know plasma waves transport the ions. This is the first time an explanation has been proposed despite similar processes producing aurora here on Earth. Scintists believe since similar processes are at play on earth and Jupiter, the phenomenon could be universal across many different environments in space. Jupiter produces x-ray auroras regularly at its north and south poles every 27 minutes.
They capture “traffic on the Moon”, but not from human ships (Video)
They capture “traffic on the Moon”, but not from human ships (Video)
As NASA prepares for man’s first mission to Mars, it is curious that it has not set foot on the Moon since 1972, let alone establish a base there.
Astronauts and many researchers have claimed that this is because bases already exist on the lunar surface … and, in fact, they are not human bases.
Former NASA Communications Systems chief Maurice Chatelain confirmed in 1979 that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had seen two UFOs on the rim of a crater during the Apollo 11 lunar mission in the summer of 1969.
“The encounter was common knowledge at NASA,” Chatelain said, “but no one has talked about it until now,” he added. According to Armstrong, the aliens would have “warned them to stay away” from the Moon.
Former NASA employee Otto Binder said an unidentified radio receiver intercepted NASA broadcast channels and captured the following exchange:
“NASA: What’s up? Mission control calling Apollo 11 … “
“Apollo: These” babies “are huge, sir! Huge! OH MY GOD! You won’t believe it! I’m saying there are other spaceships out there, lined up on the other side of the crater rim! They are on the moon watching us! “
During the journey of Apollo 17 , NASA’s last mission to the Moon in 1972, only CBS was covering the live broadcast as the rover traversed the lunar surface.
NASA operators on Earth began directing the television camera, mounted on the mobile vehicle, to obtain a panoramic view of the lunar surface.
There was a 4 second delay between the movements of the TV camera and the controls operated from the Earth, due to the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
As the camera scanned the landscape, it suddenly captured what looked like a huge rectangular building in the distance.
CBS host Walter Cronkite was stunned and exclaimed, “It looks like a man-made object!”
Almost immediately, the live broadcast along with Cronkite’s was cut off and replaced by an earlier recording labeled “recorded earlier today”.
Twenty minutes later Walter returned to the air and, bewildered, told viewers that the so-called “man-made object” was just part of the moon rover.
However, the video was never aired again, nor was the incident mentioned again on television, nor in any document known to the public… until now.
It seems that one of NASA’s responsibilities is to control what information the public can and cannot see.
Former NASA employee Dona Hare explained that she and her colleagues were responsible for airbrushing evidence of alien activity in our skies and on the lunar surface.
Dona asked her colleague one day: “What are you going to do with this information? ‘We have to airbrush this…’ People who told me it was a cover-up… said, ‘Never say I said it or I’ll say I didn’t.’
However, it appears that images of so-called “alien activity” on the Moon have leaked anyway. On October 1, 2010, China launched its Chang’e-2 Moon into orbit.
The widely disputed claims said that the orbiter’s cameras captured what appears to be a facility on the lunar surface.
It was later said that the photos were not taken by Chang’e-2 , but were from NASA’s own archives, although this could not be confirmed as the photo lacked the registration number.
Could the Chinese government have intentionally (possibly subversively) leaked a NASA photo before they had a chance to control it?
In fact, much of this evidence is corroborated by the claims of numerous high-level officials, such as a former US Air Force employee named Karl Wolf, who came to possess a “top secret cryptological” security clearance.
He revealed that an NSA employee told him: “We have discovered a base on the back of the moon.” Wolf added: “And then he took out one of these [maps] and showed this base, which had geometric shapes.”
“There were towers; There were spherical buildings… they are huge. Some of the structures are half a kilometer long. They are huge structures, ”he commented.
And in other images there are more of what appear to be giant structures that were obtained during the Apollo 16 mission. What do you think? Do things happen that we are strangers on the moon?
Alien hunters are searching for signatures emitted from ‘interstellar beacons’ setup by an advanced civilization using a system that stems from the Very Large Array Telescope in New Mexico
Alien hunters are searching for signatures emitted from ‘interstellar beacons’ setup by an advanced civilization using a system that stems from the Very Large Array Telescope in New Mexico
SETI scientists have ramped up their search for alien life deep in space
The team is using a system that stems from the Very Large Array telescope
They will search for 'techno-signatures' given off by 'interstellar beacons'
If aliens are using an interstellar beacon to contact Earth, scientists at the SETI Institute are going to find it.
The team believes advanced lifeforms have placed a transmitter in the center of the galaxy and are developing techniques to detect signatures from the technology.
SETI scientist are developing a system that 'piggybacks' off the Very Large Array (VLA) telescope based in New Mexico to listen for 'technosignatures', which are signs of advanced alien civilizations.
A trove of nearly two petabytes of data was released on Thursday from ‘the most the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the plane of the Milky Way galaxy and the region around its central black hole’, which SETI is encouraging the public to sift through.
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SETI scientist are developing a system that 'piggybacks' off the Very Large Array (VLA) telescope (pictured) based in New Mexico to identify anomalies in the stellar 'light curves' and listen for 'technosignatures' - both of which are signs of advanced alien civilizations
The project, called Breakthrough Listen, is being supported by a grant from Yuro Milner, an Israeli-Russian billionaire who told the American Association for the Advancement of Science: ‘For the whole of human history, we had a limited amount of data to search for life beyond Earth.’
‘Now, we are getting a lot of data, we can do real science – and, with making this data available to the general public, so can anyone ho wants to know the answer to this deep question.’
Many scientists believe the first beings found in distant worlds will be in the form on tiny bacteria that live under rocks on Mars or in the icey ocean of Saturn’s moon Titan.
If aliens are using an interstellar beacon to contact Earth, scientists at the SETI Institute are going to find it. The team believes advanced lifeforms have placed a transmitter in the center of the galaxy and are developing techniques to detect signatures from the technology
(stock)
However, Dr. Andrew Siemion with SETI, belives ‘techno-signatures’ will be the first clue.
‘The first is the search for chemical signatures from planets and the second is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.’
SETI is forming partnerships all over the world in its search for alien life, as in October the group announced its alliance with NASA to use its Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellites (TESS) to search for 'technosignatures' in deep space.
The partnership between NASA and SETI was announced at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington, DC.
The TESS and Listen collaboration will expand Breakthrough Listen's target list (adding over 1000 'objects of interest' identified by TESS); refine Listen's analysis strategy (for example, utilizing new knowledge about planetary alignments to predict when transmissions might be more likely to occur); and provide more meaningful statistics in the event of non-detections.
SETI is forming partnerships all over the world in its search for alien life, as in October the group announced its alliance with NASA to use its Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellites (TESS) to search for 'technosignatures' in deep space
Dr. S. Pete Worden, Executive Director of the Breakthrough Initiatives, said, 'It's exciting that the world's most powerful SETI search, with our partner facilities across the globe, will be collaborating with the TESS team and our most capable planet-hunting machine.'
'We're looking forward to working together as we try to answer one of the most profound questions about our place in the Universe: Are we alone?'
The captured data will be analyzed for 'technosignatures', which are created by technologies of advanced civilizations and come in different forms such as radio waves, transmitters and propulsion devices.
NASA announced a the partnership with SETI scientists in October. The team will scan hundreds of exoplanets (pictured is a concept drawing of K2-18b)
Researchers will also be on the lookout for anomalies in the stellar 'light curves' TESS collects, as such oddities could be caused by orbiting megastructures built by advanced civilizations.
And the organization already has its eyes on a few targets – specifically interstellar visitors Oumuamua and Borisov.
Dr. Andrew Siemion, leader of the Breakthrough Listen science team said 'The discovery by the Kepler spacecraft of Boyajian's Star, an object with wild, and apparently random, variations in its lightcurve, sparked great excitement and a range of possible explanations, of which megastructures were just one.'
WHAT IS THE VLA TELESCOPE?
The Very Large Array (VLA) is telescope found in new Mexico, US and is a collection of 27 antennae in New Mexico.
The VLA comprises twenty-seven 25-meter radio telescopes deployed in a Y-shaped array and all the equipment, instrumentation, and computing power to function as an interferometer.
Each of 27 dishes has diameter of 82 feet (25 meters) and weighs 230 tons (209 metric tons).
It was first seen in 2016 by the Very Large Array (VLA) telescope in New Mexico using radio signals (pictured). The scientists concluded that this was not a 'brown dwarf' or a failed star, but a free-floating planet
The VLA stands at an elevation of 6970 ft (2124 m) above sea level. It is a component of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).
It is designed to pickup radio signals and help spot young planets from outside our Solar System.
It works in conjunction with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile.
'Followup observations have suggested that dust particles in orbit around the star are responsible for the dimming, but studies of anomalies like this are expanding our knowledge of astrophysics, as well as casting a wider net in the search for technosignatures.'
TESS is expected to find up to 10,000 new planets, many of them considerably closer to Earth than those spotted by Kepler.
In April of 2018, SpaceX launched NASA's $337 million TESS into space, which is equipped with four cameras that allows it to view 85 percent of the entire sky, as it searches exoplanets orbiting stars less than 300 light-years away.
Two months ago, TESS discovered was deemed a super-Earth exoplanet just around 31 light years away in the in the so-called habitable zone, an area far enough from its star to not be too hot but close enough to not be too cold.
In this region, it is possible for liquid water to exist on the surface of a planet if it is rocky, although further research is needed to work out whether GJ 357 d's atmosphere is dense and warm enough to host liquid water.
WHAT IS THE TESS SPACECRAFT?
NASA's new 'planet hunter,' set to be Kepler's successor, is equipped with four cameras that will allow it to view 85 per cent of the entire sky, as it searches exoplanets orbiting stars less than 300 light-years away.
By studying objects much brighter than the Kepler targets, it's hoped TESS could uncover new clues on the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.
Its four wide-field cameras will view the sky in 26 segments, each of which it will observe one by one.
In its first year of operation, it will map the 13 sectors that make up the southern sky.
Then, the following year, it will scour the northern sectors.
'We learned from Kepler that there are more planets than stars in our sky, and now TESS will open our eyes to the variety of planets around some of the closest stars,' said Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA's Headquarters.
'TESS will cast a wider net than ever before for enigmatic worlds whose properties can be probed by NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope and other missions.'
Tess is 5 feet (1.5 meters) wide and is shorter than most adults.
The observatory is 4 feet across (1.2 meters), not counting the solar wings, which are folded for launch, and weighs just 800 pounds (362 kilograms).
NASA says it's somewhere between the size of a refrigerator and a stacked washer and dryer.
Tess will aim for a unique elongated orbit that passes within 45,000 miles of Earth on one end and as far away as the orbit of the moon on the other end.
TO FIND ALIENS, SCIENTISTS ARE HUNTING FOR INTERSTELLAR ENCRYPTED MESSAGES
TO FIND ALIENS, SCIENTISTS ARE HUNTING FOR INTERSTELLAR ENCRYPTED MESSAGES
“If someone is communicating with quantum technology, I think they may already know we are here.”
SCIENTISTS HAVE SPENT YEARS hunting for alien life by listening in on the radio signals that bombard our planet from outer space to see if they can detect transmissions beamed using extraterrestrial technology.
But this search method has a flaw: It relies on what we can easily spot, in other words, radio signals. What if a highly developed alien civilization has figured out a way to communicate instead in encrypted code using particles of light?
This question is not the stuff of sci-fi. In fact, it is at the heart of a recent preprint study that makes the case for expanding our search for extraterrestrial life to include quantum communication.
Quantum communication uses the properties of quantum physics to relay encrypted messages from point A to point B.
This is a technology that aliens may have already conquered.
Ravi Kopparapu, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center, explains to Inverse that scientists typically look for signs of alien technology based on what we have right now on Earth. As quantum communication becomes increasingly sophisticated here on Earth, it would be a good one to add to the arsenal, he says.
“I would say it’s a good way to communicate and send a lot of information to another civilization,” Kopparapu says. “So it’s an interesting idea to propose.”
WHAT’S NEW
The idea is essentially to create a new focus for a so-called “quantum SETI.”
For more than 60 years, the modern search for extraterrestrial life has focused on detecting technosignatures from foreign worlds. SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) is a series of interrelated programs looking for intelligent life beyond our solar system.
“FUTURE SEARCHES SHOULD ALSO TARGET QUANTUM COMMUNICATIONS.”
As scientists look for alien life today, they may want to add signals of quantum communication to their list of so-called “technosignatures” — the signals that reveal technology must be at play.
The recent study suggests that since quantum communication is developing on Earth, then scientists should soon add it to the list of signals to look out for from alien civilizations.
“I argue that future searches should also target quantum communications,” Michael Hippke, a researcher at Sonneberg Observatory and lead scientist of the new research, writes in the preprint.
“They are preferred over classical communications with regards to security and information efficiency, and they would have escaped detection in all previous searches.”
HERE’S THE BACKGROUND
SETI’s focus has been on radio signals. But now that humans have established quantum communication between cities on Earth, it may be worth looking for these encrypted signals beyond our planet, too.
In 2017 China inaugurated the first long-distance quantum communication landline in the world, connecting the capital city of China with the coastal city of Shanghai.
In quantum systems, data is transferred through photons — units of light known as quantum bits or qubits.
The quantum properties of qubits are linked in pairs, and those pairs are generated in random order. The pairs that are shared between the two parties spell out a secret phrase, which is then used to encrypt a follow-up data transmission.
Quantum communication systems use single photons that are encoded in a quantum superposition state, where particles can be thought of as waves. These encoded photons are then sent to distant locations.
Through this mechanism of encoding and decoding, two distant parties share a string of random bits called “secret keys” which are used to encrypt and decrypt these confidential messages.
Optical SETI looks for alien messages via light. Quantum SETI takes it one step further by looking for encrypted light communications. SETI Institute
CAN ALIENS USE QUANTUM COMMUNICATION?
Although quantum communication hasn’t really taken root on Earth, a distant alien civilization that is slightly more advanced than humans may have developed the technology to send encrypted messages through photons by now.
Quantum communications, via photons, can travel large distances across the universe, transcending from one star system to another, the same way that interstellar dust and grains can reach different planets.
“WE CAN’T HIDE.”
In order to detect these signals, the paper suggests that existing telescopes can be used to detect photons. The author also suggests using a femtosecond photon counter that would reveal the time stamps at which the photons are sent out — but that device, unfortunately, is yet to be invented.
WHY IT MATTERS
Some may be wary that by intercepting an encoded message, humans are exposing themselves on Earth.
This alien civilization, according to Kopparapu, may have already developed a space telescope similar to the James Webb Telescope, launching in October, which would be able to detect life on distant worlds far in the universe.
“There are also other kinds of civilization activities we might be looking at where they might be building big huge structures that can go in front of a star and block the star’s light, which would give us some clue about the structure and what kind of objects they would be constructing,” he says.
Kopparapu suggests that if humans are able to intercept a quantum communication signal, then it is likely that the civilization responsible for it already knows of our own existence.
“If someone is communicating with quantum technology, I think they may already know we are here,” Kopparapu says.
The risk of exposing humanity by intercepting an encrypted code, whereby the sender would know that the signal was intercepted, does not really make a difference at this point, he says.
“It's like a kid closing their eyes and trying to hide,” he says. “We can’t hide.”
Abstract:
The modern search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) began with the seminal publications of Cocconi & Morrison (1959) and Schwartz & Townes (1961), who proposed to search for narrow-band signals in the radio spectrum, and for optical laser pulses. Over the last six decades, more than one hundred dedicated search programs have targeted these wavelengths; all with null results. All of these campaigns searched for classical communications, that is, for a significant number of photons above a noise threshold; with the assumption of a pattern encoded in time and/or frequency space. I argue that future searches should also target quantum communications. They are preferred over classical communications with regards to security and information efficiency, and they would have escaped detection in all previous searches. The measurement of Fock state photons or squeezed light would indicate the artificiality of a signal. I show that quantum coherence is feasible over interstellar distances, and explain for the first time how astronomers can search for quantum transmissions sent by ETI to Earth, using commercially available telescopes and receiver equipment.
Antarctica may seem like a static environment: a still, white landscape frozen motionlessly into place.
But much more is going on under the ice than we realize – even if you have to travel all the way to space to tell for sure.
Over a decade ago, scientists made just such a discovery, when an analysis of data from NASA's ICESat satellite revealed that variations in ice elevation in West Antarctica reflected a vast mass of subglacial water movement underneath the ice sheet.
Prior to the discovery, it had been thought that hidden meltwater lakes – deeply concealed at the bottom of the ice sheet, where the ice meets the continental bedrock underneath – existed in isolation, cut off from one another.
But in 2007, researchers found that fluctuations in the height of Antarctica's surface ice signified the movement of water flowing between a hidden network of subglacial lakes, which alternately fill and drain before their water escapes to the Southern Ocean.
The new lakes discovered.
(Siegfried et al./NASA Goddard/YouTube)
Now, the ICESat mission's follow-up – ICESat-2, launched in 2018 – is giving scientists an even keener glimpse at this mysterious, deeply buried lake network, while revealing two lakes never before discovered.
"The discovery of these interconnected systems of lakes at the ice-bed interface that are moving water around, with all these impacts on glaciology, microbiology, and oceanography – that was a big discovery from the ICESat mission," says glaciologist Matthew Siegfried from the Colorado School of Mines.
"ICESat-2 is like putting on your glasses after using ICESat, the data are such high precision that we can really start to map out the lake boundaries on the surface."
In a new study, Siegfried and fellow researchers compiled altimetry data from ICESat-2 and the original ICESat mission, along with measurements taken from CryoSat-2, an ice-observing satellite operated by the European Space Agency (ESA).
By combining the datasets – encompassing the period from 2003 to 2020 – the researchers are able to monitor active subglacial lakes at timescales shorter than ICESat-2's repeat cycle (the 91-day gap before it can observe the same region again).
"Surface deformation due to active subglacial lakes filling and draining provides one of the few remotely accessible windows into the evolution of basal water systems; these systems are otherwise hidden beneath up to 4 km [2.5 miles] of ice and remain one of the major physical uncertainties on projections of future ice sheet dynamics," the researchers write in their paper.
"ICESat-2 laser altimetry can not only extend the record of subglacial lake activity but also provides better understanding of hydrological processes by capturing denser and more precise spatial detail."
In addition to giving us a more detailed look at the activity and outlines of known subglacial lakes in Antarctica – of which there are over 130 already documented – the analysis found two anomalies that appear to be hidden lakes, previously undetected.
These potentially active lakes – called Lower Conway Subglacial Lake (LSLC) and Lower Mercer Subglacial Lake (LSLM), lie near previously discovered lakes, and may have been missed by the original ICESat mission, falling within the narrow gaps between its observations.
In this region – underneath the Mercer and Whillans ice streams in West Antarctica – the lake system, which is dominated by two large active subglacial lakes (Conway Subglacial Lake and Mercer Subglacial Lake), appears to be in the midst of its third drainage event since ICESat observations began in 2003.
Just a few weeks ago, one of the same researchers involved here – glaciologist Helen Fricker from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography – co-authored a related study, detailing a dramatic lake drainage event in East Antarctica, where a surface lake on a floating ice shelf vanished in the space of days.
Far below the ice sheet in West Antarctica, the water draining from subglacial lakes is also thought to eventually flow into the ocean, although the concealed escape route is much harder to visualize.
"These are processes that are going on under Antarctica that we wouldn't have a clue about if we didn't have satellite data," Fricker says.
"We've been struggling with getting good predictions about the future of Antarctica, and instruments like ICESat-2 are helping us observe at the process scale."
I’m sure that everyone has had a dream that didn’t seem quite right. A dream that didn’t seem like an everyday dream. The kind of dream that came across like an absolute nightmare. And, in some cases, the nightmare went on and on. In September 2014, I received the details of such a dream from an Englishwoman named Sandra Green. Only hours after briefly seeing a cigar-shaped UFO hovering near Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England on December 25, 1985, Sandra – who was driving home, in the early hours, after a late night Christmas Eve party in the English city of Bath – had a bizarre dream. In it, three Men in Black warned Sandra to keep her nose out of UFOs. They were – as they usually are – cadaverous “slightly dead”-looking MIB. As for the warning, it was one of those “or else”-type threats that the MIB are so skilled at making. The dream was so graphic it led Sandra to believe that the MIB had the ability to literally get inside her dreams, manipulate those very same dreams, and issue a bone-chilling warning – one which she has still not forgotten. Now, it’s time to tackle another creepy dream. It’s a story that goes back to October 2014. The Hat Man is a Man in Black-type thing that appears in shadowy form; not unlike the infamous Shadow People – to whom the Hat Man is almost certainly related, even if we’re not sure why. On many occasions, however, the Hat Man appears in regular, human form, with a black beard and a black suit, and wearing a long overcoat or a cloak –always black, too. I know this, as I have investigated many such incidents. Most noticeable about this creepy figure is, of course, his hat. Sometimes, it’s a fedora, other times it’s an old style top hat. Occasionally, it’s more like a cowboy hat. But, regardless of the kind of headgear, it’s always present and always black. Many of the encounters occur while the victim is in a distinct altered state – that of sleeping.
Angie had just such an encounter in Leominster, Massachusetts, on September 6, 1994, as she told me late on the evening of October 8, 2014. Her reason for contacting me was due to the fact that, quite out of the blue, she had suddenly begun to dream of the events of twenty years earlier – and dream of them almost every night for the last couple of weeks. Very much like those people unfortunate enough to be confronted by the somewhat similar Slenderman – the ultimate Internet meme come to life in Tulpa form – Angie was sleeping when the mysterious thing disturbed her sleep by manifesting in her bedroom and staring at her with a menacing grin on its pale, ghoulish face. For a few moments, Angie was unable to move. As she finally broke the spell of paralysis, however, the Hat Man was gone.
Then, on February 28, 2016, and on checking my email around 8:30 a.m., I received a story from a woman named Belinda. She had a traumatic dream two nights earlier: she encountered a Man in Black wearing shiny black gloves. In the dream, the MIB pursued her along an old railroad track – one that was seemingly never-ending. Only when the MIB was within a few feet of her did Belinda wake up with an ear-piercing scream. Something which Belinda’s husband attested to. She had no involvement in the UFO subject, or that of the paranormal. Belinda sought me out. Good friend and psychic Kim Rackley had a story to share, too. Here’s how it goes: “Being a medium I am not fearful of the supernatural or unearthly, but there is one thing that has filled me with terror since I was a child and that is the MIB. I’ve told the story of my repetitive MIB encounters before but it suffers repeating because I believe it is significant to the most recent encounter. From the time I was 8 and witnessed a glowing figure slightly similar to a grey walking down the hallway of my home, I have been subject to frequent MIB visits. These visits are always from the same two men, mostly in my dream state until I began realizing my abilities as a medium and then the visits would occur in meditation or altered states of consciousness.”
In the summer of 2016, UFO researcher and radio-show host, Tracie Austin, invited me and David Weatherly to be on her show. The plan was to have Tracie first interview us separately: I would be interviewed on the MIB and David on the Black-Eyed Children. And, then, there would be a round-table discussion on both phenomena, noting the undeniable links between the two. A date was soon fixed: September 22. Both David and I flew in on the same morning and spent the afternoon hanging out at our hotel. The high-strangeness wasn’t just limited to the show, however. Tracie herself had a trio of stories of her own to relate to me. They were, of course, as bizarre as they were disturbing. She told me: “With me doing the show on the Black-Eyed Kids, I was reading David’s book every day before we did the show. So, it was on my mind. And it only happened the one time, but I had this dream that we had a friend over and there was a knock at the door, and the friend that came over opened the door. And I saw a black-eyed kid standing at the door; one single boy. And the friend asked him to come in, and I said “No, no, no; you can’t let him in!” But, he wandered in, slightly. It was a kid with a hoodie and jeans; the typical kid. And I pushed him out the door and said again, “No, you can’t let him in!” It shook me a bit when I woke up.”
One of the people whose studies I focused upon was Samuel Hatfield, a psychic. In his own words: “Why would someone purposefully invade someone else’s dream? Well, there are a number of reasons; the chief among them is to influence someone’s thinking. Much of what occurs in a dream is left in the subconscious or unconscious mind. The subconscious / unconscious mind influences much of our daily lives. It governs the automatic responses and processes such as memory, motivation, instinct, and even emotional reaction. Purposeful invaders often seek to influence these things to invoke particular responses in others. They do this by entering the lucid dream, or even pulling someone into their own dream and implanting thought forms to condition the subject.”
I could go on and on with such accounts involving black-garbed characters and who are intent on getting into our dreams. The skeptics would likely say that it’s all down to bad dreams. Frankly, though, I don’t think that’s all it is. There’s something else going on, too. But, I freely admit I don’t know what that “it” is. Maybe, you do…
Archeologists have determined that 107 ancient Roman coins found on the banks of the Aa river in the village of Berlicuma in the Netherlands were left there by superstitious travelers crossing the waterway to ensure their safe passage. For positive proof, they need to find a troll booth.
The NYPD’s official beekeeper amazed tourists and Manhattan residents by removing a swarm of approximately 25,000 bees from a spot on Times Square and transporting them to a safe location. Which, in New York City, is anyplace besides Times Square.
Facebook’s AI research team joined forces with researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science and the University of California, Berkeley, to train a four-legged robot to use AI learning to walk over sand, rocks and other difficult surfaces, adjusting its stride as it moves to keep from falling. When they do this with a two-legged robot looking at a cellphone, let us know.
The European Space Agency’s Fast Kinetic Deflection (FastKD project proposes in a new study that large telecommunications satellites used for TV broadcasting could be quickly and easily repurposed as asteroid deflectors if a space rock were to threaten Earth. But only if they don’t interrupt Dr. Who.
Researchers at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created a new radar scanning system that uses one receiver and many transmitters to create real-time images and video of objects are hidden behind walls or moving at hypersonic speeds. If you have something moving at hypersonic speed inside your wall, it’s time to move.
A research team in China declassified an unmanned underwater drone that can recognize, follow and attack an enemy submarine without human instruction — which was developed in secret by the military more than a decade ago. If it flies too, we need to learn the Chinese word for Tic-Tac.
At the recent Goodwood Festival of Speed, a British designer unveiled a car that removes pollution from the air as it travels around town. It can’t be driven in U.S. cities yet because the container in the trunk is way too small.
Using new data from satellite laser instruments, NASA scientists have penetrated Antarctica’s thick ice sheet and discovered two new hidden but active subglacial lakes which cyclically fill and drain into the Southern Ocean. Thanks, NASA, for some cool news in this record-breaking hot summer.
A team from NASA and NOAA found that Earth’s “energy imbalance” doubled between 2005 and 2019, meaning Earth is retaining more than twice as much heat annually as it was 15 years ago, and the causes are melting ice, which reduces the amount of reflective white surface, and greenhouse gases, which prevent radiation from escaping, increasing the overall energy retained. Thanks, NASA, for reminding us why there’s so little ‘cool’ news these days.
Three towns in Wisconsin — Belleville, Dundee and Elmwood — are fighting over which one is the UFO capital of the state, with Dundee claiming to have an alien in a jar, Elmwood having a police officer as a reliable witness to one, and Elmwood with one picked up by FAA radar. Cows in Wisconsin are relieved humans are finally fighting over something besides cheese.
A team of nanoscientists in China have discovered a way to grow microfibers of water ice that can flex and bend into a loop without breaking the ice surface. This could completely change figure skating at the Winter Olympics into an extreme event.
We’ve had UFO reports by military pilots, Navy ship crews, commercial airline pilots, astronauts and other reputable witnesses who are trained to spend a lot of time scanning the skies for unusual occurrences. It’s time to here from another one – the captain of a cruise ship. And not just any cruise ship captain – this one was good enough to break through the glass ceiling to become the first American woman to captain a ship for a major cruise line – and the first of any gender to return to the seas after the pandemic shutdown. She’s Captain Kate McCue and has quite a story to share.
“I was looking at a beautiful sunset when someone suddenly said to me – “Hey, what is it there?” I looked up into the sky and saw it. It looked like a huge jellyfish.”
On a video posted on YouTube on July 3, 2021, Captain Kate McCue shows a clip of her UFO sighting, which was posted to her Instagram page exactly one year before. McCue is currently the captain of the Celebrity Edge, part of the Celebrity Cruises fleet, but her experience on the high seas goes far beyond cruises. After graduating from the California State University Maritime Academy with a degree in business administration, she studied celestial navigation on sailing ships, interned on a banana cargo ship for Chiquita Brands International and worked as a general deck hand on a tourist catamaran before progressing through the ranks with Disney Cruise Line to staff captain (second in command on a ship).
Another Celebrity Cruises ship
“There was almost no wind at that moment, no more than 5 knots (9 km / h), but this object rotated around its axis and flew around our ship at a speed of about 25 km / h.”
McCue was hired by Celebrity Cruises and appointed in 2015 as the commanding officer of Celebrity Summit, making her the first American woman to command a modern “mega ship”. Captain McCue moved to the Celebrity Edge in 2019.
“Then the object began to descend, about 400 meters from the stern of our ship and plunged into the water. We even thought to lower the lifeboat, but there was nothing on the water, no debris, it just sank into the water and disappeared.”
McCue has become a social media star, so her bosses were well aware that she posted the UFO encounter on her Instagram page, which led to the interview with Cruise Reviews uploaded to YouTube.
“It was not a drone, all of us who saw it are sure, there was no sound, it flew completely silently.”
Not a bird either
Captain McCue refers to other witnesses but she’s the only one in the interview. That doesn’t lessen her credibility, and many comments on the video point out that cruise ship captains reporting UFOs suffer the same ridicule as military ship commanders, personnel and pilots. Her celebrity status should get her encounter more exposure, yet this seems to be the first outside of her own Instagram page. One could surmise it’s because she’s a woman, although at least one female military pilot has shared her UFO story to the mass media. It could also be because the video is brief and the UFO far off in the distance – but that hasn’t stopped the infamous tic-tacs from gaining credibility.
We’ll keep an eye on Captain Kate McCue as she returns to the seas in hopes she shares more and/or has additional UAP encounters.
Yesterday’s article from me was on a very controversial issue: how a number of potentially important files concerning “radiation experiments” dating back to the 1940s can no longer be found. They’re gone. Not to be seen anymore. Etc., etc. Today, I’m going to demonstrate how certain, possibly notable, papers concerning UFOs have vanished. I’ll begin with the Roswell affair. On July 28, 1995, the Government Accountability Office’s report on the Roswell affair surfaced from its National Security and International Affairs Division. The GAO’s report did not provide any smoking-guns – such as old B&W photos of dead bodies and wreckage at the crash-site on the Foster Ranch, New Mexico. The report did, however, provide something interesting and controversial. A wealth of papers from the Roswell base were missing. As the Government Accountability Office (back then, the General Accounting Office) said:
Roswell UFO Incident
“In addition to unit history reports, we also searched for other government records on the Roswell crash. In this regard, the Chief Archivist for the National Personnel Records Center provided us with documentation indicating that (1) RAAF records such as finance and accounting, supplies, buildings and grounds, and other general administrative matters from March 1945 through December 1949 and (2) RAAF outgoing messages from October 1946 through December 1949 were destroyed.” When the GAO demanded to know the reasons behind this development, they got an answer, as GAO files note: “According to this official [the Chief Archivist for the National Personnel Records Center], the document disposition form did not properly indicate the authority under which the disposal action was taken. The Center’s Chief Archivist stated that from his personal experience, many of the Air Force organizational records covering this time period were destroyed without entering a citation for the governing disposition authority. Our review of records control forms showing the destruction of other records – including outgoing RAAF messages for 1950 – supports the Chief Archivist’s viewpoint.”
Some Ufologists believe this is evidence that the government (a) destroyed the files to prevent people, today, learning more of the Roswell affair; and/or (b) because of something else; something that went back to as far back as 1945 and, therefore, can’t be relevant, because the Roswell event occurred in 1947. Whatever the truth of the matter, it still comes down to one thing: a significant number of files from the Roswell base from the 1940s cannot be located. Now, onto another famous UFO case: Between December 26 and 29, 1980, multiple UFO encounters occurred within Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England that involved military personnel from the nearby Royal Air Force stations of Bentwaters and Woodbridge. According to numerous U.S. Air Force operatives, a small, triangular-shaped object was seen maneuvering in the forest – as were, some said, near-spectral, alien-style entities. And although the incident has been the subject of a significant number of books, intense media coverage and even parliamentary questioning, it continues to provoke furious debate within the UFO research community. And that debate was reignited only very recently when it emerged that certain files on the affair – that originated within the murky world of defense-intelligence – appear to be “unavailable.”
In a July 31, 1994 lecture at Leeds, England, Colonel Charles Halt, (USAF), one of those that had witnessed the strange object in Rendlesham Forest) divulged his recollections of what had occurred fourteen-years previously. During the course of his lecture, Halt astounded the audience by revealing something that had been hitherto unknown: an unscheduled C141 transporter aircraft arrived at Woodbridge just hours after the initial encounter, and a group of “special individuals” departed from the aircraft, headed straight out of Woodbridge’s East Gate, and disappeared into the forest. It should be noted, too, that the C141 is a huge aircraft, fully equipped to carry freight, vehicle payloads and troops. With all of that activity going on, you would think at least some files would be created. Nothing has appeared yet, though.
Moving onto Australia, in the summer of 2011, the Australian Department of Defense admitted to having misplaced a UFO file that should have been packed with reports. Natalie Carpenter, of the nation’s Freedom of Information Office, responded to media inquiries by stating that, “The files could not be located and Headquarters Air Command formally advised that this file is deemed lost.” UFO researcher-author Whitley Strieber made a very good observation, on June 6, 2011: “Last week, the Australian government announced that it has ‘lost’ its UFO files. Thus it joins the United States, which ‘lost’ all the files relating to the Roswell AFB dating from 1947 through 1952, and the United Kingdom, which recently announced that it has ‘lost’ all the files relating to the Rendlesham Forest UFO Case.” Hmm.
The Milky Way’s Central bar Spin-Rate is Slowing Down Thanks to Dark Matter
The Milky Way’s Central bar Spin-Rate is Slowing Down Thanks to Dark Matter
If it were’t for an enormous halo of dark matter enveloping our galaxy, the spin-rate of our central bar should stay pretty constant. But researchers have recently inferred that it has slowed down by almost 25% since its formation, a clear sign of the presence of dark matter.
How do you measure the spin-rate of something that takes millions of years to make a single revolution?
Stars near the center of the galaxy are much richer in “metals”, which is the word astronomers use to denote any element heavier than helium. Stars in the outskirts, however, are much more lacking in metals. Therefor, if you happen to come across a group of stars that is exceptionally rich in metals, then it most likely wandered away from the center of the galaxy.
That’s the case for the Hercules stream, a large group of stars observed with the Gaia satellite. The Hercules stream is a metal-rich clump of stars, but sits relatively far from the galactic center. There’s something else intriguing about the Hercules steam: it’s locked in a gravitational dance with the central bar of the Milky Way.
Much like the Trojan asteroids of the solar system lead and follow Jupiter in its orbit around the sun, the Hercules steam is captures by a unique combination of gravitational forces. As the central bar sweeps around, so does the Hercules stream.
So the Hercules stream follows the motion of the central bar, and the stars of the Hercules stream have migrated outwards to their present position over the past few billion years.
The only way for the Hercules stream to move outwards is for the central bar to be slowing down. As the spin-rate of the bar drops, the Hercules stream has to move outwards to match the period.
Putting it all together, a team of astronomers estimates that the spin-rate of the bar has dropped by 24% since the formation of the Milky Way, as published in a new study.
Co-author Dr Ralph Schoenrich (UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory) said: “Astrophysicists have long suspected that the spinning bar at the centre of our galaxy is slowing down, but we have found the first evidence of this happening.
“The counterweight slowing this spin must be dark matter. Until now, we have only been able to infer dark matter by mapping the gravitational potential of galaxies and subtracting the contribution from visible matter.
“Our research provides a new type of measurement of dark matter – not of its gravitational energy, but of its inertial mass (the dynamical response), which slows the bar’s spin.”
Co-author and PhD student Rimpei Chiba, of the University of Oxford, said: “Our finding offers a fascinating perspective for constraining the nature of dark matter, as different models will change this inertial pull on the galactic bar.
“Our finding also poses a major problem for alternative gravity theories – as they lack dark matter in the halo, they predict no, or significantly too little slowing of the bar.”
The Milky Way’s Central bar Spin-Rate is Slowing Down Thanks to Dark Matter
The Milky Way’s Central bar Spin-Rate is Slowing Down Thanks to Dark Matter
If it were’t for an enormous halo of dark matter enveloping our galaxy, the spin-rate of our central bar should stay pretty constant. But researchers have recently inferred that it has slowed down by almost 25% since its formation, a clear sign of the presence of dark matter.
How do you measure the spin-rate of something that takes millions of years to make a single revolution?
Stars near the center of the galaxy are much richer in “metals”, which is the word astronomers use to denote any element heavier than helium. Stars in the outskirts, however, are much more lacking in metals. Therefor, if you happen to come across a group of stars that is exceptionally rich in metals, then it most likely wandered away from the center of the galaxy.
That’s the case for the Hercules stream, a large group of stars observed with the Gaia satellite. The Hercules stream is a metal-rich clump of stars, but sits relatively far from the galactic center. There’s something else intriguing about the Hercules steam: it’s locked in a gravitational dance with the central bar of the Milky Way.
Much like the Trojan asteroids of the solar system lead and follow Jupiter in its orbit around the sun, the Hercules steam is captures by a unique combination of gravitational forces. As the central bar sweeps around, so does the Hercules stream.
So the Hercules stream follows the motion of the central bar, and the stars of the Hercules stream have migrated outwards to their present position over the past few billion years.
The only way for the Hercules stream to move outwards is for the central bar to be slowing down. As the spin-rate of the bar drops, the Hercules stream has to move outwards to match the period.
Putting it all together, a team of astronomers estimates that the spin-rate of the bar has dropped by 24% since the formation of the Milky Way, as published in a new study.
Co-author Dr Ralph Schoenrich (UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory) said: “Astrophysicists have long suspected that the spinning bar at the centre of our galaxy is slowing down, but we have found the first evidence of this happening.
“The counterweight slowing this spin must be dark matter. Until now, we have only been able to infer dark matter by mapping the gravitational potential of galaxies and subtracting the contribution from visible matter.
“Our research provides a new type of measurement of dark matter – not of its gravitational energy, but of its inertial mass (the dynamical response), which slows the bar’s spin.”
Co-author and PhD student Rimpei Chiba, of the University of Oxford, said: “Our finding offers a fascinating perspective for constraining the nature of dark matter, as different models will change this inertial pull on the galactic bar.
“Our finding also poses a major problem for alternative gravity theories – as they lack dark matter in the halo, they predict no, or significantly too little slowing of the bar.”
UFOs Sighted Between The Moon Over London, England ( July 11, 2021 )
UFO : UFOs : Object : Objects sighted flying between the moon over London, England on July 11, 2021
credit : dezabedrosky
UFO Fleet Sighted On ISS Live Stream ( July 11, 2021 )
UFO Fleet recorded on ISS live stream from an external HD camera mounted on the ISS on July 11, 2021
they can't hide it anymore.
note : no audio
related video
Multiple UFOs Sighted From SpaceX CRS-22 ( July 6, 2021 )
Hundreds of UFOs are recorded entering the land. Through NASA's live broadcast on July 6, 2021, UFO at high speed and with different visible trajectories were observed for more than 15 minutes, discarding rational explanations. Also, NASA and SpaceX have postponed crew decoupling of Crew Dragon crs-22 for ′′ climate issues "... what a coincidence, don't you think? Were we suffering a silent and covered alien invasion? I don't think so, because UFOs and aliens have always been here. What happens is they can't hide it anymore. Little by little, we are receiving disqualification prepared and manipulated for occultation. Meanwhile, we have too much proof here, that we are not alone, that they have always been here, and the space agencies trying, as always, to deceive and hide us at all costs.
note : no audio
related video
Mysterious Flying Object Captured By Perseverance Rover ( May 8, 2021 )
Mars : Alien-Bird Or UFO? Mysterious Flying Object Captured By Perseverance Rover : alien : alienmars : perserverance : Rover
MUFON CASE : 116828 Thornhill, British Columbia ( July 11, 2021 )
Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : I At around 14:40 I saw an white object over the Mountain. Long Description of Sighting Report
I noticed a white object above Copper Mountain, British Columbia. I took out my cell and took this short video. I do work at an airport so I have an idea of what to look for. I checked Flight aware24 and noting in that direction was flying over. This is not the first I have ever seen something unidentifiable in the sky.
Date Submitted :2021-07-11 Date of Event : 2021-07-11 / 2:40PM MUFON SUBMITTER FILE : 20210711142540.mp4
12 Biggest Sinkholes Caught Swallowing Things On An EPIC Scale
12 Biggest Sinkholes Caught Swallowing Things On An EPIC Scale
If you haven’t seen any sinkholes, let us tell you that they are pretty terrifying to watch, let alone be close to. Just imagine the fear anyone would feel while being swallowed by the earth under their feet. It’s pretty much the same as being buried alive. Although not all sinkholes turn out to be utterly devastating, some are the epitome of danger. In today’s video, we’ll be telling you all about the craziest sinkholes that were caught on camera, from a sinkhole that boiled people alive to the one that swallowed an entire beach.
Two enormous galaxies capture your attention in this spectacular image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope using the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The galaxy on the left is a lenticular galaxy, named 2MASX J03193743+4137580. The side-on spiral galaxy on the right is more simply named UGC 2665. Both galaxies lie approximately 350 million light-years from Earth, and they both form part of the huge Perseus galaxy cluster.
Perseus is an important figure in Greek mythology, renowned for slaying Medusa the Gorgon – who is herself famous for the unhappy reason that she was cursed to have living snakes for hair. Given Perseus’s impressive credentials, it seems appropriate that the galaxy cluster is one of the biggest objects in the known universe, consisting of thousands of galaxies, only a few of which are visible in this image. The wonderful detail in the image is thanks to the WFC3’s powerful resolution and sensitivity to both visible and near-infrared light, the wavelengths captured in this image.
Text credit: European Space Agency Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Harris; Acknowledgment: L. Shatz
I found a spaceship parked in the shadows along the inside of a crater on earths moon. The photo comes form the US archives and it shows the southern polar region of the moon taken by the Clementine Mission probe. The alien ship has two arms on each of its four sides, but its center is round like a donut. Very odd shape and though I just had to report it to the public. The ship itself is about 5-8 km long. Its hard to believe that NASA could hide such things from the public for so long, however the moon is 384,000 km from Earth and we the public rely on NASA for images. Therefore, hiding the evidence of alien life is easy for NASA, since no-one can go there. But when life on the moon is discovered...NASAs reputation will go down the toilet in a single flush.
How does a globular cluster die? Although this question sounds medical, it actually comes from astronomy. Globular clusters are remnants of the early days of the universe – anywhere from 100,000 to a million ancient stars, all spawned by a single cloud of gas, linked in a loose spherical shape. The Milky Way’s outer edge is ringed with about 150 of them – a large number considering how old they are — hence the question about how they die. Palomar 5, located in the Serpent constellation (visible in the northern hemisphere), may provide the answer and it involves a mysterious process that doesn’t sound very pleasant – it may be consumed from within by a swarm of black holes.
“In this scenario, Palomar 5 formed with a ‘normal’ black hole mass fraction of a few per cent, but stars were lost at a higher rate than black holes, such that the black hole fraction gradually increased. This inflated the cluster, enhancing tidal stripping and tail formation.”
A typical globular cluster
In a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, Professor Mark Gieles, an astronomer in the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona, and his team first describe the reasons why Palomar 5 caught their eyes – it began sparsely populated with stars, has very few black holes, and is distinguished by its unique “tidal tails” which span over 20 degrees across the sky. Astronomers believe these tails are made of stars the cluster has kicked out – not a good thing for Palomar 5 because that is slowly giving its black holes the upper hand. And when black holes get the upper hand in a low-mass globular cluster like Palomar 5, things can get weird … and deadly.
“This inflated the cluster, enhancing tidal stripping and tail formation. A billion years from now, the cluster will dissolve as a 100% black hole cluster. Initially denser clusters end up with lower black hole fractions, smaller sizes and no observable tails.”
The tail is the telltale sign of an eventual death-by-black-hole scenario for a globular cluster. The lack of a tail means stars have the upper hand and the gravity of the few black holes living amongst is too weak to throw them out, thus forming a tail. Palomar 5 began in a bad situation with a low density and lots of black holes. Not only does their gravity fling out stars, it also propels the black holes around Palomar 5 – causing them to become like galactic robot vacuum cleaners ridding the globular cluster of star dirt while bouncing around like a pool table break shot.
A black-hole-in-a-globular-cluster simulation you can do at home
As usual, what’s bad for stars in globular clusters is good for astronomers.
“Black hole-dominated, extended star clusters are therefore the likely progenitors of the recently discovered thin stellar streams in the Galactic halo.”
The black holes are expected to eliminate the last of Palomar 5’s stars in about a billion years – a galactic blink of an eye. Astronomers using ever-stronger telescopes are finding more wispy tails on globular clusters, which means they face the same fate as Palomar 5.
Is a cluster of hungry black holes dangerous to others? Let’s just say it’s good that Palomar 5 is about 65,000 light-years from Earth.
Over the last few days I’ve made mention of the extremely inflammatory story of Philip Corso and his 1997 book, The Day After Roswell. He was a particularly controversial, even mysterious, player who, with Bill Birnes (of the now-defunct television show, UFO Hunters), wrote one of the most hotly-debated books in the history of Ufology. According to Corso, while working with the U.S. Army’s Foreign Technology Division in the early 1960s, he personally handled much of the supposed alien technology retrieved in New Mexico, back in 1947. More controversially, according to Corso he didn’t just see and handle the materials: he secretly oversaw a project to share the alien technology with some of the United States’ most powerful companies involved in the research and production of advanced technology.
Corso claimed that such technologies as fiber-optics, transistors, night-vision goggles, and certain computer-based materials were all given significant kick-starts thanks to those who studied and – to a degree – somehow managed to replicate the extraterrestrial discoveries. As I said previously, although I was willing to at least address and muse upon Corso’s claims, I certainly didn’t endorse any of them. I still don’t. And, I never will. According to Corso, he saw one of the Roswell bodies at Fort Riley, Kansas in the summer of 1947. He recalled: “At first I thought it was a dead child they were shipping somewhere. But this was no child. It was a four-foot human shaped figure with arms, bizarre-looking four-fingered hands – I didn’t see a thumb – thin legs and feet, and an oversized incandescent light bulb shaped head that looked like it was floating over a balloon gondola for a chin.”
Philip James Corso
Corso added: “I allowed myself more time to look at the creature than I should have, I suppose, because that night I missed the time checks on the rest of my rounds and believed I’d have to come up with a pretty good explanation for the lateness of my other stops to verify the sentry assignments. But what I was looking at was worth any trouble I’d get into the next day. This thing was truly fascinating and at the same time utterly horrible. It challenged every conception I had, and I hoped against hope that I was looking at some form of atomic human mutation. I knew I couldn’t ask anybody about it, and because I hoped I would never see its like again, I came up with explanation after explanation for its existence, despite what I’d read on the enclosed document: It was shipped here from Hiroshima, it was the result of a Nazi genetic experiment, it was a dead circus freak, it was anything but what I knew it said it was – what it had to be: an extraterrestrial.”
For some people in Ufology, the Corso-Birnes book was just what they wanted to hear: dead aliens and a found Flying Saucer. Others, meanwhile, thought that the whole thing was just too good to be true. As for the Air Force, it kept silent on the matter of Corso – respectfully or angrily, we don’t know. There can be little doubt, though, that the Pentagon found itself in a very awkward position in 1997, when Corso surfaced with his yarn-of-all-yarns. After all, at the very same time that one of their own – Corso – was championing the alien side of the story, the Air Force was doing all that it possibly could to convince people that crash-test dummies were responsible for much of the talk of aliens. With that said, it’s almost time to address the life and career of a certain Major General Charles Willoughby – who just happened to be a good friend and colleague of Corso. Now, we come to the situation I presented in my 2005 book, Body Snatchers in the Desert – and that I expanded on in the sequel, The Roswell UFO Conspiracy of 2017.
In Body Snatchers, I shared information with my readers concerning specific data on experiments undertaken by one of the most evil, deranged, insane organizations that ever existed: Japan’s Unit 731. It was a terrible group of people who performed high-altitude experiments on people. People were exposed to chemical warfare and biological warfare. Those behind it all were easily as fucked up and crazy as all those Nazi scientists/scum. Then, at the end of the Second World War – when U.S. military personnel moved into Japan – a variety of classified Japanese military documents were captured and revealed plans for new, huge balloons – far larger than the “Fugo” balloon-bombs of the War, as they were known. More files on terrible experiments were found, too. Much of the material was secretly flown to various military facilities in New Mexico. Several high-altitude, balloon-based experiments took place (also in New Mexico), and using the same plans for those aforementioned, massive Japanese war-balloons. They had the ability to carry a crew of around five people.
Nick Redfern
Some of those balloons crashed. One them came down on the Foster Ranch, Lincoln County, New Mexico. It’s better known as the crash site of the “Roswell UFO.” It’s a complicated story that led to that famous “Saucer crash” and those “dead aliens.” The fact is, though, there were no aliens. But, there were several huge balloon arrays that fell to the ground killing the Japanese crews, and that showered tough balloon material that fell to the ranch floor, and provoking a plethora of wild rumors that still exists to this very day. In part 2, I’ll share with you an even more controversial part of this story that no-one in Ufology will want to hear. Certainly, Corso didn’t want to hear it. That’s why he smothered it all in a story of a crashed UFO.
Part 1 of this article was on the matter of Philip Corso’s many tales (also referred to as “lies”) concerning his 1997 book, The Day After Roswell. That same Part 1 included secret, terrible atrocities; classified documents; the top secret development of huge Japanese balloons in 1945; all of this eventually through 1947 in New Mexico; and terrible experiments undertaken by a group of 100 percent scum called Unit 731. With that said, I’ll now let you read the second part of the story and you’ll see why Corso had a reason – a very controversial reason – for hiding the real story of Roswell from just about everyone. According to Tien-wei Wu (who wrote “A Preliminary Review of Studies of Japanese Biological Warfare and Unit 731 in the United States”): “Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby, MacArthur’s intelligence chief, was in charge of the whole affair of Unit 731 [italics mine], shielding its former members from any outside contact in order to avoid any research data on biological warfare fallen into the Soviet hands. Despite the fact that Lt. Col. Thomas H. Morrow (a lawyer from Ohio) of International Prosecution Section of the Tokyo Trial and David N. Sutton, head of its Document Division, made a trip to China to collect evidence on Japanese waging biological warfare in China, during the afternoon of August 29, 1946 no sooner was the Unit 731 case raised than it was dropped. MacArthur was empowered ‘to approve, reduce or otherwise alter any sentence imposed by ‘the International Military T
Similarly, on August 15, 2005, the Japan Times ran an article on Unit 731 and Willoughby. One month later, the American Thinker website stated, while commenting on the Japan Times story: “The Japan Times editorial says Brigadier General Charles Willoughby, head of the intelligence unit of the Occupation forces in Japan was behind Washington’s efforts to gain access to Unit 731’s biological and chemical research: In the documents, Willoughby described the achievements of his unit’s investigations, saying the ‘information procured will have the greatest value in future development of the U.S. BW (bacteria warfare) program.’ Citing a U.S. War Department specialist in charge of the investigation, Willoughby wrote in the report that data on human experiments may prove invaluable and the information was only obtainable through the skillful, psychological approach to top – flight pathologists involved in Unit 731 experiments. The U.S. provided money, food, gifts, entertainment and other kinds of rewards to the former Unit 731 members, according to the report. According to Keiichi Tsuneishi, a professor at Kanagawa University and an expert on biological and chemical weapons who uncovered the documents at the U.S. National Archives, members of 731 were forced by Washington to choose between cooperating and facing war crime charges.”
So, what does all of this have to do with Philip Corso? The answer is quite a lot. A huge amount, one might say. Willoughby and Corso were – wait for it – very close friends and worked together in more than a few fields. In They Cast No Shadows, Brian Desborough reveals how following an anti-communist seminar in Mexico City in 1957, an organization was spawned called Liberty Lobby. Desborough further noted that the group ran “under the direction of Willis Carto, whose mentor, Francis Yockey, had been jailed as a Nazi sympathizer during WWII. Curiously, the steering committee of Liberty Lobby included such people as Lt. Colonel Philip Corso and Major General Charles Willoughby.” The pair was also part of a group known as the Armed Services Committee of the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. On top of that, Corso received a 1945 briefing on the work of Unit 731 as a part of his, Corso’s, work undertaken for Operation Paperclip. You may know that Paperclip was a dirty, classified program designed to seize advanced Nazi technology at the end of the Second World War.
In Confessions of an Illuminati, it’s revealed that in the immediate period after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, Corso and a man named Frank Capell (an editor for the John Birch Society) were “instrumental in spreading stories linking Oswald to Russia and Ruby to Castro’s Cuba.” it’s also notes that Corso was a member of the Armed Forces Committee of the Shickshinny Knights of Malta. He adds: “Psychological Warfare and Propaganda, including, of course, disinfo operations, were the main areas of interest for these global manipulators working for the Committee during the Cold War.”
As we have seen, Corso was a close colleague of – and a good friend to – Major General Charles Willoughby, who just happened to be one of the key figures in the top secret Japanese operation to bring the Unit 731 people and records to the United States. The pair are known to have shared secret intelligence data. Corso was an expert in the field of disinformation – namely, creating faked stories to fool certain targets, individuals and entire countries. And, maybe, to fool the field of Ufology. Just perhaps, Corso’s final, “crowning glory” of the fabricated kind came in 1997 with the publication of The Day After Roswell. The reason: to save Willoughby’s, ahem, “reputation,” and to prevent anyone from learning the truth of the Corso-Willoughby-Roswell-UFO-Unit 731 controversy. On the matter of Corso’s reliability (or, rather, of the absolute distinct lack of it), the following words of Kevin Randle – the most respected and grounded of all the various Roswell investigators within the UFO research community – are well worth noting: “…when Corso came into conflict with other witnesses or information [on Roswell] that was contrary to his point of view, he retreated. He was quick to suggest that his information might not have been the best[italics mine].”
Philip Corso was a man who really did know a great deal about a lot of secrets. And, probably, much of what he knew really did relate to the Roswell affair of forty-seven. But, instead of standing up and being a man, and telling the “real truth” of Roswell, Corso chose to save the reputation of his buddy, Willoughby (and the reputation, and connection of himself, too). All of those controversy-filled issues in the paragraph above, had Corso scared and pissing in his pants. So, he did what he felt was the best thing to do: bury the Japanese angle, amplify the UFO aspect, and hope that his – Corso’s – story would keep him and the late Willoughby away from those really important issues: Unit 731; Japanese documents; secret, huge balloons; high-altitude experiments over New Mexico; and bodies found on the Foster Ranch, but not alien bodies. Japanese bodies.
The Mandela Effect Documentary - Alternative Time Lines or False Memories?
The Mandela Effect Documentary- Alternative Time Lines or False Memories?
The Mandela Effect Documentary – Alternative Time Lines or False Memories?
This is the best information I have ever seen on this. I have experienced this personally on more than one occasion. This DOCUMENTED proof speaks for itself.
Richard Branson and Friends Reach the Edge of Space, and Lived to Tell About it!
Richard Branson and Friends Reach the Edge of Space, and Lived to Tell About it!
Early this morning, Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic achieved a major milestone in the development of commercial space travel. Along with a team of specialists, Branson traveled to the edge of space aboard the VSS Unity and made it safely back to Earth. In so doing, Branson and his company have also fired the latest salvo in the ongoing race between the titans of the commercial space industry (aka. NewSpace).
Coverage began at 7:30 am PST (10:30 am EST) and was live-streamed on the company website, its Youtube channel, and social media accounts. As promised, the event was hosted by comedian Stephen Colbert and co-hosted by a panel that consisted of famed former astronaut and science communicator Chris Hadfield, industry professional and popular science communicator Kelly Jerardi, and Virgin Galactic structures engineer Veronika McGowan.
Kicking things off in style, Branson rode his bicycle to Spaceport America and joined the rest of the crew, who then entered the facility and signed the “astronaut log book.” This included aerospace engineer Beth Moses (Astronaut 002), Virgin Galactic’s Chief Astronaut Instructor; Colin Bennett (Astronaut 003), the company’s lead operations engineer; and Sirisha Bandla (Astronaut 004), Virgin Galactic’s vice president of government affairs and research.
At 08:21 AM PDT (11:21 AM EDT), the mission took off with its carrier – the VMS Eve (named after Branson’s late mother) – and was flown to its launch altitude of over 13,715 m (45,000 ft). At 09:15 AM PDT (12:15 PM EDT), the VSS Unity detached from VMS Eve and engaged its rocket motor for a full burn of 60 seconds. At this point, Branson and his fellow crewmembers were given the green light to undo their safety harnesses and float around the cabin.
The spacecraft achieved a top velocity of Mach 3 (3,700 km/h; 2,300 mph) and reach an altitude of 86 km (53.5 mi) – just slightly below the Kármán Line (the official boundary of space). The entire flight was captured by flight cameras mounted on the mothership, the spacecraft, and the chase plane. Branson and crew also live-tweeted the event and shared photos of their ascent and the four minutes of weightlessness they experienced.
“Welcome to the dawn of a new space age,” Branson tweeted. “I have dreamt about this moment since I was a child, but going to space was more magical than I ever imagined.” Shortly after, the VSS Unity “feathered” its wings and began gliding safely back to Earth, touching down on the runway at Spaceport America at about 09:30 AM PDT (12:30 PM EDT). As promised, Branson had a “very exciting” announcement to share during the post-flight press event:
“Today Virgin Galactic is proud to announce that it has partnered with Amaze, to open space for everyone. If you go to Amaze.com/space to enter, you have a chance to go to space… You’ll be entered into the Amaze sweepstakes for the chance to win not one, but two seats aboard one of the first commercial Virgin Galactic spaceflights. And with my Willy Wonka hat on, a guided tour of Spaceport America, guided by yours truly, and I promise lots of chocolate in the factory…
“And I would just like to end by saying, welcome to the dawn of a new Space Age!”
Image tajne from inside VSS Unity during the four minutes of weightlessness. Credit: Virgin Galactic
The post-celebrations that accompanied the landing featured a performance by Grammy-nominated singer Khalid who debuted a new song, titled “New Normal” (a possible shout-out to the new age of space exploration?) and an earlier hit song, “Better/Talk.” Chris Hadfield was there as well to pin FAA Wings onto the lapels of the Unity 22 crew, who are now officially Commercial Astronauts. As always, Hadfield had some inspired words to share as he issued the wings:
“It has been a tremendous day here in New Mexico, a beautiful, sunny day. It’s the time of year where from the sycamores and the maples, the little keys, after having worked so hard to grow vertically, are going to detach from the mother ship of their tree and float and tumble and plant a seed somewhere else.
“And the wings that are the Virgin Galactic wings, that I have the huge privilege of pinning on the crew, are those sycamore seeds and the sycamore wings. It’s just a beautiful acknowledgment of the work, and the passion, and the risk, and the accomplishment of everyone here, and specifically, these four astronauts.”
So… his announcement was about a giveaway a la “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” And he even referenced Willy Wonka, chocolate, and factory in the process? SO called it! While donations are not necessary to enter, every donation made will go to support Space for Humanity (S4H), a non-profit organization dedicated to “democratizing space” through its Sponsored Citizen Astronaut Program.
External image of the VSS Unity “feathering” its wings in preparation for descent. Credit: Virgin Galactic
By allowing regular citizens the chance to go to space, they hope that more people will experience the Overview Effect and be inspired to help find solutions to problems here on Earth. The contest will remain open to submissions until Aug. 31st, 2021, the details of which can be found on Amaze.com. The winning entry (winner and guest) will be announced on or around September 29th, 2021.
This mission was the 22nd test flight of the VSS Unity, which was named by late Stephen Hawking “as a vehicle that will unite the world through space.” The flight also reportedly fulfilled its test objectives, which included evaluating the crew cabin, the potential for research, and the five-day pre-flight training program. And as Branson was quoted as saying in the post-flight press release issued by his company:
“I have dreamt about this moment since I was a child, but nothing could have prepared me for the view of Earth from space. We are at the vanguard of a new space age. As Virgin’s founder, I was honored to test the incredible customer experience as part of this remarkable crew of mission specialists and now astronauts. I can’t wait to share this experience with aspiring astronauts around the world.
“Our mission is to make space more accessible to all. In that spirit, and with today’s successful flight of VSS Unity, I’m thrilled to announce a partnership with Omaze and Space for Humanity to inspire the next generation of dreamers. For so long, we have looked back in wonder at the space pioneers of yesterday. Now, I want the astronauts of tomorrow to look forward and make their own dreams come true.”
Branson, pilot, and crew of the Unity 22 flight posing for looking out onto the New Mexico desert. Credit: Virgin Galactic
Next up, Jeff Bezos and his historic crewed flight aboard the New Shepard spacecraft (RSS First Step Crew Capsule)! On this inaugural crewed flight, Bezos will be joined by his brother Mark and veteran aviator and female aerospace trailblazer Wally Funk. This event, which will take place on Tuesday, July 20th, is also sure to be a media circus and will be broadcast live from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One facility near the town of Van Horn, Texas.
We can also anticipate that Bezos and others will take the opportunity to make inspiring speeches of how they are fulfilling a personal dream of going to space, and how they hope that countless others will now be able to follow. After that, there’s not much left to do but wait for Elon Musk to try and up the ante even further. What will it be? An inaugural flight around the Moon with the #dearMoon project crew?
Or perhaps the Starship’s inaugural flight to Mars? It’s hard to say and the possibilities are as numerous as they are profound. Musk, the ball’s in your court! While we’re waiting, be sure to watch the live stream in its entirety, courtesy of Virgin Galactic:
VIDEO 3 : By : Puerto Rico desde el Aire ; Strange road : up is down, down is up : July 7, 2021
VIDEO 4 : By : Cavazoni, July 10, 2021 : This is one of the most sinister cases you will see today. Does anyone out there have an explanation for what happened in this video
UFO Sighted Over Manchester, England ( July 8, 2021 )
STATEMENT : United Kingdom - Manchester - 8th July 2021 .. This is not on radar or the flight path of anykind
credit : Bazzil Brush
UFO Portal Sighted Over Philippines ( July 10, 2021 )
UFO Portal Sighted Over Philippines on July 10, 2021
STATEMENT : happening this evening 7pm Philippines UFO portal
credit : Yaj Oanilam
UFOs Sighted Over Wiltshire, England ( July 8, 2021 )
UFOs Sighted : Crop Circles designers captured in Wiltshire, England on July 8, 2021 : This season has been a famous Crop Circles season in the English country side, where the tenth appeared on the July 6, 2021 : waiting to see if any get reported.
credit : UFO Sightings Footage
Dark Grey Spherical Shaped UFO Traveling Over I-25 In New Mexico?
Dark Grey Sphere shaped UFO Spotted by motorist traveling down I-25 in New Mexico.
These unusual structures were found on the moon IO which is the inner most moon of Jupiter. The structures are a bit hard to see due to the angle, lighting, and exposure of the photo. So I added a bit of deepening, contrast and light to allow you to see it more easily. Some of these structures are 20-40 miles across! Structures that are made by aliens do not conform to the ideas in the heads of humans. Those ideas...were made by growing up in a culture that shaped our ideas of what's beautiful what's ugly and what's right and what's wrong. You didn't decide that...the people you grew up with and were taught by did. Even the media did. Please don't just glance at the screenshots I posted here...instead look deeply into them, not just to see what I saw, but to see what I missed. Let me leave you with a single question. What if what you see here is real, and what you were taught growing up was wrong?
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Huge fleet of objects passing the International Space Station
Huge fleet of objects passing the International Space Station
Avery strange event took place near the ISS on July 6, 2021, when the ISS live feed captured hundreds of unknown bright objects moving through space.
Although many of these unidentified flying objects come from different locations in space, they all follow a fixed trajectory and fly at different speeds, it seems most of them come from one location.
It doesn't look like space junk since these objects apparently follow a fixed route and debris from a meteor seems unlikely as the first meteor shower is a month away. From August 10 to August 13 Earth will pass through a stream of debris from giant comet Swift-Tuttle, source of the annual Perseid meteor shower.
AMAZING daytime UFO over parliament building in Hague, Netherlands 2021
AMAZING daytime UFO over parliament building in Hague, Netherlands 2021
This UFO video was submitted to me a few days ago. It show this huge unidentified flying object hovering in the sky above The Hague, a city on the North Sea coast of the western Netherlands. This happened on 29th June 2021 at 8 am.
Witness report:
Dear UFO enthusiasts, I am sharing a video with you that I recorded. I saw this crazy big thing floating in the sky on Tuesday morning at around 08:00 on my way to work. It was filmed in The Hague, in the Netherlands, right above the parliament building. Do you happen to know what this could be? I would appreciate it if you could share it on your Facebook page.
Astronomers use artificial intelligence to reveal the true shape of universe
Astronomers use artificial intelligence to reveal the true shape of universe
WION Web Team
This handout picture released on March 15, 2021 by Roland Bacon, David Mary, ESO/NASA shows one of the hydrogen filaments discovered by the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field Photograph:( AFP )
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Now, Japanese astronomers have developed an astounding technique to measure the universe. Using artificial intelligence, scientists were able to remove noise in astronomical data which is caused by random variations in the shapes of galaxies. What does this mean? What is its significance? Read here
The universe comes off as a vast and immeasurable entity whose depths are imperceptible to Earthlings. But in the pursuit of simplifying all that surrounds us, scientists have made great strides in understanding the space we inhabit.
Now, Japanese astronomers have developed an astounding technique to measure the universe. Using artificial intelligence, scientists were able to remove noise in astronomical data which is caused by random variations in the shapes of galaxies.
What did the scientists do?
Scientists used supercomputer simulations and tested large mock data before performing the same on real data from space. After extensive testing, scientists used the tool on data derived from Japan’s Subaru Telescope.
To their surprise, it worked! The results that followed remained largely in sync with the currently accepted models of the universe. If employed on a bigger scale, the tool could help scientists analyse expansive data from astronomical surveys.
Current methods cannot effectively get rid of the noise which pervades all data from space. To avoid interference from noise data, the team used the world’s most advanced astronomy supercomputer called “ATERUI II”.
Using real data from the Subaru Telescope, they generated 25,000 mock galaxy catalogues.
All data from space can be distorted by the gravity of what’s in the foreground eclipsing its background. This is called gravitational lensing. Measurements of such lensing is used to better understand the universe. Essentially, a galaxy directly visible to us could be manipulating data about what lies behind it.
But it’s difficult to differentiate oddly-looking galaxies from distorting ones that manipulate data. It’s called “shape noise” and regularly gets in the way of understanding the universe.
Based on these understandings, scientists added noise to the artificial data sets and trained AI to recover lensing data from the mock data. The AI was able to highlight previously unobservable details from this data.
Building on this, scientists used the AI model on the real world, covering 21 square degrees of the sky. They found that the details registered about the foreground were actually consistent with existing knowledge about the cosmos.
“Lack of wings and lack of evident means of propulsion clearly rule out conventional aircraft and helicopters. Many are soundless, many move at such speeds and with such accelerations that they defy understanding in terms of present technology.”
This description – which outlines an intriguing science problem – could easily apply to mysterious flying objects encountered by military aviators in recent years. In 2014 and 2015, for example, Navy pilots tracked unidentified craft seemingly able to turn, stop in midair and rapidly accelerate “with no jet engine, no exhaust plume” and no wings.
A few years earlier, at least five naval aviators witnessed an object that, as a squadron commander later recounted, had no “wings or rotors and outran our F-18s,” accelerating to extreme speeds in the blink of an eye.
According to former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe, unidentified objects are engaging “in actions that are difficult to explain. Movements that are hard to replicate, that we don’t have the technology for, or are traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom.” Asked about these encounters, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) referred to “technology which is in a whole different sphere than anything we understand.”
Similarly, former President Obama stated that “there’s footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don’t know exactly what they are. We can’t explain how they moved.” Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, went a step further, speculating that these mysterious craft might constitute “a different form of life.”
But the description at the top of this column is not from a high-level government official or a pilot. Nor, despite similarities, does it describe any recent UFO encounters.
Instead, it is an excerpt from 1968 congressional testimony by the late James McDonald, a leading atmospheric physicist and professor of meteorology at the University of Arizona.
Initially a skeptic with only a tangential interest in UFOs, McDonald found his scientific curiosity aroused after discovering that official explanations for several noteworthy UFO sightings were absurdly unscientific.
After spending years combing through declassified documents and scrupulously tracking down more than 500 witnesses, McDonald became the world’s premier scientific authority on UFOs. Perhaps most intriguingly, his archive of extraordinary, physics-defying UFO reports spanning the mid-1940s to the late 1960s has remarkable parallels to more recent incidents.
Unsurprisingly, McDonald’s painstaking research turned him from skeptic to outspoken advocate of serious academic study of UFOs. But as an exasperated McDonald told Congress, the scientific community “has been casually ignoring as nonsense a matter of extraordinary scientific importance.”
Testifying alongside McDonald at that 1968 hearing on UFOs was J. Allen Hynek, chair of the astronomy department at Northwestern University. Hynek, like McDonald, began his academic career a fierce UFO skeptic. But after two decades as a consultant to a U.S. Air Force project cataloguing UFO sightings, Hynek had seen enough compelling data to implore Congress and the scientific community to initiate a robust, fiercely independent academic inquiry into such encounters.
Hynek and McDonald were particularly struck by the sincerity, good judgment and professional caliber of hundreds of often-reluctant witnesses who had nothing to gain – and much to lose – by reporting UFO sightings. Moreover, McDonald and Hynek found that radar and other technical data corroborated credible eyewitness accounts in many of the most remarkable incidents. As Hynek observed, skepticism of the UFO topic is largely due to scientists’ lack of exposure to such “really challenging UFO data.”
Moreover, much of the aversion to serious investigation of these phenomena is rooted in the conclusions of a massive 1969 report funded by the U.S. Air Force. Billed as the final say on UFOs, the 1,000-page report’s summary claimed that “extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.”
But this conclusion, written by physicist Edward Condon and reported by major media outlets at the time, did not reflect important scientific analysis in the report. In stark contrast to Condon’s recommendation against academic study of UFOs, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ scientific consensus held that “a phenomenon with such a high ratio of unexplained cases (about 30% in the Report itself) should arouse sufficient curiosity to continue its study.”
McDonald, Hynek and several other experts also made abundantly clear that much of the so-called Condon Report was unforgivably flawed. It was biased from the outset, omitted important cases and critical context, relied on shoddy or nonexistent witness interviews and frequently ascribed absurd, unscientific explanations to extraordinary events.
As Stanford physicist Peter Sturrock noted, “critical reviews [of the report] came from those scientists who had actually carried out research in the UFO area, whereas the laudatory reviews came from scientists who had not carried out such research.”
But for an academic community already wary of involvement in a topic associated with kooky UFO fanatics and bizarre works of science fiction, the report’s overarching recommendation against rigorous academic study of UFOs was – as Hynek accurately noted – “the kiss of death to any further investigation.” A half century later, little has changed. With few exceptions, the stigma largely remains.
Following the report’s release, an exasperated McDonald spoke at a symposium organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, telling his colleagues that “science is in default for having failed to mount any truly adequate studies of [the UFO] problem.” The audio recording of McDonald’s AAAS presentation is a must-listen for any skeptical scientist.
A few years before writing the book that inspired the film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Hynek drilled down to the root of the problem: “So powerful and all-encompassing have the misconceptions among scientists been about the nature of UFO information that an amazing lethargy and apathy to investigation has prevailed. This apathy is unbecoming to the ideals of science and undermines public confidence.”
Make no mistake: These are remarkable statements from two academics who began their careers deeply skeptical of the UFO phenomenon.
With recent UFO encounters mirroring the incidents that stirred Hynek and McDonald’s academic curiosity, Congress must continue to assert itself on an issue that begs for scientific investigation.
It can begin by following Hynek’s recommendation to establish an independent “UFO Scientific Board of Inquiry, properly funded” and staffed by academic experts with access to relevant data. To alleviate national security concerns, sensitive information can be analyzed by Department of Energy and NASA scientists with security clearances.
As the proliferation of nuclear weapons barrels on unchecked and a drought of “biblical proportions” grips the United States, Hynek’s rhetorical question to Congress whether we can “afford to overlook a potential breakthrough of great significance” is more relevant than ever.
Perhaps more importantly, as Hynek eloquently stated in his congressional testimony, “even if the sole purpose of such a study is to satisfy human curiosity, to probe the unknown and to provide intellectual adventure, then it is in line with what science has always stood for.”
Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, as well as an Obama administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter @MvonRen.
File’s Files 27 2021 - End of the World Almost - PART I
Bedford, Pennsylvania on February 2, 2021
File’s Files 27 2021 - End of the World Almost - PART I
Major George A. Filer III ret. USAF
New Jersey State Director
MUFON Eastern Region Director
Special Projects are Lord Hill-Norton Unimpeachable UFO Sightings,Tic Tac UFO Photographed Near ISS, End of the World Almost, India -10,000-Year-Old Rock Paintings Depict Aliens, Castro Saw Alien Craft and Bodies, Alien Bases, Pacific Northwest Bakes, and Strange Craft.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over Alaska, California, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Washington, and Wisconsin
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over Argentina, China, France, Latvia, and Mexico.
The Filer Research Institute feels the scientific study of UFOs is for the benefit of humankind and is an important endeavor. The US Air Force investigated UFOs publicly for more than twenty years under Project Blue Book; and I continue this advanced research. I believe the God of the universe has spread life throughout the cosmos and UFO’s are visiting us in ever-increasing numbers.
Forward these files to your friends and neighbors.
Special Projects
Lord Hill-Norton Unimpeachable UFO Sightings
Lord Hill-Norton Unimpeachable UFO Sightings
Lord Hill-Norton, Chairman, Military Committee of NATO, 1974-77 s
Clues “The evidence that there are objects which have been seen in our atmosphere, and even on terra firma, that cannot be accounted for either as man-made objects or as any physical force or effect known to our scientists, seems to me to be overwhelming
A very large number of sightings have been vouched for by persons whose credentials seem to me unimpeachable. It is striking that so many have been trained observers, such as police officers and airline or military pilots. Their observations have in many instances been supported either by technical means such as radar or, even more convincingly, by interference with electrical apparatus of one sort or another.” Lord Hill-Norton, Chief of Defense Staff, Ministry of Defense, Great Britain, 1973; quoted from foreword of “Above Top Secret” by Timothy Good.
Tic Tac UFO Photographed Near International Space Station
Tic Tac UFO
This golden UFO is often seen near the space station. Usually it is a golden ball, but this time it’s a long cigar shaped craft caught on a live Internet cam on July 9, 2014
The UFO stays in formation with the ISS, which tells us it has matched speeds with the space station so that it can conduct its mission. The space station solar panels move to adjust to the sun and move to cover up the UFO. Very interesting catch by Streetcap1 of YouTube.
India -10,000-year-old Rock Paintings Depict Aliens and UFOs
Possible UFO Drawing
Charama — Chhattisgarh State Department of Archaeology and culture plans to seek help from NASA and Isro for research on 10,000-year-old rock paintings depicting aliens and UFOs in Charama region in Kanker district in tribal Bastar region.
According to archaeologist JR Bhagat, these paintings have depicted aliens like those shown in Hollywood and Bollywood flicks. Located about 130km from Raipur, the caves come under village Chandeli and Gotitola.
“The findings suggest that humans in prehistoric times may have seen beings from other planets which still create curiosity among people and researchers. Extensive research is needed for further findings.
One of the ancient rock paintings carved on caves at Charama in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker district. (TOI photo by Amit Bhardwaj)
Large Head and Strange Feet Suggest Aliens
There are several beliefs among locals in these villages. While few worship the paintings, others narrate stories they have heard from ancestors about “rohela people” — the small sized ones — who used to land from sky in a round-shaped flying objects and take away one or two persons of the village who never returned.
“The paintings are done in natural colors that have hardly faded despite the years. The strangely carved figures are seen holding weapon-like objects and do not have clear features. Specially, the nose and mouth are missing. In few pictures, they are even shown wearing spacesuits. We can’t refute possibility of imagination by prehistoric men…,” the archaeologist said.
Cataclysmic Event Dawns the Origin and Perhaps the End of Civilization
Around 13,000 years ago, the Earth burned. A swarm of comet debris from the Taurid meteor stream had blasted the Americas and parts of Europe; the worst day in prehistory since the end of the ice age. Many species of large animal were exterminated by the conflagration and ensuing cataclysms. And those that survived the initial onslaught could do little against the floods, acid rain, and starvation that followed. People suffered too. Mankind was knocked backwards by this cataclysm into even more primitive stone-age ways of life, leaving sickly, frightened communities battling for survival.
Many years passed before the dust settled and the stars could be seen again. The sun and moon gradually strengthened and slowly the natural order of things returned. But this devastating cataclysmic event was not forgotten.Vegetation, and the animals that grazed it, could not live in the weak half-light of day or the starless black of night. And without them, life was bleak and hard.
Prehistory Decoded at Gobekli Tepe: From a Cataclysmic Event Dawns the Origin and Perhaps the End of Civilization
In the Fertile Crescent, modern day southern Turkey, the surviving Natufian tribes memorialized this great catastrophe by erecting Gobekli Tepe, the world’s first temple. The event had changed them – made them more fearful and religious. They prayed at their new stone temple for protection, deliverance, and anything else that might help. And they watched the sky, very carefully. In the Fertile Crescent, modern day southern Turkey, the surviving Natufian tribes memorialized this great catastrophe by erecting Gobekli Tepe, the world’s first temple. The event had changed them – made them more fearful and religious. They prayed at their new stone temple for protection, deliverance, and anything else that might help. And they watched the sky, very carefully.
In the Fertile Crescent, modern day southern Gobekli Tepe,
Turkey, the surviving Natufian tribes memorialized this great catastrophe by erecting Gobekli Tepe, the world’s first temple. The event had changed them – made them more fearful and religious. They prayed at their new stone temple for protection, deliverance, and anything else that might help. And they watched the sky, very carefully.
Fidel Castro Saw Alien Craft and Bodies
Fidel Castro and Pope John Paul
Jorge Martin, Puerto Rican ufologist reports that on March 29, 2012, former President of Cuba, Fidel Castro issued historical document of Reflections, entitled “The need to Enrich our Knowledge.” The letter discussed several issues related to the dangers for the survival of humankind posed by the current warmongering race that some of the world powers are enforcing; and how the bearers of these actions tend to suffer from characters that lack culture and special knowledge. Interjected is the possibility of extraterrestrial life in the universe around us.
Millions of stars with multiple planets
Castro stated, “When Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in 1998, I sat down to dinner with a spokesman of the Pope. I said, “I think there is a 99.9 percent chance there is intelligent life on other planets’. A European article reads, “There could be thousands of millions of planets not much larger than Earth orbiting stars in our galaxy. “Our new observations show that about 40% of the 160.000 million red dwarf stars have a ‘super-Earth” orbiting in their living zone, and there may be liquid water on the surface of the planet. “
Jorge Martin, states, In 2002, the renowned Cuban filmmaker Octavio Cortazar visited Puerto Rico and asked to meet with us at our magazine Enigmas Goals. He gave me a copy of the first documentary ever made in Cuba entitled “UFOs in Cuba.” Octavio Cortazar further stated since President Fidel Castro opened the door with his letter about extraterrestrial life, he would reveal more of Castro’s statements. John Paul II told Castro in 1998, The probability of life beyond Earth was a fact and discussed the observations of UFOs!
Castro saw the reality of extraterrestrial life visiting us, when he visited the Soviet Union. Perhaps, as a result we would deviate from the path of self destruction in which we currently are on.
Above: Photographic simulation of Fidel Castro’s visit to the Soviet secret Lab in which he was shown both the alien craft and the corpse of its pilot.
Fidel Castro also gave Juan Mari Bras, a pro-Puerto Rico Independence leader information about the UFO matter? I asked Mrs. Trabal, What did Castro say to Attorney Juan Mari Bras?
Well-she-said, On one occasion we were talking about the UFO subject. Fidel Castro told us, before the fall of the Soviet Union, he had traveled to the USSR and the Soviet Authorities had taken him to a military base in which there was a special laboratory, and had showed him an alien spaceship, a disk they had captured. He also saw the body of a tall extraterrestrial being they kept preserved in a special box-like machine or cryogenic freezer.
Kapustin Yar Launch Site
Juan Mari Bras had not spoken about this before because Castro had told him confidence. Juan is a person of great integrity, and would not say something like this if it not was true. Castro also told us, the Soviets told him they knew Americans had a similar lab and research center with crafts and alien bodies.
It is likely Castro was taken to the Plesetsk Cosmodrome where the Soyuz Rocket Cosmos-3M, and Tsykon are launched and is under persistent surveillance by alien crafts. This photo was taken by security officer Ghenady Korniev Vassili Zaitsev on January 5, 1992, at the Plesetsk missile center.
The other possible missile center where the alien craft could be stored is the base of Kapushtin Yar, in Astrakhan, Volgograd. Here there are several large hangars and an underground facility with several floors, in which Russian scientists could study alien technology of captured and crashed alien spacecrafts.
USSR UFO Museum
It is very possible that Fidel Castro saw the alien spaceship and the alien corpse at Kapustin Yar. Thanks to Jorge Martin jorgemartin87@yahoo.comUnder these lines we are showing a sketch with data on some of the extraterrestrial spacecrafts that the Russian Government keeps at this research center, made by a confidential Russian source, which was delivered to Italian journalist and UFO researcher Constantino Paglialunga in 1997.
Green Mountains, Vermont Alien Base
Possible First Photo of UFO over Mt. Washington
The route encircles Vermont’s Green Mountains, including Vermont’s highest peak, Mount Mansfield and the famous mountain pass of Smugglers’ Notch. The area offers many recreational opportunities in all four-seasons, both indoor and outdoor, including world-renown skiing and snowboarding, hiking, biking and water sports to name a few. A mail man called me to say he noticed UFOs flying in and out of the mountains near the Canadian Border. He had been talking to the Border Patrol personnel who also frequently saw UFOs and they suggested he can call me. The mountains are not far from Mt. Washington where it’s believed the first UFO picture was made in the late 1800s.
The route encircles Vermont’s Green Mountains, including Vermont’s highest peak, Mount Mansfield and the famous mountain pass of Smugglers’ Notch. The area offers many recreational opportunities in all four-seasons and apparently many UFOs are seen. Note some people feel the black mark is a dark spot on the mountain however a dark spot is more likely to be jagged and run up and down with gravity rather being horizontal.
Fostoria Ohio Underground Cavern
Craft Diving into Cavern
FOSTORIA – George Ritter took video images over his two Corvettes of a UFO that was diving into his neighbor’s farm. His RCA VHS video camera regularly picks up UFOs landing and taking off in the farmer’s field. It is assumed that these craft operate in an underground base since there are numerous underground caverns in the general area.
Birds and insects are usually portrayed in thirty or so frames of the video, while a UFO moving at thousands of miles an hour is in only one or two frames. US military aircraft can also reach speeds of a thousand miles an hour and close up would appear as a blur.
Many of the objects filmed appear to be headed into the ground of the field behind this farm. The objects are captured on a non digital RCA VHS video camera shooting towards the southeast in the afternoon sky. The UFOs are flying at speeds near a 1000 mph and appear to enter and leave the ground without effecting the crops or soil. Departing they quickly climb to higher altitudes apparently in an attempt to avoid accidents with commercial aircraft. George has noticed when the police radio announces crashes. on the Ohio State Highway not far away the craft quickly depart suggesting they capture the souls of those killed.
If the video is correct this area may contain an alien base. Seneca County, Ohio not far from Lake Eire is known for its underground caverns. A dowsing expert from England believes that a large cavern exists below this farmer’s field that is located about thirty miles from Lake Erie. One of the largest caverns in Ohio also exists on the Southwest corner of the lake at a distance of thirty miles, but further east. Thanks to George Ritter
ALIEN UFO BASES
UFO entering field near a Finley, Ohio farm
Erich A. Aggen, Jr. reports a great deal of UFO research has led to the conclusion that various species of aliens have set up secret underground bases in the United States and other countries. It is logical to assume that such bases have also been established elsewhere in the solar system. If such bases exist, where would we find them? Existing information allows us to make a few educated guesses.
“EARTH BASES: UNDERGROUND – The dark, cavernous world beneath our feet is the source of many baffling mysteries. Clandestine UFO bases may be hidden deep within the earth in natural and or artificial caverns and even under the sea.
Huge Cavern notice man at right
As a former member of the National Speleological Society (NSS), I am well aware of the vast extent of cave systems within the United States. In my own native state of Missouri, for example, there are over 2,500 known caves and dozens of new ones being discovered every year. Many of these caves are intricately linked together by numerous passageways and interconnecting chambers.
“One particular species of blind white (albino) cave fish, the Typhlichthys, has been found in many widely separated cave systems over several states. It has been found in caves that make a great arc through Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and UNDER the Mississippi River extending into Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma! A vast section of the central and southern United States must lie above one immense cavern system!
“Many caves possess rooms hundreds of feet in length, width, and height. In most cases, these huge natural caverns can only be reached and explored with the utmost skill and perseverance. There are only a few thousand NSS members in the United States and only a few hundred of this number are active spelunkers that is people who explore caves. With so few spelunkers spread over such a large area, only a very small fraction of the tens of thousands of known caves in this country have been carefully mapped and explored. Thousands of other caves remain undiscovered and unexplored. “Extensive evidence indicates that caves in the United States may be connected with caves in other parts of the world.
Nevada Alien Base
According to various reports the visitors have large brains and are able transmit their thoughts and read our minds. They obviously have advanced technology and reportedly are able to go through walls, transport people into their craft, and control people’s actions, etc.
Tall Whites Living in Northern Area 51
Former Air Force Sgt weatherman, Dr. Charles Hall claims he met aliens in Dreamland near Indian Springs, Nevada. He claims he spent two years working with three different extra-terrestrial races. One race was the tall whites are about 5 feet 11inches who grow taller after age 40 years old. They seemed to have a base partly inside a mountain in the northern part of Area 51.A fairly large group of aliens had set up a living area. They carried weapons apparently to protect themselves from intruders. For some unknown reason they had accepted the friendship of a weatherman who often trawled into their general area to obtain winds and information about the weather for the approach to Indian Springs Air Force Base.
Entities are probably visiting Earth as a tourist attraction to show other aliens how not to behave. Our tribal wars, crime, and environmental destruction would likely make an interesting study of human nature. They are also worried that our war like activities could be spread out to other planets. Each life form on Earth from the tiniest bacteria to whales may be valuable to an alien race for food or medicine. There is no evidence the aliens plan to destroy Earth or to wipe out humanity. However, they do apparently have interest in human life, minerals, nuclear power plants and weapons. It is possible they desire to take control of the world and settle here if their planet or sun is failing. An alien race trying to take over this planet may attempt to accomplish numerous tasks to make the transition painless.
INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2021
Senate Intelligence Committee
June 17, 2020. – Ordered to be printed
Mr. Rubio, from the Select Committee on Intelligence, submitted the following REPORT together with MINORITY VIEWS
… “Advanced Aerial Threats”
The Committee supports the efforts of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force at the Office of Naval Intelligence to standardize collection and reporting on unidentified aerial phenomenon, any links they have to adversarial foreign governments, and the threat they pose to U.S. military assets and installations. However, the Committee remains concerned that there is no unified, comprehensive process within the Federal Government for collecting and analyzing intelligence on unidentified aerial phenomena, despite the potential threat. The Committee understands that the relevant intelligence may be sensitive; nevertheless, the Committee finds that the information sharing and coordination across the Intelligence Community has been inconsistent, and this issue has lacked attention from senior leaders.
Therefore, the Committee directs the DNI, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense and the heads of such other agencies as the Director and Secretary jointly consider relevant, to submit a report within 180 days of the date of enactment of the Act, to the congressional intelligence and armed services committees on unidentified aerial phenomena (also known as ‘anomalous aerial vehicles’), including observed airborne objects that have not been identified.
The Committee further directs the report to include:
A detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence reporting collected or held by the Office of Naval Intelligence, including data and intelligence reporting held by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force;
A detailed analysis of unidentified phenomena data by:
geospatial intelligence; b. signals intelligence; c. human intelligence; and d. measurement and signals intelligence.
A detailed analysis of data of the FBI, which was from investigations of intrusions of unidentified aerial phenomena data over restricted United States airspace;4. A detailed description of an interagency process for ensuring timely data collection and centralized analysis of all unidentified aerial phenomena reporting for the Federal Government, regardless of which service or agency acquired the information;5. Identification of an official accountable for the process described in paragraph 4;6. Identification of potential aerospace or other threats posed by the unidentified aerial phenomena to national security, and an assessment of whether this unidentified aerial phenomena activity may be attributed to one or more foreign adversaries;7. Identification of any incidents or patterns that indicate a potential adversary may have achieved breakthrough aerospace capabilities that could put States strategic or conventional forces at risk; and8. Recommendations regarding increased collection of data, enhanced research and development, and additional funding and other resources. The report shall be submitted in unclassified form, but may include aclassifiedannex.
Pacific Northwest Bakes Under Once in a Millennium Heat Dome
Repeat Article With Unusual Jet Stream on June 27, 2021
In a December statement, the Chinese Communist government announced an expansion of its weather control program, covering an area of over 2.1 million square miles. The country believes it will have the technology. When I served in Vietnam in 1968, the US controlled the weather
Along the Route of Ho Chi Minh” with six aircraft. China has developed the use of six HAARP machines that also appear to control the jet stream over the United States. Like the Communist media daily tells the Chinese they are at war with the US the Chinese work actively in every method possible to destroy democracy even though you news will not tell you. It is my opinion that China has developed a method to change the path of the jet stream that essentially controls the weather in the United States.
The jet stream making an Omega swing surrounding a heat dome
The most recent evidence includes the wild Omega pattern of the jet stream which according to Weather experts has not happened by accident in a thousand years. This pattern is causing record high temperatures throughout the West. Temperatures above 100 degrees are common.
Just like the 600,000 US citizens killed by the Corona –virus. The virus was as bad as the Spanish Flu a hundred years ago. Communist countries feel it is their right to destroy the United States.
The heat wave baking the U.S. Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, Canada, is of an intensity never recorded by modern humans. By one measure it is more rare than a once in a 1,000 year event — which means that if you could live in this particular spot for 1,000 years, you’d likely only experience a heat dome like this once, if ever.
Portland, Oregon, has already broken its all-time record hottest temperature at 108 degrees on Saturday and the peak of the heat wave has not even been reached yet. Canada is expected to register the nation’s all-time highest temperature before the event is done. These are extremely dangerous numbers, especially in a region not used to heat like this, where many people do not have air conditioning.
By Monday, some — if not all — of the all-time record highs seen below are forecast to break, with many more cities not listed here expected to achieve the same feat.
These are all-time heat records for select cities. Portland has already broken its former all-time record of 107. / Credit: CBS News
The heat is being caused by a combination of a significant atmospheric blocking pattern on top of a human-caused climate changed world where baseline temperatures are already a couple to a few degrees higher than nature intended.
The core of the heat dome, as measured by the thickness of the air column over British Columbia and the Pacific NW, is – statistically speaking – equivalent to a 1 in 1000 year event or even 1 in 10,000 year event. / Credit: CBS News More
This heat wave comes on the heels of another historic heat wave less than two weeks ago that baked the U.S. Intermountain West, Desert Southwest and California with hundreds of record highs.
Meanwhile, the Eastern U.S. is also seeing the heat ratchet up, with feels like temperatures pushing 100 degrees by Monday and Tuesday in the major cities of the I-95 corridor. The back to back and dueling heat waves are made more likely by a very wavy jet stream and our unnaturally heating climate.
Abortion and Drugs Not Beneficial to Women’s Mental Health
Tarrant County, Texas Sheriff Bill Waybourn warns the ‘crisis’ at the southern border is ‘growing throughout America’. Expect at least a hundred thousand young Americans to lose their life taking fentanyl this year. thousands will be killed due to the defunding police in numerous cities. In most of those cities the police are told not to arrest the important drug dealers since they pay the politicians large sums. Several hundred illegal immigrants have been found dead at the U.S. border due to the extreme heat. Most of the women claim they have been raped on their trip though Mexico.
“Texas law enforcement has seized enough fentanyl to kill every man, woman and child in the state of New York.”
Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn made the comments on “Fox & Friends“. The sheriff warns the crisis at the border is growing throughout America. There has been a 50% rise fentanyl overdoses in his county. Nearly 841,000 people have died since 1999 from a drug overdose mostly from fentanyl coming Mexico and China..1 In 2019, .
Is Abortion Murder?
The Catholic Church Once conceived, the human person has a body and a soul, and a right to life. To terminate that life is morally wrong. “The Biden administration says it is committed to advancing sexual and reproductive rights around the world which essentially means they are killing millions of babies here in the U.S. and paying millions more to kill babies around the world. One million three hundred thousand abortions in 2019.
High suicide and divorce rate with abortions
Of course, the data that mothers who have an abortion attempt suicide six times more than women who have babies. The mental and physical strain on the body frequently causes a high rate of divorcé, a higher number of cancer victims and other physical problems.,
The Biden budget drops the Hyde amendments to all public funding of abortion estimated at 500 million dollars in the U.S. and a similar amount worldwide.
The Biden administration is working to restore America’s relationship with the global Catholic Church at a time when Catholic bishops in the U.S. are targeting the president over his stance on abortion and are refusing to provide communion to him.
Is a married couple who aborts their child more likely to divorce? If so, is there a direct relationship between high abortion rates and high divorce rates? Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer hinted that this might be the case.
In his book Ethics, Bonhoeffer wrote, “Marriage involves an acknowledgment of the right of life that is to come into being, a right which is not subject to disposal by the married couple. Unless this right is acknowledged as a matter of principle, marriage ceases to be marriage and becomes a mere liaison.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/philosophical/introductio
Strange Craft
The True Story of an Air Force Intelligence Officer’s Life with UFOs
U.S. Air Force Major George Filer belongs to the generation of pilots and airmen who first became aware of the strange aircraft showing up in the Earth’s atmosphere after World War II. These men – military professionals who flew planes, served as radar operators and air traffic controllers at air fields around the world – began to whisper amongst themselves about encounters with suspected extraterrestrial aircraft.
During secret debriefings at U.S. bases, pilots and air crew told their commanders of seeing UFOs off their plane’s wings. Award-winning investigative author John Guerra spent four years interviewing Filer, a decorated intelligence officer.
From objects in the skies over Cold War Europe to a UFOs over during the Cuban Missile Crisis to lights over the DMZ in Vietnam Filer leaves nothing out about his Air Force UFO encounters,
Filer’s most memorable case – the shooting of an alien at Fort Dix Army Base in 1978 – is fully recounted for the first time in this book. As a member of the Disclosure Project, military experts, astronauts, and scientists urge the U.S. government to release all it knows about UFOs to the public.
Filer describes his UFO encounters in this incredible book. By John L. Guerra.https://amzn.to/2SK3SIQ
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File’s Files 27 2021 - End of the World Almost - PART II
Bedford, Pennsylvania on February 2, 2021
File’s Files 27 2021 - End of the World Almost - PART II
Major George A. Filer III ret. USAF
New Jersey State Director
MUFON Eastern Region Director
Special Projects are Lord Hill-Norton Unimpeachable UFO Sightings,Tic Tac UFO Photographed Near ISS, End of the World Almost, India -10,000-Year-Old Rock Paintings Depict Aliens, Castro Saw Alien Craft and Bodies, Alien Bases, Pacific Northwest Bakes, and Strange Craft.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over Alaska, California, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Washington, and Wisconsin
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over Argentina, China, France, Latvia, and Mexico.
The Filer Research Institute feels the scientific study of UFOs is for the benefit of humankind and is an important endeavor. The US Air Force investigated UFOs publicly for more than twenty years under Project Blue Book; and I continue this advanced research. I believe the God of the universe has spread life throughout the cosmos and UFO’s are visiting us in ever-increasing numbers.
Forward these files to your friends and neighbors.
UFO Sightings in the United States
Sightings are from MUFON CMS
Alaska Object
Kodac –I have witnessed over 10 UFOs, this is my first reporting. My accounts vary from 2006 all the way to 2020. This account is my first telepathic communication with another species. At 9 o clock I stepped outside, when I noticed a bright light almost above me. It was two big blue lights that wrapped into a circle almost the size of a football field, I couldn’t even see the whole ship due to the fog, trees, and house. The two lights trailed while going in a circle, then went faster and faster until it was a solid blue circle. Then it zipped straight up into the sky.
I didn’t have my camera on me. The communication happened later on the next night, for about a week. List of sightings.
2006- Kodiak Alaska at night, zig zag pattern orb, also seen early morning in Harlingen Texas later that year. 2011- Orb moves above river near the border of Mexico, in Harlingen Texas. 2011- Pair of red lights in vertical form swoop across road with a high pitched screech, while driving down Edna Texas, highway 111 in November. 2014- February in Kodiak Alaska, Disc flashes in abrupt stop, then warps again over mountain. Probe comes out of ship and fly’s down mountain. Tracked every night for a week. 2015- May in Kodiak, saucer circles plane on incoming, quick zip around plane. 2015- September in Kodiak, orb drops below fog line, then floats back up in fog. 2016- August in Kodiak, metamorphic looking ship, white in color, circles over head, ship sensed something then imploded and disappeared. 2017- September in Kodiak, meteor leaves streaks of aurora borealis behind it, this happens 12 times on craft entry. 2018- May in Kodiak, ship comes in from the east to over the mountains. Serial other similar events during last two years.
California Object
Hesperia/Cajon pass/Victorville – on April 16, 2017, I saw a large transparent object in the sky that was hovering. There was a very huge dark void in the sky. The transparent ship was lower towards the ground hovering in place. The pictures don’t show how massive these things were in the sky. They were not lenticular clouds as the object was trying to camouflage.
Nebraska Light
La Vista– on June 21, 2021, my son looked up to the Northwest, and pointed. I looked up, and saw a very bright circular object like a globe. The object was moving Southwest very slowly. I took a distorted picture, but it was very It was darker in the center and reflected the Sun from the outer edges.
Note: The witness stated that the time of the sighting was 8:33 PM CDT. The camera metadata trail says that the time was 9:03 PM that is used in this report. Thanks to Will Pucket/www.ufosnw.com/newsite/
New Hampshire Light
North Conway– on June 10, 2021, my wife and I were driving and stopped to take a picture of the Sunset over the mountains. I noticed a light to my right that was gone quickly .it, I changed to video catching the object flying sporadically, and then to photos but never saw anything. A sphere opened and the ship flew into this wormhole.
New Jersey Objects
Edison– on June 26, 2021, I saw craft that just hung in the eastern night sky and moved and winked out after 5 minutes. It was shaped like the letter H with a string of smaller lights below that were of less radiance than the principal golden lights that faded during my observation. The object was in the flight path of EWR airport and airplanes wood pass near it. There were no red or green nav lights on this craft ruling out a terrestrial airplane. An actual UFO depiction of sighting.
New Jersey Objects
I recently retired from the NJANG with 32 years of aviation experience. It was a fantastic experience and an honor to serve my country.
Back in 2011 while flying in our South Jersey training area under goggles I witnessed an event that was life changing. Up until this point I had already been flying for 25 years and never saw anything in the air that I could not identify. Well on a clear fall night that all changed. I had just finished flying and had switched out with another pilot. I was sitting in the back left side jump seat, the crew chief in the right jump seat. We were hovering just above the trees when the crew chief yelled over the intercom that his goggles had just shut down due to a bright flash of light coming from the sky. Just then I saw while looking out the left side this huge 2 by 4 looking object. It was long and had semi squared off corners. No wings, no landing gear, no lights. It flew right over our helicopter, probably five hundred feet above us and headed toward Philadelphia in about three seconds. I estimate that object was moving over 20,000 mph. Remember I saw this while wearing night vision goggles. The object appeared to be lite up from inside. Unfortunately the two pilots in from never saw the craft. The story you have in the issue of the tic tac looking object is similar to what I saw. I did file a report with MUFON.
Pennsylvania Disc
Bedford – on February 2, 2021, hovering round disc was about 25 meters across and 2 meters high and metallic Taken with a large style 5 rear camera.
South Carolina Lights
Charleston– on June 23, 2021, I watched the aircraft approach from the WSW as I walked to the car and realized how slow it was moving. It did not change altitude but as it passed over it changed to a NW direction. I watched for 3 minutes and saw 6 other people also watching. It did have 3 lights on it but zero sound. Silhouetted against a brighter than normal sky I could see the outline of a perfect black boomerang.
Washington Lights
SeaTac – on May 15, 2021, my wife and I spotted a long string of flashing lights. My wife thought she could see windows and I thought it was the SpaceX launch but that was earlier in the day. It was traveling east for 5 minutes. I took several pictures along with a video.
Note:The witnesses quite likely saw Star-Link communication satellites that were already in orbit. Thanks to Will Pucket/www.ufosnw.com/newsite/
Wisconsin Object
Racine–on May 23, 2021, shiny Tic Tac very close above the neighborhood moving effortlessly with no wings, engine, sound! I got a clip of it. It went in a straight line and was gone before I knew
Worldwide UFO Sightings
Argentina Object
Vivero— on November 2011, I didn’t know when I took the photo, but spotted the disc much later. Yu already certified another UFO; a photo is of San Rafael Mendoza Argentina in 2008. Attached are 2 photos.
China Light
Hangzhou– on June 24, 2021, a UAP seen above the house flying slowly with no wings and no sound. We often see military jets in the area that are very loud. This object was shiny and flew a perfect trajectory in a straight line out of sight.
France Light
Bourpeuil le Vigeant– on May 1, 2021, we were at the window looking at the sky, when I saw a point of light approaching the size of Venus. It suddenly moved in our direction (North) and veered sharply to the South-East to quickly disappear.
Latvia Light
Alaine– on August 18, 2018, UFOs from the Alien Aircraft Fleet visit me every day. They seek and steal wealth from parallel realities: money, property, children, valuables, technology. The steals my potential and talents by pumping them out of my body. The video shows several other flying objects also in time 00:04 and 1:09 which flash like bluish blue flashes.
Mexico Lights
Taxco Guerrero – May 23, 2021, I took this video around midnight from a well-known hotel next to the magic town of Taxco, watching some lights on the left side of the town which are only perceptible through the night vision of a Saiony Aurora Pro camera.
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Mars helicopter Ingenuity spotted a 'heart' in Perseverance rover's tracks on 9th flight (video)
Mars helicopter Ingenuity spotted a 'heart' in Perseverance rover's tracks on 9th flight (video)
NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter captured this image, which features tracks made by the Perseverance rover, using its high-resolution color camera during its ninth Red Planet flight, on July 5, 2021.
During its latest Red Planet flight on Monday (July 5), NASA's 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity Mars helicopter photographed a heart-shaped feature among the tracks made by the six-wheeled Perseverance rover.
The "heart" shows where the Perseverance rover took a slight detour, perhaps to investigate some interesting rock or patch of dirt, before returning to its original path and heading on its way. Or, if your inclinations run in a less literal, less factual direction, the ground-bound robot was sending a message of support (or more) to its aerial partner.
The car-sized Perseverance rover landed, with Ingenuity attached to its belly, this past February on the floor of Mars' Jezero Crater, which harbored a big lake and a river delta in the ancient past. In early April, the little chopper deployed onto the red dirt, kicking off a month-long, five-flight campaign designed to show that aerial exploration is feasible on the Red Planet.
Ingenuity aced that original technology-demonstrating mission and was rewarded with an extension, which aims to showcase the scouting potential of Mars rotorcraft. For example, the Perseverance team is looking forward to studying the photos Ingenuity captured on Sunday's sortie, which flew over a rugged region called "Séítah," the helicopter's handlers said.
"Captured in those images are rock outcrops that show contacts between the major geologic units on Jezero Crater's floor," Ingenuity chief pilot Håvard Grip and Perseverance deputy project scientist Ken Williford wrote in a Flight 9 update on Wednesday (July 7).
"They also include a system of fractures the Perseverance team calls 'Raised Ridges,' which the rover's scientists hope to visit in part to investigate whether an ancient subsurface habitat might be preserved there," wrote Grip and Williford, both of whom are based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
"Finally, we're hoping the color images will provide the closest look yet at 'Pilot Pinnacle,' a location featuring outcrops that some team members think may record some of the deepest water environments in old Lake Jezero," the duo added. "Given the tight mission schedule, it’s possible that they will not be able to visit these rocks with the rover, so Ingenuity may offer the only opportunity to study these deposits in any detail."
Perseverance's main mission goals involve hunting for signs of ancient Mars life on Jezero's floor and collecting and caching samples for future return to Earth. The rover began focusing on that science work in earnest when Ingenuity completed its original technology-demonstrating mission. (All communications to and from Ingenuity must go through Perseverance.)
Ingenuity's extended mission is expected to last at least a few more months, provided the helicopter remains healthy, with a flight roughly every two weeks on average during that span. The helicopter team has been pushing Ingenuity's limits during the extended phase, as the latest flight showed. On Monday, the copter flew farther (2,051 feet, or 625 meters) and faster (about 11 mph, or 18 kph), and stayed aloft longer (166 seconds), than it ever had before.
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.
12 Terrifying Animals You Wouldn't Want To Encounter
12 Terrifying Animals You Wouldn't Want To Encounter
Unless you’re a wildlife enthusiast or expert, there’s a good chance you are not aware of the uniquely terrifying animals that still inhabit the wilderness and oceans. If you assumed that the reign of these nightmarish scary beasts ended hundreds of thousands of years ago or at least their presence has been reduced because of the rapid urbanization, get ready to be amazed. Because turns out, these formidable beasts still co-habit the planet with us and can keep you up at nights from fear with just their looks.
There’s a new spike in interest in POLE SHIFTS after a lot of Youtube videos in the last few weeks started commenting on a “new navy map” that isn’t really new and isn’t really from the U.S. Navy. There are a lot of maps based on estimates of what would happen if polar ice all melted or what would happen if the Earth’s crust slips over the core and a pole shift creates a new arrangement of the planet’s surface, with all the continents at different latitudes and elevations, and new locations for the poles, the equator, and everything in between.
It’s all guesswork, but it’s pretty cool to look at. Consider these pics from a video just based on all the ice melting:
More recently Pastor Paul Begley made several videos highlighting a map he got from “Mike From Around the World” and this map of the eastern United States also shows many areas submerged and is allegedly based on the U.S. Navy’s expectations of a worst case climate change scenario in the near future:
In this map many low lying areas, including Florida, Cuba, and much of the southeastern United States and eastern coastal areas are just gone, submerged underwater. But this map is based more on soil liquefaction.
Ben Davidson’s map above only shows the new positions of the continents if the massive ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland are re-balanced and allowed to shift to the equator. No changes in elevation – no submergence of existing lands – or rising of old ones – is depicted above. But it may very well show the future equator. Chan Thomas, author of The Adam and Eve story and the subject of my next book, predicted that the upcoming pole shift will see the new North Pole in the Bay of Bengal, and that is where our magnetic poles seem to be moving to a convergence point – the magnetic poles are currently on a collision course towards the Bay of Bengal. (And Chan Thomas is not the only pole shift researcher who expected that position for the next North Pole.) If this happens, southeast Asia will be under one of the next ice caps, along with Peru, as the new South Pole would end up just west of Peru. But before those new ice caps grow, the old ones we have known will be melting rapidly in the equatorial sunshine. I often wonder what newly habitable lands will emerge, and what evidence may yet be found of previous civilizations….
Different analysts have different expectations based on the evidence of past pole shifts and current terrestrial, solar, and galactic ongoing changes. If you want a deeper look at the evidence, consider reading some good pole shift books like POLE SHIFT: Evidence Will Not Be Silenced – and several others found here.
UFO Institutes Best UFO Cloud Camouflage Sightings 2021 Compilation :
In general, it is safe to say that when we observe UFOs (or merely envision them) we tend to think in terms of objects or unusual aircraft that may be discernible in our skies. After all, the prototype UFO is often considered to be a metallic silver disk of sorts, or else an elongated, cigar-shaped object. Orbs are also very common in day-to-day sightings these days. But one aspect of Ufology that is overlooked all too often is the notion that UFOs may be disguising themselves in order to obtain a closer look at Earth without giving themselves away. This seems to be particularly evident when we take a closer look at meteorological phenomena, clouds in particular.
If there is any merit to the theory that UFOs disguise themselves as everyday objects we observe in the sky, then it is fairly obvious that their object of choice is clouds.
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Strange Object Sighted Over England ( July 8, 2021 )
Strange Object Sighted Over England on July 8, 2021
STATEMENT : "Ufo" in England euro league 2021 England vs Denmark 2021
MUFON CASE : 116778 South Beach, Florida ( July 7, 2021 )
Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : We saw two orbs sightings at the South Beach FL Long Description of Sighting Report There were 2 sightings about 5 minutes apart from Each other, took pics of the first one and video tape the 2nd one
Date Submitted :2021-07-07 Date of Event : 2021-07-05 / 8:23PM MUFON SUBMITTER FILE : trim.0390F14646F7435B87EB28354816EEF6.MOV
Ball of light turns into black sphere over Seattle
Ball of light turns into black sphere over Seattle
Aball of light turns into black sphere over Seattle, Washington and a black unknown object flying past planes over Dana Point, California.
But first a remarkable image captured by the Mars Perseverance Rover on July 7, 2021 (SOL135) showing an unknown metallic box between the rocks. If the metallic box is not from NASA then who left it?
Throughout history people have witnessed strange objects in the sky. Veterans J.T. and Michael Via share their experience both seeing the same unusual triangle-shaped pattern believed to be UFOS, in this clip from Season 2, “The Triangle Mystery.”
One of the more intriguing – and highly controversial – claims I’ve heard concerning Area 51 is that top secret research has been undertaken at the base in the field of none other than teleportation. Of course, nothing solid has ever come my way. And, given the fact that the base is impenetrable, it’s unlikely anything ever will. That’s not to say that research isn’t going on in this incredible field, however. Let’s look a bit deeper at the matter of teleportation: the very same technology that has become famous in the likes of Star Trek and the 1958 movie (and its 1986 remake) The Fly. Let’s see what teleportation actually is. IBM stated the following concerning this decidedly fringe part of science: “Teleportation is the name given by science fiction writers to the feat of making an object or person disintegrate in one place while a perfect replica appears somewhere else. How this is accomplished is usually not explained in detail, but the general idea seems to be that the original object is scanned in such a way as to extract all the information from it, then this information is transmitted to the receiving location and used to construct the replica, not necessarily from the actual material of the original, but perhaps from atoms of the same kinds, arranged in exactly the same pattern as the original.”
IBM continues: “A teleportation machine would be like a fax machine, except that it would work on 3-dimensional objects as well as documents, it would produce an exact copy rather than an approximate facsimile, and it would destroy the original in the process of scanning it. A few science fiction writers consider teleporters that preserve the original, and the plot gets complicated when the original and teleported versions of the same person meet; but the more common kind of teleporter destroys the original, functioning as a super transportation device, not as a perfect replicator of souls and bodies.” In 2017, the Guardian said: “Chinese scientists have teleported an object from Earth to a satellite orbiting 300 miles away in space, in a demonstration that has echoes of science fiction. The feat sets a new record for quantum teleportation, an eerie phenomenon in which the complete properties of one particle are instantaneously transferred to another – in effect teleporting it to a distant location.”
The BBC ran an article on the astounding story titled “Teleportation: Photon particles today, humans tomorrow?” It included the following, under the sub-heading of “What has the Chinese team achieved?”: “They created 4,000 pairs of quantum-entangled photons per second at their laboratory in Tibet and fired one of the photons from each pair in a beam of light towards a satellite called Micius, named after an ancient Chinese philosopher. Micius has a sensitive photon receiver that can detect the quantum states of single photons fired from the ground. Their report – published online – says it is the first such link for ‘faithful and ultra-long-distance quantum teleportation.’ ‘It is a very nice experiment – I would not have expected everything to have worked so fast and so smoothly,’ says Professor Anton Zeilinger from the University of Vienna, who taught Chinese lead scientist Pan Jianwei.”
Star Trek Teleportation
As for the matter of teleportation in the real world, we have to turn our attentions to a man named Eric W. Davis. In 2004, the U.S. Air Force quietly (as in extremely quietly) contracted Davis’ Las Vegas, Nevada-based Warp Drive Metrics company to prepare a report for them on the feasibility of teleportation being feasible. It became known as the Teleportation Physics Study. We know that as the Air Force has now placed the report in the public domain. The specific arm of the Air Force that had a particular interest in teleportation was the Air Force Research Laboratory, Air Force Materiel Command, which is based out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. The Air Force states of the AFRL: “Air Force Research Laboratory, with headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was created in October 1997. The laboratory was formed through the consolidation of four former Air Force laboratories and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The laboratory employs approximately 10,000 military and civilian personnel. It is responsible for managing and annual $4.4 billion (Fiscal Year 2014) science and technology program that includes both Air Force and customer funded research and development. AFRL investment includes basic research, applied research and advanced technology development in air, space and cyber mission areas.
“With headquarters at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, and an additional research facility at Edwards AFB, Calif., the Aerospace Systems Directorate leads the effort to develop and transition superior technology solutions that enable dominant military aerospace vehicles. Areas of focus include vehicle aerodynamics, flight controls, aerospace propulsion, power, rocket propulsion, aerospace structures, and turbine engines. Programs advance a wide variety of aerospace technologies including unmanned vehicles, space access, advanced fuels, hypersonic vehicles, future strike, and energy management.”
What the above tells us is that even if teleportation – as it is popularly perceived – has not been achieved, then, still, a lot of facilities and programs have looked into it. Maybe, one day, we’ll all be surprised and find out that it has been perfected.
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There are Probably Many More Earth-Sized Worlds Than Previously Believed
There are Probably Many More Earth-Sized Worlds Than Previously Believed
In the past decade, the discovery of extrasolar planets has accelerated immensely. To date, 4,424 exoplanets have been confirmed in 3,280 star systems, with another 7,453 awaiting confirmation. So far, most of these planets have been gas giants, with about 66% being similar to Jupiter or Neptune, while another 30% have been giant rocky planets (aka. “Super-Earths). Only a small fraction of confirmed exoplanets (less than 4%) have been similar in size to Earth.
However, according to new research by astronomers working at NASA Ames Research Center, it is possible that Earth-sized exoplanets are more common than previously thought. As they indicated in a recent study, there could be twice as many rocky exoplanets in binary systems that are obscured by the glare of their parent stars. These findings could have drastic implications in the search for potentially habitable worlds since roughly half of all stars are binary systems.
For the sake of their study, the research team examined 517 exoplanet-hosting stars that were identified by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) during its three years in operation. When compared to data from the twin telescopes of the international Gemini Observatory and the WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, they found that over 100 of these stars likely had a binary companion.
An artist’s rendition of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
To date, the vast majority of confirmed exoplanets (roughly 75%) have been discovered using the Transit Method (aka. Transit Photometry). This consists of observing stars for periodic dips in their brightness, which can be the result of a planet passing in front of their face (transiting) relative to the observer. Like its predecessor, Kepler,TESS relies on the Transit Method to determine the presence of exoplanet systems around thousands of stars at any given time.
Unfortunately, binary companions have always been challenging when it comes to detecting transiting exoplanets. Transit Photometry requires that star systems being observed edge-on in order for exoplanets to be detected. But in binary star systems, where two stars orbit each other, dips in luminosity are a regular occurrence and are the result of one companion eclipsing the other.
As a result, it can be very difficult to spot smaller exoplanets that orbit closer to their stars, which is where astronomers expect to find rocky planets in the stars’ circumsolar Habitable Zone (HZ). Instead, using the Transit Method with binary star systems is likely to reveal only gas giants and/or planets that have distant orbits from their parent stars. This is why Dr. Lester and her colleagues set out to determine whether some of the exoplanet-hosting stars were in fact binaries.
Searching for Stellar Companions
The team relied on a technique called Speckle Imaging, where large numbers of short exposure images are combined and analyzed to greatly enhance the resolution of ground-based telescopes (similar to interferometry). Of the 517 TESS Objects of Interest (TOIs) they examined, they found that 73 exoplanet host stars that had previously appeared as a single point of light actually had a stellar companion.
They similarly found that 29 TOI stars that had produced false positives in the past also had stellar companions. Said Dr. Lester in a recent NOIRLab press release:
“With the Gemini Observatory’s 8.1-meter telescopes, we obtained extremely high-resolution images of exoplanet host stars and detected stellar companions at very small separations… Since roughly 50% of stars are in binary systems, we could be missing the discovery of — and the chance to study — a lot of Earth-like planets.”
The next step was to take the exoplanets that have been detected in these systems and comparing them to the sizes of exoplanets detected in single-star systems. From this, the team was able to demonstrate that while the TESS spacecraft was able to identify both Jupiter and Neptune-like (“large”) exoplanets and Super-Earths and Earth-like (“small”) exoplanets orbiting single stars, it found only large planets in binary systems.
These results imply that there could be a population of Earth-sized exoplanets in binary systems that have gone undetected by missions like TESS, Kepler, and other exoplanet surveys that rely on Transit Photometry. For some time, scientists have suspected that transit surveys have been missing small planets in binary systems because of the potential for interference from a companion star.
However, this new study provides the first observational support for this suspicion while also showing what kind of exoplanets are affected. It is also significant because of the way the Transit Method has been seen as the most effective means of exoplanet detection to date – accounting for 3343 of the 4424 confirmed exoplanets. But if these results are correct, there could be up to 1600 rocky exoplanets that were missed with transit surveys.
This means that moving forward, astronomers will need to rely on a variety of observational techniques before they conclude that a binary system has no Earth-like planets. As Dr. Lester stated:
“Since roughly 50% of stars are in binary systems, we could be missing the discovery of — and the chance to study — a lot of Earth-like planets.Astronomers need to know whether a star is single or binary before they claim that no small planets exist in that system. If it’s single, then you could say that no small planets exist. But if the host is in a binary, you wouldn’t know whether a small planet is hidden by the companion star or does not exist at all. You would need more observations with a different technique to figure that out.”
“We have shown that it is more difficult to find Earth-sized planets in binary systems because small planets get lost in the glare of their two parent stars,” added Dr. Steve Howell, the leader of the speckle imaging effort at NASA Ames and a co-author on the paper. “Their transits are ‘filled in’ by the light from the companion star. This is a major finding in exoplanet work. The results will help theorists create their models for how planets form and evolve in double-star systems.”
An illustration of the Kepler-47 circumbinary planet system. Credit: NASA/JPL Caltech/T. Pyle
Another aspect of the study involved Dr. Lester and her colleagues analyzing the distance between binary companions in systems where TESS detected large planets. What they found was that exoplanet-hosting pairs were typically farther apart than binary pairs that have no known exoplanets. This could be interpreted as an indication that planets do not form around stars that have close stellar companions.
In the future, this could be used to place added constraints on where astronomers should look for rocky planets. The speckle imaging survey conducted by Dr. Lester and her team also illustrates how exoplanet studies are transitioning from exoplanet discovery to characterization. In addition to characterizing exoplanet atmospheres and surface environments, there’s also the vital task of characterizing planetary systems.
By knowing which types of stars are most likely to support rocky exoplanets, astronomers and astrobiologists can narrow the search for planets that are most amenable to “life as we know it.”
The Chronicle of Akakor: The legend of “the gods who came from space”
The Chronicle of Akakor: The legend of “the gods who came from space”
Written and oral stories narrated by a tribe that still remains in the Brazilian Amazon jungle. More than 15,000 years of history in a compendium of experiences; the “Chronicle of Akakor.”
The book written by Karl Brugger where he explains the whole legend.
The first narratives of the Akakor Chronicle were written on tree bark. Using the language of the ancient masters and gods.
Tatunca Nara, considered the prince of the Ugha Mongulala tribe, was the one who transmitted the story orally to Karl Brugger, a German journalist, who worked on the legend in Brazil.
The enigma of an unknown story
Karl Brugger recorded Akakor’s chronicle, which begins with the arrival of the gods who civilized them for the first time, until the year 70. Brugger wrote and published a book in 1976.
The Ugha Mongulala are considered the oldest civilization in the South American region. Thus, the Chronicle of Akakor narrates the millenary history of the area.
This legend holds many mysteries and questions, which to date continue to be an enigma for archeology. An example of this are the creations of structures such as Machu Pichu or Tiahuanaco .
In fact, even the very region where the Ugha Mongulala live, or the “Akakor region”, is a mystery , as it has never been found.
the Chronicle of Akakor is told in chronological order and begins in the year 13,000 BC. C . when the old gods came from outer space . Upon their arrival, they chose the tribes located in the area of the great Amazon river.
They transmitted culture to them, brought them out of savagery, taught them to cultivate the land, to know and respect the laws of nature and to create their own laws so that they could live in harmony.
They were the guides in the construction of great stone structures and underground and superficial cities. These are the temples for sun worship, pyramids for spirituality.
In addition to an immense network of underground tunnels that cover areas of Peru, Bolivia, reaching Brazil and Venezuela.
Map where the city of Akakor would be.
After 3,000 years of being among them, the gods returned to their world. In the Chronicle of Akakor this date is identified as the Zero Hour which is equivalent to 10,481 years BC. C.
Structure of the Chronicle of Akakor
The history of the tribe is also really interesting and captivating; The tribe went through really difficult times; 15,000 years of wars between tribes, natural disasters and the European conquest that almost extinguished them.
Despite the fact that at present, both its existence and the Akakor Chronicle are practically unknown , the invasion that the Amazon is suffering was prophesied by the chieftain Tatunca Nara.
The story told by this leader mentions a period of 10,000 years of existence of the tribe and the chronicle divides it into 4 parts:
The book of the Jaguar: consists of the narration from the arrival of the gods, until the second catastrophe of the world .
The Book of the Eagle: according to its calendar, it includes the years 6,000 to 11,000 , and deals with the Goths and the description of their arrival in their lands.
The Book of the Ant: it narrates the colonization of the Spanish and Portuguese after landing in Brazil and Peru.
The Book of the Serpent: it narrates the arrival of 2,000 German soldiers to Akakor, how they integrated into the Ugha Mongulala people and the prediction of a third great catastrophe .
Mystery over Jupiter's aurora is SOLVED: X-ray bursts are transported by plasma waves through a similar process to how Earth produces the Northern Lights, scientists say
Mystery over Jupiter's aurora is SOLVED: X-ray bursts are transported by plasma waves through a similar process to how Earth produces the Northern Lights, scientists say
Jupiter's mysterious X-ray auroras have been explained, ending a 40-year quest
Scientists say they're triggered by vibrations in the planet's magnetic field lines
These vibrations create plasma waves that send ion particles along the field lines
These ions 'smash' into the planet's atmosphere to form a powerful X-ray aurora
The process is like Earth's northern lights and likely happens on other planets too
The 40-year-old mystery of how Jupiter produces a spectacular burst of X-rays every few minutes has been solved in a new study.
University College London (UCL) experts studied data from NASA's Juno spacecraft, which is currently orbiting Jupiter – the largest planet in our Solar System.
They discovered that X-ray flares from Jupiter's north and south poles are triggered by periodic vibrations in the planet's magnetic field lines, in its 'magnetosphere'.
These vibrations create waves of plasma – one of the four fundamental states of matter, consisting of a gas of ions.
The plasma waves then send heavy ion particles 'surfing' along magnetic field lines until they smash into the planet's atmosphere, releasing energy in the form of X-rays and forming a spectacular aurora.
A similar phenomenon occurs on Earth, creating the northern lights, but Jupiter's is much more powerful, releasing hundreds of gigawatts of energy, enough to briefly power all of human civilisation.
Overlaid images of Jupiter's pole from NASA's satellite Juno and NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope. Left shows a projection of Jupiter's Northern X-ray aurora (purple) overlaid on a visible Junocam image of the North Pole. Right shows the Southern counterpart
WHAT IS A MAGNETOSPHERE?
A magnetosphere is the region around a planet dominated by the planet's magnetic field.
Earth's magnetosphere acts as an invisible forcefield that protects us from dangerous charged particles from the Sun.
Meanwhile, Jupiter's magnetic field is about 20,000 times as strong as Earth's – and therefore its magnetosphere, the area controlled by this magnetic field, is extremely large.
it was visible in the night sky, it would cover a region several times the size of our moon.
Jupiter's X-ray aurora alone releases about a gigawatt, equivalent to what one power station might produce over several days, the study authors claim.
UCL researchers worked with experts at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and have published their findings in the journal Science Advances.
'We have seen Jupiter producing X-ray aurora for four decades, but we didn't know how this happened,' said study author Dr William Dunn at UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory.
'We only knew they were produced when ions crashed into the planet's atmosphere.
'Now we know these ions are transported by plasma waves – an explanation that has not been proposed before, even though a similar process produces Earth's own aurora.
'It could, therefore, be a universal phenomenon, present across many different environments in space.'
For the study, researchers analysed observations of Jupiter and its surrounding environment carried out continuously over a 26-hour period by Juno and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite, which is in Earth's own orbit.
They found a clear correlation between waves in the plasma detected by Juno and X-ray auroral flares at Jupiter's north pole recorded by X-MM Newton.
For the first time, astronomers have seen the way Jupiter's magnetic field is compressed, which heats the particles and directs them along the magnetic field lines down into the atmosphere of Jupiter, sparking the X-ray aurora
THE ABUNDANCE OF PLASMA
Nearly all the visible matter in the universe exists in a plasma state.
They occur in this form in the sun and stars and in interplanetary and interstellar space.
Auroras, lightning, and welding arcs are also plasmas.
Plasmas exist in neon and fluorescent tubes, in the crystal structure of metallic solids, and in many other phenomena and objects.
The Earth itself is immersed in a tenuous plasma called the solar wind and is surrounded by a dense plasma called the ionosphere.
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
They then used computer modelling to confirm that the waves would drive the heavy particles towards Jupiter's atmosphere.
Why the magnetic field lines vibrate periodically – the trigger for the whole process – is unclear.
But one possible explanation is the vibration results from interactions with the solar wind or from high-speed plasma flows within Jupiter's magnetosphere.
X-ray auroras occur at Jupiter's north and south poles, often with clockwork regularity, according to the team.
During their window of observation, Jupiter was producing bursts of X-rays every 27 minutes.
Now the team have identified the whole process, they believe similar processes likely occur around Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and maybe even exoplanets – planets outside our Solar System.
'X-rays are typically produced by extremely powerful and violent phenomena such as black holes and neutron stars, so it seems strange that mere planets produce them too,' said study author Professor Graziella Branduardi-Raymont at UCL.
'We can never visit black holes, as they are beyond space travel, but Jupiter is on our doorstep.
'With the arrival of the satellite Juno into Jupiter's orbit, astronomers now have a fantastic opportunity to study an environment that produces X-rays up close.'
Juno is pictured here in an artist's impression as it approaches Jupiter. Launched a decade ago, Juno has been orbiting Jupiter for five years
Juno launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida nearly a decade ago – on August 5, 2011 – to study Jupiter from orbit.
A rotating, solar-powered spacecraft, Juno arrived at Jupiter on July 4, 2016, after making its five-year journey.
It has three giant blades stretching out some 66 feet (20 meters) from its cylindrical, six-sided body.
Juno will continue its investigation of the solar system’s largest planet through September 2025, or until the spacecraft’s end of life.
An interactive NASA tool is providing real-time updates of Juno's location relative to Jupiter and its moons.
How NASA's Juno probe to Jupiter will reveal the secrets of the solar system's biggest planet
The Juno probe reached Jupiter in 2016 after a five-year, 1.8 billion-mile journey from Earth
The Juno probe reached Jupiter on July 4, 2016, after a five-year, 1.8 billion-mile (2.8bn km) journey from Earth.
Following a successful braking manoeuvre, it entered into a long polar orbit flying to within 3,100 miles (5,000 km) of the planet's swirling cloud tops.
The probe skimmed to within just 2,600 miles (4,200 km) of the planet's clouds once a fortnight - too close to provide global coverage in a single image.
No previous spacecraft has orbited so close to Jupiter, although two others have been sent plunging to their destruction through its atmosphere.
To complete its risky mission Juno survived a circuit-frying radiation storm generated by Jupiter's powerful magnetic field.
The maelstrom of high energy particles travelling at nearly the speed of light is the harshest radiation environment in the Solar System.
To cope with the conditions, the spacecraft was protected with special radiation-hardened wiring and sensor shielding.
Its all-important 'brain' - the spacecraft's flight computer - was housed in an armoured vault made of titanium and weighing almost 400 pounds (172kg).
The craft is expected to study the composition of the planet's atmosphere until 2025.
Wetenschappers zijn erin geslaagd om te achterhalen hoe het poollicht (aurora) op Jupiter precies ontstaat. Daarmee losten ze een 40 jaar oud mysterie op, zo maakte het Europese ruimteagentschap ESA bekend.
Op Aarde ontstaat poollicht wanneer elektrisch geladen deeltjes van de zon (die door de zonnewind onze planeet bereiken) door het aardmagnetisch veld worden afgebogen naar de polen en er botsen met deeltjes in de atmosfeer. Op Aarde zijn aurora's alleen zichtbaar in de zogenaamde poollichtovalen (tussen 65 en 80 graden noorder- en zuiderbreedte). Boven die breedtegraden komen ze niet voor door de open magnetische veldlijnen, die zijn verbonden met de zonnewind.
Mocht het er op Jupiter hetzelfde aan toegaan, zouden geen grote aurora's verwacht worden op de planeet. De lichtverschijnselen hebben er dan ook andere kenmerken. Omdat de gasreus ook boven de voornaamste poollichtovalen gesloten veldlijnen heeft, die de planeet aan de ene kan verlaten en aan de andere kant weer raken, komen ze ook bij de eigenlijke polen voor. Bovendien pulseert het poollicht met regelmaat en is het soms verschillend aan de noord- en zuidpool.
Op basis van de röntgenstralen die bij de aurora's op Jupiter vrijkomen, konden wetenschappers al uitvissen dat ze worden veroorzaakt door elektrisch geladen atomen (ionen) die in de atmosfeer neerstorten. Maar hoe die geladen deeltjes in de eerste plaats tot in de atmosfeer van de grootste planeet van ons zonnestelsel raken, bleef tot nu een raadsel.
Computersimulaties
Astrofysicus Zhonghua Yao (onderzoeker bij het Instituut voor Geologie en Geofysica in Peking en in het verleden onder meer verbonden aan de ULiège) werkte samen met enkele collega's computersimulaties uit die de pulserende röntgenaurora's linkten aan gesloten magnetische velden die diep in Jupiter ontstaan, vervolgens miljoenen kilometers de ruimte ingaan en daarna weer terugkeren.
Een groep astrofysici onder leiding van Yao en William Dunn (Mullard Space Science Laboratory van de University College London) greep die simulaties aan om te achterhalen hoe de ionen precies in de poolgebieden van Jupiter terechtkomen. Daarvoor analyseerden ze data van de ESA-satelliet XMM-Newton en het onbemande ruimtevaarttuig Juno van het Amerikaanse ruimtebureau NASA. De XMM-Newton, die in een baan rond de Aarde draait, observeert Jupiter vanop afstand met röntgentelescopen, terwijl Juno rond de gasreus cirkelt en gegevens binnen het magnetische veld van de planeet verzamelt.
Schommelingen in magnetisch veld
Ze ontdekten dat de röntgenaurora's worden veroorzaakt door schommelingen in het magnetisch veld van Jupiter. Terwijl de planeet roteert, trekt ze zijn magnetisch veld mee, dat wordt geraakt door geladen deeltjes van de zonnewind en zo wordt samengedrukt. Die compressies verhitten deeltjes die gevangen zitten in het magnetisch veld, met elektromagnetische ion-cyclotrongolven, of EMIC-golven, tot gevolg. Daarbij worden de ionen langs de magnetische veldlijnen miljoenen kilometers door de ruimte geleid, tot ze weer neerstorten in de atmosfeer en zo poollicht creëren.
"Wat we in de data van Juno zien, is een prachtige opeenvolging van gebeurtenissen. We zien de compressie gebeuren, we zien de EMIC-golf ontstaan, we zien de ionen, en dan zien we de ionen langs de veldlijnen reizen", legt Dunn uit. "Een paar minuten later ziet XMM een uitbarsting van röntgenstralen."
Dat wetenschappers nu het proces van de röntgenaurora's op Jupiter hebben ontrafeld, helpt ook bij het begrip van andere planeten met poollicht. "Dit is een fundamenteel proces dat van toepassing is bij Saturnus, Uranus, Neptunus en waarschijnlijk ook exoplaneten (planeten die draaien rond andere sterren dan de zon, red.)", zegt Yao.
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LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 09 - 07 - 2021
LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 09 - 07 - 2021
UFO Sighted Over Itaipava, Brazil : Part 2 ( July 8, 2021 )
UFO Sighted Over Itaipava, Petrópolis - State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil :Sighting made this week show an object in a discoid format flying over the Itaipava mall, in the serrana region of Rio de Janeiro State.
UFO Sighted Over Itaipava, Brazil : Part 1 ( July 8, 2021 )
UFO Sighted Over Itaipava, Petrópolis - State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Sighting made this week show an object in a triangular format flying over the Itaipava mall, in the serrana region of Rio de Janeiro State.
UFOs Sighted Over La Marque, Texas ( July 4, 2021 )
STATEMENT : Saw these in La Marque, Texas July 4th, after a massive display of fireworks over the bay.
credit : Michelle Walsh-Vallejo
Black Ring UFO Sighted Over Montana Ranch ( July 8, 2021 )
Strange black ring UFO was sighted hovering in the sky above a Montana ranch on July 8, 2021 : UFO? A bizarre smoke signal? Or something else entirely?
credit : UFO Sightings Footage
UFO on Google Street View Over Diamondhead City, Mississippi
Amazing UFO on Google Street View This unquestionable UFO record was made by Google Street View in Diamondhead City, Mississippi, USA. When analyzing the images it becomes clear that it is not an anomaly or error in the camera, as the UFO also moves according to where it can be viewed until the moment it disappears altogether. Here I present the video, the images and the link to analyze for yourself and draw your own conclusion...
Captain of cruise ship captured UFO diving into ocean
Captain of cruise ship captured UFO diving into ocean
Captain Kate McCue of the Celebrity Edge recalls the day she saw a UFO hover over her ship for a few moments, then dive directly into the ocean.
Kate McCue said that she was looking at the sunset when someone suddenly said to her, “Hey, what's this? ” Kate looked up at the sky and saw a strange object which looked like a huge jellyfish.
The UFO slowly flew away from the ship and after about 400 meters from the cruise ship the object which made no sound started to descend before diving into the ocean leaving no trace, it just disappeared.
During the War of 1812, British troops closed in on Washington, D.C. The US capital appeared doomed – until shocking twist of fate, in this clip from Season 7, “Aliens in America.”.
Lunar pyramidal structures? “The reason why we have not returned to the Moon”
Lunar pyramidal structures? “The reason why we have not returned to the Moon”
There are many theories as to why the Moon has not been returned. Independent researchers and other members of the community say it is due to the existence of pyramidal structures.
Edgar Mitchell, former NASA astronaut.
For decades, many people have wondered why humanity has not returned to the Moon . What is the reason? Why haven’t they said anything about it?
However thanks to the publications made by a group of former NASA scientists , which revealed the location of pyramidal structures located on the lunar surface.
The mystery of the moon landing
Edgar Mitchell, former NASA astronauts and the sixth person to walk on the Moon , at this time it can already be said that humanity is not alone in the universe.
It is believed that world powers have kept all kinds of information on this subject safe. Especially from what was found on the Moon during the moon landings .
Mitchell stated that every NASA worker must take an oath of confidentiality . However, this has not been enough and many employees have disclosed what is hidden.
One of the most important characters in this disclosure is John Brandenburg , a scientist with a Ph.D. in Plasma Physics, a consultant at Monrningstar Applied Physics LLC, and a part-time professor at Madison College of astronomy, physics, and mathematics.
Brandenburg was part of NASA during the Clementine mission , which was done in conjunction with the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. The goal was to thoroughly investigate the satellite.
It was thanks to this mission that the existence of water was discovered at the lunar poles . However, the scientist said that “something else” was found.
Photographic reconnaissance revealed the existence of advanced pyramidal bases and structures on the lunar surface.
Several former employees have revealed the existence of pyramidal structures and bases on the Moon.
Among the images, a kind of straight wall stands out, measuring approximately a mile wide . This showed that, obviously, it was an artificial structure .
But the most worrying thing about the matter is that the representative of the Defense Organization said nothing . It was obvious that none of those structures were human. Why was he silent?
Editing pyramidal structures on the Moon?
However, Brandenburg is not the only one to divulge this information. The first person to tell this was Ken Johnston , former director of NASA’s Department of Space Photographic Evidence.
The scientist stated that, during his working days, he was able to observe original images of the lunar surface, where there were several pyramidal structures.
In addition, he said that all information of this type is protected by high-ranking US government officials. The one that reaches the public is always manipulated.
Shortly after giving these statements, NASA declared that it never had a relationship with Ken Johnston. However, there is evidence that needs no explanation:
The photos that NASA published in 1950 and the clear differences that exist with the most recent ones. The latter, clearly, are manipulated .
What was actually found on the Moon? Why has the satellite not been stepped on again when the technology is now much more advanced? There has to be a real compelling reason .
UFOs Sighted By Strange Light Over China ( June 26, 2021 )
UFOs were sighted by a strange light over China on June 26, 2021 : STATEMENT : 26/06/2021 中國
TRANSLATE : 26/06/2021 China
video : submitted
Fireball Sighted Over Eagle Skies, Idaho ( July 3, 2021 )
UFO / Fireball / Meteorite Sighted Over Eagle Skies Idaho. a public recreation area on the southwest outskirts of the city of Eagle, Idaho.
STATEMENT : Here's an incredible fireball I captured at 10:52 MDT on 7/3/21 from Eagle, ID with my AllSkyCam from AMS.
credit : Jordan Ragsdale
note : no audio
RELATED VIDEO
Crazy Skies Over Texas ( July 5, 2021 )
Video Compilation of Strange lightning and Crazy Skies July 2021
STATEMENT : They capture ′′ crazy ′′ lightning over Texas
credit : Mt Police Frequency
UFO Sighted Over Joshua Tree, California ( July 3, 2021 )
STATEMENT :Hi. Had an incredible occurrence Saturday night (July 3). Four is us went to Joshua Tree for hopeful ET sightings. Although a great night no sightings. However driving home while on the 10 freeway I spotted a huge object motionless in the middle of the sky. No sound no propulsion. It was hovering right in front above us in the air. I wanted to take photos and videos because it was up close and clear but there was no way to safely pull over on the freeway initially. And to take photos at night out a moving window would not work (although we did try).
I was amazed that no one else on the freeway had a reaction to this large craft. I could not understand how the trucks and cars kept driving by. It was about 3:15 AM (we left the dessert very late, LOL). Only the four of us in Rob Rowes truck had any recognition and response to it. I was wondering when we returned where to look for any postings about sightings? We attempted to do a few Google searches under: “UFO, sighting, today, California” but had no results. Any suggestions?
credit : Debbi Dachinger
UAP / UFO Sighted Calgary - Vancouver Flight
The Canadian UAP
Dennis Pena was travelling back from a holiday at a spiritual retreat in Calgary to his home in Vancouver. On the flight he came across a very strange glowing light form right outside his aircraft window. Dennis just could not make any sense of what he was seeing with his own eyes. At first Dennis thought it was the sun reflecting on the window, but then he realised that it was not behaving in accordance with the logic of the sun rays and flares on the window. So he waved his fingers in front of it, thinking maybe it's something in the airplane reflecting on the window.
That wasn't it either.
Then at around the 1:15 mark in the video the plane happened to lean slightly and you could clearly now see the wing and the light intersect and it appears that the light gets covered by the wing and it reappears behind the wing... meaning clearly the light was not a reflection on the aircraft window.
So what was it?
Dennis looked back into the cabin and down his row to see if anyone else was seeing this as well but all had pulled down their window shade to cover the sun.
Dennis was the only one with his window more than halfway open.
Is the sun reflecting something off the plane and it creating a strange glow in the clouds? Dennis says that it looked intense. And it's was just floating out there. Moving at a steady pace. Maybe even slightly faster than the commercial airline he was travelling in.
It kind of reminded Dennis of the footage the army or the navy caught on video of a weird flying object in the sky at night.
Anyway... Dennis sums it off poignantly ... " I don't know what this was that I saw so clearly ... I just wonder if the pilots saw it, too...! "
Any answers to Dennis's questions ?
Watch the complete unedited video that Dennis Pena captured on his mobile camera while travelling on a commercial flight between Calgary and Vancouver
So what do you make of it ?Flare ? Reflection ?
Or something else ?
Watch the video carefully ! It is not that simple to answer to answer Denise's question ?
This is the public entrance to the Einhornhöhle cave, the Unicorn cave in English, in the Harz Mountains, Germany, where the tiny piece of engraved bone was found.
(CNN) A tiny piece of bone that once belonged to a giant Ice Age deer is changing how we think about Neanderthals.
Found in Einhornhöhle cave in northern Germany, the decorated deer phalanx, or toe bone, features an engraved geometric pattern and has been dated, using several techniques, to at least 51,000 years old.
It refreshes the debate over to what extent Neanderthals, the heavily built Stone Age hominins that disappeared about 40,000 years ago, were capable of artistic expression and symbolic thought and whether they developed these skills themselves or through interactions with early modern humans, who first arrived in Europe around this time.
"The phalanx from Einhornhöhle with its stacked offset chevrons represents one of the most complex cultural expressions in Neanderthals known so far," according to astudy that published Monday in the journal Nature.
The team of German researchers said the small bone appears to be of no practical use, and the chevron design, with its three uniform parallel lines appears to be intentionally created -- perhaps as a personal ornament.
"The choice of material, its preparation before carving and the skilful technique used for the engraving are all indicative of sophisticated expertise and great ability in bone working," said Silvia M. Bello, a researcher at the Centre for Human Evolution Research, Department of Earth Sciences, at the Natural History Museum in London, in a commentary that accompanied the paper. She wasn't involved in the research.
"The presence of incisions artistically arranged in a chevron pattern on the bone of a giant deer, supports the symbolic meaning of this find and raises new questions about how complex Neanderthal behaviour might have been."
The giant deer bone has no practical use and is believed to be purely decorative.
Boiled before decorated
The bone was from a giant deer, an animal that researchers described as "very impressive," but also one that would have been very rare north of the Alps at the time. Choosing the giant deer bone as the raw material emphasizes the special character of the object and supported that it had a symbolic meaning, they said.
The decorated bone was found in the former entrance to the cave about 1 meter behind the person holding the staff in the right of the image.
To understand how the object was made, the researchers made their own versions using stone blades from Baltic flint and carved five bones belonging to Limousin cows. The bones were treated in different ways: one was fresh, another was room dried and a thirdwas dried in the open air, while bone four was boiled once and bone five was boiled twice.
"The fresh bone... it didn't really work out. The bone was really hard. We were constantly slipping with the tools," said Dirk Leder, a research associate at the State Service for Cultural Heritage Lower Saxony, Hannover, Germany, and an author of the study.
Leder and his colleagues found that the boiled bones offered a softer "mellow" surface to make controlled incisions in a way that closely resembled the original item. They said it took around one-and-a-half hours to make the object using a combination of cutting and scraping.
The earliest evidence for cultural innovation and artistic expression among early modern humans emerged in Africa and dates back to around 100,000 years ago -- where we seewe see tools made from material other than stone, such as bone, ivory and antlers, shell bead ornaments, and advancements including the use of pigments, cave art and deliberate burials.
Homo sapiens are thought to have first arrived in Europe about 45,000 years ago and overlapped with Neanderthals for thousands of years. During that time, the two groups encountered each other -- sometimes having sex and babies, leaving traces of Neanderthal DNA in our genes.
Given its age, the study authors said they believe the engraved deer bone was of "independent Neanderthal authorship" and not linked to any interactions with Homo sapiens.
Computerized topography scans of the engraved bone showed six lines that show the shape of the chevron symbol.
They noted that the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in central Europe comes from sites in the Upper Danube area of between 43,500 and 38,000 years ago -- several millennia after the engraved bone. They said the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Europe -- pendants made from animal teeth from 45,500 years ago is from 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) away in Bulgaria.
However, the Natural History Museum's Bello said more recent research had found genetic evidence in a Homo sapien's skull from a site in the Czech Republic -- around 400 kilometers (248 miles) from Einhornhöhle -- that suggested the individual had some Neanderthal DNA,This raises the possibility early modern humans and Neanderthals had interbred more than 50,000 years ago.
"Given this early exchange of genes, we cannot exclude a similarly early exchange of knowledge between modern human and Neanderthal populations, which may have influenced the production of the engravedartefact from Einhornhöhle," she wrote in the commentary.
"The possibility of an acquired knowledge from modern humans doesn't undervalue, in my opinion, the cognitive abilities of Neanderthals," she wrote.
"On the contrary, the capacity to learn, integrate innovation into one's own culture and adapt to new technologies and abstract concepts should be recognized as an element of behavioural complexity."
A recent discovery of a bone ornament in Einhornhöhle cave in the northern part of Germany has shed new light on how creative Neanderthals were. An ancient toe bone (also called a phalanx) belonging to a giant deer had geometric patterns engraved into it that date back at least 51,000 years.
It is believed that this is the oldest ever work of art associated with Neanderthals. Other ancient items have been found connected to Neanderthals such as eagle talons that were made into pendants and old cave paintings, but their ages are still being disputed.
This discovery is very significant in regards to learning more information about the creativity of Neanderthals since there has been a lot of debate on this topic. The study read in part, “The phalanx from Einhornhöhle with its stacked offset chevrons represents one of the most complex cultural expressions in Neanderthals known so far.” Since the chevron design on the bone also contained three uniform parallel lines, it is believed that it was intentionally created as a possible ornament.
The ornament was created from a deer bone.
In order to get a better understanding of how the ornament was created, the researchers attempted to make their own version of it. The first thing they did was attempt to recreate the ornament with stone blades from Baltic flint and carved five Limousin cow bones that were all treated differently (fresh, room dried, air dried, boiled once, and boiled twice).
Dirk Leder, who is a research associate at the State Service for Cultural Heritage Lower Saxony, Hannover, Germany, explained that the fresh bone was extremely difficult to work on as the tools were always slipping off of it. They realized that the boiled bones provided a much softer “mellow” surface to carve with the finished product looking quite similar to the original. Furthermore, it took them approximately 1.5 hours to complete the engravings by scraping and cutting the bone.
Silvia M. Bello, who is a researcher at the Centre for Human Evolution Research, Department of Earth Sciences, at the Natural History Museum in London but was not involved with the study, described the intention behind the creation, “The choice of material, its preparation before carving and the skillful technique used for the engraving are all indicative of sophisticated expertise and great ability in bone working,” adding, “The presence of incisions artistically arranged in a chevron pattern on the bone of a giant deer, supports the symbolic meaning of this find and raises new questions about how complex Neanderthal behavior might have been.”
Even though Homo sapiens arrived in Europe at the same time that Neanderthals were there and they did interact with one another, it is believed that the carved deer bone was of “independent Neanderthal authorship” and had no link to Homo sapiens. (A picture of the bone ornament can be seen here.)
The giant deer bone has no practical use and is believed to be purely decorative.
Today, I’m going to share with you a number of UFO cases that are not just amazing or incredible. Rather, they are downright crazy. You’ll quickly see what I mean. Here’s our first case of absolute weirdness. It comes from Men in Black expert, Gareth J. Medway. He says of an MIB case that occurred on November 1, 1973: “At the start of a UFO wave in New Hampshire, Florence Dow heard a thumping sound on her porch. Looking out, she saw a man in a black coat and a wide-brimmed black hat, with what appeared to be a face covered with masking tape.” Precisely why anyone might want to cover their face with masking tape after a UFO report is anyone’s guess. And I don’t have a guess!” One more from Gareth: this one comes from January 26, 1986. As Gareth reports it: “About 7.30 pm Paul Rebek of Epping, New South Wales, received a visit from a man who said: ‘Hello sir, I am a representative of the Uranus Peanut Company. Would you like to sample my wares?’ He bought some peanuts off him, and was told: ‘Thank you. The Council will remember you favorably. Good night.’ He turned, but seemed to vanish after a few steps. Rebek thought it must have been ‘a spectral Man In Black.'”
Mary Hyre was a woman who played an integral role in the series of 1960s-era events that led John Keel to write The Mothman Prophecies. In January 1967, Hyre was visited by a creepy, bowl-haired man of around 5-feet in height and who had oddly hypnotic eyes. Throughout the encounter, the black-clad character kept staring at Hyre’s ballpoint pen. To the point where Hyre told him he could keep it. The man did so, laughed loud in a strange fashion, and vanished as mysteriously as he first arrived. Whatever floats your boat, I guess! Moving on: in 1961, a Wisconsin chicken-farmer named Joe Simonton claimed to have met aliens who landed on his property in a classic flying saucer-style craft. They were said to be very human-looking entities, who had an “Italian” appearance, and generously gave the stunned Simonton three pancakes that one of the crew-members happily cooked on his alien grill! And with their good deed for the day duly accomplished, the aliens were gone – presumably to fill the bellies of even more astounded souls.
Simonton, holding the ‘alien pancake’ he kept
What about a dog inside a UFO? Yep. Back in November 1980, a then-serving English policeman named Alan Godfrey had a profound UFO encounter in Todmorden, Yorkshire – a pleasant locale that has its origins in the 17th century. Godfrey’s encounter came just five months after he was involved in the investigation of a curious death in town. The victim was a man named Zigmund Adamski. As most people will know, the not exactly common name of Adamski is a very famous one in Ufology. It was just one of those strange synchronicities that proliferate when the UFO phenomenon looms large. As for Godfrey’s UFO encounter, it occurred undercover of darkness, in the pre-dawn morning of November 29, 1980, while he was out on patrol in his police-car. As he drove along one particular stretch of road, Godfrey was amazed by the sight of what he first thought was a bus positioned oddly in the road. As Godfrey got closer, however, he could see it was something else entirely. It was actually nothing less than a somewhat egg-shaped UFO.
There then followed an experience that contained certain, key elements of the UFO phenomenon, such as missing-time, and recollections of being taken on-board a craft. However, the entity Godfrey was confronted by on the craft was not the typical black-eyed, dwarfish “Grey.” Rather, it was a human-looking figure dressed in a long gown and sporting a beard. That wasn’t all, though: While undergoing hypnotic regression, Godfrey said that also aboard the UFO was a large black dog. This was not the first encounter Godfrey had with an anomalous hound. Years earlier, he had seen a ghostly Labrador. There was also an odd occasion – in the 1960s, and near Todmorden – when what seemed to be a woman with a large black dog stepped out in front of Godfrey’s vehicle, causing him to slam the brakes on. Both the woman and the dog vanished.
Every now and then a story will surface that is so bizarre, yet also intriguing, that it is almost impossible to categorize. Such a story comes from Jan, a woman who encountered a small UFO – as in extremely small – in the southwest of the U.K.. Jan was walking through nearby woods with her dog early one morning when she heard a loud buzzing noise that quickly filled her ears – and clearly those of her dog, too. Puzzled, she looked around, but it was all to no avail – at least, for around two minutes. Then, everything became amazingly clear. As if out of nowhere, a small flying saucer appeared before her, hovering at a height of around four feet off the ground, in a small clearing in the trees. It was circular in shape, silver in color, and had a red band around its middle. And, it was barely four-feet across! She watched, astonished, as the diminutive craft settled to the ground – in decidedly wobbly fashion – and a small door opened. Jan still recalls holding her breath, wondering what might happen next. She soon found out. Out of the door flew three, three-to-four-inches long small humanoid figures: clearly female and glowing brightly, they fluttered around Jan for a minute or two, dressed in silvery mini-skirts! At one point the tiny trio landed on Jan’s right arm, smiled, then flew back into the craft, which shot away into the skies, never to be seen again. Such rogue cases are so often dismissed by Ufology; yet they are weirdly engaging and not at all rare.
My previous article was on the subject of Philip Corso’s controversial claims in relation to the July 1947 “Roswell UFO Crash” in Lincoln County, New Mexico. The article was mostly on the possibility that the “bodies” found at the crash site were what we might call, in simple terms, “biological robots.” And, that they were constructed, rather than born. This makes me wonder if – should the theory have any merit to it, of course – that the mysterious makers of those biological robots might also be behind the likes of the Men in Black, the Women in Black, the Black Eyed Children, and so on – all of who look creepily odd. There’s a reason why I specifically say all of this. There’s no doubt there are a lot of accounts of people who have encountered strange-looking people and that we might call “semi-humans.” And there’s no doubt that most of the witnesses to these things have said that it’s the faces that gave them away – which is hardly surprising. After all, it’s largely our faces that define us. With that said, let’s take a look at the cases of a few, really creepy-looking people who might not even be human.
Denise Stoner, co-author with Kathleen Marden on The Alien Abduction Files, told me a bizarre but fascinating story. It involved her husband and occurred in Florida only a couple of years ago. Denise said: “My husband’s run-in with a possible WIB [Woman in Black] was a few days ago when he decided he would take a bike ride around a lake he travels around on a regular basis and knows it well. If he is feeling pretty energetic, he begins near a pool and park complex, rides the trail nearby and then turns into an area that has a Vet memorial then on around the lake that used to be part of the Navy Base – now new housing. When he entered the path, there was a woman jogging with one of those jogging strollers but the top was down so he could not see a baby inside. This woman had sunglasses on that wrapped around her head and looked way too large for her head. She was thin and about 6 ft. tall. She smiled at my husband as he passed on his bike. She was very thin and pale skinned. He still did not feel uncomfortable because not much scares him. He just thought she was a weird person. As he approached her, she dropped her sunglasses to show him huge black eyes that we at least 4X human size and they wrapped around the side of her head. She grinned again and this time he noticed she did not have a real nose; plus her mouth was long and thin with no teeth – only a dark gap.” Denise’s husband quit the area – quickly.
The Black Eyed Children are very much the same: at first glance they look like us, but the closer you get, the weirder things get. Their skin is, to say the least, nothing like ours. It’s plastic-like. One called it “kinda like wax.” Their faces are often like those of a mannequin. Plain, bland, lacking in emotion, and as if sculpted. Or, right out of a factory. One witness said: “His face was so thin and his skin was strange and almost a see-through milky color, no hair that I could see.” Others have said that the BEC seem to have come out on conveyor-belts. In other words, the witnesses got the feeling these things were machines, rather than real children, and being dispatched to perform particular tasks. What those tasks might be, it’s hard to know, since the BEC are elusive on almost every occasion. One other thing regarding the BEC: it’s almost always their not-quite-normal faces that give them away.
In 2015, Dr. David M. Jacobs’ book, Walking Among Us: The Alien Plan to Control Humanity, was published. As the title alone suggests, this is an extremely controversial book. Although it is heavily focused on so-called “alien abductees,” it is not actually about abduction events, at all. Rather, its focus is on how abductees are allegedly being used to assist alien-human hybrids whose role it is to infiltrate human society. And, yes, that word “infiltrate” is intended to suggest that nothing good can come from all of this. Or, from any of it. We’re talking about the way in which potentially hostile aliens – with no real regard for us, the Human Race – are working towards a certain, fateful day. A day when the Earth will be so heavily infested with these part-ET/part-human things that the invasion, take-over, and/or extermination, will be completed before we’ll have even a single chance to do anything about it. Yes, I said it was controversial. Even Jacobs notes this when he says: “My research has uncovered a substantial presence of hybrids living on Earth…”
Are all of these strange-looking characters something along the lines of a biological robot? It sounds totally nutty. Just maybe, though, it’s not.
For as long as photographs depicting the surface of Mars have been made available by NASA and other space agencies conducting studies of the Red Planet, online sleuths have scoured the images in search of possible anomalies.
Over the years, claims of everything from alien spacecraft and even possible alien skulls, to Bigfoot have turned up in imagery depicting the Martian surface. However, what this really constitutes is an exercise in pareidolia and only shows us, for the most part, how active the human imagination can be.
Perhaps not everything unusual that has been observed on the Martian surface seems quite so outlandish though. One instance involves a peculiar formation that was first spotted more than three decades ago when the Mariner 9 spacecraft managed to photograph the peculiar feature within a crater located near the Martian equator.
On the 58-mile-wide Pollack Crater floor, there appeared to be an unusual-looking region with a lighter coloration than the surrounding Martian terrain. Estimated to be 8.5 by 11 miles in size (think of a standard sheet of printing paper, albeit greatly enlarged), the weird feature was not only a peculiar whitish color but appeared to possess unusual grooves running along its surface.
The anomaly known as “White Rock” within Pollack Crater
(NASA/Public Domain).
Dubbed “White Rock,” the object was subsequently also photographed by the Viking Orbiter and presented a unique series of questions. What was the object, and what caused it to stand out so sharply against the rest of the Martian terrain?
Although the notion that it might represent an ice formation immediately springs to mind, White Rock’s location close to the Martian equator would easily rule this out. So what is this unusual feature?
If not ice, some scientists who continued to puzzle over White Rock began to suspect that it might represent a deposit of water-rich sediments, similar to salts that collect along the surface of dry lake beds in deserts on Earth. This would seem plausible, especially because later in 2004, such deposits were indeed found by NASA’s Opportunity rover while exploring the Meridiani Planum.
Backtracking to 2001, however, with the deployment of NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor orbiter and its Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) instrument, new clues emerged about the mysterious White Rock at the bottom of Pollack Crater. With the new spectrographic information, scientists were able to determine that White Rock showed no signs of water and, in fact, wasn’t white at all: its coloration closely matched other lighter regions on the Martian surface.
Part of what led to the confusion had been an optical illusion presented by the sharp contrast between the lighter material, which rises from the surface of the feature in the form of ridges shaped over time by wind, placed alongside darker basaltic sand (the latter can particularly be observed toward the feature’s northern side, where a field of dark basaltic dunes exists).
Detail of the unusual light colored area within Pollack Crater
(NASA/JPL/Public Domain).
While most scientists would agree that wind action played a significant role in the formation of the peculiar White Rock formation, estimates about its direction vary. Some of the grooves apparent on the feature seem to indicate an easterly or southeastern wind that could have shaped them over time, while others interpret that a wind approaching from the west would have done the job.
This before-and-after pair of images of the same patch of ground in front of NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity 13 days apart documents the arrival of a strange, bright rock at the scene. The rock, called "Pinnacle Island," is seen in the right image on Jan. 8, 2014. The image at left was taken on Dec. 26, 2013.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ. )
Steve Squyres, lead scientist for NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, points at a strange rock found by the rover on Jan. 8, 2014, where earlier there had been nothing, during a Jan. 16 presentation. The rock has been named "Pinnacle Island."
(Image credit: NASA/JPL)
A comparison of two raw Pancam photographs from sols 3528 and 3540 of Opportunity's mission (a sol is a Martian day). Notice the "jelly doughnut"-sized rock in the center of the photograph to the right. Minor adjustments for brightness and contrast. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Opportunity has been exploring Mars since Jan. 24, 2004, when it landed on the Red Planet a few weeks after its robotic twin Spirit. Both` rovers far outlasted their original 90-day mission, with Opportunity still driving today. Spirit's mission officially ended in 2011, several months after the rover stopped communicating with Earth.
Although White Rock initially seemed to stand out from other Martian features with its unusual light coloration, similar features have since been located at places like Ganges Chasma, where another bright grooved region rising from the surface can be seen to almost match the mysterious appearance of White Rock perfectly.
So as it turns out, White Rock isn’t so white, and in fact, it isn’t really a rock either… but it helps illustrate how astronomers are closing in on explaining even some of the more plausible anomalies on the Martian surface.
For as long as photographs depicting the surface of Mars have been made available by NASA and other space agencies conducting studies of the Red Planet, online sleuths have scoured the images in search of possible anomalies.
Over the years, claims of everything from alien spacecraft and even possible alien skulls, to Bigfoot have turned up in imagery depicting the Martian surface. However, what this really constitutes is an exercise in pareidolia and only shows us, for the most part, how active the human imagination can be.
Perhaps not everything unusual that has been observed on the Martian surface seems quite so outlandish though. One instance involves a peculiar formation that was first spotted more than three decades ago when the Mariner 9 spacecraft managed to photograph the peculiar feature within a crater located near the Martian equator.
On the 58-mile-wide Pollack Crater floor, there appeared to be an unusual-looking region with a lighter coloration than the surrounding Martian terrain. Estimated to be 8.5 by 11 miles in size (think of a standard sheet of printing paper, albeit greatly enlarged), the weird feature was not only a peculiar whitish color but appeared to possess unusual grooves running along its surface.
The anomaly known as “White Rock” within Pollack Crater
(NASA/Public Domain).
Dubbed “White Rock,” the object was subsequently also photographed by the Viking Orbiter and presented a unique series of questions. What was the object, and what caused it to stand out so sharply against the rest of the Martian terrain?
Although the notion that it might represent an ice formation immediately springs to mind, White Rock’s location close to the Martian equator would easily rule this out. So what is this unusual feature?
If not ice, some scientists who continued to puzzle over White Rock began to suspect that it might represent a deposit of water-rich sediments, similar to salts that collect along the surface of dry lake beds in deserts on Earth. This would seem plausible, especially because later in 2004, such deposits were indeed found by NASA’s Opportunity rover while exploring the Meridiani Planum.
Backtracking to 2001, however, with the deployment of NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor orbiter and its Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) instrument, new clues emerged about the mysterious White Rock at the bottom of Pollack Crater. With the new spectrographic information, scientists were able to determine that White Rock showed no signs of water and, in fact, wasn’t white at all: its coloration closely matched other lighter regions on the Martian surface.
Part of what led to the confusion had been an optical illusion presented by the sharp contrast between the lighter material, which rises from the surface of the feature in the form of ridges shaped over time by wind, placed alongside darker basaltic sand (the latter can particularly be observed toward the feature’s northern side, where a field of dark basaltic dunes exists).
Detail of the unusual light colored area within Pollack Crater
(NASA/JPL/Public Domain).
While most scientists would agree that wind action played a significant role in the formation of the peculiar White Rock formation, estimates about its direction vary. Some of the grooves apparent on the feature seem to indicate an easterly or southeastern wind that could have shaped them over time, while others interpret that a wind approaching from the west would have done the job.
This before-and-after pair of images of the same patch of ground in front of NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity 13 days apart documents the arrival of a strange, bright rock at the scene. The rock, called "Pinnacle Island," is seen in the right image on Jan. 8, 2014. The image at left was taken on Dec. 26, 2013.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ. )
Steve Squyres, lead scientist for NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, points at a strange rock found by the rover on Jan. 8, 2014, where earlier there had been nothing, during a Jan. 16 presentation. The rock has been named "Pinnacle Island."
(Image credit: NASA/JPL)
A comparison of two raw Pancam photographs from sols 3528 and 3540 of Opportunity's mission (a sol is a Martian day). Notice the "jelly doughnut"-sized rock in the center of the photograph to the right. Minor adjustments for brightness and contrast. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Opportunity has been exploring Mars since Jan. 24, 2004, when it landed on the Red Planet a few weeks after its robotic twin Spirit. Both` rovers far outlasted their original 90-day mission, with Opportunity still driving today. Spirit's mission officially ended in 2011, several months after the rover stopped communicating with Earth.
Although White Rock initially seemed to stand out from other Martian features with its unusual light coloration, similar features have since been located at places like Ganges Chasma, where another bright grooved region rising from the surface can be seen to almost match the mysterious appearance of White Rock perfectly.
So as it turns out, White Rock isn’t so white, and in fact, it isn’t really a rock either… but it helps illustrate how astronomers are closing in on explaining even some of the more plausible anomalies on the Martian surface.
For as long as photographs depicting the surface of Mars have been made available by NASA and other space agencies conducting studies of the Red Planet, online sleuths have scoured the images in search of possible anomalies.
Over the years, claims of everything from alien spacecraft and even possible alien skulls, to Bigfoot have turned up in imagery depicting the Martian surface. However, what this really constitutes is an exercise in pareidolia and only shows us, for the most part, how active the human imagination can be.
Perhaps not everything unusual that has been observed on the Martian surface seems quite so outlandish though. One instance involves a peculiar formation that was first spotted more than three decades ago when the Mariner 9 spacecraft managed to photograph the peculiar feature within a crater located near the Martian equator.
On the 58-mile-wide Pollack Crater floor, there appeared to be an unusual-looking region with a lighter coloration than the surrounding Martian terrain. Estimated to be 8.5 by 11 miles in size (think of a standard sheet of printing paper, albeit greatly enlarged), the weird feature was not only a peculiar whitish color but appeared to possess unusual grooves running along its surface.
The anomaly known as “White Rock” within Pollack Crater
(NASA/Public Domain).
Dubbed “White Rock,” the object was subsequently also photographed by the Viking Orbiter and presented a unique series of questions. What was the object, and what caused it to stand out so sharply against the rest of the Martian terrain?
Although the notion that it might represent an ice formation immediately springs to mind, White Rock’s location close to the Martian equator would easily rule this out. So what is this unusual feature?
If not ice, some scientists who continued to puzzle over White Rock began to suspect that it might represent a deposit of water-rich sediments, similar to salts that collect along the surface of dry lake beds in deserts on Earth. This would seem plausible, especially because later in 2004, such deposits were indeed found by NASA’s Opportunity rover while exploring the Meridiani Planum.
Backtracking to 2001, however, with the deployment of NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor orbiter and its Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) instrument, new clues emerged about the mysterious White Rock at the bottom of Pollack Crater. With the new spectrographic information, scientists were able to determine that White Rock showed no signs of water and, in fact, wasn’t white at all: its coloration closely matched other lighter regions on the Martian surface.
Part of what led to the confusion had been an optical illusion presented by the sharp contrast between the lighter material, which rises from the surface of the feature in the form of ridges shaped over time by wind, placed alongside darker basaltic sand (the latter can particularly be observed toward the feature’s northern side, where a field of dark basaltic dunes exists).
Detail of the unusual light colored area within Pollack Crater
(NASA/JPL/Public Domain).
While most scientists would agree that wind action played a significant role in the formation of the peculiar White Rock formation, estimates about its direction vary. Some of the grooves apparent on the feature seem to indicate an easterly or southeastern wind that could have shaped them over time, while others interpret that a wind approaching from the west would have done the job.
This before-and-after pair of images of the same patch of ground in front of NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity 13 days apart documents the arrival of a strange, bright rock at the scene. The rock, called "Pinnacle Island," is seen in the right image on Jan. 8, 2014. The image at left was taken on Dec. 26, 2013.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ. )
Steve Squyres, lead scientist for NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, points at a strange rock found by the rover on Jan. 8, 2014, where earlier there had been nothing, during a Jan. 16 presentation. The rock has been named "Pinnacle Island."
(Image credit: NASA/JPL)
A comparison of two raw Pancam photographs from sols 3528 and 3540 of Opportunity's mission (a sol is a Martian day). Notice the "jelly doughnut"-sized rock in the center of the photograph to the right. Minor adjustments for brightness and contrast. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Opportunity has been exploring Mars since Jan. 24, 2004, when it landed on the Red Planet a few weeks after its robotic twin Spirit. Both` rovers far outlasted their original 90-day mission, with Opportunity still driving today. Spirit's mission officially ended in 2011, several months after the rover stopped communicating with Earth.
Although White Rock initially seemed to stand out from other Martian features with its unusual light coloration, similar features have since been located at places like Ganges Chasma, where another bright grooved region rising from the surface can be seen to almost match the mysterious appearance of White Rock perfectly.
So as it turns out, White Rock isn’t so white, and in fact, it isn’t really a rock either… but it helps illustrate how astronomers are closing in on explaining even some of the more plausible anomalies on the Martian surface.
The search for methane on other planets is a key element in the search for life on other planets because one cause of the carbon gas is the decaying of organic matter. Unfortunately for life searchers, the most common cause of methane is abiotic or inorganic — either because of magmatic (volcanic) processes or via water-rock reactions that occur at low temperatures and pressures. That’s why the discovery of giant water plumes containing methane erupting from the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus by Cassini spacecraft generated mixed reactions from scientists depending on whether they saw their glass of possible life half empty or half full. The level of that glass just increased with the release of a new study which determined that no known process could generate as much methane as that erupting in plumes on Enceladus. Is it life … or something else?
Cassini image of Enceladus backlit by the sun showing the fountain-like sources of the fine spray of material over the south polar region.
(NASA)
“Here we use a Bayesian statistical approach to quantify the probability that methanogenesis (biotic methane production) might explain the escape rates of molecular hydrogen and methane in Enceladus’s plume, as measured by Cassini instruments”.
Scientists at the University of Arizona and Paris Sciences & Lettres University knew the best way to determine if the methane was being generated by Earthlike microbes eating dihydrogen and producing methane in such huge quantities would be to be to go where they are – on the seafloor of one of the water bodies on Enceladus. Since that’s not currently possible, they did the next best thing — develop mathematical models to calculate the probability of the different known processes of methane generation, both biological and abiotic, captured in the Cassini data. The researchers used the Bayesian statistics approach which expresses probability as a degree of belief in an event.
“We find that the observed escape rates (1) cannot be explained solely by the abiotic alteration of the rocky core by serpentinization; (2) are compatible with the hypothesis of habitable conditions for methanogens; and (3) score the highest likelihood under the hypothesis of methanogenesis, assuming that the probability of life emerging is high enough”.
That’s as close as the authors of the study, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, will get to saying, “We’re not saying it’s alien life, but it’s alien life”. In the University of Arizona press release, Régis Ferrière, an associate professor in the University of Arizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and one of the study’s two lead authors, explains that the results show that even the highest possible estimate of abiotic methane production based on known hydrothermal chemistry is far from sufficient to explain the methane concentration measured in the plumes. Add it together with the probability of biological methanogenesis and the model shows the combination could produce enough methane to match Cassini’s observations. In other words, the probability of life on Enceladus at some point in time just made the glass more than half full.
An artist’s concept of Saturn’s rings and major icy moons.
(NASA)
Then again, it’s just a model. Missions to Enceladus which would settle the argument have been proposed since 2006, with half already canceled and half under study – but none funded and planned. Will this study push the Enceladus mission needle to the ‘planned, funded and scheduled’ side anytime soon? We can only hope.
My son, Josh, who a few of you met recently, would appreciate it if I’d make clear what my view(s) is (or are) on schizophrenics, UFO visions, and psychopathologies among the UFO fringe; the topic that took up a portion of the July 4th weekend.
When I write that schizophrenics actually see what they say they see, and sometimes present those visions in art and scribblings, I’m saying that they are not making up their visions. They really see what they report, sometimes incoherently but “reliably.”
Yes, some visions (many perhaps) come from neural creations that aren’t actually in front of the observers’ eyes but are what they are seeing.
Are the images real, in a material way? Yes and/or No. Some are material and perceived by sensory vision. Others are contrived from neural memory or creative delusions.
Two papers consider the issue(s):
An integrated network model of psychotic symptoms Jasper Looijestijn a, Jan Dirk Bloma,b, André Alemanc, Hans W. Hoeka,b,d, Rutger Goekoopa,∗ a Parnassia Psychiatric Institute, Kiwistraat 43, The Hague 2552
Are persistent delusions in schizophrenia associated with aberrant salience? Rafeef Abboud a,1, Jonathan P. Roiser a,⁎,1, Hind Khalifeh b,c,d, Sheila Ali a, Isobel Harrison b,c, Helen T. Killaspy b,c, Eileen M. Joyce ea Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London
As you see, the matter is couched in psychiatric jargon; the persons afflicted are psychotic or delusional.
But are they? Not necessarily. What they see or experience can be real and is often real in a material way. That is when a persons says they see something or saw something, they did. Material reality and intangible reality need not be odd-fellows. They are often bed-fellows – observations as “real” as anything “normal” persons experience daily.
So, how can we discount – or why do we discount — these rapacious ravings or wildly offered renderings out of hand?
No one is pressing the confluence, while some are trying to juxtapose psychedelic and pharmacological into the mix, a wrong-headed approach to reality as I see it. Contrived intrusions into a brain bombards that brain’s mechanisms with biologic flotsam, which adds one more side-bar to what is happening, that side-bar flooded with non-real information.
The problem – one of many – for ufologists is separating the sociopath’s rendering of a UFO event from normal AND schizophrenic accounts.
Psychopaths abound in the UFO community. I have recently seen, among the offerings in the Facebook UFO groups, some of the most tawdry forms of UFO chicanery, stories of abductions and observations that make schizophrenic accounts pale by comparison.
How can any serious UFO researcher cope with such nonsense? They can’t. There are few, if any, qualified UFO enthusiasts with the credentials and training to ferret out the fraudulent reports from the credible reports.
Facebook remains the fount from which sociopaths spring forth, and they overwhelm, making the social media site and those within partners in a social insanity” not unlike that experienced by the nuns of Loudon or the Dutch during the tulip craze of 1637:
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk talks Starship space telescopes, artificial gravity
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk talks Starship space telescopes, artificial gravity
In his latest batch of tweets, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that the company is already thinking about the many potential ways its next-generation Starship launch vehicle could be used in space.
Already, ideas publicly touted by the SpaceX CEO range from using Cargo Starships to clean up space debris with its mouth-like payload bay to a stripped-down, expendable variant of the rocket to rapidly send massive spacecraft throughout the solar system. Now, Musk says that SpaceX has also considered tethering Starships together in space to create a form of artificial gravity for passengers on multi-month journeys between planets, as well as the possibility of turning entire Starships into all-in-one orbital observatories a magnitude more powerful than Hubble.
Since SpaceX first began discussing Starship and its predecessors, the potential to launch massive space telescopes has always been close by.(SpaceX)
Apparently invoked during discussions with astrophysicist and Nobel laureate Saul Perlmutter, at least parts of the physics community are already considering the possibilities offered by using Starship as a sort of foundation or spacecraft bus that could carry and operate vast scientific payloads. While Starship has already been officially floated several times as a serious contender for launch services for major future missions, this concept would instead see Starship function as the spacecraft itself.
As of 2021, Starship has yet to reach space or orbit once, but SpaceX isn’t far from that milestone. Eventually, perhaps just a few years from now, Starship will have successfully launched to and operated in orbit dozens or even hundreds of times and become a mature and reliable spacecraft.
Yeah, that would be cool. Also, using ship itself as structure for new giant telescope that’s >10X Hubble resolution. Was talking to Saul Perlmutter (who’s awesome) & he suggested wanting to do that.
At that point, it wouldn’t be out of the question to entrust Starships themselves to serve as long-lasting scientific spacecraft, exploiting a ‘bus’ that could offer abundant power, propulsion, thermal management, navigation, and communications capabilities to any ‘hosted’ payloads. That includes extensively modifying Starships on the ground to create vast space observatories, among numerous other possibilities.
Given Starship’s low production cost, 9-meter (~30 ft) diameter, and nominal ability to deliver at least 100 metric tons (~220,000 lb) of payload to low Earth orbit (LEO), it’s not inconceivable that ships could be outfitted with massive telescopes and scientific instruments. Perhaps more importantly, drastically reduced payload constraints (more than an order of magnitude relative to the Hubble or James Webb telescopes) could allow major innovation in spacecraft/instrument design, radically lowering costs while still improving reliability, redundancy, and performance.
Meanwhile, Musk says that SpaceX has also considered tethering crewed Starships together and spinning them around the center of that tether to create artificial gravity for crewmembers on months-long journeys between Earth, Mars, and other planets. Among fan communities, the tethered gravity concept has been circulating ever since SpaceX first announced Starship in 2016. Loosely researched by NASA and other institutions for decades, no real experimental efforts – save for a single halting test during a 1960s Gemini mission – have ever been pursued.
For Starship, orbital refueling could easily allow SpaceX to cut crewed Earth-Mars transit time to 100 days or less – subjecting astronauts to significantly less time in microgravity than those that crew the International Space Station (ISS). The value proposition of artificial gravity on 3-month cruises is likely substantially less clear-cut given the far-reaching complexity and modifications required to make such a system functional and make Starships compatible.
Regardless, Musk rather cryptically says that SpaceX has considered the concept, though he didn’t elaborate on whether the company ultimately decided to drop the subject or pursue it further.
On July 4, Dr. Steven Greer released his latest documentary film - The Cosmic Hoax. In it, he presented evidence of a decades-long plan to stage an alien false flag invasion.
He described multiple aspects of the plan and key figures in its implementation. He asserts that the staged event is imminent given recent developments in the mass media and US politics.
The first video below is Dr. Greer’s answer to the current government and media disinformation campaign promoting 3 big lies:
1. We do not know what these UAPs/ UFOs are. WE DO.
2. Humans cannot make craft that can maneuver like UFOs. WE CAN and WE DO.
3. The UFOs are a threat. THEY ARE NOT.
But according to Dr. Michael Salla, what's missing in Dr Greer's analysis of a Cosmic Hoax is another kind of alien false flag event.
In the second video Exopolitics Today podcast, Dr. Michael Salla examines The Cosmic Hoax, pointing out its strengths and shortcomings as an expose on a future alien psyop, especially when it comes to a very different kind of staged alien event - an 'Alien Rescue' or 'Salvation'.
In 1952 cameras spotted UFOs flying over the White House lawn in Washington D.C. – these sightings eventually lead to Project Blue Book, created by the U.S. government, in this clip from Season 5, “Aliens and Cover-Ups.”
“IF WE HAVEN'T REALLY UNDERSTOOD HUMAN EMOTIONS, CAN WE ACTUALLY ... PUT THEM INTO MACHINES?”
“IF WE HAVEN'T REALLY UNDERSTOOD HUMAN EMOTIONS, CAN WE ACTUALLY ... PUT THEM INTO MACHINES?”
SAY CHEESE - Bilge Mutlu, University of Wisconsin at Madison
ROBOTS ARE LEARNING TO SMILE AND IT'S MAKING HUMANS CRINGE
WHEN IT COMES TO EXPRESSING EMOTIONS, HUMAN FACES HAVE A LOT TO SAY.
Without speaking a word, we can signal our disgust to those around us with pursed lips and a furrowed brow. Our joy is expressed just as fast: Eyes open wide and lips upturned. Like an overturned flag signaling otherwise unnoticeable distress on a ship at sea, our facial expressions act as a bridge between our internal life and the outside world.
While other humans are generally good at picking up on these small signals, we may soon have another group with which to communicate: intelligent robot companions. From service robots delivering our takeout to companion bots bonding with our grandparents, it’s becoming more important to design robots that use emotion-like signaling to efficiently relate to humans.
But achieving this feat is easier said than done, and getting it wrong could doom a robot to reside in the “uncanny valley” — forever ruining their hopes of a true human relationship.
Enter Eva, a blue-skinned, body-less robot designed by Boyuan Chen, a computer science Ph.D. student at Columbia University, and colleagues from Columbia’s Creative Machines Lab. With 12 tiny muscle-like actuators built into its face, Eva is prepared to express a myriad of human emotions — from fear to joy to disgust.
Chen tells Inverse that he and the rest of the team behind Eva aren’t even sure exactly how many emotions it can express.
“Can you tell me how many expressions you can make?” Chen asks me. “It’s a very hard question to answer and it’s the same for the robot. I'm happy to see this happen because if we know the exact number [of emotions], that means there are limits. We do not know the number, [so] there are no limits.”
Eva is made using a 3D printed and assembled skull with a blue, flesh-like face mask placed on top.Faraj et al.
WHY CREATE A SMILING ROBOT
As for why you’d want to create a smiling robot at all, Chen says that developing robots that can hold their own in human-like interactions — such as reading distress in a human companion and responding accordingly with a comforting face — will be essential for improving human-machine interactions in the future.
Using emotions as a stepping stone toward building emotional and physical intelligence will help robots in the future intuitively know how to help humans, Chen explains, instead of needing to be explicitly programmed to do so.
“When robots see that other people may need help, you want a robot to actively help the people instead of me asking for help and programming it to help us,” he says.
Paula Niedenthal is an emotions researcher and professor of psychologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She tells Inverse that working toward emotionally express robots is important as well because humans will read emotions into these robots no matter what. Take, for example, food delivery robots milling the streets around UW Madison.
“The robot's behavior rather than a facial expression can look really emotional because it accelerates when there’s danger,” says Niedenthal. “For example, if a robot is crossing the road and then comes across a car there’s kind of a panicked rearing or running away. That makes you actually feel a kind of relationship with it, both sympathy and wanting to use that agent in the future.”
Eva can show a wide range of expressions, starting from 6 base human emotions: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise.
Robots that can expertly express these kinds of emotions will have a better chance at building human relationships and even persuading humans to do what they want, i.e. taking their medicine on time.
But having a robot nail this interaction every time is an incredibly difficult task, says Bilge Mutlu, an associate professor of computer science and psychology and UW Madison. Even humans don’t always get it right.
“When you look at the psychology literature, our understanding of emotions is incomplete,” Mutlu says. “And if we haven't really understood human emotions, can we actually simplify them and put them into machines? That's an open question.”
WHAT IS THE UNCANNY VALLEY?
For humans, these mismatched interactions can be uncomfortable or awkward, but with robots, they can be downright creepy, thanks to the uncanny valley.
The concept was proposed by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in the 1970s to describe a humanoid robot that looks close — but not quite close enough — to a real human.
According to the uncanny valley concept, humans are comfortable interacting with a more abstract and cute robot (think, Pixar’s WALL-E) or an incredibly human-like robot (think, Battlestar GalacticaCylons.) However, there exists a so-called valley between these two robotic extremes where robots look neither truly human nor robotic. This feeling of the “uncanny” might be the shiver you get when walking through a wax museum or when looking at a robotic Einstein video.
Psychologically, scholars have theorized that this discomfort with the not-quite-human may stem from an instinctual fear or distrust of dead human bodies, explains Niedenthal.
To steer clear of the uncanny valley altogether researchers will typically try and keep their robots on the cuter, more abstract side of the curve, says Mutlu. However, when it comes to programming emotions into your bot, he says avoiding creepiness altogether is a little impossible.
Does Eva creep you out? You’re not alone.Faraj et al.
HOW DOES IT WORK
The uncanny valley was a challenge that Chen and colleagues were willing to take when designing Eva.
To start, they chose to design Eva as just a disembodied head. While this may instinctually sound creepy, the researchers explain in their April 2021 paper on the project that this design choice was made to help viewers more clearly separate this robot from humans in their minds. For similar reasons, the team also chose to leave Eva’s skull exposed and color its face a distinctly non-human color: blue.
Admittedly, Chen says this decision was influenced partially by the lab's affection for the 2009 movie “Avatar.”
In addition to their 2021 paper published in the journal HardwareX, the team also recently presented a second paper at the 2021 International Conference on Robotics and Automation which further describes Eva’s latest hardware and software developments.
Underneath its blue skin, Eva is equipped with:
42 “muscles”
Expressive, hand-milled eyes
Base knowledge of six basic human emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise)
Running an off-the-shelf learning framework on a small Raspberry Pi built into its skull, Eva is able to “look” at human expressions in person or through video and realistically mimic them. This is done by mapping the human face using discrete points, similar to the kind of dot arrays used in motion tracking for CGI in movies. Eva then imagines how these patterns of dots would look on its face and then moves its facial actuators to bring the new face to life.
Altogether, the team reports that Eva can be manufactured for just $900.
WHAT’S NEXT
Eva is still in its infancy, but Chen says he’s excited to see how other researchers will use this open-source platform to design their own emotional robots — from changing the skin tone to programming real human interactions for Eva. In the future, Chen hopes that expressive robots like Eva will find a home as educators or in healthcare to help care for humans when others can’t.
And as for whether or not Chen finds Eva’s smile creepy, he says he could never be scared by a smile like that.
“This is hard for me because the robot is like our baby,” says Chen. “I absolutely love every part of it.”
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07-07-2021
Did The U.S. Government Steal Tesla’s Research?
Did The U.S. Government Steal Tesla’s Research?
Nikola Tesla was undoubtedly one of the brightest minds of the 20th century. Many of our modern day commodities owe their existence to his brilliant mind. However, he lived most of his life in a constant battle with the energy brokers of his day, namely Thomas Edison backed by General Electric.
On January 7, 1943, Tesla died alone and impoverished in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel. Two days after his death, the FBI ordered that all of his belongings be seized.
His lifetime work was confiscated by the Office of Alien Property even though he had been an American citizen for 52 years. It was known at the time that Tesla had been working on several important projects, including wireless communications and limitless free energy.
Last photo of Nikola Tesla
Tesla’s plan was to harness energy from the radiation present in the universe, using the entire planet as a conductor. This would have meant that anybody could have free electricity simply by sticking a metal rod into the ground.
These notions did not go well with the power elite, whose interest was maintaining the status quo, that is keeping their multi-billion dollar businesses running.
After all, what good was free energy if they wouldn’t be able to meter and control it? Therefore, many speculate that the U.S. government acted according to the pressure exerted by these big corporations. They eventually shipped his estate to Belgrade, Yugoslavia but not before taking nine years to go through it.
This situation gave rise to a pervasive notion that is strongly supported by circumstantial evidence: Tesla’s research was considered critical, even dangerous and was confiscated for good measure.
His ideas could have constituted an important advancement for humanity and that’s exactly why they were withheld.
Nikola Tesla
It is believed that the technology behind HAARP is based on Tesla’s research. The U.S. has many top-secret compounds around the world and also has a history of secretly developing technology.
Perhaps this is why Tesla’s papers were seized but we might never know for sure.
After years of fielding questions about possible cover-ups, the FBI finally declassified some 250 pages of Tesla-related documents under the Freedom of Information Act in 2016. The bureau followed up with two additional releases, the latest in March 2018.
But even with the publication of these documents, many questions still remain unanswered—and some of Tesla’s files are still missing.
Shortly after an electrical engineer, Dr. John G. Trump (yes it is current President Donal Trump’s uncle) was assigned to review his papers to discover if any of it was of actual tangible value.
He determined that it was “primarily of a speculative, philosophical and promotional character” and said the papers did “not include new sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results.”
Tesla’s extended family, including his nephew Sava Kosanovic, tried desperately to have at least his personal effects returned. Their requests were eventually accepted and some of his personal items were returned to the family.
Recently declassified documents reveal that the FBI, at the time, were concerned with his nephew’s intentions. They had even considered arresting him to prevent Tesla’s work falling into enemy hands.
After a long court battle, Kosanovic, the rightful heir to his uncle’s belongings, was finally given them. Tesla’s possessions and files were sent to Belgrade.
But, interestingly, of the 80 trunks or so of Tesla’s effects, only 60 arrived in Belgrade. Whether the U.S. Government had kept some of the information and effects or not is still, today, unknown.
It is also believed that Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative program in the 1980s was probably inspired by Tesla’s “Death Ray”. But if the government is still using some of Tesla’s material for its Research and Development, this would explain why some, if any, of his original works, are still missing today.
Bill Nelson, the former astronaut who is currently the new head of NASA and who just finished reading the classified Pentagon report on UFOs, should know something about them, right? However, the big question yet to be asked is, “If NASA knows about UFOs and UAPs, would it share that information with the people who pay their salaries – the tax-paying public?” The answer to that may be found on the agency’s own Frequently Asked Questions page on its website. It’s not as long as ‘War and Peace’. In fact, it’s not even as long as the Cliffs Notes for ‘War and Peace’ (which is actually four volumes itself!). it’s more like the jacket flap of ‘War and Peace’. If you’re still interested, NASA’s “FAQ: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs/UFOs)“ was updated recently to reflect the latest events in the search for explanations for the military sightings of UAPs. That should make it worth a look while in the bathroom, right?
“One of NASA’s key goals is the search for life in the universe.”
Where have I heard that before?
Right up front is NASA’s Trekkie “To seek out new life and new civilizations” mission statement, which completely ignores its Cold War military purpose from day one. Then the disclaimer:
“To date, NASA has yet to find any credible evidence of extraterrestrial life.”
Did the lawyers make them put that in right up front? More like the scientists, who accept the possibility but need the evidence, which the FAQ again states it hasn’t found … but “We do, however, continue to look.” Isn’t that what they’re paid to do? (Asking for a taxpaying friend.) Speaking of what they DO spend money on …
“NASA does fund research into technosignatures, but not for ground-based, radio-telescope searches due to NASA’s policy of supporting astrophysical research using space-based assets.
We also funded a Topical Workshops, Symposia, and Conference to develop a research agenda to prioritize and guide future theoretical and observational studies of non-radio technosignatures, and to draft a publishable report that can serve as the basis for building a library of technosignatures.”
Boring! There’s astronomers all over the world looking for technosignatures and biosignatures, but you’re the space agency that has put the most people and vehicles in space – vehicles with windows and instruments for watching for UFOs and UAPs. In fact, plenty of people make a point of watching the live International Space Station camera feed for the specific purpose of watching for UFOs as they fly by … and have noticed many times that said feed often mysteriously cuts out when this happens? Coincidence? Is that a frequently-asked question? If not, it should be.
OK, the last FAQ (yes, that’s all there are) is the big one: Does NASA search for or study Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs)? You can hold your breath if you want because the answer is disappointingly short.
“NASA does not actively search for UAPs. However, through our Earth-observing satellites, NASA collects extensive data about Earth’s atmosphere, often in collaboration with the other space agencies of the world. While these data are not specifically collected to identify UAPs or alien technosignatures, they are publicly available and anyone may use them to search the atmosphere.
While NASA doesn’t actively search for UAPs, if we learn of UAPs, it would open up the door to new science questions to explore. Atmospheric scientists, aerospace experts, and other scientists could all contribute to understanding the nature of the phenomenon. Exploring the unknown in space is at the heart of who we are.”
Sorry, NASA. Figuring out what those UFOs and UAPs are is the heart of who WE are … and we’re the taxpayers! It’s time to shape up. Bill Nelson says he believes we’re not alone. Answer the questions or commit to finding out!
One of the earliest astronomers to ever produce a complete map of the moon, Johann Heinrich von Mädler’s four-quadrant representation of the lunar surface remained an unsurpassed early representation of Earth’s lonely natural satellite for almost half a century.
Known as the Mappa Selenographica, Mädler laboriously poured over the moon on an almost nightly basis through his refractor telescope, not only observing and mapping lunar features but also producing measurements of its various features that included craters and his estimates regarding the height of lunar peaks. Mädler’s collaborations with Berlin banker and fellow astronomer Wilhelm Wolff Beer also resulted in the earliest charts cataloging the surface of Mars.
The map of Mars produced by Johann Heinrich von Mädler and his associate Wilhelm Wolff Beer
(public domain).
While Mädler’s contributions to early astronomy remain of significance today, he is also remembered for one of his curious observations involving the planet Venus. Although documented elsewhere in historical accounts detailing observations of the planet, the anomalous occurrence has since become so closely associated with Mädler that astronomers have given it the apt title of “The Mädler Phenomenon.”
During the spring of 1833, prior even to the publication of his Mappa Selenogra, Mädler had been observing Venus’s approach of an inferior conjunction, a period where both Mercury and Venus are positioned on the same side of the sun. At the time, Mädler was observing Venus through a refractor telescope and had noticed a few minor irregularities in the planet’s appearance which may have been influenced by the planet’s position relative to the Sun. However, Mädler might never have guessed how unusual the planet’s appearance would become in the days ahead.
Johann Heinrich von Mädler
(public domain).
On April 7, as Mädler trained his telescope on Venus, he was surprised by a sudden, significant change in the planet’s appearance. Mädler was able to see long rays or “brushes” of light extending off to the side of the planet, giving it an appearance so curious that had he not known otherwise, the astronomer might have mistaken Earth’s neighbor for being a comet. The observation had not been fleeting either; over the course of the next 20 hours, Mädler was able to continuously observe these unusual beams of luminosity that gave Venus a fan-tailed appearance.
What might have been the cause of this peculiar display? Considering whether the problem had been originating with the telescope itself, Mädler made adjustments but could find no change in the appearance of Venus with adjustments in magnification, angle, or rotation. Mädler also conducted tests to determine if the ghostly rays emanating from Venus could be an illusion, but to no avail; whatever had been producing this curious spectacle appeared to be a real light phenomenon, the likes of which the astronomer had never witnessed before.
Venus photographed on February 5, 1974, during NASA’s Mariner 10 mission
(NASA/Public Domain).
The debate has continued as to what might have been the source of the mystery, although not everyone was convinced by Mädler’s account. In his Celestial Objects, the Reverend T.W. Webb discussed Mädler’s observation, noting that “it is an instructive instance of the oversights which may be incidental even to great philosophers, that it never occurred to [Mädler] to try another telescope.” Of the opposite perspective, R. Baum writing in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association would note in 1988 that “it is difficult to credit the greasy finger hypothesis advanced by one modern astronomer without charging Mädler with gross incompetence, a rather unlikely possibility given his later success.” Baum, however, offered his own take on what could account for the phenomena observed by Mädler, pointing to atmospheric conditions described in the weather diary of John Gadbury as being able to account for the unusual observation.
The likely solution would appear to have been some variety of halo or another effect similar to the atmospheric optical phenomena known as a light pillar. Nonetheless, Mädler’s reputation as a detailed chronicler of astronomical data resulted in the phenomena in question bearing his namesake to this day, being recognized as one of the many curious footnotes in the history of human observation of our planetary neighbors.
Nineteen-eighty-seven was one of the most important years in the field of UFO research. That was the year in which Whitley Strieber’s book, Communion, was published. The alien abduction-themed book became a huge bestseller – even a New York Times bestseller, no less. Strieber’s book was an important one because it didn’t follow the same pathway that so many other abduction books did. Strieber suggested that the black-eyed, dwarfish creatures known as “the Greys” are far from being just entities from another world and who have come to visit us. Strieber’s work suggested something far more than that; something that has deep relevance to the world of robots. Or, maybe, of cyborgs. Some people were excited and intrigued by the story that Strieber told. Others were puzzled, some were appalled by the fact that Strieber brought into Communion matters relative to magic, to the human soul, to immortality, and to life after death – and all in one big mix. Indeed, Strieber put forth the distinct possibility that the Greys may have the ability to operate in both a physical state and a soul-based situation. As for that physical form, Strieber came up with a fascinating theory – based upon his very own experiences with the Greys. He strongly suspected that when not in spirit/soul form, the Greys had the ability to be “downloaded” into physical form. And vice-versa. And, in that particular form, they werefar more like biological robotsthan literal extraterrestrial beings that many of the UFO research community embraced.
Mac Tonnies went down that pathway, too. He said: “Given the vast number of out-of-body and near-death experiences, I find it difficult to reject the prospect of ‘nonlocal’ consciousness; perhaps a sufficiently advanced technology can manipulate the ‘soul’ as easily as we splice genes or mix chemicals in test tubes. If so, encounters with ‘extraterrestrials’ may help provide a working knowledge of how to modify and transfer consciousness – abilities that seem remote to the current terrestrial state-of-the-art, but may prove invaluable in a future where telepresence and virtual reality are integral to communication. Already, the capabilities of brain-machine interfaces are tantalizingly like the popular perception of telepathy, often thought of in strictly ‘paranormal’ or even ‘magical’ terms.’ It should be noted that this is very much like what has become known as Transhumanism. Basically, it’s a case of being in a state of post-human, rather than present-human. Or, post-alien, rather than alien.”
In some respects this parallels what Philip Corso said of the “alien bodies” allegedly found at Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947. Namely, that they weren’t aliens as we understand the term. Rather, they may have been robots designed and “built” to perform specific tasks in relation to alien abduction events – and, quite possibly, that’s just about all they were designed for. If true, it would be highly logical to expect that the Greys still play that robot-like role. If, of course, Corso was telling the truth (and, I should stress that I have massive doubts about anything Corso ever said). Also, if Corso was telling the truth, then the creatures may never have had any degree of self-awareness, and had no knowledge of their place in world history. That provokes another question: who, then, were the creators of the Greys? Corso wasn’t at all sure. Let’s get it right on the target:, he actually had no real clue, at all. The Space Brothers? Cryptoterrestrials? Maybe, no-one – at all – has any idea. And, possibly, no human being has ever seen what we might call “The Controllers” of the Greys. Certainly, I’m only speculating here and musing on matters. As I said, I was not a fan of Corso’s back in 1997 when his book The Day After Roswell was published. I’m still not a fan now. But, now and again, addressing theories outside one’s own conclusions isn’t a bad thing. After all, none of us really knows the truth of Roswell. A bit of speculation doesn’t hurt.
Has the Earth undergone periods of violent change throughout its long history? If so, what had been the result of these changes and, of equal significance, what instigated them in the first place?
Many ancient texts appear to describe great cataclysms that have affected our planet in various ways, although debate remains as to whether all of them describe real phenomena or are in some cases just myths and allegories conjured from the minds of ancient commentators.
Arguably, the most famous of all these is Plato’s account of the destruction of the fabled Atlantis. While modern scholars generally accept that Plato’s dialogues recounting tales of Atlantis had been aimed at having an instructive purpose, even some of Plato’s early followers were said to have considered the story to have historical roots. Chief among these had been Crantor, a Greek philosopher of the Old Academy and one of the earliest scholars to write commentaries on Plato’s works.
Raphael’s depiction of Plato, seen holding a copy of his “Timeaus,” which describes part of the Atlantis legend
(Public Domain).
Modern science holds a different view on the matter, however. To date, there has been little evidence come to light that supports the existence of a literal island continent that sank into the Atlantic some 9000 years or so before Plato’s time. However, this is not to say that there weren’t incredible changes that the Earth underwent during this period which, although they may be coincidental, certainly have caused some academics to wonder about narratives like the ones Plato offered.
Around 12,700 years ago, as Earth was transitioning from the last major ice age into the modern era (or Holocene) several changes were underway, for which there is an abundance of modern geological evidence. As the glacial formations around the polar regions began to melt and the ice sheets that extended over parts of North America and Eurasia began to slowly thaw, meltwater runoff gradually flowed into the Atlantic Ocean, disrupting the circulation of ocean currents and causing temperature changes lasting for hundreds of years.
Some modern evidence—primarily in the form of concentrations of rare-earth elements in geological strata coinciding with this period—points to even more potentially catastrophic phenomena that might have occurred, having possibly instigated some of the other changes Earth underwent around this time. One emergent theory that had once been ridiculed, but in recent years had increasingly gained support among scientists involves a possible impact event that occurred as Earth exited the Pleistocene, which triggered a period of cold reversal known as the Younger Dryas.
Many modern catastrophists point to this not only as possible evidence of a cataclysmic period in the late Pleistocene but also note the similarity in its timing and the period during which Plato said Atlantis sank beneath Atlantic waters. If nothing else, it might be possible that legends that range from Atlantis to the idea of a “great flood” prevalent in mythologies from all over the world could have been born from what were once actual memories of such events in Earth’s past.
Map depicting the location of Atlantis, as depicted in Ignatius Donnelly’s “Atlantis: The Antediluvian World”
(Public Domain).
Over time, catastrophism has seen sympathy from a range of scholars. These include the Harvard-trained professor and one-time member of the Office of Strategic Services Charles Hapgood, who went on to become a proponent of rapid pole shifts, as well as a champion of the idea that the famous Piri Reis map detailed not merely the coastline of the Americas, but perhaps Antarctica too. Most of Hapgood’s theories, while entertaining (and perhaps not all of them entirely without merit) have nonetheless failed to withstand scientific scrutiny over the ensuing decades.
Nonetheless, others have appeared to champion the catastrophist cause. A 1978 paper by P. Warlow titled “Geomagnetic Reversals?” in the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General, Volume 11, Number 10, revealed a comparatively fresh take on the matter (at least when compared with earlier theories proposed by the likes of Hapgood).
“The enigma of geomagnetic reversals and their apparent link with other phenomena,” Warlow wrote, “such as faunal extinctions, is shown to be explicable by treating these reversals as a relative rather than an absolute effect.” Rather than to suppose that mere magnetic reversals occur, Warlow posited the idea that an actual shift of the Earth’s rotation might periodically take place. Such an idea, he believed, “is sufficient to account for the behaviour of the field in detail during a reversal, and for explaining the links with the various other phenomena.”
Warlow cited information “not only from modern geological and related investigations, but also from astronomy and from ancient sources.” Among the sources he examined had been peculiar accounts from ancient Egypt that appear to describe the sun rising in the West, rather than in the East, a mystery which has been revisited more recently by author Scott Creighton in books like The Great Pyramid Void Enigma.
Of course, geomagnetic reversals certainly have occurred in the past and are widely recognized phenomena, although ideas about the range of effects they may cause remain varied. Geologists have long understood that changes in Earth’s magnetic field resulting in the reversal of the positions of magnetic north and south occur periodically throughout time, leading to alternating periods (known as chrons) where these polarity reversals occur.
As far as what leads to these changes, there are no definite patterns. While geomagnetic reversals appear to occur randomly, a total of 183 have occurred within the last 83 million years, meaning that on average such reversals occur once every 450,000 years or so. Some geomagnetic shifts appear to be far less widespread, which geologists call excursions. One interpretation is that these excursions could be the result of incomplete or failed geomagnetic shifts. Another possibility is that these shifts are instigated by cataclysmic events, and at least some data appears to correlate geomagnetic phenomena with periods like the Younger Dryas.
Will there be another geomagnetic reversal any time soon? Since the last one occurred around 780,000 years ago, some have noted that we appear to be overdue for the next one, which could occur at almost any time given our limited understanding of the mechanisms that might facilitate such changes. However, one thing that remains clear is that they do occur… and gaining a more complete understanding of why and how could be beneficial both in terms of understanding past changes our planet has undergone, as well as those which may await us in the future.
Two Top Leading Experts Explain The Alien Human Abduction Agenda And Who Are The Ones Doing The Abducting Based On Their Vast Research! Must See Videos!!
FOUR Top Leading Experts Explain The Alien Human Abduction, Their Agenda And Who Are The Ones Doing The Abducting Based On Their Vast Research! Must See Videos!!
THE ALIEN-HUMAN ABDUCTION AGENDA EXPLAINED BY DR. KARLA TURNER PH.D. (TOP EXPERT #1)
THE ALIEN-HUMAN HYBRID PROGRAM/AGENDA BY DAVID JACOBS PH.D. (TOP EXPERT #2).
Abductions and Experiencer Cases Investigated by John Mack (TOP EXPERT #3).
Alien Abduction Documentary with Budd Hopkins (TOP EXPERT #4)
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LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 07 - 07 - 2021
LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 07 - 07 - 2021
UFO Sighted Over California Beach
UFO was sighted moving slowly across the water then disappearing under the ocean in California : Video surfaced on Tic Tok, July 2021
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UFOs Sighted Over Olaria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ( July 6, 2021 )
STATEMENT:
Gravado hoje 06/07/2021 em torno das 18:56 no bairro de Olaria RJ Desculpem a qualidade do vídeo. Meu celular não é muito bom para filmagens Claro que dentro das possibilidades pode ser algumas coisas que conhecemos Porém o movimento das luzes me chamou a atenção
TRANSLATE :
Recorded today 06/07/2021 around 18:56 in the neighborhood of Olaria RJ Sorry for the video quality. My phone is not very good for filming Of course within possibilities may be some things we know But the movement of lights caught my eye
credit : Jairo F Sampaio
UFOs Sighted Over Houston, Texas ( July 6, 2021 )
UFOs were sighted over Houston, Texas on July 6, 2021
STATEMENT :
The two lights on the lower right end of the screen, Houston today
credit : Luis Bauta
UFOs Sighted Over Phoenix, Arizona ( July 5, 2021 )
UFOs were sighted over the skies of Phoenix, Arizona on July 5, 2021 : STATEMENT : In Phoenix Az
credit : Leonel Mendoza
ISS Camera Gets Cut Capturing UFOs ( July 4, 2021 )
ISS Camera Gets Cut Capturing UFOs on July 4, 2021 : UFOs ? : 23.40 pm : ISS Camera : Nasa Live Feed
UFO Zooms Past Steamship On River Weaver, England ( July 5, 20221 )
UFO Zooms past The Danny - Daniel Adamson a 1903 steamship with a unique story
STATEMENT :And at last... We are underway. Get ready Abandon Normal Devices we are heading our way for your event.
credit :The Danny - Daniel Adamson a 1903 steamship with a unique story
Multiple UFOs Sighted Over Texas ( July 5, 2021 )
Multiple UFOs were Sighted Over Texas in formation on July 5, 2021
A few months ago Ammar heard about an incredibly strange event in Massachusetts on September 1st 1969 where several people that didn’t know each other from the same town claim to have been abducted by aliens on the same evening. The story seemed so surreal and otherworldly that we had to go speak to the people directly… Here are their stories. What do you think?
WAAR ZITTEN DE ALIENS? NEGEN MANIEREN OM DAAR ACHTER TE KOMEN!
WAAR ZITTEN DE ALIENS? NEGEN MANIEREN OM DAAR ACHTER TE KOMEN!
Caroline Kraaijvanger
De meeste onderzoekers zijn ervan overtuigd dat er buitenaards leven is. Maar ja.. hoe vind je dat? We zetten negen methoden op een rij.
Zijn we alleen? Het is een vraag die de mensheid al heel lang bezighoudt. En hoe meer onderzoek we binnen en buiten ons zonnestelsel doen, hoe aannemelijker het bestaan van buitenaards leven lijkt te worden. Zo blijken bouwstenen voor leven veelvuldig in het universum voor te komen. Net als aardachtige planeten. En zelfs in ons eigen zonnestelsel zijn dankzij recente studies wel wat kandidaten voor buitenaards leven aan te wijzen. Zo lijken de omstandigheden onder de dikke ijskappen van Jupiters maan Europa bijvoorbeeld niet ongeschikt voor het ontstaan en instandhouden van primitieve levensvormen.
Al met al voldoende reden dus om – hetzij binnen of buiten ons zonnestelsel – actief te gaan zoeken naar aliens. maar ja..hoe doe je dat? We hebben negen methodes voor je op een rijtje gezet!
1. Jagen op radiosignalen…
Misschien wel de bekendste zoekmethode is die van het SETI-project, waarbij met radiotelescopen gezocht wordt naar radiosignalen, verzonden door intelligente aliens. Deze Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is al decennialang bezig. Vooralsnog zonder resultaat.
Wow! De zoektocht naar radiosignalen kent één toch wel opvallend resultaat en dat is het in de jaren zeventig waargenomen ‘wow-signaal’. Een sterk, smalbandig signaal dat onderzoekers nog altijd niet goed kunnen verklaren. De meeste wetenschappers zijn het er echter wel over eens dat het signaal waarschijnlijk niet afkomstig is van aliens.
2. …of laserpulsen
Naast radiosignalen kun je ook zoeken naar andere signalen die door intelligente aliens – bewust of onbewust – de ruimte in worden geslingerd. Zo wordt er binnen het Breakthrough Listen-project bijvoorbeeld gezocht naar laserpulsen. Ook die zoektocht heeft tot op heden niets opgeleverd.
3. Ga ter plaatse
De dichtstbijzijnde exoplaneet is Proxima b. De planeet bevindt zich op zo’n 4,2 lichtjaar afstand, wat betekent dat licht al meer dan vier jaar nodig heeft om van de aarde naar Proxima b te reizen. Even op en neer vliegen om te kijken of er leven is, zit er dan ook niet in. Maar in ons eigen zonnestelsel kunnen we wel ter plaatse naar aliens zoeken. Bijvoorbeeld op Mars. Daar rijden nu al een Chinese en Amerikaanse rover rond die actief zoeken naar sporen van (vergaan) leven.
4. Zoek naar biosignaturen
De atmosfeer van de aarde is relatief zuurstofrijk. Maar dat is niet altijd zo geweest. Miljarden jaren geleden herbergde de aardatmosfeer nauwelijks zuurstof. Daar kwam verandering in toen micro-organismen de fotosynthese onder de knie kregen en zuurstof gingen produceren. De zuurstofconcentratie in de atmosfeer steeg gestaag en daarmee werd ook het ontstaan van complexere levensvormen mogelijk. De hoge zuurstofniveaus in onze atmosfeer getuigen dus van de aanwezigheid van leven. Op een vergelijkbare wijze kan ook de atmosfeer van een andere planeet verraden of deze leven herbergt of niet. Het enige wat we moeten doen, is de atmosfeer van zo’n planeet uitpluizen én helder krijgen welke elementen of combinatie van elementen goede indicatoren van leven (oftewel: biosignaturen) zijn. Naar dat laatste wordt volop onderzoek gedaan. En aan een telescoop krachtig genoeg om de atmosfeer van exoplaneten uit te pluizen, wordt as we speak de laatste hand gelegd; de James Webb Space Telescope moet nog dit jaar gelanceerd worden.
5. Zoek de vervuiling
Wanneer we in de atmosfeer van een exoplaneet een hoge concentratie zuurstof aantreffen, kan dat wijzen op de aanwezigheid van leven. Maar dat hoeft geen intelligent leven te zijn. De zuurstof kan net zo goed geproduceerd worden door eenvoudige micro-organismen. Wie aan de hand van buitenaardse atmosferen specifiek wil zoeken naar complexe levensvormen kan het dan ook beter over een iets andere boeg gooien en zoeken naar technosignaturen. Dit zijn bijproducten van grootschalige industriële processen, zoals bijvoorbeeld stikstofdioxide. Dit komt bijvoorbeeld vrij tijdens het verbranden van fossiele brandstoffen en is dan ook zeer geschikt voor het opsporen van aliens met een voorliefde voor benzineauto’s of andere vervuilende vervoersmiddelen.
6. Ga op jacht naar de schaduw
Het meest voorkomende meercellige organisme op aarde is de boom. Het lijkt niet ondenkbaar dat ook op andere planeten zulke grote meercellige, rechtopstaande levensvormen te vinden zijn. En als dat zo is, kunnen we ze volgens recent onderzoek misschien wel opsporen aan de hand van hun schaduw. Het enige wat we nodig hebben, zijn krachtige telescopen die deze schaduw kunnen spotten.
7. Probeer ze zover te krijgen dat ze ons contacteren
We zoeken dus al decennialang naar aliens, maar zonder resultaat. Voor sommige mensen voldoende reden om de rollen om te draaien en in plaats van naar aliens te zoeken, heel luidruchtig aan alle eventuele aliens te laten weten dat we er zijn. Dat wordt ook wel METI – Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence – genoemd. Hierbij wordt een boodschap de ruimte ingestuurd, in de hoop dat aliens die oppikken en naar aanleiding daarvan contact met ons opnemen. Niet iedereen is echter heel enthousiast over die aanpak. Zo vertelde radioastronoom Heino Falcke een aantal jaren geleden aan Scientias.nl er heel weinig heil in te zien. “We weten uit de geschiedenis dat een botsing tussen twee beschavingen altijd uitvalt in het voordeel van de beschaving met grotere resources en betere technologieën. In dit geval zou dat de beschaving zijn die de ander kan bezoeken.” En dus lijkt het erop dat we bij voorbaat al aan het kortste eind trekken. “Waarom zou je willen communiceren met iemand die ons wel kan bezoeken, maar waar wij niet naar toe kunnen?”
8. Houd de moederster in de gaten
Als aliens een beetje ambitieus zijn, veranderen ze niet alleen hun atmosfeer, maar ook de nabije ruimte. Zo kun je je voorstellen dat ze satellieten rond hun planeet plaatsen. Of een hitteschild – om klimaatverandering tegen te gaan. Of ze leggen een megastructuur rond de moederster aan om de energie daarvan op te slokken en naar eigen inzicht te kunnen gebruiken. Het zijn allemaal aanpassingen die we zouden kunnen waarnemen als we langdurig naar de moederster turen. Zowel de hitteschilden als satellieten zouden we wellicht kunnen detecteren als de planeet voor die moederster langs beweegt en – door alle toeters en bellen eromheen – voor een wat vreemde dip in de helderheid van de ster zorgt. En ook de megastructuur rond de moederster zou een detecteerbare impact hebben op de helderheid ervan.
Zo zijn er dus behoorlijk wat manieren om aliens te ontdekken. Of we ze binnenkort op één van deze manieren ook daadwerkelijk gaan vinden, blijft afwachten. Maar de meeste onderzoekers zijn optimistisch over onze kansen. Zeker met de komst van de volgende generatie telescopen – zoals de al genoemde James Webb, maar ook de in aanbouw zijnde Extremely Large Telescope – hebben we straks eindelijk instrumenten tot onze beschikking waarmee we gericht naar aliens kunnen gaan zoeken. Het lijkt dan ook niet ondenkbaar dat we ergens in de komende decennia het bewijs vinden waarmee we het vermoeden dat we in dit enorme universum toch niet moederziel alleen zijn, kunnen staven.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
TAAI RADERDIERTJE LEEFT NA 24.000 JAAR INGEVROREN TE ZIJN GEWEEST, VROLIJK VERDER
TAAI RADERDIERTJE LEEFT NA 24.000 JAAR INGEVROREN TE ZIJN GEWEEST, VROLIJK VERDER
Vivian Lammerse
En met zo’n lange adem stoot hij het weerbarstige beerdiertje van de troon.
Je denkt misschien dat beerdiertjes taaie rakkers zijn. Maar we kennen er nog zo eentje. En wel het raderdiertje. Het raderdiertje uit de orde Bdelloida zijn meercellige dieren die zo klein zijn dat je een microscoop nodig hebt om ze te zien. Net als beerdiertjes zijn ze in staat om de meest krankzinnige omstandigheden te overleven, zoals uitdroging, bevriezing, verhongering en omgevingen met weinig zuurstof. Maar niet alleen zijn ze bestand tegen bevriezing… Wetenschappers hebben namelijk bijzonder kranige exemplaren gevonden die zelfs na 24.000 jaar (!) ingevroren te zijn geweest in Siberisch permafrost, gewoon verder gaan met hun leven.
Beerdiertje versus raderdiertje Op het eerste gezicht lijken beerdiertjes en raderdiertjes behoorlijk wat overeenkomsten te hebben. “Zowel beerdiertjes als raderdiertjes zijn microscopisch kleine meercellige dieren met organen en weefsels,” vertelt onderzoeker Stas Malavin in een interview met Scientias.nl. Bovendien zijn ze beide lastig kapot te krijgen. Zo zijn ze allebei al weleens de ruimte in geschoten en blootgesteld aan de meest gruwelijke experimenten, zoals je al even hierboven kon lezen. Maar er zijn ook verschillen. “Qua morfologie lijken ze niet veel op elkaar,” vervolgt Malavin. “En, nog belangrijker, ze hebben heel verschillende mechanismen van cryptobiose (schijndood).”
Bevroren Enkele jaren geleden ontdekten wetenschappers al dat ingevroren raderdiertjes na tien jaar gewoon weer de draad oppikken. Ook beerdiertjes kunnen dat. Zo wekten wetenschappers beerdiertjes die meer dan 30 jaar ingevroren waren geweest, weer tot leven. Maar daar doet het raderdiertje nu weer een schepje bovenop. In de nieuwe studie reisden de onderzoekers af naar enkele van de meest afgelegen Arctische eilanden en verzamelden de microscopisch kleine organismen uit oeroud permafrost. Radiokoolstofdatering maakte duidelijk dat de raderdiertjes al zo’n 24.000 jaar in het permafrost ingevroren zaten. Nadat de onderzoekers de diertjes ontdooid hadden, leefden ze wonderbaarlijk genoeg vrolijk verder.
Ontdooid Het is een bizarre ontdekking. Want het betekent dat de diertjes dus maar liefst 24.000 jaar ’slapend’ weten te overbruggen, om vervolgens gewoon door te gaan met hun leven. “Ze kunnen tienduizenden jaren in cryptobiose – de toestand van bijna volledig gestopt metabolisme – verkeren,” zegt Malavin. “Het aantal jaar maakt natuurlijk indruk. Dit overtreft alle eerdere bekende gevallen.” Bovendien leken de raderdiertjes weinig door zo’n lange periode in schijndood aangetast. Eenmaal ontdooid, plantte het raderdiertje zich zelfs gewoon voort.
Dat doet het raderdiertje trouwens ook al op een vrij merkwaardige manier. Zo is het raderdiertje aseksueel. Heel concreet betekent dat dat het organisme geen mannetjes nodig heeft om jongen op de wereld te zetten. Omdat er in dit geval geen uitwisseling van genen plaatsvindt, eet het raderdiertje waarschijnlijk DNA. “Ze nemen vreemd DNA in hun genomen op; een eigenaardig mechanisme van horizontale genoverdracht,” vertelt Malavin. “Dit helpt de genetische diversiteit in deze groep te verhogen.”
Je vraagt je misschien af hoe het raderdiertje zoveel jaar in een ingevroren toestand kan overleven. Om dat verder te onderzoeken, bevroren en ontdooiden de onderzoekers tientallen exemplaren in het laboratorium. Deze experimenten suggereren dat de beestjes bestand zijn tegen de vorming van ijskristallen die bij bevriezing ontstaan. Waarschijnlijk beschikken ze over een bepaald mechanisme om hun cellen en organen te beschermen tegen schade bij extreem lage temperaturen. “Raderdiertjes onderbreken hun metabolisme en accumuleren bepaalde verbindingen – zoals chaperonne-eiwitten – die hen van cryptobiose helpen herstellen wanneer de omstandigheden verbeteren,” legt Malavin desgevraagd uit. “Ze hebben ook een uniek mechanisme voor de bescherming tegen reactieve zuurstofsoorten – een van de grootste bedreigingen tijdens schijndood – en zeer sterke DNA-reparatiemechanismen.”
Voordelen Waarom raderdiertjes aan cryptobiose doen? Het is een slimme truc. “Door de rustperiode kunnen ze ontsnappen aan ongunstige omstandigheden en dus op plaatsen wonen die ongeschikt zijn voor de meeste andere dieren,” vertelt Malavin. “Bovendien ontsnappen ze dankzij cryptobiose aan parasieten en worden ze zelfs sterker wakker. Na herstel leven ze namelijk langer en zorgen voor meer nakomelingen dan soortgenoten die de staat van cryptobiose overslaan.”
Meercellige organismen Dankzij de studie kunnen we nu concluderen dat het blijkbaar ook voor meercellige organismen mogelijk is om tienduizenden jaren in bevroren toestand te verkeren, om daarna weer succesvol tot leven te worden gewekt. “Een droom van fictieschrijvers,” zegt Malavin. Tot voor kort werd gedacht dat dit alleen maar het domein was van rondwormen, die zelfs 30.000 tot 40.000 jarige dutjes doen. Maar nu kunnen ook raderdiertjes toegevoegd worden aan de lijst van organismen die over het opmerkelijke vermogen beschikken om schijnbaar voor onbepaalde tijd, in een toestand van schijndood, onder het bevroren landschap te overleven.
Mensen Of dit op een dag ook mogelijk wordt voor mensen? “Ik zie hier geen theoretische beperkingen aan,” beantwoordt de onderzoeker. “Natuurlijk, hoe complexer het organisme, hoe lastiger het is om dat wat bevroren is, levend te houden. Zoogdieren kunnen dit dan ook nog niet. Het lijkt misschien grappig, maar het grootste obstakel hiervoor is waarschijnlijk niet de complexiteit van zoogdieren, maar hun macroscopische afmetingen.” Op dit moment is het nog onduidelijk wat er precies nodig is om zelfs maar een paar jaar in ijs te overleven. Ook is het de vraag of de stap naar duizenden jaren veel verschil maakt. “Dat is een vraag die nadere studie vereist.”
De onderzoekers zijn van plan om Arctische monsters te blijven bestuderen. Op die manier willen ze namelijk ook achterhalen of er misschien naast indrukwekkende raderdiertjes en sommige wormen, ook andere organismen zijn die net zo lang in cryptobiose kunnen verkeren. Daarnaast zijn de onderzoekers van plan om de precieze biologische mechanismen die verantwoordelijk zijn voor de overleving van ingevroren raderdiertjes, volledig te doorgronden. De hoop is dat dit nieuw inzicht verschaft in hoe cellen, weefsels en organen van andere dieren – inclusief mensen – beter kunnen worden ingevroren en bewaard.
The truth is out there, but for now, it doesn’t involve extraterrestrial visitors. It could, however, be a foreign power’s technology.
So concludes a forthcoming US government report, whose broad findings leaked earlier this month, on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), the current, less X-Files–sounding term for UFOs. The investigation followed sightings and videos recorded in recent years, by fighter aircraft instruments and pilots’ naked eyes, of objects flying at seemingly impossible speed and doing seemingly impossible maneuvers.
UFOs aren’t just the playpen of conspiracy theorists and sci-fi fans: NASA awards grants to reputable scientists seeking real-life ETs, and we’ve been scanning the heavens for signs of artificial signals for decades, says Thomas Bania, a College of Arts & Sciencesprofessor of astronomy. He researches the possibility of life elsewhere, along with many in his field. (“Carl Sagan…owes me money,” he says, a debt he knows he won’t collect, as his celebrity colleague died in 1996.)
Bania and Jack Weinstein, a Pardee School of Global Studies professor of the practice of international security and a retired Air Force lieutenant general, offered their takes on the government’s conclusions for BU Today.
Q&A WITH THOMAS BANIA AND JACK WEINSTEIN
BU Today:Any doubts about the government’s reported conclusion that the recent sightings aren’t extraterrestrials?
Jack Weinstein: I have no expertise in UFOs except for watching Men in Black. I never flew for the Air Force—I was a nuclear and space guy. [Never] did we track something that we thought was a UFO.
My concern with the report is that [it] stated it could be a foreign power’s technology.The UFO sightings dating back into the ’50s and ’60s were never technology that we were able to see later on from a foreign power. That never materialized later into a foreign nation having a capability like that. I can’t comment on whether they’re UFOs or not, because I don’t want to look like a kook, to be blunt. All I’m saying is that if a foreign power developed technology, then later on we’d see technology like that from them, either in operation or testing.
Thomas Bania: Do any of us believe these are actual flying saucers from outer space? No. [But] there really isn’t enough information to evaluate what is going on.
[The government] shows images of these objects, and they have ruled out extraterrestrial technology. Yet they then say these things have enormous speeds and do maneuvers that are impossible to replicate by our technology. All of those claims require that we know the distance to the target. Think of an airplane—if you look at a 747 in the sky, it doesn’t appear to be moving very fast. It’s going 600 miles an hour, but the rate at which a film of that plane would look[like it’s going] depends on the distance. And [the government’s] not telling us whether they know the distance. These are not [reliable] measurements of speed and acceleration unless they know the distance to the object, and they’re not telling us.
Media coverage cited experts who doubt foreign technology could have been invented without our knowing it and that it could have been kept secret.
Weinstein: I won’t go that far. China has developed some good technology much faster than we thought they were going to. To go back: if we think a foreign power has developed a technology, we would have then seen that technology later on in use or in testing.
Bania: I agree with Professor Weinstein that until these recent reports, there has never been any evidence to invoke foreign technology [as UFOs]; 90 percent of UFO reports have always had prosaic, natural explanations.
The point is, how do you interpret what these experts are responding to—the enormous speeds and maneuvers? If that’s the case, I agree we would know if somebody had developed some device that could do those maneuvers. I am questioning that interpretation of the data; without knowing the distance, there would be no evidence for enormous accelerations and avionic capabilities in terms of maneuverability.
No new technology is required here [to explain recent sightings]. We know how to build things, drones, complex electronics. So do our adversaries. You’re talking to someone who’s responsible for more than half of the UFO reports in Bergen County, N. J., in the late 1960s—my Explorers Boy Scouts specialized in creating UFOs.
Vladimir Putin claimed to have developed a super cruise missile. Is it possible he wasn’t blustering?
Weinstein: I don’t trust anything Vladimir Putin says. I put everything in the “bluster” category. If a country has developed a technology that they can use militarily that they don’t want anyone to know anything about, no one is going to ever say anything. We want to surprise the adversary on the battlefield.
Bania: I don’t think you can stealth a cruise missile to radar to the extent that you could a small drone, things the size you could buy at Micro Center in Boston.
What’s your best guess as to what these pilots saw?
Weinstein: It could be truly a UFO. I never want to say something could never be. It could be a phenomenon caused by nature—just a weather phenomenon. We learn something new every day, we’re flying at higher altitude than we’ve ever flown before, so maybe we’re seeing things that would look differently at a lower altitude.
My bottom line is: I think everyone who believes in UFOs will see a conspiracy if the government doesn’t say they are UFOs. I can’t believe we’re the most intelligent life-form in the entire universe, ’cause that means the universe is pretty dumb. If I’m an extraterrestrial and I can travel from other planets, I would think they would be smart enough to evade radar.
Bania: It’s just a pure guess, but I would think these things would be electronic warfare. They’re trying to get intelligence of exactly what our weapons systems are capable of doing, the frequencies they use, the encoding of radar transmissions, things they could use to develop countermeasures to render themselves invisible to radar. It would be either Russia or China. I’m more worried about China.
What it isn’t is little green men. If these were extraterrestrials, and they had the technology to traverse the stars and get to Earth, they would play these games? To what end?Land on the goddamn White House lawn and say hello.
NASA Continues to Try to Rescue Failing Hubble Space Telescope
NASA Continues to Try to Rescue Failing Hubble Space Telescope
ByMATT WILLIAMS
This illustration shows the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in its high orbit 600 kilometers above Earth.
Credit: European Space Agency
Things are not looking very good for the Hubble Space Telescope right now. On Sunday, June 13th, the telescope’s payload computer suddenly stopped working, prompting the main computer to put the telescope into safe mode. While the telescope itself and its science instruments remain in working order, science operations have been suspended until the operations team can figure out how to get the payload computer back online.
While attempting to restart the computer, the operations team has also tried to trace the issue to specific components in the payload computer and switch to their backup modules. As of June 30th, the team began looking into the Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF) and the Power Control Unit (PCU). Meanwhile, NASA is busy preparing and testing procedures to switch to backup hardware if either of these components are the culprit.
The payload computer is part of the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit, where it is responsible for controlling and coordinating the scientific instruments aboard the spacecraft. The current issues began when the main computer stopped receiving the “keep-alive” signal from the payload computer – which lets the main computer know that everything is working.
That’s when the operations team began investigating different pieces of hardware on the SI C&DH as the possible source. Based on the available data, the team initially thought that the problem was due to a degrading memory module and tried to switch to one of the module’s multiple backups – but met with failure. On the evening of Thursday, June 17th, another attempt was made to bring both modules back online, but these attempts also led to failure.
At that point, they began looking into other possibles sources of the shutdown, like the Standard Interface (STINT) hardware. This component is responsible for bridging communications between the computer’s Central Processing Module (CPM), which they began investigating as well. Now, the team is investigating the Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF) and a power regulator within the Power Control Unit (PCU).
Whereas the CU/SDF sends and formats commands and data while the PCU is designed to ensure a steady voltage supply to the payload computer’s hardware. If either of these systems is responsible for the shutdown, then the team must once again go through an operations procedure to switch to the backup units. This time, however, the procedure is more complex and risky than the ones the team executed last time.
Mainly, switching to the backup CU/SDF or backup power regulator requires that several other hardware boxes need to be switched to their backups because of the way they are connected to the SI C&DH unit. The last time the operations team performed this task was back in 2008, which was the last time the CU/SDF module failed. This is what prompted the final servicing mission in 2009, which replaced the entire SI C&DH unit.
Given the complexity of switching multiple systems over to their backups, the operations team is currently reviewing and updating all of Hubble‘s operations procedures, commands, and all other items relating to switching to backup hardware. When they are finished (expected for next week) the team will run a high-fidelity simulator to test their plan of execution and see if they can pull it off.
Since Hubble first launched in 1990, it has taken over 1.5 million images, and more than 600,000 of those were taken since its last servicing mission in 2009. These images are some of the most breathtaking views of the Universe ever taken and have led to substantial discoveries about the nature of our Universe. Here at home, it has deepened our understanding of the Kuiper Belt and Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) like Pluto and Eris.
In 2014, it also observed the farthest object to ever be visited by a spacecraft – the Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) Arrokoth, which the New Horizons mission made a close pass with on Jan. 1st, 2019. It also observed aurora in the atmospheres of Jupiter, and Saturn, as well as Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. Hubble is also responsible for providing the data that led astronomers to conclude that Ganymede likely contains a large saltwater ocean in its interior.
Beyond the Solar System, Hubble has aided in the first atmospheric studies of exoplanets, helped constrain the size and mass of the Milky Way, the evolution of galaxies over time, revealed the accelerating expansion of the Universe (leading to the theory of Dark Energy), and aided in the study of Dark Matter. These and other accomplishments are all part of Hubble‘s legacy as it celebrates being in space for 31 years, 2 months, and either days.
I think I speak for everyone when I wish Hubble a speedy recovery and hope it has a few more years left in her!
A multi-day test of procedures that would be used to turn on backup hardware on the Hubble Space Telescope began today. Meanwhile, NASA continues to investigate the cause of the payload computer issue that began on June 13.
For previous updates:
Operations Underway to Restore Payload Computer on NASA's Hubble
NASA is working to resolve an issue with the payload computer on the Hubble Space Telescope.
The US government's release of a report on unidentified aerial sightings has been met with much interest in Germany. Enthusiasts believe UFOs have been sighted here, too.
The occasional sighting of saucer-like objects in the sky regularly give rise to speculation
"We're just a small blue planet in the middle of an infinite universe," UFO researcher Robert Fleischer told DW. "Anything is possible out there."
"We'll see that these aircraft fly around with astounding properties — which we can't explain and are superior to ours," he said.
For Fleischer, Germany is a "valley of cluelessness" when it comes to UFO research. Other countries commit far more resources to researching and reporting unexplained events, he said.
"This only got big in Germany after Barack Obama talked about it," he added.
That is a reference to a May New York Times interview with the former US president, during which he referred to "footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't exactly know what they are. We can't explain how they move, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern."
The pentagon has published images of unknown flying objects
Satellites and hotlines
Obama's comments piqued others' curiosity in UFOs, Hansjürgen Köhler told DW. After decades of running the Central Research Network for Extraordinary Aerospace Phenomena (CENAP) outside Frankfurt, the hobby astronomer has gone from believer to skeptic.
"Our hotline gets hundreds of tips every year. Most have natural causes," Köhler said. "We can explain 97% of them. The other 3% are open because we don't have enough data."
Köhler's phone has been ringing even more since the end of 2019, which he attributes to Elon Musk's Starlink satellite network. More than 600 of the nearly 900 reports have been linked to Starlink, he said.
A country of clubs — including for UFOs
In Germany, there seems to be an endless list of hobby clubs and nonprofit associations. The Association for UFO Research (GEP) is one of them. Their databank includes 140,000 entries, and 95% of them can be explained. Aside from satellites, strangely shaped balloons is one common answer, as well as weather phenomena and insects that zoom across photos.
The remaining 5% "perhaps also have natural causes, which we just can't explain yet," Hans-Werner Peiniger, GEP's head, told DW.
Members of Germany's UFO clubs — there are at least three — are not blind alien believers, Leipzig-based Fleischer said. They are rational, engineer types who use limited resources to analyze what curious sky watchers send them. The result, however, can be a great deal of information about what is happening above us.
The really interesting cases "are a matter for the military," Fleischer said. "They control the skies and have instruments and radar."
Do aliens exist?
Suddenly not so secret
No military or intelligence service is known for its transparency, however. That US agencies appear to be more forthcoming recently has taken Fleischer by surprise.
"The Americans have spent decades trying to laugh off these phenomena," he said. "Their reporting now is quite the surprise."
For him, the issue is not about convincing people that aliens are visiting earth, but "giving more space to discuss this topic publicly so it gains the importance that it deserves," Fleischer said. "We want it to be investigated in a scientific way."
Andean Gods Emerge From the Rock in Peru’s Mythological Sculpture Park!
Andean Gods Emerge From the Rock in Peru’s Mythological Sculpture Park!
A sculptor in Peru has assured the future for a range of ancient Andean gods, spirits and myths, by carving them into the face of a mountain just north of the famous ancient tourist city of Cusco.
Cusco near the Urubamba Valley of the Andes mountain range in southeastern Peru, is the ancient capital of the “ Tahuantinsuyo,” or ancient Inca Empire. While this legendary high altitude stone city attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists from all over the world to see its magnificent buildings and streets, it now has a new attraction in the making: Apukunaq Tianan or the "Abode of the Andean Gods .”
Located in Senk, a community of the Poroy district, about 40 minutes by car from Cusco, Apukunaq Tianan features sculptures of Andean gods and figures from various Inca creation myths. While the new attraction is still under construction the public are already flocking to what The Vale Magazine call “a fun and fascinating outdoor recreation space.”
Created by Cusco sculptor Michael de Titan the new artworks are similar to the Mt. Rushmore monument in the United States, just much smaller in scale, with each sculpture work ranging from between 49 and 56 feet (15 and 17 meters) in height.
Two of the sculptures in the process of being created on the mountainside at Senk, near Cusco, Peru.
Apukunaq Tianan: A Modern Home For Andean Gods and Myths
Michael de Titan’s celebration of Andean culture merges art and nature “just like the ancient Inca did.” Therefore, Apukunaq Tianan is like a royal palace of Andean deities and spirits with its own private library of creation stories.
Pachamama or “Mother Earth” is represented at the new site, who was/is the deity who presides over agriculture, controlled earthquakes, and rain. This god was associated with feminine principals relating to the spirit of the Earth.
While Pachamama was associated with the fertile field and rivers on the sides of mountains, the mountains god, or “ Apu Guardian ” governed mountain tops and consorted with the sky gods. A stunning Apu cliffside sculpture is naturally featured in the new sculpture park.
Also represented at the majestic new tourist attraction is Puma, one of the sacred animals of the Andean trilogy of the condor, the puma and the snake or serpent. Puma represented Earth while the serpent represented the underworld, and the condor was associated with the heavens.
The Andean creator god Viracocha is also immortalized in stone at Apakunaq Tianan. This chief deity of Inca mythology is believed to have emerged from Lake Titicaca where he created the entire universe, and everything in it, before vanishing to the east.
Also chiseled in stone in Apakunaq Tianan’s hall of Inca mythological fame, is the last Sapa Inca, " Tupac Amaru ," and mixed in with these massive sculptures are smaller carvings made of wood and stone.
Another of the fantastical Andean god sculptures at Apakunaq Tianan with a log house gallery on top.
It is hoped that Apukunaq Tianan will be completed later this year to coincide with the bicentennial year of Peru ’s independence. While each of the sculptures described so far are exceptionally esoteric in nature, there is one that penetrates the veil more so that all the others.
This work represents the myth of the Ayar Brothers . Inca legends in Cusco say that at the end of the great flood which devastated the land of the mountain “Tampu Tocco, ” four young brothers with their wives, and ten “ayllus” (Inca family groups) ventured in search of fertile lands where they could settle.
After a series of tribulations, the only survivor of the Ayar brothers was Ayar Manco who managed to reach the aforementioned fertile land. There, he took the golden rod that the sun god Inti had given him, and sank it into the moist earth, where it immediately vanished. Such an occurrence could only mean that the sun god had chosen a special spot and it was there that the city of Cusco was founded.
From this ancient Andean center of agriculture, the “Tahuantinsuyo,” would later expand and become the Inca Empire .
Top image: One of the Andean gods at the Apukunaq Tianan sculpture park, featured on a publicity poster from the site.
Andean Gods Emerge From the Rock in Peru’s Mythological Sculpture Park!
Andean Gods Emerge From the Rock in Peru’s Mythological Sculpture Park!
A sculptor in Peru has assured the future for a range of ancient Andean gods, spirits and myths, by carving them into the face of a mountain just north of the famous ancient tourist city of Cusco.
Cusco near the Urubamba Valley of the Andes mountain range in southeastern Peru, is the ancient capital of the “ Tahuantinsuyo,” or ancient Inca Empire. While this legendary high altitude stone city attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists from all over the world to see its magnificent buildings and streets, it now has a new attraction in the making: Apukunaq Tianan or the "Abode of the Andean Gods .”
Located in Senk, a community of the Poroy district, about 40 minutes by car from Cusco, Apukunaq Tianan features sculptures of Andean gods and figures from various Inca creation myths. While the new attraction is still under construction the public are already flocking to what The Vale Magazine call “a fun and fascinating outdoor recreation space.”
Created by Cusco sculptor Michael de Titan the new artworks are similar to the Mt. Rushmore monument in the United States, just much smaller in scale, with each sculpture work ranging from between 49 and 56 feet (15 and 17 meters) in height.
Two of the sculptures in the process of being created on the mountainside at Senk, near Cusco, Peru.
Apukunaq Tianan: A Modern Home For Andean Gods and Myths
Michael de Titan’s celebration of Andean culture merges art and nature “just like the ancient Inca did.” Therefore, Apukunaq Tianan is like a royal palace of Andean deities and spirits with its own private library of creation stories.
Pachamama or “Mother Earth” is represented at the new site, who was/is the deity who presides over agriculture, controlled earthquakes, and rain. This god was associated with feminine principals relating to the spirit of the Earth.
While Pachamama was associated with the fertile field and rivers on the sides of mountains, the mountains god, or “ Apu Guardian ” governed mountain tops and consorted with the sky gods. A stunning Apu cliffside sculpture is naturally featured in the new sculpture park.
Also represented at the majestic new tourist attraction is Puma, one of the sacred animals of the Andean trilogy of the condor, the puma and the snake or serpent. Puma represented Earth while the serpent represented the underworld, and the condor was associated with the heavens.
The Andean creator god Viracocha is also immortalized in stone at Apakunaq Tianan. This chief deity of Inca mythology is believed to have emerged from Lake Titicaca where he created the entire universe, and everything in it, before vanishing to the east.
Also chiseled in stone in Apakunaq Tianan’s hall of Inca mythological fame, is the last Sapa Inca, " Tupac Amaru ," and mixed in with these massive sculptures are smaller carvings made of wood and stone.
Another of the fantastical Andean god sculptures at Apakunaq Tianan with a log house gallery on top.
It is hoped that Apukunaq Tianan will be completed later this year to coincide with the bicentennial year of Peru ’s independence. While each of the sculptures described so far are exceptionally esoteric in nature, there is one that penetrates the veil more so that all the others.
This work represents the myth of the Ayar Brothers . Inca legends in Cusco say that at the end of the great flood which devastated the land of the mountain “Tampu Tocco, ” four young brothers with their wives, and ten “ayllus” (Inca family groups) ventured in search of fertile lands where they could settle.
After a series of tribulations, the only survivor of the Ayar brothers was Ayar Manco who managed to reach the aforementioned fertile land. There, he took the golden rod that the sun god Inti had given him, and sank it into the moist earth, where it immediately vanished. Such an occurrence could only mean that the sun god had chosen a special spot and it was there that the city of Cusco was founded.
From this ancient Andean center of agriculture, the “Tahuantinsuyo,” would later expand and become the Inca Empire .
Top image: One of the Andean gods at the Apukunaq Tianan sculpture park, featured on a publicity poster from the site.
Sacrifice and Destruction: The Apocalyptic Aztec Creation Myths
Sacrifice and Destruction: The Apocalyptic Aztec Creation Myths
Many ancient cultures around the world have their own creation myth to explain their origins, and how the universe came into being. But few are as vivid, or as apocalyptic as the creation myth of the Aztecs. This myth has been referred to as the “Five Suns” wherein the world is created and destroyed again and again.
As the name given to this myth suggests, the current world is the fifth one, preceded by four cycles of creation and destruction. Whilst the Aztecs believed that we are now living in the fifth cycle of creation, they also believed that destruction would ensue if they neglected their duty of nourishing the sun god.
Different Accounts
Before going into the details of the Aztec creation myth itself, it should be mentioned that there are various versions of the story. In some instances, these different versions even contradict one another. One of the reasons behind the multiple versions of the myth is the way it was transmitted. Since the creation myth was originally passed down orally, different versions emerged. Another reason for this is that the Aztecs incorporated the gods and myths of the peoples they encountered and conquered, thereby modifying the myth.
Interestingly, the Aztec creation myth shares similarities with that of the Maya, which is found in the Popol Vuh , their foundational sacred narrative. For instance, both creation myths are cyclical in nature, though the Maya version has four, instead of five, cycles. It may be added that although both myths are cyclical, each cycle is not a mere repetition of the previous one, but rather, an improvement.
The Mayan “Hero Twins” of the Popol Vuh show clear parallels with Aztec mythology
It is believed that the Aztec and Maya creation myths share a common source, and the former has been used to shed light on the latter. A key reason for this is that the Aztec creation myth is much more complete, whereas the Maya one has survived only in fragments.
The Aztec Pantheon
The Aztec creation myth begins with a pair of creator gods known collectively as Ometecuhtl (meaning ‘Two Lords’ in the Aztec language of Nahuatl). Ometecuhtl consisted of Ometecuhtli, the male deity, and Omecihuatl, his female counterpart. The pair of gods are known also as Tonacatecuhtli and Tonacacihuatl.
The Aztecs believed that Ometecuhtl resided in Omeyocan (meaning ‘Two Place’ or ‘Double Heaven’), the 13th and highest heaven in the belief system of the Aztecs. Incidentally, Ometecuhtl was the only Aztec deity with neither a temple dedicated to him, nor any formal cult in his name. Apparently, the Aztecs reasoned that since the deity lived so far away from them, he would never interact with them directly. In spite of Ometecuhtl’s remoteness, the Aztecs believed that he was omnipresent, being in every act of ritual, and in every rhythm of nature.
According to the Aztec creation myth, Ometecuhtl created themself, after which, being both male and female, the god produced four children – Huizilopochtli, Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, and Xipe Totec. These four gods represented, amongst other things, the four cardinal directions – south, east, west, and north, respectively.
Gods and Monsters
These four gods existed for some time, 600 years, according to one version of the myth, before they began to create the universe. They created cosmic time, the world, and all the other deities.
In one version of the myth, the four gods created a giant sea monster called Cipactli, which was part crocodile and part fish. As the children of Ometecuhtl continued to create the universe, this great monster became a source of trouble. Cipactli lived in the water, and had an insatiable appetite. For one reason or another, the creations of the gods would fall into the water, and they inevitably ended up being devoured by Cipactli.
Eventually, the four gods decided that enough was enough, and went to war with the sea monster. Cipactli was pulled in four directions, but fought back violently. In the end, however, the ferocious monster was defeated, and destroyed.
Subsequently, the gods used Cipactli’s corpse to create the universe. The 13 heavens were created on the monster’s head, the earth on its body, and the nine underworlds along its tail. Incidentally, this story resembles the Mesopotamian myth of Marduk and Tiamat, in which the latter was slain by the former, and her corpse used to create the universe.
The creation of the universe from the corpse of Cipactli is not only part of the Aztec creation story, but also illustrated the Aztec world view, which the Aztecs depicted in their art. The Aztecs believed that the Templo Mayor at Tenochtitlan occupied the centre of the universe. The Cipactli myth indicates that the earth is sandwiched in between the heavens and the underworld. On the earthly level, the Aztecs believed that universe spread out in four directions from the Temple Mayor.
Reconstruction of the Templo Mayor at Tenochtitlan, Mexico City
The Aztec creation myth, however, does not end with the slaying of Cipactli. Although the universe was created from the sea monster’s corpse, it was still incomplete, and required a source of energy. For the Aztecs, this was the sun.
The sun, however, was such a powerful entity could not simply be created by the gods. Instead, a sacrifice had to be made in order for the sun to be created. Therefore, Tezcatlipoca sacrificed himself by jumping into a fire, thus creating the First Sun, also called “4 Jaguar”. For one reason or another, Tezcatlipoca was only able to produce half a sun, resulting in an incomplete creation.
Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl
Tezcatlipoca was a major Aztec deity, whose name translates to mean “Smoking Mirror”. He was regarded as the god of magic and night, as well as the patron deity of kings and young warriors. Tezcatlipoca’s arch-rival was Quetzalcoatl, and a quarrel between these two gods ultimately led to the end of the age of the First Sun.
Carving of Quetzalcoatl at the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, Teotihuacan
During this first cycle of creation, the gods made the first humans out of ash. These people, however, were giants, and the Aztecs believed that they ate only acorns.
According to the myth, the first cycle of creation lasted a total of 676 years, and came to an end when a fight broke out between Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl. It seems that the latter wanted to replace the former as the sun. As a result of the fight, the sun was knocked out from the sky, which infuriated Tezcatlipoca. Therefore, the god sent jaguars, the animal most associated with Tezcatlipoca, to devour the giants.
After the destruction of the giants, Quetzalcoatl sacrificed himself by leaping into a fire, and becoming the Second Sun, also called “4 Wind”. Quetzalcoatl, whose name means “Feathered / Plumed Serpent”, is arguably one of the best-known deities of the Aztec pantheon. Quetzalcoatl was a pan-Mesoamerican deity, and he was worshipped (though under different names) by other Mesoamerican cultures, such as the Maya, and the Toltecs.
Quetzalcoatl was most associated with the wind, and worshipped as the patron god of the arts and knowledge. The Aztecs also believed that Quetzalcoatl was the deity who loved humans the most, and there are numerous myths about how he helped humanity.
The Creation of Man
During the age of the Second Sun, regular-sized humans were created. The people of this age subsisted on pine nuts, and according to one version of the myth, the age of the Second Sun was initially peaceful. In time, however, the humans became corrupt, and were turned into monkeys by Tezcatlipoca, perhaps as revenge for what Quetzalcoatl had done to him. This angered Quetzalcoatl, who sent a hurricane to destroy the monkeys.
According to another version of the myth, Tezcatlipoca longed to become the sun again. Therefore, he transformed himself into a jaguar, and cast Quetzalcoatl off his throne. In retaliation, Quetzalcoatl sent floods and hurricanes to destroy the world. Some humans were able to escape from this destruction by climbing to the top of trees, and these survivors were then turned into monkeys. Like the First Sun, this age also lasted 676 years.
Tlaloc and the Third Sun
The god who became the next sun was Tlaloc, the Aztec god of the rains and fertility. This god was not one of the four sons of Ometecuhtl, but a very important deity, nonetheless. Like Quetzalcoatl, Tlaloc was a god worshipped throughout Mesoamerica, as rain gods are found in many cultures of this region.
Additionally, it is thought that Tlaloc is one of the most ancient Mesoamerican gods, as his origins can be traced all the way back to the Olmecs, the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilisation. Amongst the Maya, Tlaloc was known as Chaac, whilst the Zapotecs called this god Cocijo.
The Third Sun was known also as “4 Rain”, and this age was dominated by rain. The people of this age ate seeds that grew in the water. According to one version of the myth, this world ended when Quetzalcoatl caused fire and ash to rain from the sky. Like the preceding age, there were some who managed to escape from the destruction of the world, and these survivors were transformed into turkeys, butterflies, or dogs.
Another version of the myth blames Tezcatlipoca for the destruction of the third age. This version states that Tezcatlipoca abducted Xochiquetzal, Tlaloc’s wife. The god was grief-stricken, and decided to withhold the rains. Consequently, a drought ensued, causing much suffering.
Despite the pleas of the people, Tlaloc refused to allow the rains to fall. Finally, the furious Tlaloc caused fire, instead of rain, to fall, which engulfed the earth in flames, and brought this age to an end. The age of the Third Sun only lasted for 364 years.
Chalchiuhtlicue and the Fourth Sun
The Fourth Sun, known also as “4 Water”, was created by Chalchiuhtlicue, the sister of Tlaloc, and his second wife. Chalchiuhtlicue, whose name means ‘She of the Jade Skirt’, was worshipped as the goddess of the waters that collect on the earth, i.e. rivers, lakes, oceans, etc. In addition, she was the protectress of childbirths and newborns. The age of the Fourth Sun was one dominated by water, and its people ate maize.
The age of the Fourth Sun lasted 676 years, and ended with a great flood. According to the Aztec creation myth, both Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl were jealous of Chalchiuhtlicue, and struck her down. As the goddess fell from her throne, the sky opened, and the earth was flooded. All things were destroyed once again, and the people were transformed into fishes.
The Fifth Cycle and the Two Suns
The Aztecs believed that after the fourth destruction of the world, the gods met at Teotihuacan to decide who amongst them would become the next sun. Curiously, none of the gods wanted to sacrifice themselves this time round. Finally, the proud Tecuciztecatl volunteered to jump into the fire. At the last moment, however, the god hesitated, and did not sacrifice himself.
In that moment of hesitation, another god, the humble Nanahuatzin, jumped into the flames, and became the sun. Tecuciztecatl felt ashamed of his cowardice, and jumped in after Nanahuatzin, thereby becoming a second sun.
The existence of two suns simultaneously, however, presented a dilemma to the other gods, as their combined energy would overwhelm the world. They solved this problem by throwing a rabbit at Tecuciztecatl’s face to dim the light, which turned the god into the Moon. According to the Aztecs, this is the reason why there is a rabbit in the moon today.
Another problem that the gods faced was the fact that Nanahuatzin was weak, and so the sun was motionless. Therefore, the rest of the gods gave him their blood to set him in motion. In another version of the myth, the sun was set in motion by Ehecatl, the god of the wind, who blew fiercely at it.
The Age We Live In Today
The Fifth Sun is known also as “4 Movement”, and is the age that we are living in today. The Aztecs believed that this age will be destroyed by a massive earthquake, and its people will be eaten by sky monsters. According to Aztec belief, the sun will disappear if it is not nourished by blood offerings and sacrifices, thereby leading to the end of the present age. Therefore, they believed that it was their duty to ensure the sun was nourished.
The Aztec “Stone of the Five Suns,” clockwise from bottom right: 4 Jaguar, 4 Wind, 4 Rain, 4 Water; 4 Movement in the center
The Aztec creation myth provides some profound insights into the beliefs that this civilization had about the origins of the universe, embedded in the world they saw around them. Additionally, the myth shows us the key pressures on their civilization, as deified in the Aztec pantheon. And finally, the dangers the Aztecs felt in their environment, and their concerns about survival, help to explain what drove them to their more extreme rituals, for example, human sacrifice.
Eleven New Neolithic Hill Sites Discovered Near Göbeklitepe, Turkey
Eleven New Neolithic Hill Sites Discovered Near Göbeklitepe, Turkey
The Turkish government has just announced a major archaeological discovery that could have a serious impact on the study of Neolithic Era culture in the region. On June 27, Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Ersoy told reporters gathered in the southeastern Turkish city of Sanliurfa that several new sites had been found in the vicinity of Göbeklitepe, the world’s oldest prehistoric stone monument site. Also written as Gobekli Tepe, the site name translates into "belly hill" in Turkish.
"We have [discovered] 11 more major hills on a 100-kilometer line around Göbeklitepe,” Ersoy declared. “Here, we will give the details for the first time, and now call it 12 hills.”
In fact, Ersoy offered few details about what had been found at these new sites. He explained that a “major study” was on the verge of being completed and said the results of that study would be released in September 2021.
Engaging in what may or may not have been hyperbole, Ersoy said that people may soon be describing the monuments found in the Sanliurfa region as “the pyramids of southeast Turkey.”
If these new sites are on a par with the spectacular remains uncovered at Göbeklitepe, their discovery would represent a significant milestone in prehistoric archaeology in the Mesopotamian region.
An example of one of the many circular stone monolith formations unearthed at Göbeklitepe, Turkey.
The Meaning of Göbeklitepe: What We Know So Far . . .
First unearthed in 1995 by German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, the Neolithic excavation site at Göbeklitepe has produced the most stunning and impressive collection of standing stone pillar monoliths ever found on Earth.
The biggest monoliths at Göbeklitepe are as tall as 20 feet (six meters) and are estimated to weigh between seven and ten tons (7.7-11 US tons). They were arranged in large circles, with a pair of heavy T-shaped pillars placed in the center of each arrangement. Some were decorated with carved images of animals, and others with obscure shapes and images that have no clear real-world references.
Neolithic hunter-gatherers working in teams built and inscribed these stone circles, over a period of perhaps 1,000 years. The oldest construction work at Göbeklitepe has been dated to about 9,000 BC, meaning that some of the monoliths found there were carved and erected 6,000 years before the rock pillars at Stonehenge.
It is important to realize this feat was accomplished by individuals who had no access to metal tools or wheeled transport carts. They used stone / flint hand tools to carve out and shape huge slabs of limestone from nearby quarries. The massive pillars would then be levered out of their places in the quarry rock walls, and somehow hauled, dragged, or lifted to the Göbeklitepe construction site.
In some instances, the builders placed the circles alongside each other. In other instances, they put them one on top of the other, after the circle on the bottom had been buried. Sometime after construction stopped the entire complex was buried, creating a low-topped artificial mound or hill that was 50 feet (15 meters) high and 1,000 feet (300 meters) in diameter.
The seemingly forgotten landscape around the Göbeklitepe site and likely where the latest 11 hills or artificial mounds have recently been discovered. So far photographs of the newest discovery area have not been released.
Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Ersoy’s statement about the “12 hills” implies that new monolithic sites have been found buried beneath similar artificial mounds. If stone pillar circles have been unearthed at these locations, it remains to be seen if they were built to the same specifications and in the same style as the circles at Göbeklitepe, or if they are as old (or even older).
Archaeologists have already found other sites in the region where stone pillars have been carved out of quarries and arranged in standing circles. None of the other sites are as ancient as Göbeklitepe, however, which was apparently in use 11,000 years ago. They do all feature the distinctive T-shaped central pillars found at Göbeklitepe, a type of monolith that has only been discovered in ancient sites built close to the city and province of Sanliurfa.
This suggests they all were created by the same stone-monument-building culture, which presumably would also be responsible for making whatever has been found during excavations at the 11 newly discovered hills.
A Neolithic totem pole from Göbeklitepe from Layer II, dated to 8800-8000 BC.
Uncovering the Many Remaining Secrets of Göbeklitepe
Unsurprisingly, Ersoy’s primary interest in the new discoveries is how they might affect tourism in the region.
"When you look at Mesopotamia, this region has a unique culture,” the Minister said at his press announcement. “It has its own registered gastronomy. It has many products. And when you combine that with its unique archaeological value, it's a wonderful thing.”
The Turkish government’s priorities are understandable. But the interests of the archaeological community are quite different.
With respect to the incredible monuments at Göbeklitepe, perhaps the biggest question left unanswered is, why were they built?
The general consensus is that Göbeklitepe was a religious or spiritual mecca, sought out by ancient worshippers looking to commune with their gods or with the spirits of their ancestors. The site has often been referred to as the world’s oldest temple. Schmidt, the site’s original discoverer, believed that one day graves would be found beneath the monolithic circles, proving they were built as monuments to the dead.
This monolithic pillar at Göbeklitepe is decorated with pictograms of animals. Surprisingly, the meaning of these pictograms is still a mystery that archaeologists and anthropologists are hoping to solve.
Pictograms were carved into many of the pillars. But unfortunately, scholars have been unable to interpret them, as either pictures or as symbols. Many of the pillars are decorated with images of animals, of dozens of different species including gazelles, lions, bears, foxes, bulls, snakes, birds, spiders, and a variety of insects. While arid now, during the Neolithic era Turkey was part of the Fertile Crescent , a region blessed with abundant rainfall, fertile soil, dense grasslands, and wildlife of all types.
The imagery on the pillars may relate to worshipping practices or religious rituals in some way. The same can be said about the shapes of the stone circles, which may have been arranged to reflect astronomical alignments . But since Göbeklitepe was constructed by prehistorical peoples, there is no written record to guide archaeologists and historians in a useful direction, as they attempt to comprehend what they’ve found.
Assuming they were built by the same ancient people, the remains at the newly discovered sites will likely be similar to those found at Göbeklitepe. If so, their ultimate purpose may be just as mysterious.
But if the stone pillars in these new locations contain different imagery than those at Göbeklitepe, or if they feature clearer pictograms that can be successfully interpreted, their discovery may be a game-changer. Having more remains to examine may increase understanding about the motivations of the builders. It could reveal whether they were inspired by religious sentiments, or by some other type of ancient or universal motivation.
Top image: Göbeklitepe is so important that it has been completely covered to protect it from rain. To date, it is the oldest place of worship ever found on Earth, dating to 12000 BC. Archaeologists are expecting more amazing finds and insights from the recently discovered 11 new hills (or artificial mounds) near the site for which details will be released in September 2021.
The supposed alien technology that the Russian army found in the arctic
The supposed alien technology that the Russian army found in the arctic
Normally, the few scientists who tell themselves to give information about the extraterrestrials, they assure that they are out of our reach. However, the Russian military “recently claimed” that alien technology would exist under the Arctic.
Russian military found alleged alien technology under the Arctic.
The search for intelligent life and alien technology has been, for the most part, in vain. Or at least, scientists say that we are not able to locate it .
However, how to know if what they tell us is true? We know that there is a brutal smear and censorship campaign on this issue. Therefore, the alleged discovery of UFOs under the Arctic by Russia has surprised locals and strangers.
Alien technology hidden under the arctic?
Russia, and especially its leader Vladimir Putin , have for many years shown an interest in UFOs and the alien technology they may contain.
However, there had never been news of real interest from the Eurasian nation. Every time there is a manifestation of intelligent life superior to the human one, authorities are in charge of minimizing the fact.
In recent years, the United States has also been heavily involved in this issue, as has China.
But the first nation to begin the “real” search was Russia, after several of its military experienced strange situations at the poles of the Arctic .
While conducting secret explorations for the Putin government, various military personnel picked up different signals that could solve several of the arctic mysteries.
China has also allegedly tried to cover up the presence of UFOs in the Arctic.
Statements of a Russian captain
Captain Prikhodko, who was in command of a Russian mission in the Arctic, related a surprising fact.
During the reconnaissance of the terrain, the Captain detected several unidentified objects “sailing” at speeds never seen before. These objects moved under the Arctic ice without any hindrance. As if they were submarines with advanced technology.
According to his experience, no land submarine , regardless of having the most advanced technology, could reach such speeds.
Prikhodko assumed that it was alien technology , since it was necessary to have an intelligence far superior to the human to create such vehicles.
He claims that this was not only seen by him, but by the entire platoon under his command, and that he accompanied him at all times.
Is it possible to confirm or deny the Captain’s words? It is not, in fact, no one knows exactly what it is that is hidden under the Arctic ice .
Obviously, it is impossible to know the origin of these objects. But they are not the only ones who have claimed to have seen alien technology in the Arctic; China has also tried to hide the existence of UFOs.
SpaceX’s Starship, which won a NASA award in April, is the biggest example of NASA’s use of services for the Artemis program but not the only one. Credit: SpaceX
NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) program is the biggest bet the agency has made on the commercial space industry since the commercial crew program a decade ago. NASA decided to procure landing services rather than the landers themselves, awarding a $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX April 16 to fund development of a lunar lander based on the company’s Starship vehicle and fly one demonstration mission with astronauts.
That approach has attracted plenty of scrutiny and criticism. The award to SpaceX is on hold as the Government Accountability Office evaluates protests filed by two losing bidders, Blue Origin and Dynetics. A bill passed by the Senate June 8 would require NASA to select a second company, although with no guarantee that the funding will be there to support both companies.
HLS may be the biggest example of NASA buying services to support the Artemis program, but it is not the only one. Even as some cornerstones of Artemis — Orion, the Space Launch System and the Gateway — move forward under conventional contracts where NASA owns and operates the hardware, it’s making greater use of service contracts to acquire the other things it needs to explore the moon, from landers and communications to even the spacesuits the astronauts will wear on their moonwalks.
CLPS AS A SERVICES PATHFINDER
HLS is not NASA’s first lunar lander services program. In 2018, NASA unveiled the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, where the agency would buy payload space on commercially developed robotic lunar landers.
The idea was to provide frequent and inexpensive access to the moon for experiments and technology demonstrations, particularly those with a higher tolerance of risk. Agency officials often talked about taking “shots on goal” with CLPS, with the expectation that not every shot would make it in.
Fourteen companies have received NASA contracts through CLPS, making them eligible to bid on task orders for delivery missions. Four companies have won the six task orders NASA has issued to date: Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines each won two, along with Firefly Aerospace and Masten Space Systems. Their missions range from transporting scientific instruments that had been sitting on the shelf waiting for a ride to VIPER, a NASA rover the size of a golf cart that will search for ice deposits at the lunar south pole.
Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander will be one of the first missions in NASA’s CLPS program. Credit: Astrobotic
CLPS is also a pathfinder for buying services for lunar exploration. “The big thing here is that we’re starting to work more closely with the commercial community,” said Jake Bleacher, chief exploration scientist at NASA. “CLPS is our first step on that front.”
That has become a learning experience for both NASA and the companies as they get used to different ways of doing business. Some scientists who have experiments flying on CLPS missions have privately complained that NASA’s approach of buying payload space on commercial landers shifts the technical burden, and costs, onto researchers. They now have to come up with their own solutions to engineering issues like thermal control that would, in a traditional approach, be handled in a more integrated fashion.
A services approach also doesn’t prevent delays. When NASA made the first CLPS awards in May 2019, the three winners — Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines and Orbit Beyond — promised to launch their missions by the middle of 2021. But Orbit Beyond, whose lander was going to be the first to launch in September 2020, returned its award two months later because of what NASA called “internal corporate challenges.”
Intuitive Machines saw its first Nova-C lander mission slip slightly from July to October 2021. However, in a Federal Communication Commission license application filed in April, the company revealed its launch had been delayed to no earlier than the first quarter of 2022. The company blamed the delay on its launch provider, SpaceX, who said that “unique mission requirements” forced the delay.
Astrobotic, which originally was going to launch its Peregrine lander in June 2021, is still hoping to launch before the end of the year. It will fly on the inaugural Vulcan Centaur rocket from United Launch Alliance, whose development has been delayed by issues with its BE-4 main engine. ULA has suggested that customer payload delays, and not Vulcan issues, would delay its first launch with the Peregrine lander into 2022.
John Thornton, chief executive of Astrobotic, said at a June 9 event that the Peregrine launch is coming “very soon” but wasn’t more specific.
LUNANET AND MOONLIGHT
There have been proposals to expand the CLPS program to include orbiters or even sample return missions. However, the next frontier for commercial services at the moon may involve infrastructure.
NASA is studying a concept it calls LunaNet: a network of satellites that would relay communications and provide navigation information for spacecraft on or around the moon. Current and proposed missions can communicate directly to Earth, but increasing lunar traffic will strain existing ground networks, and won’t work for missions on the lunar farside, where Earth is out of view.
“Our philosophy is that each mission should not have to create its own communications and navigation infrastructure. That’s not efficient,” said Andy Petro, lunar communications and navigation implementation lead at NASA Headquarters. “We see having an infrastructure to provide those services lowers the barrier to entry for new missions and capabilities.”
Exactly what LunaNet will look like is unclear, as the project is still in its earliest phases of development. “The idea of having relays this early was not anticipated,” he said at a meeting of a Space Studies Board committee in April. Interest in doing missions on the far side of the moon, as well as exploration of the polar regions where direct-to-Earth communications can be difficult, accelerated planning for a communications network.
However, it’s unlikely that LunaNet would be a conventional NASA program. “We’re looking at doing something that NASA would not necessarily build and operate, but through either commercial public private partnerships or service contract arrangements, quite possibly from multiple providers,” he said.
In a request for information (RFI) last October, NASA asked for details from potential commercial service providers for lunar communications and navigation. That included not just technical capabilities but also cost estimates and the “potential for partnerships and options for financing” the system.
Petro said at the April meeting that NASA is still working on an acquisition strategy for LunaNet. “I don’t expect it to be the traditional development and procurement that we’ve done in other cases.”
NASA is not the only agency looking at commercial approaches to lunar communications and navigation. On May 20, the European Space Agency announced it issued study contracts to two consortia, one led by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) and the other by Telespazio, for an initiative called Moonlight. The two groups will spend the next 12 to 18 months studying concepts for satellite networks around the moon for communications and navigation.
“Moonlight could be a flagship European project to create the first operational comms and navigation system around the moon,” David Parker, ESA’s director of human and robotic exploration, said at a briefing about the contracts.
The goal, he emphasized, is to create a commercial system, one developed in partnership with ESA but offering services to others. That will be part of the initial Moonlight studies: “the feasibility of the system but also the business case,” Parker said. The studies will be done in time for ESA to decide whether to seek support for the program at its next ministerial meeting in late 2022.
SSTL has a head start. It is developing a spacecraft called Lunar Pathfinder scheduled for launch in 2024 that will provide commercial communications relay services. It will operate in an elliptical orbit providing coverage over the south polar regions of the moon, using UHF and S-band links with spacecraft on the lunar surface and X-band for communications with Earth.
“We’re creating this shared communications and navigation network for the moon that we believe will undoubtedly act as a catalyst to inspire more exploration missions,” said Phil Brownett, managing director of SSTL.
ESA officials said NASA was aware of Moonlight but added that having multiple networks of communications and navigation satellites at the moon could have benefits provided there was some degree of interoperability, like that between the GPS and Galileo satellite navigation systems.
Petro said NASA also supported interoperability. “We’re promoting this idea of mutually agreed-upon standards among a set of cooperating networks,” he said, which could go beyond communications and navigation to other services, like solar storm warnings. “We think this could be introduced as part of the earliest missions.”
NASA may rent, rather than buy, its next lunar spacesuits. Credit: NASA
RENT THE (LUNAR) RUNWAY
NASA is also examining how it can use services, rather than conventional contracts, for the spacesuits it will need for future Artemis missions. NASA previously announced plans to develop a new spacesuit, called the exploration extravehicular mobility unit or xEMU, that astronauts will wear on the lunar surface.
However, in an April 14 RFI, NASA said it was considering moving to a services model for those suits. One or more companies would produce, own and maintain the suits, with NASA effectively renting them as needed for missions. The same approach could also be used for spacesuits needed for International Space Station spacewalks.
“We are always looking at ways to lower costs for the taxpayer and focus our efforts and resources on future technology and our bold missions in deep space,” said Mark Kirasich, head of NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems division. “We hope to receive industry input on the feasibility of shifting our exploration spacewalk acquisition activities to a service-based model like our procurement for commercial cargo and crew services.”
NASA will continue its own design work on the xEMU suit and share that information with industry, but companies would be able to develop their own designs that meet NASA requirements.
Responses to the spacesuit RFI were due to NASA at the end of April. A draft request for proposals could be released in mid-June, according to a tentative schedule included in the RFI, with a contract award as soon as the end of the calendar year.
All these efforts by NASA and other agencies to procure services, rather than spacecraft and other hardware, are driven by the belief that doing so can save time and money for governments and give companies the flexibility to offer similar services to other customers.
In a June 9 talk in Pittsburgh, after visiting the headquarters of Astrobotic, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, explained that Artemis was pairing science and exploration with the “entrepreneurial spirit” exemplified by Astrobotic and others in the CLPS program.
“Combining those would create a lunar program that we’ve never seen before and open the path for Americans to go back to the surface of the moon later this decade,” he said.
This article originally appeared in the June 2021 issue of SpaceNews magazine.
The largest comet that’s ever been found in modern times has been discovered by Pedro Bernardinelli (a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania) and astronomer Gary Bernstein. It was discovered in images taken by the Dark Energy Survey in 2014.
Named Comet C/2014 UN271 (or Bernardinelli-Bernstein after the two men who discovered it), it could be up to a thousand times larger than a typical comet. Its diameter has been estimated as being between 62 and 124 miles (between 100 and 200 kilometers) which is about ten times wider than a typical comet. Astronomers made this estimation based on how much sunlight reflects off the icy body.
In a statement, Bernstein discussed their discovery, “We have the privilege of having discovered perhaps the largest comet ever seen — or at least larger than any well-studied one — and caught it early enough for people to watch it evolve as it approaches and warms up.”
(Not Comet C/2014 UN271)
After Comet C/2014 UN271 was detected, it didn’t show any evidence of a tail between the years 2014 and 2018; however, recent observations conducted this year by an independent observation from the Las Cumbres Observatory network found that the comet now has a distinct coma of gas and dust that is surrounding it.
It is currently at a distance of about 20 astronomical units (AU) from the sun – basically, the equivalent of where Uranus is located. It is extremely difficult to see as it has a current magnitude of 20. To put this into better perspective, with the naked eye, people can see stars with a magnitude of 5 or 6. It will make its closest approach to the sun in the year 2031 but it will still be quite far from us with a magnitude of 11 so it won’t be any easier to spot (this is a bit further out than Saturn’s orbit around our sun). (An image from the Dark Energy Survey of the comet located at a distance of 25 AU in 2017 can be seen here.)
What’s even more interesting is that the comet hasn’t traveled through the inner part of our Solar System in approximately 3 million years. It comes from a very long distance away – about 40,000 AU in the Oort Cloud where scientists have estimated trillions of comets are located.
Oort Cloud
The National Science Foundation (NSF) noted, “Astronomers suspect that there may be many more undiscovered comets of this size waiting in the Oort Cloud far beyond Pluto and the Kuiper Belt,” adding, “These giant comets are thought to have been scattered to the far reaches of the solar system by the migration of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune early in their history.”
An artist’s illustration of what Comet C/2014 UN271 would look like can be seen here.
This artist's illustration shows the distant Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein as it might look in the outer Solar System. Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is estimated to be about 1000 times more massive than a typical comet, making it arguably the largest comet discovered in modern times. It has an extremely elongated orbit, journeying inward from the distant Oort Cloud over millions of years. It is the most distant comet to be discovered on its incoming path.
(Image credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva)
This image from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) is composed of some of the discovery exposures showing Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein collected by the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. These images show the comet in October 2017, when it was 25 au away, 83% of the distance to Neptune.
(Image credit: Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Bernardinelli & G. Bernstein (UPenn)/DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys)
Planes crash every now and then. Although uncommon, this is a fact. What’s strange, though, is when a plane seems to completely vanish into thin air. Especially in the modern era, this is extraordinary, considering the incredible technology we have available to us. This is a list containing planes that left behind no wreckage, debris, clues, or answers from across history.
On October 21, 1978, 20-year-old Frederick Valentich disappeared during a flight in his Cessna 182L. Frederick was widely described by friends and family as a “flying saucer enthusiast,” and during the doomed flight, he reported being accompanied by an unidentified aircraft.
As Frederick flew over the Bass Strait between Tasmania and mainland Australia, he radioed air traffic control just after 7:00 PM to report that he was being followed by an aircraft. Air traffic control responded, saying there was no known traffic nearby. Valentich described the aircraft as large and illuminated by four bright landing lights. It purportedly passed about 300 meters (1,000 ft) overhead and was moving at very high speed.
Finally, Frederick stated that the UFO was orbiting above him and had a shiny metal surface and a green light. Air traffic control asked him to identify the craft, to which Frederick responded, “It isn’t an aircraft,” before his transmission was interrupted by unidentified noise described as “metallic, scraping sounds.” Contact was lost at this point, and neither Valentich nor his plane were ever seen again.[1]
This is a strange one. On the late afternoon of March 23, 1951, a US Air Force Douglas C-124 Globemaster II on its way to England ditched into the ocean. An explosion in the cargo hold and the ensuing fire forced the pilots to put the plane down in the Atlantic, a few hundred miles from Ireland. The exact location was radioed by the pilots, and the ditching itself was successful.
The 53 passengers and crew aboard the flight donned life preservers and climbed aboard well-equipped emergency rafts. A B-29 had already been en route with the intention of aiding the plane in its navigation to the nearest airfield. When it arrived at the location transmitted by the pilots, the crew of the B-29 observed the passengers and crew in their rafts. It seemed everyone was okay.
The B-29 then had to return to base, as it was running low on fuel. However, when rescue crews arrived, the plane and the stricken passengers had all disappeared without a trace. All that was left was a piece of charred plywood and a briefcase. Nobody knows what happened in those hours while help was on the way.[2]
Amelia Earhart was an American aviation pioneer. She held many early records, including being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. On July 2, 1937, she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean, near the island of Howland.
Her final transmissions to the nearby ship, Itasca, indicated that she believed she had reached Howland Island. However, this was incorrect: She was at least 8 kilometers (5 mi) away. Fearing the worst, the Itasca used its oil-fired boilers to generate large clouds of smoke to signal the fliers, but to no avail.
Many theories surround Earhart’s disappearance, including a failed crash landing into the ocean, a surprisingly complete theory of Japanese capture, and an explanation that assumes Earhart instead decided to land—successfully or not—on Gardner Island, 560 kilometers (350 mi) away.[3]
On March 16, 1962, Flying Tiger Flight 739 disappeared from radar screens over the ocean. The Lockheed Super Constellation aircraft was carrying 93 US and three South Vietnamese soldiers from California to Saigon. All 107 aboard the plane are presumed to have died in the incident.
No traces of wreckage or debris have ever been found. The only lead investigators have is an eyewitness account from a nearby civilian tanker, which reported seeing “an extremely bright flash of light, immediately followed by two red dots plummeting to the ocean at different speeds.” It is believed that the tanker witnessed the missing aircraft explode mid-flight, during which it split in two and fell to the ocean in separate fireballs.
The most reasonable assumption, given the evidence, is sabotage. However, since 518,000 square kilometers (200,000 mi2) of searching has turned up nothing, it is likely we will never get the true answers.[4]
Flight 19 was the designation of five Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared without a trace over the Bermuda Triangle on December 5, 1945. A Martin PBM Mariner flying boat also disappeared while searching for the lost bombers and their pilots. Overall, 14 crew members aboard the Avenger bombers were lost, as were the 13 aboard the rescue plane.
The bombers were experiencing serious navigation issues in and around the Bermuda Triangle. Their compasses were nonfunctional, and they were running out of fuel by their last transmission: “All planes close up tight. We’ll have to ditch unless landfall . . . when the first plane drops below ten gallons, we all go down together.”
By this point, the Sun had set, and the weather was deteriorating. At 7:27 PM, the PBM-5 Mariner took off and was never heard from again. A nearby tanker reported sighting an apparent explosion, whose flames leapt 30 meters (100 ft) high and burned for at least ten minutes. The wreckage of the bombers was never found.[5]
Star Ariel was lost on January 17, 1949. Very little is known about what caused the loss of the British South American Airways (BSAA) aircraft and its 20 crew and passengers. Weather was excellent, visibility was good, and the pilots were experienced. The captain chose a high-altitude flight path to best take advantage of the excellent conditions. The flight was between Bermuda and Kingston, Jamaica.
Last contact with Star Ariel was made at 9:42 AM. Despite a large search operation headed by a US Navy task force, no traces of wreckage, fuel, debris, or bodies was ever found. As stated by the head of the inquiry tasked with finding a cause for the loss of the aircraft: “Through lack of evidence due to no wreckage having been found, the cause of the accident is unknown.”[6]
4. Star Tiger
In the early hours of January 30, 1948, another BSAA craft, Star Tiger, disappeared between Santa Maria and Bermuda. All 31 passengers and crew aboard are believed to have perished, and the cause remains unsolved to this day. The Star Tiger was flown by two experienced pilots in strong winds and rain at an unusually low cruising altitude.
Flying at 600 meters (2,000 ft) during strong winds is inherently dangerous, but the pilots were highly experienced and likely very aware of their surroundings. It is suggested that a sudden, strong gust of wind could have forced the plane into the ocean or that altimeter failure could have made the pilots gently pitch the plane into the water. No distress call was made, and no wreckage or debris has ever been found.[7]
On July 22, 2016, an Antonov An-32 twin-engine transport aircraft belonging to the Indian Air Force disappeared while flying over the Bay of Bengal. There were 29 people on board at the time: 23 passengers and six crew members.
Radar contact was lost at 9:12 AM, and the ensuing search and rescue operation would become the largest in Indian history. Sixteen ships, a submarine, and six aircraft were deployed to aid in the search in and around the Bay of Bengal. On September 15, 2016, the mission was called off, and all aboard were presumed dead.[8]
On May 25, 2003, a Boeing 727, registered as N844AA, was stolen from Quatro de Fevereiro Airport in Angola. Shortly before sunset, two men boarded the aircraft: American pilot Ben Padilla and mechanic John Mutantu. Neither were certified to fly the 727, which normally flies with a flight crew of three. It is believed that Padilla was the one at the controls. The aircraft made its way onto the runway without clearance and without communicating with the control tower. With its lights switched off and a few erratic maneuvers, the plane thundered down the runway and took off, heading southwest over the ocean.
Since then, neither the two men nor the aircraft have been seen. The disappearance of N844AA prompted a worldwide search by the FBI and the CIA. Despite this, no trace of the aircraft has ever been found.[9]
Malaysian Airlines flight 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China. A total of 227 passengers and 12 crew members were aboard the Boeing 777, and the most expensive search operation in aviation history ($130–160 million) failed to turn up any evidence of the large aircraft. Some small pieces of the wings have washed up on various islands since the crash as well as a damaged briefcase believed to be related to the incident. At present, however, the plane has not been found, and the cause of the crash is unknown.
Verbal communication with the aircraft’s two experienced pilots was lost at 1:19 AM. At 1:21 AM, the aircraft’s transponder ceased to function. The transponder allows the plane to be tracked on radar by air traffic control. Despite the lack of a functioning transponder, the plane was still tracked by military radar, turning right and then left at an erratic altitude. Once it had left the airspace trackable by Malaysian military radar, the aircraft automatically responded to hourly status update requests from a satellite communication system. Two phone calls to the cockpit at 2:39 AM and 7:13 AM went unanswered. The final status update, which took place at 8:10 AM (almost two hours after MH370 was meant to land in Beijing) was initiated by the aircraft, as opposed to the ground station.
There are only a few reasons the plane would initiate this communication itself: power failure, critical component failure, loss of altitude, or fuel exhaustion. (The latter is the most likely scenario.) The status update would be the last communication from MH370, before it is presumed to have crashed at high speed into the Indian Ocean.[10]
In July 1952, a very weird event began in Racine, Wisconsin. It’s a story that went down on the morning of the 22nd of the month. Karl Hunrath had complained to his local police department about something very weird indeed; something that had occurred just a few hours earlier, in the dead of night. Who knows what the cops thought of it all, but it basically went as follows: In the early hours of the morning, Hunrath’s bedroom was flooded with a blinding, white light. He immediately sat upright and, as his eyes finally adjusted to the light, he could see in the corner of the room a floating ball of light that had a diameter of about four feet. Hunrath could only stare in shock and awe. Then, something amazing and terrifying happened: the glowing ball transformed into a well-dressed man in black, and Hunrath found himself temporarily paralyzed. The “man” then proceeded to pump Hunrath’s right arm full of chemicals – which rendered him into a distinctly altered state of mind – and proceeded to tell him that he had been chosen to play a significant role in the alien mission on Earth. A very groggy Hunrath could only look on from his bed as the somewhat foreign-sounding – but now perfectly human-appearing – alien told him: “I am Bosco. You have been chosen to enter our brotherhood of galaxies.”
The suit-and-tie-wearing Bosco advised Hunrath that the brothers from beyond were deeply worried by our warlike ways, and so action had to be taken against those dastardly elements of the Human Race that wanted to spoil everyone else’s fun. There was not to be any The Day the Earth Stood Still-style ultimatum for one and all, however. Nope. The aliens wished to recruit sympathetic humans to aid their righteous cause. Or, more correctly, get someone else to do all of their dirty work while they lurked safely in the shadows. And as Hunrath came to quickly realize, he was now one of the chosen few. But there was more. Bosco, via what Hunrath said were “occult techniques,” downloaded into his mind countless amounts of data on how to build a terrible weapon that had the ability to destroy aircraft; specifically, the aircraft of the U.S. military, who the Space-Brothers viewed as being just about as dangerous to world peace as the dastardly commies.
“I am Bosco and that will be its name, too,”” boomed the alleged alien, in reference to the device that he wanted Hunrath to not just build, but also deploy. Far too stunned and drugged to move, Hunrath could only watch in a mixture of befuddlement and shock as Bosco then turned on his heels and left for his – one might be inclined to assume after an experience like that – flying saucer. There was no amazing “Beam me up, Scotty”-type exit for Bosco, however. For a ball of light that shapeshifted into a human-like extraterrestrial, Bosco had a very down to earth means of making good his departure: he pulled back the curtains of Hunrath’s bedroom-window, clambered out, and vanished into the depths of the early morning blackness of Hunrath’s front-yard!
Hunrath had assured the police there was no way he would even consider building Bosco and letting it loose on the world. The neighbors were soon complaining of strange noises coming from Hunrath’s garage day and night, and at least three or four times per week he had a visitor who stayed for hours on end. He was a local: Wilbur J. Wilkinson – a subservient, Igor-like lackey to Hunrath’s escalating Dr. Frankenstein. On a morning in early August, FBI agents made an unannounced visit to Hunrath’s place of residence, demanding to be shown what it was that he and Wilkinson were working on in the garage. Weapon or not, to the FBI it appeared to be nothing more than “a collection of radios, and speakers and cables strung together.”” The somewhat bemused agents said their farewells and left. Had they been born into today’s world, they might just as well have texted their boss: “Hunrath/Bosco: WTF?”
Whether or not Hunrath may have anticipated getting such a visit is unknown. But what we can be sure of is that Hunrath was now a man on a mission. And with the Bureau boys snooping around, Hunrath had no choice but to head for pastures new. There was only one way he was going to achieve his goal of fame and fortune and do the right thing by brother Bosco. It was time to say “adios” to both Wisconsin and the FBI and head to where all the alien action was then taking place: California. Hunrath and Wilkinson soon hooked up with the major players in West Coast Ufology at the time. That included such Contactees as George Adamski and George Hunt Williamson, as well as a number of UFO researchers and investigative groups.
All was going well until November 1953. That was when things came to a mysterious and ominous end. It was early on the morning of the 10th that Hunrath and Wilkinson rented a compact aircraft from a local airstrip. They headed off for what they claimed to several colleagues, just forty-eight hours earlier, was to be a face to face meeting with a group of extraterrestrials connected to Mr. Bosco. Although the pair was seen taking off from the airstrip, and headed in a direction that would have set them on a course for Palm Springs and Joshua Tree, they were never seen again. Despite extensive searches by the emergency services, Hunrath and Wilkinson were not found. No wreckage of the aircraft was ever found, either. And, Wilkinson’s wife never heard from her husband again. They were gone. As in forever. Overseas? Into a mountain? Taken by ETs? There’s not a solid answer anywhere in sight.
Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Smashes Records on Ninth Flight
Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Smashes Records on Ninth Flight
NASA deemed this the chopper's 'most challenging' trip yet.
By Stephanie Mlot
(Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)
NASA broke more records this week as the Ingenuity Mars helicopter completed its ninth and "most challenging" flight across the planet's surface. In so doing it set new records for distance, time aloft, and groundspeed. The rotorcraft, according to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), traveled for 166.4 seconds (nearly three minutes) at a speed of 5 meters per second (11 mph).
An image of Ingenuity’s shadow taken by the helicopter on July 5, 2021.
This "max effort," NASA explained, challenged more than the machine's physical strength. It tested an onboard navigation algorithm, which helps Ingenuity determine where it is along the flight path, as well as the helicopter's telecom system, designed for line-of-sight communications over distances of a few hundred meters.
"All of this amounts to a significantly elevated risk, and it is safe to say that it will be the most nerve-wracking flight since Flight 1," JPL's chief pilot Håvard Grip and chief engineer Bob Balaram wrote in a pre-flight blog post. Spoiler alert: Ingenuity made the harrowing trip this week without a hitch, collecting close-up images of the nearby Séítah terrain for scientists to study.
Since its deployment in early April, Ingenuity has been smashing flight goals left and right. It has flown at altitudes up to 33 feet and ground speeds up to 13 feet a second, covered a distance of 873 feet on flight four, and stayed in the air for 139.9 seconds on flight six. It even survived an in-flight anomaly while still landing within about 16 feet of its intended target.
"In doing all of those things, Ingenuity has already exceeded our expectations," NASA's blog said. Flight nine, however, upped the ante in terms of speed, landscape, and distance from the Perseverance rover. There is no word on when the next impressive ascent will take place.
NASA's Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its Left Mastcam-Z Camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover's mast. This image was acquired on Jun. 15, 2021 (Sol 114).
Marshelikopter rondt moeilijkste en langste vlucht tot nu toe af
NASA’s Marshelikopter ‘Ingenuity’ heeft zijn negende vlucht succesvol afgerond. Het was de langste en meest risicovolle vlucht tot nu toe, omdat de helikopter over onherbergzaam terrein vloog, wat de navigatie bemoeilijkte.
De vlucht duurde in totaal 166,4 seconden en daarbij haalde Ingenuity een snelheid van 5 meter per seconde, meldt NASA. Tijdens de vlucht is een afstand van 625 meter afgelegd. De langste vlucht daarvóór duurde 139,9 seconden en de hoogste snelheid was tot nu toe 4 meter per seconde.
Vorige week schreef NASA uitgebreid over de plannen van de negende vlucht van Ingenuity. Het kleine helikoptertje navigeert aan de hand van een camera aan de onderkant. De algoritmes voor het herkennen van het terrein zijn niet in staat om hellingen te zien en interpreteren alles als vlak terrein.
De negende vlucht vond plaats in het gebied Séítah, waar juist veel relatief steile hellingen zijn. Daardoor zouden er bij het navigeren afwijkingen van meters kunnen ontstaan en ook bij het landen zou dat problemen kunnen opleveren. Door langzaam te vliegen over bepaalde gebieden wilde NASA die risico’s beperken.
Experiment
NASA koos een vlak landingsgebied uit met een radius van 50 meter, maar door de mogelijke afwijkingen bestond er volgens de ruimtevaartorganisatie een kans dat Ingenuity daarbuiten terecht zou komen. Dat zou ook de communicatie tussen Marsrover Perseverence en de helikopter in gevaar brengen, omdat die uitgaat van een line-of-sight-verbinding.
Volgens NASA paste het hoge risico van de vlucht bij het doel van Ingenuity. De kleine helikopter is meegenomen naar Mars als een experiment en heeft met deze vlucht gedemonstreerd dat een dergelijk luchtvoertuig op plekken kan komen die voor een Marsrover onbegaanbaar zijn. De vlucht levert ook close-upfoto’s op van het Séítah-terrein die anders niet bemachtigd hadden kunnen worden.
Whether called a UAC (Unidentified Air Condition) or a UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) or a UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) – sightings are on the increase. A Mothership barely hidden in the clouds was allowed to be seen and photographed on May 13 in Alberta, and one of the ZetaTalk Follower photographers was inspired by his own personal Mothership sighting a year ago, which he captured on film.
ZetaTalk Confirmation 6/30/2021: Motherships are disguised in clouds, or by bending light rays to go around the ship so that it is not seen from the ground. Recently there was an instance in Edmonton, Canada on May 13 where the Mothership was visible within the clouds. Decades ago Nancy and her neighbors observed a Mothership within a cloud, identified only by the traffic of smaller craft zipping into and out of the cloud. These photos provided by an Idaho photographer were indeed a deliberate Mothership sighting, to encourage the photographer to take photos of Nibiru, which he then did in a fury. The Mothership was coated in ice as a disguise, to appear more cloudlike.
The Defense Department has confirmed that leaked photos and video of ”unidentified aerial phenomena” taken in 2019 are indeed legitimate images of unexplained objects.
An F-18 weapons systems officer (WSO) seated behind the pilot used his iPhone to capture images of three different objects he encountered in the same airspace. The object the Navy calls the “Sphere” was photographed. The second one to be photographed was dubbed the “Acorn.” The WSO spotted a third object, described as the “Metallic Blimp.” It appears to have various appendages.
In recent years a series of government videos showing unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs – the ufology community’s preferred term – have been released, including footage from a navy F-18 fighter jet which showed an oblong object flying through the sky near San Diego in 2004.
ZetaTalk Confirmation 5/31/2021: We have confirmed in the past that Motherships can be cloaked in clouds, by several means. Light can be bent around the Mothership so that it simply disappears from view. When assisted in this cloaking by clouds, a punch hole in the clouds can appear when the Mothership leaves, and the Mothership may be temporarily visible when the process of bending light around the sides of the ship is stopped. The clue that this is what the Edmonton photo captured is the uneven outline standing behind the clouds. The edges of the ship are visible when the cloud is absent, but hidden when the cloud is thick.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) uses a three-tiered system to investigate instances of “unidentified air conditions” – a euphemism reminiscent of the US military’s term for UFOs, “unidentified aerial phenomena.” The PLA relies on reports from military radar stations, air force pilots, police stations, weather stations, and Chinese Academy of Sciences observatories to gather as much data as possible about mysterious flying objects. The information is then processed by the military and undergoes preliminary analysis, before being submitted to a national database.
China’s only officially confirmed UFO sighting occurred over a military airbase in Cangzhou, Hebei province, on October 19, 1998. According to a report in Hebei Daily – official newspaper of the province which neighbours Beijing – two military jets were ordered to intercept a low-flying object that appeared suddenly above the airbase.
mRNA Demise
Since the experimental mRNA vaccine is in many respects an unknown, with the side effects just becoming known and the future effects still an unknown, would the Zetas like to comment? The Zetas of ZetaTalk and I, Nancy, have been careful not to speculate about the results of the mRNA vaccines, only reporting the documented and published results. The reason is simple. If the Zetas told you then, what they are saying now, it would only have encouraged the public to rush to be vaccinated. Now that Herd Immunity has been established, this worry is past. There is good news, per the Zetas.
June 3, the United States reported the lowest daily coronavirus case rate since the beginning of the pandemic, including a 30% drop from the previous week.
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday recommended that all eligible Americans get the coronavirus vaccine when their opportunity comes, though he added a caveat that he also respects people’s decisions not to get one. Trump and former first lady, Melania, who both dealt with a bout of COVID-19 last year, received the vaccine in private sometime before leaving office, but had not publicly encouraged people to get it.
ZetaTalk Announcement 6/30/2021: President Trump boasted that he had produced a Covid-19 vaccine, as promised, in record time. Then all the side effects from the various vaccines were reported. The mRNA seemed to be the worst, with allergy reactions due to the polyethylene glycol used by Pfizer and then the horror of the effect on placentas and mother’s milk due to the syncytin-1 protein being attacked by the Pfizer vaccine. Shedding of the Spike Protein has been proven and will likely affect everyone eventually. Where is this heading?
Early in the vaccine production process, President Trump urged everyone to get the vaccine, and even late in the game just recently President Trump continued to urge the public to get vaccinated. On the one hand, the draconian lockdowns the Democrats want to continue are destroying the economy and increasing suicides and drug and alcohol abuse. The vaccine will allow society to return to normal in this regard. Does President Trump not know of the worrisome side effects from the mRNA vaccine? He does, and also knows something not yet in the public view.
The mRNA vaccine is not permanent. Thus the insistence by the Biden Administration that the public go back for repeated booster shots. Are these booster shots required for the Sputnik or the J&J vaccine? This is not normal for a flu vaccine. The mRNA utilizes the bodies messenger system, so the Spike Protein mimicking the Covid-19 virus inspires the immune system to develop antibodies. Since the mRNA system is not 100% effective, boosters are needed to install full immunity to Covid-19.
What will occur over time, as the mRNA vaccines are no longer used? Attacks against the syncytin-1 protein will stop when the vaccines are no longer given. This is not a permanent change to women of child bearing age. Covid-19 mutations, caused in the main by the mRNA incomplete destruction of the Covid-19 virus (allowing Antibody Dependent Enhancements to occur) will cease. President Trump was aware of this, early in the vaccine production process, and thus considered the effect of the lockdowns on society to be the greater danger.
At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Zetas stated that Covid-19 emerged from the drains in the wet markets of Wuhan, saying “because nature mutates and mixes virus material faster and more adroitly than man. Reports emerge that it seems the Wuhan virus took a trip through a snake, or shares 99% of the virus found on the mammalian pangolin but that 96% of its RNA is shared with China’s bat population. What about the presence of HIV-1 genetic code in the Wuhan virus? Are there HIV infected individuals in China? Of course there are.”
A new study by Oxford University has discovered there were no bats or pangolins sold in the Wuhan wet market. In fact, the study reported no bats or pangolins were found anywhere around Wuhan at the beginning of the Coronavirus outbreak. Through their investigations, the scientists are believed to have effectively debunked the natural origin argument. The Oxford study also reported that Chinese people rarely consume bats and the nearest natural habitat of bats is 1,500 miles away from Wuhan.
ZetaTalk Argument 6/30/2021: Why would a wet market in Wuhan be the source for Covid-19? The market is frequented by produce vendors or butchers who can pick up the virus or its components elsewhere. An infected human can infect the produce. The produce likewise travels on dirty trucks filled with various types of wildlife and can pick up the virus or its components from each other. Then there is the mixing of various virus components in the drains of the wet markets – a supremely efficient mixing pot. Most of the world’s new flu virus emerges from China for these reasons.
The argument that Covid-19 was a bioweapon cannot be proved or disproved. Were Gates and others plotting to release a pandemic, and working on the best candidate? Yes, but not at the Wuhan labs. Samples and test results can travel and be taken elsewhere. Most of the specialized labs that do Corona virus tests are in China or the US, and Europe has its share of these labs too. Gates was working with the Pirbright Institute in the UK. The natural emergence of Covid-19 in the wet markets of Wuhan beat them in the race to the next pandemic.
Schumann Resonance Blackout
Why have the Schumann Resonance charts gone black lately? This trend started a year ago in June of 2020, but this June the blackness encompassed 4 full days. Per the Zetas, the blackness on the charts indicates an inability of the monitoring equipment to record the data, as it is too strong! Despite excuses by the establishment, power outages world wide were caused by this Electro-Magnetic Pulse – in St. Louis, Texas, and Puerto Rico. The outages coincide with the Schumann Resonance blackouts.
Schumann Resonance and Amplitude monitoring data from Tomsk has returned to service 10 TLVD June 16, 2021. We had a massive internet outage in Turkey starting the 14th, it was three days before they were able to return my service.
The outages started late Thursday afternoon near the Princeton Heights neighborhood, with more than 4,000 customers being in the dark at one point. The power came back on for many around 10 p.m. and then it popped back off.
Officials with Texas’ power grid operator pleaded with residents to limit their electrical usage amid soaring temperatures and a series of mechanical problems at power plants.
A sudden power failure left more than 330,000 clients in the dark across Puerto Rico. Luma Energy, a private company that took over the island’s power transmission and distribution system on June 1, said three units were knocked offline for reasons not immediately known.
ZetaTalk Comment 6/30/2021: The Schumann Resonance charts have turned black for 4 days in a row, showing that the spikes in the magnetic blast from Nibiru have returned again. As we explained when this phenomenon first appeared a year ago, the magnetic blasts turn black when they are too strong for the equipment. The Schumann Resonance charts began showing white hot bands in 2016, and the blackout gaps began appearing in June of 2020. These magnetic blasts from Nibiru do indeed cause blackouts in mankind’s power grids, with equipment shutting down in response to the pulse.
Where is this leading? President Trump recognized what the future held when he issued an Executive Order on March 26, 2019, directing the US Government to harden their infrastructure against Electromagnetic Pulse. Other than critical infrastructure, such efforts will not keep mankind’s grid in operation. There is simply too much equipment in use in human society. Outages will become a fact of life. To lessen damage, equipment should be turned off when not in use, as the flow of electrons is an attractant. After the passage, life will return to normal.
Council’s Plan
The Zetas revealed that the Council of Worlds intends to force Nibiru awareness past the coverup enforced by the media, utilizing a temporary severe wobble and increased visibility of Nibiru. Selective blackouts affecting the worst media offenders will also be used. Shortly after this statement was posted, Indonesia recorded an episode of the Sun in the North just after sunrise. This would have been a severe lean to the East. Burning Petrol descending from the sky as in this photo from Manila on June 17 continues to be obvious, and close up photos show Nibiru and its Double Helix cracking with burning Petrol too.
ZetaTalk Reveal 6/15/2021: The Council of Worlds has approved increasingly severe wobble, to increase gradually so as not to panic the people. This wobble will proceed to the extent that the Sun may rise in the North, or the globe turn upside down temporarily, with rotation seeming to move from East to West during that time. Meanwhile, those media outlets suppressing the truth and spewing lies, such as CNN and MSNBC, will be silenced. They will have no voice. Nibiru visibility is already present but will be increased during this time.
The sun has appeared from the NORTH seen from the area of Jeneponto, Sulawesi, Indonesia. “We and our friends in Jeneponto witnessed firsthand something strange happened. I have never seen before, where the habit of the morning sun rising in the east. It turns out that the sun is already in the north position, it doesn’t usually happen like that,” says one witness. “Reporting from the location of MAN Binamu. Something very strange had happened. Where the sun is at a position in the north this morning on Thursday, June 17. Now it’s just before 8 o’clock the sun is already in the north position,” said the teacher in the video.
SHOCKING UFO SIGHTING! | The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch
SHOCKING UFO SIGHTING! | The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch
Rabbi Ariel Tzadok reveals a possible indigenous earth spirit that’s been visiting the property through disappearing portals, in this clip from Season 2, “There’s No Place Like Homestead Two.”
Images from the orbiter are the most detailed yet of the planet’s discrete auroras, ultraviolet emissions that follow the patterns of a decaying magnetic field.
Images taken by Hope’s onboard spectrometer (left-hand panel) and an artist’s impression (right) show discrete auroras on Mars’s night side.
Credit: Emirates Mars Mission
The United Arab Emirates’ Hope spacecraft has taken the most detailed pictures yet of the ‘discrete auroras’ of Mars. The ultraviolet emissions — seen by the orbiter’s onboard spectrometer — arise when solar wind runs into magnetic fields that emanate from Mars’s crust. Charged particles then collide with oxygen in the upper atmosphere, causing it to glow.
Hope, formally known as the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM), arrived at Mars in February and started its official science run on 23 May. The primary science goals of the 1.35-tonne, US$200-million mission focus on the planet’s atmosphere, not on its magnetism, so the aurora images came as a bonus. “Seeing it has been just a gift,” says Hessa Al Matroushi, the EMM’s science lead at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai.
Mars researchers had previously detected ‘diffuse’ auroras during solar storms, as well as ‘proton’ auroras emanating from high altitudes when solar-wind protons rip electrons off atoms to form hydrogen1. The discrete auroras seem to follow the patterns of Mars’s crustal magnetism, which suggests that the planet once had a global magnetic field similar to Earth’s. Those patterns are thought to have frozen in place billions of years ago, when lava solidified in the presence of such a field.
The emissions seen by Hope were first detected by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express satellite in 2004, and have been previously imaged by NASA’s MAVEN probe. But the EMM took “spectacular images”, says Nick Schneider, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder who is part of the MAVEN team. “From my work on the topic, I immediately recognized the way the aurorae draw an outline around the last vestiges of Mars’ decaying magnetic field. These images really capture the fact that Mars has lost its global field, the suspected cause of the disappearance of its earlier thick atmosphere.”
Al Matroushi says that her team plans to publish a study based on the observations.
Star Maps: “40,000-Year-Old Paintings Reveal Advanced Knowledge in Astronomy”
Star Maps: “40,000-Year-Old Paintings Reveal Advanced Knowledge in Astronomy”
Some 40,000-year-old rock paintings with star maps reveal a superb use of advanced astronomy in ancient times, according to a scientific study.
The ancient rock art are the advanced astronomical representations.
What was originally believed to be symbols of prehistoric animals turned out to be an ancient star map.
New research has revealed that in early rock art , our ancestors are shown to have advanced knowledge in astronomy. This indicates that the knowledge between the ancient ice age and today was not that different.
Ancient star maps
Scientists revealed that ancient humans had superb control over the passage of time , observing how the stars changed their position in the sky.
This has been shown through the art found in many places in Europe , which are not simple representations of animals, as previously believed.
And it is that these figures are actually the representation of constellations of stars in the night sky. They were used to represent, date and mark important events .
Scientists at the University of Edinburgh suggest that ancient peoples fully understood the effect of gradual change in the Earth’s axis of rotation .
This phenomenon called precession of the equinoxes was previously attributed to the ancient Greeks .
Researcher Martin Sweatman stated that these findings support the theory of multiple comet impacts during human development. So it is likely that they revolutionize the way of seeing prehistoric civilizations.
The study was based on the investigation of caves in Turkey, Spain, France and Germany and the dating of the art was achieved by chemically dating them.
What was believed was the representation of wild animals, it was actually a representation of constellations.
Sophisticated knowledge of constellations
Thanks to the application of computer software, the scientists predicted the position of the stars at the time the paintings were made.
This revealed that it is about the interpretation of constellations, as they appeared in the distant past.
It was concluded that these cave paintings are, in fact, clear evidence that ancient humans practiced a sophisticated method of timekeeping , based on astronomical calculations.
All this was possible, even though the cave paintings were separated in time by tens of thousands of years .
For example, scientists concluded that the oldest sculpture in the world, the Lion-Man from the Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave, is from 38,000 BC. C. This is compatible with the old timing system.
The statuette is a commemoration of the catastrophic impact of an asteroid that occurred 11,000 years ago , initiating the Younger Dryas Event . A period of sudden cooling of the weather.
How is it possible that early humans have developed such advanced knowledge of constellations? It remains a mystery. Without current technology and instruments, it would seem illogical.
Strange light or portal maybe a time portal, or spacetime portal, gateway to another time and dimension. Sighted on July 3, 2021
STATEMENT : Portal ?
video : submitted
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MUFON CASE : 116703 Davie, Cooper City, Florida ( July 5, 2021 )
Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : I have video Long Description of Sighting Report
July 4th, 2021, Davie Florida, 10:15 PM, I observed a very strange object hovering silently in the sky. It was white at first with at least two separate sections of 6 large tubes connected together appearing vertically, roughly 5-10 feet apart from one another. Appeared to be a single object. Each connected tube (6, at least 12 total) stepped down in size like a Native American flute. Suddenly it disappeared but then reappeared a second later strobing red and blue colors.
Date Submitted : 2021-07-05 Date of Event : 2021-07-04 / 10:15PM MUFON SUBMITTER FILES :
Sun ray reflects on strange cylindrical shaped object on Mars
Sun ray reflects on strange cylindrical shaped object on Mars
June 24, 2021 NASA's Perseverance rover (SOL 122) - Possible sun ray reflects on cylindrical shaped object, who left it behind?
Furthermore, June 30, 2021 NASA's Curiosity rover (SOL 3163) - Something shooting off the Martian surface? The Curiosity Rear Hazcam captured two images at almost the same time. First image shows the white object but the second image doesn’t show the object.
July 1, 2021 NASA's Perseverance rover (SOL 129) - Three possible figures standing between rocks. Pareidolia or real human-like creatures?
In recent days, long-standing questions about the existence of unidentified aerial phenomena, more commonly known as UFOs, have had all eyes on the United States government. This, following the release of an unclassified summary of the Navy’s UAP Task Force report on its findings about 144 incidents that it says cannot be explained.
In addition to the release of the nine-page report, the Pentagon weighed in on the matter shortly afterward, stating that the Department of Defense would continue the efforts of the UAP Task Force, in addition to expanding the scope of its operations.
“Analyzing UAP is a collaborative effort involving many departments and agencies,” read a DoD statement attributed to Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby, who added that “To that end, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks today directed the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security to develop a plan to formalize the mission currently performed by the UAPTF.”
Kirby stated that the DoD’s plan “will establish procedures for synchronizing collection, reporting and analysis of UAP,” in addition to advising on security measures related to UAP and a host of other things.
While the DoD’s encore performance following the issuance of the UAPTF report had been surprising enough, almost directly coinciding with the Pentagon’s statement had been one from NASA, which detailed some of the space agency’s own new policies on the search for UAP, or the lack thereof.
“NASA does not actively search for UAPs,” the FAQ page reads, though adding that “through our Earth-observing satellites, NASA collects extensive data about Earth’s atmosphere, often in collaboration with the other space agencies of the world. While these data are not specifically collected to identify UAPs or alien technosignatures, they are publicly available and anyone may use them to search the atmosphere.”
The NASA statement did concede that if it ever did uncover evidence of UAPs, “it would open up the door to new science questions to explore” involving experts from a wide range of disciplines. The FAQ page also followed a recent statement by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who has stated that the agency will, in fact, be conducting investigations into the subject, whether or not its own FAQ page says so.
Although the agency says it does not currently engage in active search for UAPs, this does not necessarily mean that it has never collected any data on them at all.
As an independent agency of the United States Federal Government, since 1958 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has overseen a variety of space-related objectives that include science and aeronautics research, as well as overseeing the civilian space program. Since their primary focus has to do with outer space, it seems fair to ask what NASA’s general attitude toward the UFO subject is, a topic that various agency employees have addressed on a few occasions in the past. One example involved a 2007 statement from David Morrison, past NASA Lunar Science Institute Interim Director, who said that “As far as we know, no astronaut has seen a ‘ufo’ in space. Not everything they saw was immediately identified, but on the other hand, there is no evidence whatsoever of anyone seeing an alien spacecraft.”
While this may be true, there are other slightly more obscure NASA resources available online where some additional information on UAP can be found. The Aviation Safety Reporting Program and its Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), according to Federal Aviation Administration Advisory Circular number 00-46E states that “the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Aviation Safety Reporting Program (ASRP)… utilizes the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a third party to receive and process Aviation Safety Reports.”
In essence, NASA collects information on possible aviation hazards on behalf of the FAA and once an incident report is filed, aviation safety analysts within the ASRS, ranging from experienced pilots to air traffic controllers, and with knowledge of both commercial and military flight operations, will analyze each case. In every instance, at least two of these analysts will review the case, aiming to identify any potential aviation hazards the report may entail. If an incident elicits concern, appropriate officials within the FAA or aviation authority are notified, and any causes for the incident are determined. Finally, these observations, along with the original report, are added to the ASRS database. Such reports have been filed since 1988 and continue to be updated regularly up to the present day.
A search through the ASRS database will occasionally turn up more than just the average sort of potential aviation hazards; the following report, dated June 2015, occurred near Dulles International Airport, involving a pilot observation of an unusual object:
“Approaching DOMSE on visual approach to [Runway] 19L at IAD, descending through 1,800 MSL an object was spotted at 12:30 position tracking straight on slightly below our altitude. As it passed by the right side of the aircraft approximately 100 FT and below our altitude by 100 FT it became apparent that it was a drone of some sort approximately 4 FT in diameter, saucer shaped, and gold or bronze in color. I made a comment to the other two pilots in the flight deck that it appeared to be a drone. The Captain reported our sighting to the Tower and the rest of the approach was continued without incident.”
Not every day that you have pilots reporting an unidentified flying object, let alone one that is saucer-shaped! As the pilots noted, this could have been a drone or some other object (a balloon might also qualify here). However, if the object was a drone, it certainly was unlike any that were known to exist in 2015, and no drone—civilian or military—should have been operating over an airport like the object in this report had been doing, which constitutes a violation of FAA regulations.
Another very unusual incident report occurred over Greene County, New York. The principal witness in this case had been the pilot of a small aircraft, who was accompanied at the time by a passenger on his first flight. At approximately five miles northeast of Windham High Peak, the observers encountered some kind of unmanned aerial vehicle, of which they could discern no “wings, rotors, or form of propulsion.”
According to the pilot’s incident report:
“It was about 6 feet tall, 2-3 feet wide. Top of UAV was extremely radiant, with black half sphere under the radiant top and what appeared to be an antenna under the half sphere, we watched it skimming over the tree tops below and to the right of our flight path. It was moving at a fast speed southwest toward Windham High Peak. It had a very sparkling appearance like sun shining on a mirror with rainbow colors. I was flying northeast from Windham High Peak at about 3500 feet.”
After watching the unusual craft for several moments, the pilot began to execute a left turn, at which time the unidentified craft appeared to take notice, and quickly began moving in their direction.
“As we watched the UAV I banked to the left and half way through the turn and now pointing at Windham High Peak, the UAV turned around and came toward us at a high rate of speed. As I got 3/4 of the way through the turn was within 50 yards of my right wing, quickly got in front of me and followed me around the turn getting closer until it was off my left wing, probably no more than 25-30 yards away. It covered about 5 miles in just a few seconds. We had a really good view of it. As it got off my left wing, my passenger looked up and saw two more UAVs come out of the cloud directly over us. At that point I told my passenger we were returning immediately to the airport, I pushed the nose down and picked up speed. The UAVs then headed to the west at a fast speed.”
These are just a small sampling of the kinds of reports that occasionally turn up in the ASRS database, although there are others and, following the release of the recent UAPTF report, perhaps there will be others added in the years ahead, if efforts to remove the stigmas against UAP are successful. However, one thing is certainly clear: whether or not NASA is actively engaged in the search for unidentified aerial phenomena, it certainly has managed to collect data on unusual aerial objects that would appear to qualify in that regard.
A surprising discovery in clay samples from Mars hints at the possibility that the planet may have been habitable for thousands of years and perhaps even as long as a million years. The clay was collected in Mars’ Gale Crater back in 2016 by NASA’s Curiosity Rover.
Since then, equipment on the rover has been taking X-rays of the clay samples and found that they contain a mineral called glauconite which is also found here on Earth (it is a green-colored iron potassium phyllosilicate). This is incredibly surprising and exciting as it could possibly mean that there was once life in the Gale Crater during a time in which scientists believe an ancient lake was once located approximately 3.5 billion years ago and that lasted as long as 10 million years.
The Gale Crater was believed to have once held water.
The Gale Crater was created when a meteor slammed into Mars between 3.8 and 3.5 billion years ago. The large crater measures 96 miles in diameter (154 kilometers) and contains a mountain in the middle of it – this mountain is called “Mount Sharp” as a tribute to geologist Robert P. Sharp who passed away in 2004.
The discovery of glauconitic clays indicates that there may have been stable conditions on the Red Planet that could have supported life – specifically in the Gale Crater – which includes temperatures between -3 and +15 degrees Celsius (between 27 and 59 degrees Fahrenheit) as well as a neutral pH level in the water. Furthermore, these suitable conditions may have lasted as long as a million years.
Lead author Elisabeth Losa-Adams from the University of Vigo, Spain, explained, “Glauconitic clays can be used as ‘a proxy’ for stable conditions.” “The conditions under which these minerals form are friendly for the presence of life.”
Gale Crater
She went on to say, “The existence of glauconitic clays indicates the presence of liquid water remaining long-term under steady-state conditions,” adding, “In addition, the geochemical parameters required for their formation (that is, neutral pH and low temperature) would have also created supportive habitable conditions for potential organisms.” The study was published in Nature Astronomy where it can be read in full.
It’s important to note that even though the discovery of glauconitic clays is very exciting news in regards to the possibility of Mars once containing some type of life, there still isn’t any solid proof that there is or ever was life on the Red Planet. We’ll have to wait and see what more information the rovers will discover while exploring the planet.
A surprising discovery in clay samples from Mars hints at the possibility that the planet may have been habitable for thousands of years and perhaps even as long as a million years. The clay was collected in Mars’ Gale Crater back in 2016 by NASA’s Curiosity Rover.
Since then, equipment on the rover has been taking X-rays of the clay samples and found that they contain a mineral called glauconite which is also found here on Earth (it is a green-colored iron potassium phyllosilicate). This is incredibly surprising and exciting as it could possibly mean that there was once life in the Gale Crater during a time in which scientists believe an ancient lake was once located approximately 3.5 billion years ago and that lasted as long as 10 million years.
The Gale Crater was believed to have once held water.
The Gale Crater was created when a meteor slammed into Mars between 3.8 and 3.5 billion years ago. The large crater measures 96 miles in diameter (154 kilometers) and contains a mountain in the middle of it – this mountain is called “Mount Sharp” as a tribute to geologist Robert P. Sharp who passed away in 2004.
The discovery of glauconitic clays indicates that there may have been stable conditions on the Red Planet that could have supported life – specifically in the Gale Crater – which includes temperatures between -3 and +15 degrees Celsius (between 27 and 59 degrees Fahrenheit) as well as a neutral pH level in the water. Furthermore, these suitable conditions may have lasted as long as a million years.
Lead author Elisabeth Losa-Adams from the University of Vigo, Spain, explained, “Glauconitic clays can be used as ‘a proxy’ for stable conditions.” “The conditions under which these minerals form are friendly for the presence of life.”
Gale Crater
She went on to say, “The existence of glauconitic clays indicates the presence of liquid water remaining long-term under steady-state conditions,” adding, “In addition, the geochemical parameters required for their formation (that is, neutral pH and low temperature) would have also created supportive habitable conditions for potential organisms.” The study was published in Nature Astronomy where it can be read in full.
It’s important to note that even though the discovery of glauconitic clays is very exciting news in regards to the possibility of Mars once containing some type of life, there still isn’t any solid proof that there is or ever was life on the Red Planet. We’ll have to wait and see what more information the rovers will discover while exploring the planet.
Ryan Gordon had been in talks with Mike Rogers and Travis Walton beginning in June 2020. Ryan was driving when Mike called him out of the blue. This was not uncommon for Mike to do.
When Mike started to tell Ryan that the event was hoaxed, Ryan pulled his truck over and put his phone on speaker and recorded the call with his Apple Watch pursuant to Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 13-3001. The date of the call is April 30, 2021.
UFO Hoax Confession by Mike Rogers.
Partial transcript:
“All I can remember….like…is that…uhh….we were…we were talking in the woods one day….Travis and I….and uhh…..I….I remember…..leaving a chainsaw on a stump…..okay….he had a saw but he took his with him…because we were talking about creating….uhh…uhh….a UFO hoax….okay?”
“I remember that uhh…..uhh….when I drove….when I was driving the truck and he jumped out….it was….it was all deliberate….it was all uhh….staged thing….okay?”
“And he ran up there and uhh….and there was something….there was something about the UFO uhh….not being real…..although it looked real….”
Ryan Gordon:
What you’re saying is…uhh…you and Travis..together…hoaxed this?
Mike Rogers:
“Yeah….I mean Travis’ brother Duane helped him.”
“Phillip Klass uhh…….actually suspected that uhh…..uhh Duane was…..was part of it.”
“I mean, he was his protector and uhh…..he was saying weird things on that Fred Sylvanus interview – – ‘I have nothing. I don’t fear for at all for his life. I know where he’s at’..blah blah….you know?”
“And I thought all along that he was just trying to….uhh….how would you say it?….make himself belief that his brother was okay…”
On March 19, 2021, Mike Rogers posted the following to his personal Facebook page:
“The reason why the crew all passed the lie detector test was because the question on the lie detector was not about UFOs. Here is a good comment from Orion: “This was a question I had asked, well UNTIL I looked at what the polygraph consisted of. The questions they were asked had to do with a missing person and/or murder investigation – NOT a UFO abduction. We must remember that law enforcement is not in the business of conducting polygraphs to prove or disprove UFO abductions. Of course they passed the polygraph – they didn’t kill Travis nor did they have anything to do with his disappearance.”
P.S.
Comment from Victor Coleiro:
“I interviewed Mike around that time (March of 2021). He had been posting on Facebook that Travis was a UFO Hoaxer.
The interview was basically Mike complaining that Travis had owed him money and that Travis did not tell him of another movie he was lining up.
But they came to terms and they were all good again.”
The TR-3A Black Manta is the name of a reconnaissance airplane of the United States Air Force speculated to be developed under a black project. The only real “evidence” for such an aircraft is based on speculations about several “Reported” sightings of mysterious flying wing aircraft in a track of the California desert known as Antelope Valley.
This stretch of desert draws black project fanatics because it is close to several known military research and testing areas, such as Edwards Air Force Base in California, United States Air Force Plant 42, and Groom Lake in Nevada. Northrop Corporation
Rare X-Flare Causes High Latitude Radio Blackouts as Earth Reacted Nearly Instantly!
Rare X-Flare Causes High Latitude Radio Blackouts as Earth Reacted Nearly Instantly!
Rare X-Flare Causes High Latitude Radio Blackouts as Earth Reacted Nearly Instantly!
The biggest flares are known as ”X-class flares” based on a classification system that divides solar flares according to their strength. The smallest ones are A-class (near background levels), followed by B, C, M and X. Similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, each letter represents a 10-fold increase in energy output. Nasa
Do You Believe In Aliens? | Conspiracy Road Trip (UFO Documentary) | Real Stories
Do You Believe In Aliens? | Conspiracy Road Trip (UFO Documentary) | Real Stories
Andrew Maxwell, a comedian, takes five UFO believers on a cross-country road trip to meet experts, eyewitnesses, and journalists in order to debunk the theories surrounding UFO sightings.
A new deep-sea exploration technology that could one day search for life in subsurface oceans on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn will be put to test during a two-week demonstration expedition aboard a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ship.
The new underwater vehicle, called Orpheus, relies on autonomous navigation software developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California for the Mars Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter. The primary task for the mini-submarine, which was built by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts, will be to advance humanity's understanding of the deepest regions of the oceans, the so-called hadal zone.
With trenches and troughs as deep as 20,000 to 36,000 feet (6,000 to 11,000 meters), the hadal zone presents similar challenges to those experienced by exploration vehicles on other planets, Russel Smith, a roboticist at JPL, said during an online news conference on May 5.
"There are quite a few similarities between Earth's deep ocean and space exploration," Smith said, citing "data-constrained communication, requiring a lot of autonomy, but also challenging environmental conditions that require a lot of engineering work to deal with."
To navigate in the dark, unexplored depths, Orpheus will rely on Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN) technology that NASA developed for the Mars 2020 mission. TRN helped Perseverance land safely in Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, and has guided the Ingenuity helicopter during its pioneering flights.
"Terrain Relative Navigation uses cameras that look around and identify significant features in the surroundings," Smith, who worked on software for Perseverance and Ingenuity, as well as for Orpheus, explained. "The vehicle then uses those features to navigate. It's like you walking into a living room and recognizing a couch and a TV. Robots do exactly the same thing."
NASA JPL engineer Russel Smith and WHOI engineer Molly Curran calibrate Orpheus’s cameras prior to its first-ever dive in 2018. (Credit: Woods Hole Oceanographic institution/Ken Kostel) (Image credit: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Searching for life in the depths
Orpheus will be put through its paces, albeit not yet reaching the ultimate depths, during a two-week expedition on the NOAA ship Okeanos from May 14 to 27. The uncrewed mini-submarine will operate 24/7, mapping the seafloor as the ship travels from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to Norfolk, Virginia. The autonomous submarine will also test novel environmental DNA (eDNA) technology that can retrieve DNA samples of organisms from the water and soil they live in.
WHOI deep-sea biologist Tim Shank, the mission's lead scientist, expects Orpheus to kick off a new chapter in deep-sea exploration and shed light on the mysterious world where pressure exceeds a thousand times that at sea level.
"We know that there is a tremendous amount of organic material in the hadal zone and a lot of biodiversity, organisms that have developed very unique adaptations to survive in the high pressure environment," Shank said in the briefing. "But until now we didn't have a vehicle to go there."
The fate of Orhpeus' predecessor Nereus testifies to the challenges of deep-sea exploration. In 2014, the vehicle imploded 6.2 miles (9,990 m) below the sea surface in the Kermadec Trench near New Zealand, likely because of the extreme pressure of about 16,000 pounds per square inch (2,860 kilograms per square centimeter).
Cubesat philosophy
The loss of Nereus made Shank and his colleagues rethink their approach to hadal zone exploration. They designed Orpheus to be smaller and cheaper than WHOI's earlier deep-sea exploration vehicles.
At about 550 lbs. (250 kilograms), Orpheus is only about a tenth of the mass of Nereus. The six-foot-long (2 m) mini-submarine cost about $2 million to develop and build, about a fourth of the cost of Nereus. Employing what WHOI describes as a cubesat philosophy, developing new technology fast and at lower cost, will allow the scientists to replace the vehicle in case of a failure, but also to create an entire exploration fleet.
"Our grand vision is to have a whole network of these vehicles, like a dozen or so, with base stations," Shank said. "They would communicate with each other about their position, about what they're doing and what they're sampling."
The autonomous submarines would roam above the ocean floor, taking high-resolution images that will be combined into a 3D map of the seafloor, looking for traces of life in the process.
A submarine below the thick icy crust of Jupiter's Moon Europa would experience about the same pressure as a vehicle in the hadal zone. (Credit: NASA//JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute) (Image credit: NASA)
Next destination: Europa
But Shank already has his eyes set on other oceans in the solar system, such as Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's Enceladus. In fact, Shank pointed out during the briefing, the pressure below the 7-mile-thick (12 kilometers) ice crust of Europa will be about the same as that in the deepest trenches of the hadal zone. Moreover, the environmental DNA sensors that Orpheus tests would be an asset for a mission searching for microbial life on an ocean-covered moon.
"The hadal ocean on Earth represents a nice analogy of what we will experience on Europa," Shank said. "Orpheus is working in the same depths, so it makes sense that we use Orpheus as a testbed for instruments and sensors. We will learn how to navigate, we will learn how to operate autonomously."
Smith added that by partnering with the ocean exploration community, NASA can tap into a pool of knowledge and experience that would otherwise take too long to build up from scratch.
The discovery of abundant ecosystems around deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the 1970s changed biologists' beliefs about the requirements for life. Could similar ecosystems exist on the ocean-covered moons? (Credit: NOAA) (Image credit: NOAA)
Space ready
"NOAA and WHOI have a ton of experience exploring Earth's oceans, which are a great test bed for exploration of other ocean worlds," Smith said. "Our experience is very complementary and by cooperating, we can build vehicles that would require a lot of trial and error to build alone. We are speeding up the development of both: Earth submersibles but also these future ocean-world explorers."
Thanks to its small size, Orpheus is a convenient starting point for iterations that could lead to a mini-submarine exploring other ocean worlds, according to Smith. However, to make the technology fit for an interplanetary voyage, engineers will have to shrink it by at least a factor of 10. "Things would have to get a lot smaller because launching vehicles to space is super expensive when they are heavy and big," said Smith. "We would also have to make sure that the electronics can withstand being bombarded by radiation in space but also on those moons because there is no atmosphere to shield them."
The promises of hydrothermal vents
Shank said that finding life on Europa or Enceladus wouldn't surprise him. Biologists' beliefs about life on Earth changed fundamentally in 1977 with the discovery of hydrothermal vents. These cracks in the sea floor, miles below the ocean surface, release hot, mineral-rich water that gives rise to thriving ecosystems with unique types of microbes, molluscs or fish. These ecosystems survive without the presence of light. Instead of photosynthesis, microorganisms around these vents process carbon-containing molecules that seep from the seafloor to create organic material that other creatures feed on.
"I see no reason why these types of habitats wouldn't exist on Europa," Shank said. "All you need is a warm core, and you get that from gravitational pull. The stretching and contracting cracks the seafloor, fluid goes into it and gets heated by the movements of the seafloor. Once you have rock, a heat source and hot water, you can have microbial life."
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NASA'S MARS ROVER SHARES NEW 2.4 BILLION-PIXEL, 360-DEGREE PANORAMIC IMAGE FROM JEZERO
Credit: NASA/JPL
NASA'S MARS ROVER SHARES NEW 2.4 BILLION-PIXEL, 360-DEGREE PANORAMIC IMAGE FROM JEZERO
Since gently dropping down onto the Red Planet's surface on Feb. 18, NASA's amazing Perseverance Mars rover has been quite busy, trundling around Jezero Crater, deploying a little drone helicopter, making microphone recordings, and capturing more than 75,000 images of the surrounding terrain.
Now NASA has released the rover's latest photographic impressions of our neighboring planet in the form of an impressive 360-degree panorama pieced together using 992 separate images snapped by its Mastcam-Z stereo imaging system.
Perseverance Mars rover obtained these photos as it sat idle out at the “Van Zyl Overlook” inside the Jezero Crater while its accompanying Ingenuity Mars helicopter finished up its initial flights between April 15 and 26.
Hold your breath and have a look around...
Stitched together into a single mosaic, these images represent 2.4 billion pixels of Mars' barren world. The rover shot in this panorama was taken on Mar. 20, 2021 and added to deliver a more accurate sense of scale and perspective.
Imaging coverage of the sky has been digitally smoothed over based on the true observed sky color. The video's accompanying audio recording was created on Feb. 22, 2021 and contributes an eerie mood while you explore the landscape.
Per NASA, Perseverance is about to kick off its new science phase this month as it exits the “Octavia E. Butler” landing site.
““We are putting the rover’s commissioning phase as well as the landing site in our rearview mirror and hitting the road. Over the next several months, Perseverance will be exploring a 1.5-square-mile patch of crater floor,” said Jennifer Trosper, Perseverance project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement. “It is from this location that the first samples from another planet will be collected for return to Earth by a future mission.”
Astronaut before dying: “aliens came to prevent a war”
Astronaut before dying: “aliens came to prevent a war”
Have you heard of Edgar Mitchell? A NASA astronaut, who was also the sixth man to step on the Moon on the Apollo 14 mission in 1971.
It was he who piloted the lunar module Antares that brought 40 kilos of lunar rocks to analyze on Earth.
After retiring he founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences for the study of unconventional scientific phenomena such as aliens.
Michael died at the age of 85 in Florida, United States.
Before dying, Mitchell gave an interview that left the entire world speechless, as, according to him, aliens visited Earth during the Cold War era and helped prevent a nuclear war.
“The aliens were trying to prevent war by helping to create peace on Earth,” astronaut Edgar Mitchell told the British newspaper Mirror.
Astronaut talked about aliens
According to Mitchell, UFOs were sighted near military bases of the time: “I spoke with several Air Force officers who worked at these bases during the Cold War.”
“They told me that UFOs were seen frequently and that they were capable of deactivating their missiles.”
“Other officers on the Pacific coast reported that their missiles were frequently shot down by alien ships,” said the sixth man to set foot on the moon .
But why did this story never come to light? Mitchell explained that the matter was covered up by the United States government.
Mitchell pointed out that he spoke with several former military members of the North American Intelligence Agency, better known as the CIA, and they revealed that Harry Truman, then president of the United States, convened a committee to study this ufological phenomenon, which concluded that it was really about aliens.
Despite the conclusions, it was decided to hide the events. For this they created a National Security Act in 1974 to hide the case and the existence of the investigation committee.
Mitchell says that out of fear of losing control and power over knowledge and technology, the government discouraged other people from conducting similar investigations.
You can watch the video below with the full interview with astronaut Edgar Mitchell.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
NASA Mars orbiter grabs dramatic first view of China's elusive rover
NASA Mars orbiter grabs dramatic first view of China's elusive rover
China's historic Tianwen-1 mission lander and rover star in a fresh Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter view.
Amanda KooserChina's Tianwen-1 lander and Zhurong rover (lower dot) are visible in this NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image from June 6.NASA/JPL/UArizona
It's a rover-fest on Mars. Curiosity and Perseverance are sharing the planet with China's Zhurong rover, which a NASA spacecraft in orbit around the red planet spotted down on the Martian surface on June 6.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has already captured remarkable views of Curiosity and Perseverance, but this is its first look at Zhurong, part of the the China National Space Administration (CNSA) Tianwen-1 mission. Tianwen-1 consists of an orbiter, a lander and the rover.
"Clearly visible are what we interpret as the lander surrounded by a blast pattern, and the rover itself a bit to the south after it descended from the lander," said the MRO HiRise camera team at the University of Arizona in a statement on Thursday.
The rover is in a plains region of Mars. "This image shows the surrounding terrain to be very typical of southern Utopia Planitia, with a smooth and mostly boulder-free region," the HiRise team said. "The bright curving features are aeolian (windblown) landforms."
China has released few images from the Tianwen-1 mission overall, in contrast to NASA's constant feed of Mars images available to the public. We have seen a few snaps from the surface, however, including a look at Zhurong's wheel tracks after if descended from the lander in May.
The lack of images can be frustrating for space fans, so NASA's view of Zhurong's adventures on the red planet is a welcome addition to the sparse Tianwen-1 photo collection.
HERE’S HOW QUICKLY ALIENS COULD CONQUER THE GALAXY
IMAGE VIA PIXABAY/FUTURISM
HERE’S HOW QUICKLY ALIENS COULD CONQUER THE GALAXY
NO WARP DRIVES ALLOWED — THAT WOULD BE CHEATING.
Risk: Galaxy Edition
Colonizing the Milky Way is an unfathomable task for us mere Earthlings, but for an extraterrestrial civilization capable of hopping from one star system to the next, it’s shockingly doable.
Based on reasonable technological constraints, the researchers suggest it would take an ambitious alien race about one billion years to conquer and colonize the entire inner portion of the galaxy, according to research published in the journal Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society. That may seem comically long, but the researchers told Gizmodo that it’s not that bad compared to how long the galaxy has been sitting around, just waiting to be conquered.
Why would aliens want to? Well that’s a separate question, but it’s not that far-fetched of an idea — just think about how many Earthlings talk about colonizing the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
Ground Rules
In the realm of far-out science fiction, a super-advanced extraterrestrial civilization could lay waste to Earth and claim the galaxy in the blink of an eye. But the scientists wanted their model of galactic conquest to be somewhat grounded in reality, so they imposed technological constraints that reflect a more believable scenario. That means warp drives are out, planetary civilizations die off over time, and spacecraft travel at the fastest speeds that we can achieve today with our own tech.
“This means we’re not talking about a rapidly or aggressively expanding species, and there’s no warp drive or anything,” study coauthor and Penn State astrophysicist Jason Wright told Gizmodo. “There’s just ships that do things we could actually manage to do with something like technology we can design today, perhaps fast ships using solar sails powered by giant lasers, or just very long-lived ships that can make journeys of 100,000 years running on ordinary rockets and gravitational slingshots from giant planets.”
But they would still get some help — even if the aliens are limited by boring old rules like the speed of light, the movement of the galaxy itself would give them a little boost in their journey.
Extra Boost
In an accompanying animation of the scientists’ model, you can watch as the aliens hop among the stars as they rapidly spiral around the galaxy’s center, claiming greater and greater swaths of the galaxy at a time.
“Stars themselves are moving around, so once you settle a nearby system, the star moves you to another part of the galaxy where more new stars will wander by and give you another nearby star to settle,” Wright told Gizmodo.
A clip of the new visualization. White dots are unsettled stars, magenta spheres are settled stars, and white cubes are starships in transit.
Gif: J. T. Wright et al., 2021/The American Astronomical Society/Gizmodo
Of course, this all just raises an even more crucial question: If these theoretical aliens are so capable of galactic conquest, what the hell are they waiting for?
Siberia: Meet the strange “metallic spheres” of unknown origin
Siberia: Meet the strange “metallic spheres” of unknown origin
Siberia is a frozen land, full of mysteries and enigmas that have dazzled the scientific world. One of these questions is metal spheres that baffle experts.
Aerial image of Yakutia, Siberia.
Located in Russia, Siberia is a region endowed with mysteries ; the area has been linked to multiple UFO sightings, habitat of lost civilizations, strange phenomena or rare explosions.
An example is the strange case of Tunguska ; mystery that little by little has become more related to an unidentified flying object.
Siberian Metal Spheres
North of Russia is Yakutia, a region of 3,083,523 square kilometers. This area has been explored very little since, being surrounded by swamps, it is practically impassable.
The natives know it as ” The Valley of Death ” and avoid approaching the area at all costs. Local stories assure that whoever enters, never returns .
It is in this frozen valley, where there are testimonies of the existence of some strange metallic spheres that nobody knows how they appeared or what function they fulfill there.
The locals assure that the origin of the spheres is not terrestrial , although there is no type of scientific research to corroborate it.
Obviously this whole area of Siberia seems to be a magnet for mysterious and strange phenomena ; A small list of unfortunate events in the area are the Tunguska, in 1908, Chulum in 1984, and Vitim, in 2002.
People who live in the vicinity say that the fear they feel is due to the number of diseases and deaths of people who went through it or were in the vicinity of the metal.
Hence, the legend of the “Ancient Taiga Demons” is born, quite popular among the natives.
Testimonials of people who went to the place
The renowned explorer R. Maak, was one of the first people to explore the region in 1853 . His story tells of Algy timirbit, a river that flows through the upper part of the Viliuy mountain . In that place there is a kind of “copper cauldron” that he could not measure , since only the edges were visible sticking out of the ground.
A geologist, in 1936 he ignored the legends of the area and entered the vicinity of the Olguidakh river , guided by native elders. There he found a sphere buried in the ground, reddish in color and extremely smooth . He said the edges were sharper than any material he has ever known and the outer walls were barely 2 centimeters thick.
All this information was sent to the Yakutia regional center.
In 1979 , an expedition of native archaeologists tried to locate the spheres mentioned in different legends.
The person who guided them claimed to have seen them in his youth, but the topography of the place was totally different compared to those days.
ND Arkhipov, a researcher who studied Yakutia culture, had this to say:
«Among the population of the Viliuy basin there is an ancient legend about the existence in the upper parts of this river of bronze cauldrons or olgis.
This legend deserves attention since the areas that are the supposed location of the mythical calderas contain several streams with the name Olguidakh ».
Other testimonies with less documentation come from hunters who claimed to have seen them. Some protruded from the ground and others covered by vegetation or under water.
What can be deduced is that these strange spheres are made of an unknown metal, very similar to copper. It is believed that its strength and toughness is far superior to what is known.
The curse of the spheres
The little vegetation that grows in the area is totally irregular.
The few tests that have been done have not been taken into account by the laboratories, since they do not know their origin or composition .
Local explorers assure that as time passes the spheres sink deeper into the ground until they disappear.
A strange fact is that in their surroundings, strange blackish spots appear on the ground and the vegetation does not grow . Reason why the elders of the area curse them.
Related to this is the testimony of Mikhail Koretsky from Vladivostok, who claimed to have been in the place where the spheres are found.
He said that up to 3 times he visited the place; the first time with his father at the age of 10 in 1933. Then he returned in 1947 with a group of young people.
His interest in visiting the place was the possibility of finding gold in the valleys. On the spheres, he managed to make out up to 7 spheres or cauldrons .
The size and the metal were powerfully conspicuous. They tried to scratch them with a fine, sharp chisel on several occasions, without success. The metal they are made of is not damaged .
The little vegetation that existed around the spheres was totally strange , of disproportionate sizes or peculiar colors.
They spent the night in the area and did not immediately feel any strange effects. However, 3 months later, one of the 6 young men lost all his hair and 3 strange sore spots appeared on the left side of Vladivostok’s head . Coincidentally, that side was the one that rested on the ground to sleep.
So far there is no scientific study on the spheres, beyond testimonies made by adventurers. But the spheres of Siberia continue to generate intrigue. Where do they come from or what is their origin? Nobody seems to know.
NASA uncovered: “They find Excel sheets with Alien Pilots” (Video)
NASA uncovered: “They find Excel sheets with Alien Pilots” (Video)
Anyone who knows the history of NASA knows that it has been uncovered on more than one occasion. His biggest misstep was when hacker Gary McKinnon hacked into a host of secrets, including aliens.
Gary McKinnon was the hacker who could see the EXCEL list.
For years, NASA has withheld vital information about space from the general public. That is why it is not surprising that hackers have tried to obtain that information by force.
That is exactly what Gary McKinnon did at the beginning of this millennium. He infiltrated the space agency database to find out what they were hiding.
However, he never imagined that he could come across so much information related to UFOs and aliens.
What NASA hides
McKinnon discovered several files containing photographs of UFOs , documents with EXCEL files , where lists of pilots and soldiers were found .
These were numbered with different ranks, from Sergeant to Major and leader of different spaceships . Among these soldiers, there were some who were not of this world .
McKinnon spent more than a decade in prison and his life is slipping between courts and tribunals. NASA, to date, has managed to keep it quiet .
However, in different press conferences or interviews, the hacker assured that the EXCEL file exists . Or at least it was in the files when he signed in.
If this were to be confirmed, the United States government would have no other way to continue hiding . Not only the contact, but the relationship that exists with said power and alien beings.
For having released information, the hacker spent more than a decade behind bars.
What are they hiding from us?
However, the same question that we have been repeating ourselves for decades comes back to haunt us. Why hide from the world that we have maintained constant contact with beings from other worlds?
The only possible reason is that they are doing something that only benefits a small number of people and, on the contrary, harms the majority.
This matter has not been reported by Gary McKinnon. In fact, if we talk about “credibility”, despite his feat, the hacker could be one of the least.
Unlike high officials of the government itself, active and retired military and even former workers of the space agency.
All of them have denounced that both the US government, along with other world powers, already maintain highly advanced contact with intelligent entities from other worlds.
So can we be sure that NASA has, or had, a list of alien pilots on file? Why is this list? What ships operate and what is their mission?
Many questions remain unsolved. But the hope is the large number of weighty people within different governments who have denounced the alien presence among us.
One of many unanswered questions in the eyewitness accounts and testimonies of military personnel encountering UAPs near their aircrafts or the warships they’re in place to protect is why none of them took any sort of aggressive action and fired upon those UFOs. This question looms even larger after the recent release of the Pentagon’s UAP report, which goes out of its way to emphasize that the government deems this unidentified but seemingly sophisticated objects risks to national security. We may finally have an answer … and it comes from a pilot who himself encountered these UAPs and claims to have first coined the name ‘Tic Tac’. His answer may shock you.
“Once I got the target of interest on my radar I took a lock and that’s when all the kinda funky things started happening. “The erratic nature of the tic-tac. The air speed was very telling to me. Then we started seeing what we call jam strobe lines. Strobe lines are vertical lines that show up on your radar that are indications that you are being jammed.”
Still image from the footage of the “tic-tac” UFO
The tic-tac UFO was jamming the radar of Lieutenant Commander Chad Underwood, the pilot who filmed the now famous encounter in 2004 between his F/A-18 Super Hornet and the USS Nimitz carrier group that was in exercises off the coast of southern California. For the first time since then, he revealed to Jeremy Corbell, the filmmaker responsible for making so many of these videos public, that his jet, and most likely the rest, had its radar jammed by a “target of interest.” If you haven’t figured it out by now, Corbell explains on his Twitter feed how serious this action was.
“P.S. Active Jamming a weapons system – it’s an act of war.”
Corbell promises the release of his entire interview with Underwood is “imminent.” This appears to be his first interview since he talked to New York magazine in December 2019. Until then, David Fravor, commanding officer of the Black Aces group which Underwood was part of, was the media spokesperson for the encounter. Fravor also mentioned the radar-jamming in another interview but did not refer to it as “an act of war.” That 2019 interview was where Underwood made his own big reveal.
“The term “Tic Tac,” I actually coined that. So, any time you heard the term, “It looked like a ‘Tic Tac’ out there in the sky,” I was the one that kind of coined that.”
While the look of the UAP was candy-like, it’s performance was anything but sweet to the eyes of a trained fighter pilot.
“The thing that stood out to me the most was how erratic it was behaving. And what I mean by “erratic” is that its changes in altitude, air speed, and aspect were just unlike things that I’ve ever encountered before flying against other air targets. It was just behaving in ways that aren’t physically normal. That’s what caught my eye. Because, aircraft, whether they’re manned or unmanned, still have to obey the laws of physics. They have to have some source of lift, some source of propulsion. The Tic Tac was not doing that. It was going from like 50,000 feet to, you know, a hundred feet in like seconds, which is not possible.”
At that time, Underwood said he didn’t want to call the craft anything but a tic-tac – he had no opinion on “alien beings” and “alien aircraft.” Has he changed his mind since the Pentagon report came out? That seems to be what Jeremy Corbell is implying as he teases with his pre-release of the interview, where disabling weapons is the starting point. What more will Underwood reveal? We’ll be waiting.
European Space Agency detects a unique exoplanet with 'no known equivalent' in the constellation Lupus after the world unexpectedly photobombs its star
European Space Agency detects a unique exoplanet with 'no known equivalent' in the constellation Lupus after the world unexpectedly photobombs its star
New exoplanet holds more water than Earth and has a mass nine times greater
Found by accident when it 'photobombed' star 48 light-years away from Earth
First time exoplanet with 100+ day orbit seen transiting star visible to naked eye
Not habitable but scientists keen to study more because 'no known equivalent'
A unique exoplanet with a mass almost nine times that of Earth has been discovered after it unexpectedly 'photobombed' its star 48 light-years away.
The world was found in the constellation of Lupus, also known as Wolf, and is 'sure to be a golden target for future study' because there is 'no known equivalent', scientists have said.
It is the first time an exoplanet with an orbit of more than 100 days has been spotted transiting a star bright enough to be visible to the naked eye.
Scroll down for video
Discovery: A unique exoplanet has been found after it unexpectedly 'photobombed' its star 48 light-years away. An artist's impression of the Sun-like Nu2 Lupi and its three planets is shown
Orbit comparisons: This graphic shows how long it takes planets B, C and D to circle Nu2 Lupi 48 light-years away, compared to the planets of Venus and Mercury in our solar system
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT PLANET 'D' IN THE NU2 LUPI SYSTEM?
The newly-discovered planet 'd' is one of three exoplanets orbiting a Sun-like star called Nu2 Lupi.
Nu2 Lupi is about 48 light-years away from Earth and one of only three stars visible to the naked eye that are known to host multiple transiting planets.
Planets 'b', 'c' and 'd' have masses between those of Earth and Neptune with orbits lasting 11.6, 27.6 and 107.6 days, respectively.
Planet d's orbit would put it between Mercury and Venus in our solar system.
It isn't habitable but contains far more water than Earth, with 25% of its mass made up of water compared to less than 0.1 per cent on our world.
However, it is not liquid water but instead takes the form of high-pressure ice or high-temperature steam.
Planet d has a mass 8.8 times that of Earth and is 'sure to be a golden target for future study' because there is 'no known equivalent', scientists say.
The 'hugely exciting' discovery was made by accident while researchers were exploring two other planets in a bright nearby star system.
All three orbit a Sun-like star called Nu2 Lupi, which is one of only three naked-eye stars known to host multiple transiting planets.
Planets 'b', 'c' and the newly-discovered 'd' have masses between those of Earth and Neptune with orbits lasting 11.6, 27.6 and 107.6 days, respectively.
None are habitable, the European Space Agency (ESA) has said, but planet 'd' will be a particularly attractive target for both the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, when it launches at the end of this year.
'Combined with its bright parent star, long orbital period, and suitability for follow-up characterisation, this makes planet d hugely exciting – it is an exceptional object with no known equivalent, and sure to be a golden target for future study,' said study co-author David Ehrenreich, of the University of Geneva in Switzerland.
Planet d's orbit would put it between Mercury and Venus in our solar system, he added, while b and c would be inside the orbit of Mercury, which takes 88 days to circle the sun.
Researchers say planet b is mainly rocky but c and d contain far more water than Earth – a quarter of each planet's mass is made up of water, compared to less than 0.1 per cent for Earth.
This water, however, is not liquid but instead takes the form of high-pressure ice or high-temperature steam.
The discovery of planet d, found to have a mass 8.8 times that of Earth, is one of the first results from ESA's Cheops (CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite).
'Exciting': The world was found in the constellation of Lupus, also known as Wolf, and is 'sure to be a golden target for future study' because there is 'no known equivalent', scientists said
CHEOPS: A MISSION TO CHARACTERISE KNOWN EXOPLANETS
Cheops is the shortened name for ESA's CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite mission.
It is the first mission dedicated to studying bright, nearby stars that are already known to host exoplanets.
It will make high-precision observations of the planet's size as it passes in front of its host star.
It will focus on planets in the super-Earth to Neptune size range, with its data enabling the bulk density of the planets to be derived.
Cheops is the first small, or S-class, mission in ESA’s science programme.
It is a partnership between ESA and Switzerland, with a dedicated Consortium led by the University of Bern, and with important contributions from 10 other ESA Member States.
The first planet studied by Cheops was WASP-189b - an ultra hot Jupiter planet orbiting its star every three days.
'While none of these planets would be habitable, their diversity makes the system even more exciting, and a great future prospect for testing how these bodies form and change over time,' said Cheops project scientist Kate Isaak.
'There is also the potential to search for rings or moons in the Nu2 Lupi system, as the exquisite precision and stability of Cheops could allow detection of bodies down to roughly the size of Mars.'
Most long-period transiting exoplanets have so far been discovered around stars that are too faint to allow detailed follow-up observations, meaning little is known about their planets' properties.
However, Nu2 Lupi is bright enough to be seen by powerful telescopes in space and large observatories on the ground.
Planetary transits – when one celestial object crosses in front of a larger body in space – give researchers an opportunity to study a planet's atmosphere, orbit, size and interior.
A transiting planet blocks a tiny but detectable proportion of its star's light as it crosses in front of its star – and it was this drop in light that led Cheops researchers to their discovery.
It is very rare to see long-period exoplanets during transit because they orbit so far from their stars.
'Transiting systems such as Nu2 Lupi are of paramount importance in our understanding of how planets form and evolve, as we can compare several planets around the same bright star in detail,' said lead author Laetitia Delrez, of the University of Liège in Belgium.
'We set out to build on previous studies of Nu2 Lupi and observe planets b and c crossing the face of Nu2 Lupi with Cheops, but during a transit of planet c we spotted something amazing: an unexpected transit by planet 'd', which lies further out in the system.
'Given its overall properties and orbit, this makes planet d a uniquely favourable target for studying an exoplanet with a mild-temperature atmosphere around a star similar to the Sun.'
The aim of Cheops, an ESA mission developed in partnership with Switzerland, is to help better understand known exoplanets and discover new ones.
KEY DISCOVERIES IN HUMANITY'S SEARCH FOR ALIEN LIFE
Discovery of pulsars
British astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was the first person to discover a pulsar in 1967 when she spotted a radio pulsar.
Since then other types of pulsars that emit X-rays and gamma rays have also been spotted.
Pulsars are essentially rotating, highly magnetised neutron stars but when they were first discovered it was believed they could have come from aliens.
'Wow!' radio signal
In 1977, an astronomer looking for alien life in the night sky above Ohio spotted a radio signal so powerful that he excitedly wrote 'Wow!' next to his data.
In 1977, an astronomer looking for alien life in the night sky above Ohio spotted a radio signal so powerful that he excitedly wrote 'Wow!' next to his data
The 72-second blast, spotted by Dr Jerry Ehman through a radio telescope, came from Sagittarius but matched no known celestial object.
Conspiracy theorists have since claimed that the 'Wow! signal', which was 30 times stronger than background radiation, was a message from intelligent extraterrestrials.
Fossilised Martian microbes
In 1996 Nasa and the White House made the explosive announcement that the rock contained traces of Martian bugs.
The meteorite, catalogued as Allen Hills (ALH) 84001, crashed onto the frozen wastes of Antarctica 13,000 years ago and was recovered in 1984.
Photographs were released showing elongated segmented objects that appeared strikingly lifelike.
Photographs were released showing elongated segmented objects that appeared strikingly lifelike
(pictured)
However, the excitement did not last long. Other scientists questioned whether the meteorite samples were contaminated.
They also argued that heat generated when the rock was blasted into space may have created mineral structures that could be mistaken for microfossils.
Behaviour of Tabby's Star in 2005
The star, otherwise known as KIC 8462852, is located 1,400 light years away and has baffled astronomers since being discovered in 2015.
It dims at a much faster rate than other stars, which some experts have suggested is a sign of aliens harnessing the energy of a star.
The star, otherwise known as KIC 8462852, is located 1,400 light years away and has baffled astonomers since being discovered in 2015 (artist's impression)
Recent studies have 'eliminated the possibility of an alien megastructure', and instead, suggests that a ring of dust could be causing the strange signals.
Exoplanets in the Goldilocks zone in 2017
In February 2017 astronomers announced they had spotted a star system with planets that could support life just 39 light years away.
Seven Earth-like planets were discovered orbiting nearby dwarf star 'Trappist-1', and all of them could have water at their surface, one of the key components of life.
Three of the planets have such good conditions, that scientists say life may have already evolved on them.
Researchers claim that they will know whether or not there is life on any of the planets within a decade, and said: 'This is just the beginning.'
A newfound planet was unexpectedly discovered by the European Space Agency’s exoplanet-hunting CHEOPS satellite and it is quite unique with “no known equivalent”. This newfound planet was found when it “photobombed” its star which is located 50 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Lupus.
This was the first time that an exoplanet with an orbital period of more than a hundred days has been witnessed transiting a star that is so bright it can be seen with the naked eye. But what’s even more astonishing is that the newly discovered planet has a mass that is 8.8 times greater than Earth’s and contains more water than our planet. Unfortunately, experts have stated that it is not habitable.
This discovery came as a huge surprise when researchers were studying the two other planets that are part of the star system. This new information means that the sun-like star called Nu2 Lupi is actually orbited by three planets (they are referred to as “b”, “c”, and the newly detected “d”). All three of these planets have masses that measure between those of Earth and Neptune. Another interesting fact is that Nu2 Lupi is one of just three stars bright enough to be seen with the naked eye that have more than one transiting exoplanet.
(Not any of the planets in the Nu2 Lupi system.)
Planets “b”, “c” and “d” have orbits that last 11.6, 27.6 and 107.6 days, respectively. To put this into better perspective, planet d’s orbit would be between where Mercury and Venus orbit our sun, while planets b and c would be located inside of Mercury’s orbit.
While planet b is mostly a rocky planet, the c and d worlds have much more water than what we have here on Earth. However, it isn’t liquid water but high-pressure ice or high-temperature steam that is on those two planets.
While the European Space Agency has stated that none of those worlds are habitable, planet d is a very interesting and significant place to study as explained by David Ehrenreich from the University of Geneva in Switzerland, “Combined with its bright parent star, long orbital period, and suitability for follow-up characterization, this makes planet d hugely exciting – it is an exceptional object with no known equivalent, and sure to be a golden target for future study.”
Two of the three exoplanets have more water than Earth.
Further analysis of the Nu2 Lupi system may reveal moons, possible rings, or even extra planets, but much more research needs to be conducted in order to know for sure. An artist’s impression of the system can be seen here.
The research was published in the journal Nature Astronomy where it can be read in full.
Do you believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life? Your answer may reveal whether you are American or British, according to two new polls taken in the U.S. and the U.K. coinciding with the release of the Pentagon UAP report and the celebration of World UFO Day. Write down your answer and let’s see if you need to move.
“As an unprecedented U.S. intelligence report brings new attention to the phenomenon of unidentified flying objects, about two-thirds of Americans (65%) say their best guess is that intelligent life exists on other planets.”
A Pew Research Center survey conducted just before the release of Pentagon mini-report revealed that two-thirds of Americans believe in intelligent ETs, and 51% say the UFOs reported by military personnel are evidence of intelligent life outside Earth. While that report and comments both before and after its release by government officials emphasize the concern that these UFOs are a security issue and possible national threat, the Pew survey found that half of Americans (51%) think they’re no threat at all while a third (36%) consider them just a minor threat. However, the ETs in the UFOs are not necessarily the candy-sharing kind – 74% say they’re neither friendly nor hostile while only 17% think they’re friendly. Not surprisingly, people who followed the release of the report (12%) were more inclined to believe in intelligent ET life (80%) and that the military-reported UFOs are evidence of such life (65%). Does this sound like you?
We’re ready for you.
Moving on to the U.K. …
According to a new poll of 2,000 U.K. adults commissioned by Beavertown Beer and conducted by OnePoll in honor of World UFO Day on July 2, 60% believe it’s only a matter of time before Earth becomes the target of an alien invasion, but 80% say they have a plan on how to deal with these ET invaders. Part of the plan seems to involve extending a hand to shake or a fist to bump – 63% say they’d welcome an alien spaceship if they saw one land nearby. While they didn’t get specific on how they greeted them, 5% claimed they’ve already had an ET encounter. The best part of the Beavertown Beer poll is the British plans for an alien invasion. The list includes:
• Rely on experts to sort it out • Panic! • Run to the supermarket for essentials • Barricade all doors and windows • Turn off all the lights at home and hope the aliens think they’re not in • Put the kettle on • Stock up on toilet paper • Fashion a weapon using household objects
Which one of you has a kettle on?
Put the kettle on? Sounds like a good idea, especially to an ET who has just traveled light years drinking instant beverages and longs for a nice hot cuppa. Do you agree? Then you’re probably British. An American would make coffee and most likely already own a weapon.
To say that there has been an incredible amount of diversity in the forms of life on our planet during the course of its existence would be more than an understatement. Scientists estimate that the species extant on our planet today represent less than 1% of the incredible range of organisms that once thrived here, and which have now faded into extinction.
Because of this, the evolution of life here on Earth is arguably among the most remarkable phenomena known to exist in all of nature, and one which continues to surprise us and our understanding of biology. Within the complex maze of constant changes and adaptations that Earth species have undergone, a number of mysteries have endured over the years which still evade conclusive understanding. Among these are questions about the earliest fossil insects, and the peculiar origins of their wings.
From within Devonian cherts unearthed in Scotland, some of the earliest known fossil insects represent a wingless variety of collembolans, which are essentially ancient predecessors to modern springtails. These primitive insects are named for their springlike tail which allows them to leap out of the way of potential harm when they are disturbed, and varieties of them have been recovered from such chert deposits dated to around 402 million years ago.
Sample of Rhynie chert from Scotland, the likes of which contains some of the oldest ancestors of living insects
(Public Domain).
These ancient springtails stand as both a testament to this simple, yet obviously successful evolutionary form, as varieties of springtails still exist today. However, biologists stop short of calling these creatures insects, since they lack both wings and the proper mouthparts for such designation, instead classifying them as hexapods. Nonetheless, it appears that modern varieties of springtails and their insect cousins share common ancestry with the hundreds of million-year-old bugs that turn up fossilized in chert deposits today.
Herein lies the true mystery, since there remains a surprising gap in the fossil record between these early springtails, and the first winged insects that only begin to appear in the Upper Carboniferous period some 100 million years later. At some point during this lengthy period, insects began to evolve the ability to fly, but why is there so little evidence of it in the fossil record?
Some scientists have theorized that the earliest forms insect wings might have taken hadn’t actually been designed for flight, but instead growths that aided in cooling the bodies of ancient bugs. From here, random mutations over time would have led to the musculature required to move these portions of early insect bodies, after which they eventually became adapted for flight as is commonly observed with insects today, a feature useful not only in locomotion, but allowing the similar protection mechanism of the springtail’s unique leaping activities.
Modern springtail (collembolans) as seen under a microscope
(Wikimedia Commons 3.0).
While the controversy over the origins of insects remains, a step toward discovering one of the long-sought representatives from the “missing” 100-million-year period did finally turn up in 2012, as detailed in a paper that appeared in the journal Nature.
“Although it can hardly be described as well preserved, the fossil shows a six-legged thorax, long single-branched antennae, triangular jaws and a 10-segmented abdomen,” wrote William Shear of the fossil discovery. Insects are, as Shear noted, the only known arthropods to have ever existed with this combination of traits, and therefore it would seem that the specimen in question had been just that. While the creature differed enough from insects known to us since around 250-million-years ago that there had been a few questions, the authors of the Nature paper nonetheless concluded that they were probably looking at one of the earliest ancestors of modern insects.
Dubbed Strudiella devonica, this specimen was recovered from samples extracted from a quarry in Belgium, and dated to approximately 370 million years ago. While perhaps one of the most significant discoveries of its kind, it only further emphasizes how strange the absence of anything definitively attributable to insects remains during their “missing” period in Earth’s ancient history.
There have been some promising discoveries found in Scottish chert deposits that resemble jaws of a possible insect, as well as in fossils recovered from New York that appear to represent portions of creatures that resemble modern insect eyes. As Shear noted in 2012, “these fragments more or less complete the picture of all that is known of insects at this crucial time in Earth’s history.”
To be recognized as one of the oldest and most successful forms life has ever taken on Earth, it is indeed mysterious that so little is known of the origins of insects. This, along with their early absence in the fossil record, endures as one of the most perplexing mysteries that nature and evolution presently keep from us.
Astronauten Chinees ruimtestation maken eerste ruimtewandeling
Astronauten Chinees ruimtestation maken eerste ruimtewandeling
Astronauten op het nieuwe ruimtestation van China hebben hun eerste ruimtewandeling uitgevoerd, meldden de staatsmedia. Het was pas de tweede keer dat Chinese ruimtevaarders uit hun ruimteschip stapten tijdens een ruimtemissie.
Drie astronauten vertrokken op 17 juni en hebben het Tiangong-station bereikt, waar ze drie maanden zullen blijven tijdens China's langste bemande missie tot nu toe. Zondagmorgen verlieten twee van hen het ruimtestation, aldus de staatszender CCTV. De eerste, Liu Boming, werd via een mechanische arm naar een werkplek gebracht en de andere, Tang Hongbo, klom zelf naar buiten. Hun missie omvat het omhoog brengen van de panoramische camera buiten de kernmodule van Tianhe, evenals het controleren van de overdrachtscapaciteit van de robotarm, zeiden de staatsmedia.
Op televisiebeelden was te zien hoe de astronauten zich voorbereidden op de ruimtewandeling door hun uitrusting aan te trekken en hun gezondheid te controleren terwijl ze oefenden in de cabine. Het is de eerste van twee geplande ruimtewandelingen voor de missie. Beide zullen naar verwachting zes tot zeven uur duren.
Het ambitieuze China werkt in de ruimtevaart niet of nauwelijks samen met andere landen. Als het ruimtestation rond 2023 klaar is, kan daar wel wat verandering in komen. "In de nabije toekomst zullen we zowel Chinese als buitenlandse astronauten samen in het Chinese ruimtestation zien", liet een bestuurder van het Chinese ruimtevaartprogramma weten.
Bekijk ook:Richard Branson to Beat Jeff Bezos as First Billionaire in Space by 9 Days
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LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 04 - 07 - 2021
LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 04 - 07 - 2021
UFO / TR4B ? Sighted Over Carmarthen, Wales ( July 2, 2021 )
UFO / TR4B Anti-Gravity Spacecraft Sighted Over Carmarthen, Wales on July 2, 2021. It doesn't exist officially. It uses highly pressured mercury accelerated by nuclear energy to produce a plasma that creates a field of anti-gravity
STATEMENT : Outside the bedroom window last night it was 4.30 in the morning and they were a couple of miles from the house Carmarthen South Wales : had to go to work mate no time
credit : Nicholas Parsons
UFO Sighted Close to ISS ( May 2, 2021 )
A mysterious object was captured on video soaring close to the ISS : NASA was streaming footage of the ISS ( International Space Station ) and captured this UFO.
UFO Sighting Caught Over Montello WIsconsin.
YouTube Channel HomeSteadHow catches brightly lit UFO fairly close to the ground during night time video for his channel.
In 2015 zoefde NASA's ruimtesonde "New Horizons" langs Pluto. Nu heeft het alle gegevens teruggestuurd, wat is er gezien en ontdekt? https://brilliant.org/astrum/
In deze video laat ik de reis zien die New Horizons heeft gemaakt om Pluto, de manen, de geologische kenmerken en de atmosfeer te kunnen zien.
Curiosity’s “Duluth” Selfie: NASA's Curiosity rover took this selfie on June 15, 2018, which was the 2082nd Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s mission. A dust storm had reduced sunlight and visibility at the rover's location, which was at the “Duluth” drill site. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
The topic: ‘Methane on mars’ has gathered scientists’ interest, as its presence may indicate the presence of . Although methane has nothing to do with microbes, it is produced by the geological processes that involve the interaction of rocks, water, and heat.
Methane on Earth is special. Of the 1,750 parts per billion by volume (ppbv) of methane in Earth’s atmosphere, 90 to 95 percent is biological in origin
On Mars, instruments like NASA’s Curiosity rover have detected the methane gas right above the surface of Gale Crater. However, another instrument like ESA’s (the European Space Agency) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter hasn’t detected any methane higher in the Martian atmosphere.
Why does this happen? Why some instruments detect the gas while others don’t?
In 2016, Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) on NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover was expected to report about the presence of a small amount of methane everywhere on Mars. The TLS has estimated less than a one-half part per billion in the volume of methane on average in Gale Crater. These estimations have been accentuated by baffling spikes of up to 20 sections for every billion in volume.
On the other hand, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter was designed to measure methane and other gases over the whole planet. At the same time, Curiosity’s TLS is so precise, but it was quite surprising to know that ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter detects no methane.
Jolted by European orbiter findings, scientists immediately decided to study the TLS measurements on Mars.
According to some experts, the Mars rover itself was releasing the gas. Hence, scientists detected the correlations with the pointing of the rover, the ground, the crushing of rocks, the wheel degradation – you name it.
Planetary scientist John E. Moores from York University in Toronto published an intriguing prediction in 2019. “I took what some of my colleagues are calling a very Canadian view of this, in the sense that I asked the question: ‘What if Curiosity and the Trace Gas Orbiter are both right?'”
Along with Moores, other Curiosity team members studying wind patterns in Gale Crater suggested that the difference between methane measurements arose due to the time of day they’re taken.
TLS needs a lot of power to operate, especially at night, when no other Curiosity instruments work.
Moores noted, “The Martian atmosphere is calm at night, so the methane seeping from the ground builds up near the surface where Curiosity can detect it.”
“The Trace Gas Orbiter requires sunlight to pinpoint methane about 3 miles, or 5 kilometers, above the surface. Any atmospherenear a planet’s surface goes through a cycle during the day. The heat from the Sun churns the atmosphere as warm air rises and cool air sinks. Thus, the methane that is confined near the surface at night is mixed into the broader atmosphere during the day, which dilutes it to undetectable levels.”
“So I realized no instrument, especially an orbiting one, would see anything.”
Immediately, the Curiosity team decided to test Moores’ prediction by collecting the first high-precision daytime measurements. TLS measured methane consecutively over one Martian day, bracketing one nighttime measurement with two daytime ones.
With each experiment, SAM sucked in Martian air for two hours, continuously removing the carbon dioxide, which makes up 95% of the planet’s atmosphere. This left a concentrated sample of methane that TLS could easily measure by passing an infrared laser beam through it many times, one that’s tuned to use a precise wavelength of light that is absorbed by methane.
Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator of SAM, who’s based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said, “John predicted that methane should effectively go down to zero during the day, and our two daytime measurements confirmed that. TLS’s nighttime measurement fit neatly within the average the team had already established. “So that’s one way of putting to bed this big discrepancy.”
While this study suggests that methane concentrations rise and fall throughout the day at the surface of Gale Crater, scientists have yet to solve the global methane mystery on Mars.
Experiments are underway to test whether very low-level electric discharges induced by dust in the Martian atmosphere could destroy methane or whether abundant oxygen at the Martian surface quickly destroys methane before it can reach the upper atmosphere.
Journal Reference:
Christopher R. Webster et al. Day-night differences in Mars methane suggest nighttime containment at Gale crater. DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202040030
Small Town Monsters' latest paranormal project focuses on the connection between unidentified objects and energy sources.
America is currently in the throes of UFO mania these days, especially with the Pentagon's recent inconclusive report to Congress on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) recently emerging after Navy footage showed strange objects buzzing over the ocean at hypersonic speeds.
Not since the 1970s when author Erich von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods" topped book sales charts and Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" mined box office gold has there been such interest in ufology and getting to the scientific realities of uncanny sightings.
Now a new documentary by the award-winning filmmakers at Small Town Monsters is shining further light on the subject matter with "On the Trail of UFOs: Dark Sky" and Space.com has an exclusive first look at the official full trailer.
This latest project is a sequel to "On the Trail of UFOs" from 2020, their acclaimed series that took an intimate look at the current state of unidentified flying objects and our country's constantly-shifting relationship with the culture. It became one of the most-viewed independent UFO documentary titles in history, pulling in nearly 10 million views on Amazon Prime alone.
(Image credit: Small Town Monsters)
Here, cryptid documentarian Seth Breedlove ("On the Trail of Bigfoot: The Journey") and paranormal researcher Shannon LeGro ("Into The Fray") continue their hunt for the truth behind the enigma of unidentified flying objects in this newest Small Town Monsters release.
"Dark Sky" explores the UFO and UAP topic from the point-of-view of LeGro, a well-known podcast host and bestselling author, and leans more heavily on actual eyewitness accounts than typical alien fare by focusing on connections between Unidentified Objects and energy sources.
The new documentary "On The Trail of UFOS: Dark Sky" examines the UFO phenomenon and the U.S. military's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena reports. It will launch on streaming platforms Aug. 3, 2021. (Image credit: Small Town Monsters)
"This project excited us because we were able to look into reports from real people in real places that still connect what they’re seeing to what is being talked about in the mainstream media today," Breedlove said. "Particularly, this idea of why these objects or lights in the sky might actually be here on earth and how they might be closer connected to us than we think."
"On the Trail of UFOs: Dark Sky" from 1091 Pictures will be available to purchase or rent starting Aug. 3 on streaming platforms like iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu, and FandangoNOW.
Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
The UFO phenomena and its alien abduction cases go way back. In the late 1800s, a strange series of events would begin to play out across the skies of the United States, in such far-flung places as of Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Missouri, California and Arizona. People were seeing bizarre airships of some sort, usually described as massive, anywhere between 30 to 200 feet long and moving at speeds of roughly 135 to 150 mph, far beyond the dimensions and capabilities of anything at the time. One of the first sightings of these mysterious ships had been a mass sighting in November of 1896 at Sacramento, California, with hundreds of witnesses describing a giant cigar-shaped body with wheels at the sides, some calling it an “electric arc lamp propelled by some mysterious force,” with two human-looking figures seated upon an apparatus. Sightings would pour in after this, moving steadily eastward as far as Chicago, and it would reach peak weirdness with an alleged attempted alien abduction by the pilots of these mysterious vessels.
From between November 1896 and April 1897 there were thousands of reports from across a vast area of 18 states of these strange, cigar-shaped airships that resembled a flying dirigible of some sort, in some cases described as having revolving wheels, rudders, motors, sails, and a powerful beam they could project in front of them or towards the ground. In some cases, the pilots of the vessels were seen and even heard talking, although it could never be made out what they were actually saying. Some were described as having wings, others with propellers, some with no noticeable form of propulsion at all. Strange intricate machinery and contraptions were often mentioned, and all of them were completely bizarre things that no one had ever seen before, which served to sow fear in the regions where they appeared. People were truly baffled because this was an era when airships and blimps were still very rudimentary and primitive, and the Wright Brothers were years away from their flight of the Kitty Hawk. One report printed in the Quincy Morning Whig of April 1897 described a sighting at Quincy Illinois as follows:
At times it did not appear to be more than 400 or 500 feet above the ground. Men who saw the thing describe it as a long, slender body shaped like a cigar, and made of some bright metal. On either side of the hull extending outwards and upwards were what appeared to be wings. At the front end of the thing was a headlight similar to the searchlights used on steamboats.
As all of this was going on there was plenty of speculation on what was going on, ranging from the rational to the outlandish. Meteorites, Venus or other planets, stars, kites, floating Chinese lanterns, birds, and atmospheric phenomena were all mentioned, as was as pranksters and the idea that there may have been some mad inventor at work designing advanced flying machines. It got to the point that even the famous inventor Thomas Edison was questioned on his possible involvement, to which he laughed and said “I prefer to devote my time to objects which have some commercial value. At best, airships would only be toys.” Another idea was that they were aliens, “Martians” as people liked to call them at the time, and there would be at least one bizarre report that would suggest this was the case.
The very strange account was given in 1896, when a Colonel H.G. Shaw was travelling with a companion by the name of Camille Spooner in a horse and carriage in Lodi, California when the horse stopped in abject terror and refused to continue on. In a report on the incident in the Stockton Evening Mail of November 25th, 1896, Shaw would say of what happened next:
Looking up we beheld three strange beings. They resembled humans in many respects, but still they were not like anything I had ever seen. They were nearly or quite seven feet high and very slender. We were both somewhat startled, as you may readily imagine, and the first impulse was to drive on. The horse, however, refused to budge, and when we saw that we were being regarded more with an air of curiosity than anything else, we concluded to get out and investigate. I walked up to where the strange looking persons were and addressed them. I asked where they were from. They seemed not to understand me, but began – well, “warbling” expresses it better than talking. Their remarks, if such you would call them, were addressed to each other, and sounded like a monotonous chant, inclined to be guttural. I saw it was no use to attempt a conversation, so I satisfied myself with watching and examining them. They seemed to take great interest in ourselves, the horse and buggy, and scrutinized everything very carefully.
While they were thus engaged, I was enabled to inspect them as well. As I have already stated, they were seven feet in height and very slender. I noticed, further, that their hands were quite small and delicate, and that their fingers were without nails. Their feet, however, were nearly twice as long as those of an ordinary man, though they were narrow, and the toes were also long and slender. I noticed, too, that they were able to use their feet and toes much the same as a monkey; in fact, they appeared to have much better use of their feet than their hands. I presently discovered that this was probably a provision of nature. As one of then came close to me I reached out to touch him, and placing my hand under his elbow pressed gently upward, and lo and behold I lifted him from the ground with scarcely an effort. I should judge that the specific gravity of the creature was less than an ounce. It was then that I observed him try to grasp the earth with his toes to prevent my lifting him. You can readily understand that their slight weight made such a provision necessary, or they might be blown away.
They were without any sort of clothing, but were covered with a natural growth hard to describe; it was not hair, neither was it like feathers, but it was as soft as silk to the touch, and their skin was like velvet. Their faces and heads were without hair, the ears were very small, and the nose had the appearance of polished ivory, while the eyes were large and lustrous. The mouth, however, was small, and it seemed to me that they were without teeth. That and other things led me to believe that they neither ate nor drank, and that life was sustained by some sort of gas. Each of them had swung under the left arm a bag to which was attached a nozzle, and every little while one or the other would place the nozzle on his mouth, at which time I heard a sound of escaping gas. It was much the same sound as is produced by a person blowing up a football. From the description I give I do not want you to get the idea that these creatures were hideous. In appearance they were markedly the contrary. They were possessed of a strange and indescribable beauty. I can express myself in no other way. They were graceful to a degree, and more divinely beautiful than anything I ever beheld.
Shaw also made mention of very strange tools the creatures held, the size of a “hen’s egg,” and which could project “the most remarkable, intense and penetrating light one can imagine.” The mysterious beings apparently examined the horse and buggy with great interest, but this was apparently only the beginning of the weirdness, and it would soon escalate into what sems to have been a very early account of alien abduction. Shaw would say in the newspaper account of this:
Finally, they became tired of examining us and our horse and buggy, and then one of them, at a signal from one who appeared to be the leader, attempted to lift me, probably with the intention of carrying me away. Although I made not the slightest resistance, he could not move me, and finally the three of them tried it without the slightest success. They appeared to have no muscular power outside of being able to move their own limbs. Well, after trying in vain to move either of us they turned in the direction of the Woodbridge canal, near which we were, and as they flashed their lights towards the bridge we beheld a startling sight.
There, resting in the air about twenty feet above the water, was an immense airship. It was 150 feet in length at least, though probably not over twenty feet in diameter at the widest part. It was pointed at both ends, and outside of a large rudder there was no visible machinery. The three walked rapidly toward the ship, not as you or I walk, but with a swaying motion, their feet only touching the ground at intervals of about fifteen feet. We followed them as rapidly as possible, and reached the bridge as they were about to embark. With a little spring they rose to the machine, opened a door in the side, and disappeared within. I do not know of what the affair was built, but just before it started, I struck it with a rock and it gave no sound. It went through the air very rapidly and expanded and contracted with a muscular motion, and was soon out of sight. I have a theory, which, of course, is only a theory, that those we beheld were inhabitants of Mars, who have been sent to the earth for the purpose of securing one of its inhabitants.
What had gone on to be called the “Great Airship Mystery of 1896-97” would continue on after this, generating thousands of sightings of these aircraft but no further attempted abduction accounts, not even any detailed descriptions of the shadowy figures often reportedly standing atop them. It has all been written off as the product of some sort of collective delusion or mass hysteria, but does this really explain the myriad sightings made across many states? What are we to think of Shaw’s bizarre account, and how does it fit in to the larger mystery that was going on at the time? There is no way to know, and it remains a curious and very odd historical oddity.
A section of a panorama produced by Zhurong, released June 27, showing comms and solar arrays, roving tracks and the distant landing platform. Credit: CNSA/PEC
HELSINKI — China has released landing process footage from its Zhurong rover as well as video and sounds of the vehicle roving on Mars.
Footage of the entry, descent and landing shows deployment of a supersonic disk-gap-band parachute, separation of the backshell, followed by powered descent, a hazard-avoidance hover phase, and landing.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) published the footage in a Zhurong mission update early Sunday Beijing time. Video of the descent of the Zhurong rover from its landing platform, including sounds made by the vehicle’s egress, was included in the release.
The sounds were created by the metal on metal interaction of a rack and pinion system and recorded by Zhurong’s climate station, which intends to capture sounds of Martian winds.
“With the files we released this time, including those sounds recorded when our Mars rover left the lander, we are able to conduct in-depth analysis to the environment and condition of Mars, for example, the density of the atmosphere on the Mars,” Liu Jizhong, deputy commander of China’s first Mars exploration program, told Chinese media.
NASA’s Perseverance captured similar sounds of driving on Mars in March.
The 240-kilogram Zhurong rover successfully landed in Utopia Planitia on May 14. The deployment took place late May 21 Eastern, following a week-long series of checks and analysis of the environment.
The six-wheeled, solar-powered Zhurong has since covered 236 meters on the Martian surface. An undated panorama shows Zhurong and tracks leading back to the landing platform, along with surface and horizon features.
Zhurong had earlier dropped a remote Wifi camera when still close to the landing platform. The rover then returned to pose for a joint selfie with the lander. The new update this time featured footage of Zhurong’s drive back to the landing platform and later making a turn.
“Zhurong Rover is more independent in its driving on Mars [compared with China’s Yutu lunar rovers]. It can judge by itself whether there is a path ahead based on its own image analysis. It will make a judgment about every one meter in its driving, and move towards the target set by the ground,” Jia Yang, deputy chief designer of Tianwen-1 Mars probe, told CCTV.
The rover is part of the Tianwen-1 mission, China’s first independent interplanetary mission. Consisting of an orbiter, a lander, and a rover, Tianwen-1 launched in July 2020. It entered Mars orbit Feb. 10.
Zhurong is equipped with six science payloads, including a laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy instrument for analysing surface elements and minerals, panoramic and multispectral imagers, a climate station, magnetometer and a ground-penetrating radar.
It aims to return data on potential water-ice deposits, weather, topography and geology, complementing science carried out by missions from other space agencies.
The Tianwen-1 orbiter is currently in an 8.2-hour orbit, allowing a pass over Utopia Planitia once per sol to perform a data relay role. Zhurong has a primary mission and design lifetime of 90 sols (92 Earth days). It is currently unknown if Zhurong’s mission will be extended beyond this.
Tianwen-1 carries seven science payloads. It is expected to change to its dedicated science orbit with a period of 7.8 hours after supporting Zhurong.
The Tianwen-1 mission builds on technologies and capabilities developed through the Chang’e lunar program orbiters, lander and rovers. It also draws on head shielding and parachute expertise from Shenzhou human spaceflight endeavors.
Meanwhile NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed Zhurong’s progress with images captured with the HiRise camera June 6 and June 11. The images provided evidence of Zhruong’s driving activity in absence of regular updates from CNSA.
China’s Zhurong rover (bottom) and landing platform (top) imaged by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL/UArizona
Was President Roosevelt In Possession Of Extraterrestrial Technology?
Was President Roosevelt In Possession Of Extraterrestrial Technology?
Investigators reveal the secret history of several U.S. Presidents and their connection to the UFO phenomenon. Starting with FDR, researchers examine the startling discoveries of unidentified flying craft facing a president preoccupied by WWII.
WASHINGTON — Stephen Bassett and Mick West don’t agree on much. Bassett has devoted much of his adult life to provingUFOs are helmed by aliens, and West has devoted much of his to proving they are not.
But they both agree on one thing: It’s good that, after nearly 75 years of taboo and ridicule going back to Roswell, New Mexico, serious people are finally talking seriously about the unidentified flying objects people see in the skies.
“If you look at the level of public interest, then I think it becomes important to actually look into these things,” said West, a former video game programmer turned UFO debunker. “Right now, there is a lot of suspicion that the government is hiding evidence of UFOs, which is quite understandable because there's this wall of secrecy. It leads to suspicion and distrust of the government, which, as we’ve seen, can be quite dangerous.”
Later this month, the Pentagon is expected to deliver a report to Congress from a task force it established last year to collect information about what officials now call "unexplained aerial phenomena," or UAPs, from across the government after pilots came forward with captivating videos that appear to show objects moving in ways that defy known laws of physics.
While those who dabble in the unknowns of outer space are hoping for alien evidence, many others in government hope the report will settle whether the objects might be spy operations from neighbors on Earth, like the Chinese or Russians.
The highly anticipated report is expected to settle little, finding no evidence of extraterrestrial activity while not ruling it out either, according to officials, but it will jumpstart a long-suppressed conversation and open new possibilities for research and discovery and perhaps defense contracts.
“If you step back and look at the larger context of how we've learned stuff about the larger nature of reality, some of it does come from studying things that might seem ridiculous or unbelievable,” Caleb Scharf, an astronomer who runs the Astrobiology Center at Columbia University.
The omertà has been broken thanks to a new generation of more professional activists with more compelling evidence, a few key allies in government and the lack of compelling national security justification for maintaining the official silence, which has failed to tamp down interest in UFOs.
Interest in UFOs waxes and wanes in American culture, but millions have questions and about one-third of Americans think we have been visited by alien spacecraft, according to Gallup.
But those questions have been met with silence or laughter from authorities and the academy, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by conspiracy theorists, hoaxsters and amateur investigators.
West, the skeptic, thinks the recent videos that kicked off the latest UFO craze, including three published by the New York Times and CBS’ “60 Minutes,” can be explained by optical camera effects. But he would like to see the U.S. government thoroughly investigate and explain UFOs.
The government has examined UFOs in the past but often in secret or narrow ways, and the current Pentagon task force is thought to be relatively limited in its mission and resources.
In a new, leaked video, an unidentified object flies around a Navy ship off the coast of San Diego.U.S. Navy via Jeremy Corbell
West pointed to models from other countries like Argentina, where an official government agency investigates sightings and publishes its findings, the overwhelming majority of which are traced to unusual weather, human objects like planes or optical effects.
“This is something that we could do here,” West said. “But right now we're left with people like me, who are just enthusiasts.”
John Podesta, a Democratic poobah who has held top jobs in several White Houses, has called on President Joe Biden’s White House to establish a new dedicated office in the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, which would help get the issue out of the shadows of the military and intelligence community.
Podesta, who has harbored an interest in UFOs since at least his days as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, recently told Politico, “It was kind of career-ending to basically talk about this subject. That has clearly switched, and that's a good thing.”
Believers are unsurprisingly thrilled by the culture shift.
“The ‘truth embargo’ is coming to an end now,” said Bassett, the executive director of Paradigm Research Group and the only registered lobbyist in Washington dedicated to UFO disclosure. “I am elated to finally see this movement achieving its moment.”
Bassett is convinced the government is covering up proof of extraterrestrial life and that everything happening now is elaborate political theater to make that information public in the least disruptive way possible — a view, of course, not supported by evidence or most experts.
“This is the most profound event in human history that's about to be taking place,” he said.
But you don’t have to be a believer to believe that poorly understood things should be investigated, not ignored.
"We don't know if it's extraterrestrial. We don't know if it's an enemy. We don't know if it's an optical phenomenon," said new NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a former astronaut and Florida senator, in a recent CNN interview. “And so the bottom line is, we want to know."
Two former CIA directors — John Brennan, who served under Obama, and James Woolsey, who served under Clinton — recently said in separate podcast interviews that they’ve seen evidence of aerial phenomena they can’t explain. John Ratcliffe, who was the director of national intelligence under then-President Donald Trump, told Fox News in March there were “a lot more sightings than have been made public.”
Cold War and fish farts
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, pushed the government to conduct the UFO report. For him, it’s a question of national security and understanding whether rivals like China or Russia have developed advanced technology we don’t know about.
“I want us to take it seriously and have a process to take it seriously,” Rubio told “60 Minutes.”
For others, like Ravi Kopparapu, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and Jacob Haqq-Misra, a research scientist with the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, it’s about discovery.
"For too long, the scientific study of unidentified flying objects and aerial phenomena — UFOs and UAPs, in the shorthand — has been taboo," they wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. "If we want to understand what UAP are, then we need to engage the mainstream scientific community in a concerted effort to study them."
Scharf looks for life on other planets and is a bit tired of people asking him if alien life has visited us on ours, but he said looking more at the skies could yield information about how our own world works.
A mysterious object hovers over a Navy ship in night vision video.U.S. Navy via @JeremyCorbell
“Stuff like this has a scientific interest not because we're necessarily thinking we're going to find aliens, but maybe there's an unknown phenomenon or a collection of phenomena that are giving rise to some of these sightings,” he said. “There's never been a systematic effort to categorize and catalog stuff that people see, and from the past, we know that some of this stuff sometimes turns out to be interesting.”
The history of science is filled with accidental discoveries and incidents where the hubris of religious or scientific authorities dismissed something as ridiculous that later proved true. Scientists didn’t believe meteorites really came from space until the early 1800s, for instance.
Government secrecy can lead to confusion and misunderstanding that might be cleared up with the help of a wider circle of experts and investigators.
Sweden spent years futilely chasing what it thought were Russian submarines off its coast. But when the navy let civilian researchers listen to a recording of the alleged submarine, they figured out it was actually the sound of schools of fish farting.
Important people have had an interest in UFOs for a long time; they just didn’t really talk about it.
Former President Jimmy Carter claimed to have seen a UFO while he was governor of Georgia and even filed two formal reports of his observations. Former President Ronald Reagan allegedly told people he saw one too while riding in a small plane, according to the pilot, who was quoted in a book by John Alexander, the former Army colonel whose paranormal investigations were featured in the book and movie “The Men Who Stare at Goats.”
As the Cold War intensified in the 1950s, U.S. officials worried the Soviet Union would use a UFO hoax to drum up fear in the American public. Civilians started seeing what they believed were UFOs but were actually secret spy planes, like the U-2, so the government settled on a policy of silence and denial.
''Over half of all U.F.O. reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights,” according to a secret CIA study that was declassified in the late 1990s, The New York Times reported then. ''This led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project.''
The very real government stonewalling fed bogus conspiracy theories, which came to dominate the study of UFOs and made the topic even more off-putting to serious scholars.
A new generation
In recent years, though, a newer generation of activists has been at center of recent high-profile disclosures thanks to a more professional, careful and credible approach. They include people with serious national security credentials like Christopher Mellon, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, and Luis Elizondo, the former Army counterintelligence special agent who led an earlier Pentagon team to investigate UFOs.
The budget for Elizondo’s team — a modest $22 million in the scheme of defense spending — was secured by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, a powerful ally who has helped drive the resurgence of interest in UFOs.
An unidentified aerial phenomenon in a U.S. military video.
DoD via To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science
The newer activists have worked with mainstream news outlets to deliver evidence and eye witnesses that meet their high editorial standards and are careful when speaking to general audiences to avoid talking about aliens — though Mellon and Elizondo have appeared on controversial podcaster Joe Rogan’s show as well as "Coast to Coast A.M.," a long-running radio program devoted to conspiracies and the paranormal.
Both the skeptics and the believers don’t expect the Pentagon report to settle anything. Instead, they hope it will start something new.
“The idea of some super powerful aliens coming to visit us is a very compelling story,” West said. “So if you get even a tiny little taste of something like that, it really spices up the story.”
Aliens who have been rescued from crashed UFOs reveal what they want from us (video)
Aliens who have been rescued from crashed UFOs reveal what they want from us (video)
The tragic events of September 11th are not to be laughed at. The lives lost on that day will be remembered forever, and we will never trivialize the case.
But, as well-known as this tragedy is, did you know it wasn’t the only tragic occurrence to occur during that time period?
About two days before the crisis on 9/9, a UFO from the future landed on Earth, and when the aliens descended from their spacecraft, they started showing us what they had been trying to teach us all along.
Since the video was leaked, don’t expect it to be in flawless condition. Former President Jimmy Carter was the one who first released it, and he said that it is top-secret video that could never have been made public.
Immediately after every sighting, these men in black come and take it inside. However, we do sometimes get evidence of the aliens, which dispels all concerns that the images were staged to begin with.
Take, for example, the Colorado crashed UFO site, which shows the following Grey Aliens emerging from their crashed submarine.
Many people think they are potential humans who have evolved in this way. So, if the Grey aliens are the future, do the Reptilians represent the past?
The videos were taken down from the internet because the government is in cahoots with these aliens and has stated that they intend to keep it a secret.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
03-07-2021
Earth’s Largest-Ever Lake Engulfed Europe and Asia 12 Million Years Ago
Earth’s Largest-Ever Lake Engulfed Europe and Asia 12 Million Years Ago
In-depth research has shed new light on the astonishing and awe-inspiring history of the Paratethys Sea. This 12-milion-year-old megalake was formed in Eurasia by the same tectonic shifts that created many European and Asian mountain ranges. It was the Earth’s largest lake, covering more area than the modern-day Mediterranean Sea .
Until now, not much was known about the lake’s geological history, or about its relationship to the surrounding environment. But two new studies have revealed some fascinating information about how the Paratethys Sea was created, how it disappeared, and how its fluctuations in size and shape ultimately influenced the evolution of modern animal species.
Chart showing the comparison between the water volume of the Paratethys Sea and that of other water bodies.
Under the leadership of paleo-oceanographer Dan Palcu from the University of São Paulo in Brazil, an international team of geologists, geographers, and evolutionary biologists performed a detailed analysis of fossils and geological samples taken from the area that was once covered by the Paratethys Sea. They recently disclosed their mind-blowing discoveries in the journal Scientific Reports , and it seems their work has solved many of the mysteries involving the life and death of this massive inland body of water.
At its peak size, the Paratethys Sea covered an area of approximately 1.7 million square miles (2.8 million square kilometers), the researchers report. It bisected the Eurasian continental mass, flooding the lands of what is now Central Europe and creating a watery border that separated northern from southern Asia. Before climate change caused it to shrink, the Paratethys Sea extended from the eastern Alps to what is now the nation of Kazakhstan.
The Paratethys Sea was created through the collisions of moving tectonic plates, explains Sid Perkins in Science. These movements created huge mountains that thrust up and through the existing prehistoric ocean and enclosed one section of it, trapping a massive quantity of ocean water inland. The researchers estimate that the lake’s volume surpassed the astonishing figure of 1.1 cubic miles (1.77 cubic kilometers), which is 10 times more than the volume of water held in all of today’s fresh and saltwater lakes combined.
The remnants of the Earth’s largest lake include Bulgaria’s Cape Kaliakra cliffs (above) overlooking the Black Sea.
How Climate Change Affected the World’s Largest Lake
During the Miocene Epoch, which lasted from 23 million years ago to about five million years ago, the Eurasian climate gradually became dryer. Rainfall levels fell, and the Paratethys Sea was significantly affected by the ongoing climate change. This drying of the climate was not steady, but was instead marked by a series of long-term droughts.
Palcu and his team identified four separate drying events that caused the Paratethys Sea to shrink in size, with the most dramatic shift occurring in the period between 7.9 and 7.65 million years ago. Over this time span the lake lost one-third of its volume and two-thirds of its surface area, with water levels falling by up to 250 meters (820 ft) at areas of greatest depth.
These catastrophic changes caused the salinity of the lake to increase dramatically. This decimated many of the unique species that had evolved there over the nearly five million years the lake had been separated from the world’s larger oceanic ecosystem. "It must have been a post-apocalyptic prehistoric world, an aquatic version of the wastelands from Mad Max," explained Wout Krijgsman, a geologist and study co-author in a Utrecht University press release .
Smaller versions of dolphins, seals, and whales were among the creatures known to have lived in the Paratethys Sea. Spikes in salinity caused these mammals to go extinct, creating evolutionary dead ends. Only a few of the hardiest species (like certain types of mollusks) were able to survive the changes the lake underwent as its size decreased.
The end came for the Paratethys Sea between 6.9 and 6.7 million years ago. Erosion caused a massive breach in its southwest coastline, forming a rampaging river that eventually drained the lake’s remaining water into the Mediterranean.
Based on the fossil record, scientists know know that the Paratethys Sea was once home to unique species, such as the Cetotherium riabinini, the smallest known whale on record.
How the Paratethys Sea Shaped the Evolution of African Wildlife
Research by another team of scientists, published in May 2021 in Communications Earth & Environment , has helped publicize the surprising connection between the Paratethys Sea and the evolution and eventual migration of African wildlife.
Fossil finds have shown that the ancestors of giraffes, elephants, and other large mammals that reside on the African savannah originally lived along the southern shores of the Paratethys Sea. They survived by grazing on the grasslands that were formed when the lake’s water levels declined, carving out a niche in a unique ecosystem.
At some point, these large mammals left the area and migrated to the southwest. They eventually settled in Africa and evolved into their modern forms after that. The reason why this migration took place has never been clear, and that motivated evolutionary biologist Madelaine Böhme, from the University of Tübingen in Germany, to launch a study designed to solve this enduring mystery.
The scientists focused their research on western Iran, where the geological record has revealed the occurrence of multiple severe changes in climate during the Miocene Epoch. Examining this record in more detail, they concluded that the animals left because the climate near the rapidly shrinking Paratethys Sea had gradually become too arid for them to survive.
Matching the findings of Palcu’s research team, they identified four distinct phases of significant drying that helped drive the migration, which occurred between 8.75 and 6.25 million years ago. After migrating south and west, these ancient mammals were able to gain a foothold in Africa. The conditions they found closely mimicked those on the grasslands of the ultimately doomed Paratethys Sea, which had played the decisive role in directing the course of their evolution.
The rocky cliffs of Bulgaria’s Cape Kaliakra on the Black Sea.
Today, the most notable remaining remnant of this magnificent inland lake is the Black Sea , which was formed in the Paratethys’ central basin. Despite its impressive size, the Black Sea covers just 14 percent of the area that the Paratethys did at its prime.
When the Paratethys Sea was extinguished, it completely transformed the interior of Eurasia. With the lake gone, more than a million square miles (two million square kilometers) of fertile new land in Central Europe and Asia were opened for future human settlement. Once they’d dispersed out of Africa millions of years later, humans would eagerly occupy these areas, never dreaming that they were living in a region that had once been submerged under hundreds of meters of water.
Top image: Map showing the location of the ancient Paratethys megalake, known as the Earth’s largest lake. Source: Utrecht University
The Nine Unknown Men: An Ancient Indian Secret Society
The Nine Unknown Men: An Ancient Indian Secret Society
There is a pervasive legend in India of a secret organization that allegedly has a vast amount of advanced knowledge in their possession. Believed to have been formed over 2000 years ago, the Nine Unknown Men is widely suspected of manipulating political and societal trends in order to further the personal goals of the Nine. But is sucha secret organizationa reality or is it merely the stuff of legend?
An Origin Story Like No Other…
The society of the Nine Unknown Men was formed shortly after 226 BC by Emperor Ashoka. Grandson of the legendary Emperor who unified the Indian subcontinent, Chandragupta, Ashoka was anxious to uphold his grandfather’s legacy and maintain the empire. In the region between Calcutta and Madras, the Kalingan’s resisted the imperial rule, leading to an all-out war.
Ashoka’s vastly superior forces are said to have killed over 100,000 of Kalinga’s warriors and deported over 150,000 of the region’s villagers. Even though he had won the war, Ashoka was aghast at the carnage such a victory entailed. From then on, he swore off violence forever.
Relief from Sanchi showing Ashoka on his chariot. First century BC.
Emperor Ashoka is best known for his conversion to Buddhism and his efforts to spread the peaceful religion throughout India as well as Malaya, Ceylon, and Indonesia. His efforts contributed to Buddhism’s later rise in China, Nepal, Tibet, and Mongolia. Ashoka was a sworn vegetarian but did not force others to do likewise. Indeed, he was incredibly tolerant of other religious sects. He did, however, prohibit the consumption of alcohol.
Most importantly, “he renounced the idea of trying to integrate the rebellious people, declaring that the only true conquest was to win men’s hearts by observance of the laws of duty and piety, because the Sacred Majesty desired that all living creatures should enjoy security, peace, and happiness and be free to live as they pleased” (Pauwels and Bergier). So committed was the Emperor to this mission that he sought to prevent his fellow man from putting their intelligence towards perpetrating evil, particularly the evil involved with warfare.
The task of collecting, preserving, and containing all knowledge was too great for one emperor to do alone, not the least because of the other duties required in ruling an empire. So Ashoka summoned nine of the most brilliant minds in India at the time. For security purposes, the identity of these men was never made public. Together, these geniuses formed a secret society that came to be known as the Nine Unknown Men.
What Did The Nine Unknown Men Study?
The organization set up accumulating all the scientific knowledge they could, from natural science to psychology to the composition of matter. Fearing that if ordinary men were given scientific knowledge they would use it for destruction, only the Nine Men were allowed to study and develop scientific theories and technology. To better accomplish this daunting task, each of the nine was charged with a specific book that he was to update, revise, and ultimately perfect the knowledge therein.
When one of the nine could no longer complete the task – whether from the wish to retire, fading health, or death - the obligation was passed to a chosen successor. The number of members in the society was always to be nine. Thus the society of the Nine Unknown Men has allegedly lived on for over 2000 years.
Portrait of a young Indian scholar, Mughal miniature by Mir Sayyid Ali, circa 1550 AD. ( Public Domain )
Speculation about the contents of each of the nine books varies widely. Talbot Mundy, an English writer, published a book entitled The Nine Unknown Men in 1923, which contained a list of the nine books. This list has come to be generally accepted.
“Propaganda: The first book dealt with techniques of propaganda and psychological warfare. “The most dangerous of all sciences is that of molding mass opinion, because it would enable anyone to govern the whole world,” according to Mundy.
Physiology: The second book discussed physiology and explains how to kill a person simply by touching him or her, known as the “the touch of death,” simply by the reversal of a nerve impulse. It is said that the martial artof Judo is a result of “leakages” from the second book.
Microbiology: The third volume focused on microbiology and biotechnology.
Alchemy: The fourth dealt with alchemy and transmutationof metals. According to another legend, in times of severe drought, temples and religious relief organizations received large quantities of gold from “a secret source.”
Communication: The fifth book contained a study of all means of communication, terrestrial and extraterrestrial. Alluding then that the Nine Unknown Men were aware of alien presence.
Gravity: The sixth book focused on the secrets of gravitation and actual instructions on how to make the ancient Vedic Vimana,(like Vaiminika Shastra on aerospace technology).
Cosmogony: The seventh contained cosmogony and matters of the universe.
Light: The eighth dealt with light, including the speed and how to use it as a weapon.
Sociology: The ninth and final book discussed sociology. It included rules for the evolution of societies and the means of foretelling their decline.” (Mundy paraphrased by Ancient Explorers)
Is the Secret Society Fact or Myth?
But were the Nine Unknown Men real? Ashoka may very well have asked nine men of unknown identity to gather scientific knowledge, particularly with regards to its application to warfare. This was a very fractious time and other Emperors have been known to order similar initiatives. These men may have explored different empires’ battle tactics and training, weapons manufacturing, horse/elephant handling, and maybe even gunpowder usage.
However, an ancient group living on in secrecy for over 2000 years, controlling global events from the remote jungles of India with not a hint of modern equipment, infrastructure, or technology is hard to believe. For many, the legend is most likely just a legend.
Has the ancient group of the Nine Unknown Men been working in secrecy for over 2000 years?
NASA’S MARS ROVER JUST REACHED A NEW AREA AND IT’S BEAUTIFUL
NASA’S MARS ROVER JUST REACHED A NEW AREA AND IT’S BEAUTIFUL
THE SANDY DUNES OF MARS NEVER LOOKED THIS GOOD.
Sandy Dunes
NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover is making another pit stop on its journey to probe the surrounding Jezero Crater for signs of ancient life.
“I’ve made it to my next lookout, overlooking a spot we’re calling ‘Séítah,'” the rover’s official account tweeted just now.
“It’s an area of dunes with some good science targets in and around it,” the rover added. “I’ll spy a few from here, doing science from afar, then circle around and keep exploring.”
As promised, the views are extraordinary, as seen in a panorama accompanying the update — a reminder of the countless landscapes we have yet to see for ourselves on the Red Planet and beyond.
Rover Journey
The six-wheeled rover officially kicked off its science phase on June 1, leaving the “Octavia E. Butler” landing site where it touched down earlier this year.
It has since covered roughly 0.57 miles, according to geolocation data, making several stops along the way to explore its surroundings.
The Séítah (“amidst the sand” in the Navajo language) geological unit is adjacent to the crater-filled floor of Jezero, dubbed the Crater Floor Fractured Rough. The Séítah area is filled with layered rocks and sand dunes.
“Starting with the Crater Floor Fractured Rough and Seitah geologic units allows us to start our exploration of Jezero at the very beginning,” said Kevin Hand, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a June 9 statement.
“This area was under at least 100 meters [328 feet] of water 3.8 billion years ago,” he added. “We don’t know what stories the rocks and layered outcrops will tell us, but we’re excited to get started.”
On Auto
Thanks to Perseverance’s sophisticated “AutoNav” mode, which essentially turns it into a self-driving car, the rover is about to really get going.
“I’m getting a good feel for driving, and starting to take charge more to find my own way,” the rover’s account tweeted today. “By mapping while I drive, I may be able to cover up to 5 or 6 times more distance in a day. Good, since there’s so much to get to!”
An image showing a UFO was allegedly captured on closed circuit television (CCTV) in the United Kingdom in 2008.
(Image credit: Lenscap/Alamy Stock Photo)
For the last few weeks, the imminent release of a U.S. intelligence report on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) had stirred excitement across the United States. So it's not surprising to find that most Americans believe in intelligent life inhabiting other worlds, according to a survey conducted before the report was made public on June 25.
Approximately 65% of Americans concur that extraterrestrials exist, and about 51% say that UFO sightings reported by members of the U.S. military represent visits from intelligent aliens, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.
Pew released their survey results prior to World UFO Day, an informal holiday celebrated on July 2 by UFO enthusiasts. The date is a nod to the purported 1947 UFO crash on a ranch at Roswell, New Mexico, according to the World UFO Day website. While the exact date of the alleged Roswell crash is unknown, the U.S. Army issued a press release on July 8, 1947, describing the recovery of a crashed flying disk from the ranch, launching an enduring fascination in the U.S. with extraterrestrials and UFOs (army representatives later identified the mysterious object as an errant weather balloon).
For the survey, Pew representatives questioned 10,417 American adults about aliens and UFOs. They found that about 76% of people between 18 and 29 years of age were likely to believe in intelligent aliens, compared with 69% of people ages 30 to 49 and only 58% of people ages 50 to 64. Regardless of age, most people who were surveyed — 87% — rejected the notion that UFOs posed a threat to national security — although the question didn't break down whether that's because they believe UFOs are ordinary objects or because they believe the aliens flying these UFOs are friendly.
The long-awaited government report on UFOs was promised to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee six months ago. The committee requested an investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), to be delivered by the the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense, at a time no more than 180 days from Dec. 21, 2020 — the date when the Intelligence Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year 2021 was enacted.
While Pentagon officials released most of the new report, part of it remains classified and is not available to the public, Live Science previously reported. However, the report did reveal that military aviators recorded 144 UAP sightings between 2004 and 2021, of which only one could be definitively identified — as a weather balloon, the report said.
The report did not describe any UAPs as extraterrestrial in origin, instead saying "there are probably multiple types of UAP requiring different explanations based on the range of appearances and behaviors described in the available reporting."
Based on new analysis of data collected by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (or MARSIS), Mars may have dozens of lakes hidden underneath the planet’s south pole.
We already know that Mars has water as data collected by Europe’s Mars Express spacecraft revealed evidence of a large subsurface lake around the south pole area back in 2018. It is located approximately a mile (1.6 kilometers) underneath the surface of the planet and measures about 12 miles in width (19.3 kilometers). The MARSIS instrument then detected three more underground lakes – all measuring around 6 miles in width (9.7 kilometers).
And now, new research has suggested that there may be much more water under the Red Planet’s south pole that experts previously didn’t know about. Aditya Khuller, who is an Arizona State University doctoral student, as well as Jeffrey Plaut from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California and MARSIS co-principal investigator, studied 44,000 observations of the planet’s south pole area that were collected by MARSIS over a time frame of 15 years.
They discovered dozens of radar reflections that looked like the previous four lakes found in the region. What’s even more incredible was that these signals were detected pretty close to the surface of the planet where the cold temperatures would make it impossible to have liquid water – at least that’s what was previously believed.
In a statement, Plaut described their findings, “We’re not certain whether these signals are liquid water or not, but they appear to be much more widespread than what the original paper found,” adding, “Either liquid water is common beneath Mars’ south pole, or these signals are indicative of something else.”
If these signals actually are liquid water, how is it possible that it hasn’t frozen over with the extremely cold temperatures? Mars has an average surface temperature of minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62 degrees Celsius) which would certainly freeze water. One possibility (but highly unlikely) is volcanism as Khuller addressed in the same statement, “…we haven’t really seen any strong evidence for recent volcanism at the south pole, so it seems unlikely that volcanic activity would allow subsurface liquid water to be present throughout this region.”
How much water is actually on Mars?
While experts still aren’t exactly sure as to what the radar reflections were picking up, if it is liquid water located relatively close to the surface, this would be incredible news regarding how much water is on the Red Planet and if there could be any potential life. Their study was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters where it can be read in full.
Pictures taken of Mars’ south pole can be seen here.
The bright white region of this image, captured by Europe's Mars Express spacecraft in December 2012, shows the icy cap that covers Mars’ south pole, composed of frozen water and frozen carbon dioxide.
(Image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/Bill Dunford)
The colored dots represent sites where bright radar reflections have been spotted by ESA’s Mars Express orbiter at Mars’ south polar cap. Such reflections have previously been interpreted as subsurface liquid water, but their prevalence and proximity to the surface suggests they may be something else.
This destructive cosmic event has puzzled scientists for more than a century
A mysterious blast in 1908, thought to have been caused by a meteor, flattened a Siberian taiga forest. This photo was taken in 1938, during an expedition by Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik, investigating the event.
(Image credit: Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
A new explanation for a massive blast over a remote Siberian forest in 1908 is even stranger than the mysterious incident itself.
Known as the Tunguska event, the blast flattened more than 80 million trees in seconds, over an area spanning nearly 800 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) — but left no crater. A meteor that exploded before hitting the ground was thought by many to be the culprit. However, a comet or asteroid would likely have left behind rocky fragments after blowing up, and no "smoking gun" remnants of a cosmic visitor have ever been found.
Now, a team of researchers has proposed a solution to this long-standing puzzle: A large iron meteor hurtled toward Earth and came just close enough to generate a tremendous shock wave. But the meteor then curved away from our planet without breaking up, its mass and momentum carrying it onward in its journey through space.
On the morning of June 30, 1908, the sky above Siberia flared so bright and hot that a witness standing dozens of kilometers from the site thought that his shirt had caught fire, said Vladimir Pariev, co-author of the new Tunguska study and a researcher with the P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
Following the bright light, which lasted for about 1 minute, was an explosion that smashed windows and knocked people off their feet in a town more than 35 miles (60 km) away, the BBC reported. "The sky was split in two, and high above the forest the whole northern part of the sky appeared covered with fire," another witness said in a testimonial. Energy released by the blast was later estimated by scientists to be 185 times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, according to NASA.
Initial explanations for the blast included volcanic eruptions and mining accidents, according to NASA, but those claims were not supported by physical evidence. Other later suggestions were more far-fetched, such as a crashed UFO or a black hole collision with Earth — a study describing the black hole hypothesis was published in the journal Nature in 1973 (and was soundly debunked in another Nature study published just a few months later).
The most widely accepted scientific explanation is that a rocky asteroid or comet entered Earth's atmosphere and then disintegrated with a bang about 3 to 6 miles (5 to 10 km) above the ground, Pariev told Live Science in an email. But such an explosion should have strewn the ground with rocky debris, which no one has ever found. By comparison, a meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February 2013 broke into fragments that were discovered within a week, Pariev said.
What if, the researchers questioned, the Tunguska meteor were made of iron rather than rock? Could a massive iron meteor "graze" Earth's atmosphere, approaching close enough to generate a powerful shock wave, then yank free of the planet's gravitational pull and escape without fragmenting?
To test that hypothesis, the scientists calculated meteor paths using computer models. They looked at objects that were as small as 164 feet (50 meters) across and as large as 656 feet (200 m) in diameter. Objects were made of rock, ice or iron, and approached in a trajectory that brought them within 6 to 10 miles (10 to 15 km) of Earth's surface.
The scientists' calculations showed that space bodies made of rock and ice would completely disintegrate under the enormous pressures generated by their passage through the tropospheric altitudes. "Only asteroids made of iron larger than 100 m [328 feet] in diameter can survive and not get cracked and fragmented into many separate pieces," they said.
The researchers estimated that the Tunguska meteor likely measured between 328 and 656 feet (100 and 200 m) in diameter, and hurtled through Earth's atmosphere at roughly 45,000 mph (72,000 km/h). During its fiery passage, the meteor would lose some of its mass. But iron shed by a meteor traveling at such speeds would have escaped as gas and plasma, oxidized in the atmosphere and then dispersed on the ground, becoming nearly indistinguishable from terrestrial iron oxides, according to the study.
Prior studies have calculated the power of shock waves produced by meteors based on the object entering Earth's atmosphere at a very steep angle "and either hitting the ground or exploding in midair," Pariev said.
In the case of the Tunguska meteor, the iron-rich space object could have entered Earth's atmosphere at a very shallow angle — about 9 to 12 degrees tangential to the surface. It then would have grazed through the atmosphere, creating a shock wave at an altitude of around 6 to 10 miles (10 to 15 km) above the ground, capable of flattening trees for hundreds of kilometers and scorching the surface. But because of the meteor's mass and momentum, it didn't break up; it then exited the atmosphere and returned to space, the researchers reported.
However, some lingering questions about this scenario remain, said Mark Boslough, a research professor at the University of New Mexico and physicist with Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Boslough, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email that if an object "skimmed through the atmosphere" and didn't blow up, the resulting shock wave would be significantly weaker than an explosion's blast wave.
"An object that survived such a transit through the atmosphere could not have descended close enough to the surface for a sonic boom to do the kind of damage that was observed at Tunguska," Boslough said.
What's more, the pattern of felled trees at the site is radial — emanating from a single point of tremendous energy release, he said. That's something you'd expect to see after an explosion rather than a sonic boom, "even if it had been strong enough to blow trees over." Boslough added that eyewitness accounts at the time of the incident "are consistent with an object that was descending toward the surface before it exploded."
While the study authors didn't numerically calculate the impact of a shock wave that a "grazing" iron meteor of this size could produce, their estimates still suggest that such a wave would be powerful enough to flatten trees and damage the ground as the Tunguska event did, Pariev said in the email.
"Detailed calculations of the shock waves from a grazing asteroid is the subject of our ongoing research," he added.
Japan is opening up a UFO lab near the Fukushima nuclear disaster to research the enigma after a flurry of local sightings of unidentified flying objects
Japan is opening up a UFO lab near the Fukushima nuclear disaster to research the enigma after a flurry of local sightings of unidentified flying objects
Japan is opening up a research lab dedicated to unexplained phenomena
The International UFO Laboratory opened on June 24, the day before the Pentagon released its 9-page report on unidentified aerial phenomena
The lab will 'strive to unravel the enigma' of UFOs
Its director is Takeharu Mikami, the editor-in-chief of Mu occult magazine
The lab will look into various sightings, including the Mount Senganmori incident in the 1970s
It will be in Iiono, miles away from the Fukushima nuclear disaster
Nearly a year after it was reported the Japanese Defense Ministry would draw up plans for any potential encounters with UFOs, the country is opening up a research lab dedicated to unexplained phenomena near the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
According to Japanese news outlet The Mainichi, the International UFO Laboratory opened up on June 24, the day before the Pentagon released its 9-page report on unidentified aerial phenomena.
The lab, which is on the grounds of UFO Interactive Hall, will 'strive to unravel the enigma' of these objects and its director will be 51-year-old Takeharu Mikami, the editor-in-chief of Mu occult magazine.
'Until now, even if UFOs were discovered, the information was shared only on an individual level,' Mikami was quoted as saying by the news outlet.
'I hope the research lab will serve as a base receiving information, and lead to new discoveries. I'd like to get to the bottom of their identity.'
Japan is opening up a research lab dedicated to unexplained phenomena near the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster
Its director is Takeharu Mikami, the editor-in-chief of Mu occult magazine. The lab will look into various sightings, including the Mount Senganmori incident in the 1970s
The new lab is located in Iino, Fukushima Prefecture, just miles from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Fukushima-1) in Okuma, Fukushima.
The UFO lab will look into a number of sightings that have occurred near the district, which calls itself the 'hometown of UFOs.'
In the 1970s, a light-emitting cone-shaped object was witnessed near Mount Senganmori, which eventually became known as the Mount Senganmori incident.
Mikami wants residents of the area to share images with the laboratory.
'Particularly during quarantine, look up at the sky and see if you can see anything. I hope the research institute will be a base for receiving more information on UFOs so we can get to the bottom of what they are,' Mikami said in a translated article from Kyodo News.
In May 2020, the Japanese Defense Ministry began to 'consider procedures to respond to, record and report encounters, but the unknown nature of such objects may confuse Self-Defense Forces pilots, including those of F-15 fighter jets,' according to Nippon News.
The update from the Defense Ministry came just one week after the Pentagon officially released three videos of unidentified aerial phenomena taken by Navy aircraft which had circulated in the public for years.
In April 2020, the Pentagon officially released three videos of unidentified aerial phenomena taken by Navy aircraft which had circulated in the public for years
On June 25, the long-awaited report from the Pentagon on the subject of 'unidentified aerial phenomenon' (UAPs) offered no explanation for 140 of the 144 observations dating back to 2004
Last week, the long-awaited report from the Pentagon on the subject of 'unidentified aerial phenomenon' (UAPs) offered no explanation for 140 of the 144 observations dating back to 2004.
The declassified June 25 report, which came from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, added that it lacks sufficient data to determine the nature of mysterious flying objects.
'In 18 incidents, described in 21 reports, observers reported unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics,' the report reads.
'Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings.
'The UAPTF holds a small amount of data that appear to show UAP demonstrating acceleration or a degree of signature management. Additional rigorous analysis are necessary by multiple teams or groups of technical experts to determine the nature and validity of these data.
'We are conducting further analysis to determine if breakthrough technologies were demonstrated.'
Only one of 144 reports of UFOs - or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena as the government calls them - can be explained while the others can barely be classified
The government report says there are 144 reported UFOs - or UAPs - between 2004 and 2021.
These reports include a spherical flying object buzzing over Navy warships and disappearing into the Pacific ocean, a tic-tac shaped flying object mimicking Super Hornet pilots' maneuvers and pyramid-shaped flying objects.
The only one that can be explained with 'high confidence' is a deflated balloon.
Because the reported UAPs showed unusual flight characteristics and displayed a range of appearances and behaviors, the report groups the UAPs into five categories.
1. Airborne clutter - These objects include birds, balloons, recreational unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or airborne debris like plastic bags that muddle a scene and affect an operator’s ability to identify true targets, such as enemy aircraft.
2. Natural atmospheric phenomena- Natural atmospheric phenomena includes ice crystals, moisture and thermal fluctuations that may register on some infrared and radar systems.
3. USG or U.S. industry developmental programs - Some UAP observations could be attributable to developments and classified programs by U.S. entities. The report states, 'We were unable to confirm, however, that these systems accounted for any of the UAP reports we collected.'
4. Foreign adversary systems - Some UAP may be technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or a non-governmental entity but the report says the US is unaware that any nation has technology that's been reported.
5. A catchall 'other' bin- Most of the UAP described in the dataset probably remain unidentified due to limited data or challenges to collection processing or analysis and may require additional scientific knowledge and advances to categorize them. 'The UAPTF intends to focus additional analysis on the small number of cases where a UAP appeared to display unusual flight characteristics or signature management,' according to the report.
The International UFO Laboratory in Fukushima opened on June 24. It aims to investigate mysterious UFO sightings over Japan. International UFO Laboratory
A UFO research lab has opened in Fukushima to study UFO encounters.
The International UFO Laboratory is based in Iino, a rural town known for strange occurrences.
The opening of the Fukushima facility comes amid a marked increase in interest in UFOs worldwide.
The new UFO lab opened its doors last week in the rural town of Iino, Fukushima Prefecture, and its team plans to delve into the mysteries of the country's odd and inexplicable sightings.
According to a report by local Japanese news outlet The Mainichi, the International UFO Lab opened on the premises of the UFO Interactive Hall, a facility filled with some 3,000 pieces of UFO-related materials and clues. The facility celebrated its opening on June 24, which was dubbed UFO Day after the first reported UFO sighting in the US.
While Mikami does not appear to have a professional background in science, he intends to work with the UFO museum's curator, Tsugio Kinoshita, to study these flying objects, per local news outlet Fukushima Minpo News. And according to the lab's website, they are looking for scientists — and the UFO-obsessed — alike to contribute to their records of UFO sightings.
Mikami appealed to residents of the town to share materials like smartphone images with the center, wrote Kyodo News.
"Particularly during quarantine, look up at the sky and see if you can see anything. I hope the research institute will be a base for receiving more information on UFOs so we can get to the bottom of what they are," said Mikami to Kyodo News.
The Institute was located there because the surrounding area is known for unexplainable aerial sightings since the 1970s, per a Yahoo! Japan report. One of these events included a bright cone-shaped object soaring above the town that was spotted in the 70s, according to Asahi News.
On June 30, veteran UFO researcher Richard Dolan released a leaked summary of the classified version of the UAP report delivered to the US Senate five days earlier. The alleged summary asserts that members of Congress were informed of eight breakthrough propulsion technologies being studied and tested at Nevada’s Area 51 and Tonopah Test Range. None of the advanced propulsion technologies were deployed outside of these testing facilities, according to the summary, and therefore none of craft identified in the June 25 UAP report belong to the US.
This Exopolitics Today podcast examines competing claims over whether evidence exists that such craft have been successfully built and deployed by different branches of the US military.
The Untold History of America's Reverse Engineering of Alien Spacecraft fromEXOPOLITICS.ORG
We are on the verge of an official report being delivered by the Intelligence Community to the US Senate acknowledging the reality of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs/UFOs) as an unknown national security threat. The Deep State will use all its political and media assets to perpetuate a major lie over the origin of these craft and the threat they pose. In fact, it is well known by many within the intelligence community that most of the UAPs/UFOs seen over the US and around the world are reverse engineered extraterrestrial spacecraft.
In the immediate post-World War II era, leaked documents reveal that the US military embarked on an ambitious research and development program aiming to reverse engineer recovered extraterrestrial spacecraft. Military laboratories, government funded think-tanks, scientific advisory groups, and leading aerospace corporations collaborated in trying to understand the highly advanced alien technologies, but their combined efforts resulted in limited progress. This is because most of the retrieved craft were Trojan horses, insofar as the technologies were too advanced for Earth’s scientific community, thereby luring US policy makers into seeking extraterrestrial assistance.
Technological breakthroughs only occurred with the assistance of German scientists brought into the US through Operation Paperclip with links to a breakaway German colony in Antarctica, and with extraterrestrial entities found at crash sites willing to assist. There appeared to be two distinct alien factions willing to share their technology secrets with the US military. Eventually, several agreements were reached during the Eisenhower administration which made reverse engineering possible, and major aerospace companies were enlisted for projects that received the highest security classification possible. These covert reverse engineering efforts led to the development of advanced technologies used in multiple secret space programs underway today.
In the meantime, the US intelligence community initiated a sophisticated psychological warfare operation to hide these reverse engineering programs, the reality of extraterrestrial life, and the existence of a German space program out of Antarctica. Today, we are on the verge of an official disclosure initiative that is best described as a Limited Hangout designed to deceive and mislead the public. It will depict UFOs as an unknown national security threat, requiring massive military investments and further, instigate new levels of public fear through controlled media manipulation.
In order to understand what is coming, everyone needs to know the historical background which illuminates many of the lies already being spun around disclosure. This is particularly the case when it comes to an emerging disclosure narrative that is likely to acknowledge the existence of recovered extraterrestrial craft, while depicting US reverse engineering efforts as historically unsuccessful.
In this webinar, Dr. Michael Salla, author of the best-selling Secret Space Programs series will reveal the full extent of the massive reverse engineering efforts set up in the US, and how this relates to the scheduled June 2021 Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon report to be delivered to the US Congress.
Pre-Order Now - Scheduled Release is June 21, 2021
CLAY DUG UP BY NASA MARS ROVER MAKES IT SEEM LIKE RED PLANET COULD’VE SUPPORTED LIFE
CLAY DUG UP BY NASA MARS ROVER MAKES IT SEEM LIKE RED PLANET COULD’VE SUPPORTED LIFE
THE SAMPLES ARE AN INDICATION THAT MARS MAY HAVE HAD HOSPITABLE CONDITIONS FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS.
Wet Clay
Back in 2016, NASA’s Curiosity rover dug up some Martian clay that scientists are now saying is compelling evidence that the Red Planet could have once hosted life.
The finding suggests that Mars experienced a long period of relatively stable, hospitable conditions, according to research published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. That’s not even close to saying that Mars once hosted life, but it’s a promising sign that the planet was ever capable of doing so.
Terrestrial Clues
The key to the new study comes down to a mineral called glauconite. On Earth, glauconite often turns up in sediment beds at the bottom of bodies of water as well as in carbonates and sandstones, according to Phys.org. What all three have in common is that it takes them long, long time periods of relative stability in order to form.
Well, the scientists, who hail from NASA and a variety of research institutes in Spain, found that the Martian samples strongly resemble glauconitic clays in terms of both physical structure and chemical composition. With that discovery in hand, the team made a few evidence-based assumptions about what Mars must have been like in order for such a mineral to form.
Livable Conditions
First, they suggest that Mars had large bodies of water on the surface. That’s already a pretty well-accepted hypothesis, though, as more and more evidence of ancient rivers and lakes has piled up in recent years. But beyond that, the researchers say in the paper that whenever this ancient lake was around, Mars must have also low, temperate temperatures so that the lake didn’t immediately freeze or evaporate away. And then in order to actually form these clay deposits, that time period must have lasted for millions of years.
Again, that’s not direct evidence that life exists or ever existed on Mars. But a temperate, aqueous era that lasted that long would have given any budding life forms enough time to emerge and proliferate before the Martian environment turned into the frozen hellscape it is today — and that’s intriguing.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Perhaps not, some say.
And if someone is there to hear it? If you think that means it obviously did make a sound, you might need to revise that opinion.
We have found a new paradox in quantum mechanics—one of our two most fundamental scientific theories, together with Einstein's theory of relativity—that throws doubt on some common-sense ideas about physical reality.
Quantum mechanics vs common sense
Take a look at these three statements:
When someone observes an event happening, it really happened.
It is possible to make free choices, or at least, statistically random choices.
A choice made in one place can't instantly affect a distant event. (Physicists call this "locality.")
These are all intuitive ideas, and widely believed even by physicists. But our research, published in Nature Physics, shows they cannot all be true—or quantum mechanics itself must break down at some level.
This is the strongest result yet in a long series of discoveries in quantum mechanics that have upended our ideas about reality. To understand why it's so important, let's look at this history.
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
The battle for reality
Quantum mechanics works extremely well to describe the behavior of tiny objects, such as atoms or particles of light (photons). But that behavior is … very odd.
In many cases, quantum theory doesn't give definite answers to questions such as "where is this particle right now?" Instead, it only provides probabilities for where the particle might be found when it is observed.
For Niels Bohr, one of the founders of the theory a century ago, that's not because we lack information, but because physical properties like "position" don't actually exist until they are measured.
And what's more, because some properties of a particle can't be perfectly observed simultaneously—such as position and velocity—they can't be real simultaneously.
No less a figure than Albert Einstein found this idea untenable. In a 1935 article with fellow theorists Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, he argued there must be more to reality than what quantum mechanics could describe.
The article considered a pair of distant particles in a special state now known as an "entangled" state. When the same property (say, position or velocity) is measured on both entangled particles, the result will be random—but there will be a correlation between the results from each particle.
For example, an observer measuring the position of the first particle could perfectly predict the result of measuring the position of the distant one, without even touching it. Or the observer could choose to predict the velocity instead. This had a natural explanation, they argued, if both properties existed before being measured, contrary to Bohr's interpretation.
However, in 1964 Northern Irish physicist John Bell found Einstein's argument broke down if you carried out a more complicated combination of different measurements on the two particles.
Bell showed that if the two observers randomly and independently choose between measuring one or another property of their particles, like position or velocity, the average results cannot be explained in any theory where both position and velocity were pre-existing local properties.
That sounds incredible, but experiments have now conclusively demonstrated Bell's correlations do occur. For many physicists, this is evidence that Bohr was right: physical properties don't exist until they are measured.
But that raises the crucial question: what is so special about a "measurement"?
The observer, observed
In 1961, the Hungarian-American theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner devised a thought experiment to show what's so tricky about the idea of measurement.
He considered a situation in which his friend goes into a tightly sealed lab and performs a measurement on a quantum particle—its position, say.
However, Wigner noticed that if he applied the equations of quantum mechanics to describe this situation from the outside, the result was quite different. Instead of the friend's measurement making the particle's position real, from Wigner's perspective the friend becomes entangled with the particle and infected with the uncertainty that surrounds it.
This is similar to Schrödinger's famous cat, a thought experiment in which the fate of a cat in a box becomes entangled with a random quantum event.
For Wigner, this was an absurd conclusion. Instead, he believed that once the consciousness of an observer becomes involved, the entanglement would "collapse" to make the friend's observation definite.
But what if Wigner was wrong?
Our experiment
In our research, we built on an extended version of the Wigner's friend paradox, first proposed by Časlav Brukner of the University of Vienna. In this scenario, there are two physicists—call them Alice and Bob—each with their own friends (Charlie and Debbie) in two distant labs.
There's another twist: Charlie and Debbie are now measuring a pair of entangled particles, like in the Bell experiments.
As in Wigner's argument, the equations of quantum mechanics tell us Charlie and Debbie should become entangled with their observed particles. But because those particles were already entangled with each other, Charlie and Debbie themselves should become entangled—in theory.
But what does that imply experimentally?
Our experiment goes like this: the friends enter their labs and measure their particles. Some time later, Alice and Bob each flip a coin. If it's heads, they open the door and ask their friend what they saw. If it's tails, they perform a different measurement.
This different measurement always gives a positive outcome for Alice if Charlie is entangled with his observed particle in the way calculated by Wigner. Likewise for Bob and Debbie.
In any realization of this measurement, however, any record of their friend's observation inside the lab is blocked from reaching the external world. Charlie or Debbie will not remember having seen anything inside the lab, as if waking up from total anesthesia.
But did it really happen, even if they don't remember it?
If the three intuitive ideas at the beginning of this article are correct, each friend saw a real and unique outcome for their measurement inside the lab, independent of whether or not Alice or Bob later decided to open their door. Also, what Alice and Charlie see should not depend on how Bob's distant coin lands, and vice versa.
We showed that if this were the case, there would be limits to the correlations Alice and Bob could expect to see between their results. We also showed that quantum mechanics predicts Alice and Bob will see correlations that go beyond those limits.
Next, we did an experiment to confirm the quantum mechanical predictions using pairs of entangled photons. The role of each friend's measurement was played by one of two paths each photon may take in the setup, depending on a property of the photon called "polarization." That is, the path "measures" the polarization.
Our experiment is only really a proof of principle, since the "friends" are very small and simple. But it opens the question whether the same results would hold with more complex observers.
We may never be able to do this experiment with real humans. But we argue that it may one day be possible to create a conclusive demonstration if the "friend" is a human-level artificial intelligence running in a massive quantum computer.
What does it all mean?
Although a conclusive test may be decades away, if the quantum mechanical predictions continue to hold, this has strong implications for our understanding of reality—even more so than the Bell correlations. For one, the correlations we discovered cannot be explained just by saying that physical properties don't exist until they are measured.
Now the absolute reality of measurement outcomes themselves is called into question.
Our results force physicists to deal with the measurement problem head on: either our experiment doesn't scale up, and quantum mechanics gives way to a so-called "objective collapse theory," or one of our three common-sense assumptions must be rejected.
There are theories, like de Broglie-Bohm, that postulate "action at a distance," in which actions can have instantaneous effects elsewhere in the universe. However, this is in direct conflict with Einstein's theory of relativity.
Some search for a theory that rejects freedom of choice, but they either require backwards causality, or a seemingly conspiratorial form of fatalism called "superdeterminism".
Another way to resolve the conflict could be to make Einstein's theory even more relative. For Einstein, different observers could disagree about when or where something happens—but what happens was an absolute fact.
However, in some interpretations, such as relational quantum mechanics, QBism, or the many-worlds interpretation, events themselves may occur only relative to one or more observers. A fallen tree observed by one may not be a fact for everyone else.
All of this does not imply that you can choose your own reality. Firstly, you can choose what questions you ask, but the answers are given by the world. And even in a relational world, when two observers communicate, their realities are entangled. In this way a shared reality can emerge.
Which means that if we both witness the same tree falling and you say you can't hear it, you might just need a hearing aid.
For several decades—well over half a century, in fact—information has been collected about unidentified aerial phenomena.
That’s what they’re called in modern parlance, at least. Prior to the last few years, these mysteries of the skies were more commonly known as unidentified flying objects or UFOs. This had been the name given to them by Edward Ruppelt, the first director of Project Blue Book, the United States Air Force’s systematic study of anomalous aerial phenomena that ran from March 1952 until December 1969. The program was the successor to a pair of previous studies, Project Sign and Project Grudge, undertaken by the USAF beginning in the late 1940s.
Project Blue Book, although it had been the longest-running government study of UFOs to date, produced limited results regarding the potential that an unrecognized form of technology existed and operated in our skies. Among its primary findings had been three main points:
“No UFO reported, investigated and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security.”
“There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as ‘unidentified’ represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge.”
“There was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as ‘unidentified’ were extraterrestrial vehicles.”
This might all be news to anyone who hasn’t been following the UFO/UAP subject now for more than the last few years. In fact, it might also be news to the most recent government group that has been convened to analyze the problem, which appeared to frame its analysis of the issue within a narrow period spanning only the last few years.
Recently, a widely anticipated government report on UFOs was recently delivered to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence by the Navy’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF). In it, we learned that our government has been using a formalized method of collecting reports on UAP encountered by our military since early 2019, involving a refined mechanism for the collection of data on such reports that subsequently was adopted by the USAF in late 2020. Based on this, the Navy’s UAPTF has analyzed 144 incidents that have been logged since 2004, the majority of which occurred within the last two years.
To summarize their conclusions:all but one of these incidents remain unexplained, and the technology behind them could represent both a hazard to aviators, as well as a “challenge” to United States National Security.
Despite the merit of the Task Force’s analysis of recent reports involving UAP, it leaves much to be desired. For instance, the nine-page report—which also consists of a cover page, and appendixes at the back—leaves us with a total of just six pages that are actually related to the discussion of what the UAPTF learned from studying UAP reports during its short time in operation. What’s more, of the 144 reports that were logged, there were no details provided that gave any specific information about any of these incidents… not even one.
Indeed, the UAPTF report leaves much to be desired for longtime followers of the UFO topic. Also contained within the report are a few curiosities; take, for instance, the following excerpt regarding the USAF’s involvement, and its limited participation in the analysis of the phenomenon in question:
“Although USAF data collection has been limited historically the USAF began a six-month pilot program in November 2020 to collect in the most likely areas to encounter UAP and is evaluating how to normalize future collection, reporting, and analysis across the entire Air Force.”
Obviously, the report’s authors must have meant that the USAF has played a “limited” role in the recent collection of information on this topic, which the UAP Task Force relied upon for its analysis. However, many who read this when the report appeared online were no doubt aware of the irony in the statement: the one branch of the military that actually did undertake what remains the single longest study of unidentified flying objects in American history with Project Blue Book is now considered to have participated in “data collection [that] has been limited historically”?
Of course, there are other issues the public version of the UAPTF report presents, and we must recognize that this is also considered to be nothing more than a preliminary report, as its title aptly conveys. Nonetheless, many Americans and others around the world had probably been hoping for a bit more from our government about its involvement with the study of UAP.
Perhaps with time, there will be additional analysis and even portions of the classified version of the report that will be obtained and released by diligent transparency advocates who make frequent use of the Freedom of Information Act. However, for the time being, it appears that “what you see is what you get,” and in light of that, the American public has been left wanting on the subject of UFOs, or whatever else people may choose to call them.
It certainly isn’t the first time it has happened either… indeed, some things really don’t ever change, do they?
There are UFO reports of all shapes and sizes, spanning the globe, and these can run the range from the odd to the outright insane. In many cases the elements come together to form a case that not only includes traditionally reliable witnesses, but many of them, all seeing the same thing and leaving us to wonder what is going on. In 1960 there was just such a case, which was first brought to the public’s attention by two sober, reliable police officers, and which would later be corroborated by many others to leave it a highly intriguing account that has never been solved.
August 13, 1960, started off fairly normally in the small town of Corning, California, near another larger town called Red Bluff, and on this hot night California Highway Patrol officers Charles A. Carson and Stanley E. Scott were out at work along Hoag Road. It was a hot, lazy evening, with the two of them looking for speeding motorists, but no one was really out in the rural area, and so they were mostly just driving along lost to their thoughts. Just before midnight they noticed something in the sky that they at first took to be an airliner, but it was flying so low that they feared it was in trouble, possibly even coming in to crash. They stopped their car to get a better look, and it would soon become apparent that this was no normal aircraft. Carson would later say of what happened:
From our position outside the car the first thing we noticed was an absolute silence. Still assuming it to be an aircraft with power off we continued to watch until the object was probably within 100′ to 200′ of the ground when it suddenly reversed completely, at high speed and gained approximately 500′ altitude. There the object stopped, at this time it was clearly visible to both of us and obviously not an aircraft of any design familiar to us. It was surrounded by a glow making the round or oblong object visible. At each end, or each side of the object there were definite red lights. At times about five white lights were visible between the red lights. As we watched the object moved again and performed aerial feats that were actually unbelievable. At this time, we radioed Tehama County Sheriff’s Office requesting they contact local radar base. The Radar Base confirmed the U.F.O. – completely unidentified.
In the meantime, the two men continued to observe the object, which they described as “as large or larger than an airliner,” completely transfixed by what they were seeing. At this point they had no idea what it could be up there doing its aerial acrobatics, and even as they excitedly wondered to each other what it was things got weirder when the object began to show signs that it knew they were there, on several occasions approaching them and then moving away again, all while occasionally lighting up the ground below with a bright red light. Officer Carson would explain:
On two occasions the object came directly towards the patrol vehicle, each time it approached, the object swept the area with a huge red light. Officer Scott turned the red light on the patrol vehicle towards the object and it immediately went away from us. We observed the object use the red beam approximately 6 or 7 times, sweeping the sky and ground areas.
After this, the mysterious craft then began to slowly move off to the east, and not wanting to lose sight of it the officers followed in their car. They kept increasing their speed to keep up with it, and were now chasing it down the road, and although they lost sight of it a few times they managed to relocate it again. At one point, they were shocked to see a similar light begin approaching from the south. This second inscrutable object approached the first and they took up a tight formation, after which they stopped and hovered there for some time, sporadically shooting red beams towards the ground, before both of them sped off to the east and disappeared. The two startled officers then went back to the Tehama County Sheriff’s Office, where they found that two deputies had also seen the strange object. Carson would say of this:
We returned to the Tehama County Sheriff’s Office and met Deputy Fry and Deputy Montgomery, who had gone to Los Molinos after contacting the radar base. Both had seen the U. F. O. clearly and described to us what we saw. The night jailer also was able to see the object for a short time, each described the object and its maneuvers exactly as we saw them. We first saw the object at 2350 hours and observed it for approximately two hours and 15 minutes. Each time the object neared us we experienced radio interference.
Image by Steve Baxter
The objects were also allegedly seen by another deputy, other Highway Patrol Officers, the night jailer, several prisoners, and some residents of the area, with around a dozen people having also observed one or both of them. In one case a formation of eight mysterious lights was supposedly seen. On top of this, the deputies who had seen the original object also reported trying to follow it as it had sped off along to its rendezvous with the other. Deputy Fry would explain in a report that would be heavily redacted and later released by the Air Force of what he and four prisoners had seen:
At 12:00 Midnight this Officer and Officer Montgomery went to Los Molinas and set on a small hill to the East named or called Blueberry Hill and at approximately 12:30AM of 8-14-60 observed four objects in the Western sky, they were traveling from the south to the north in a straight line and at times they would go straight up or down, one of the objects seem [sic] to stop and hover over the Red Bluff area. After a short time, there was an object seen going from the North to the South. I went out side of the Tehama Co. Jail to check the sky as officer Montgomery radioed that he had an object in the area that had appeared to have landed twice to the east of Los Molinas, on checking out side of the Jail observed a object coming in from the west to a position of about South East of the jail, and it appeared to stop and hover for a moment in that position. I called to the four trusties a [Blacked Out], [Blacked Out], [Blacked Out] and a [Blacked Out] to come out side and observe the flying object, by the time the four men arrived the object was hovering and it looked like a large Rail Road car with two large Red Lights one on each end, the whole object was a pale yellow glow in color and white lights appeared along it in three or four places which may have been windows. The object then took off in a southerly direction and passed out of sight without any of the above four persons and this writer hearing any type of motor or sound from the Object.
This was a great relief to officers Carson and Scott, because they had not believed their own eyes, and had thought that everyone would think they were crazy. Officer Carson would say of this in a radio interview on the matter:
I am like officer Scott, I still find it rather difficult to believe even after watching. It was amazing to sit out there for two hours and fifteen minutes watching this thing, and it is even more difficult to tell someone else what you saw. It is quite an experience. That is all you could say about it. It was definitely not a balloon or optical illusion. We saw something out there. I could hardly believe what I had seen out there and I was thankful for the fact that there were other officers from different agencies that had seen the object, plus residents of the area and people traveling through because myself — I don’t think if I had seen it and no one else had seen it — I would have been pretty confused.
Image by Steve Baxter
In the meantime, the Red Bluff Air Force Station, a radar-only site at nearby Red Bluff, who had originally confirmed to deputy Fry that they had made radar contact with something strange, were now flatly denying that they had, claiming that they had seen nothing unusual. In the following week after Carson and Scott’s sighting there would be myriad other reports of something strange in the sky, some by similarly traditionally reliable witnesses, and this is what must have finally caused the Air Force to move in for their own investigation, sending in investigators from their Project Blue Book division, which was specifically tasked with dealing with UFO reports. They would immediately confirm that there had been various sightings both before and after the Conrad and Scott sighting, and investigator Duane K. Bilslend would write of this in his report:
Local inquiry succeeded in locating various residents who had witnessed the appearance of UFO previous to or on the same date the Highway Patrol Officers had reported seeing the one in question. The undersigned interviewed each of the above persons and based on a personal opinion formed through observation of credibility, responsibility and reputation, concluded that an unidentified object and/or objects of similar physical appearance, whether real or imaginary, were observed by various solid citizens of Tehama County California.
This all seems to be very promising, with a solid series of sightings made by many disparate reliable witnesses all describing the same thing, but unfortunately, the Project Blue Book investigation was under the authority of a Colonel Philip G. Evans, who was at the time was very keen to end the Air Force’s investigation into UFOs and was known for conjuring up reports that were riddled with misinformation and dishonest data and information, mis-stating, fabricating, or omitting relevant facts, as well as often offering up lengthy and scientifically questionable “rational explanations” that sounded great to skeptics but didn’t always add up and were just as pseudo-scientific as anything else. His dismissive final report on the matter would read in part:
The conclusion of ATIC is that the sightings which occurred in the Red Bluff area were due to atmospheric refraction. It is an impossible task to determine what the exact light source was for each specific incident, but the planet Mars was the most probable culprit in the instance of the highway patrolmen. The planet at the time of the sighting was just below the horizon and probably hove into view due to the refraction of its light by the atmosphere. A contributing factor to the sightings could have been the layer of smoke which hung over the area in a thin stratiform layer. This smoke came from the forest fires in the area and hung in a layer due to the stable conditions associated with the inversion. In addition to the usual results of atmospheric refraction, special optical effects known as mirages may occur when there are strong temperature contrasts in adjacent layers of air. It is quite probable that reports of all of the sightings which occurred in California during the period 12-20 August 1960 did not reach ATIC. It is, therefore, impossible to make an accurate estimate as to how many sightings actually occurred and what percentage were due to the inversion. It is possible that some were due to other causes such as “hysteria” and the “get into the act” attitude of some people. However, in view of all available evidence in this case, it is concluded that the effects associated with the inversion were responsible for the sightings which occurred in the Red Bluff, California area between 12-20 August 1960.
This is despite the fact that Mars, Aldebaran, and Betelgeuse were all below the horizon at the time of the sighting, and an analysis of the meteorological records of the area for that night by atmospheric physicist James E. MacDonald did not find any evidence that would indicate the presence of a temperature inversion. Nevertheless, this was the Air Force story and they were sticking with it. As to what he thought of these findings, Officer Carson would say:
I have been told we saw Northern lights, a weather balloon, and now refractions. I served 4 years with the Air Force, I believe I am familiar with the Northern lights, also weather balloons. Officer Scott served as a paratrooper during the Korean Conflict. Both of us are aware of the tricks light can play on the eyes during darkness. We were aware of this at the time. Our observations and estimations of speed, size, etc. came from aligning the object with fixed objects on the horizon. I agree we find it difficult to believe what we were watching, but no one will ever convince us that we were witnessing a refraction of light.
Is that what this all was, just some refraction of light or some other mundane phenomena? Is so, how could it fool so many trained witnesses and be described by many people as something wholly otherworldly? Why did the Air Force confirm a radar lock on the object, only to then go and withdraw this? Just what was going on here? It is hard to say, and the Red Bluff incident remains a rather curious and intriguing mass sighting involving a good amount of very good witnesses, and which has never been adequately explained.
UFO Sighted Over Volcán Irazú, Costa Rica ( July 2, 2021 )
STATEMENT : Wie opinan de esto esto es en el Volcán Irazú, Costa Rica
TRANSLATE : What do you think about this? This is in the Volcán Irazú
Costa Rica credit : Hector Rivera
UFOs Sighted Over China ( June 29, 2021 )
UFOs were sighted over China on June 29, 2021 : video was taken by Cheng.33313333 and posted on Tik Tok
RELATED VIDEO
UAPs / UFOs Sighted Over Kansas ( June 29, 2021 )
Amazing UFO / Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sighting over Kansas
Statement :These UAPs or UFOs were spotted in Kansas in 29/06/2021. I would like you to try explaining these objects!
original and following with approximation and speed reduction.
They are everywhere
credit : GA. B.A.
UFO Sighted Over Dinkelsbühl, Germany ( July 2, 2021 )
This is the most documented UFO that was recorded at night the location of capturing this UNIDENTIFIED object is Germany.... Dinkelsbuhl town recorded in 2.07 2021. It's the most authentic capture of a triangular object that appeared in the air right above the front of the car road, some people will think why the author of this video didn't stop and video because she was terrified and it was happening quickly, you would they stopped at night as if such an object flew over your head, the author of this not alone film, I want to remain anonymous I think she has reasons and I don't blame her
UFO Sighted Over California Beach ( July 1, 2021 )
UFO sighted over California beach on July 1, 2021
STATEMENT : Ovni o Avión??? UFO or Plane???
credit : Dracko Mcfly
UFO Sighted Over Courrières, France ( July 2, 2021 )
Massive UFO was sighted over Courrières, Hauts-de-France region of France on July 2, 2021. Video was taken by Reynald Wisniewski
NOTE PETER2011 : in my personal opinion that is clearly a ZEPPELIN, a blimp thus...
MUFON CASE : 116646 Upland, California ( July 2, 2021 )
Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : Small blackened object descending over san bernadino mountains
Long Description of Sighting Report
When driving east bound on 210 freeway in upland. I Notice object falling leaving dark grey cloud like trail. Cloud remained and seemed to have internal structure partially visable.
Date Submitted : 2021-07-02
Date of Event : 2020-12-05 / 4:45PM
MUFON SUBMITTER FILE :
20201206162541.mp4 ( FILE 2 )
MUFON CASE : 116640 Mount Crested Butte, Colorado ( July 2, 2021 )
This was taken from my patio a couple days after the one I submitted to MUFON. This was filmed on my porch thru binoculars using a device that makes it possible. Sadly, I haven’t been able to video thru it when it’s dark though. This object is like many of the others. If you zoom in you can see that appears to be revolving. Also, it is clear from this video that the object flies into the cloud rather than the cloud obstructing the view of a celestial object.
Date Submitted :2021-07-02
Date of Event : 2021-04-19 / 4:18P
MUFON SUBMITTER FILE : MVI9247.MP4
MUFON CASE : 116639 Glendale, Arizona ( July 2, 2021 )
inc : 116464 Lumby, Canada : Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : Red and Blue Flying saucer that appears to change shapes, but could be blurring?
Long Description of Sighting Report
Saw black speck hovering up high in the sky and zoomed in on it and recorded a red and blue colored saucer type event. Tried to put camera on tripod and by that time, the object was gone.
Date Submitted : 2021-07-02 Date of Event :2021-07-02 / 10:56AM MUFON SUBMITTER FILE : MVI9247.MP4
VIDEO 2 : MUFON CASE : 116464 : Lumby, Canada I have seen this a couple of times within the last weeks.
Long Description of Sighting Report
I have been seeing this for the past few weeks. Randomly. It’s after the sun has gone down completely.
Date Submitted : 2021-06-24 Date of Event : 2021-06-23 / 9:38PM MUFON SUBMITTER FILES :
Leaked Info on UAP Task Force Report - The Alien Threat Narrative
Leaked Info on UAP Task Force Report - The Alien Threat Narrative
The UAP Task Force Report was finally released to the public last week, generally being panned by the UFO community. For understandable reasons, considering how vague and tepid it was.
UFO historian Richard Dolan examines the report, especially in light of claims regarding the so-called alien threat narrative.
He examines whether or not this latest report fits with the thesis that much of the recent UFO information is part of a psychological operation (psyop) or even a false flag designed to frighten and manipulate the public.
He also shares information that was leaked to him describing the classified portion of the UAP report. This is unconfirmed and should be taken as such.
UFO caught on thermal camera in Wales as UK gov urged to come clean
UFO caught on thermal camera in Wales as UK gov urged to come clean
AUFO which appeared to travelling around 106mph and is said to have been only visible on a thermal camera was filmed by a police helicopter in the UK. The eerie footage - which is similar to recent UFOs videos captured by the US military - was released by cops after a Freedom of Information (FOI) request appears to show the object moving over the Bristol Channel.
Image credit: The Sun.
Video shows the object moving against the wind as it appears to travel at high speed and is tracked by the police helicopter's FLIR thermal camera near St Athan in Wales at around 9pm on September 17, 2016.
Snippets of the video filmed off a screen were originally shared by the NPAS team at the time.
But now the full video of the strange encounter has been revealed following on FOI request by former cop turned UFO investigator Gary Heseltine.
And after a protracted battle to get his questions answered, he has called on the UK government to finally come clean on what it knows about UFOs.
NPAS South West tweeted at the time the object was not detected by local air traffic control and was described as "hot" as it travelled against the wind - meaning it was unlikely to be a balloon or lantern.
It was flying around 1,000 feet and was only visible when the cops noticed it on the thermal camera which they were said to be testing by pointing it at planes heading into Cardiff Airport.
The encounter lasted around eight minutes and the footage shows the camera changing settings as the cops appear to try to identify the strange phenomena.
Cops also said in a tweet in 2019 - more than three years after they released the short clip - "a drone is possible, but they were unable to keep up with it so it would have to have been very fast.".
Mr Heseltine's attempts to obtain the audio recordings from inside the police chopper along with a map of the object's movements, but this information was not provided in the FOI response.
"This is verified police helicopter FLIR footage showing an object not seen with the naked eye but clearly seen in the infrared spectrum. It is moving against the wind, so it is not a balloon, nor is emitting any heat signature indicating a propulsion system," he told The Sun Online.
A teacher who claimed to see UFOs hovering over a Melbourne school says military officials threatened to have him fired if he ever spoke about the incident. Andrew Greenwood is talking publicly about the famous Westall High sightings 55 years ago for the first time in tonight’s 7NEWS ‘Spotlight’ program.
Experts are still searching for life on other planets and we may possibly even find it on one of them in our own Solar System. NASA just recently announced that there will be two missions sent to Venus to study our “sister planet”. Unfortunately for our planetary neighbor, a new study has pretty much dashed any hopes of finding life on Venus, but there is optimism for Jupiter.
According to the study, Earth’s most drought-tolerant microbes wouldn’t even be able to survive on Venus. The researchers came to this conclusion by studying data collected by probes that flew through Venus’ atmosphere. This data included temperatures, pressure, and humidity in the planet’s atmosphere – specifically in the clouds that contain sulphuric acid.
In a news conference, John Hallsworth, who is a microbiologist at Queen’s University in Belfast, U.K., explained this further, “When we looked at the effective concentration of water molecules in those clouds, we found that it was a hundred times too low for even the most resilient Earth organisms to survive,” adding that it is an “…unbridgeable distance.”
Venus
For example, microorganisms on Earth can survive in water activity with a value as low as 0.585; however, on Venus, the water activity level in the clouds was just 0.004. Chris McKay, who is a NASA Ames astrobiologist, went into further details about their findings, “Our conclusion is based directly on measurements.” “It’s not a model, it’s not an assumption. The missions that NASA just selected to go to Venus will do the same measurements again — temperature, pressure — and they are going to come to very much the same conclusions because Venus is not changing on that type of time scale.”
This is incredibly disappointing news, especially for the experts who were excited to find phosphine on the planet (this is a compound that is made up of atoms from phosphorus and hydrogen that is important in regards to life.)
Now onto Jupiter, the researchers analyzed data collected by the Galileo probe that flew between 26 and 42 miles (between 42 and 68 kilometers) from the surface of the planet and discovered that the water activity in the Gas Giant’s clouds was at 0.585 which means that there is enough water activity to possibly support life. Furthermore, the temperature is about minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit which is also within the range for life to survive.
Jupiter
McKay talked a bit about this discovery, “Jupiter looks much more optimistic.” “There is at least a layer in the clouds of Jupiter where the water requirements are met. It doesn’t mean that there is life, it just means that with respect to water, it would be OK.” There are, however, other problems for life to survive such as a lack of nutrients and high levels of ultraviolet radiation.
The study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy where it can be read in full.
June 25, 2021, might have been the day the United States government released its most significant report on unidentified aerial phenomena, more commonly known as UFOs, that the American public has seen in several decades.
By some measures, the report that arrived on this date was as significant as many had hoped that it would be. Nobody would deny that the document, produced by the U.S. Navy’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), had been both highly anticipated, and conveys that the United States military appears to be taking the subject of UFOs more seriously than it has in decades. The information it contained would have been especially significant for anyone new to the subject, who might have been surprised—if not a little concerned—to learn that our military believes there is reasonable evidence of unidentified technologies operating in our controlled airspace.
By contrast, the contents of the report left much to be desired of long-time advocates of the existence of unidentified flying objects, who probably looked at the report as being, loosely summarized, “the same old, same old.” In other words, little that the report conveyed in its brief, nine pages (just six pages, if we exclude the cover page and appendixes) was anything new to those who are well-read on the topic of UFOs. These folks have likely been hearing about the release of documents through the Freedom of Information Act now for decades, conveying similar instances where unusual aerial objects appear to be capable of entering our controlled airspace at their leisure, and with little regard for the national security concerns of our military.
Because of this, there have no doubt already been plenty of members of our military that have taken the subject seriously in years past, whether they ever voiced their interest or not. However, the appearance of a larger scale, coordinated effort to collect information about possible aerial threats, and analyze them within government, has never been more apparent in recent memory than it is now. This, following both the release of the UAPTF report, as well as a press statement on it from the Pentagon that referenced a memorandum from Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks outlining the objectives of the UAPTF as it moves forward. In addition to this, several Senators, and even NASA weighed in on the timely subject of UAP following the report’s release.
Where does all of this leave us though? Perhaps more importantly, where do we go from here, and what will the American military be doing in the years ahead as it continues to study this phenomenon?
While much of this remains to be seen, there are several things that the United States, as well as any other nation that endeavors to study the phenomenon, should consider in terms of transparency, as well as the possibility of threats that could arise from such studies. Below are just a few considerations related to the study of UAP and its implications in the years ahead.
Make at least some information about UAP available to the scientific community for analysis:
There has long been a significant disconnect between government and science on this subject. Since the UAP issue currently appears to remain within the purview of national security, a degree of government secrecy is warranted (especially as it relates to potentially classified technologies used to obtain information on the phenomena). However, if any of these objects should prove to represent novel or breakthrough technologies (especially in the unlikely event that they have exotic origins), it will be incumbent upon our government to coordinate with the scientific community on this issue and assess whether it has implications that are broader than the isolated space of national security, with potential ramifications for both the American public and maybe the entire world.
Along with its internal system of formal reporting, the U.S. Government should provide ongoing updates to the public:
The public version of this report, while limited, is a necessary step in the right direction toward government transparency on a timely issue. When it is possible to do so while maintaining national security protocols, future information about this area of study should be periodically conveyed to the public.
Our government should commit to the ethical use and management of technologies potentially derived from UAP:
Whatever the source of UAP may ultimately prove to be, the potential exists they may serve as the impetus for new innovations and disruptive technologies. This may hold true whether the technology is captured by our military, studied, and replicated, or even as a result of the mere observation of the devices and their operation. Such technologies may prove beneficial, although the possibility also exists that they could even hold the potential for escalating an arms race at some point in the future.
The problem outlined above is only one among several possibilities that military studies involving UAP might lead to, whether or not it was ever intended. If a significant technological breakthrough were ever to arise from the study of UAP, it indeed might prove to be beneficial to humankind. However, all-too-often in the past when new technological innovations have been acquired by militaries, their use in weapons systems development and other potentially destructive capacities has remained a consistent problem.
Transparency will be the key. In addition to being able to be studied by the scientific establishment, government studies of UAP could benefit greatly from the oversight and moral guidance that civilian organizations might be able to provide, ranging from think tanks, to media agencies and a host of other sources of valuable feedback. For that to happen, it also requires the government to be transparent with at least some of its UAP data.
The release of the UAPTF report in late June is already a step in the right direction in that regard, but will this trend continue? Or as information on military UAP studies begins to trickle out, will we merely see a bottleneck effect, where the pace of “disclosure” (if we dare even call it that) begins to steadily slow, and finally stop?
All of this remains to be seen, but for now, if nothing else, the U.S. government’s current UAP studies have injected a much-needed renascence of interest into the debate about unidentified aerial phenomena observed by pilots and others for decades. This, as well as a new awareness of the scientific possibilities—both potentially good, and bad—that the study of them might afford us in the years ahead.
The Pentagon’s long-awaited UFO report (and by ‘report’ we mean the public summary, not the full classified report) and the general consensus is that it’s weak on details and totally lacking on any information that kept the investigators from completely ruling out extraterrestrial origins. It’s as if this duck soup of a report is saying to those who have seen UFOs or claim to have been abducted by aliens and believe they’re not of this Earth, “Who are you going to believe … us or your lying eyes?” (Thank you, Marx Brothers.) Fortunately, we have a couple of psychics who claim they’ve used their abilities to confirm aliens are already here and predict that real ‘full and transparent disclosure’ is coming soon. Let’s start with the psychic who has seen evidence of alien presence on Earth for at least 50 years.
“I touched it and told Wernher, ‘this is not from our planet’. He said, ‘You’re right – this is a piece of a UFO that crashed on Earth’. I cannot reveal any more about what I saw in that refrigerator. I have signed non-disclosure documents. But I can tell you that we are in contact.’’
Did he see aliens?
That’s everyone’s favorite psychic spoonbender Uri Geller – fresh off of using his ‘powers’ to help England beat Germany in Euro 2020 (so he claims) – telling the Daily Star about a time in 1974 when he allegedly was invited to a NASA “base” in Maryland, possibly while his abilities were being tested by the U.S. government as part of the Stargate Project, to view what he was told was part of a crashed alien spacecraft … and more.
“I cannot reveal any more about what I saw in that refrigerator. I have signed non-disclosure documents. But I can tell you that we are in contact.’’
Geller is likely implying he saw a body or bodies of beings from the craft, a sight he claims shocked him. Geller says he doesn’t believe the Pentagon report is truthful because: “They DO know more!? Do they? Does he? Really? Or should he stick to football and spoon bending?
Moving on …
“I see more information being shared with the public about the known presence of alien life visiting our planet. I also see that more people will come forward to speak about strange lights in their homes and gardens and the public collectively will speak about this. It’s only through public demand that more information will be given. We are being visited now more than ever by life forms from other planets.”
Deborah Davies is the next generation of psychics – a reality star on “Real Housewives of Cheshire” who claims she’s the descendent of psychics, has had abilities since childhood and has been a working medium doing readings, paranormal consulting and predictions since 2009. No spoon-bending here – just claims she’s accurately predicted plane crashes, the coronavirus outbreak, Prince Philip’s death, advancements in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and more. This appears to be her first prediction on UFOs and extraterrestrials, but she makes two important comments – there is information about the “known presence of alien life forms visiting our planet” and we are being visited now by “life forms from other planets.” Unfortunately, she seems to have nothing more to share on them and The Daily Mail did no follow-up.
Ask more questions!
Two well-known psychics say alien life is here – one claims to have firsthand, eyewitness knowledge. Are they any less believable than a 9-page summary that blames its lack of depth on the witnesses not providing enough information?
Who are you going to believe … the government or a spoon-bender, a real housewife and the tabloids? Tougher question than you thought, isn’t it?
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Linda Moulton Howe: Secrets of Antarctica and the Extraterrestrial Presence
Linda Moulton Howe: Secrets of Antarctica and the Extraterrestrial Presence
Linda Moulton Howe: Secrets of Antarctica and The Extraterrestrial Presence
Linda Moulton Howe in Manchester, UK: Awakening Expo Anniversary Release Special! Researcher, Author and Investigative Journalist Linda Moulton Howe reveals a startling incident involving military personnel and an extraterrestrial underground facility based in Antarctica.
Emmy and Peabody honored investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe, Reporter and Editor of the award-winning Earthfiles news website and weekly YouTube Channel broadcasts, reports firsthand accounts by military and controlled remote viewers who already have information about and experiences with other intelligences of unknown origin or intent.
MUFON CASE : 116633 Seattle, Washington ( July 2, 2021 )
Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : Noticed ball of light that turned into a barrell Long Description of Sighting Report
Ball of light that eventually turned into a black barrel coming from the he Olympic park direction towards west Seattle
Date Submitted : 2021-07-02 Date of Event : 2021-07-01 / 9:55PM MUFON SUBMITTER FILES :
20210701215758.mp4
20210701215719.mp4
20210701215504.mp4
MUFON CASE : 116625 Portland, Oregon ( July 1, 2021 )
Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : 3 hovering twinkling lights in diagonal formation, then each take off in different directions
Long Description of Sighting Report
Did anyone else see interesting lights last night? We saw these beauties looking south from Mt. Tabor. Started off as 3 giant bright lights in a diagonal line. They hovered there for about 10 minutes. One by one, they peeled off in different directions, about 5 minutes apart.
Date Submitted : 2021-07-01 Date of Event :2021-06-23 / 11:03PM MUFON SUBMITTER FILE :
trim.0CD65C64DA3343C4810337DC741A01AE.MOV
MUFON CASE : 116623 Cleveland, Ohio ( July 1, 2021 )
Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : Saw over 10 UFO/Star Like move thru the sky, from southwest to Southeast.
Long Description of Sighting Report
Observed over ten UFO/Starlike objects move across the night sky, from Southwest to Southeast. The day had been stormy and cloudy. The event was filmed with a regular Cellphone. Objects made no sound and at the end of The sighting, A Helicopter entered the area.
Date Submitted : 2021-07-01 Date of Event :2021-06-30
MUFON SUBMITTER FILE :
20210630213343.mp4
MUFON CASE : 116619 Sofia, Bulgaria ( July 1, 2021 )
Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : Hello this video is filmed at 18th of June Long Description of Sighting Report
This video is filmed by 2 of my colleagues 10 min after I left the office. We all thing that this may be some sort of drones but not sure about it this is why I send it to mufon so more people can give their opinion.
My colleagues speak in Bulgarian and many times during the clip they say that the objects can't be seen anymore with a naked eye just from the phones zoom. We have 2 videos from 2 phones that ware filming it. My colegue say that this objects are hovering where usually plains fly and approach for landing on the nearby airport and that there was no plains ~2 or more hours
Date Submitted : 2021-07-01 Date of Event :2021-06-18 / 5:11PM MUFON SUBMITTER FILE :
UFO Sighted Over Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park, Brazil ( May 29, 2021 )
UFO captured at Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park, Goiás, Brazil : recorded in May 29, 2021
STATEMENT : object apparently shaped like a glowing disk and it moves quite quickly and looks like it had some sort of trouble in flight and looks like it would crash behind these mountains
PROOF ALIENS EXIST? | First, it was UFOs, but could extraterrestrial life be next?
PROOF ALIENS EXIST? | First, it was UFOs, but could extraterrestrial life be next?
The US Government and Pentagon made global news when they confirmed the existence of UFOs after leaked footage surfaced online. But what about aliens? The search for extraterrestrial life has never been more important, or more valued than right now.
A US Navy pilot whose plane filmed the famous "tic-tac" UFO footage has revealed how his weapons system was disabled during the eerie encounter.
Seventeen years on, Lieutenant Commander Chad Underwood said when he tried to track the "target of interest", he began seeing "strobe lines" on his cockpit radar.
Screenshot from the eerie and unexplained 'Tic Tac' video filmed by the US Navy and released by the Pentagon
Commander Chad Underwood encountered a bizarre object moving 'erratically' at incredible speeds
It followed the Pentagon confirming Mr Underwood’s in-flight "tic-tac" video from 2004, recorded by his F/A-18 Super Hornet, was authentic.
The incident unfolded during a USS Nimitz carrier group exercises off the coast of Mexico.
Crew aboard the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Princeton, had been spending the past two weeks tracking mysterious aircraft on and off with an advanced AN/SPY-1B passive radar.
Now, speaking to filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, Mr Underwood has revealed how his weapons system was suddenly crippled after he attempted to track the "tic-tac" object which was moving at incredible speeds.
He said: "Once I got the target of interest on my radar I took a lock and that’s when all the kinda funky things started happening.
Once I got the target of interest on my radar I took a lock and that’s when all the kinda funky things started happening
Commander Chad Underwood, US Navy
"The erratic nature of the tic-tac. The air speed was very telling to me.
"Then we started seeing what we call jam strobe lines.
"Strobe lines are vertical lines that show up on your radar that are indications that you are being jammed."
Mr Corbell's extraordinary interview with Mr Underwood detailing the "act of war" UFO encounter will appear in full at a later date.
French warplane pilots have also reported heir weapons systems being disabled during UFO encounters, according to an official investigation.
After releasing the bombshell report last week, it appears the US Department of Defense (DoD) is preparing to set up a new unit dedicated to the strange phenomena, similar to secretive agencies in hit TV show The X-Files and movie series Men in Black.
When Underwood tried to lock on to the UFO, 'strobe lines' began appearing on his radar, indicating his weapons systems were being jammedCredit: Jeremy Corbell
DoD officials released a memo on Friday which stated they will now seek to "formalise" the investigations of UFOS, often now referred to as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs).
UAPs are currently the main brief of the UAP Task Force, a body set up after a series of stunning leaked videos show strange encounters between the phenomena and US warplanes.
And a memo released by the DoD set out a three point plan to pull together US investigations to try and work out exactly what these mysterious objects that defy normal understanding could be.
The first point states the DoD wants to "synchronize collection, reporting and analysis" of UAPs, and to "secure" military test and training ranges.
And then next it states it wants to set aside resources and staffing to continue the probe, seemingly confirming the establishment of a formal office.
Finally, it states there must be "coordination" between all arms of the US military and the intelligence services on the issue.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby confirmed the US military would be taking a deeper look at UFOs after a report was released detailing hundreds of encounters
Some of the numerous sightings by the US military
What is going on with UFOs in the US?
UFOS have stepped from fringe conspiracy theories to a genuine national security debate in the US.
Pentagon officials last year took the unprecedented step to confirm a trio of remarkable videos which showed US encounters with UFOs.
The debate is still open as to what the phenomena caught on film were – but it made clear to everyone, something is in the skies.
Perhaps the most striking was a video known as the "Tic-Tac" – which showed an unidentified object being pursued by fighter planes.
The US also confirmed the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) – a Pentagon programme set up to study UFOs before being disbanded in 2017.
However, it was replaced by the UAP Task Force in June 2020 after a vote by the US Senate Intelligence Committee.
Defence chiefs have since confirmed a number of leaked UFO videos and photos which were submitted to the Task Force for investigation.
Why this sudden rush for transparency?
No outside the secretive wings of the US government currently knows for sure.
And as a tacked on addendum to a 5,500 page Covid relief bill passed in December, the the Director of National Intelligence’s office was ordered to compile a report on UFOs within 180 days.
The UAP report dropped as expected on June 25, and while not giving much away - it did not rule anything out either as much of it remains classified.
The US appear to have acknowledged that UFOs - whatever they are - are real and are a potential threat to national security as they appear to be able to enter restricted airspace with total impunity.
Is it aliens? Officially the US position is simply, "we don't know yet" as further disclosure is expected in the coming months and years.
DoD staff will also have to report an apparent encounter with a UAP within two weeks to allow it to be more properly investigated, the memo reads.
It was signed off by deputy secretary of defense Kathleen Hicks.
The move is a major win for campaigners who have been calling on the US to take the issue of UFOs more seriously, and is being sent as another step on the road to potential disclosure.
Most of the sightings bear similarities. Some are tic-tac shaped while others are triangular or circular.
Footage taken by FA-18 pilots on March 4, 2019
An FA-18 pilot and a Weapons Systems Officer spotted mysterious objects in the sky
Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell received information about a third sighting which happened on March 4, 2019
Footage captured by a US Navy destroyer shows several mysterious flashing objects
Accounts of alien abductions have been around for a while, and they always serve to amaze, stir debate, and raise eyebrows. Some such accounts can definitely be more bizarre than others, and one of the truly outlandish ones comes to us from a supposed alien contactee in the U.S. state of New Mexico, who has a very amazing, and some might say unbelievable, story to tell. The rather bizarre tale here begins in July of 1987, when a woman named Christa Tilton had an inexplicable bout of missing time, with three hours of her life simply gone and with no reasonable explanation. After suffering from nightmares and finding herself constantly pondering why she had lost this time, Tilton underwent hypnosis and this was where she would find her lost memories surging into her consciousness, and would weave an outlandish account of alien abductions, secret underground bases, and strange experiments.
Under hypnosis, Christa would remember being approached by two small humanoid creatures, who grabbed her by the arms and somehow rendered her unconscious. When she awoke, she found herself lying on a table within a small craft, where she was approached by what she calls a “guide.” This guide gave her some sort of liquid to drink, which immediately woke her up and energized her, after which he took her outside onto what appeared to be a small hill. She would say of what happened next:
It was dark, but I saw a faint light near a cavern. We walked up to this area and it is then that I saw a man, dressed in a red military-type jump suit [like a pilot would wear]. My guide seemed to know this man as he greeted him as we came closer. I also noticed he wore some type of patch and was carrying an automatic weapon. When we walked into the tunnel, I realized we were going right into the side of a large hill or mountain. There we were met with another guard in red and I then saw a computerized check-point with two cameras on each side. To my left was a large groove where a small transit vehicle carried you further inside.
To my right it looked like a long hallway where there were many offices. We took the transit car and went for what seemed to be a very long time to another secured area. It was then that I was told to step onto some type of scale-like device that faced a computer screen. I saw lights flashing and numbers computing and then a card was issued with holes punched into it. I would later realize it was used as identification inside a computer. I asked my guide where we were going and why. He didn’t say too much the whole time except that he was to show me some things that I need to know for future reference. He told me that we had just entered Level One of the ‘facility’. I asked what kind of facility it was and he did not answer.
The guide then wordlessly took her to a large elevator that had no door and they descended, with him merely remarking that they were going to “Level 2.” Here she says there were offices and people walking about, all of them human and seemingly oblivious to her presence, just going about their business as if she wasn’t there. It all looked rather like a normal office building other than for the armed guards in colored jumpsuits interspersed throughout, and at one point they passed what looked like a huge factory of some sort, which had what looked like “small alien-type craft” parked there. As she looked at this factory and the strange craft, she saw what looked like typical “grey-type aliens” going about some sort of maintenance on the craft, which also ignored her as if she had every right to be there in the world. After this she was taken to another elevator to “Level 5,” where she was asked to change clothes. By this point she was starting to feel terrified, but her guide assured her that nothing bad would happen to her. She put on a hospital gown and was weighed and scanned with some sort of electrical device, after which she was led past another guard station and down another hall. It was here where she says she was suddenly hit with a wave of overpowering stench that smelled to like what she thought might be formaldehyde, something she knew from her days as a former nurse. The guide reassured her that everything was alright but the smell was oppressive, and she says of what happened next:
We came to a large room and I stopped to look inside. I saw these huge large tanks with computerized gauges hooked to them and a huge arm-like device that extended from the top of some tubing down into the tanks. The tanks were about 4 feet tall so standing where I was I could not see inside them. I did notice a humming sound and it looked as if something was being stirred inside the tanks. I started to walk closer to the tanks and it was at that time that my guide grabbed my arm and pulled me roughly out into the hall. He told me that it wasn’t necessary to see the contents of the tanks; that it would only complicate matters. So we went on down the hallway and then he guided my arm into a large laboratory. I was amazed because I had worked in a laboratory before and I was seeing machines that I had never seen before. It was then I turned and saw a small grey being with his back turned doing something at a counter. I heard the clinking of metal against metal. I had only heard this when I was preparing my surgical instruments for my doctor in surgery.
Christa was then told to sit on a table in the middle of the room, and she was now getting the very strong sense that something wasn’t right, the fear beginning to grip her more tightly. As she sat there wondering what to do and what was going on, a human doctor then entered the room, greeted the guide, and turned his gaze to her. She explains the next part of her very odd tale:
My guide smiled at me and told me he would be waiting outside and I would only be there for a few minutes. I began to cry. I cry when I get scared. The grey alien looked at me and turned around to continue what he was doing. The doctor called for more assistance and it was then that one other grey alien came in. The next thing I knew I was very drowsy. I knew I was being examined internally and when I lifted my head, I saw this horrid grey alien glaring at me with large black eyes. It was then I felt a stabbing pain. I screamed and then the human doctor stood next to me and rubbed something over my stomach. It was cold. The pain immediately subsided. I could not believe this was happening to me all over again.
I begged for them to let me go, but they just kept on working very fast. After they were finished, I was told to get up and go into this small room and change back into my other clothes. I noticed blood, as if I had started my period. But, I continued to get dressed and when I came out I saw my guide speaking to the doctor in the corner of the room. I just stood there… helpless. I felt more alone then than I ever had in my life. I felt like a guinea pig. After we left that laboratory I was silent. I was angry at him for allowing this to happen to me ‘again’. But he said it was necessary. Told me to forget. I see more aliens pass us in the hall. Again, it is as if I was a ghost. I asked my guide to please explain this place to me. He told me it was a very sensitive place and I would be brought back again in the next few years. I again asked where I was and he told me I could not be told for my own safety.
She then got into a sort of transit car with her guide and they moved on to what she considers to be the most unsettling thing she saw during the whole weird encounter, saying:
I saw what looked to me to be people of all different types standing up against the wall inside a clear casing-like chamber. I went closer and it looked ‘as if they were wax figures. I could not understand what I was seeing. I also saw animals in cages. They were alive. They looked as if they were in suspended animation. I went up to the clear casings that they were being held in. I put my hands on the casing and leaned towards them to see if I could get some kind of a response. I did not. I could not discern whether they were dead or alive at that point in time. They were just not moving, and I could not see whether or not there was any fluid. I think that the casings were free of any fluid in this particular case.
She says that after this, her guide took her back outside to the waiting alien craft that had abducted her, and she was taken back to where they had found her and her memory was wiped. Remembering this experience through the hypnosis marked the beginning a nearly obsessive search for answers as to what had happened to her. Although she was never explicitly told where she had been taken, she would come to the conclusion that she had likely been brought to a secret underground base beneath the town of Dulce, New Mexico, a place that has been at the center of all manner of conspiracy theories since at least the 1970s and is a hotbed of UFO activity, cattle mutilations, and talk of top secret underground bases. In addition to this, Christa claims that after this initial experience she would be abducted on numerous other occasions and taken to different underground facilities, which she claims the government keeps a network of across the country. She explains of this:
I am aware of many, many, many underground facilities or bases that are being used for different purposes. Most of the underground bases are being used for covert purposes or otherwise purposes involving governments who are doing certain types of testing that they consider would be safer to do underground. And then there are the bases, one in particular north of Tucson, Arizona, where I’m almost positive I was taken to, it goes under the cover or name of “Evergreen Aviation”. They have all the planes there and everything, but what I found during my ten years of research is that this is a CIA-backed or based facility. I got very, very close to the facility, I climbed over the wired fence and sneaked in with a pilot friend of mine not long ago and got some great photographs of some black helicopters. These black helicopters were unmarked. There were other types of aircraft there, and so we really believe that there are many many bases in many states. I’ve heard of bases in almost every state here in the United States.
Christa has written a book of her experiences at Dulce, rather straightforwardly called Underground Alien Bio Lab At Dulce, and has been very vocal about these underground bases and aliens in general. Her stories have gotten increasingly eye-brow raising over the years, with her claiming to be an alien hybrid, and she has written extensively on her encounters with various types of alien beings, including what she calls “Light Beings,” Reptilians, blonde-haired humanoid Nordics, and more, with agendas that from range strict non-interventionists to imperialistic factions who want to conquer Earth. Then there are of course the Greys, which she has made abundantly obvious she doesn’t care much for. She has not minced words when she has said of the Greys:
The Greys seem to do things like a massive collective consciousness. I’ve noticed that they do things together, there is almost no discussion among themselves. They seem to be working on projects or on certain things that are given to them by higher-ups, or higher alien beings and/or humans. I can tell you right now that the main weakness of the Greys is that they have no soul, they are soulless. Do not allow them to tell you otherwise. Some of them have been known to try to impart some type of false religious philosophies on people that they’ve abducted, and the thing is you have to realize that these aliens have their own agenda, and its not something that I feel is a positive one really. Certainly I have to believe that the Greys are, the only way I can describe it is that they are an empty, empty case… There’s nothing there other than a superior technology type of brain apparatus up in their skull area. Otherwise they are of no use to us really, they are really of no use. They are used to impart different technologies and give us information, but as far as trusting them, I do not trust them as far as I could throw them.
It is hard to know what to do with this rather spectacular case, and with all of the added details and science fiction-sounding claims made over the years, Tilton has gained just as many skeptics and detractors as believers. It is all certainly a compelling and oddball case, but is there anything to it all? Whatever you might think, it manages to stand on the fringe end of alien abduction cases, and true or not it manages to point out just how deep the rabbit hole can go.
Imagine you're walking into a forest, and you roll over a fallen log with your foot. Fanning out on the underside, there is something moist and yellow – a bit like something you may have sneezed out, if that something was banana-yellow and spread itself out into elegant fractal branches.
What you're looking at is the plasmodium form of Physarum polycephalum, the many-headed slime mold. Like other slime molds found in nature, it fills an important ecological role, aiding in the decay of organic matter to recycle it into the food web.
This bizarre little organism doesn't have a brain, or a nervous system – its blobby, bright-yellow body is just one cell. This slime mold species has thrived, more or less unchanged, for a billion years in its damp, decaying habitats.
And, in the last decade, it's been changing how we think about cognition and problem-solving.
"I think it's the same kind of revolution that occurred when people realized that plants could communicate with each other," says biologist Audrey Dussutour of the French National Center for Scientific Research.
"Even these tiny little microbes can learn. It gives you a bit of humility."
P. polycephalum – adorably nicknamed "The Blob" by Dussutour – isn't exactly rare. It can be found in dark, humid, cool environments like the leaf litter on a forest floor. It's also really peculiar; although we call it a 'mold', it is not actually fungus. Nor is it animal or plant, but a member of the protist kingdom – a sort of catch-all group for anything that can't be neatly categorized in the other three kingdoms.
It starts its life as many individual cells, each with a single nucleus. Then, they merge to form the plasmodium, the vegetative life stage in which the organism feeds and grows.
In this form, fanning out in veins to search for food and explore its environment, it's still a single cell, but containing millions or even billions of nuclei swimming in the cytoplasmic fluid confined within the bright-yellow membrane.
Cognition without a brain
Like all organisms, P. polycephalum needs to be able to make decisions about its environment. It needs to seek food and avoid danger. It needs to find the ideal conditions for its reproductive cycle. And this is where our little yellow friend gets really interesting. P. polycephalum doesn't have a central nervous system. It doesn't even have specialized tissues.
"We're talking about cognition without a brain, obviously, but also without any neurons at all. So the underlying mechanisms, the whole architectural framework of how it deals with information is totally different to the way your brain works," biologist Chris Reid of Macquarie University in Australia tells ScienceAlert.
"By providing it with the same problem-solving challenges that we've traditionally given to animals with brains, we can start to see how this fundamentally different system might arrive at the same outcome. It's where it becomes clear that for a lot of these things – that we've always thought required a brain or some kind of higher information processing system – that's not always necessary."
P. polycephalum is well known to science. Decades ago, it was, as physicist Hans-Günther Döbereiner of the University of Bremen in Germany explains, the "workhorse of cell biology". It was easy to clone, and keep, and study.
However, as our genetic analysis toolkits evolved, organisms such as mice or cell lines such as HeLa took over, and P. polycephalum fell by the wayside.
In 2000, biologist Toshiyuki Nakagaki of RIKEN in Japan brought the little beastie out of retirement – and not for cell biology. His paper, published in Nature, bore the title "Maze-solving by an amoeboid organism" – and that's exactly what P. polycephalum had done. Nakagaki and his team had put a piece of plasmodium at one end of a maze, a food reward (oats, because P. polycephalum loves oat bacteria) at the other, and watched what happened.
The results were stunning. This weird little acellular organism managed to find the fastest route through every maze thrown at it.
"That triggered a wave of research into what other kinds of more difficult scenarios we can test the slime mold with," Reid says.
"Virtually all of those have been surprising in some way or another, and surprised the researchers in how the slime mold actually performed. It revealed some limitations as well. But mostly, it's been a voyage of revelation on how this simple creature can do tasks that have always been given to and thought to be the domain of higher organisms."
Full of surprises
Nakagaki recreated the Tokyo subway, with the station nodes marked out with oats; P. polycephalumrecreated it almost exactly – except the slime mold version was more robust to damage, wherein if a link got severed, the rest of the network could carry on.
Yet another team of researchers found that the protist could efficiently solve the traveling salesman problem, an exponentially complex mathematical task that programmers routinely use to test algorithms.
Earlier this year, a team of researchers found that P. polycephalum can "remember" where it has previously found food based on the structure of the veins in that area. This followed previous research from Dussutour and her colleagues, who discovered that blobs of slime mold could learn and remember substances that they didn't like, and communicate that information to other blobs of slime mold once they fused.
"I'm still amazed by how, in a way, complex they are because they always surprise you in an experiment, they would never do exactly what you choose to do," Dussutour says.
In one instance, her team was testing a growth medium used for mammal cells, and wanted to see if the slime would like it.
"It hated it. It started to build this weird three-dimensional structure so it could go on the lead and escape. And I'm like, 'oh my gosh, this organism'."
A processing network
Although it's technically a single-celled organism, P. polycephalum is considered a network, exhibiting collective behavior. Each part of the slime mold is operating independently and sharing information with its neighboring sections, with no centralized processing.
"I guess the analogy would be neurons in a brain," Reid says. "You have this one brain that's composed of lots of neurons – it's the same for the slime mold."
That brain analogy is a really intriguing one, and it wouldn't be the first time P. polycephalum has been compared to a network of neurons. The topology and structure of brain networks and slime mold blobs are very similar, and both systems exhibit oscillations.
It's not entirely clear how information is propagated and shared in the slime mold, but we do know that P. polycephalum's veins contract to act as a peristaltic pump, pushing cytoplasmic fluid from section to section. And oscillations in this fluid seem to coincide with encounters with external stimuli.
"It's thought that these oscillations convey information, process information, by the way they interact and actually produce the behavior at the same time," Döbereiner tells ScienceAlert.
"If you have a network of Physarum go to a certain food, it changes oscillation pattern when it encounters sugar: it starts to oscillate quicker. Because of these quicker oscillations, the whole organism starts changing its oscillation pattern and starts to flow into the direction where the food was found."
He and colleagues recently published a paper demonstrating that these oscillations are extraordinarily similar to the oscillations seen in a brain, only a hydrodynamic system rather than electrical signals.
"What's relevant is not so much what oscillates and how the information is transported," he explains, "but that it oscillates and that a topology is relevant – is one neuron connected to 100 neurons or just to two; is a neuron connected just to its neighbors or is it connected to another neuron very far away."
P. polycephalum growing on a life-sized model of a human skull.
As exciting as its escapades may seem, any researcher working with it will tell you that P. polycephalum is not, in itself, a brain. It's not capable of higher-level processing or abstract reasoning, as far as we can tell.
Nor is it, as intriguing as the notion may seem, likely to evolve into something like a brain. The organism has had a billion years to do so and shows no sign of going in that direction (although if any science fiction writers out there like the idea, feel free to run with it).
In terms of overall biology, slime mold is extremely simple. And by that very fact, it's changing how we understand problem-solving.
Just like other organisms, it needs food, it needs to navigate its environment, and it needs a safe place to grow and reproduce. These problems can be complex, and yet P. polycephalum can solve them with its extremely limited cognitive architecture. It does so in its own simple way and with its own limitations, says Reid, "but that in itself is one of the beautiful things about the system".
In a sense, it leaves us with an organism – a wet, slimy, damp-loving blob – whose cognition is fundamentally different from our own. And, just like the Tokyo subway, that can teach us new ways to solve our own problems.
"It's teaching us about the nature of intelligence, really, challenging certain views, and basically widening the concept," Reid says.
"It does force us to challenge these long-held anthropocentric beliefs that we are unique and capable of so much more than other creatures."
If UFOs are out there, feds want to know what they are and where they're from
More frequently reported sightings of unidentified flying objects by pilots have made government officials more serious about finding out what they are.
(File Photo)
If UFOs are out there, feds want to know what they are and where they're from
WASHINGTON — It’s an idea that has tantalized civilization for ages: Is there intelligent life beyond Earth? For years, it has preoccupied the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, too.
What You Need To Know
House, Senate intelligence leaders briefed on report on UFOs
The report is expected to be released at end of June
Sightings not confirmed or ruled out as alien spacecraft in report
Nation must know whether they're a safety concern, Demings and Rubio say
NASA will investigate sightings scientifically, administrator says
The growing number of sightings of unidentified flying objects, or UFO's, by military and commercial pilots is now drawing the attention of the federal government. Members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on Capitol Hill have now been briefed on the much-anticipated UFO report that is expected to be released at the end of this month.
“We do have reason to be concerned until we are able to rule out any threat to the traveling public, to those military pilots, to our military facilities,” said Rep. Val Demings (D-Florida District 10), a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
Demings was briefed Wednesday by Naval and FBI officials on their findings, which did not confirm or rule out the sightings as alien spacecraft.
“It’s an ongoing investigation — I think they are competent and capable of identifying those unidentified objects,” Demings said in an interview with Spectrum News.
The Department of Defense has been keeping track of these kinds of reports for decades but only recently acknowledged their existence.
“There was a taboo on discussing technological civilizations beyond Earth for a while,” said Harvard University science professor Dr. Avi Loeb. “It was considered a little crazy, perhaps in the realm of science fiction, but I think we're getting to the time where it will be part of the mainstream discussion.”
For years, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has been urging the federal government to take UFOs seriously. He’s been demanding answers and added language into former President Donald Trump’s last spending bill that mandated the Pentagon to compile the UFO report.
“People can speculate about, well, it’s space aliens,” Rubio said. “My biggest concern frankly is that it’s another country. They’ve made some technological leap that will catch us by surprise by perhaps one of our adversaries. That would be deeply concerning.”
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the space agency is also launching an investigation of its own.
“Now that I’m here at NASA, I’ve turned to our scientists, and I’ve said, ‘Would you look at it from a scientific standpoint?’” Nelson said. “NASA is going to appropriately look at it through the lens of its scientists.”
The UFO report is expected to be released to the public by the end of the month. It’s unclear how much the government will reveal of its findings because of national security concerns.
In three newly-approved missions to Venus, scientists will probe the planet’s atmosphere and geology.
Credit: JSC/NASA
After years of waiting, an armada of spacecraft are headed to Venus. US scientists were thrilled earlier this month when NASA approved not one, but two new missions to our closest planetary neighbour. Now, Europe has followed suit and approved its own mission. The explorations raise the prospect that major questions about this planet — from whether it once had oceans and was therefore habitable to whether it still has active volcanoes — could finally be answered.
On 2 June, NASA announced it would send two spacecraft to Venus this decade: VERITAS, an orbiter that will map the planet’s surface, and DAVINCI+, which includes a probe that will dive into Venus’s atmosphere. On 10 June, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced its own orbiter, EnVision, that would launch in the early 2030s to take high-resolution radar images of the planet’s surface.
“We’re delighted that all our hard work has paid off,” says planetary scientist Colin Wilson at the University of Oxford, UK, one of the deputy lead scientists on EnVision.
NASA’s pair of spacecraft will be its first missions to Venus since its Magellan orbiter in 1989; EnVision is ESA’s first since Venus Express in 2005. Only one probe currently orbits the planet: Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft, which arrived in 2015 and is studying the planet’s atmosphere. “Venus has been a forgotten planet for too long,” says ESA’s Håkan Svedhem, the former project scientist on Venus Express.
As the planetary-science community celebrates the approvals, Nature explores the questions that scientists hope these missions might answer.
Why are Venus and Earth so different?
One of the major questions about Venus is why, despite being a similar size to Earth and a similar distance from the Sun, is it a hellish locale with a poisonous atmosphere composed mostly of carbon dioxide and surface temperatures that are hot enough to melt lead, rather than a pleasant oasis for life.
“Why is Venus, our sibling planet, not our twin planet?” says Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. “How is it you can have a world that’s functionally the same as Earth, but with a vastly different history?”
To find out, scientists will use the missions to probe the planet’s geological past to see how it evolved. VERITAS and EnVision will both be crucial in that aim — each will study the geological record of the planet by imaging its surface with their radar instruments.
The DAVINCI+ mission, meanwhile, will include an orbiter that images the planet using ultraviolet and infrared light. It will also drop a small spherical probe into the atmosphere. This will sample the atmosphere, including looking for unreactive noble gases such as helium and xenon, which persist for a long time. “They are clues as to the early formation and evolution of the planet,” says Wilson. “Do they come from magma in the interior, were they there from formation, were they brought by comets?”
Did Venus once have oceans?
Working out whether Venus ever had bodies of liquid water on its surface is crucial to understanding why Venus and Earth are different. Astronomers can see hints of past water in the planet’s atmosphere, but it’s unclear whether this water comes from ancient oceans on the surface that were lost as the planet warmed, or whether water existed only as vapour early in the planet’s history. The former would suggest the planet was once habitable, like Earth.
DAVINCI+ will be useful in answering this question when it studies the planet’s atmosphere. Its probe will descend for about an hour, sampling the atmosphere up to every 100 metres at lower altitudes and making high-precision measurements to reveal which gases are present, says James Garvin, chief scientist for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and mission lead for DAVINCI+ . This will surpass data on Venus’s atmosphere taken by the Soviet Union’s Venera probes in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
“The chemical signatures will tell us the history, permanence and nature of past oceans,” he says. “Those will provide boundary conditions for everyone. Then we can tailor the big climate models, and ask questions with other missions like VERITAS and EnVision, with their global mapping.”
Did Venus have continents?
About 7% of Venus is covered in highland regions known as tesserae, plateaus that rise above the surrounding surface. These “might be the equivalent of continents on Earth”, says Byrne.
To find out, VERITAS will study the composition of the tesserae, including comparing their content of the volcanic rock basalt with regions at lower elevation. “On Earth when continents form, the massive amounts of basalt in the oceanic crust melt in the presence of water,” says Suzanne Smrekar, the mission lead for VERITAS at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “If we can test this hypothesis, we can show that these huge plateaus are effectively fingerprints of a time when water was present,” with the tesserae being the continental landmasses that were once surrounded by water.
The DAVINCI+ probe will also descend over a tessera called Alpha Regio, taking up to 500 images as it falls to the surface. Although the spacecraft will eventually be destroyed, there is a small chance that it could survive on the surface for several minutes before it is wiped out by the intense pressure and temperature. These pictures of the tessera could be enlightening. “Our final images should have a resolution of tens of centimetres,” says Garvin.
An artist’s impression of the ESA mission EnVision, which will take high-resolution radar images of Venus’s surface.
Credit: ESA/VR2Planets/DamiaBouic
Is Venus still volcanically active?
Earlier probes have shown that volcanoes are present on Venus, but it’s unclear whether any have been geologically active in the past few thousand years — or whether they are still active today. Both VERITAS and EnVision will help to answer this question by mapping the surface. EnVision’s high-resolution images in particular are expected to reveal previously unseen surface features.
The mapping will include looking for volcanic features such as lava flows, and the amount of weathering they have encountered could reveal when they erupted. “Fresh lava flows may appear particularly dark or black,” says Wilson.
The Akatsuki spacecraft has seen recent changes in the amount of ultraviolet light absorbed by Venus’s atmosphere, which could be an indicator of recent volcanic activity. “The changing climate of Venus [today] may depend on volcanic activity,” says Masato Nakamura at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in Sagamihara, Japan, who is the project manager for Akatsuki.
The result has since been called into question, and the presence of phosphine has been hotly debated. The argument might ultimately be put to rest with DAVINCI+, which might detect phosphine when it samples the atmosphere.
“If there’s a ton of phosphine, we’ll be able to measure it,” says Garvin.
Is there ‘snow’ on Venus?
The planet’s mountaintops above 2.6 kilometres look strangely reflective, like those on Earth do, “where you have snow and frost deposited above a certain altitude”, says Wilson. But Venus is much too hot for water to exist, leading scientists to wonder whether the reflective regions might be something else.
One possibility is a substance called semiconductor snow — a mix of exotic metals such as bismuth tellurium and sulfur, which can condense at these higher altitudes and are all known to be produced by volcanic activity. DAVINCI+ might detect these materials in the atmosphere, whereas VERITAS and EnVision will search for deposits near any volcanic vents.
Perhaps one day, researchers will sample these mountaintops directly, with a lander. “It’s certainly something which is technically possible,” says Wilson.
Chichen Itza: Ancient Maya City Built Above A Gateway to the Underworld
Chichen Itza: Ancient Maya City Built Above A Gateway to the Underworld
Chichen Itza is an ancient Mayan city located in the northern part of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The city is though to have been founded around the 6th century AD. Nevertheless, it only rose to prominence several centuries later. Chichen Itza dominated the Yucatan Peninsula during the early part of the postclassic Mayan period, from about the 10th to 13th centuries AD. The supremacy of the city during this period is reflected by the great monuments that were constructed by its rulers. By the time the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, Chichen Itza had been largely left abandoned. Since the 19th century, the site has been explored and excavated by archaeologists. Apart from being an active archaeological site, Chichen Itza is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Mexico.
Where does the name Chichen Itza come from?
The name Chichen Itza comes from a combination of three separate Mayan words. Chi means “mouth” or “edge”, chen means “well,” and Itza is the name of the Mayan ethnic group that settled at the site. Therefore, the name of this ancient city may be said to mean “the mouth of the well of the Itzas.” The word Itza can also be translated to mean “magicians of the water”. This is because Itza itself is a combination of two words, itz, meaning “magic”, and a, meaning “water”.
Chichen Itza is thought to have been founded during the 6th century AD, presumably by the Maya peoples who had occupied the Yucatan Peninsula since the preclassic period, which lasted from around 1500 BC to 300 AD. There is evidence that during the 10th century the city was invaded by foreigners. It was around this time that the Maya cities of the southern lowlands were collapsing. The identity of these invaders, however, is not entirely clear. Some scholars, for instance, believe the invaders were the Itza, whilst others believe that they were Maya who were influenced by the Toltecs of central Mexico, or even the Toltecs themselves. There is also a suggestion that the Itza came to occupy the site, though only two or three centuries after this initial invasion.
Relief sculpture in the Great Ball Court at Chichen Itza showing sacrifice by decapitation.
Interestingly, there is evidence in the Books of the Chilam Balam (“Chilam Balam” meaning “Secrets of the Soothsayers”) that Chichen Itza had a different name prior to the arrival of the Itza. Since there is no single standard of orthography for the Yucatec Maya, the original name for the site has been represented in different ways, including Uuc Yabnal , Uuc Habnal , Uuc Hab Nal , or Uc Abnal . Whilst Uuc or Uc means “seven”, the meaning of the second word varies. Yab, for instance, means “many”, whilst an ab is a type of fruit.
The Sacred Cenote: Ritual Sinkhole Becomes Treasure Trove for Archaeologists
One of the factors that led to the establishment of a settlement at Chichen Itza is the presence of several cenotes at the site. These are large, natural sinkholes that serve as a source of water. Considering that the northern Yucatan is arid, and that its interior has no above-ground rivers, cenotes would have played an important role in the survival of the people who lived there. The most famous cenote at Chichen Itza is the Cenote Sagrada or Sacred Cenote, which was formed by a collapsed cave in the limestone bedrock.
The Sacred Cenote is considered one of the largest repositories of offerings in the Americas.
As its name suggests, the Sacred Cenote was not just a source of water, but was also a place of ritual significance. According to sources written during the Spanish period, the Maya deposited luxury goods, and made human sacrifices at cenotes as a means of worshipping Chaac, the Maya rain god. Over time, researchers have found truth in these claims, as a variety of luxury goods have been found deposited in the cenote. As a matter of fact, the Sacred Cenote is considered to be one of the largest repositories of offerings found in the Americas during the pre-Columbian period.
During the 20th century, the Sacred Cenote has been investigated by archaeologists. Between 1904 and 1910, for example, a controversial dredging project was undertaken by the American archaeologist Edward Herbert Thompson. The project recovered a large quantity of artifacts, including pottery, gold objects, and goods made of jade. In addition, human remains, which displayed wounds consistent with ritual sacrifice, were found.
Deciphering History Through Architecture at Chichen Itza
As mentioned earlier, Chichen Itza was established during the 6th century AD, but was later captured by foreign invaders. This change in the city’s occupants is physically visible in the structures that have survived. Before the coming of the Itza, the inhabitants of Chichen Itza constructed their buildings in an architectural style known as Puuc. This style is named after the Puuc Hills to the southwest of Chichen Itza, and may be identified by several characteristics. For instance, Puuc buildings normally face inwards towards the city’s ceremonial plaza, and are grouped around a general north-south axis. Apart from that, Puuc buildings consist of a solid core of stone and plaster, covered by well-cut, worked stone that serves a purely ornamental function.
Aerial view of Chichen Itza, UNESCO World Heritage site.
The buildings of Chichen Itza that were constructed in the Puuc style are located to the south of the main plaza, in the area known today as Chichen Viejo , or Old Chichen. The structures of Old Chichen are considered to be the oldest in the site, and include el Caracol , la Iglesia , and the Akabtzib. El Caracol , which means “the snail”, named as such after the stone spiral staircase within it. The structure consists of a round building (where the staircase is found) on a square platform, and it served as a sophisticated astronomical observatory. La Iglesia , meaning “the church,” is a small temple decorated with elaborate masks of Chaac, whereas the Akabtzib, which is Maya for “House of the Dark Writing’, was the home of the city’s administrator. The name of the latter is derived from the intricately carved glyphs found on the lintel above one of the structure’s doorways. Incidentally, the building was once known as “The Flat House with the Excessive Number of Chambers.”
Temple of Kukulcan: The Mesoamerican Step-Pyramid at the Heart of Chichen Itza
The most famous monuments at Chichen Itza, however, were only built after the arrival of the foreign invaders. These include El Castillo , the Great Ball Court, and the Temple of the Warriors. El Castillo, meaning “the castle,” is arguably the most recognizable monument of Chichen Itza. This structure, known also as the Temple of Kukulcan, is situated at the center of the city. The prominence of the temple is enhanced by the fact that it is the tallest structure at the site. The pyramid itself is 24 m (78.7 ft.) in height, whilst the temple on the platform is 6 m (19.7 ft.). Thus, the entire monument is 30 m (98 ft.) high. In addition, the Temple of Kukulacan is the largest temple in Chichen Itza, having a base measuring 53.3 m (174.9 ft.) on all four sides.
El Castillo, know as the Temple of Kukulcan, at the center of Chichen Itza.
The Temple of Kukulcan is not only impressive for its size, but also for the mathematical brilliance of its architects. According to legend, twice a year, when day and night are in balance, Kukulcan (the Maya version of Quetzalcoatl) would visit this temple. The god would commune with his followers, give them his blessings, and continue into the sacred waters. After taking a bath there, he would continue his journey to the Underworld. The architects of the Temple of Kukulcan designed the pyramid in such a way that during the equinox, those who came to the temple would be treated to a magical spectacle of light and shadow. For five hours on those days, the shadow of seven triangles would appear on the side of the staircase, starting from the top, and making its way down to the giant stone head of Kukulcan at the bottom. The top and the bottom of the pyramid are connected by the shadows for 45 minutes, before it slowly descends, and disappears. For the ancient Maya, this must have been proof of the legend. Interestingly, this phenomenon has been recreated artificially in modern times on a nightly basis, so that tourists need not wait for the equinox to see it.
Great Ball Court and the Temple of a Thousand Warriors
To the northwest of the Temple of Kukulcan is located the Great Ball Court. Although seven ball courts have been discovered at Chichen Itza, this one is considered to be the most impressive. The Great Ball Court measures 166 m (544.6 ft.) by 68 m (223.1 ft.), making it the largest ball court in Mesoamerica. The walls of the court are 12 m (39.4 ft.) high, on the top of which are rings carved with intertwining serpents. The walls are also decorated by sculpted reliefs. One of these reliefs has been interpreted as depicting the victors of a game holding the decapitated head of a member of the losing team.
As for the Temple of a Thousand Warriors, this is a large, stepped pyramid with rows of carved columns portraying warriors. The columns are located in front and on the side of the temple. Similarities in design have been noted between this temple and Temple B at Tula, the Toltec capital. This has led to the suggestion that there were cultural contacts between the peoples of the two cities.
Decline of Chichen Itza and the Spanish Conquest
Scholars believe that Chichen Itza dominated the Yucatan Peninsula between the 10th and 13th centuries. According to written sources, a revolt and civil war broke out about 1221 in Chichen Itza, leading to the city’s decline. This is corroborated by the archaeological evidence, as the wooden roofs of the Temple of the Warriors and the Great Market were found to have been burned around this time. In more recent years, however, archaeologists have suggested that Chichen Itza went into decline around the 11th century, 200 years earlier than originally thought.
After its decline, Chichen Itza was replaced by Mayapan, a neighbouring city to its west, as the dominant power on the peninsula. For a period of time, Chichen Itza joined Mayapan and Uxmal to form a political confederacy called the League of Mayapan. The league, along with the supremacy of Mayapan, came to an end around 1450. During the 16th century, the Spanish arrived on the Yucatan Peninsula, and began their conquest of the Maya. Chichen Itza was claimed by the conquistador Franciso de Montejo in 1531. Although de Montejo intended to make the city the capital of Spanish Yucatan, he failed to do so, as the Spanish were driven out by a native Maya revolt several months later.
Page from the illustrated book Incidents of Travel in Yucutan by John Lloyd Stephens.
In any case, by the time of de Montejo’s arrival, Chichen Itza had been largely abandoned, as its inhabitants had moved to smaller towns. The situation remained as such in the centuries that followed, and the site was gradually reclaimed by the jungle. Although Chichen Itza remained sacred to the Maya, it was slowly forgotten by the rest of the world. The site, however, entered popular imagination during the 19th century. In 1843, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan was published by the American explorer, John Lloyd Stephens. As a result of Stephens’ book, which recounted his journey in the Yucatan Peninsula, other explorers began to visit the ancient Maya city.
In the decades that followed, various archaeological excavations were conducted at Chichen Itza . As a result of these investigations, the site’s ruins were mapped, and some monuments were restored. The archaeological work at the site has also led to a greater understanding of Chichen Itza. Archaeologists continue to work at Chichen Itza even today, on the hunt for new discoveries. In 2019, for instance, archaeologists were searching for a sacred well under the city. Instead, as they were exploring the Balamku, or ‘Jaguar God’ cave system, they stumbled upon a trove of over 150 ritual objects.
Chichen Itza has become an extremely popular tourist attraction. Stephens’ book not only prompted archaeologists to explore the site, but tourists were not far behind. In the early 1920s, for example, Yucatan’s first official tourism business was established. In recent years, it has been estimated that up to two million tourists visit Chichen Itza annually, which makes it one of the most visited archaeological sites in Mexico. Chichen Itza is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site . In 2007 it was voted as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a global survey of more than 100 million people.
Top image: The Maya pyramid of Kukulcan at Chichen Itza in Mexico.
Hyperborea: Mythical Land That Fascinated Writers of the Ancient World
Hyperborea: Mythical Land That Fascinated Writers of the Ancient World
Hyperborea is a location in Greek mythology. The inhabitants of this mythical land are known as Hyperboreans, whom the ancient Greeks believed enjoyed extremely long lives. Hyperborea is mentioned by a number of Greek and Roman writers, including Herodotus, Pliny the Elder, and Pindar. Although Hyperborea is a mythical land, there has been speculation over the ages that it is a real place on earth. This has led to a number of theories about its exact location. In addition, attempts have been made to connect the Hyperboreans with real, historical peoples.
The name ‘Hyperborea’ may be translated to mean ‘Beyond the North Wind’, which is an indication of where the ancient Greeks thought this land was located. According to Greek mythology, the North Wind, personified by the godBoreas, lived inThrace. Therefore, Hyperborea would logically be placed to the north of Thrace. Hyperborea, however, was one of theterrae incognitae(Latin for ‘unknown lands’) of the ancient Greeks and Romans. These were regions which have neither been mapped nor documented. In other words, Hyperborea might very well be a place that exists only in myth. And many of the stories told about Hyperborea and theHyperboreansare quite unbelievable.
Hyperborea Mentioned Repeatedly by Herodotus
One of the ancient writers who mentions Hyperborea many times in his work is the Greek historian Herodotus. The so-called ‘father of history’ wrote about the Hyperborea in Book IV of his Histories. In one part of this book, Herodotus writes:
“Aristeas the son of Caystrobus, who came from Proconnesus, claimed in a poem that he visited the Issedones in a state of inspiration by Apollo, that beyond the Issedones lived a one-eyed race called the Arimaspians, beyond them there is the land of the gold-guarding griffins, and beyond them the Hyperboreans, all the way to the sea. All these people, from the Arimaspians on, except the Hyperboreans, are constantly attacking their neighbors.”
Ancient north pole map of mythical lands including the central continent of Hyperborea.
Herodotus seems to be skeptical about the existence of Hyperborea, but nevertheless informs his readers that this mythical land has been mentioned by two of ancient Greece’s most revered poets, Hesiod and Homer:
“None of the tribes living there, including the Scythians, have anything to say about the Hyperboreans. Perhaps the Issedones do, but I do not think so, because if they did the Scythians would have stories about them too, just as they do about the one-eyed people. Hesiod, however, has mentioned the Hyperboreans, and so has Homer in the Epigoni (if indeed Homer is the author of this poem).”
Herodotus then points out that most of the stories about Hyperborea are told by the inhabitants of the sacred island of Delos, “The overwhelming majority of the stories about the Hyperboreans come from Delos.” The historian goes on to relate some of the tales about the Hyperboreans, in which Delos, as one might expect, plays a prominent role. One of these, for instance, relates to the way sacred objects were transported from Hyperborea to Delos:
“The Delians say that sacred objects are tied up inside a bundle of wheat straws and are transported from the Hyperboreans first to Scythia, then westward as far as possible – that is, to the Adriatic – through a chain of successive neighbouring tribes, then south to Dodona (which is the first Greek community to receive them), then to the Gulf of Malia, where they cross over to Euboea, where they are passed from town to town until they reach Carystus, at which stage Andros is omitted, because the Carystians are the ones taking them to Tenos, and from Tenos the objects are conveyed to Delos. So this is how these sacred objects are said to reach Delos.”
The next story provided by Herodotus explains why the sacred objects were delivered in such a manner. According to the historian, the first time the sacred objects were sent to Delos, they were carried by two Hyperborean women, Hyperoche and Laodice (according to the Delians). The women were accompanied by five Hyperborean men who protected them and served as their escorts. These envoys, however, never returned home, causing the rest of the Hyperboreans to worry that the people they sent to deliver sacred objects in the future would not come back either. Therefore, they devised the method in which the objects were passed from one group of people to another, until they arrived in Delos.
Herodotus states that Hyperoche and Laodice accomplished their mission, and stayed in Delos, rather than returning home. After their deaths, the women were worshipped by the Delians and commemorated in a special ritual:
“Now, the death of the young women who came from the Hyperboreans is commemorated on Delos by a hair-cutting ritual performed by the girls and boys of the island. Before they get married, the girls cut off a lock of hair, wind it around a spindle and put in on the tomb (which is inside the sanctuary of Artemis, on the left as one enters, and an olive-tree has grown over it), and the Delian boys wind some of their hair around a twig and put it on the tomb as well. So that is how these Hyperborean women are worshipped by the inhabitants of Delos.”
Herodotus’ last story about the Hyperboreans is that of Arge and Opis, a pair of women who also travelled from Hyperborea to Delos. The women are said to have made the journey before Hyperoche and Laodice, though for a different purpose. Arge and Opis went to the island in order to pay tribute to Eileithyia, the Greek goddess of childbirth, in exchange for a quick and easy labor at childbirth.
According to Herodotus, the Delians claimed that the two women were accompanied by the gods themselves, and received different honors when they came to Delos. The women of the island begged gifts for Arge and Opis, whilst calling on the pair by name in the words of the hymn composed by Olen of Lycia in their honor. This practice has spread from Delos to the other Aegean islands and Ionia. Like Hyperoche and Laodice, the tombs of Arge and Opis are also found on the island: “This tomb of theirs is situated behind the grounds of the sanctuary of Artemis, facing east, right next to the banqueting-hall of the Ceans.”
Head of Herodotus, the “father of history” who wrote the most about Hyperborea.
Before ending his discussion about Hyperborea, Herodotus mentions in passing a figure called Abaris. As the historian says that he was not going to repeat the story of Abaris, it may be assumed that Herodotus’ readers were familiar with this tale. In any case, we learn from Herodotus that this Abaris was believed to be a Hyperborean, and that he “carried an arrow all the way around the world without eating anything.” Herodotus ends this section with a playful suggestion about people living beyond the South Wind, “But if there are Hyperboreans, there should also be Hyperenotians, people living beyond the south wind.”
Pliny The Elder and Hyperborea
Although Herodotus provides several stories related to the Hyperboreans, he does not talk much about Hyperborea itself, apart from its general location. Therefore, one has to rely on other ancient sources to fill in the gaps left by Herodotus. One such source is Natural History , written by Pliny the Elder, the Roman naturalist and natural philosopher. Pliny mentions the Hyperboreans in Book IV of his work, and begins with the general location of Hyperborea:
“Along the [Black Sea] coast [of Europe], as far as the river Tanais [known today as the Don], are the Mæotæ, from whom the lake derives its name, and the last of all, in the rear of them, the Arimaspi. We then come to the Riphæan mountains, and the region known by the name of Pterophoros, because of the perpetual fall of snow there, the flakes of which resemble feathers; a part of the world which has been condemned by the decree of nature to lie immersed in thick darkness; suited for nothing but the generation of cold, and to be the asylum of the chilling blasts of the northern winds.
Behind these mountains, and beyond the region of the northern winds, there dwells, if we choose to believe it, a happy race, known as the Hyperborei.”
Pliny the Elder of Rome who also wrote a lot about Hyperborea
Like Herodotus before him, Pliny seems to express his doubts about the existence of the Hyperboreans. Unlike the Greek historian, however, Pliny does not go straight into Delian-related Hyperborean stories. (Incidentally, the story about the Hyperboreans sending sacred objects to Delos via neighboring tribes can be found at the end of Pliny’s account of Hyperborea.) Instead, Pliny provides his readers with more details about Hyperborea itself:
“At this spot are supposed to be the hinges upon which the world revolves, and the extreme limits of the revolutions of the stars. Here we find light for six months together, given by the Sun in one continuous day, who does not, however, as some ignorant persons have asserted, conceal himself from the vernal equinox to autumn. On the contrary, to these people there is but one rising of the sun for the year, and that at the summer solstice, and but one setting, at the winter solstice. This region, warmed by the rays of the sun, is of a most delightful temperature, and exempt from every noxious blast.”
Pliny continues his account with information about the Hyperboreans themselves. Apart from referring to the Hyperboreans “a race that lives to an extreme old age,” earlier on, Pliny also wrote the following:
“The abodes of the natives are the woods and groves; the gods receive their worship singly and in groups, while all discord and every kind of sickness are things utterly unknown. Death comes upon them only when satiated with life; after a career of feasting, in an old age sated with every luxury, they leap from a certain rock there into the sea; and this they deem the most desirable mode of ending existence.”
From Pliny’s work, it is clear that even in ancient times the exact location of Hyperborea was a puzzle. Several competing hypotheses about Hyperborea’s actual whereabouts are mentioned by the Roman writer. For instance, Pliny mentions some ancient writers claimed that Hyperborea is located on the edge of the shores of Asia. These writers argued that a people called the Attacori, who resemble the Hyperboreans, lived in that region, which has very similar conditions to Hyperborea. Other writers argued that the region lies “midway between the two suns, at the spot where it sets to the Antipodes and rises to us.” Pliny discounts this hypothesis, considering the “vast tract of sea which there intervenes” A third hypothesis states that Hyperborea is located “nowhere but under a day which lasts for six months,” and that the Hyperboreans sow in the morning, reap at mid-day, gather the fruits of the trees at sunset, and conceal themselves in caves at night.
Bust of the lyric Roman poet Pindar whose poems mention Hyperborea
Hyperborea is also mentioned in works by ancient poets. These poetic works provide us with more information about this mythical land. The Hyperboreans, for instance, appear in Pindar’s Olympian Ode III . In his poem, Pindar claims that Heracles had travelled to Hyperborea to obtain an olive tree from its inhabitants. The hero begged for the tree “to make shade for all men to share, and for brave deeds of valorous spirits, a crown.” In another poem, Pythian Ode X , Pindar places the slaying of Medusa by Perseus in Hyperborea, and paints the region as a place of great happiness:
“The Muse is not absent from their customs; all around swirl the dances of girls, the lyre’s loud chords and the cries of flutes. They wreathe their hair with golden laurel branches and revel joyfully. No sickness or ruinous old age is mixed into that sacred race.”
Herodotus, Pliny the Elder, and Pindar were not the only ancient authors who wrote about Hyperborea. Other well known figures who mention this mythical region include Pausanias, Diodorus Siculus, Ovid, and Strabo.
The large amount of work written about Hyperborea by these ancient authors shows that there was a great fascination with this land. As a matter of fact, this fascination has survived till this day, as some have sought to identify the location of Hyperborea, which may help to prove its existence. Nevertheless, there is still no consensus to the location of Hyperborea, assuming this paradise even exists in the first place.
Top image: Boreas, Greek God of the North Wind, who is strongly connected with the mythical land of Hyperborea, abducting Oreithyia. Source: Giovanni Francesco Romanelli / Public domain .
I cover aerospace, astronomy and host The Cosmic Controversy Podcast.
NASA's Curiosity rover took this selfie on June 15, 2018, which was the 2082nd Martian day, or sol, ... [+]
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS.
For the past two decades, planetary scientists have been trying to solve the mystery surrounding measurements of atmospheric methane on Mars. This includes repeated detections of this potential biosignature right above the surface of Mars’ Gale Crater by NASA’s Curiosity rover.
But as yet, the European Space Agency’S (ESA) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) has come up empty when looking for methane higher in the Martian atmosphere, says NASA.
“When the Trace Gas Orbiter came on board in 2016, I was fully expecting the orbiter team to report that there’s a small amount of methane everywhere on Mars,” Chris Webster, lead of the Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) instrument in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) chemistry lab aboard the Curiosity rover, said in a statement.
But now NASA thinks it may have found a solution.
Because it needs a lot of power, TLS operates mostly at night when no other Curiosity instruments are working, says NASA. That’s when the Martian atmosphere is calm at night and methane seeping from the ground builds up near the surface where Curiosity can detect it, the agency notes.
ESA’S Trace Gas Orbiter, on the other hand, requires sunlight to pinpoint methane about 3 miles above the surface.
So, NASA made specific measurements using the TLS instrument during daytime and also confirmed a non-detection of the methane gas. Webster and colleagues detailed their results this week in The Astronomy and Astrophysics Journal.
Over the past two decades, the authors point out, Mars measurements from a wide variety of platforms (ground-based telescopes, orbiters, and rover) have reported methane values from zero to some 45 parts per billion by volume.
We report that the very low methane levels measured at night —- possibly from a subsurface seep —- are dissipated and dispersed when the sun comes up, Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator of SAM, who’s based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, told me. Our daytime measurements also give a null detection just like those from ESA’s orbiting TGO spacecraft, he says.
As for the methane measured in Gale Crater, the site which Curiosity has been exploring for nearly the past decade?
“With no evidence for methane production by the rover itself, we propose that the source is one of planetary micro-seepage,” the authors write.
Methane seepage from Gale Crater might possibly be from present or past microbial life of the variety that produces methane (methanogens) on Earth, says Mahaffy. But he says it’s equally plausible that this methane could be from past subsurface abiotic water rock interactions that also produced methane.
If the methane we measure comes from a methane seep in Gale Crater, Mahaffy expects that this would also be happening in many places on Mars since, there are many similar deep craters on Mars.
Methane is a stable molecule that is expected to last on Mars for about 300 years before getting torn apart by solar radiation, says NASA. The agency notes that experiments are underway to test whether very low-level electric discharges induced by dust in the Martian atmosphere could destroy methane, or whether abundant oxygen at the Martian surface quickly destroys methane before it can reach the upper atmosphere.
Since we have seen occasional large spikes of methane orders of magnitude more intense than most of our measurements, I would encourage our European colleagues to just keep looking out for this signal as they orbit Mars, says Mahaffy. Methane release from the subsurface may be episodic and a sudden big burp may enable a TGO detection of this transient signal, he says.
Such methane detections are too important to do otherwise since most of the methane in Earth’s atmosphere originates from microbial activity.
“But Earth teaches us that there are multiple pathways by which methane can be produced in the complete absence of biology,” Timothy Lyons, a distinguished professor of biogeochemistry at the University of California, Riverside, who was not a part of the team, told me. “We simply don't yet know which is the case for the methane on Mars.”
Beetles are everywhere—and new members of Earth’s most diverse group of organisms are being discovered nearly every day. Now, for the first time, scientists have found a new species in an unusual place: the fossilized poop of a dinosaur ancestor. Found whole and remarkably intact, the 230-million-year-old beetle, named Triamyxa coprolithica, is the first insect to be scientifically described from fossilized feces, also known as coprolites.
“This is very exciting research,” says Spencer Lucas, a paleontologist at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, who was not involved in the work. “This study is cutting edge and explores a whole new area of paleontology that has only been understood in the last decade.”
Coprolites are abundant in museum and research collections around the world. But until recently, Lucas says, few scientists examined these “little capsules of incredible fossil record” for their content, largely because researchers did not think small insects could successfully pass through a digestive system and end up in a recognizable form. Instead, paleontologists got most of their information about insect evolution from unlucky ones trapped in amber, or fossilized tree resin. But these fossils aren’t very old, geologically speaking: The most ancient ones date back to about 140 million years ago.
To discover whether coprolites could indeed preserve insect remains, Uppsala University paleontologist Martin Qvarnström and colleagues examined fossilized droppings from Poland that has previously been associated with the Triassic period, some 230 million years ago. They selected a coprolite fragment nearly 2 centimeters long that, based on its broken ends, suggested it was part of a much larger piece that might be more likely to contain things inside it. Then, they subjected the whole specimen to an intense x-ray beam at a synchrotron. By rotating the coprolite in the beam, they created 3D reconstructions of the coprolite’s contents. What they saw astounded them: incredibly preserved, nearly complete insects just 1.4 millimeters long, as well as fragments like heads, antennae, and legs, they report today in Current Biology.
The new species came from dung presumed to have been excreted by Silesaurus opolensis, a beaked dinosaur ancestor about 2.3 meters in length. The beetles were well preserved because coprolites act as microenvironments that can preserve organic material, including soft tissues, without any of the flattening that comes with other fossil types.
This extinct beetle likely belonged to a group known as Myxophaga, small beetles that thrive on algae in wet habitats, says study co-author Martin Fikáček, an entomologist at National Sun Yat-sen University. The team categorized it taxonomically by noting shared characteristics, like the number of abdomen segments or the position of the antennae, to modern Myxophaga, of which four lineages still survive today. The find is remarkable, Qvarnström says. “We have found bits and pieces [of insects in fossilized feces] before, but not enough to describe a new species, genus, and family,” like this.
These reconstructed images and models (see video above) not only reveal the new beetle species, but also offer information about the diets and environments of the animals that ate them, Qvarnström says. Such analyses can help scientists understand ancient food webs and how the dinosaur ancestors lived and interacted in this ancient ecosystem. By scanning coprolites from earlier and later in the Triassic period, the team also hopes to learn about insect evolution.
Scientists found several well preserved specimens of a new beetle species inside the fossilized feces of an ancient dinosaur ancestor.
Photo by Qvarnström et al./Current Biology
As for T. coprolithica, researchers say there is no way of knowing why it went extinct while its cousins survived into the modern era. Fikáček says it is likely to have been a combination of random events and sheer bad luck. “Extinction is always the trickiest part out of all these things to understand,” he says.
(Photo: USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Laboratory from Beltsville, the USA on Wikimedia Commons) Beetle Fossil
Related information about fossil discovery is shown on Blast World Mysteries' YouTube video below:
The violent birth of modern man: The incredible ancient stone carvings that reveal how a devastating comet impact 13,000 years ago killed thousands, altered the climate and triggered the rise of the first civilisations
The violent birth of modern man: The incredible ancient stone carvings that reveal how a devastating comet impact 13,000 years ago killed thousands, altered the climate and triggered the rise of the first civilisations
Scientists were analysing symbols carved on pillars at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey
Using memorial carvings they pinpointed a comet impact to around 11,000BC
The comet triggered a mini ice age that lasted 1,000 years
This ice age forced humans to develop farming techniques to grow their crops
Ancient symbols carved into stone at an archaeological site in Turkey tell the story of a devastating comet impact that triggered a mini ice age more than 13,000 years ago, scientists believe.
Evidence from the carvings, made on a pillar known as the Vulture Stone, suggests that a swarm of comet fragments hit the Earth in around 11000 BC.
One image of a headless man is thought to symbolise human disaster and extensive loss of life.
The devastating event, which wiped out creatures such as woolly mammoths, also helped spark the rise of civilisation.
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Ancient stone carvings confirm that a swarm of comets hit Earth 13,000 years ago sparking the rise of civilisations and wiping out the woolly mammoth. Pictured are the stone carvings used in the team's research, found on pillar 43 or 'the Vulture Stone' at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey
THE GOBLEKI TEPE CARVINGS
Gobleki Tepe is thought to be the world's oldest temple site.
Estimates suggest it dates back to around 9,000BC.
It is 6,000 years older than Stonehenge.
The carvings found by the team remained important to the people of Gobekli Tepe for millennia.
This suggests that the event and cold climate that followed the comet had a serious impact.
The team suggest the images were intended as a record of the cataclysmic event.
They claim that a carving showing a headless man may indicate human disaster and extensive loss of life.
Scientists have speculated for decades that a comet could have caused the sharp drop in temperature during a period known as the Younger Dryas.
The Younger Dryas is seen as a crucial period in humanity's history as it coincides with the beginnings of agriculture and the first Neolithic civilisations.
Scientists were analysing the mysterious symbols carved onto stone pillars at Gobekli Tepe in southern Turkey to find out if they could be linked to constellations.
Engineers from the University of Edinburgh studied animal carvings made on a pillar – known as the vulture stone – at the site.
By interpreting the animals as astronomical symbols, and using computer software to match their positions to patterns of stars, researchers dated the event to 10,950BC.
It probably resulted from the break-up of a giant comet in the inner solar system.
This is around the time the Younger Dryas period began according to ice core data from Greenland, which pinpoints the event to 10,890BC.
Before the comet strike, large fields of barley and wheat had allowed roaming hunters in the Middle East to set up permanent base camps.
Evidence from the carvings, made on a pillar known as the Vulture Stone, suggests that a swarm of comet fragments hit the Earth in around 11000 BC. The different symbols, said to tell the story, are labeled in the graphic above
But the ice-cold conditions created by the impact forced these hunters to band together and find new ways to grow crops.
They developed watering and selective breeding to help their crops last against the harsh climate, forming modern farming practices.
The carvings appear to have remained important to the people of Gobekli Tepe for millennia, the Edinburgh researchers said.
This suggests that the event and cold climate that followed likely had a serious impact.
The comet's impact killed thousands of people and triggered a mini ice age that lasted more than 1,000 years. Pictured is a replica of the Vulture Stone at Sanliurfa Museum in Turkey
By interpreting the animals as astronomical symbols, and using computer software to match their positions to patterns of stars, researchers dated the event to 10,950BC. This image shows the position of the sun and stars on the summer solstice of 10,950BC
The team suggest the images were intended as a record of the cataclysmic event.
A further carving showing a headless man may indicate human disaster and extensive loss of life, they said.
Furthermore, symbolism on the pillars indicates that the long-term changes in Earth's rotational axis was recorded at this time using an early form of writing.
The symbolism suggests that Gȍbekli Tepe was an observatory for meteors and comets.
The find supports a theory that Earth is likely to experience periods when comet strikes are more likely, owing to Earth's orbit intersecting orbiting rings of comet fragments in space.
Stone pillars at Gobleki Tepe, thought to be the world's oldest temple site. Scientists have speculated for decades that a comet could have caused the sharp drop in temperature during a period known as the Younger Dryas around 11,000BC
More stone pillars found at the Gobleki Tepe temple site. The Younger Dryas is seen as a crucial period in humanity's history as it coincides with the beginnings of agriculture and the first Neolithic civilisations
Dr Martin Sweatman, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering, who led the research, said: 'I think this research, along with the recent finding of a widespread platinum anomaly across the North American continent, virtually seal the case in favour of (a Younger Dryas comet impact).
'Our work serves to reinforce that physical evidence. What is happening here is the process of paradigm change.
'It appears Göbekli Tepe was, among other things, an observatory for monitoring the night sky.
'One of its pillars seems to have served as a memorial to this devastating event – probably the worst day in history since the end of the ice age.'
Scientists were analysing the mysterious symbols carved onto stone pillars at Gobekli Tepe in southern Turkey to find out if they could be linked to constellations
The find supports a theory that Earth is likely to experience periods when comet strikes are more likely, owing to Earth's orbit intersecting orbiting rings of comet fragments in space (stock image)
Catastrophic Comet Impact 13,000 Years Ago Likely Sparked the Rise of Civilization
Catastrophic Comet Impact 13,000 Years Ago Likely Sparked the Rise of Civilization
Humans suddenly changed around 13,000 years ago. Hunter-gatherer societies began to rapidly change their way of life. They began to build permanent settlements and focused their efforts on farming. The oldest man-made megalithic structures around were also built around this period. Was a comet impact the reason behind this rapid development of human civilization?
An international team of scientists has presented a new study with evidence that a comet impact could have triggered a shift in the development of human civilization towards rapid progress around 13,000 years ago.
Did a comet impact influence the rise of civilization
The research team analyzed data from excavations carried out around the world. In particular, during archaeological excavations in Arizona (USA), characteristic black layers were discovered, indicating significant changes in the environment.
Calculations showed that these changes began to occur from about 10 800 BC. More importantly, archaeologists also discovered space debris in the area.
Similar discoveries have been made all over the world before. Scientists believe that almost 13 thousand years ago, a stream of debris from an exploding comet hit the Earth or the entire comet did, with the impact causing a catastrophe on a planetary scale. Scientists believe that the only impact stronger than that one is the asteroid that put an end to the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago.
The archaeological site in Arizona, where you can see a black layer that indicates sudden and substantial environmental changes. Scientists believe that this event was linked to a comet debris impact around 10,800 BC. Credit: Comet Research Group
The new study focuses on the fact that the destructive cosmic impact chronologically coincides with major shifts in the self-organization of human societies. A little more than 12 thousand years ago, humanity very rapidly began to change its way of life. It was then that the first settled settlements appeared.
Gobekli Tepe
An example of this is Gebekli Tepe, located on the territory of modern Turkey. By the way, recently, during excavations in this settlement, the world’s oldest open-air temple was discovered. Experts have speculated for years that the symbols carved into its giant stone pillars may be an attempt to perpetuate a global cosmic catastrophe.
In the past, scientists used computer simulations and found that the art of Gobekli Tepe could be describing a major cosmic event (that appears to be a comet impact) that took place around 10,950 BCE, a period surprisingly close to the latest estimates.
Furthermore, Gobekli Tepe is the oldest (to date) manmade temple/complex and has been dated to around 12,000 years ago, making it the earliest known architectural achievement after the hypothetical sudden development of humankind.
Aerial view of Gobekli Tepe. Credit: DAI, Gobekli Tepe Project
Rise of civilization
The researchers also write in their new work that the analysis showed that the collision of comet fragments occurred before the beginning of the Neolithic period in southwestern Asia. Namely, in the region that covers parts of modern Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon.
It is known that in this vast region, more than 12 thousand years ago, hunter-gatherer societies began to rapidly change their way of life. They began to build permanent settlements and focused their efforts on farming. It was there that the first powerful civilizations of the world arose.
Scientists write that the impact of the comet likely wiped out many species of large animals and marked the beginning of a small ice age that lasted just over 1000 years. By the way, this theory was first proposed in 2007. It seems that it is only now that she has received the first hard evidence.
Researchers analyzed geological data from four continents, in particular North America and Greenland, where the largest number of traces of a cosmic catastrophe were found. Among them, experts include an increased amount of deposits of platinum and signs of melting of materials, which could only occur at extremely high temperatures. They also discovered nanodiamonds that exist inside comets and are formed during high-energy explosions.
According to the authors of the work, all this convincingly confirms the theory of the impact of comet debris on the earth’s surface almost 13 thousand years ago. Further research is of course needed. Scientists suggest that a comet impact could provoke climate change, and people had to quickly adapt to new conditions for their own survival. This gave an impetus to the development of technology, and further technical progress was increasing.
Sources:
Bressan, D. (2021, June 25). Controversial Theory Claims Comet Impact Sparked Human Civilization. Forbes.
Gohd, C. (2021, June 25). Did a comet strike 13,000 years ago change human civilization as we know it? Space.com.
ScienceDaily. (2021, June 24). Comet strike may have sparked key shift in human civilization.
Sweatman, M. (2021, May 13). The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis: review of the impact evidence. University of Edinburgh Research Explorer.
(CNN) - On Friday evening the US intelligence community released something remarkable:An unclassified report to Congressof unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) aka UFOs.
Which is a big deal! Especially when you consider that, for decades, the American government totally denied the existence of flying objects that they simply could not identify or, in some situations, explain.
The 9-page report isn't exactly an exhaustive study of UFOs, nor does it confirm or debunk the existence of alien life. And that it was released on a Friday night in the summer is also not an accident in terms of the government doing everything they can to bury the report.
Despite all of that, there were a number of interesting tidbits in the report. I pulled out some key quotes -- and added some context as well. That's below.
1. "Our analysis of the data supports the construct that if and when individual UAP incidents are resolved they will fall into one of five potential explanatory categories: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, USG or U.S. industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall 'other' bin."
OK, so there are five basic categories for UFOs according to the report: Random airborne, uh, stuff (like birds), weather phenomenons, defense prototypes -- either from the US or "foreign adversary systems" and then the "other bin." And, yes, I (and the rest of the world) am most interested in the "other" bin.
2. "After carefully considering this information, the UAPTF focused on reports that involved UAP largely witnessed firsthand by military aviators and that were collected from systems we considered to be reliable."
The UAPTF is short for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, of course. (There's nothing that the government likes more than acronyms.) And, what this line says is that the task force decided to give precedence to UFO reports "witnessed firsthand by military aviators." Which is rightly read to mean that these reports are a) serious and b) credible.
A movie poster from the 1950s shows how Hollywood envisioned UFOs
3. "No standardized reporting mechanism existed until the Navy established one in March 2019. The Air Force subsequently adopted that mechanism in November 2020, but it remains limited to USG reporting."
Amazing! There was no formal way within the government to record UFO sightings until the Navy started one in 2019!!! And the Air Force didn't follow suit until, roughly, six months ago! Which reveals a) how resistant the government has been to acknowledging UFOs and b) how many sightings were almost certainly missed.
4. "[There were] 144 reports originated from USG sources. Of these, 80 reports involved observation with multiple sensors."
This line establishes the universe, ahem, that the task force examined. There were incidents between 2004 and 2021 -- and more than half were confirmed by "multiple sensors."
5. "Narratives from aviators in the operational community and analysts from the military and IC describe disparagement associated with observing UAP, reporting it, or attempting to discuss it with colleagues. Although the effects of these stigmas have lessened as senior members of the scientific, policy, military, and intelligence communities engage on the topic seriously in public, reputational risk may keep many observers silent, complicating scientific pursuit of the topic."
Important stuff here -- an acknowledgment that the number of reports of UFOs may have been kept artificially low because of the stigma long attached to reporting these sorts of things, particularly among the military and intelligence community. That, according to the task force, has lessened somewhat as "senior members of the scientific, policy, military, and intelligence communities engage on the topic seriously in public."
6. "In 18 incidents, described in 21 reports, observers reported unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics. Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings."
Eyes emoji!!!! Like, this seems like a big deal! A total of 18 incidents where UFOs "appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion." In plain English, that means that military personnel spotted unidentified aerial phenomena that appeared to be unaffected by wind, move in ways that can't be explained and be propelled in ways that can't be explained. Which is very, very interesting.
7. "With the exception of the one instance where we determined with high confidence that the reported UAP was airborne clutter, specifically a deflating balloon, we currently lack sufficient information in our dataset to attribute incidents to specific explanations."
So, one time the thing that people thought was a UFO was a "deflating balloon." But, ALL the other times the military and intelligence community can't explain what the heck the UFO actually was. Which, again, BIG DEAL.
8. "Although most of the UAP described in our dataset probably remain unidentified due to limited data or challenges to collection processing or analysis, we may require additional scientific knowledge to successfully collect on, analyze and characterize some of them."
Most of these episodes remain mysterious, according to the report, because there simply isn't adequate information on hand to explain them. Then, however, there are some incidents that "may require additional scientific knowledge to successfully collect on, analyze and characterize some of them." Like, advanced science beyond our current capacity. Interesting!
Translation of 5,500-Year-Old Babel Text from China Reveals Oldest Known Map of Inner Solar System
Translation of 5,500-Year-Old Babel Text from China Reveals Oldest Known Map of Inner Solar System
It is obvious to any astronomer that some of the brightest objects in the night sky are the planets. It is thus mysterious that there are so few references to the planets in ancient literature.
Prior to decoding the Babel Text , which is an archaic geometric text that is based on astronomy, the oldest representation of the planets orbiting around the sun was ancient Greek philosophers Hicetas and Philolaus’ discussion on the planets orbiting a hot ball of metal, but there is little to indicate that they knew the relative orbital distances.
Identifying Astronomical Details with the Babel Text
However, with Dr. Derek Cunningham’s recent discovery of the Babel Text, a 5,300 to 5,600-Year-Old text from Lingjiatan, China, our understanding of the ancient past has changed dramatically. Now it is possible to read the enigmatic geometrical symbols on ancient artifacts and to identify subtle astronomical details that prior historians have missed.
In China, one of the most intriguing sites is Lingjiatan. The Lingjiatan culture existed from 5,500 to 4,000 years ago; and at around the same time as Stonehenge was constructed, the Chinese also created astronomical observatories and stone circles. Remarkably, the larger stones used to create the Chinese stone circles were not local to the area, which is the exact same trend seen later at Stonehenge.
Amongst the thousands of artifacts recovered at site 87M4:30, two items have caught the attention of Chinese archaeologists and historians.
A Depiction of Heaven and Earth
The first is an engraved geometric plaque that was found in 1987 between two jade tortoise shells that draws the ancient Chinese description of Heaven and Earth. This is a geometric drawing with lines radiating through two concentric circles, with four arrow-type symbols placed on the outer circle.
At the center of this complex drawing is an eight pointed star that is still used as a pattern in local tribal clothing. For example, the Yi describe (note: the linked text is in Chinese) the eight pointed star as the "the heaven and earth gossip pattern."
A representation (not the actual image) of the Jade Heaven and Earth plaque from Lingjiatan.
Credit: Derek Cunningham
This symbol is also mentioned in the Chinese document called the “Book of Changes”, where it is said the universe began in a state of chaos called Taiji and it was centered on the rotation of the North Pole. Then order developed from this chaos and Taiji created two Yis. One Yi was called Earth (Yin). The other Yi was called Heaven (Yiang).
In the book “Chinese Jade”, the author Ming Yu then states that Yin created what was called the four Xiangs, which is represented by four arrow-type images. These are argued by Chinese historians to be the same symbols drawn on this jade plaque. Then Yin developed into the shape of a square (perhaps reflecting a rectangular Mercator Map of Earth), and the heavens then circled three (or four) times around Earth. The jade plaque is dated differently by various researchers, but it is normally considered to be between 5,600 to 5,300 years old (see work by Li Liu, and Xingcan Chen.)
Variant of the Taijitu ("supreme ultimate diagram"). A number of similar such diagrams are known from the Ming-era Daoist canon. The origin of this particular design is unknown (but it likely predates the 18th century). ( Public Domain )A more detailed explanation surrounding this ancient description of a square-shaped Earth is provided in “ The Map that Talked ”; which looks at the creation of an intriguing Stone Age map, which uses the stars to create a relatively accurate map of Earth.
This archaic map can also explain the various aquatic descriptions that the Greeks gave to the constellations; where it is found that, when an expanded map of the stars is wrapped three times around Earth the Greek water constellations intriguingly mark the oceans and the constellations that describe heroes that did not drown mark the continents. The same book also describes the initial discovery of the original Babel Text.
“Aquarius, Piscis Australis & Ballon Aerostatique”, plate 26 in Urania's Mirror, a set of celestial cards accompanied by A familiar treatise on astronomy ... by Jehoshaphat Aspin. London. Astronomical chart, 1 print on layered paper board: etching, hand-colored.
Though many dedicated Ancient Origin readers will know of Derek Cunningham’s prior work, where he analyzed many geometric symbols around the world and noted the archaic patterns were apparently used as a very simple code, in which the angles of the lines were set to reflect the key astronomical values that astronomers used to calculate time and predict eclipses, few will have heard the phrase, “The Babel Texts”.
The reason for now referring to these lines as being the original written and spoken world language comes from a preliminary analysis that has recovered a phonetic code that can be attached to the lines. This means the lines are both mathematical values (that reflect astronomical terms) and a type of alphabet, where each line can be given a consonant that depends on the angle of the line.
To this pictorial text a vowel can also be attached, where the vowel depends on whether the offset is to above or below the horizontal, or to the right or left of the vertical.
This idea is discussed in much more detail in the author’s latest book “The Babel Texts”, where the basic conclusion is that the same astronomical code was used worldwide, including in Australia and in North and South America, during the Stone Age.
Part of the Wurdi Youang stone arrangement in Victoria, Australia.
Intriguingly, though the original world “spoken” language rapidly diverged over time, it appears the written text was far more resistant to change, and that permits more modern texts, such as proto-cuneiform and other angular-based texts such as Irish Ogham , to be used to recover phonetic clues; which now brings us back to the Chinese Neolithic Lingjiatan astronomical site and a second intriguing pattern that was found on a jade eagle.
The Jade Eagle
The Babel Text also appears on this jade artifact, but what is important about this archaic text is the pattern apparently names six planets and the moon and the sun. From its layout it is possible to extract the names of the celestial bodies.
The most important point to note is the inverted triangles on this jade eagle are almost all symmetrical. The exception is just one pairing, which is created using the -18.6, -5.1 degree pairing. These astronomical values are linked to the angle of the moon’s orbital plane relative to Earth, and the moon’s 18.6 year long orbital cycle around Earth. As this is the only inverted triangle that uses the 5.1 degree value, this inverted triangle is believed to represent the moon.
Using various ancient texts to try to determine phonetic values for these lines then produces a relatively simple text that matches later Ogham phonetic values. In this case it appears the names for the celestial bodies are GeGo (Earth); ShyiShyu (Mercury); Ish(o)?Ishe (Venus); NuNi (Mars); IsheIsh(o)? (Jupiter); NiNu (Saturn); Ish(o)?Hes (The Moon) and ShyuShyi (The Sun).
Intriguingly, this jade eagle also provides the earliest known drawing of the inner solar system.
The jade eagle also appears to draw the inner solar system. Credit: Derek Cunningham
By using the holes that create the eyes and the nose of the various animals to draw circles, it is found that the image draws the orbital distances for the first four planets.
It is also intriguing that this jade eagle is considered to be circa 5,300 years old, which makes it marginally older than the earthwork found at Stonehenge.
In this image, which is a representation (and not the actual image of the jade eagle) it is found that the angles drawn by the lines that create the central star pattern are aligned to the astronomical values that astronomers use to measure time and predict eclipses. For example, the 27.32 degree value is the sidereal month, which is central in determining where the Earth is in its orbit around the sun.
Credit: Derek Cunningham
Both the jade eagle and the layout of Stonehenge are described in more detail in the author’s book “The Babel Text”, but what is now becoming clear is the same astronomical knowledge was present in both Britain and China at around the same time period.
The Case of Stonehenge
In the case of Stonehenge, I could find no prior work by any other author that mentions the size of the Stonehenge earthwork relative to the central stone circle appears to show the relative diameters of the moon and planet Earth.
The width of the stone circle at Stonehenge also appears to reflect the apparent change in the size of the moon at apogee and perigee.
This drawing of Stonehenge is based on recent LIDAR data, which shows the outer earthwork that surrounds Stonehenge is actually a reasonable representation of the size of Earth if the inner stone circle is considered to the moon. (See here)
It thus seems likely that circa 5,300 years ago the Mesopotamians, the people who settled in the Orkney Isles , and the Stone Circle Builders of Lingjiatan were in contact.
However, this is not the only time the world was in contact.
A Connection Since the Appearance of the Fist Homo sapiens
For this archaic text to be the original Babel Text, it must be old enough to explain the appearance of the same geometric text in Australia and in California and Nevada in North America; and with the original text to guide us, it is actually possible to follow this text through time. Amazingly, the journey does takes us all the way back to the appearance of the first Homo sapiens.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to discuss all the results here, but it is now clear that the Bible was correct. There was a time when the whole earth was of one language , and of one speech . The only surprise is we didn’t realize that the phrase “One Language” was referring to an archaic written text.
‘The Confusion of Tongues’ (1620) by Karel van Mander I.
President Bidenpromised to unify a fractured country. At the same time, his administration pledged to usher in a new era of transparency. Following the release of a highly anticipated government report on UFOs, Biden has a rare opportunity to live up to both commitments.
The UFO report prompted a flurry of bipartisan calls for a robust, open-minded investigation into these perplexing phenomena. If members of Congress can set aside seemingly intractable differences to take this issue seriously, the Biden administration – and the American public – should take note.
Beyond acknowledging that intelligence analysts are thoroughly stumped by mysterious objects – some of which appear to exhibit remarkable technology in restricted airspace – the report marks an extraordinary shift in how the government perceives UFOs. After seven decades of deflection, ridicule and brushing aside such encounters, the Pentagon is following in Congress’s footsteps and taking such phenomena seriously. Very seriously.
Moreover, by demanding the report, Congress stumbled upon an issue that can unite Americans of all political stripes. Indeed, if strong, bipartisan statements on these encounters are any indicator, the UFO mystery could ultimately transcend the deep polarization of the post-Trump era.
To that end, the Biden administration should declassify some basic, non-sensitive information, focusing on objects that seem to exhibit remarkable technology.
Of 143 unexplained encounters, 18 involved “unusual” “movement patterns or flight characteristics.” According to the report, analysts are attempting to determine if these objects demonstrated “breakthrough technologies.” This aligns with reporting by the New York Times that some of these craft accelerated, changed direction and submerged in seemingly extraordinary ways.
The report’s equivocation on these perplexing encounters stands in stark contrast to former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe’s unambiguous comments that “there are technologies that we don’t have and frankly that we are not capable of defending against.”
According to Ratcliffe, intelligence analysts “ruled out” weather incidents, visual disturbances, foreign adversaries or ultra-secret U.S. technology as possible explanations for the most exotic phenomena.
If Ratcliffe’s statements are accurate, this is an extraordinary development. More to the point, the Biden administration has a rare opportunity to live up to its pledges to restore transparency and national unity. It can begin by releasing a numbered list of the report’s 18 “unusual” encounters alongside the intelligence community’s preliminary confidence levels (low, medium or high) that each object exhibited some sort of “breakthrough technology.”
If Ratcliffe is correct and analysts ruled out mundane explanations or advanced U.S. and adversarial technology, the government’s high-level assessments would fuel a remarkable discussion, drawing in Americans from across the political divide.
Perhaps best of all, declassifying such data would not expose tradecraft or sensitive sources and collection methods. In other words, the Biden administration has no good reason not to release such basic information.
Ratcliffe’s eyebrow-raising comments are not the only reason more Americans’ curiosity should be piqued.
After reviewing government reports on UFOs, former astronaut, senator and current NASA administrator Bill Nelsonsaid “the hair stood up on the back of my neck.”
John Brennan, CIA director under President Obama, went further, speculating that UFOs might constitute a “different form of life.” In much the same vein, Luis Elizondo, the one-time head of a Pentagon unit tasked with investigating these phenomena, stated that the U.S. government is actively “considering whether the most extraordinary unidentified flying objects are not of earthly origin.” Meanwhile, Christopher Mellon, a former top Pentagon official, penned a post titled “Don’t Dismiss the Alien Hypothesis.”
And in recent weeks, former presidents Obama and Clinton – who still receive high-level intelligence briefings – openly speculated about extraterrestrial life when asked about UFOs.
Make no mistake: These are fascinating developments that should spur curiosity among Republicans and Democrats alike.
And if a thorough investigation, driven by intense bipartisan interest, ultimately determines that balloons, drones, birds or plastic bags explain the most extraordinary UFO encounters, the upshot is that America will be less politically and culturally fractured. (Ditto for any revelation that an adversary mounted an audacious espionage campaign.)
As large swathes of the country face a drought of “biblical proportions” and all-time temperature records are demolished, an unlikely shot at uncovering “breakthrough technology” is worth eroding the deep fault lines dividing America.
To that end, the Biden administration must live up to its twin commitments to transparency and unity.
Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, as well as an Obama administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter @MvonRen.
A coronavirus outbreak struck East Asia some 20,000 years ago — and left traces of the epidemic in the genetic makeup of people from that area, a study has found.
An international team of researchers led from the University of Queensland analysed the genes in human DNA that code for proteins that interact with coronaviruses.
They found evidence among the DNA people of East Asian ancestry of natural selection for adaptations that would have served to lessen disease severity.
COVID-19 — which has killed some 3.8 million people over the course of the last 18 months — is not the only severe outbreak of coronavirus that jumped from animals.
In 2002, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome resulting from SARS-CoV emerged in China and led to more than 800 mortalities.
Meanwhile, MERS-CoV — which leads to Middle East Respiratory Syndrome — killed more than 850 people after it was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012.
'The modern human genome contains evolutionary information tracing back tens of thousands of years,' said paper author and synthetic biologist Kirill Alexandrov of the Queensland University of Technology.
Video: In Order to Survive Antibiotics, Bacteria Can Change Shape (Amaze Lab)
The entire world right now is going through a horrible and deadly pandemic with over 180,000,000 people having been infected with COVID-19 and almost 4,000,000 deaths. But this isn’t a new thing as over 20,000 years ago there was another coronavirus infection that hit the eastern part of Asia.
A new study was conducted by researchers from the United States and Australia who analyzed the genomes of over 2,500 people belonging to 26 different worldwide populations. They specifically found the earliest interaction of the human genome with coronavirus infections and those genetic imprints are incredibly still present in the DNA of people currently from East Asia.
Lead author Yassine Souilmi explained that viruses duplicate themselves; however, they don’t have the tools to do that on their own, “So they actually depend on a host, and that’s why they invade a host and then they hijack their machinery to create copies of themselves.” The hijacking on the cells can still be seen in today’s populations which allowed the researchers to pinpoint whose ancestors may have been exposed to a very ancient form of coronavirus.
The experts found specific genomes with signs of ancient coronavirus in five populations located in China, Japan, and Vietnam. It is possible that the virus could have spread to other parts of the world but there is no information so far on whether or not that happened.
In those five specific populations, the researchers discovered that a beneficial mutation had been developed throughout the years that aided in protecting them against coronavirus and gave them a better chance of surviving it. Souilmi explained this further, “Over a long period of time, and along the exposure, this leaves a very, very clear marking in the genomes of their descendants,” adding, “And that’s the signature we actually use to detect this ancient epidemic, and also the timing of this ancient epidemic.”
It is unknown how many people caught the virus, how many died as a result from it, and what type of symptoms they had – was it like a normal flu or something much worse, similar to what we’re currently dealing with? Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine that coronavirus hit a part of the world over 20,000 years ago and it is now doing the same thing but much, much worse.
The study was published in Current Biology where it can be read in full.
Over the course of several months between the final weeks of 1896 and the early summer of 1897, newspapers throughout the United States had been reporting on odd stories of airships that were purportedly being seen across the nation. Beginning in California, the sightings continued in the months ahead as the area of sightings slowly expanded eastward into states like Arkansas, Missouri and Texas.
One of the most interesting accounts from the era appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the date of April 16, 1897, which announced that the mysterious airship had been viewed through a telescope by one Dr. Leo Caplan while it passed over Missouri.
“The airship visited St. Louis again Thursday night,” the Post-Dispatch report read. “This time the bright searchlight was not only seen by thousands but the object was observed through a telescope and the outlines of the craft were seen.”
Artist’s rendering of the airship purportedly seen during late 1896 and into the summer of 1897.
Dr. Caplan, who was described in the article as a medical doctor and “a dabbler in astronomy” and frequent stargazer, had been convinced that what he observed was no star.
“I was walking to my home on Washington avenue last night about 7:45,” Caplan explained, “when I saw a bright light almost overhead.” The light appeared to the northwest of where Caplan stood observing.
“But the moment I saw this light,” Caplan explained, “I realized it was something unusual and I hastened home, ran to the roof and brought my telescope to bear on the object. Before taking a sight I noticed the light was swaying from side to side.” Caplan likened this peculiar motion to that of “a searchlight that was being manipulated.”
Most intriguingly, Caplan also said that he was able to observe through his telescope “a long black body behind the light,” which he described as being similar to other reports of a large, cigar-shaped object reported by other observers around the time who had seen the mysterious craft during its mostly nighttime visits. One day after Caplan’s observation, another purported sighting of the strange aerial visitor was logged by an Arkansas constable named John J. Sumpter, who saw the airship with his Deputy Sherriff John McLemore.
Amidst newspaper reports like these that had been occurring in the spring and early summer of 1897, there had been other unusual sightings taking place even further east. Around the same time, Joseph Loven, a resident of the Cold Springs community along Jonas Ridge, North Carolina, first said he observed peculiar lights that appeared at night and could be seen from his home off in the direction of a location now famous for the strange lights said to manifest there: a long, flat ridgeline called Brown Mountain.
Brown Mountain as seen today in Western North Carolina.
The Brown Mountain Lights, as the phenomena reputed to occur near Linville in Western North Carolina has since come to be known, would seem to be quite different from the reports of airships that were afoot during the 1890s. However, is it possible that there might nonetheless be a connection between them?
In 1906, nine years after the American airship affair had died down (and some of the earliest alleged sightings of the Brown Mountain Lights were said to have occurred), author Jules Verne still had airships on his mind. His novel Master of the World, a sequel to his earlier book Robur the Conquerer, was now hitting the shelves, which continued the adventures of the fearful Robur and his penchant for building magnificent flying ships. In Master of the World, Verne described a rather unique location as the base of operations for Robur’s latest operations, as featured in the opening pages of the story.
“The strange occurrences began in the western part of our great American State of North Carolina,” Verne explains. “There, deep amid the Blueridge Mountains rises the crest called the Great Eyrie. Its huge rounded form is distinctly seen from the little town of Morganton on the Catawba River, and still more clearly as one approaches the mountains by way of the village of Pleasant Garden.”
“The Great Eyrie,” as depicted in the original illustrations for Jules Verne’s novel “Master of the World”
(public domain).
Verne goes on to paint the Great Eyrie as a strange prominence rising above the surrounding landscape, describing it as “rocky and grim and inaccessible,” noting that “under certain atmospheric conditions [it] has a peculiarly blue and distant effect.” Verne elaborates further, speculating that the summit of the Great Eyrie, which remained impenetrable to even the most experienced climbers, might have been an ancient volcano, “one which had slept through ages, but whose inner fires might yet reawake,” which he likens to Krakatoa, Mont Pelee, and potentially being host to an “eruption such as that of 1902 in Martinique.”
This much might have been evident by the many sightings of smoke, or the “unexplained rumblings” cited by locals which appeared to emanate from the Great Eyrie. This, and the fact that, as Verne recounts, “A glow in the sky had crowned the height at night.”
“And finally,” Verne tells us, “one stormy night pale flames, reflected from the clouds above the summit, cast upon the district below a sinister, warning light.”
Flames above the Great Eyrie, from Verne’s “Master of the World”
(Public Domain).
Soon, newspapers throughout the region would begin to report on the mysterious light show occurring in the skies above The Great Eyrie, and as Verne tells us, “curiosity among those who being in no danger themselves were interested in the disturbance merely as a strange phenomenon of nature,” while others nearer to the mysterious mountain lived in fear of possible forthcoming danger.
“Those more immediately threatened were the citizens of Morganton,” Verne tells us, “and even more the good folk of Pleasant Garden and the hamlets and farms yet closer to the mountain.”
English translations of Vern’s novel wouldn’t make their way onto the shelves of American bookstores until 1911, but by the time they did, people around real-life Morganton, North Carolina, were already familiar with similar strange happenings said to occur in their region.
An example appeared in The Charlotte Daily Observer on the date of September 23, 1913, which provided the following account:
“The mysterious light that is seen just above the horizon almost every night from Rattlesnake Knob, near Cold Spring, on the Morganton road is still baffling all investigators. With punctual regularity the light rises in a southeasterly direction from the point of observation just over the lower slope of Brown Mountain, first about 7:30 p.m. and again at 10 o’clock. It looks much like a toy fire balloon, a distinct ball, with no atmosphere about it. It is much smaller than the full moon, much larger than any star and very red. It rises in the far distance from beyond Brown Mountain, which is about 6 miles from Rattlesnake Knob, and after going up a short distance, wavers and goes out in less than 1 minute. It does not always appear in exactly the same place, but varies what must amount in the distance to several miles. The light is visible at all seasons, so Mr. Anderson Loven, an old and reliable resident testifies There seems to be no doubt that the light rises from some point in the wide, level country between Brown Mountain and the South Mountains, a distance of about 12 miles, though it is possible that it rises at a still greater distance.”
Historical photo depicting lights purported to represent the mysterious lights seen near the vicinity of Brown Mountain, North Carolina.
According to most sources, no written records of mysterious lights appear in the region prior to around 1912, although most newspaper accounts begin appearing in 1913. These state that locals had been troubled by the appearances of the lights for the last “two or three years,” which as Geologist Ed Speer, a researcher who has studied the lights for several years has pointed out, would roughly coincide with the appearance of English translations of Jules Verne’s Master of the World in 1911.
However, some sources such as Joseph Loven, who claimed to have seen the lights as early as 1897 (when mysterious “airships” were frequent appearing, at least in American newspapers) also said he wouldn’t begin to pay attention to the lights until 1910, when others began to bring attention to them like Rev. C. E. Gregory, his neighbor at the time.
Is it indeed possible that there could be any connection between beliefs about the Brown Mountain Lights—appearances of which have been said to persist now for decades—and the mysterious airships of the 1890s? Admittedly, the appearance of “The Great Eyrie” as depicted in art from Verne’s novel bears a striking similarity to Table Rock, a prominent mountain in the Linville Gorge wilderness a short distance from Brown Mountain where reports of the mysterious lights have also been logged over the years.
An enhanced photo that may depict an anomalous light rising over Table Rock in the Linville Gorge Wilderness, taken in 2009 by researcher Bill Fox
(Credit: Bill Fox).
It would be difficult to imagine Jules Verne (who despite his gifted imagination, never strayed far from his home in France) had somehow heard about quaint local traditions in the southern Appalachians regarding ghost lights at the time he wrote of the “strange occurrences… in the western part of our great American State of North Carolina” in Master of the World. This is especially unlikely since newspaper accounts detailing the lights appeared no earlier than 1912, one year after the publication of his novel.
Conversely, the skeptically inclined would argue that stories about the lights, rather than inspiring Verne’s story, had actually been influenced by its publication instead. Then again, if this were true, what can be said of the endurance of reports of the lights now for more than a century? A final possibility would simply be that there are no connections, apart from the coincidental appearances of the lights shortly after the publication of Verne’s book, which borrowed from the lingering interest in prospective airships seen in America in the 1890s (although it should be noted that a similar rash of sightings occurred in Britain in 1909, Verne’s novel was published in France three years before this, and thus couldn’t have been inspired by the sightings of “Scareships” over Europe).
Some of the similarities between these late-19th and early-20th century oddities are certainly difficult to ignore. Ultimately, they could be suggestive of the cultural influence one of the most renowned early science fiction novelists had on the development of a famous folk tradition of “ghost lights” in the American southeast.
ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011
If there was one person on Earth who would have definitive knowledge of extraterrestrials, the leading candidate would be an astronaut who has spent time in space. Second choice might be the head of NASA, who has talked to these astronauts and seen their reports. Third would probably be someone who has read the full classified Pentagon report on UFOs, not just the public summary. There’s one person who fits in all three categories – Bill Nelson, the former astronaut who is currently the new head of NASA and just finished reading the classified Pentagon report. So, what does he have to say about ETs?
“People are hungry to know. And of course, ever since ‘Star Trek,’ you know people are yearning to find out what’s out there in the cosmos. Are we alone? Personally, I don’t think we are. The universe is so big, it’s 13 and a half billion years ago is when the universe started. That’s pretty big.”
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson
What about the UAPs, Bill. Are these Romulan warships or Klingon battle cruisers? Are they shuttlecrafts from a cloaked mothership? Scouts? What did the classified version of the Pentagon report really say about them?
“The report basically says what we thought. We don’t know the answer to what those Navy pilots saw but they know that they know something. They tracked it and locked their radar on to it. It moved quickly from one location to another.”
In an interview with CNN (watch it here), Nelson unfortunately doesn’t sound the one person on Earth with the experience and the exposure to answer those critical questions. Instead, he verbally agrees with the limited 9-pafe summary released to the public, although he does add some NASA-specific observations about whether it might be an alien adversary.
“We don’t think so [that it is an adversary], but when it comes to universe, remember the universe is so large, we have a program in NASA called the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. But thus far, we don’t have any receipt communication from something that’s intelligent.”
Not surprisingly, he hopes they’re not owned by a foreign adversary.
“… I talked to the Navy pilots, when we were briefed in the Senate Armed Services Committee, and my feeling is that there is clearly something there. It may not necessarily be an extraterrestrial, but if it is a technology that some of our adversaries have, then we better be concerned.”
He also says the public needs to be patient. NASA scientists are analyzing the data in an attempt to explain them scientifically, and he’s awaiting their report. He also plugs the upcoming launch of the James Webb telescope in November, which will “peer back in time, almost to the beginning and additional information will find more planets.”
Associate NASA Administrator Robert Cabana, Administrator Bill Nelson and former NASA Deputy Director Lori Garver in an early photo front of NASA’s first space-bound Orion capsule.
Sigh. Despite his top position at NASA, his time in space and with other astronauts, his access to classified information … he sounds like he’s still in the mode of his other previous job – U.S. senator from Florida.
Will anyone step forward with additional information on those 143 unexplained UAP sightings by the military, or the UAP sightings by other countries, or the hundreds (or more) of other non-military sightings the government must have in its files? Are the sightings really not ours nor of other countries? How much longer will frustrated pilots continue to report on them with no answers? How much longer before there’s a confrontation? Why hasn’t there been one yet?
We want to believe … we just don’t yet know WHO to believe.
Strange Lights Sighted Over London, England ( June 30, 2021 )
UFO ? : STATEMENT : Wembley ( London ) blue lights coming from behind the clouds
Well guys during lockdown in the U.K. stay indoors have a ceiling over your head for a whole year !!!! Hmmmmm. Not many people looking up at the sky anymore ??? Very fishy stuff
Police car films something strange on the road in Rabun County, Georgia. What is it?
Police car films something strange on the road in Rabun County, Georgia. What is it?
In Rabun Conty, Georgia, residents have been thrown into a fright after a bizarre story emerged regarding cops being scared at a road location by what has been described as a “something strange”.
That and more strange events caught on tape. Real or fake? Video here:
Former Nevada Sen. Harry Reid shares what he saw at Area 51, thoughts on UFOs
Former Nevada Sen. Harry Reid shares what he saw at Area 51, thoughts on UFOs
Recent disclosures by the federal government acknowledged the existence of UFOs might be surprising to everyone except Nevada’s former Sen. Harry Reid.
“Interstellar vehicles” visited Earth: ancient manuscripts confirm it
“Interstellar vehicles” visited Earth: ancient manuscripts confirm it
The history of mankind keeps many secrets hidden for millennia. It is possible that the Earth was visited by interstellar vehicles from other worlds.
Interstellar vehicles were on Earth: ancient manuscripts confirm this.
There are ancient manuscripts , possibly written for some purpose . The truth is that humanity will always be oriented to discover its true origin. And the story tells of interstellar vehicles , beings from other worlds, and many other events that orthodox historians wish to eliminate.
In these ancient texts mention is made of exotic technologies, such as antigravity . Whose control came from the human mind.
For many, civilizations such as the Sumerian or Egyptian are considered those that would have the greatest relevance in terms of the evolution of the Earth .
However, ancient India keeps ancient texts with a unique and surprising knowledge.
The oldest history of mankind?
One of the broadest histories of society is found in ancient India, and its texts known as the Vedas considered the greatest ancient manuscripts of mankind.
Among some of the particularities found in these texts is the mention of flying ships that traveled the Earth 6000 years ago .
These Vedic Sanskrit texts constitute the oldest link in Hinduism in terms of Sanskrit literature and writing.
In the book, Vaimanika Shastra or “Science of Aeronautics” are descriptions of interstellar vehicles , whose control was the mind through. A technology of ancient cultures, now defunct.
According to various experts, the texts show real aeronautical ships.
Mention is also made of antigravity or levitation as technologies used in the past.
Interstellar vehicles in ancient times
For some scholars the sacred text Vaimanika Shastra can be considered as a guide for space, interstellar and space travel
V. Raghavam, writer of more than 120 books and 1,200 articles , which credited him with the Sahitya Akademi Prize for Sanskrit in 1966, was commissioned to interpret those spoken by Vaimanika Shastra.
Dr. V. Raghavam interpreted that thousands of years ago alien beings visited our ancestors. In the same way, human beings inhabited other planets .
Other scholars and authors agree with Raghavan, that evidence of various types of written technologies can be found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
For the professor of aeronautics at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, Dr. AV Krishna Murty, what has been said is totally true.
Stating that “ancient Indian Vedas and other texts describe aeronautics, flying machines, spaceships and ancient astronauts.”
It is worth mentioning that, although the Hindu Vedas is not the only text that makes mention of flying ships, it is the most explicit and graphic. So can we say that the Earth was visited by the Ancient Astronauts?
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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