Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
The idea of a plant making noises when in distress all sounds very Harry Potter.
But a study now suggests that the plant kingdom is not as silent as we once believed as some really do produce noises when they're underwatered.
They also appear to make distress signals after being cut, with these sounds found to come from tomato and tobacco plants, as well as corn and the grapevines used to make cabernet sauvignon.
Ultrasonic vibrations have been recorded from species previously, using sensors directly touching them.
But this new study provides the first evidence that plants emit airborne sounds, which researchers estimate could be heard by animals with sharp hearing, such as mice and moths, from up to 16 feet (5 metres) away.
A study has found that plants really do emit sounds when they're stressed - but it's more of a pop than a scream
The idea of a plant making noises may evoke a vision of the mandrakes from Harry Potter
Flowers and trees warn neighbours when they're under attack by releasing chemicals into the wind
However, we can't naturally listen to the noises as humans cannot hear in the high-frequency 'ultrasonic' range. So researchers have lowered the frequency of the plant noises so we can listen.
Plants typically produce a noise similar to popcorn popping - thought to be caused by air bubbles bursting in their stem - less than once an hour.
But tomato plants which had not been watered for up to five days produced this popping sound much more frantically - more than once every two minutes on average.
And when they were cut, the tomato plants made an alarm sound around every two and a half minutes.
In the Harry Potter universe, mandrakes make a screaming noise when they are taken out of the soil - and a fully grown plant's squeal could be lethal.
Professor Lilach Hadany, an evolutionary biologist at Tel Aviv University and senior author of the study which looked at hundreds of plants, said: 'Our findings suggest that the world around us is full of plant sounds, and that these sounds contain information – for example about water scarcity or injury.
'We assume that in nature the sounds emitted by plants are detected by creatures nearby, such as bats, rodents, various insects, and possibly also other plants - that can hear the high frequencies and derive relevant information.
'We believe that humans can also utilise this information, given the right tools, such as sensors that tell growers when plants need watering.
Normally plants produce a noise rather like popcorn popping - thought to be caused by air bubbles bursting in their stem - less than once an hour
Do plants feel 'pain'?
When a bug bites down on a plant leaf, the wound triggers the release of calcium, researchers at the University of Wisconsin said last year.
This sets off a chain reaction in the cells along the plant leaves and stem.
It takes about one to two minutes for the response to reach every part of the plant.
The calcium generates a hormonal response from the plant to protect its leaves.
Some plants release noxious chemicals that makes it taste bad to other invading bugs.
Others, such as grass, give off hormones that attract nearby parasitic wasps, which eat the attacking insects.
'Apparently, an idyllic field of flowers can be a rather noisy place. It's just that we can't hear the sounds!'
The ultrasonic recordings captured by two microphones positioned next to each plant in the study support the theory that they could use sound to warn each other of danger from drought or hungry animals.
If plants knew water is scarce ahead of time, they could close pores in their leaves to conserve water.
And if it heard a noise from another plant whose stem had been severed by an animal eating it, that plant could then emit volatile compounds to deter the hungry animal.
The researchers used artificial intelligence algorithms to compare the noises from healthy tomato and tobacco plants to those which had been cut or deprived of water for up to two weeks in a soundproofed acoustic chamber.
The team found plants which had not been watered began making distress calls before they were visibly dehydrated, with the noises peaking after five days without water, before decreasing before the plants dried up completely.
The noise could help growers use a sensor to tell when their house plants are unhappy and need water, or help farmers save water by irrigating crops only when they are becoming dehydrated.
The researchers also found plants including grapevines, wheat, corn and cacti made noises when they were cut or dehydrated.
The sounds lasted for longer when a plant was dehydrated compared to when it was cut, and different plants appeared to make different noises based on factors like noise frequency.
Experts suspect these noises may be helpful for creatures such as moths, which lay larvae on plants, so will find dehydrated ones unsuitable.
The noise could help people use a sensor to tell when their house plants are unhappy and need water, or help farmers save water by irrigating crops only when they are becoming dehydrated
These plant sounds have been processed to make them audible to the human ear.
Research showing water-stressed or injured plants emitting high-pitched sounds could have implications for horticultural monitoring.
credit: Lilach Hadany
Plants do not suffer in silence. Instead, when thirsty or stressed, plants make “airborne sounds,” according to a study published today in Cell1.
Plants that need water or have recently had their stems cut produce up to roughly 35 sounds per hour, the authors found. But well-hydrated and uncut plants are much quieter, making only about one sound per hour.
The reason you have probably never heard a thirsty plant make noise is that the sounds are ultrasonic — about 20–100 kilohertz. That means they are so high-pitched that very few humans could hear them. Some animals, however, probably can. Bats, mice and moths could potentially live in a world filled with the sounds of plants, and previous work by the same team has found that plants respond to sounds made by animals, too.
Crying crops
To eavesdrop on plants, Lilach Hadany at Tel-Aviv University in Israel and her colleagues placed tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) and tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) plants in small boxes kitted out with microphones. The microphones picked up any noises made by the plants, even if the researchers couldn't hear them. The noises were particularly obvious for plants that were stressed by a lack of water or recent cutting. If the sounds are pitched down and sped up, “it is a bit like popcorn — very short clicks”, Hadany says. “It is not singing.”
These plant sounds have been processed to make them audible to the human ear.
Plants do not have vocal cords or lungs. Hadany says the current theory for how plants make noises centers on their xylem, the tubes that transport water and nutrients from their roots to their stems and leaves. Water in the the xylem is held together by surface tension, just like water sucked through a drinking straw. When an air bubble forms or breaks in the xylem, it might make a little popping noise; bubble formation is more likely during drought stress. But the exact mechanism requires further study, Hadany says.
The team produced a machine-learning model to deduce whether a plant had been cut or was water stressed from the sounds it made, with about 70% accuracy. This result suggests a possible role for the audio monitoring of plants in farming and horticulture.
To test the practicality of this approach, the team tried recording plants in a greenhouse. With the aid of a computer program trained to filter out background noise from wind and air-conditioning units, the plants could still be heard. Pilot studies by the authors suggest that tomato and tobacco plants are not outliers. Wheat (Triticum aestivum), corn (Zea mays) and wine grapes (Vitis vinifera) also make noises when they are thirsty.
Chattering grasses?
Previously, Hadany’s team has also studied whether plants can ‘hear’ sounds, and found that beach evening-primoses (Oenothera drummondii) release sweeter nectar when exposed to the sound of a flying bee2.
So are plant noises an important feature of ecosystems, influencing the behaviour of plants and animals alike? The evidence isn’t yet clear, according to Graham Pyke, a retired biologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, who specializes in environmental science.
He’s sceptical that animals listen to the moans of stressed plants. “It is unlikely that these animals are really able to hear the sound at such distances,” he says. He thinks the sounds would be too faint. Further research should shed more light on the matter. But Pyke says he’s perfectly willing to accept that plants ‘squeal’ when stressed.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00890-9
References
Khait, I. et al.Cell https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2023.03.009 (2023).
A Sound Scientific Explanation For The Biblical Floods: The Burckle Crater Comet Impact
5000 years ago, a comet broke apart into three pieces upon entry into Earth. The largest piece, smashed into the indian ocean, with the other two smaller pieces landing in different areas of the Pacific Ocean. The Indian Ocean impact, was incredibly disastrous. It landed in a very deep part of the ocean, and, as a result, it released a truly monstrous mega tsunami during impact. This tsunami was so disastrous, that 600 foot high mountains were built in Madagascar in the blink of an eye, when massive amount of churned up sediment that was carried by it, got deposited in truly vast quantities here, and everywhere else that this tsunami stuck, too, including very, very far places, such as Tasmania.
When this Mega tsunami struck, it did so with such force, that it severely eroded entire cliff faces, and left deep gashing scars in the land, which document the direction the flow. Along with this, it also deposited something known as seismic chevrons. Which are arrow shaped hills of deposition, that were left after the wave had slammed into every coastline around the Indian ocean. When it began to recede, all the material it carried was just dropped where it landed, and the water move out, but the sediment remained. Because of this, massive layers of sand were deposited, and even though 5000 years have passed, you can still see many places where this tsunami impacted.
In this video we are covering the global deluge that occurred after the 3 comets impacted the earth. The massive amount of vaporized sea water would eventually cool down, and fall back to ground en masse, as a seemingly never ending rainstorm began, lasting between days to several weeks.
Who knows how many ancient civilizations were lost to time as a result of this event. But one thing is clear, not a single part of the Earth was spared from the chaos wrought by these collisions.
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Fusion Reactor To Melt Through Europa's Ice [NIAC 2023]
In this interview, I'm talking with Theresa Benyo and Lawrence Forsley from NASA. They are authors of a Lattice Confinement Fusion Reactor that got a NIAC award this year. A reactor like this could help us melt through the ice on Europa and Enceladus and have other interesting applications in space missions.
Multiple US NAVY Sensors Detected Something "Impossible" | Scientifically Authenticated UFOs
JWST has taken the most DETAILED spectrum of an exoplanet EVER
JWST has taken a DIRECT spectrum of an exoplanet mass object (it could be a failed star, the jury is still out on that one) and it is the most detailed, beautiful spectrum you ever did see. It's revealed the existence of silicates (think sand) in the atmosphere and suggests it has very dusty clouds and storms. It's also orbiting around TWO stars, so there's been a lot of comparisons to Tatooine from Star Wars!
Could We Be Detecting the Effects of "Hyperdrive" Travel? | More Wow Signals
The most intriguing signals SETI ever detected - SHGb02+14a, BLC1 and fast radio bursts.
Could Chat GPT Talk to Whales?
Could Chat GPT actually be used to talk to whales and other intelligent mammals? Understanding our language origins might help explain about how language is used by our ocean friends.
The Abduction of Betty & Barney Hill – The Full Story
The Betty and Barney Hill abduction case remains one of the most intriguing UFO encounters in history, captivating the public’s imagination for over six decades. The story revolves around an ordinary couple who claimed to have experienced a close encounter with extraterrestrials, with subsequent hypnotic regression revealing disturbing details about their experience. This article will delve into the fascinating account of the Hills, the arguments for and against the validity of their story, and the impact of their claims on the broader UFO phenomenon.
Betty & Barney Hill
On the night of September 19, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were returning to their home in New Hampshire after a vacation in Canada. As they drove along a desolate road, they noticed an unusual bright light in the sky that seemed to be following them. Curious and somewhat frightened, they continued to observe the light, which eventually descended and hovered near their vehicle. The couple claimed to have seen a craft with humanoid figures inside before experiencing a sudden loss of memory. They arrived home later than expected, with no recollection of the missing time.
Hypnotic Regression and the Star Map
The Hills sought help from a psychiatrist, Dr. Benjamin Simon, who used hypnosis to uncover their buried memories. During the sessions, both Betty and Barney recounted similar experiences of being abducted by extraterrestrials, subjected to medical examinations, and shown a star map. Betty’s star map would later become the subject of much debate, with researchers both supporting and refuting its accuracy.
While the Hills’ story is fascinating, skeptics argue that there are several reasons to doubt its validity. Firstly, the couple’s memories were only retrieved under hypnosis, a technique that has been criticized for its potential to create false memories. Additionally, inconsistencies in the timeline of their journey and the influence of fatigue on their perception raise questions about the reliability of their account.
Betty’s later claims of numerous additional UFO encounters also cast doubt on her credibility as a witness. Despite these concerns, the Hills’ story has never been definitively disproven, and certain aspects, such as the unexplained biological substance found on Betty’s dress, remain mysterious.
VIDEO:
The Abduction of Betty & Barney Hill – The Full Story | Documentary
The Betty and Barney Hill abduction case continues to fascinate both believers and skeptics alike. While substantial counter-arguments exist, the story endures as a cornerstone of UFO lore, inspiring countless other accounts of extraterrestrial encounters. Whether fact or fiction, the Hills’ experience serves as a testament to the enduring allure of the unknown and the human desire to explore the mysteries of our universe.
Temperatuurmetingen van de aardachtige exoplaneet TRAPPIST-1b onthullen dat het er niet alleen snikheet is, maar dat het de planeet bovendien aan een noemenswaardige atmosfeer lijkt te ontbreken.
Tot die conclusie komen astronomen in het blad Nature. Ze baseren zich – zoals gezegd – op waarnemingen van ruimtetelescoop James Webb. Of nauwkeuriger gezegd: op metingen van Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (kortweg MIRI). Met dit instrument kan James Webb de temperatuur van TRAPPIST-1b meten. En wel door de warmte-energie die TRAPPIST-1b in de vorm van infrarood licht afgeeft, te detecteren. De observaties wijzen uit dat de dagzijde van de planeet een temperatuur heeft van ongeveer 230 graden Celsius en suggereren dat de planeet het zonder een noemenswaardige atmosfeer moet stellen.
Over TRAPPIST-1b In 2017 doen astronomen een opmerkelijke ontdekking; op zo’n 40 lichtjaar afstand van de aarde ontdekken ze zeven(!) planeten rond een ultrakoele rode dwergster. De planeten – die aangeduid worden als TRAPPIST-1b tot en met -1h – zijn qua grootte en massa allemaal grofweg vergelijkbaar met de rotsachtige planeten in het binnenste deel van het zonnestelsel (waaronder de aarde). Daarnaast ontvangen ze ook ongeveer net zoveel energie van hun moederster als onze planeet van de zon ontvangt. Hoewel die overeenkomsten misschien veelbelovend lijken als het gaat om onze zoektocht naar buitenaards leven, stelden onderzoekers eerder al vast dat TRAPPIST-1b, -c en -d waarschijnlijk te heet zijn voor leven. TRAPPIST-1h was waarschijnlijk weer te koud. TRAPPIST-1e, -f en -g zouden zich wel in de leefbare zone bevinden, wat betekent dat hun temperaturen hoog genoeg zijn om te voorkomen dat eventueel vloeibaar water op het oppervlak van de planeten bevriest, maar niet zo hoog dat eventueel vloeibaar water verdampt. Op deze drie planeten zou in theorie dus vloeibaar water – een belangrijke vereiste voor de totstandkoming en instandhouding van leven zoals wij dat kennen – te vinden kunnen zijn. In de afgelopen jaren zijn er echter ook wel twijfels geuit over de leefbaarheid van deze drie planeten; zo zou de extreme activiteit van de moederster TRAPPIST-1 zomaar roet in het eten kunnen gooien.
Atmosfeer De nieuwe metingen van James Webb bevestigen wat onderzoekers eerder al vermoedden: het is warm op TRAPPIST-1b. Maar daarnaast kunnen onderzoekers dus ook uit de metingen afleiden dat de planeet geen noemenswaardige atmosfeer bezit. Dat laatste komt misschien ook niet direct als een verrassing; eerdere observaties van TRAPPIST-1b met behulp van ruimtetelescopen Hubble en Spitzer wezen al uit dat de planeet in ieder geval geen omvangrijke atmosfeer herbergde. Maar die ruimtetelescopen konden niet uitsluiten dat de planeet een dunnere, dichte atmosfeer bezat. James Webb veegt die laatste optie nu echter ook van tafel en wel op basis van de temperatuur van de planeet. “Deze planeet heeft een synchrone rotatie,” zo legt onderzoeker Pierre-Olivier Lagage uit. Dat betekent dat de ene zijde van de planeet ten alle tijde op de moederster gericht is, terwijl de andere zijde in permanente duisternis gehuld is. “Als de planeet een atmosfeer heeft waarin de hitte kan circuleren en zich kan verspreiden zou de dagzijde koeler zijn dan wanneer er geen atmosfeer is.”
Nadat de onderzoekers de temperatuur van de planeet hadden gemeten, vergeleken ze die metingen met de temperatuur die computermodellen in verschillende scenario’s (bijvoorbeeld een TRAPPIST-1b met en zonder een atmosfeer) voorspellen. En daaruit blijkt dat de temperatuur die James Webb heeft gemeten het beste past bij een warm, rotsachtig object zonder atmosfeer. Zo wijzen de modellen bijvoorbeeld uit dat een atmosfeer waarin de hitte gelijkmatig over de planeet verdeeld wordt, ertoe zou leiden dat de temperatuur aan de dagzijde zo’n 100 graden Celsius lager uitvalt dan nu het geval is.
De temperatuur van een planeet meten Om vast te stellen hoeveel infrarood licht (en dus warmte) TRAPPIST-1b afgeeft, bestudeerden onderzoekers het TRAPPIST-1-systeem op verschillende momenten. Namelijk op momenten dat ze zowel de moederster als de planeet in zicht hadden. Maar ook op het moment dat TRAPPIST-1b achter de moederster verdween – dit wordt ook wel een secundaire eclips genoemd. Op het moment dat de planeet achter de moederster schuilging, konden de onderzoekers vaststellen hoeveel infrarood licht de moederster alleen afgaf. Door die hoeveelheid infrarood licht vervolgens af te trekken van de hoeveelheid infrarood licht die gedetecteerd werd als TRAPPIST-1b wel zichtbaar was, konden ze vaststellen hoeveel infrarood licht deze planeet in zijn eentje afgaf. Dat klinkt misschien eenvoudig. Maar dat is het zeker niet. Zo is het al zeer opmerkelijk dat Webb in staat was om de afname in infrarood licht die optrad toen TRAPPIST-1b achter de moederster verdween, te detecteren. TRAPPIST-1 is namelijk meer dan 1000 keer helderder dan TRAPPIST-1b en op het moment dat TRAPPIST-1b achter de moederster dook, veranderde de helderheid van het systeem met nog geen 0,1 procent. “Daarnaast waren we ook bang dat we de eclips zouden missen,” merkt onderzoeker Taylor Bell op. “De planeten trekken allemaal aan elkaar, dus hun omloopbanen zijn niet perfect. Maar het was geweldig: de eclips vond binnen enkele minuten van het moment waarop we deze voorspeld hadden, plaats.”
Uniek De metingen zijn zeer bijzonder. Nog niet eerder zijn wetenschappers erin geslaagd om infrarood licht afgegeven door een exoplaneet zo klein en koel als de rotsachtige planeten in ons eigen zonnestelsel te detecteren. “Bij deze observaties is echt geprofiteerd van Webb’s vaardigheden in het midden-infrarood,” aldus onderzoeker Thomas Greene. “Geen enkele eerdere telescoop was gevoelig genoeg om zulk zwak mid-infraroodlicht te meten.”
Opmaat naar meer De metingen zijn tevens de opmaat naar meer. Want James Webb heeft nu aangetoond dat deze in staat is om vast te stellen of planeten rond kleine, actieve sterren – zoals TRAPPIST-1 – een leefbare atmosfeer kunnen herbergen. In het geval van TRAPPIST-1b zijn de resultaten misschien een beetje teleurstellend, maar er zijn nog veel meer koele dwergsterren in onze Melkweg te vinden, zo benadrukt Greene. “Er zijn tien keer meer van deze sterren in onze Melkweg dan er zonachtige sterren zijn en deze (koele dwergsterren, red.) hebben in vergelijking met zonachtige sterren een twee keer grotere kans om rotsachtige planeten te herbergen.” En hoewel veel van die planeten waarschijnlijk onleefbaar zijn, omdat hun moedersterren in hun jonge jaren heel actief zijn en genoeg zonnevlammen en röntgenstraling afgeven om de atmosferen van hun planeten te vernietigen, zijn dit toch de systemen waar astronomen – via James Webb – toch met bovengemiddelde interesse naar kijken. En ook de planeten rond TRAPPIST-1 mogen zich de komende tijd ongetwijfeld in nog meer aandacht verheugen. “Het is gemakkelijker om aardachtige planeten rond kleinere, koelere sterren te karakteriseren,” aldus onderzoeker Elsa Ducrot. “Als we de leefbaarheid op planeten rond M-klasse sterren willen begrijpen, is het TRAPPIST-1 systeem een geweldig laboratorium. Dit zijn de beste kandidaten als we willen kijken naar de atmosfeer van rotsachtige planeten.”
Ook over TRAPPIST-1b is het laatste woord nog niet gezegd. Zo wordt er momenteel nog steeds met behulp van James Webb naar deze planeet gekeken. Uiteindelijk hopen de onderzoekers vast te kunnen stellen hoe de helderheid van deze planeet in infrarood licht gedurende één volledige omloop rond de moederster verandert. Dat zal ze vervolgens ook in staat stellen om de temperatuurverschillen tussen de dag- en nachtzijde te onthullen. Op basis daarvan kan dan weer geconcludeerd worden of de planeet echt geen atmosfeer bezit of misschien toch een (heel dunne) atmosfeer herbergt.
Op de scheidslijn tussen de permanente dag- en nachtzijde van een planeet heersen mogelijk de juiste omstandigheden waar weleens leven zou kunnen gedijen.
Op dit moment is onze ijverige zoektocht naar buitenaards leven nog vruchteloos gebleken. Maar misschien zoeken we helemaal op de verkeerde plekken. Wanneer astronomen naar aliens speuren, worden planeten met een permanente dag- en nachtzijde vaak als onleefbaar bestempeld. Onderzoekers in een nieuwe studiebetwijfelen echter of dat wel de juiste denkwijze is. Want mogelijk zijn de omstandigheden in bepaalde gebieden op dergelijke extreme exoplaneten wel uitermate geschikt voor leven.
Permanente dag- en nachtzijde Rode dwergsterren zijn de de meest voorkomende en langstlevende sterren in het heelal. Ze zijn een stukje kleiner en koeler dan onze eigen zon. Bekend is dat deze zogenoemde M-sterren regelmatig planeten herbergen. “Deze planeten hebben vaak een permanente dag- en een permanente nachtzijde,” vertelt onderzoeker Ana Lobo. Dit heeft ermee te maken dat de tijd die de planeet nodig heeft om een rondje rond zijn as te voltooien, gelijk is aan de tijd die deze nodig heeft om een rondje rond zijn moederster te cirkelen. Het gevolg is dat altijd dezelfde zijde van de planeet op de moederster gericht is. Deze zijde wordt de dagzijde genoemd. De zijde die altijd van de moederster afgewend is, noemt men de nachtzijde.
Barre omstandigheden Zoals je je kunt voorstellen zijn de omstandigheden die op dergelijke planeten heersen niet bepaald mals. De temperaturen kunnen op de kant die altijd naar de ster gericht is hoog oplopen, terwijl aan de donkere kant van de planeet de eeuwige nacht ertoe leidt dat al het mogelijk aanwezige water bevriest. “Dit betekent dat het op de dagzijde altijd bloedheet is en daarom verre van bewoonbaar is,” legt Lobo uit. “Tegelijkertijd is het aan de nachtzijde ijskoud. Deze regio kan zelfs bedekt zijn met ijs en grote gletsjers.”
Water In de zoektocht naar buitenaards leven zoeken astronomen dus naar planeten met geschiktere klimaten, waar water in vloeibare vorm voorkomt. Dat komt omdat vloeibaar water – voor zover we weten – een essentieel ingrediënt is voor leven. “Je wilt dus een planeet die precies de juiste temperatuur heeft om vloeibaar water te herbergen,” concludeert Lobo.
Terminator-zones In die zin zou je dus de planeten met permanente dag- en nachtzijdes van het lijstje kunnen strepen. Toch denkt Lobo dat dat waarschijnlijk iets te voorbarig is. Op dergelijke planeten bestaan namelijk bepaalde tussengebieden; regio’s die precies op de scheidslijn tussen de dag- en nachtzijde liggen. En in deze zogenoemde ‘terminator-zones’ zouden zich volgens Lobo best weleens aliens verborgen kunnen houden.
Studie Om tot die conclusie te komen, modelleerde Lobo samen met haar collega’s het klimaat van planeten die terminator-zones hebben. Dit deden ze met behulp van software die doorgaans gebruikt wordt om het klimaat van onze eigen planeet te modelleren, maar dan met een paar aanpassingen. Uit de modellen blijkt dat de temperatuur in terminator-zones weleens precies goed zou kunnen zijn voor de aanwezigheid van vloeibaar water. En in dat water zou vervolgens best leven kunnen gedijen.
Zoektocht naar leven Volgens de onderzoekers is dit de eerste keer dat er aangetoond wordt dat planeten met permanente dag- en nachtzijdes mogelijk toch bewoonbaar zijn. En dat breidt het aantal werelden waar we naar buitenaards leven kunnen zoeken enorm uit. Tot nu toe hebben astronomen zich met name op met oceaan bedekte exoplaneten gericht. Maar nu laten Lobo en haar team zien dat ook planeten die op het eerste gezicht misschien onleefbaar ogen, mogelijk toch geschikter zijn voor leven dan gedacht. “We proberen de aandacht te vestigen op meer ‘waterbeperkte’ planeten, die ondanks het feit dat ze niet over uitgestrekte oceanen beschikken, mogelijk toch meren of andere kleine hoeveelheid water herbergen,” zegt Lobo. “De hier heersende klimaten zijn mogelijk zelfs veelbelovend voor het voorkomen van leven.”
Land Bovendien is het juist belangrijk dat een planeet met terminator-zones niet over teveel water beschikt. Wanneer het namelijk om een waterrijke wereld gaat, zal het water dat altijd naar de ster gericht is verdampen, waardoor de hele planeet omhuld wordt door een gordijn van damp. Als er in plaats daarvan veel land is, zal dit effect niet moeten optreden. In dit geval is het veel waarschijnlijker dat er in de terminator-zones aliens te vinden zijn.
De bevindingen hebben verstrekkende implicaties. Zo stellen de onderzoekers dat de huidige manier waarop astronomen op exoplaneten naar tekenen van leven speuren, enigszins aangepast zal moeten worden. Dat heeft ermee te maken dat van leven afkomstige biosignaturen mogelijk alleen aanwezig zijn in specifieke delen van de atmosfeer. Wanneer astronomen dus in het vervolg met onder andere ruimtetelescoop James Webb planeten karakteriseren die mogelijk buitenaards leven herbergen, weten ze beter waar ze exact moeten zoeken. En misschien zal dat al vrij vlot succes opleveren. “Door rekening te houden met verschillende klimaten op één en dezelfde planeet, vergroten we de kans dat we al in de nabije toekomst op een bewoonde planeet stuiten,” besluit Lobo.
The Chilling Messages Encoded in Egyptian Tombs (Video)
It’s common knowledge that man didn’t learn to fly until the 20 th century. However shocking discoveries in both South America and Egypt are beginning to bring this long-stated fact into question. Ancient golden figurines and carvings found in South Americantombs are eerily similar in shape and dimension to modern aircraft. Stranger still, ancient carvings, paintings and hieroglyphs found in the Egyptian pyramids seem to depict everything from airplanes and helicopters to submarines and spaceships. What’s the truth? Were our ancient ancestors hiding advanced technology from us all along? Were they visited by advanced extra-terrestrials? Or are these strange carvings and markings just a coincidence? Perhaps the truth really is out there.
Computers are not mechanical brains, and our brains are not biological computers. They differ in function, organization, and composition. Both have circuits, sure, but computer chips are ultimately bits of silicon alloys pressed into highly designed, extremely convenient sizes and shapes, while our brains are carbon-based masses whose structure is still largely a mystery to neuroscientists.
Since the mid-20th century, people have touted the similarities — and considered the possibility of combining — brains and computers. Sci-fi author Isaac Asimov helped to devise the idea of a “positronic brain” that could bestow robots with the intelligence and self-awareness of a human in 1950.
Computer scientists still dwell on the shared features between minds and machines. Artificial neural networks, which power many of today’s AI, mimic the organization of neurons in the human brain. Other researchers are trying to make computer hardware more brain-like, for instance, by replicating the electrical activity of a neuron on a chip.
Researchers designed artificial “neurons” for a futuristic computer chip.
UNIVERSITY OF BATH
There are also researchers like Thomas Hartung, a biochemist and physician at Johns Hopkins University. Hartung and his colleagues are growing “brain organoids,” collections of human skin cells coaxed into resembling brain cells, in the lab. They want to connect the organoids to sensors and other devices and train them to process and store information with the help of machine learning.
Hartung has lofty goals for these organoids. They could help neuroscientists study how brain cells work together. They could also aid pharmacologists who study brain chemistry — for example, people developing treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. Hartung believes brain organoids can eventually replace the animal subjects typically used in these experiments.
But ultimately, Hartung wants to turn the creations into “biological hardware” for computers. In theory, organoids could perform certain tasks using less energy and hold far more memory than current silicon machines.
Hartung and his colleague Lena Smirnova with an image of a brain organoid.
COURTESY OF THOMAS HARTUNG
This dream is already taking shape. A team of researchers in Australia recently taught a collection of brain cells to play the video game Pong using a method somewhat similar to training a dog.
The team hooked their organoid up to electrodes and fed it details on the ball’s position; the organoid sent electrical signals back to control the paddle. If the organoid successfully hit the ball, the researchers “rewarded” it with an electrical stimulus, somewhat like a treat for a pup that sits on command. The organoid didn’t master Pong, but it managed to perform better with training than it would by random chance.
We spoke to Hartung about what a brain organoid might do next — and when to expect organ-powered computers.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
If brain cells can play Pong, can they defeat humans?
They only were able to show acute, or short-term, memory. The organoid culture became better and better in each training session, but the next day, everything was forgotten. The expectation is that, now, with the potential to establish long-term memory, we can actually move into memory and learning in the sense people would understand it.
And you cannot easily build production of such complex cell cultures. It takes at least a year. We train many people, but it takes them a year, on average, to get them done.
What’s next for organoid research?
We’re planning to use brain-machine interfaces to control robots. That’s on the plan for about a year’s time from now. So, we want to demonstrate the capability of long-term learning and, ideally, learning a sequence of tasks in a brain organoid.
One of the big changes at the moment is to scale first. We are limited with the brain organoids to about half a millimeter in size … otherwise, we don’t get enough oxygen and nutrients into the center of this cell ball. But that’s just the number of neurons of a fly, so it’s not really worth training. You might lose your organoid and can’t find it anymore!
Our work at the moment aims at producing an organoid which is about 1 centimeter large — which is then, already, twice the size of a mouse brain. That’s substantial, but it requires perfusion, where we create an equivalent to blood vessels to get nutrients into the brain. That’s not rocket science; this has been done for other organs already, but nobody had seen a need so far to produce larger brains.
Tiny organoids in a petri dish at Hartung’s Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing.
CAROLINA ROMERO, CENTER FOR ALTERNATIVE TO ANIMAL TESTING, BLOOMBERG SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
How is this method different from using a mouse brain?
At the moment, when you bring a mouse or mouse brain into an experiment, it has a history: There is complex behavior, there is already an architecture in response to the mouse’s life experiences.
With our organoids, we really start from zero. We can influence and control every moment, and by what you feed into it, you can also determine what you study.
Many people are concerned about whether the organoids could suffer, for example. If I don’t give them pain receptors, there cannot be pain reception.
What about a computer that runs on a human brain?
With organoids, we can really control the input. With a human, you cannot really control what this human is experiencing. Even if you put them into a certain controlled environment, you’re limited. You’re also very much limited because — we have a skull. You cannot really poke many electrodes into the human brain easily and then control the experimental situations.
That’s exactly what we can do with organoids.
Hartung creates organoids from human skin cells in his lab.
THOMAS HARTUNG
What advantages might brain organoids have over computers?
There’s a couple of aspects which make the brain still superior to computers. For example, our capability of concluding on the basis of incomplete information, or what we would call intuitive thinking. We can be very fast and take shortcuts. We are often right — not always, but it is much easier to live with a decision that is based on incomplete data.
For example, a child can distinguish cats and dogs after 10 pictures with a pretty good error rate. A computer needs hundreds of pictures.
We can also add information much easier. You learn 10 words in Italian and you add it to your current “model.” Most computers have to just rerun their entire model to integrate this information.
But we should not compete with silicon computers where they are good. My handheld calculator is better than me at doing calculations. Why should I use a brain organoid to make it a calculator? It will likely be limited to what my brain is capable of doing — if it ever achieves something like this.
Organoids could work even quicker than today’s supercomputers, like Japan's record-breaking Fugaku.
STR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
How far are we from brain-powered computers?
For the last 60 to 70 years, the more we have understood the brain, we have tried to make computers more brain-like, because there are still some advantages.
You can either envisage that you use it as a model to change our computer architecture, or you could at some point even have a biological component to your computational system.
That’s certainly the furthest away. It is science fiction, but I would say: 20 years ago, the iPhone was science fiction.
Are you considering the obvious question: What if these organoids become self-aware?
We are far from anything which is really producing concerns. There is no suffering, there is no self-awareness or consciousness that you can expect from these organoids, for the foreseeable future. But we have to discuss it, because people are feeling uneasy.
So, one of the things our ethicists at Johns Hopkins are doing at the moment is surveying the general population. They are asking, “what do you think about this?” At some point, people say, “Uh, perhaps we should think about this better?”
Then you give them information like, “there’s an informed consent by the donors of these cells,” or “this is done to find drugs for Alzheimer’s.” You test out what people feel about it, and this helps with the communication of this research.
We don’t want this to suddenly backfire. We want to work for the greater good.
Those who have followed the UFO phenomenon for sometime are well aware how these strange aerial machines befuddle us with their seemingly weird and unpredictable movements, which are completely unlike those of standard commercial airliners or military aircrafts. The fact that eye-witness reports from all over the world mention a similar set of bizarre behavior associated with UFOs, tells us that something inexplicable has been going on in our skies for a long time. A long, long time, indeed, if we turn over the pages of the ancient records of humanity. For UFOs are not a new phenomenon at all, and have been observed, recorded and passed down through the oral traditions of many cultures. One of the UFO hotspots of the ancient world was India, where aerial vehicles called “vimanas” have been mentioned in the legends time and again.
But, before we go there, let me quickly jot down some of the key features of UFOs from the full gamut of recorded sightings over the past few decades. I shall refer back to this list later, when I start discussing the UFO war described in the ancient Indian text.
UFOs appear to have a metallic body, with light reflecting ability. They come in different shapes viz. disc-shaped, spherical, cylinder, triangle etc. Certain reports indicate that UFOs can also change their shape.
UFOs can move away and disappear at extremely high speeds, far exceeding the speed of sound. Yet, they do so noiselessly, without producing the expected “sonic boom”. How they defy the known laws of physics is anybody’s guess.
They can accelerate / decelerate or ascend / descend vertically extremely quickly. The UFO occupants, obviously, don’t seem to mind very high G forces.
They are highly maneuverable. They can change directions drastically in an instant, and sometimes move in a zigzag motion.
UFOs have been seen standing still in mid air and hovering over a specific place.
A UFO spotted at night generally has a bright array of flashing lights of different colors.
Sometimes a single UFO may split up into multiple UFOs, which whiz off in different directions. Conversely, a number of UFOs with flashing lights could come together and give the appearance of a single object. Sometimes a bunch of UFOs can move in a V-shaped formation.
A UFO can turn off its lights and become invisible. This typically happens when fighter planes get too close to it to investigate. In such cases, the lights are turned on again once the fighter planes move away.
Sometimes a UFO sends down brilliant beams of light to the ground or into water bodies. They have the ability to lift up heavy objects by means of the light beam, including cars, humans and animals. They have been seen descending into water bodies like lakes and oceans.
Many people have seen small balls of light coming out of a UFO in mid-air and dart around, as if they are intelligent, conscious entities.
UFOs cause electronic interference with car radios, engines, and aircraft communication systems. There are reports by airline pilots that their weapons systems were temporarily disabled, only to come back online after the UFO was gone.
These are some of the UFO characteristics that recur in various eye-witness reports. It is possible to add to this list, of course, since UFOs keep surprising us with their behavior from time to time, but this will do nicely for now. Quite amazingly, some of the features listed here were observed and recorded thousands of years ago in an incredible story of a UFO battle from ancient India.
The story that I am going to relate has been documented in an ancient text called Srimad Bhagavatam [1], the composition of which is attributed to the sage Vyasa – the same person who composed the Indian epic, the Mahabharata. It tells of a king named Salva, who had propitiated Lord Shiva through his penances and acquired a vimana i.e. an aerial vehicle. In Hinduism, Shiva is the patron god of yoga and meditation, who takes on the fierce form of a “destroyer” at the end of a Yuga. The vimana that Salva obtained was called Saubha, and it was built by an “asura” called Maya or Mayasura. This is what the text tells us:
The great Lord Umapati [Shiva] is known as “he who is quickly pleased,” yet only at the end of a year did he gratify Salva, who had approached him for shelter, by offering him a choice of benedictions. Salva chose a vehicle that could be destroyed by neither demigods, demons, humans, Gandharvas, Uragas nor Raksasas, that could travel anywhere he wished to go, and that would terrify the Vrsnis. Lord Siva said, “So be it.” On his order, Maya Danava, who conquers his enemies’ cities, constructed a flying iron city named Saubha and presented it to Salva.
Maya - who built this flying city of iron - was not an ordinary human being. He was a “danava” i.e one of the sons of the primeval goddess of the waters, Danu. The danavas, along with the daityas (i.e. the children of the goddess Diti) were classed as “asuras” or “titans” in Hindu mythology. The term “asura” means “powerful” or “mighty”, and may be linked to the “aesir” of Norse legends, where it means “lord” or “god”. The asuras are powerful beings with magical powers, and although they are generous and pious by nature, they are also prone to being beset by pride, anger, jealousy, lust, greed and other egoic tendencies, which brings them into frequent confrontation with the gods (devas).
Maya was one of the leader of the asuras, and was famed for his architectural and astronomical skills. Whether he had any linkage to the Maya civilization of Mesoamerica is conjectural, for nothing specific is mentioned in the Indian texts along these lines. However, considering that the Mayans were also expert builders and astronomers, it would not be far-fetched to think that the asura Maya had a role to play in the evolution of their civilization.
Coming back to the story, on acquiring the Saubha vimana, Salva immediately attacked Dvaraka, the golden, fortified city built by Lord Krishna on the western coast of India. As per Hindu beliefs, Lord Krishna was an incarnation of the Supreme Being who had taken birth towards the end of the Dwapara Yuga (Silver Age), in order to cleanse the planet of the many bloodthirsty, powerful warriors and tyrants, and to re-promulgate the sacred wisdom to serve as a beacon of light for humanity during the dark age of Kali (Iron Age) that was soon to follow. Salva regarded Krishna as his enemy, since Krishna had killed many of his powerful allies. The text tells us:
This unassailable vehicle was filled with darkness and could go anywhere. Upon obtaining it, Salva went to Dvaraka, remembering the Vrsnis’ enmity toward him. Salva besieged the city with a large army, O best of the Bharatas, decimating the outlying parks and gardens, the mansions along with their observatories, towering gateways and surrounding walls, and also the public recreational areas. From his excellent airship he threw down a torrent of weapons, including stones, tree trunks, thunderbolts, snakes and hailstones. A fierce whirlwind arose and blanketed all directions with dust. Thus, terribly tormented by the airship Saubha, Lord Krsna’s city had no peace, O King, just like the earth when it was attacked by the three aerial cities of the demons….
At one moment the magic airship built by Maya Danava appeared in many identical forms, and the next moment it was again only one. Sometimes it was visible, and sometimes not. Thus Salva’s opponents could never be sure where it was. From one moment to the next the Saubha airship appeared on the earth, in the sky, on a mountain peak or in the water. Like a whirling, flaming baton, it never remained in any one place. Wherever Salva would appear with his Saubha ship and his army, there the Yadu commanders would shoot their arrows…As the Yadus and Salva’s followers thus went on attacking one another, the tumultuous, fearsome battle continued for twenty-seven days and nights.
In this passage we find a number of striking correlations between the descriptions of Salva’s vimana, and the characteristics of UFOs which I had listed out earlier. Let me go through them one by one. Firstly, the vimana acquired by Salva has been described as a “flying city of iron”, which is capable of going anywhere. UFOs, on the other hand, have mostly been described as metallic objects with a shiny surface. So, apparently, these aerial vehicles are made of some kind of metal, possibly with a high iron content.
Salva’s vimana sometimes appeared as a single object, and sometimes in many identical forms. This happens frequently in case of UFO sightings. A number of bright UFOs may bunch together and give the appearance of a single object, and then, suddenly, split up into multiple bright objects that fly off in different directions.
Salva’s vimana was sometimes visible, and sometimes not. UFO witnesses have said that these objects can suddenly turn off their lights and become invisible. UFOs can also accelerate away at tremendously high speeds and disappear almost instantly.
Finally, Salva’s vimana was said to constantly dart from one place to another, never remaining still in any one place. This agrees with the extreme maneuverability of UFOs. Many sightings mention that UFOs can change their direction drastically and rapidly, which, in turn, makes it very difficult for fighter planes to trail them.
The 16th century Dwarkadhish Temple at Dwarka, dedicated to Lord Krishna. It was built over an earlier shrine dating to 200 BCE. It is believed that the ancient city of Dvaraka was located in this region. Credit: Vinayaraj CC BY-SA 4.0
A vimana depicted on the walls of the Ta Prohm Temple, Cambodia. Public Domain
These correlations make it quite obvious that the vimana described in the Srimad Bhagavatam is what we today know as a UFO. Of course, to the ancients, it was not an “Unidentified” Flying Object. They knew very well who built it, and how king Salva got his hands on it. However, they wouldn’t have had any idea as to how these machines were built, for, as the text tells us, it was built by Maya, the leader of the asuras. Humans had no part in their construction. Let us now return back to the story, to see how this aerial assault on Dvaraka finally ended.
The reason why Salva’s attack on Dvaraka had lasted twenty seven days is because, Krishna, who was the foremost warrior of the Yadus, had gone to Indraprastha (near modern-day Delhi) to attend a royal sacrifice. After he returned, the battle ended quite swiftly.
Invited by Yudhisthira, the son of Dharma, Lord Krsna had gone to Indraprastha. Now that the Rajasuya sacrifice had been completed and Sisupala killed, the Lord began to see inauspicious omens. So He took leave of the Kuru elders and the great sages, and also of Prtha and her sons, and returned to Dvaraka…After He arrived at Dvaraka and saw how His people were threatened with destruction, and also saw Salva and his Saubha airship, Lord Kesava [Krishna] arranged for the city’s defense and then addressed Daruka [Krishna’s charioteer] as follows: “O driver, quickly take My chariot near Salva. This lord of Saubha is a powerful magician; don’t let him bewilder you.”
Thus ordered, Daruka took command of the Lord’s chariot and drove forth…Lord Krsna then pierced Salva with sixteen arrows and struck the Saubha airship with a deluge of arrows as it darted about the sky…While Salva continued to hurl torrents of weapons at Him with great force, Lord Krsna, whose prowess never fails, shot His arrows at Salva, wounding him and shattering his armor, bow and crest jewel. Then with His club the Lord smashed His enemy’s Saubha airship. Shattered into thousands of pieces by Lord Krsna’s club, the Saubha airship plummeted into the water. Salva abandoned it, stationed himself on the ground, took up his club and rushed toward Lord Acyuta [Krishna]…Employing His disc weapon, Lord Hari [Krishna] removed that great magician’s head with its earrings and crown, just as Purandara [Indra] had used his thunderbolt to cut off Vrtra’s head.
Thus, the magical Saubha vimana, fashioned by Maya asura and given as a boon to Salva by Lord Shiva, was eventually destroyed by Lord Krishna using his club. This suggests that, even modern-day UFOs are liable to crash or may be brought down by suitable weapons. There have been a few stories of UFO crashes, the most famous being the Roswell incident of 1947, although it is difficult to be certain of the facts of that case and of others of a similar nature.
Another important insight that can be gleaned from this story is that the ancient UFOs were not built by some prehistoric Boeing company, but by the “asuras” or “titans” - a race of powerful, semi-divine beings with magical abilities. If you are wondering where the asuras live, you need not venture very far; for they don’t live on another planet, but right below our feet in an underground realm called Patala, a Sanskrit term which means, “that which is below the feet”.
As per the ancient Indian texts, Patala has seven realms, which are occupied by the asuras, along with other supernatural entities such as the nagas (human-serpent hybrids), rakshasas (giants), yakshas (dwarfs) etc. In the Bhagavata Purana, these seven realms are described as the seven subterranean paradises (bila-svargas), which are filled with beautiful houses, groves, lakes, lovely maidens, splendid jewels and unlimited opulence. Mayasura has constructed many brilliantly decorated cities in Patala. Life here is one of perpetual pleasure and sensory enjoyments. There is no old age, no decay, and no disease in Patala. Even though there is no sunshine in these regions, the effulgence of the brilliant jewels with which the residents of Patala decorate themselves, light up the entire region. It is due to the absence of sunlight, that the concept of time does not exist in Patala, whose inhabitants enjoy enormously long lives, free of anxiety or fear.[2]
Patala sounds like the perfect destination for the next vacation! Except that, it is not easy to get there. The entrances to this underworld paradise are camouflaged and heavily guarded. In Tibetan Buddhism, Patala (meaning, “the Underground”) can be entered through specific Asura caves in the sacral landscape, which are closely guarded by dakinis (“sky goers”) - the Buddhist counterparts of the British faeries. Robert Mayer of the Oxford University writes, “Once in Patala, the yogin could gain such boons as longevity, magical knowledge, fabulous material treasures, and, not least, extraordinary pleasures, especially erotic ones.”[3] This almost sounds like one of those exotic travel brochures that you read on a long, boring flight.
So, we are basically talking about of a hidden, underground dimension of great opulence and pleasures whose entrances are guarded by invisible faeries. No wonder this stuff passed into the realm of fantasies and legends over time. At some point, I guess, you simply couldn’t talk about it with a straight face. And yet, now we have this global UFO phenomenon, and the ancient texts tell us that UFOs are built by the supernatural beings of Patala. And to add to that, UFOs have been seen entering into water bodies, and many eye-witnesses have reported dwarf alien beings, the dwarfs being one of the members of the faerie folk.
It’s definitely time to bring the topic of Patala out of the cupboard, dust it off and take a fresh look at similar beliefs from around the world. For, it is quite possible that some of the UFO and alien sightings could be of subterranean origin. As to what their plans are for humanity, why they feel the urge to abduct humans and poke them with needles, or what they gain by mutilating animals – these are questions that will continue to baffle us for the time being.
ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011
Robert Mayer, "The Importance of the Underworlds: Asuras' Caves in Buddhism, and Some Other Themes in Early Buddhist Tantras Reminiscent of the Later Padmasambhava Legends", Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, 2007.
Is your dresser covered with dust? How about your coffee table? Your car? Before you grab a rag or a hose, you may want to pause and take a closer look at those particles. An astronomer in Japan believes dust on Earth may be filled with space dust ejected from meteorite and planetary collisions in our Solar System and beyond, and that dust could contain evidence of extraterrestrial life. Is this the perfect excuse for not dusting?
Is this the future of SETI?
“The search for life outside our solar system typically means a search for signs of communication, which would indicate intelligent life but precludes any pre-technological life. Or the search is for atmospheric signatures that might hint at life, but without direct confirmation there could always be an explanation that does not require life.”
Professor Tomonori Totani from the University of Tokyo’s Department of Astronomy states the obvious in a university press release announcing the release of his new study, "Solid grains ejected from terrestrial exoplanets as a probe of the abundance of life in the Milky Way," published in the International Journal of Astrobiology. Professor Totani thinks all of those other astronomers analyzing data from the habitable “Goldilocks” zones around other stars in our galaxy in the race to find technical or biological signatures are looking in the wrong direction, and even if they find something that looks like a life sign, there are always chemical alternatives that could explain them. He plans to win the race to find extraterrestrial life by looking down instead of up – at the dust beneath our feet covering planet Earth.
“I propose we study well-preserved grains ejected from other worlds for potential signs of life.”
In a sense, Professor Totani is saying the evidence of extraterrestrial life is already terrestrial – but unlike others searching for it, he doesn’t believe it came in a spaceship shaped like a long cigar or a breath lozenge or a saucer. He believes the evidence traveled to Earth on its own in the form of space dust ejected from its home planet or space rock by a catastrophic event. Totani points out that geologists have found meteorite fragments on Earth which originated on Mars. It takes no stretch of the imagination to look at the Chixculub asteroid collision 65 million years ago and see some of the millions of tons of debris ejected into the air continuing on into space and traveling to Mars and beyond to other solar systems. Intelligent life forms on exoplanets could find our dust and see evidence of the life that once existed on the solid ground that dust came from. Why can’t we do the same thing with the space dust that falls on Earth? After all, there is plenty of it. A 2021 study published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters estimated that around 5,200 metric tons of micrometeorites fall to Earth every year. Micrometeorites are particles less than a millimeter in diameter – approaching the size of the space dust or ejecta Totani is looking for.
“There is a chance that recently deceased or even fossilized microorganisms could be contained in some rocky material in this ejecta.”
Grains in the region of 1 micrometer (one-thousandth of a millimeter) could not only host a specimen of a single-celled organism, but they could also potentially escape their host solar system altogether, and under the right circumstances, maybe even venture to ours.”
Professor Totani admits that the chances of life forms staying alive on a dust particle traveling from another star system are smaller than the dust particle itself. Even if it was like a tardigrade and could survive the cataclysmic event that ejected it on its trip and could live long enough to reach Earth, the extreme heat, cold and space radiation would probably end its life somewhere during the voyage. However, signs of life might still be seen in the particles. And with about 5,200 metric tons of micrometeorites hitting Earth annually, they shouldn’t be hard to find. Right, Professor Totani?
“Despite that, I calculate around 100,000 such grains could be landing on Earth every year.”
Forget the needle … this is like looking for a dust particle in a haystack. Nonetheless, astronomers are an optimistic group of scientists. Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb thinks he can find debris from an interstellar space object on the floor of the Pacific Ocean even though it crashed in 2014. Professor Totani is cut from the same cloth – he believes that while his estimate may be too high, it could also be too low, and in either case “the means to explore it already exist so it seems like a worthwhile pursuit.”
“These grains from terrestrial exoplanets can be collected by detectors placed in space, utilizing a low-density capture media like silica aerogel that enables capture of hypervelocity particles with mild deceleration and hence minimal damage to biosignatures.”
One method Totani proposes is a kind of space gel pack with a stick surface which would catch space dust but have enough cushion that the dust remains intact and undamaged. The gel packs could then be retrieved for study.
“Another collecting method may be to search on Earth for these exoplanet grains. Cosmic dust particles smaller than 10–100 µm survive atmospheric entry without severe heating, and hence biosignatures are not seriously damaged by the entry process.”
That dust on your hand could have once been dust on an ET's hand.
Totani also thinks that, like micrometeorites and asteroid debris, space dust particles could be on Earth – frozen in Antarctic ice or resting on the floor of the oceans. While it has been relatively easy to find micrometeorites in Antarctica, and Avi Loeb believes he can find them in the Pacific, sifting through the scoops of dirt to find the extraterrestrial dust, and then sorting that out to separate the stuff from our solar system and the stuff from other star systems seems to be a daunting task. But not impossible, and it can happen today, not far into the future like a mission to another planet or moon. Professor Totani believes it is worth the effort.
“Extraordinary biosignatures that are quite different from known Earth life, as well as anomalous isotope ratios and/or mineralogical compositions, are expected to be helpful in identifying biosignatures of extrasolar particles. Finding even just one such particle would have an immense impact on the origin of life studies.”
One speck of space dust from another solar system with a biosignature proving life existed on the planet it came from would truly be a “this changes everything” moment. Think about that as you look at what your rag picked up from the top of your coffee table.
In the interview, Bryan Callen and Leslie Kean discuss various aspects of UFOs, government knowledge, and related phenomena. They cover topics such as:
Leslie Kean’s background as a journalist investigating UFOs and her book, “UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record.”
Mass sightings, including the Phoenix Lights event in 1997 and other sightings in Hudson Valley and Belgium in the 1980s and 1990s.
The speed at which some UFOs have been reported to travel, such as 13,000 MPH, and the implications of such capabilities.
Area 51 and speculation about what might be inside the secretive facility.
The U.S. government’s response to UFO sightings, including the Pentagon’s recent acknowledgment of the existence of UFOs and the creation of a task force to study them.
The difference in how UFO sightings are handled by governments in other countries, with some being more open about the topic than the United States.
The possibility that the U.S. government might be using UFOs as a means to spook adversaries with advanced technology.
Leslie Kean’s involvement in the documentary series “UFOs: Investigating the Unknown,” which originally aired on CNN and is now available on Hulu.
Throughout the conversation, they also discuss the fascination people have with UFOs and the mystery surrounding their existence, as well as the importance of approaching the subject with an open mind and a healthy dose of skepticism.
NASA has spent many years seeking the truth regarding extraterrestrial life. Furthermore, the space agency has never denied the existence of non-human life beyond Earth in any form. This is sufficient to discuss the idea of non-human life existing beyond Earth in any form, from the microscopic to the macroscopic. Avi Loeb, a professor at Harvard, has supported the idea that there may have been earlier civilizations on both Earth and Mars, and that these civilizations may have been the origin of UAPs.
The head of the Galileo Project Avi Loeb speculated that Mars, which is the main spot for NASA to find the clue to alien life, was once the home to a long-vanished civilization that may have thrived like Earthly civilization. According to the most recent study of data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Mars was rippling with rivers and ponds over the first half of its history. Based on the analogy with Earth, it is conventionally expected that Mars developed microbial life when it lost its atmosphere. In that case, the water on its surface evaporated and left a frozen desert.
This study gives thought to Mr. Loeb into believing the possibility that it intelligent life on Mars developed just twice as fast as it did on Earth, there could have been a technologically advanced civilization there a few billion years before humans showed up on Earth.
A strange keyhole-shaped formation protruding from the surface of Mars was first noticed by George Hass
He writes: “Planets like Mars or Earth could have given multiple births to technological civilizations that were a billion years apart and hence were not aware of each other. Like stable parents, the planets recovered from the environmental impact of these civilizations over time. We may have been separated in time from siblings that we never had the opportunity to meet and so we are unaware of their existence.”
Mr. Loeb believes it is possible that some of the technological advancement devices made by early inhabitants of Mars and Earth are still operational elsewhere in the Solar System. He suggests that “in that case, old flying gadgets could be a source of some of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in reports from the Director of National Intelligence to the US Congress.” (Source)
Professor Loeb is not alone in thinking of the advanced civilization that once inhabited Mars. Physicist John E. Brandenburg explained in this 2015 study what could have happened on Mars. The planet that once had an Earthlike atmosphere faced a massive thermonuclear explosion that destroyed its atmosphere. The study considered the Cydonian Hypothesis and Fermi’s Paradox. (Source)
Brandenburg considered the Cydonian Hypothesis in light of imaging and geochemical data. He adopted a model of Earthlike eroded archeology for comparison with Mars artifacts using the pyramids at Giza and the Sphinx and Olmec heads as analogs under the Principle of Mediocrity with attention to detail.
John E. Brandenburg.
Image credit: COAST TO CAST AM
Enrico Fermi analyzed the problem of the universe where intelligent life was both possible and noisy. He also knew the Universe was very old compared to humanity. There was plenty of time for other species to develop and make radio and TV broadcasts and spread throughout the universe to all habitable planets.
NASA, from its inception, expected that artifacts of past intelligent activity might be found in the Solar System: “Though intelligent or semi-intelligent life conceivably exists elsewhere in our solar system, if intelligent extraterrestrial life is discovered in the next twenty years, it will very probably be by radio telescope from other solar systems. Evidence of its existence might also be found in artifacts left on the moon or other planets.”
In his work, physicist Brandenburg showed that data from two Martian sites, Cydonia Mensa and Galaxias Chaos, were studied. This led to the Cydonian Hypothesis, which says that there was an ancient, native civilization on Mars around the time of the Bronze Age. Isotopic and gamma-ray data from Mars show that a huge explosion with both fusion and fission took place near Cydonia Mensa.
The existence of a dead humanoid civilization on Mars is completely consistent with its apparent long-lived Earthlike past climate and the Principle of Mediocrity, the idea that humanoid intelligence is not exotic or miraculous, but is a natural consequence of any long-lived Earthlike biosphere. This Martian civilization apparently perished due to a planet-wide catastrophe of unknown origin, that changed Mars’ climate from being Earthlike to its present state in a brief period compared to geologic time. However, what ended this civilization, was it a massive nuclear attack?
Taken together, the evidence suggests that Mars was the locale of a planetary nuclear massacre. The answer to Fermi’s Paradox may thus lie on Mars. Brandenburg recommended that a mission for human occupation of Mars should be immediately initiated to maximize knowledge of what transpired there.
Taking into Mr. Loeb and Brandenburg’s views on the existence of alleged Martian civilization in the past, in 2019, Retired NASA scientific director Dr. Jim Green gave some statements that caused a lot of controversies. The expert believed that it is most likely that the European Space Agency had already discovered evidence of extraterrestrial life on Mars. Dr. Green is convinced that humanity, as we know it today, is not ready for such information.
In the summer of 2020, two rovers from Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA) traveled to Mars to drill horizontally into rocks and deep into the surface, in the hope of finding evidence of living organisms. He assured that the evidence of extraterrestrial existence on Mars was obtained, at the latest, in the middle of 2021. However, it will take much longer for humanity to come to terms with the fact that life does exist outside of Earth after all. (Source)
Note: NASA’s rover Mars 2020 successfully landed on February 18, 2021, however, ExoMars rover a.k.a. Rosalind Franklin launch was postponed by 2028 due to conflicts in Ukraine.
Before the launch, Dr. Green said: “The missions are the best chance humanity has ever had of answering the question: ‘Are we alone in the universe?’” He added that “there is a real possibility that one or both will be successful.” Yet it would have far-reaching implications, and he believes Earth is not ready.
“It will be revolutionary. It’s like when Copernicus stated ‘no we go around the Sun’. Completely revolutionary. It will start a whole new line of thinking. I don’t think we’re prepared for the results. We’re not.”
“I’ve been worried about that because I think we’re close to finding it, and making some announcements. What happens next is a whole new set of scientific questions. Is that life like us? How are we related? Can life can move from planet to planet or do we have a spark and just the right environment and that spark generates life – like us or not like us – based on the chemical environment that it is in?”
The research published in 2020 shows that planets that were previously thought to be uninhabitable may have once had suitable conditions for life. The researchers detected a chemical — phosphine — in the thick Venus atmosphere. After much analysis, the scientists assert that something now alive is the only explanation for the chemical’s source.
No wonder the whole world will unite if tomorrow Earth is invaded by aliens. It may sound like science fiction but the probability of it cannot be denied. There are many accounts of encountering non-human beings but such stories are often neglected due to a lack of strong evidence. However, things become different when a government itself supports such claims. Some of them were Gen. Douglas McArthur, Gen. George Marshall, Werner Von Braun, President Ronald Reagan, Gen. Nathan Twining, Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, and many others.
Former US President Ronald Reagan expressed his concern about an alien invasion in his speeches from 1985 to 1988. In one of his speeches to the UN, he said: “What if all of us in the world were threatened by an outer power, from outer space, from another planet? We would all of a sudden find out that we didn’t have any differences at all.” None of the presidential aides, speechwriters, and handlers liked what he said. Besides, it never appeared on original drafts. Despite it, Reagan continued adding it subtly.
In 1982, there was a special screening of the movie “ET: The Extra-Terrestrial” at the White House. During the screening, President Reagan whispered to Steven Spielberg that everything depicted in the film was real. Spielberg confirmed this during an interview with Quint (also known as Eric Vespe).
John Herrington, Former US Navy AS R&MA and served as the United States Secretary of Energy under Ronald Reagan during his second term.
Spielberg said: “No, he wasn’t ushered out of the room. He was the President of the United States! Nobody could usher Ronald Reagan out of the room! It was in the White House screening room and Reagan got up to thank me for bringing the film to show the President, the First Lady, and all of their guests, which included Sandra Day O’Connor in her first week as a Justice of the Supreme Court, and it included some astronauts… I think Neil Armstrong was there, I’m not 100% certain, but it was an amazing, amazing evening.”
Reagan was criticized for his bizarre comments on aliens, he was called an actor reading a script but the truth is that they were his own words. In the following years, many officials in the White House hinted at the presence of outer world life.
One such interesting case is brought to light by the writer, producer, co-host of the podcast Need To Know, and former CNN correspondent Bryce Zabel. Mr. Bryce discovered the story of a Reagan administration cabinet member crying himself to sleep after being briefed on the truth about UFOs.
President Reagan and James Baker interviewing John Herrington for the cabinet position of Secretary of Energy in Oval Office Photo courtesy of U.S. National Archives and Records Administration: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum.
Mr. Bryce was telling a story originally told by his friend Brent Friedman. According to him, Brent was a family friend of John S. Herrington, who served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and Secretary of Energy in the Reagan Administration. Herrington “had Brent drive his car across the country in 1981 because he had just taken a position in the Reagan administration.” This is where Herrington allegedly told this story to Friedman. (Source)
Friedman said: “A good family friend of ours, when I was just getting out of high school, was working at a very high level in the Reagan administration. One night, he took me aside and was telling me some of the things he was doing in the government. He was going to get us a White House tour and everything and ended up telling me some pretty shattering stories.
And in particular, he knew that I had always been into science fiction and fantasy and comic books and very casually just threw out there that aliens were real. They’re here, and I’ve seen them. The story goes on to much greater detail because at the time, I was just absolutely shocked. And this is a person I grew up with and I completely trusted, and he just rocked my world.”
“In addition to Sauder’s well-documented research, there are other tantalizing links to the underground world. One, for example, concerns an assistant secretary to a branch of the armed forces in a new Republican administration. This person told a family friend that he had been ‘briefed’ for some eight weeks at an underground facility outside of Washington.”
When asked the purpose of the briefing, this highly-positioned man, who went on to become a cabinet secretary, said: “There is intelligent life in the universe. It’s here. And I’ve seen it.” The man said that the information he had been given caused him to cry himself to sleep for a number of nights. The reason, he told his shocked listener, was that he had children. “This is not the kind of world I thought they’d grow up in.
What kinds of things are going on that require months-long briefings in underground facilities and cause grown men to cry? The cabinet secretary told the family friend that aliens were just the ‘tip of the iceberg’ in terms of mind-blowing revelations. It is clear, then, that large underground facilities not only are real, but are connected in some way with the reality of ETs or ‘Others’ here on Earth."
The claims of non-human intelligence living with us are not new and have been told by more than a dozen of government officials.
The Honorable Paul Hellyer (1923-2021), former Canadian Minister of Defense said extraterrestrials have been visiting our planet for thousands of years and it is likely that at least two of them are working with the U.S. government and sharing their highly-advanced technologies with humans.
Hellyer stated that “aliens are living among us and that it is likely at least two of them are working with the U.S. government.” More specifically, Hellyer announced that at least four species of extraterrestrials had been visiting Earth for thousands of years. According to Huffington Post Canada, he also stated that some extraterrestrials originate from the “Zeta Reticuli, the Pleiades, Orion, Andromeda, and Altair star systems” and “may have different agendas.”
In December 2020, Haim Eshed, a retired Israeli general and former head of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s space directorate gained attention for making controversial claims about extraterrestrial life and alleged secret collaborations between humans and aliens. He stated that aliens and the U.S. government had reached some type of deal to stay quiet about their experiments on Earth and secret facilities on Mars.
In his claims, Mr. Eshed said ETs exist and monitor our nuclear capabilities. There is a “Galactic Federation,” and the alien species with whom humanity will contact is “Grey.” According to him, Earth is their Petri dish, and they are also trying to understand the whole fabric of the universe. He further stated that some of the smaller UFOs are robots/AI, consciousness is present after death, and humans have anti-gravity technology but it is still classified.
Jim Semivan, a former CIA officer has recently made a shocking statement, saying “there’s a whole other reality that surrounds us that we just simply don’t have the ability to see or interact with. There’s an entity out there! There’s some kind of non-human intelligence that’s living with us on this planet!”
“I think they mention that the phenomenon is a natural part of our universe, and we’re living in it but we don’t recognize it. The same way that insects and animals don’t recognize the human universe. A cat and a dog could be running through a library, but they don’t have the faintest idea what the books are all about and what libraries are all about. We might be walking through our existence and there’s a whole other reality that surrounds us that we just simply don’t have the ability to see or interact with.”
“It seems to be peeking inside our little consensus reality. As I explained to somebody once, it comes close, it teases us, it cajoles us, it lies to us, but you can never take it home to meet the parents. It won’t allow you to do that. There’s no formal introduction. Add on top that there’s no ontology, which is just a fancy word, it basically means there’s no structure to even discuss this. We don’t have a common lexicon. Somebody said we have dots but no connections. I don’t even think we have dots.”
The next major step in astronomy, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will see the big picture in terms of space.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is the next major step in astronomy.
(Image credit: GSFC/SVS)
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is NASA's future infrared space observatory that will attempt to tackle some of the most pressing questions in cosmology by addressing the mysteries of dark energy.
The telescope also known as "Roman" or the "Roman Space Telescope" will also search for planets outside the solar system — exoplanets, and will investigate the physics of distant stars.
Set to launch around 2026 or 2027, NASA says(opens in new tab) that the space telescope possesses a wide field of view that will allow it to generate never-before-seen big pictures of the universe essential for tackling some of the most pressing cosmic mysteries. The mission is projected to last for five years.
The Roman space telescope will be situated at Lagrange point 2, a stable gravitational point between Earth and the sun located around 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from our planet.
WHO IS TELESCOPE NAMED AFTER?
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope began life as the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) in 2010, only gaining its current name a decade later when in May 2020 it was renamed in honor of Nancy Grace Roman, a pioneering scientist who served as NASA's first chief astronomer from 1961 to 1963. Roman passed away on December 26, 2018, at the age of 93.
During her life, Roman was affectionately known as "the mother of Hubble" the nickname emerged due to the fact that Roman tirelessly advocated for new tools that would allow scientists to study the broader universe which led to the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990.
Nancy Grace Roman is best remembered for being the first chief of astronomy in the Office of Space Science at NASA Headquarters, and the first woman to hold an executive position at the space agency. (Image credit: NASA)
Announcing the new moniker for WFIRST in 2020 then NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine said:(opens in new tab) "It is because of Nancy Grace Roman's leadership and vision that NASA became a pioneer in astrophysics and launched Hubble, the world's most powerful and productive space telescope."
"I can think of no better name for WFIRST, which will be the successor to NASA's Hubble and Webb Telescopes." Bridenstine continued.
"Roman is planned to teach us a great deal about exoplanets and cosmology, but will have the capability to do so much more," Postdoctoral Fellow at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Samson A. Johnson told Space.com. "Right now, and all the way up to and after its launch, there will be a lot of opportunities for astronomers to propose their own ideas for Roman, and there are many interesting prospects such as studying stellar mass black holes, exoplanet transit surveys, asteroseismology surveys, and much, much more." Johnson continued.
NANCY GRACE ROMAN SPACE TELESCOPE DEVELOPMENT AND COST
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has been a long time in the making. (Image credit: Daisy Dobrijevic furnished with text supplied by Robert Lea. )
The development of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has been handled primarily by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, with participation by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, in Pasadena, California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprised researchers from institutions across the U.S.
The development of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has been handled primarily by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, with participation by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, in Pasadena, California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprised researchers from institutions across the U.S.
Initial designs for the Roman Space Telescope from 2011 suggested it would be equipped with a smaller 4.3 ft (1.3 m) diameter mirror and a single instrument. The current and final design of the telescope was introduced in 2015 in the WFIRST-AFTA 2015 Report by the Science Definition Team (SDT) and WFIRST Study Office.
In 2022, NASA estimated the total launch cost of the Roman telescope as $255 million, which includes the launch service and other mission-related costs.
WHAT WILL THE NANCY GRACE ROMAN SPACE TELESCOPE DO?
According to the WFIRST-AFTA Science Definition Team Final Report(opens in new tab) the Roman Space Telescope will weigh 4,166 kilograms (9,184 pounds) at launch and is set to carry a payload of 2,191 kg (4,830 lb).
The primary mirror of the Roman Space Telescope has a diameter of 7.9 ft (2.4 meters), the same size as the mirror of Hubble but under a quarter of the weight at 410 pounds (186 kilograms).
The primary mirror of The Roman Space Telescope is 7.9 ft (2.4 meters) across. (Image credit: L3Harris Technologies)
The mirror grants the telescope a 0.281-degree square field of view and sends light to the two main instruments carried by the Roman Space Telescope, the Wide Field Instrument, and the telescope's Coronagraph Instrument. The barrel-like shape of the spacecraft itself blocks out unwanted light from the sun.
This will allow the Wide Field Instrument to measure the light from a billion galaxies over its 5 5-year-long operation time, thus facilitating the primary mission of the Roman Space Telescope — to investigate dark energy.
As NASA points out,(opens in new tab) physicists estimate that dark energy accounts for around 68% of the universe's total energy/matter content, yet have little idea what it actually is. One way of addressing this problem could be to observe how the influence of dark energy has changed over time.
The Wide Field Instrument on the Roman Space Telescope will help investigate this by mapping the distribution of matter across the universe and measuring how the universe has expanded since it was around 500 million years old, about 4% of its current age. Examining the brightness and distances of supernovas, the explosions that occur at the end of stars' lives, the Roman Space Telescope may detect the first traces of dark energy thus giving scientists an idea of how the influence of this mysterious force has grown over time.
Among the other objectives of Roman, such as the study of distant supernovas and the examination of objects on the outskirts of the solar system, will be the hunt for planets around other stars.
NANCY GRACE ROMAN TELESCOPE AND DARK ENERGY FAQS ANSWERED BY AN EXPERT
Luz Ángela García is a cosmology postdoctoral researcher at Universidad ECCI in Bogotá, Colombia.
We asked Luz Ángela García, a cosmology postdoc in Bogotá, Colombia, a few questions about the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope and dark energy.
How does the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope compare to the James Webb Space Telescope?
Both telescopes are optimized to work on the wavelength range of the infrared. However, the JWST has a very narrow and detailed field of view. Instead, the Nancy Grace Roman will cover a very broad patch of the sky. One way to understand this is that the science goals of both telescopes are different, and thus, their coverage has to adapt to these observational needs.
The JWST aims to recover deep lines of view of the sky. On the other hand, the Roman will provide us with the "Big Picture". It will complement other wide galaxy surveys run from the ground, such as DESI or the upcoming Vera Rubin Observatory.
How will the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope study dark energy?
Most capabilities of the Nancy Grace Roman will make it a suitable instrument to study the nature of dark energy. Because of its broad coverage of the sky, the telescope will capture an unprecedented number of galaxies in its field of view and the distribution of those galaxies in our universe, which will allow us to understand the effect of dark energy on large cosmological scales and the clustering and evolution of galaxies. With such an extensive map of the galaxies, we can recover a robust prediction of the acoustic peak.
On the other hand, the Nancy Grace Roman will focus on detecting signals in the infrared; thus, it will 'see' galaxies that the current ground-based telescopes could be missing. In addition, the telescope will observe a large number of supernova Ia (the same type of objects that led to the concept of dark energy and the accelerated expansion of the universe in the first place). Most importantly, its findings concerning dark energy and the Universe's large-scale structure will complement those made by other observatories.
What impact will the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope have on astronomy?
Every new telescope provides a new piece of information about dark energy, the structure of matter, and the universe itself. This telescope will allow us to get a very broad map of the galaxies in infrared, therefore, they will not be only nearby galaxies, but mostly early galaxies whose light has traveled for a long time before reaching the mirrors of the Roman, thus their light will exhibit large redshifts.
But the Nancy Grace Roman will also address other interesting topics in the discipline, such as exoplanets delivering the largest census of planetary systems in our galaxy and other astronomical challenges in the infrared that neither the HST nor the JWST can tackle because of their narrow view.
HUNTING FOR EXOPLANETS
"Roman is going to teach us about exoplanets in two ways. First, one of its Core Community Surveys is designed to detect microlensing events. These events are the extremely rare, near-perfect alignment of a foreground object and a background star, which is why we need Roman's large field-of-view to monitor for these rare events," Johnson explains. "The mass of the foreground object bends space in such a way that it magnifies the light coming from the background star, temporarily increasing its brightness. If there are any planets orbiting the lensing star, they will cause deviations in the magnification which will indicate their presence."
By using the tiny bending of light caused by the presence of mass the Wide Field Instrument will conduct a survey of theMilky Wayand hunt for around 2,600 new exoplanets, according toNASA JPL(opens in new tab).
As this instrument searches for new exoplanets, the Roman Coronagraph will investigate dozens of already discovered exoplanets, by imaging them and carrying out spectroscopic — absorption and emissions of light and other radiation — observations.
Examining light as it passes through the atmospheres of exoplanets can reveal the elements that make up said atmospheres and can help scientists detect the presence of molecules such as water and complex organic molecules that could be the by-products of life.
Technology currently allows astronomers to detect bright young exoplanets that are around a million times dimmer than their host stars, but many exoplanets are fainter by their stars by factors of 100 million or more. This is especially true for "mature" gas giants like the solar system's own Jupiter and Saturn or rocky terrestrial worlds like Earth.
"The second way that Roman will study planets is by using its Coronographic Instrument, which is a technological demonstration of the first space-based adaptive optics," Johnson adds. "This will be critical for the future of directly imaging planets from space, and pave the way for the next generation of space telescopes searching for biosignatures in the 2040s."
The Roman Space Telescope Coronagraph Instrument will be the first high-performance coronagraph system sent into space with current lab tests indicating the instrument should be able to detect exoplanets a billion times fainter than their host star.
That makes Roman an important stepping stone for future missions that aim to image and characterize terrestrial planets 10 billion times fainter than their host star.
SPACE TELESCOPE SHOWDOWN: NANCY GRACE ROMAN VS THE JAMES WEBB VS HUBBLE
Though it's natural to compare the abilities of, the Hubble space telescope, theJames Webb Space Telescope, and the forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, none of these instruments is strictly a replacement for its predecessor, instead, each telescope is intended to complement the other. Though all three instruments view the universe in infrared, they offer different cosmic perspectives.
Header Cell - Column
Roman
Hubble
JWST
Wavelength coverage
0.5 to 2.3 microns (visible and infrared)
0.2 to 1.7 microns (ultraviolet light to near-infrared)
0.6 to 28 microns (near infrared, mid-infrared and small amount of visible light).
Primary mirror diameter
7.9 feet (2.4 meters)
7.9 feet (2.4 meters)
21 foot-diameter (6.5-meter)
Roman's wavelength coverage of visible and infrared light will span 0.5 to 2.3 microns, which is a 20% increase over the mission's original design. NASA says(opens in new tab) this range will enable the telescope to better collaborate with the Hubble Space Telescope, which views the universe in ultraviolet light to near-infrared light, 0.2 to 1.7 microns, and the JWST which observes the cosmos in near-infrared, mid-infrared and a small amount of visible light, from 0.6 to 28 microns.
The silver-coated mirror of Roman is the same size as Hubble's primary mirror, but it is dwarfed by the gold-coated mirror 21 foot-diameter (6.5-meter) mirror of the JWST. This huge mirror made of 18 hexagonal segments makes the JWST 100 times more powerful than Hubble and can see objects 100 times fainter than Hubble allowing it to see deeper into the universe. Because light has a finite traveling speed this means the JWST can see further back in time than Hubble, too.
Each telescope is intended to complement the other. (Image credit: NASA)
"The best way to compare Roman and Webb is actually to compare them to Hubble. Webb's big advantage over Hubble is that it is much more sensitive and can detect sources of light 100 times fainter than Hubble," Johnson said. "This makes Webb an excellent 'Swiss army knife' type observatory, very flexible and can observe a wide range of objects from the first galaxies to directly imaging exoplanets.
"Roman has a similar sensitivity to Hubble, but it has a much wider field of view. In one pointing, Roman can observe a patch of sky 100 times larger than Hubble can in a single pointing. This makes Roman great at observing thousands of galaxies at a time or tens of millions of stars in one image."
Roman's Wide Field Instrument's field of view is 100 times greater than Hubble's widest exposure. (Image credit: NASA Goddard Media Studios)
NASA estimates that Roman's infrared vision should also allow the telescope to see back into the universe to when it was little more than 300 million years old. Though Roman's main strength, according to NASA(opens in new tab), is the size of its field of view.
Roman's Wide Field Instrument's field of view is 100 times greater than Hubble's widest exposure. Roman will therefore generate much larger views of the cosmos while matching Hubble's crisp infrared resolution. In its first five years of operation, Roman will image over 50 times as much of the night sky as Hubble has done since 1990. Though Hubble can still capture something Roman can't provide, high-resolution ultraviolet observations, thus demonstrating that even the oldest of these three 'mega-telescopes' is in no way made obsolete by its predecessors.
This will allow Roman to spot targets in its wide-field view for Hubble to follow up in infrared, and for the JWST to get a clearer and deeper view of.
"Combining the Roman Space Telescope's findings with Hubble's and Webb's could revolutionize our understanding in a multitude of cosmic pursuits," NASA says.(opens in new tab)
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
The inspiration behind the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and so many of NASA's pioneering missions is its first chief astronomer, Nancy Grace Roman. You can read about her life in her own words in an interview conducted before her death in 2018, during a series of interviews she gave with NASA(opens in new tab).
The primary mission of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be the investigation of dark energy. You can get the lowdown on this mysterious force driving the expansion of the universe, with these resources from NASA(opens in new tab). Put your observation skills to the test with NASA's Roman Space Observer game.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, [Accessed 01/26/23], [https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/(opens in new tab)]
AI-blog | AI-experts en Elon Musk roepen op om onderzoek stil te leggen
Foto: BELGA
Hoe wij omgaan met informatie op het internet is helemaal aan het veranderen. En onze job ziet er straks ook heel anders uit. In deze blog volgen we de pijlsnelle opmars van ChatGPT en generatieve AI.
Gastheer van deze blog: Dominique Deckmyn
Het onderzoek in de meest geavanceerde AI-systemen moet voor zes maanden worden stilgelegd, om overleg mogelijk te maken over noodzakelijke veiligheidsmaatregelen. Die oproep is de jongste uren ondertekend door onder meer Elon Musk, Apple-oprichter Steve Wozniak en historicus Yuval Noah Harari.
De open brief staat op de website van het Future of Life institute. Het groeiende lijstje ondertekenaars omvat al heel wat vooraanstaande tech-ondernemers en denkers. Daar zitten medewerkers bij van verschillende grote spelers in de AI, zoals Deepmind (een zusterbedrijf van Google) en Stability AI (ontwikkelaar van de beeldgenerator Stable Diffusion). Voorlopig is nog niemand gesignaleerd van OpenAI, het bedrijf dat enkele weken geleden zijn meest geavanceerde AI-model, GPT-4 lanceerde.
Opvallend is dat de brief heel nadrukkelijk oproept om alleen de ontwikkeling stil te leggen van systemen ‘krachtiger dan GPT-4’. Koploper OpenAI zou dus de ontwikkeling van een hypothetisch GPT-5 voor zes maanden moeten stilleggen, maar concurrenten zouden ongestoord verder kunnen werken om hun achterstand op OpenAI in te halen. Dat kan de reden zijn dat de topmensen van OpenAI niet, maar die van de concurrenten wél bij de ondertekenaars zijn. Ook het ontwikkelen van AI-toepassingen gebaseerd op bestaande AI-modellen zou niet worden gehinderd.
De brief opent met een waarschuwing voor ‘human-competitive intelligence’ en de maatschappelijke risico’s die samenhangen met het gebruik van AI die de mens naar de kroon steekt. Zo’n ingrijpende verandering in de geschiedenis van het leven op aarde, zegt de brief, moet met grote zorg gepland worden. Maar in plaats daarvan is een ‘ongecontroleerde race’ aan de gang ‘die niemand, zelfs niet de makers, kan begrijpen, voorspellen of controleren’.
De oproep om de ontwikkeling van systemen die GPT-4 overtreffen, voor zes maanden stil te leggen, is geadresseerd aan alle AI-labs. Als daar geen akkoord over wordt bereikt, moeten overheden een moratorium opleggen.
De adempauze van zes maanden moet worden gebruikt om regelgeving en regelgevende autoriteiten op punt te stellen. Een andere geëiste maatregel is een systeem van ingebouwde watermerken, zodat teksten geproduceerd door zo’n AI-systeem als zodanig kunnen worden herkend.
We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.
AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research[1] and acknowledged by top AI labs.[2] As stated in the widely-endorsed Asilomar AI Principles, Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources. Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.
Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,[3] and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable. This confidence must be well justified and increase with the magnitude of a system's potential effects. OpenAI's recent statement regarding artificial general intelligence, states that "At some point, it may be important to get independent review before starting to train future systems, and for the most advanced efforts to agree to limit the rate of growth of compute used for creating new models." We agree. That point is now.
Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium.
AI labs and independent experts should use this pause to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts. These protocols should ensure that systems adhering to them are safe beyond a reasonable doubt.[4] This does not mean a pause on AI development in general, merely a stepping back from the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities.
AI research and development should be refocused on making today's powerful, state-of-the-art systems more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal.
In parallel, AI developers must work with policymakers to dramatically accelerate development of robust AI governance systems. These should at a minimum include: new and capable regulatory authorities dedicated to AI; oversight and tracking of highly capable AI systems and large pools of computational capability; provenance and watermarking systems to help distinguish real from synthetic and to track model leaks; a robust auditing and certification ecosystem; liability for AI-caused harm; robust public funding for technical AI safety research; and well-resourced institutions for coping with the dramatic economic and political disruptions (especially to democracy) that AI will cause.
Humanity can enjoy a flourishing future with AI. Having succeeded in creating powerful AI systems, we can now enjoy an "AI summer" in which we reap the rewards, engineer these systems for the clear benefit of all, and give society a chance to adapt. Society has hit pause on other technologies with potentially catastrophic effects on society.[5] We can do so here. Let's enjoy a long AI summer, not rush unprepared into a fall.
For thousands of years, phallic objects have been used symbolically as a means to boost fertility and ward off evil spirits - but their use as sexual aids has a long history, too.
A 28,000-year-old phallus found in Germany recently, for example, is quoted as being the oldest known 'sex toy' ever found.
While phalluses made from stone, wood, leather and even camel dung have all be found during excavations, or referenced throughout historical text and images.
To celebrate this expansive history of sexual experience, the Wellcome Collection currently has a number of ceremonial sculptures shaped - among other sexual artefacts - as part of its Institute of Sexology exhibition.
A 7.8-inch (20cm) long, 1.1-inch (3cm) wide stone object (pictured) was found in the Hohle Fels Cave near Ulm in the Swabian Jura. The prehistoric ‘tool’ is made from 14 fragments of siltstone and dates back 28,000 years. Due to its size, experts believe it may be the earliest example of a sex aid ever found
The term dildo was first coined in around 1400 AD and originated from the Latin for ‘dilatare’, which means ‘open wide’, and the Italian for delight, which translates as ‘diletto.’
In the Middle East, historical reports reference Egyptians and the Greek using unripe bananas, or camel dung coated in resin as sexual aids.
But the aids were used much earlier, as far back as 500BC, when phalluses were carved out of stone, leather or wood. Some were even made from tar.
PHALLIC SYMBOLS WARD OFF EVIL
Phallic sculptures weren’t just used for sexual pleasure.
In some pagan cultures, a female orgasm was seen as an offering to the gods of fertility, while the phallic symbol was popular during ancient Roman times.
In particular, statues of fertility god Priapus with a large phallus would be used to protect gardens and help crops grow.
In Greek mythology, Priapus was depicted with oversized, permanent erection, which is where the name for the medical term priapism originated.
Priapism is a persistent and often painful erection that lasts for several hours - in rare case, for weeks.
A solid bronze amulet, in the form of Priapus, is among the artefacts displayed at the Wellcome Collection.
Phallic charms of the time were known as fascinum, and were even found in the ruins of Pompeii, and it was believed that the symbols could ward off evil spirits.
Meanwhile, the phallic deity Mutunus Tutunus was a symbol of marital sex.
In Turkey, during the 6th century BC, ancient Anatolians used sculptures of sex organs to ward off evil and ill luck as they believed they contained special powers.
In ancient Greece, in particular, reports claim traders in the city of Miletus made and sold objects called ‘olisbos’, intended to help wives achieve sexual penetration while their husbands were away.
The aids were also used in Renaissance Italy, and were typically made of leather and used with olive oil for lubrication.
High class members of society would even display their sex toys, often made from silver, gold and ivory.
However, they were said to be painful to use and their popularity waned. The first dildos didn’t arrive in the UK until the 1500s.
Honor Beddard, co-curator at the Wellcome Collection said: ‘The Institute of Sexology presents the study of sex in all its complexity and contradiction.
‘It brings together the diverse collections of data, art, testimony and objects of those who challenged preconceived ideas about sex and tells the human stories behind the charting of sexual experience.
‘Highlighting the profound effect that gathering and analysing information can have in changing attitudes about the human condition, the exhibition reveals our understanding of sexual identity as an ever-evolving story.’
The exhibition features rare archival material, erotica, film, photography, medical artefacts and ethnography, all related to sex.
In 2005, a 7.8-inch (20cm) long, 1.1-inch (3cm) wide stone object was found in the Hohle Fels Cave near Ulm in the Swabian Jura.
The prehistoric ‘tool’ is made from 14 fragments of siltstone and dates back 28,000 years.
Due to its size, experts believe it may be the earliest example of a sex aid ever found, but could have also been used for knapping flints to help light fires, said Professor Nicholas Conard, from the department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, at Tübingen University.
During excavations at Neolithic site Membury Rings in Dorset in the early 20th century, archaeologists found various deposits of artefacts and other material, including antler, animal and human bone, flints and carved chalk.
Symbol: In Turkey, during the 6th century BC, ancient Anatolians used sculptures of sex organs (pictured) to ward off evil and ill luck as they believed they contained special powers
During excavations at Neolithic site Membury Rings in Dorset, archaeologists found various deposits of artefacts and other material, including antler, animal and human bone, and flints. Among these artefacts was a phallic-shaped object made of chalk (pictured) that measures 4-inches long. However, its use is unknown
Among these artefacts was a phallic-shaped object made from chalk and measures approximately 4-inches long. However, its use is unknown.
But the sculptures weren’t just used for sexual pleasure.
In some pagan cultures, a female orgasm was seen as an offering to the gods of fertility, while the phallic symbol was popular during ancient Roman times.
In particular, statues of fertility god Priapus with a large phallus would be used to protect gardens and help crops grow.
In Greek mythology, Priapus was depicted with oversized, permanent erection, which is where the name for the medical term priapism originated.
Priapism is a persistent and often painful erection that lasts for several hours - in rare case, for weeks.
Statues of fertility god Priapus with a large phallus would be used to protect gardens and help crops grow. Priapus was often depicted with oversized, permanent erection, which is where the name for the medical term priapism originated. Priapism is a persistent and often painful erection that lasts for hours
Phallic charms of the time were known as fascinum (examples pictured), and were even found in the ruins of Pompeii, and it was believed that the symbols could ward off evil spirits. Used in ancient Roman religion and magic, the fascinum referred to the god Fascinus. The phallus was used to summon divine protection
A solid bronze amulet, in the form of Priapus, is among the artefacts displayed at the Wellcome Collection.
Phallic charms of the time were known as fascinum, and were even found in the ruins of Pompeii, and it was believed that the symbols could ward off evil spirits.
Used in ancient Roman religion and magic, the fascinum referred to the god Fascinus. The phallus was used to summon divine protection.
Meanwhile, the phallic deity Mutunus Tutunus was a symbol of marital sex.
The 'Veedee' massager (pictured) is said to have been used by doctors to cure Victorian women of hysteria. But this has been disputed as myth
In Turkey, during the 6th century BC, ancient Anatolians used sculptures of sex organs to ward off evil and ill luck as they believed they contained special powers.
Much later, in 18th century France, the first vibrator called Tremoussoir was built. It was a handheld, wind-up contraption designed by physicians.
In 1869, an American physician George Taylor is credited as creating a steam-powered version called the Manipulator, before an electromechanical vibrator was developed in 1880 by Dr Joseph Granville.
Far from being sexual aids, these devices were said to have been used to treat female hysteria.
Reports claim that doctors as far back as the 13th century doubted that women had libidos and advised using sex toys to alleviate sexual frustration.
Physicians during the 20th century would then use vibrators for clitoral stimulation to treat this so-called hysteria, which comes from the Greek word for uterus.
Symptoms for hysteria included anxiety, sleeplessness, irritability and erotic fantasies.
One such vibrator, called Veedee, is on display at the Wellcome Collection, but a spokesman told MailOnline that its use as a Victorian tool by doctors to induce orgasms has been disputed as myth.
The first rubber dildos have been traced back to around 1850 and they started appearing in movies during the 1930s and 1940s.
At this point, many were called marital aids, rather than sexual aids.
‘At the turn of the century, the vibrator kind of split into two product lines,’ explained technology historian Rachel Maines.
‘One was for doctors and one was for consumers and doctors really hated the idea that there were consumer vibrators out there.
‘There were these relatively inexpensive, some that looked like an egg beater for people who didn't have electricity. And there were battery powered ones.
‘There were even water-powered ones that you could attach to your sink!’
A solid bronze amulet, in the form of Priapus, is among the artefacts displayed at the Wellcome Collection
The Institute of Sexology exhibition features rare archival material, erotica, film, photography, medical artefacts and ethnography, all related to sex. A collection of sexual aids on display is pictured. The exhibition runs at the London-based museum until 20 September 2015
Humans Have Been Keeping Dildos Handy for at Least 28,000 Years
When archaeologists assembled the pieces of an ancient stone artifact discovered in a cave in Germany, it was pretty clear what they’d found. Known as the Hohle Fels phallus, this prehistoric tool dates back 28,000 years and has come to be known popularly as the world’s oldest dildo.
The reconstruction of the so-called dildo by archaeologists from the University of Tübingen was finally announced at a press conference in 2005 after 14 stone fragments were excavated at the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany. The resulting artifact measured an adequate 20 centimeters (8 in) long and 3 cm (1.2 in) wide.
Described as being smooth and “hard as, well, a rock” in the Huffington Post , this life-sized representation of a phallus was probably used as a sex toy during the Ice Age . “It's highly polished; it's clearly recognizable," said Professor Conard to the BBC. The archaeologists also found evidence that it was used during Paleolithic times to sharpen flints, thanks to marks found on its surface.
Whatever it was, Nicholas Conard from the Tübingen team described it as “very rare.” An article in ACB News explained that this was due to the fact that while artistic representations of female genitalia are “common” during this era, the discovery of representations of male genitalia in the prehistoric record are sparse.
One issue with stone is its resistance to dating. Nevertheless, by looking at other remains discovered in the same ash layer the archaeologists involved in the find claimed that it was created by prehistoric modern humans, i.e. Homo sapiens , as far back as 28,000 years ago.
Although avowals that these objects are dildos abound, the World Journal of Research and Review explained that “these interpretations say a lot more about the mind of the proposers (their own Rorschach-like test) than about reality.” When it comes to the supposed dildo from Hohle Fels, it may well have been a multi-purpose tool, used for anything from “knapping flints” to personal pleasure.
While the thought is rather satisfying, Snopes concluded that “the interpretation of the use of this object is speculative.” Meanwhile, the resulting paper published in Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt merely stated: “Whether the stone artifact had functions related to its masculine symbolism is difficult to answer.”
Writing about the history of the dildo in All That’s Interesting , John Kuroski speculated that the plethora of ambiguously named “ Ice Age batons ” within excavation inventories could actually be referring to a universe of female pleasure dating back – literally – to the Ice Age. Shaped to serve their purpose, and made out of anything from antler bone to bread sticks, the rediscovery of these bedroom buddies could rewrite the history of female sexuality. A gratifying thought indeed.
Top image: The 28,000-year-old Hohler Fels phallus is thought to be the oldest dildo in the world.
Mystery of Flight N3808H: 'Pilot mentioned a UFO before went missing'
Authentic Mayday radio transmission by Jose Santos Pagan on June 28, 1980. In the second part of the video (03:35-08:31) Puerto Rican UFO researcher Jorge Martin talks about the disappearance of flight N3808H. At the end of his speech he suggests what may have happened to the crew.
At 6:10 P.M. on June 28, 1980, Jose Maldonado Torres and his friend, Jose Pagan Santos, took off from Los Americas International Airport in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in an Ercoupe aircraft marked N3808H.
The Ercoupe was owned by Santos' father Jose Pagan Jimenez, an Aero Police Officer for Puerto Rico. They were bound for home in Puerto Rico.
At 8:03 P.M. the Las Mesas site and several aircraft picked up radio transmissions from N3808H:
"Mayday, Mayday! Ercoup ocho cero, eight, zero, zero, Hotel. We can see a strange object in our course, we are lost, Mayday, Mayday!"
An Iberia Airlines Flight IB-976 en route from Santo Domingo to Spain responded to the Mayday and received a reply:
"Ah we are going from Santo Domingo ah San Juan International, but we found ah, a weird object in our course that made us change course about three different times, we got it right in front of us now at one o'clock, our heading is zero seven zero degrees… our altitude one thousand six hundred a zero seven zero degrees… our VORs got lost off frequency…"
Iberia Flight IB-976 then relayed a message asking from San Juan Center asking N3808H to turn on their transponder.
N3808H replied that the Ercoup was not equipped with a transponder. At 8:06 Iberia IB-976 asked for their call sign and estimated position and received this reply:
"Right now we are supposed to be at about thirty-five miles from the coast of Puerto Rico but we have something weird in front of us that make us lose course all the time I changed our course a second (unintelligible) our present heading right now is three hundred we are right again in the same stuff, sir."
They were not heard from again. At 8:12, the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Range verified the last radar position of N3808H as thirty-five miles West of Puerto Rico.
A search that included Santos' father was then mounted which centered on this last radar position.
It was discontinued after two days when no trace had been found.
Mystery of Flight N3808H: 'Pilot mentioned a UFO before went missing'
Authentic Mayday radio transmission by Jose Santos Pagan on June 28, 1980. In the second part of the video (03:35-08:31) Puerto Rican UFO researcher Jorge Martin talks about the disappearance of flight N3808H. At the end of his speech he suggests what may have happened to the crew.
At 6:10 P.M. on June 28, 1980, Jose Maldonado Torres and his friend, Jose Pagan Santos, took off from Los Americas International Airport in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in an Ercoupe aircraft marked N3808H.
The Ercoupe was owned by Santos' father Jose Pagan Jimenez, an Aero Police Officer for Puerto Rico. They were bound for home in Puerto Rico.
At 8:03 P.M. the Las Mesas site and several aircraft picked up radio transmissions from N3808H:
"Mayday, Mayday! Ercoup ocho cero, eight, zero, zero, Hotel. We can see a strange object in our course, we are lost, Mayday, Mayday!"
An Iberia Airlines Flight IB-976 en route from Santo Domingo to Spain responded to the Mayday and received a reply:
"Ah we are going from Santo Domingo ah San Juan International, but we found ah, a weird object in our course that made us change course about three different times, we got it right in front of us now at one o'clock, our heading is zero seven zero degrees… our altitude one thousand six hundred a zero seven zero degrees… our VORs got lost off frequency…"
Iberia Flight IB-976 then relayed a message asking from San Juan Center asking N3808H to turn on their transponder.
N3808H replied that the Ercoup was not equipped with a transponder. At 8:06 Iberia IB-976 asked for their call sign and estimated position and received this reply:
"Right now we are supposed to be at about thirty-five miles from the coast of Puerto Rico but we have something weird in front of us that make us lose course all the time I changed our course a second (unintelligible) our present heading right now is three hundred we are right again in the same stuff, sir."
They were not heard from again. At 8:12, the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Range verified the last radar position of N3808H as thirty-five miles West of Puerto Rico.
A search that included Santos' father was then mounted which centered on this last radar position.
It was discontinued after two days when no trace had been found.
Located out in a small valley in the central part of Norway, in the municipality of Holtålen in Trøndelag county, is the scenic valley of Hessdalen. Surrounded by scenic mountains, it is an isolated, sparsely populated area, the largest settlement being the tiny village of the same name, which has a population of just 150 people. Not much typically goes on here, and the people live a quiet, peaceful life among the picturesque scenery away from the bustle of city life, but beginning in 1981 their serene lives would be interrupted by a spate of sightings of mysterious lights in the sky that have remained unexplained.
Hessdalen Valley
Although strange lights had been sporadically seen in the valley since the 1940s, the activity of the phenomenon now known as the Hessdalen lights really picked up and became known in 1981, when villagers in the valley were startled by a myriad of mysterious orbs of light in the sky that would regularly appear at various places throughout the valley both night and day. These lights could be anywhere from the size of a basketball to the size of a car, sometimes even much larger, and had a wide variety of characteristics and behaviors. They would usually be bright white, yellow or red, and depending on the report usually appearing below the horizon but sometimes above the mountains. They would alternately zip away at high speeds to vanish, slowly float about, hover in midair, speed up or slow down, away from side to side, or do aerial acrobatics. They would sometimes merely appear and disappear in a flash, while others were observed floating and zipping about for up to 2 hours, with larger orbs frequently seen to spew out smaller orbs. On occasion, the orbs were said to hover over water or approach or shy away from observers when approached, demonstrating what seemed to be intelligent control, and in some daytime sightings the objects were described as looking metallic. Whatever they were, they were sighted very frequently, in their peak being seen 15 to 20 times a week, frightening locals in the process.
In spite of their irregular occurrence—i.e., 15 to 20 times per week from 1981 to 1984 and 10 to 20 times per year nowadays— the Hessdalen lights (HL) have been consistently observed and possess a series of recurring features: (1) they have the appearance of a free-floating light ball with dimensions ranging from decimeters up to 30 m. (2) they are characterized by geometric structures that are often accompanied by small, short-duration pulsating “spikes” in the high frequency and very low frequency radio ranges, (3) they show an absolute luminosity that has been estimated to be 19 kW, and (4) they have a time duration ranging from seconds to hours. HL are also characterized by the formation of light ball clusters and the ejection of mini light balls. They may also show very high velocities. Furthermore, HL are thunderstorm-independent events, as opposed to other rare and poorly understood transient luminous phenomena occurring in the atmosphere (i.e., ball lightings, blue jets, red sprites and terrestrial gamma-ray flashes).
The Hessdalen lights quickly became big news, drawing in droves of all manner of curiosity seekers and UFO researchers, as well as mainstream scientists eager to get to the bottom of the mystery. In the summer of 1983, an ongoing scientific field investigation was launched to study the lights, and by the conclusion of their 1-year investigation there were 53 light observations made. More scientific investigations have been carried out as well, including one in 1985, and another from 1997–1998 which managed to capture footage of the lights in a bizarre pyramid shape that bounced up and down. In 1998, an automated station was installed in the valley, called the Hessdalen Automatic Measurement Station (Hessdalen AMS) to monitor the lights year round, collecting reams of photos of the lights, as well as various readings on scientific equipment, and there have been various peer reviewed papers on the lights published in scientific journals. Indeed, the Hessdalen lights constitute one of the most well researched mysterious phenomenon there is. However, despite all of this study, no one can quite figure out what they actually are.
The number of theories as to what the lights might be is vast. One idea is that some sort of combustion is occurring involving hydrogen, oxygen and sodium, helped along by large deposits of scandium in the area. Another is that they are caused by piezoelectricity, which is an electrical charge that accumulates in certain materials including certain kinds of rock such as quartz, crystals, certain ceramics, and even some biological materials like bone. Considering that the valley has large deposits of crystal rocks, it is speculated that these may build up a charge that is released to form these balls of light. Other theories include plasma balls, ball lightning, meteorites, mirages, igniting gases, and even the idea that the valley itself acts as a sort of battery that generates a current, as well as many other numerous hypotheses and speculations. However, no single explanation can really account for all of the different characteristics reported with the lights. Of course, the lights have been claimed to be ghosts and alien UFOs as well, and UFO researchers have long held keen interest in this place. Yet, as much as this lonely valley has been studied, the secrets of its strange lights have remained evasive, and we still have no idea what they are, keeping them in the realm of mystery and speculation.
Unidentified Submerged Objects: A Hidden Dimension of the UFO Phenomenon
For years, the UFO phenomenon has captivated the public’s imagination with tales of strange objects in the sky. However, a lesser-known aspect of this enigmatic phenomenon is the existence of unidentified submerged objects (USOs) – mysterious entities lurking beneath the ocean’s surface. This article delves into intriguing USO cases, their potential implications, and the ongoing debate surrounding their existence.
The USO Phenomenon: Unidentified submerged objects are often reported as fast-moving underwater entities that defy conventional explanations. Many witnesses, including military personnel, have reported observing USOs demonstrating advanced propulsion systems, seemingly unaffected by the challenges of underwater travel. These objects are occasionally seen entering or exiting the water, further complicating the mystery.
The Shag Harbour Incident (1967) – An object crashed into the water off the coast of Nova Scotia, prompting an extensive search by Canadian authorities. No debris was ever found, leaving the incident unexplained.
The Togo Beach Encounter (1978) – In West Africa, a group of fishermen reported observing an object emerging from the water, which then hovered over their boats and scanned them with a beam of light before disappearing.
The Malibu Anomaly (2014) – A peculiar underwater structure was discovered off the coast of California, leading to speculation that it could be a submerged extraterrestrial base.
Possible Explanations:
Skeptics argue that these cases could be attributed to natural phenomena, military exercises, or advanced human technology. However, proponents of the USO theory suggest that we may be dealing with an advanced intelligence operating covertly in Earth’s oceans. Some believe that these entities could be studying our oceans, marine life, or even maintaining hidden underwater bases.
VIDEO:
USOs: The Forgotten UFOs | The Richard Dolan Show
The Trans-Medium Dilemma:
One of the most puzzling aspects of USO cases is the reported ability of these objects to transition seamlessly between water and air, defying known principles of physics and engineering. This trans-medium capability raises questions about the origin and purpose of these elusive objects.
While the USO phenomenon remains shrouded in mystery, it serves as a reminder that there is more to the UFO enigma than meets the eye. The existence of unidentified submerged objects challenges our understanding of the world and underscores the need for further research and exploration. As we continue to investigate these perplexing cases, we must remain open-minded and vigilant in our pursuit of the truth.
JAMES WEBB DEMOLISHES HUBBLE'S RECORD OF FITTING THE MOST GALAXIES IN A SINGLE IMAGE
AND WE'RE BARELY SCRATCHING THE SURFACE.
NASA/FUTURISM
Galactic Triumph
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field, conducted using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, was once considered the zenith of astronomical surveys, capturing light from some 10,000 galaxies in the deepest reaches of the cosmos — all in a single image.
But as you may be very familiar with at this point, the James Webb Space Telescope has proven to be so advanced, it's making the Hubble's most Herculean efforts look almost trivial.
Now, astronomers are sharing some of the first images from James Webb's largest survey to date: the COSMOS-Web, set to eclipse the scope of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field with a whopping 25,000 galaxies in just its first stage.
"It's one of the largest JWST images taken so far," said Caitlin Casey, co-principal investigator of the project and an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin, in a press release. "And yet it's just four percent of the data we will get for the full survey."
"When it is finished, this deep field will be astoundingly large and overwhelmingly beautiful."
Already observable in the first image are a host of exotic galaxies: spiral galaxies, merger galaxies, the gravity of galaxies creating cosmic lenses, magnifying older galaxies even further behind them.
Deep Impact
Like other deep field surveys preceding it, the COSMOS-Web focuses only on a tiny sliver of the sky — just 0.6 square degrees, or about the size of three full moons according to NASA — using the telescope's Near-Infrared Camera. Its Mid-Infrared Instrument scans an additional 0.2 square degrees.
In doing so, scientists hope to deepen our understanding of the Reionization Era between 400,000 and one billion years after the Big Bang, a time during which stars, galaxies, and other structures emerged.
Of particular interest are these primeval galaxies, and how dark matter, a hypothetical but unobservable substance thought to be holding our galaxies together, evolved along with them.
And, to reiterate, this is merely the first stage of the survey. When it wraps up, the over 200 scientists collaborating from across the globe will have surveyed up to one million galaxies over the course of some 255 hours of observations. That's the goal, anyhow.
It's ambitious, but the scientists are undeniably off to a stellar start. According to Santosh Harish, an astrophysicist at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the James Webb is so effortlessly detailed that "sources are literally popping out in every small patch of the observed sky."
"With these first observations," he said in the release, "we have just barely scratched the surface of what is to come with the completion of this program, next year."
The universe may be flat, but could still be shaped like a doughnut, weird patterns in leftover light from the Big Bang suggest.
An image of the cosmic microwave background as taken by the Planck satellite. The size of fluctuations in the CMB suggest the universe is flat, but new research suggests it could still be twisty.
The universe could, in fact, be a giant doughnut, despite all of the evidence suggesting it's as flat as a pancake, new research suggests.
Strange patterns found in echoes of the Big Bang could be explained by a universe with a more complicated shape, and astronomers have not fully tested the universe's flatness, the study finds.
All observations so far suggest the universe is flat. In geometry, "flatness" refers to the behavior of parallel lines as they go out to infinity. Think of a tabletop: Lines that start out parallel will remain that way as they extend along the table length.
In contrast, look at Earth. Lines of longitude begin perfectly parallel to each other at the equator but eventually converge at the poles. The fact that parallel lines initially intersect reveals that Earth is not flat.
The same logic applies to the 3D universe. For instance, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — light released when the cosmos was only 380,000 years old — now sits over 42 billion light-years away and features tiny fluctuations in temperature across the sky. Astronomers have calculated the predicted size of those fluctuations compared with observations. If their measured size differs from predictions, that means those rays of light, which started out parallel, changed directions over space-time, indicating that the geometry of the universe is curved.
But those same measurements have revealed that, ignoring small-scale deflections from galaxies and black holes, the overall geometry of the universe is flat.
Different types of flat
But there's more than one kind of flat. For example, draw parallel lines on a piece of paper. Then wrap one end of the paper to connect with the other, forming a cylinder. The lines remain parallel as they circle the cylinder. In the language of mathematics, any cylinder is geometrically flat but is said to have a different topology. Close up both sides of the paper, and you make a torus, or doughnut shape.
To get another example of a weirdly flat shape, wrap a thin strip of paper in a circle, but make a 180-degree twist in one end. The end result is a Möbius strip, which is still geometrically flat, because parallel lines stay parallel, even when they flip over each other.
Mathematicians have discovered 18 possible geometrically flat, 3D topologies. In each one, at least one dimension wraps up on itself, and sometimes, they flip over like a Möbius strip or make partial rotations. In such a twisty universe, if we looked far away, we would see a (maybe upside-down) copy of ourselves from a much younger age. For example, if the universe were 1 billion light-years across, astronomers would see a version of the Milky Way galaxy as it was 1 billion years ago and, behind that, another copy from 2 billion years ago, and so on.
If the universe were a giant doughnut, astronomers could look in two directions to see such copies.
The universe's shape
Astronomers have measured the topology of the universe in multiple ways, from looking for duplicates of patterns of galaxies to matching circles in the CMB. All evidence suggests the universe is both geometrically flat and has a simple unwrapped topology.
But a paper published Feb. 23 to the preprint database arXiv(opens in new tab) suggests that past measurements have been limited. Most notably, observations have assumed that the universe wraps around itself in only one dimension and does not have a more complicated topology. Also, observations of the CMB have revealed some strange, unexplained anomalies, like large patterns appearing where they shouldn't.
In fact, a universe with a complicated topology could explain at least some of the anomalies in the CMB. While this isn't an iron-clad case for complicated topologies, the researchers offered ideas for more sophisticated direct searches, like follow-up studies of the CMB.
In that case, there may be a mirror image of us somewhere in our twisty universe.
This story originally appeared on Livescience(opens in new tab).
Some mass extinctions unfold like a sloppy murder, leaving clear fingerprints for the keen investigator to uncover. (Asteroids are no masters of subtlety.) The Late Ordovician mass extinction, the oldest of all and the second most lethal, isn’t one of them. Though there is a standard explanation for this granddaddy of death — involving an ancient ice age — the evidence is cryptic enough that experts are still submitting new theories for how 85 percent of all marine species suddenly sank into oblivion.
The planet’s first death knell sounded 444 million years ago, near the end of the Ordovician Period.* Simple forms of life — mainly bacteria and archaea — had already flourished for 3 billion years. Complex life, on the other hand, had only just hit its stride.
In the sequence of geologic time, the Ordivician follows the Cambrian Period, well-known for the evolutionary "explosion" of the same name that populated the world with nearly all the modern animal phyla — the major branches we now see in the tree of life. The ranks of vertebrates, mollusks, arthropods and other broad taxonomic groups still familiar to us today were growing and diversifying at an extraordinary rate — until their abrupt downfall, that is.
“The Ordovician is a very interesting time period,” says Seth Finnegan, a paleobiologist at the University of California, Berkeley, “because you have one of the largest and most rapid biodiversification events … and also one of the largest mass extinction events. Both of them are clearly tied up in physical changes to the environment.”
Ice, Fire and Deformities
At the time, most of Earth’s dry land was merged together in the supercontinent of Gondwana, which had drifted so far south that it hovered over the pole like present-day Antarctica. To the north, there were a few minor continents — notably Laurentia, which includes most of North America, and Baltica, which includes the Baltic region and part of Russia — that dotted the tropical and temperate regions around the equator.
Plants and animals were perhaps beginning to venture above water, though nothing near the extent that they would in the coming eras. By and large, most of the action was still happening under the sea, where trilobites, corals and other primordial ocean-dwellers prospered like never before.
Cameroceras (name meaning "chambered horn") is an extinct orthoconic (straight-shelled) cephalopod that lived during the Ordovician period. They were likely a top predator of their time.
(Credit: Esteban De Armas/Shutterstock)
Then came their demise. In conventional wisdom, it consisted of two distinct “pulses” separated by roughly a million years. First, glaciers engulfed Gondwana and the planet cooled dramatically, chilling the tropics and mid-latitudes. Sea levels plummeted hundreds of feet. This destroyed vast stretches of the warm, shallow-water habitat that sustained much marine life. Then, in the second pulse, the glaciers melted, the planet warmed, and the ocean rose. The species that had just adapted to the cold struggled once again to evolve fast enough.
It’s unclear what triggered that icy advance. Some studies suggest weathering of silicate rocks — especially in the rising Appalachian Mountains — could have drawn down atmospheric carbon dioxide, lowering global temperatures. Others implicate the expansion of plants, which could have absorbed greenhouse gases while also speeding up silicate weathering. One theory posits that a gamma-ray burst, by converting nitrogen and oxygen into sun-blocking smog, may have brought on the glaciers.
But many researchers are beginning to think that “cooling itself may not be solely responsible for these extinctions,” as Thijs Vandenbroucke and colleagues wrote in a 2015 paper that links some deaths to changing ocean chemistry. They found fossilized plankton with fatal deformities dating to the event, suggesting the release of toxic metals like iron and lead from the ocean depths may have been an important kill mechanism.
Some evidence in recent years even points the finger at glaciation’s elemental opposite: volcanism. The Ordovician extinction, if caused by the cooling climate, would be an outlier. Extreme volcanic activity is widely accepted as a main catalyst in most other mass die-offs, since it leads to inhospitable global warming. Now, with the discovery of mercury deposits from the era, the telltale signature of eruptions has surfaced in this extinction too. Rewriting the story with a fiery culprit would “make the late Ordovician stand out less,” Finnegan says, though he’s not convinced yet.
(Credit: Microstocker1/Shutterstock)
The Equitable Extinction
While scientists are unsure why the majority of species died at this moment, they do understand how those deaths influenced the progression of life. Many extinctions jolt evolution off its course, allowing a host of new organisms to rise from the ashes and fill new niches in a new environment. But not so with the Ordovician extinction.
“The resulting fauna had ecologic patterns similar to the fauna that had become extinct,” writes Peter Sheehan, a paleontologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Other extinction events that eliminated similar or even smaller percentages of species had greater long-term ecologic effects.” That’s because those long-term effects depend on which level of the taxonomic ladder an extinction acts upon.
The Ordovician, for example, eliminated 85 percent of all species, but only 60 percent of genera and 25 percent of families, the next two levels of classification. Since some members survived in most families, life went on more or less as it would have anyway. The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, in contrast, dethroned both orders (an even higher tier of taxonomy) of the dominant dinosaurs. The natural hierarchy inverted, and mammals rose to power.
So, even though it was deadlier than all mass extinctions but the Permian (also known, grimly, as the “Great Dying”), the Ordovician didn’t leave much of an impression. It killed many individual organisms, but decimated no so-called mascot groups — nothing of dinosaur, or even ammonite, stature.
There were casualties, of course. The asaphida family of trilobites — which, with their snail-like eye stalks, are “about as charismatic as late Ordovician fossils get,” says Finnegan — disappeared almost completely. Graptolites, tiny colonial animals that lived together in a single skeleton, also flirted with annihilation. Corals, bryozoans (another colonial creature), clam-like brachiopods, and eel-esque conodonts suffered too.
Fossilized asaphida at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.
(Credit: Sarunyu L/Shutterstock)
But overall this extinction just wasn’t as selective as most — it didn’t target specific groups over others. In some extinctions, “it matters who you are and how you make your living,” as Finnegan puts it. For example, in the Permian extinction, acidic oceans eroded the calcified shells of many animals, while sparing the uncalcified. “In the late Ordovician event,” he went on, “my sense is that it matters more where you are.”
Most high-level taxonomic groups, happily for them, were widely dispersed. So even as ecological catastrophe struck certain regions, the cousins of the less fortunate persisted elsewhere and upheld the evolutionary status quo. In fact, the fossil record is so similar before and after the event that a rookie paleontologist staring right at the layers might miss the cutoff. “You need to be a specialist,” Finnegan says, “to tell what side of the Ordovician-Silurian boundary you’re on.”
Author note:It’s likely that the Ordovician event wasn’t actually the first mass extinction ever to sweep Earth, at least in terms of the proportion of organisms killed. In the billions of years before complex life emerged, the planet’s single-celled denizens endured harsh ecological change many times, including so-called snowball Earth episodes that likely locked every living thing beneath a sheet of ice. These and other events surely led to widespread extinction for microbial life.
Glass beads under the lunar surface could trap vast reservoirs of moisture.
(Valeriano Antonini/Getty Images)
We know there's water on the Moon, but questions remain about how it got there, where it's stored, and how it moves around. In a new study, scientists from China have identified tiny glass beads in the lunar soil as potential places where water could hide.
And we're talking about a lot of water too, perhaps as much as 270 trillion kilograms (297.6 billion tons) of the stuff.
The new findings are based on samples brought back from China's Chang'e 5 rover mission. The spacecraft spent a couple of weeks collecting material from the lunar surface in December 2020, and we've already seen exciting new discoveries from subsequent analysis.
Impact glass beads under analysis. (He et al, Nature Geoscience, 2023)
Microscopic glass beads typically form as bits of space rock smack into another object's surface, vaporizing minerals which can cool into vitreous particles barely a few tens or hundreds of micrometers across. Past studies on beads found in Apollo lunar samples helped overturn prior assumptions on the dryness of the Moon.
Current research suggests a good proportion of the Moon's water is produced with a little help from the Sun's winds, as hydrogen ions from these showers of solar particles bond with oxygen already stored in lunar soil.
The reservoir of water potentially represented by these beads could potentially play an important part in the lunar water cycle, according to the researchers behind this latest study. As some water gets lost to space, it can be replenished by the stores held in the amorphous impact glass.
"The impact glass beads preserve hydration signatures and display water abundance profiles consistent with the inward diffusion of solar wind-derived water," the researchers write in their recently published paper.
How the lunar water cycle might work. (He et al., Nature Geoscience, 2023)
Each glass bead is capable of holding up to 2,000 micrograms (0.002 grams) of water for every gram of the particle's mass. Based on a hydration signatures analysis, the scientists think the beads can accumulate water in the span of just a few years.
"This short diffusion time indicates that the solar wind-derived water can be rapidly accumulated and stored in lunar impact glass beads," write the researchers.
This is all very useful to know when it comes to supporting Moon missions and bases. Being able to tap into this vast reservoir of water could make living on the lunar surface for extended periods of time much more comfortable.
What's more, the scientists say that other "airless bodies" like the Moon could be storing water in their surface layers in the same way. Expect more discoveries along these lines as the samples from Chang'e 5 continue to get analyzed.
"These findings indicate that the impact glasses on the surface of the Moon and other airless bodies in the Solar System are capable of storing solar wind-derived water and releasing it into space," says geophysicist and study co-author Hu Sen from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
A spectroscopic analysis determined that the beads contained more water than the researchers expected based on past studies. They surmised that interactions between hydrogen ions in the solar wind and oxygen-bearing materials in lunar soil created H2O molecules that could be trapped within the glass — and then diffused under the right conditions.
Based on an extrapolation of such findings, the research team — headed by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences — estimates that glass beads in lunar soil may contain up to 270 trillion kilograms (595 trillion pounds, or 71 trillion gallons) of water.
“We propose that impact glass beads in lunar soils are a prime water reservoir candidate able to drive the lunar surface water cycle,” the researchers report in Nature Geoscience.
Scientists have known for decades that the moon harbors reservoirs of water in the form of ice, concentrated at the poles. That sort of water is thought to have arrived in the form of cometary impacts, with water molecules migrating to permanently shadowed craters in the lunar polar regions.
Water was even detected in glass bead samples that were brought back to Earth by NASA’s Apollo lunar missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s — but the water detected in the Chang’e-5 samples was three times as abundant on average. And based on studies of basaltic glass beads on Earth, the researchers say it’s theoretically possible for the abundances to be even greater.
“This could be the result of dynamic diffusion and release of water in the impact glass beads controlled by the time-of-day temperature oscillations,” they write. “The dynamic ingress and egress of water in impact glass beads could have acted as a buffer to explain the global and daily variations of water abundance on the lunar surface and in the lunar exosphere.
Researchers propose a three-stage process for sustaining a lunar water cycle with impact glass beads: (A) The beads are created when a meteoroid impact melts silica-bearing materials on the moon’s surface. (B) The solar wind brings hydrogen ions to the surface, and interactions with oxygen-bearing materials produce water molecules that are trapped within the beads. (C) The beads sink deeper into the lunar soil, creating a reservoir for water. Irradiation or further meteoroid impacts can cause release of the water. (Credit: He et al. / Nature Geoscience)
If enough of the beads could be collected, and if engineers can come up with an efficient way to heat up the beads and extract the H2O, that could give future lunar explorers a source of water for drinking, oxygen for breathing, and hydrogen for rocket fuel. Those are a couple of big “ifs,” but the research team says the problems seem solvable.
“These findings indicate that the lunar soils contain a much higher amount of solar wind-derived water than previously thought, which could be a water reservoir for in situ utilization in future lunar exploration,” they say in their study. “Indeed, this water entrapped in impact glass beads appears to be quite easy to extract.”
Astronauts could investigate the possibilities further as part of NASA’s Artemis program, which is due to send the first crewed mission since the Apollo era to the lunar surface in the mid-2020s. And if the newly reported findings hold up, they could also apply to the exploration of other worlds where water has been detected, such as Mercury and Vesta.
“Our findings indicate that the impact glasses on the surface of solar system airless bodies are capable of storing solar wind-derived water and releasing it to space,” the researchers behind the new study say.
Some of the best ever video footage of an unidentified flying object, was captured while a passenger was on board an airplane. Kerry Forides from Athens, Greece was on a commercial airplane flight. He is a resident in Greece, but is from Australia.
To his surprise, he noticed something quite unusual…whatever it was, it was seen moving around the outside of the airplane. It’s movements were quite bizarre to say the least. The dark colored elongated mass, seems to rotate, twist and turn as it soars through the air. No known aircraft that human technology has, can move quite like this.
Image: YouTube
The incredible footage, was taken while flying over the Agean sea. Kerry works as a permaculturalist and he was perplexed at what he was recording. A woman is heard startled, this is his wife, who further commenting about this encounter. She claimed to have seen this UFO, about 30 minutes earlier before Kerry started recording it with his camera.
“It was around 4:30 p.m.,” said Forides, who owns a YouTube channel he refers to as Kerry Cameraworks. “It was flying at right angles from our plane.”
The entire length of the video, lasts for 2 minutes and 46 seconds. The footage captured, was taken with a XDCAM-EX1 video camera. The object seen seems to make miraculous twists and turns even at 180 degrees. The shape and size of this UFO, appears to be quite slim and elongated. This UFO, seems to be following the plane perhaps under some sort of observation.
Image: YouTube
Skeptically, people are saying this is nothing but a chemtrail. But this is mere speculation and nothing more. One viewer commented, mentioning this is a military Greek F4 Phantom II “with the old engine type”. It is unknown if this is true either.
Other speculations include, this being a missile since there is an ongoing war in nearby Syria. The way it moves is peculiar, but some believe a missile moves like this by comparison. Perhaps this is a part of some kind of secretive military operation. However, with drones now being prevalent in the world, they are now being used to discredit many UFO sightings.
Forides didn’t elaborate on the size of the UFO, but as seen in the video, it appears to be rather large. It is unknown if anyone else has any video about this yet. Whatever this is, it has people wondering and worried that something else is happening in our world.
Filmmaker James Cameron and the Godfather of AI Agree: AI Could Destroy Us Soon
Paul Seaburn
Artificial intelligence is here and two people who are closely connected to it in very different ways agree that it has the potential to eliminate humanity … and the takeover may already be underway. One is James Cameron – the filmmaker and screenwriter responsible for some of the most futuristic and dystopian films of all time, including The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water. Cameron not only made movies about artificial intelligence – he pioneered is usage in the process of film production. The other is Geoffrey Hinton, a British computer scientist known as the "godfather of artificial intelligence" for his work in training multi-layer neural networks used in artificial intelligence. Both were recently interviewed on the subjects of artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence and both agree that AI has the ability to take over humanity and the process may have already begun. Are we living in a James Cameron movie? Is it Titanic?
Is this a movie or our destiny?
“I think A.I. can be great, but also it could literally be the end of the world.”
Appearing recently on the SmartLess podcast, James Cameron was pondering whether an uprising of artificially intelligent machines in The Terminator is possible. Not only does he think it can happen, he says the current state of artificial intelligence makes him “'pretty concerned about the potential for misuse of A.I.” For those not familiar with the film (spoiler alert), The Terminator is a cybernetic android sent from the future to kill the person whose not yet born son is responsible for eventually stopping an artificially intelligent defense network called Skynet which will become hostile and self-aware and trigger a global nuclear war to exterminate all humans. Needless to say, the recent revelations of conversations with GPT-4 chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google's PaLM and Microsoft’s Bing AI turning strange, hostile and violent have caused many to equate them to The Terminator and Skynet. Cameron says he understands why.
"You talk to all the AI scientists and every time I put my hand up at one of their seminars they start laughing. The point is that no technology has ever not been weaponized. And do we really want to be fighting something smarter than us that isn't us? On our own world? I don't think so.”
Cameron is, of course, correct in his assessment of the weaponization of technology. However, it is his next comment that is the real cause for concern.
“AI could have taken over the world and already be manipulating it but we just don't know because it would have total control over all the media and everything."
Think about the fears being expressed about ChatGPT and other forms of AI being used to collect news, write news stories and even deliver them in the form of very humanlike – and in this case, ironic – avatars of human newscasters. Could AI have already penetrated the media and be working its way into taking over the world? Is this another Terminator sequel in real life?
"I think it's very reasonable for people to be worrying about these issues now, even though it's not going to happen in the next year or two. People should be thinking about those issues."
In an interview with CBS News, Geoffrey Hinton, the "godfather of artificial intelligence," thinks Cameron is right to be worried about the weaponization of artificial intelligence and a possible takeover of humanity that could lead to its destruction. Hinton knows what he’s talking about. He is the descendent of computer and mathematics royalty – his great-great-grandmother was Mary Everest Boole, who was influential in promoting mathematics education for both boys and girls, and her husband was logician George Boole, whose invention of Boolean algebra and Boolean logic is credited with laying the foundations for modern computer science and the Information Age. Hinton has carried on the tradition of his illustrious ancestors – he was awarded the 2018 Turing Award, with Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun, for their work on deep learning. On the subject of the weaponization of AI, Hinton has been speaking out against it for years – he moved from the U.S. to Canada because he was against the military funding of artificial intelligence, and has regularly spoken out against lethal autonomous weapons. One concern he expressed in the CBS interview was the rapidity of AI development.
"Until quite recently, I thought it was going to be like 20 to 50 years before we have general purpose AI. And now I think it may be 20 years or less.”
He is also worried about one of the very things he helped develop – computers coming up with their own ideas for self-improvement, warning that “We have to think hard about how you control that." When asked about the possibility of one of Cameron’s Terminators being developed with artificial general intelligence that takes it beyond human capabilities to the point of acting on its own and potentially threatening the very existence of humanity, he answered cautiously:
"It's not inconceivable, that's all I'll say,"
Not inconceivable? Or already deliverable?
Not inconceivable! This is from the godfather of artificial intelligence! Why are we not panicking? Why is Hinton not panicking? Or moving farther away than Canada? He explains that on the more conceivable side, things aren’t so bad.
“The phrase ‘artificial general intelligence’ carries with it the implication that this sort of single robot is suddenly going to be smarter than you. I don’t think it’s going to be that. I think more and more of the routine things we do are going to be replaced by AI systems — like the Google Assistant.”
What about ChatGPT?
"We're at this transition point now where ChatGPT is this kind of idiot savant, and it also doesn't really understand about truth."
That is a key problem with ChatGPT – its responses are often far from the truth … but presented as facts as it tries to figure out what it is doing and works towards being truthful, factual and consistent. Hinton’s final warning comes straight out of the Wizard of Oz … we need to be worried about who is doing the development and corking the controls behind the curtain.
"You don't want some big for-profit company deciding what's true."
James Cameron and Godfrey … geniuses in different fields who agree on the potential dangers of artificial general intelligence. Are we going to listen to them or the big for-profit companies?
Space Brothers, Contactees and a Mysterious Death: One of the Weirdest UFO Stories of All
Nick Redfern
Born in Poland in 1891, George Adamski – of Flying Saucers Have Landed notoriety - was the ultimate “contactee,”regardless of what you may or may not think of him and his tales. He defined what it meant in the 1950s to have interactions with beings from other worlds; creatures very much like us and who wished us nothing but goodwill. Adamski’s primary visitor from the great beyond was Orthon. Adamski’s forays into the world of the supernatural, however, did not begin when the flying saucer phenomenon was at its height. Adamski had been involved in matters of a metaphysical type for years. For example, in April 1934, the L.A. Times ran a feature on the man himself with a headline that succinctly read as follows: “Shamanistic Order to be Established Here.” In part, it states: “The 10-foot trumpets of faraway Lhasa, perched among perpetual snows in the Himalayan Mountains in Tibet, will shortly have their echo on the sedate hills of Southern California’s Laguna Beach. Already the Royal Order of Tibet has acquired acreage on the placid hills that bathe their Sunkist feet in the purling Pacific and before long, the walls, temples, turrets and dungeons of a Lama monastery will serrate the skyline. It will be the first Tibetan monastery in America and in course of time, the trained disciples of the cult will filter through its glittering gates to spread ‘the ancient truths’ among all who care to listen. The central figure in the new movement is Prof. George Adamski.”
It’s important to note that Adamski was never a professor. Of anything. But, he most certainly didn’t mind the suggestion that he was a professor. He told the L.A. Times, in what was an undeniably pompous fashion: “I learned great truths up there on the roof of the world, or rather the trick of applying age-old knowledge to daily life, to cure the body and the mind, and to win mastery over self and soul. I do not bring to Laguna the weird rites and bestial superstition in which the old Lamaism is steeped, but the scientific portions of the religion.” Adam Gorightly and Greg Bishop say in their “A” is for Adamski book that: “During Prohibition, The Royal Order of Tibet secured a special license to produce wine, which some suggest was Adamski’s main motivation for starting his mystical order to begin with.” Old George was definitely well-known for his particular fondness for the grape. Now, it’s time to head to 1952, when Adamski’s involvement in Ufology really took off. Maybe literally. At least, for those who bought, and still buy, into his stories. It was early on the morning of November 20, 1952. Adamski and his faithful secretary Lucy McGinnis drove to Blythe, California. This was not your average road-trip, however. Adamski, when telling the story to whoever would listen, claimed that the reason for hitting the road to Blythe had an astonishing purpose behind it: aliens dearly wanted to meet with the professor-who-wasn’t. The pair soon met up with other characters in 1950s-era Ufology. They included UFO enthusiasts Al and Betty Bailey, and George Hunt Williamson. The latter was a controversial contactee who crossed paths with the FBI on several occasions, most seriously in 1962. That was when Williamson was suspected by the Bureau of smuggling priceless Mexican artifacts of an historic and archaeological significance into the United States.
(Nick Redfern) The desert areas where Adamski hung out.
After refueling their vehicles and their stomachs, the gang then headed out to Parker, Arizona – where, Adamski said, he was absolutely sure that aliens were soon to put in an appearance. So the tale goes, that’s exactly what happened. A huge, “cigar”-shaped UFO loomed into view, high in the skies above Parker. The amazed crew hit a dirt-road in hot pursuit of the mighty craft. Adamski and co. were, apparently, not the only ones who were looking for a close encounter. Adamski claimed that a squadron of U.S. Air Force planes were also after the aliens. The people from the stars almost effortlessly made a quick escape from the pursuing pilots. It wasn’t long before a much smaller flying saucer made its appearance before the astonished group. In an almost Old Testament-style fashion, the gleaming craft landed on a nearby mountain, awaiting the disciple-like Adamski to come forward and meet his superior. He somehow knew that the aliens had come for him. Adamski approached the craft, while the rest – their mouths no doubt agape – looked on. An extremely-human-looking extraterrestrial exited the futuristic craft, just as Michael Rennie’s character of Klaatu did in the classic 1951 movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Unlike Klaatu, though, Adamski’s alien – who announced himself as Orthon – had long hair of the kind that just about any and every 1980s-era “hair-metal” rock band would have been proud to sport.
Orthon announced to Adamski that he came from Venus - and that he came in peace, too. In no time at all, Orthon began lecturing Adamski on why we, the human race, needed to ditch our atomic weapons. If we didn’t, the only outcome would be overwhelming, worldwide destruction. Not only that, Orthon wanted Adamski to be one of the key figures in the plan to save the Earth and its people. In an instant, Adamski was up for the challenge. Orthon, seemingly happy with the outcome, returned to his flying saucer and shot off into the skies. An alien had come and gone, and for Adamski a new life had just begun. I decided to share with you the early days of Adamski, as a means to show how his "career" continued into the 1960s. With that said, let's now look at the really weird story. Today's article is a classic counter-style event that is made all the more controversial by the possibility that it may actually have had nothing to do with UFOs, after all. It might have been a staged event, one in which the witness was led to believe he had a UFO sighting. If that has caught your attention, read on.
(Nick Redfern) From Contactees to Space Brothers. And possibly to a murder.
The story revolves around a man named Ernest Arthur Bryant, a resident of an old village in the English county of Devon called Scoriton. Or, as some prefer to spell it, Scorriton. As for Devon, it's an ancient and mysterious land, and which is made famous by the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle set his classic Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles in Devon's Dartmoor National Park. On April 24, 1965, Bryant (who served with the British Commandos in World War Two) saw something amazing hovering over a field close to his home: a flying saucer. Bryant stared, shocked and amazed for a few moments, and then made his cautious way to the field. As he did so, and seemingly in response to his actions, the circular-shaped craft gently touched to the ground. As Bryant arrived, a group of three, human-like beings attired in shiny, silver suits motioned him not to come any closer. He did as he was told. Bryant looked on, stunned, and noticed that the beings had overly long foreheads, seemed to have problems breathing in the Earth's atmosphere, and, somewhat oddly, had no thumbs. One of the beings then moved towards Bryant and reeled off typical, absurd, Space Brother-themed spiel.
The entity claimed his name was "Yamski" and that he and his comrades hailed from Venus, no less.The alien then made a comment along the lines of, "If only Des were here." Or, suggested Bryant, it may have been "Les," rather than "Des." This, along with the "Yamski" name is all very interesting, since only one day before the encounter, the world's most famous Contactee, George Adamski, died. Plus, Adamski's co-author on his Flying Saucers Have Landed book was Desmond Leslie. As Bryant arrived, a group of three, human-like beings attired in shiny, silver suits motioned him not to come any closer. He did as he was told. Bryant looked on, stunned, and noticed that the beings had overly long foreheads, seemed to have problems breathing in the Earth's atmosphere, and, somewhat oddly, had no thumbs. One of the beings then moved towards Bryant and reeled off typical, absurd, Space Brother-themed spiel. The entity claimed his name was "Yamski" and that he and his comrades hailed from Venus, no less.The alien then made a comment along the lines of, "If only Des were here." Or, suggested Bryant, it may have been "Les," rather than "Des." This, along with the "Yamski" name is all very interesting, since only one day before the encounter, the world's most famous Contactee, George Adamski, died. Plus, Adamski's co-author on his Flying Saucers Have Landed book was Desmond Leslie.
Also in typical Contactee/Space Brother style, Bryant was given a "tour" of the UFO - which was, allegedly, split into three sections. The aliens then made a cryptic statement suggesting they would contact Bryant again. As Bryant watched from a safe distance, the UFO then rose into the sky and vanished from sight. Also in typical Contactee/Space Brother style, Bryant was given a "tour" of the UFO - which was, allegedly, split into three sections. The aliens then made a cryptic statement suggesting they would contact Bryant again. As Bryant watched from a safe distance, the UFO then rose into the sky and vanished from sight. Although Bryant was determined to keep the incident under wraps, it didn't stay like that for long: both the local media and UFO researchers were soon on the case. Flying Saucer investigator Norman Oliver looked into the matter deeply and, in 1967, Eileen Buckle penned an entire book on the affair, The Scoriton Mystery. Bryant's story would, in all likelihood, have remained as just another Contactee case were it not for one, notable and very strange thing. In the late 1970s, UFO researcher Rich Reynolds was contacted by a man named Bosco Nedelcovic, who suggested that Bryant's encounter had very little to do with aliens, and much more to do with secret experimentation of a very down to earth nature. Nedelcovic (who worked for the U.S. Department of State's Agency for International Development, and who also had ties to the CIA) claimed that Bryant was the victim of a form of sophisticated mind-control, somewhat akin to the kind of work undertaken by the CIA's MKUltra program.
(Central Intelligence Agency) This is just one of thousands of MK-Ultra papers. The document was released under the terms of the U.S. government's Freedom of Information Act.
Nedelcovic told Reynolds of a number of bogus "UFO episodes" in both the US and the UK, in which individuals were led to believe they had UFO encounters when, in fact, they experienced something very different. Nedelcovic alluded to how these events involved "visual displays, radar displacement, and atifact droppings." One of those events, said Nedelcovic, was the Bryant case. Nedelcovic also revealed how the operation proceeded, and which involved "experimental drugs used to induce specific hallucinatory material" as well as "microwave transmissions." On this latter point, Reynolds was told by Nedelcovic that "the injudicious use of microwave technology" led to a disastrous outcome for Bryant. As history has shown, Bryant died in 1967, from the effects of a brain tumor. Interestingly, in his 1969 book, UFO: Flying Saucers Over Britain? author Robert Chapman noted: "There remains a possibility" that Bryant "might have had the UFO sighting planted in his mind through hypnotism." Chapman noted that there was "no evidence" to warrant such a belief, yet it is interesting that he even chose to bring up the matter in the first place - given that this was pretty much exactly what Bosco Nedelcovic was asserting a decade or so later. All of the above suggests there is far more to the UFO encounter and tragic death of Bryant than meets the eye. And, with the 50th anniversary of the incident now fast-approaching, it would be the ideal time for someone to (A) readdress the Bryant case and the claims of Bosco Nedelcovic, and (B) undertake a new, in-depth study of this tragic, controversial, and fatal affair. The truth just might be even stranger than an alien visitation.
A unique solar phenomenon will be taking place on Monday and you can be a part of it, provided light pollution doesn’t overwhelm the sky where you are.
Rather unsurprisingly, a five planet alignment occurs when five planets in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, appear close together in the sky. At least that’s what our position on Earth will give us a perception of.
While these planets do not actually line up in a straight line, they will appear close enough in the sky to create the illusion of a line connecting them. These events are rare, and they typically occur once every few decades. The last such alignment took place on 28 December 2022, but this was just four planets.
Not every planet will be as bright as each other.
“Perhaps the hardest to see with your eye will be the planet Mercury, [which] will be the one closest to the horizon, and right beside it will be a brighter object, planet Jupiter,” said Bill Cooke, who has a PhD in astronomy and heads NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
Cooke also said Venus will likely be the brightest.
How to watch the planetary alignment
The best way to watch a five planet alignment is to find a location with an clear view of the horizon and as little light pollution as possible, and to observe the event during the pre-dawn or post-sunset hours.
A pair of binoculars or a telescope might be useful to get a better view.
5 planeten staan op een rij vanavond. Dit is waar en wanneer je ze kan zien.
Vandaag op dinsdag 28 maart kan je iets uitzonderlijks zien aan de hemel. Net na zonsondergang zijn maar liefst 5 planeten zichtbaar. Jouw kans dus om Jupiter, Mercurius, Venus, Uranus en Mars tegelijkertijd te zien. Maar wanneer moet je precies omhoog kijken en in welke richting?
Martijn Peters
Meestal zijn de planeten verspreid over de nachtelijke hemel en zichtbaar op verschillende tijdstippen. Maar af en toe staan ze op hetzelfde moment dicht bij elkaar. Ze lijken dan bijna op een rechte lijn te staan, een planetaire uitlijning. In wezen is dit een optische illusie. Alle planeten draaien in (bijna) hetzelfde vlak rond de zon. Hierdoor volgen ze allemaal het jaarlijkse pad dat onze zon aflegt aan de hemel. Die lijn noemt men de ecliptica. In werkelijkheid bevinden de planeten zich in de ruimte absoluut niet dicht bij elkaar. Momenteel staan Jupiter en Mercurius vlak bij elkaar, maar de gemiddelde afstand tussen die twee planeten is 720 miljoen kilometer.
Vanavond kunnen we zo’n planetaire uitlijning waarnemen. Je kan 5 van de 8 planeten van ons zonnestelsel tegelijkertijd zien. Het zijn Jupiter, Mercurius, Venus, Uranus en Mars die op een denkbeeldige lijn staan. Dat roept veel enthousiasme op bij sterrenkijkers wereldwijd, waaronder voormalig Apollo-astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Hij plaatste de volgende tweet in afwachting van onze planetaire buren: “Ik ben altijd op zoek naar geweldige opportuniteiten om naar de sterren te kijken... en dinsdag zou wel eens een avond kunnen zijn om de verrekijker te pakken en een glimp op te vangen van een vrij zeldzame uitlijning van de vijf planeten Mercurius, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus en Mars. Nu maar hopen dat de lucht helder blijft!”
I’m always on the lookout for some great star-gazing opportunities…and Tuesday might be a night to grab the binoculars and catch a glimpse of a pretty rare five-planet alignment of Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus, and Mars. Here’s hoping the skies will remain clear!
Waar en wanneer kan je naar de planetaire uitlijning kijken?
Om de 5 planeten op een rij te zien moet je vlak na de zonsondergang naar het westen kijken. Je hebt maar weinig tijd want al snel verdwijnen Jupiter en Mercurius met de zon mee achter de horizon. Tijdens de schemering staat Jupiter het dichtst bij de horizon. Hij is ook de helderste van de twee en makkelijk zichtbaar met het blote oog. Vlakbij Jupiter staat Mercurius, wat moeilijker zichtbaar met het blote oog (maar niet onmogelijk) en zeker zichtbaar met een verrekijker.
Iets hoger in de lucht kan je Venus spotten. Deze heldere planeet zie je makkelijk zonder hulpmiddelen. Vlakbij staat de 4de planeet, Uranus. Dit is de enige van de 5 die je niet zonder verrekijker of telescoop kan zien. Ook Venus en Uranus verdwijnen enkele uren na zonsondergang achter de horizon. Tot slot is er nog Mars die naast de wassende maan staat. Je zou dus minstens drie van de deelnemers aan de parade (Jupiter, Venus en Mars) en mogelijk zelfs een vierde (Mercurius) met alleen je ogen moeten kunnen zien.
Wil je de vijf planeten spotten, kijk dan met een verrekijker naar het westen vlak na zonsondergang op een plaats waar je duidelijk zicht hebt op de horizon. Ook de komende dagen kan je de planetaire uitlijning nog waarnemen tot Jupiter definitief achter de horizon verdwijnt.
The Gateway Process: Unraveling the CIA’s Secret Space & Time Travel System
The United States military has long been in pursuit of creating super soldiers, employing various methods like performance-enhancing drugs, brain implant technology, and even genetic engineering. However, in 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Wayne McDonnell submitted a groundbreaking report to US Army Intelligence that delved into the world of out-of-body experiences and intelligence gathering. This report, titled “Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process,” explored the idea of the Gateway Process, a classified system that enables anyone to travel through space and time using their consciousness.
The Gateway Process
According to Colonel McDonnell’s report, the Gateway Process is a step-by-step guide on how to achieve an out-of-body experience for intelligence gathering purposes. Advanced Gateway participants can not only project their consciousness to a different place but also completely remove it from this reality. This allows them to travel anywhere in the universe and at any point in time.
The idea behind the Gateway Process is based on the concept that our universe is a construct created by our minds. By using the Gateway Process, one can exit this construct and see reality for what it truly is. The 30-page Gateway report was classified, primarily because anyone can learn to do it, and its implications have intrigued researchers and conspiracy theorists alike.
The Absolute and the Universal Hologram
In his report, Colonel McDonnell introduces the concept of the Absolute, an omnipotent and omniscient energy field that exists without boundaries, occupying every dimension, including the time-space dimension where our physical existence takes place. The Absolute, which some might consider synonymous with the concept of God, is responsible for creating the universe and the world we perceive as reality. Our reality, in turn, is a layer on top of other dimensions, all residing within the Absolute.
The idea of the Universal Hologram suggests that the Absolute projects a hologram of itself to attain self-consciousness. This hologram serves as the basis of all creation and reality, and understanding it could help individuals comprehend the nature of the universe and themselves. McDonnell’s report also highlights similarities between the concept of the Absolute and various religious beliefs, citing examples from Hebrew mystical philosophy, Christian theology, and Eastern religions.
The CIA’s Involvement and the Missing Page Controversy
The CIA’s involvement in the Gateway Process has sparked curiosity and debate, especially surrounding the controversy of a missing page from the Gateway report. Despite numerous attempts by the public to pressure the CIA into releasing the missing page, the CIA maintained that they never had it. However, in 2021, the Monroe Institute released the complete report, including the missing page, which discusses the value of the Gateway Process as a tool for self-discovery and understanding the nature of the universe.
The Potential Risks and Benefits
While some individuals who have practiced the Gateway Process report increased self-awareness, creativity, and clarity in their daily lives, others have experienced negative outcomes such as anxiety, depression, and, in rare cases, psychosis. Although Colonel McDonnell recommended the military pursue the Gateway Process, the potential risks and benefits of the technique remain debated.
The Gateway Process is a fascinating concept that merges science, consciousness, and the potential for time and space travel. While the CIA’s involvement and the classified nature of the Gateway report have fueled conspiracy theories and speculation, the idea of transcending our perceived reality and exploring the true nature of the universe remains a captivating subject for researchers and enthusiasts alike.
Unmasking the Men in Black: A Journey Through Time and Conspiracy
Since the dawn of UFO cover-up history, numerous people have reported encounters with the enigmatic Men in Black. These shadowy figures consistently appear in the aftermath of credible UFO sightings, leading many to wonder about their true nature and intentions. In this article, we delve into the history of Men in Black incidents, starting from the 1940s, and explore the theories surrounding their existence with the help of renowned researchers, experiencers, and insiders.
The Men in Black phenomenon can be traced back to the 1940s, with countless witnesses recounting eerily similar encounters. These mysterious individuals, usually dressed in black suits, seem to have a vested interest in ensuring that those who have witnessed UFO events remain silent. Questions about their origins abound – are they part of a clandestine government agency, or are they themselves extraterrestrial beings?
Over the years, the Men in Black have been known to employ various tactics to silence witnesses, from stalking and following them, to using intimidation and harassment. However, it appears that their strategies have evolved with time. Researchers now believe that the military may have even supported prominent UFO debunkers and skeptics in an effort to suppress public interest in the phenomenon.
Moreover, some evidence suggests that the Men in Black have infiltrated the UFO research community in order to spread disinformation and discredit genuine sightings. One such example is the involvement of Richard Doty, who has been implicated in the dissemination of false information within the field.
As we continue to investigate the Men in Black phenomenon, one thing is certain: their presence remains a persistent and enigmatic thread woven throughout the fabric of UFO history. Their motives and true identities remain shrouded in mystery, fueling speculation and intrigue among researchers and experiencers alike. Until we uncover the truth behind these enigmatic figures, their shadow will continue to loom over the world of UFO sightings and encounters, casting doubt on our understanding of what lies beyond our own skies.
De ontdekking onderschrijft het idee dat belangrijke bouwblokken voor leven in de ruimte gecreëerd worden en door ruimtestenen op aarde kunnen zijn afgezet.
Tijdens een analyse van materiaal afkomstig van planetoïde Ryugu zijn wetenschappers onder meer op uracil gestuit. Een bijzondere ontdekking. Uracil is namelijk een bouwblok van ribonucleïnezuur, beter bekend als RNA: een molecuul dat instructies herbergt voor de ‘bouw’ en het functioneren van organismen.
Vitamine B3 Naast uracil stuitten onderzoekers in het materiaal ook op nicotinezuur, dat ook wel bekend staat als vitamine B3. Dit stofje speelt een belangrijke rol in de stofwisseling.
Andere biologische moleculen “We troffen uracil in kleine hoeveelheden in de monsters aan,” vertelt onderzoeker Yasuhiro Oba. Het gaat dan om concentraties van 6-32 ppb (deeltjes per miljard). “Vitamine B3 kwam overvloediger voor, met een concentratie van 49 tot 99 ppb. Daarnaast troffen we ook andere organische moleculen in het monster aan.” Waaronder een selectie van aminozuren die onderdeel uitmaken van eiwitten of een rol spelen in de stofwisseling.
Ryugu De onderzoekers ontdekten de stofjes zoals gezegd in materialen afkomstig van Ryugu. Die materialen zijn verkregen doordat ruimtestonde Hayabusa2 in 2019 naar het oppervlak van de planetoïde afdaalde om deze te bemonsteren. Het verzamelde materiaal werd vervolgens in december 2020 op de aarde afgezet voor analyse.
Waardevolle monsters Het is natuurlijk niet voor het eerst dat onderzoekers de samenstelling van meteorieten onderzoeken. Maar eerder moesten ze het daarbij voornamelijk doen met ruimtestenen die op het aardoppervlak waren geploft. De monsters die nu op een ruimtesteen die nog daadwerkelijk in de ruimte vertoeft, zijn verzameld, zijn in zekere zin echter veel waardevoller, zo legt Oba uit. “Wetenschappers hebben eerder wel nucleobasen en vitamines in bepaalde koolstofrijke meteorieten ontdekt, maar het was dan altijd de vraag of ze door blootstelling aan de aardse omgeving niet (met die stoffen, red.) besmet waren geraakt.” In andere woorden: men kon niet helemaal uitsluiten dat die nucleobasen en vitamines na de landing van meteorieten op die ruimtestenen terecht waren gekomen. “Aangezien Hayabusa2 twee monsters van planetoïde Ryugu heeft gehaald en deze in verzegelde capsules naar de aarde heeft gebracht, kan contaminatie worden uitgesloten.”
Vorig jaar wierpen wetenschappers al een eerste blik op de materialen die op Ryugu werden verzameld. Daaruit bleek dat de monsters het meest ongerepte materiaal uit de jonge jaren van ons zonnestelsel herbergen dat wetenschappers ooit hebben gezien. Een latere analyse wees vervolgens uit dat de planetoïde rijk was aan organische moleculen. In de materialen werden toen reeds onder meer aminozuren aangetroffen. Suikers en nucleobasen konden de onderzoekers toen niet vinden. “Mogelijk zijn ze wel aanwezig, maar in hoeveelheden die te klein zijn om in het relatief kleine beetje materiaal dat we voor deze studie tot onze beschikking hadden, door ons gedetecteerd te worden,” stelde onderzoeker Daniel Glavin, werkzaam bij NASA Goddard, toen. En nu zijn Japanse onderzoekers er dus wel in geslaagd om de aanwezigheid van nucleobasen op de ruimtesteen aan te tonen.
Theorie Met de ontdekking dat de nog in de ruimte vertoevende Ryugu vitamines en nucleobasen herbergt, wint de theorie dat belangrijke bouwstenen voor leven – zoals nucleobasen – in de ruimte gevormd worden, terrein. Aangenomen wordt dat die bouwstenen voor leven vroeger door planetoïden en kometen op aarde zijn afgezet. Daar droegen ze vervolgens bij aan de totstandkoming van leven.
Later dit jaar zal de Amerikaanse ruimtesonde OSIRIS-REx materialen verzameld op planetoïde Bennu op aarde afleveren. Door de samenstelling van die planetoïde aan de hand van die materialen te bestuderen en met die van Ryugu te vergelijken, hopen wetenschappers de hierboven genoemde theorieën te versterken en waar nodig bij te kunnen schaven.
Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, University of Aizu, AIST
St. Lucia's Flood: The Disaster That Changed the Shape of Europe
Water has a destructive nature that is hard to contain - calm and peaceful in one moment, it can turn violent in another. These days, however, many coastal cities and regions have effective, modern protection from flooding. But what of the past? In medieval times, flood protection was crude at best, and did little to stave off the utter destruction of the rising floodwaters. One of the most devastating floods in human history occurred in 1287, in the Netherlands. Known as St. Lucia’s food, it claimed thousands of lives, and is a great insight into the vulnerability of coastal regions in ancient times.
For centuries, the Netherlands had the nasty reputation of being rather low-lying in comparison to the neighboring sea. That is why today, we know it as the land of many canals, and equally as many islets and islands. However, not all is perfectly fine. This seaside nation is losing ground, and if the water levels continue to rise globally, many parts of this country will be forever lost under the sea. The current map of the country was not always so. In the early Middle Ages, there were many more exposed parts of the coast, and many more extant villages near the sea. But one catastrophic event changed that forever. It was a major flood, instigated by a storm tide which happened exactly on the day of St. Lucia.
A storm tide is a big threat in the North Sea. These are coastal floods connected with cyclone winds. And if all the parameters meet together - such as the timing of the tides, the path of the storm, or the depth of the sea - such a storm tide can truly wreak havoc. And in 1287 - it did.
St. Lucia’s flood occurred on 13th December 1287 AD, exactly on the day when the Dutch people celebrated the Feast of St. Lucia. A terrible storm erupted, coinciding with the tides, and creating a catastrophic coastal flood. Immense areas of the coast were quickly swallowed by the water - entire villages and cities were submerged, with great destruction and loss of life. Accurate estimates of the period state that between 50,000 and 80,000 people perished in this flood. Low sandbanks and coastal dunes could not withstand the great wave of water, and were eroded with ease. Entire plains were submerged, and those villages that were not swept away - had to be evacuated.
The flood brought chaos to the Netherlands. Those cities that were not destroyed were now in an entirely new position - as the geography of the coast was totally changed. The water that did not recede now created a number of islands and lakes that remain to this day. Most notable was the emergence of the Zuiderzee (Southern Sea), a shallow bay that extended up to 100 kilometers inland. Before, it was only a small freshwater lake, connected to the sea by the River Vlie. St. Lucia’s flood completely destroyed this river. And this meant that the once-powerful trading ports on the river’s banks were now left to dwindle. This was the fate of the powerful trading port of Stavoren, which now no longer had a river to trade upon.
Following the St. Lucia’s flood, a new focus was shifted on the IJssel River, upon which emerged new trading cities, such as Zwolle, Deventer, Kampen, and Doesburg. It also signaled the rise of a new trading port called Amsterdam, which began from zero almost instantly after the flood’s changes. Today, that city is the Dutch capital!
In neighboring Frisia, destruction was even greater. Many small islands that were inhabited were now gone forever, and loss of life was enormous. The coastline shifted many kilometers inland. For example, Harlingen, before the flood a landlocked city, suddenly found itself on the coast of the sea! From the flood onwards, the city became a port! And the nearby island of Griend, which had many inhabitants, a walled settlement, and a monastery, was entirely devastated, with only 10 houses left standing.
Holland and Frisia were not the only ones affected. Coastal parts of Germany suffered as well, with entire villages in the region of East Frisia disappearing forever. Deaths were numbered in the thousands. Those that survived found the landscape changed, and their traditional way of life was no longer possible. Many survivors fled inland, where they had to begin entirely new lives.
And even those across the North Sea were not spared the effects of the storm. England’s coast suffered greatly, and its map was entirely redrawn. The town of Old Winchelsea, in its time a busy and prosperous port - was now gone for good. In the small village of Hickling, 180 villagers perished, and the water was recorded to have reached a foot above the high altar in their priory. The trading port of New Romney suddenly found itself being a landlocked town: the storm silted up the harbor, diverting the nearby river some 15 miles to the west! The level of the land in the town rose by 5 inches - such was the amount of silt thrown at it.
And in historic Hastings, the storm caused half of the cliff to tumble down, destroying great parts of the extant Norman Castle. The town’s days as a busy port were over ever since, as the protective inlet was wiped away by the storm. One of England’s major ports, Dunwich (once a capital of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of the East Angles ), began its rapid decline around this time. The storm of 1287 was the final nail in its coffin - coastal erosion and flooding ended its days as a leading coastal town. The river which was its lifeline shifted several kilometers to the north. Dunwich was gradually abandoned ever since, and is now a simple village of 180 inhabitants - where once it had over 3,000.
Untamed Wrath of the Nature
Nature is unpredictable. One day all might seem fine, and the next - tragedy erupts. Such is the unpredictable character of mother nature, and those living by the coasts of the North Sea could never know when something so fierce could hit. In 1287, their fears came true.
It can be safely said that St. Lucia’s Flood is one of the biggest catastrophes in the history of Europe. With more than 50,000 people dead and drowned, with dozens of villages erased from the face of the Earth, and geographical maps completely redrawn, we can safely say that this event was one of nature’s fiercest fit of rage. And from it, people learned valuable lessons to defend themselves from future floods.
Top image: A storm tide in the Netherlands caused a devastating flood in 1287.
Triangle UFOs 'from parallel universe' and have own intelligence says aircraft designer
EXCLUSIVE: As the US military takes UFO reports ever more seriously, one British man who has encountered a huge unexplained aircraft 'the size of a house' is examining alien encounters here in the UK
Colin thinks the craft could be not just from another planet, but from another universe entirely(Image: Colin Saunders)
A British man who worked for many years as an aircraft designer says he has seen UFOsover the UK that he believes could be piloted by creatures from another dimension.
Colin Saunders had his own encounter with a triangular UFO “about the size of a house “ in 1999, and the experience changed his life. First he saw its lights, and then the mystery craft “de-cloaked” in front of him.
The fact that the mystery craft seem to have some type of invisibility technology raises the possibility that the unexplained black triangles are hovering unseen above us more often than we think.
While Colin’s new book 'Triangular UFOs of the United Kingdom' focuses specifically on wedge-shaped phenomena, he says that other unexplained objects seen in our skies could be representatives from different alien races.
He said: “I think Triangles, Saucers, Cigars and Tic-Tac [UFOs] are all the same or similar phenomena,” Colin said, adding “I'm sure they must be aware of each other.
“Whether different species fly different craft I do not know but small grey aliens seem to feature in many sightings of different craft.
“But,” he added, “they may just be biological robots”.
The strange craft could be flying above us right now, using advanced stealth tech to go undetected(Image: Getty Images)
Colin’s experience has led to a deep fascination with these strange phenomena and their possible explanation, and he has interviewed dozens of people about their own experiences with them.
He’s unconvinced by suggestions that the flying objects seen in the skies over Europe could be experimental stealth aircraft.
“I have worked in the aircraft industry as a designer and I have never witnessed anything like this before,” he says.
He points out that he has researched well over a hundred sightings of these craft and they all appear to be very different from each other.
Colin added: “It’s wouldn’t make sense to build a black budget craft and keep changing the design on each one.
“Plus would the military fly around sometimes over rooftops with a secret aircraft? I think they would probably test in Area 51 rather than the UK countryside."
Colin's new book, due out next month, is already selling well on Amazon(Image: Colin Saunders)
He does concede, though, that some modern military aircraft, such as the USAF’s iconic B2 Spirit stealth bomber, could be in part based on reverse-engineered alien technology.
And, whatever they are, they aren’t simple optical illusions either. For his book, Colin interviewed a few UFO contactees who had actually touched one of the ships:
One of them, Charles Bee describes how the “huge” object blotted out the stars as it glided silently above him.
As he stood transfixed on a hill, the craft came within a “few feet of him,” he said, and he could see black channels etched into its underside, which he speculates may have been some sort of “docking mechanism”.
Some witnesses claim to have even touched the craft(Image: Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF)
It seemed to be made of a slate or graphite material,” Charles recalled. “Very dark-grey and a smooth matt texture. I could feel the presence in my whole body and a dental implant was vibrating in my mouth.
“I could see the channels covered the underside of the craft: they are probably six feet across and of a similar depth.
“I raised my hand and touched part of the craft’s body between the channels. I was terrified and even thought it could harm me but did it anyway. I brushed my fingers over it and then put my entire palm on it. It felt like a hard, kitchen worktop with a matte finish, but it was not cold”.
Colin's book covers over 130 first hand UK witness accounts of close encounters with triangular craft, including 'missing time' and men in black(Image: Colin Saunders)
Despite the UFO phenomenon being taken increasingly seriously by the US military, there’s still no definitive explanation for what people across the world are experiencing.
“My own feeling is that these craft are inter-dimensional,” says Colin. “Like a parallel world running alongside our own."
They are crewed by beings from this other universe, Colin claims, but may also have some intelligence of their own.
He added: “I believe the majority of the larger craft will be manned but one suspects the smaller tic tac types may well be remotely controlled.
“I have to say ‘our’ craft looked like it was alive even though it was clearly manufactured, perhaps having an intelligence of its own”.
Triangle UFOs 'from parallel universe' and have own intelligence says aircraft designer
EXCLUSIVE: As the US military takes UFO reports ever more seriously, one British man who has encountered a huge unexplained aircraft 'the size of a house' is examining alien encounters here in the UK
Colin thinks the craft could be not just from another planet, but from another universe entirely(Image: Colin Saunders)
A British man who worked for many years as an aircraft designer says he has seen UFOsover the UK that he believes could be piloted by creatures from another dimension.
Colin Saunders had his own encounter with a triangular UFO “about the size of a house “ in 1999, and the experience changed his life. First he saw its lights, and then the mystery craft “de-cloaked” in front of him.
The fact that the mystery craft seem to have some type of invisibility technology raises the possibility that the unexplained black triangles are hovering unseen above us more often than we think.
While Colin’s new book 'Triangular UFOs of the United Kingdom' focuses specifically on wedge-shaped phenomena, he says that other unexplained objects seen in our skies could be representatives from different alien races.
He said: “I think Triangles, Saucers, Cigars and Tic-Tac [UFOs] are all the same or similar phenomena,” Colin said, adding “I'm sure they must be aware of each other.
“Whether different species fly different craft I do not know but small grey aliens seem to feature in many sightings of different craft.
“But,” he added, “they may just be biological robots”.
The strange craft could be flying above us right now, using advanced stealth tech to go undetected(Image: Getty Images)
Colin’s experience has led to a deep fascination with these strange phenomena and their possible explanation, and he has interviewed dozens of people about their own experiences with them.
He’s unconvinced by suggestions that the flying objects seen in the skies over Europe could be experimental stealth aircraft.
“I have worked in the aircraft industry as a designer and I have never witnessed anything like this before,” he says.
He points out that he has researched well over a hundred sightings of these craft and they all appear to be very different from each other.
Colin added: “It’s wouldn’t make sense to build a black budget craft and keep changing the design on each one.
“Plus would the military fly around sometimes over rooftops with a secret aircraft? I think they would probably test in Area 51 rather than the UK countryside."
Colin's new book, due out next month, is already selling well on Amazon(Image: Colin Saunders)
He does concede, though, that some modern military aircraft, such as the USAF’s iconic B2 Spirit stealth bomber, could be in part based on reverse-engineered alien technology.
And, whatever they are, they aren’t simple optical illusions either. For his book, Colin interviewed a few UFO contactees who had actually touched one of the ships:
One of them, Charles Bee describes how the “huge” object blotted out the stars as it glided silently above him.
As he stood transfixed on a hill, the craft came within a “few feet of him,” he said, and he could see black channels etched into its underside, which he speculates may have been some sort of “docking mechanism”.
Some witnesses claim to have even touched the craft(Image: Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF)
It seemed to be made of a slate or graphite material,” Charles recalled. “Very dark-grey and a smooth matt texture. I could feel the presence in my whole body and a dental implant was vibrating in my mouth.
“I could see the channels covered the underside of the craft: they are probably six feet across and of a similar depth.
“I raised my hand and touched part of the craft’s body between the channels. I was terrified and even thought it could harm me but did it anyway. I brushed my fingers over it and then put my entire palm on it. It felt like a hard, kitchen worktop with a matte finish, but it was not cold”.
Colin's book covers over 130 first hand UK witness accounts of close encounters with triangular craft, including 'missing time' and men in black(Image: Colin Saunders)
Despite the UFO phenomenon being taken increasingly seriously by the US military, there’s still no definitive explanation for what people across the world are experiencing.
“My own feeling is that these craft are inter-dimensional,” says Colin. “Like a parallel world running alongside our own."
They are crewed by beings from this other universe, Colin claims, but may also have some intelligence of their own.
He added: “I believe the majority of the larger craft will be manned but one suspects the smaller tic tac types may well be remotely controlled.
“I have to say ‘our’ craft looked like it was alive even though it was clearly manufactured, perhaps having an intelligence of its own”.
This 12,000 year old ancient discovery changes our history
Could our DNA have been altered thousands of years ago? Explore the secrets of one of the oldest religious site known to man, Gobekli Tepe.
Researchers believe the ancient stone carvings tell the story of a progenitor race’s influence on human genetics through agriculture, astronomy and architecture.
The Mysterious UFO Over Chile: Real Life UFO Footage Caught On Camera
Chile is home to an astonishing number of UFO sightings, with more per capita than any other country. So much so that the government founded an official agency, Cifa, to investigate these claims and keep Chile’s vast airspace as clear as possible. In this article, we delve into one of the most intriguing UFO cases in recent years, captured on video by Chile’s own military.
A Glimpse into the Unknown
Josh Gates was invited to Cifa to meet with its director, Hugo Camus, communications chief Karen Navarro, and the director of Chile’s civil aviation agency, Ricardo Gutierrez. They showed him footage of a mysterious object in the sky, captured by a Navy helicopter crew. The object was invisible to radar and appeared to be hovering in place before expelling something and disappearing.
To further investigate this compelling case, Gates met with Alberto Solari, a researcher who has spent almost a decade analyzing UFO reports. Solari devised an ingenious experiment to explain the mysterious Navy footage by attempting to recreate it. He arranged for a hot air balloon to run parallel to a helicopter, allowing them to film it with the same thermal camera used by the Navy pilots.
A Hot Air Balloon, or Something More?
The hot air balloon displayed some similarities to the UFO in the footage, but differences in shape and movement were apparent. When the balloon released bursts of hot gas from its onboard propane system, the gas was barely perceptible on the thermal camera. They then tried using a fire extinguisher to emit a visible, colder gas, but still, the results were inconclusive.
Conclusion: A True UFO
Despite Solari’s best efforts, the experiment failed to provide a sufficient explanation for the mysterious object in the video. This leaves the case open and the object’s origin up for debate. Is it an extraterrestrial craft or an unknown phenomenon? It seems that, for now, the truth behind this captivating UFO sighting remains shrouded in mystery.
Real Life UFO Footage Caught On Camera | Expedition Unknown: Hunt For Extraterrestrials
A towering, conical mountain that compasses cannot understand. Sphinx-shaped megaliths arranged nearby in a pattern. Strange ancient ruins of a forgotten civilisation surrounded by wilderness.
The 1,515ft Senganmori mountain in Fukushima prefecture is shrouded in mystery.
Outside of Japan, Fukushima is best known as the region worst hit by the devastating 2011 Tohoku tsunami, which caused nuclear reactors to go into meltdown and spawned many tall tales of mutant plants and insects across the prefecture.
But for over 30 years, the isolated village of Iino - on the side of Senganmori mountain - has has also been associated with extra-terrestrial mysteries, with tens of thousands of travellers making the pilgrimage each year to see for themselves.
In an ordinary town in rural Japan, enthusiasts claim to have recovered 3,000 items of alien origin, connected to centuries of mythology around an ancient mountain.
MailOnline investigates the secrets of Senganmori.
In 2022 alone, the UFO lab received 452 reports of sightings in and around Japan. They were able to authenticate that evidence had not been doctored in 149 of the cases (pictured: alleged UFO sightings in Japan)
The authority to do this is built up an extensive collection of some 935 declassified CIA documents, gifted from UFO researcher Kinichi Arai, recounting stories of sightings from all over the world through the last century (pictured: alleged UFO sightings in Japan)
When Arai died in 2002, the corpus was transferred from a UFO library to the village's museum, providing a strong backbone for research into alien trends. Steadily, the museum has built a trusted reputation for identifying and validating claims of alien life (pictured: alleged UFO sightings in Japan)
The story starts in the 1972. A large light-emitting cone-shaped object is reported by witnesses near the mysterious Mount Senganmori. At the age of 25, Tsugio Kinoshita is convinced he has seen something otherworldly while hiking with friends.
'This thing stuck out in front of me,' he told VICE World News last year. 'Starting and stopping in the blue sky. Then all of a sudden, it was gone.'
After the sighting, Kinoshita would go on to dedicate his life to the research of unidentified flying objects.
In the years since, the tiny 'town' of Iino (now integrated with the city of Fukushima) has steadily grown into a hotspot for alien sightings and enthusiasts.
Since 1992, the pink, UFO-shaped Fureaikan museum on the side of the mountain has collected and curated 3,000 artefacts - possible evidence of extra-terrestrial life.
These reportedly include classified CIA documents containing records of UFO research.
The museum itself was helped to thrive with government funding, handed out between 1988 and 1989.
These days, some 30,000 people each year make the pilgrimage to the museum, which residents have built their community around.
The stories of an isolated village built around a mountain, itself rumoured to be an artificial pyramid of ancient design, or an underground alien airbase, have helped build a tourism industry from scratch within a generation.
The village even has a mascot - a little grey alien with big, dark eyes - who appears in different statue forms around the town to guide tourists to the summit.
But for many, this is not tourist trap. Iino provides believers with a foundation of research and investigation from which to understand their beliefs.
Speaking to Fukushima residents in 2020, a Japan Forward reporter was told: 'Senganmori is no joke. They (UFOs) really show up in the area...'
Senganmori mountain lies just southeast of the city of Fukushima, famous for the 2011 disaster
The village received funding to set up the first national UFO laboratory in 2021
The villagers take pride in their local heritage, with signs and statues nodding to alien life up and down the mountain
Japan funded the opening of an International UFO Lab in 2021 to bring tourists to the area
The village of Iino is decorated with alien-themed statues leading up the mountain
In 2021 the town became home to the International UFO Lab, a national first set up to collect and share reports of sightings after Japan issued guidelines on the research of 'aerial occurrences'.
As the population has halved from 9,500 in 1955, the new tourism industry has helped put Iino back on the map; the lab was one small step for Japan, but a giant leap for a town left-behind, now welcoming in six times its population in tourists each year.
The revived interest has motivated the lab's staff to maintain records and blogs of the area's extraterrestrial history and mythology.
They reason that the 'mysterious pyramid-like shape of Senganmori and the strong magnetic field in its underground part are related', and the mountain acts as a kind of antennae for space visitors.
Or, they suggest: the strange sphinxes around the mountain all form a 'ley line', supposedly an ancient track used to guide alien travellers.
They note the mountain is dotted with 'direction stones' all joined up with ancient burial mounds and shrines to steer flying visitors in the right direction.
Of course the village profits from its unique industry. But its analysts clearly do believe in the importance of collating and retelling stories of alien encounters from around the world.
The village website published last year, in Japanese: 'Information dissemination is essential, and I believe that it is important to always strive for transparency rather than putting a lid on smelly things.'
And this is what they have done.
In August 2021, the UFO Lab was cited as an authority who 'authenticated' the sighting of a possible flying saucer photographed by an elementary school first-grader.
The photo shows a disk shaped object at Senganmori mountain.
The director of the lab said at a news conference on 25 June last year that the objects in the photos were not aeroplanes or helicopters.
In 2022 alone, they received 452 reports of sightings in and around Japan. They were able to authenticate that evidence had not been doctored in 149 of the cases.
The authority to do this is built up an extensive collection of some 935 declassified CIA documents, gifted from UFO researcher Kinichi Arai, recounting stories of sightings from all over the world through the last century.
When Arai died in 2002, the corpus was transferred from a UFO library to the village's museum, providing a strong backbone for research into alien trends.
Steadily, the museum has built a trusted reputation for identifying and validating claims of alien life.
The International UFO Lab has taken a role in 'authenticating' UFO sightings in the region
Image shows an flying object near Senganmori mountain, identified by the UFO lab
The International UFO lab shares an image of an apparent UFO over Senganmori mountain
For those who claim to have witnessed UFOs in the region, it is a deeply personal experience that lines up with many others. Lab director Toshio Kanno said: 'I'm not one to disregard other people's stories. First and foremost, I listen to what people have to say; then I draw what I can draw, transcribe what I can transcribe, and last, I build a handmade newspaper' (pictured: alleged UFO sightings in Japan)
The town of Iino has been hit hard by falling birth rates and people leaving the prefecture since the devastating 2011 tsunami.
This left the town a shell of itself, with villagers getting steadily older and businesses closing their doors with nobody to buy from them.
But interest in extra-terrestrial life, and backing from the government, has helped Iino make the most of Senganmori's secrets, attracting visitors from far and wide.
Cynics might look at the lab and the museum and the tourist trinkets and laugh off the tales of a mysterious mountain home to alien life.
But Iino's flourishing tourism industry only exists because centuries of stories around Senganmori were already there to make generations wonder what caused so many space oddities to line up in one place.
For those who claim to have witnessed UFOs in the region, it is a deeply personal experience that lines up with many others.
Lab director Toshio Kanno said: 'I'm not one to disregard other people's stories.
'First and foremost, I listen to what people have to say; then I draw what I can draw, transcribe what I can transcribe, and last, I build a handmade newspaper.'
The tourism side does not make much money, Kanno says. But that isn't the point. It is place for those who believe to share their stories and feel heard.
On the side of Senganmori mountain, villagers today pay tribute to its secrets by recording and preserving the rich and unanswerable stories passed down and believed for generations.
While the details of these myths may never be fully understood, the work of a few committed enthusiasts, shaped by their own experiences, brings our world, day by day, a little closer to others.
The Enigmatic Senganmori Mountain: Japan’s UFO Attraction
UFO-Inspired Bus Stop Spotted in Iinomachi District, Fukushima, Japan
Deep within the heart of Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, lies the enigmatic Senganmori Mountain. This mysterious 1,515ft mountain has captured the attention of UFO enthusiasts and believers for over four decades, making it a renowned hub for alien sightings.
Senganmori Mountain has long been shrouded in mystery, with its towering, conical peak seemingly defying compasses and the presence of sphinx-shaped megaliths arranged in intricate patterns nearby. Surrounded by the strange ancient ruins of a forgotten civilization, it’s no wonder that this remote location has become synonymous with extraterrestrial encounters.
Senganmori mountain – UFO hotspot
The village of Iino, nestled on the side of Senganmori Mountain, has also been associated with these otherworldly events for over 30 years. Each year, tens of thousands of travelers embark on a pilgrimage to this isolated village to uncover its secrets for themselves. The small town has even amassed a collection of over 3,000 alleged alien artifacts, further fueling its connection to centuries of mythology surrounding the ancient mountain.
In 2022, the UFO lab located within the village received 452 reports of sightings in and around Japan, with 149 of these cases being authenticated as genuine, unaltered evidence. The lab’s authority is bolstered by an extensive collection of 935 declassified CIA documents, gifted by UFO researcher Kinichi Arai. These documents recount stories of sightings from around the world throughout the last century, providing a solid foundation for research into alien trends.
Statue of Alien-Like Figure Captured in Iinomachi, Fukushima, Japan
After Arai’s death in 2002, his collection was transferred to the village’s museum, which has since built a trusted reputation for identifying and validating claims of alien life. The Fureaikan museum, situated on the side of the mountain, has curated a collection of 3,000 possible pieces of evidence for extraterrestrial life, including classified CIA documents containing records of UFO research.
Thanks to government funding between 1988 and 1989, the museum has thrived and now attracts roughly 30,000 visitors annually. The village has embraced its unique heritage, with alien-themed statues and signs decorating the area and guiding tourists up the mountain. The local community has even adopted a mascot – a little grey alien with large, dark eyes.
UFO museum
For many, Iino is not just a tourist attraction but a hub for research and investigation into the existence of UFOs. In 2021, the village received funding to set up the first national UFO laboratory, further solidifying its commitment to the study of extraterrestrial life.
Senganmori Mountain, just southeast of the city of Fukushima, offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of UFO sightings and research. With its rich history, enigmatic landscape, and dedication to the study of otherworldly phenomena, it’s no wonder that this remote Japanese village has become a magnet for UFO enthusiasts and believers alike.
Amazing Mumbai, India UFO sighting – 2023 (Today!)
Mumbai, India UFO sighting
In the bustling city of Mumbai, a remarkable event occurred earlier today that has left citizens and experts alike in a state of awe and curiosity. A mysterious object was sighted hovering in the sky, exhibiting bizarre flight patterns and an enigmatic appearance. The object’s behavior was unlike any known aircraft or natural phenomena, with witnesses reporting that it moved rapidly and seemingly at random. Alongside this article, a video has been included to provide a visual account of the event.
The unidentified flying object (UFO) was first spotted by a group of onlookers who could not help but notice its peculiar movements. As the object hovered in the sky, it performed rapid, random movements that defied the capabilities of conventional aircraft. Eyewitnesses reported feeling both amazed and baffled by the sight, with many claiming that they had never seen anything quite like it before.
This is not the first time that Mumbai has been the site of UFO sightings. In previous years, there have been several reports of unexplained aerial phenomena in the city, though none as dramatic and widely witnessed as the event that took place today. Some have even drawn connections between these sightings and ancient alien theories, positing that extraterrestrial beings may have visited the region in the distant past.
Mumbai is home to numerous ancient structures and artifacts that have long fascinated historians and archaeologists. Some proponents of the ancient astronaut theory believe that these relics provide evidence of advanced technology and knowledge that could not have been developed by the civilizations of the time. They argue that extraterrestrial visitors may have had a hand in the creation of these enigmatic sites and that their influence can still be seen today.
While no concrete evidence has yet been found to support these theories, the recent UFO sighting has certainly reignited interest in the topic. As experts and enthusiasts continue to analyze the video and gather additional data, many are left to wonder whether today’s sighting could be a sign of something more significant.
As the mystery surrounding this latest UFO sighting unfolds, the event is sure to capture the imaginations of people around the world. Whether the object is eventually identified as a man-made or natural phenomenon, or remains unexplained, it has undoubtedly sparked a renewed interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life and its potential connections to ancient civilizations in Mumbai and beyond.
The investigation into this enigmatic sighting is ongoing, and we will provide updates as more information becomes available. In the meantime, the video accompanying this article offers a glimpse into the extraordinary event that has captivated Mumbai and the world.
Artist's impression of astronauts on the lunar surface, as part of the Artemis Program. How will they store power on the Moon? 3D printed batteries could help.
Don’t Take Batteries to the Moon or Mars, 3D Print Them When you Get There
When the Artemis astronauts and future explorers go to the Moon and Mars, they’ll need power. Lots of it. Of course, they’ll use solar panels to generate the juice they need for habitats, experiments, rovers, and so on. But, they’ll need batteries for power storage. Those things weigh a lot and cost a fortune to send up from Earth. So, why not simply 3D print their own when they get there?
That’s the question a team of researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and Youngstown State University (YSU) are working to answer. They’ve teamed up with several NASA centers in a $2.5 million project to explore the idea of 3D printing batteries using local materials.
“UTEP is a seminal partner in this NASA-led project with our long and deep heritage in additive manufacturing,” said Eric MacDonald, professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering and associate dean in the UTEP College of Engineering. “UTEP’s reputation in 3D printing, material science, and our state-of-the-art facilities were important factors in convincing our NASA partners to pursue this potentially transformative research – for space exploration but for terrestrial applications of batteries as well.”
UTEP has joined a project led by NASA to leverage 3D-printing processes with the aim of manufacturing rechargeable batteries using lunar and Martian regolith. Photo by JR Hernandez / UTEP Marketing and Communications
This NASA-led effort is a big step toward adapting the 3D print process for space use. Another goal is to be able to extrude batteries in about any shape needed. Then, they can be fitted into walls of habitats or inside other equipment to save space. And, if it works out, eventually astronauts will be able to print habitat modules, power generators, and other facilities.
What Kind of 3D Print Process to Use in Space?
The project is looking at two types of 3D print methods. One is called “material extrusion”, where the shapes are pushed out of the printer in their final form. The other is “vat photopolymerization” (VPP). The basic material is a vat of liquid photopolymer resin. The machine then uses this material to construct an object, layer by layer. VPP would allow lunar inhabitants to make shape-conformable batteries to fit wherever they’re needed. That includes smaller spacecraft, robots, portable power units, and large-scale long-term power systems.
Illustration representing materials extraction and manufacturing of rechargeable batteries using lunar and martian materials as material feedstock for 3D printers. This original artwork was conceived, created, and adapted by A. Maurel, with a contribution from P. Garcia to the central diagram that includes the 3D printer. Credit NASA.
Making batteries using local regolith puts an interesting limitation on what type can be printed. Right now, on the International Space Station, the primary power systems rely on lithium-ion power storage units brought up from Earth. Unfortunately, if people are going to manufacture power storage units on the Moon or Mars, they aren’t going to be able to use lithium-ion. That’s because there’s very little lithium available to mine on the Moon and Mars. So, what will they use?
The NASA and university teams are looking at sodium-ion technology. Both the Moon and Mars do have some amounts of sodium accessible. So, the UTEP research team will be studying sodium-ion battery chemistry and possible printing solutions. After that, they’ll test the procedures.
Lunar and Martian Batteries Tech
NASA, UTEP, and YSU will also work on the extraction of battery materials and precursors for these sodium-ion batteries from lunar and Martian regolith. The university teams already developed and used VPP 3D printing to make composite resin feedstocks for each part of the proposed power storage units. Technically, that includes the electrodes, electrolytes, and current collectors. The team at NASA’s Marshall Ames centers developed and ME 3D printed composite inks for the different battery components. UTEP and NASA’s Glenn Research Center will electrochemically test the completed 3D-printed sodium-ion battery components.
“This project with NASA is an opportunity to demonstrate UTEP’s expertise in both energy storage and 3D printing,” said Alexis Maurel of the UTEP Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. “Additive manufacturing appears as a unique approach to manufacture shape-conformable batteries to support human operations in space and on the surface of the moon or Mars, where cargo resupply is not as readily available.”
Astronauts Could Mix and Match Parts to Make the Perfect Robot for Any Job
Building with Legos is a favored pastime for many small children and adults. We’ve even covered some more space-oriented Lego sets here at UT. But, as the Lego movie points out, they constitute “a highly sophisticated interlocking brick system.” So why not take the idea underpinning Legos – that you can make anything you want out of a set of generic pieces and apply it to a much more serious scientific topic…like robots.
That is precisely what a student-led team from MIT has done with the Walking Oligometric Robotic Mobility Systems (WORMS) robot they have developed. Conceived initially as a project in response to NASA’s Breakthrough, Innovative, and Game-changing (BIG) idea challenge, the system is designed to have replaceable parts to achieve various mobility tasks over rugged terrain.
Part of its appeal is its lack of wheels. Despite its name, WORMS looks more like a spider, at least in the configuration that has been the most thoroughly tested. The design team, based out of the Space Resources Workshop, took biological inspiration from several different creatures, including spiders, elephants, and oxen. Each could be used for a specific task – spiders could explore caves, elephants could join together to transport heavy objects, and oxen could drag other equipment up or down steep slopes.
At the heart of the system is a core that could easily snap different parts onto it. If a spider bot is needed to explore a lava tube, six legs could be snapped on, along with a drill to dig for liquid water. Suppose the astronauts programming the robots needed to get a solar panel up to the top of a ridgeline to collect more sunlight. In that case, they could configure the robot with many more legs and even multiple central cores, allowing the WORMS system to expand its payload capacity linearly.
In place of wheels, the WORMS team uses articulated appendages measuring about 1 meter in length and with a part that looks somewhat like Captain America’s shield in place of a foot. However, like much of the rest of the system, those parts can be replaced with differing parts for different use cases. Many could be 3D printed on the Moon itself using one of the various lunar 3D printing technologies we discussed in past articles.
For now, the WORMS remains Earthbound but is still under active development. A paper from the group recently won the Best Paper award at the Institute for Electrical Engineers’ Aerospace Conference. With continued support and a never-ending stream of MIT students interested in continuing development on the project, what started as a student-led project could morph into a fully fleshed-out robotic support system for the Moon’s first long-term inhabitants
UT video on lunar lava tubes, where WORMS or other robotic explorers could potentially be the first to tread.
What is it? Mysterious lights appear in the sky of São Paulo, Brazil, and intrigue residents.
In São Paulo, Brazil, residents have been thrown into a fright after a bizarre story emerged regarding peoples being scared at a street location by what has been described as a “strange lights”.
That and more strange events caught on tape. Real or fake? Video here:
Tic-Tac Seen From Jet Over Stratford, California, 3-11-2023, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: March 11, 2023
Location of sighting: Stratford, California, USA
Source: MUFON
According to the plane photo data she included, but I didn't post here, the plane was directly over Stratford, CA at that time. California is known for lots of UFO being reported so this is no real surprise to me. The UFO is a tactic because of its odd whiteish color and tactic shape. At first I thought it was a plane so I enlarged it and as you can see in the video, the object has no wings, no contrail, no lights, no windows or tail. This is not a manmade craft. Its is absolutely a real alien UFO. Did you notice how it almost matches speed with the plane, so it will appear as a normal aircraft on radar? Aliens are smart. They know how to mess with us without getting caught.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
Seen from passenger jet, Eyewitness states: On Saturday March 11, 2023, I was flying south over central California on Southwest Airlines 2463 from Sacramento Airport (SMF) to San Diego (SAN). I was seated in the window seating, on the left side in the middle of the plane, right behind the left wing. About halfway through our flight, I was looking out the window and saw a tic tac ufo in the distance traveling perpendicular to us. It was a white cylinder craft, with no wings, windows, markings, or discernible features. It was a smooth white cylinder with no visible means of propulsion or exhaust, plumes. The tic tac ufo was in the distance a few miles from us. It was moving in a constant path. There was nothing remarkable about it - it didn't move fast, or hover, it was just moving at a constant speed and disappeared soon into the clouds. It was a few degrees above our plane, so at a similar altitude.
And was northwest of our plane's orientation (note the plane is heading south). I saw the tic tac's side and it was traveling perpendicular to us towards the plane (so it was traveling west). I recorded it on my phone with a video for about 18 seconds before the tic tac disappeared into a cloudbank. I have included that video and stills. According to the video, the video was taken on March 11, at 5:57:53 pm (Time zone GMT-08:00). I used Flight Aware and converted this time to Sun March 12, 1:58 AM UTC and that put the plane just near Selma in Fresno county.
There were no planes in the immediate vicinity, nor that match the orientation the tic tac was viewed from my window (NW orientation relative to the plane's nose, which was traveling southwards).
Glowing Balls Near Palm Springs, California 3-23, 2023, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting:March 23, 2023 Location of sighting: Near Palm Springs, California, USA
Source: MUFON
Now they objects look like two spheres but I have to say that they are only spheres for a few seconds, most the time they look like one triangle and one rectangle shaped object. Some people are telling me on comments on Youtube that it looks like flares, however flares don't usually last this long and are not usually shot over the homes of people, but instead are over the desert area. I can clearly see home under these lights. Military would not do that! I do feel that these lights are not man made, but are two alien spacecraft that have appeared from an underground base in the area and are waiting to hyper jump out of the area.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
2 Yellow/Orange lights glowing then combine as one and disappear in the Southeastern Coachella Valley near Palm Springs CA.
Could UFOs over the US be the same as the infamous 'Tic Tac' caught on video? Expert says mysterious objects resemble white oblong spotted by the US Navy in 2004 – as the Pentagon refuses to rule out ALIENS
UFOfever is gripping the US after a third mysterious object was shot down using a missile from a F-16 fighter jet yesterday.
The 'octagonal' object with 'potential surveillance capabilities' flew near a sensitive military site in Montana before being taken over the Great Lakes on Sunday.
It follows a further two objects that were shot down over Alaska and Canada in the preceding days and a Chinese 'spy balloon' being eliminated the weekend before.
While China claimed ownership of the spy balloon, the origin and purpose of the three subsequent unidentified flying objects are more mysterious, with the Pentagon refusing to rule out an extraterrestrial origin.
British UFO expert Nick Pope, formerly with the UK's Ministry of Defence, told MailOnline that he 'can't rule out a connection with the Tic Tac sighting' but cautioned that an overall explanation is 'still to be determined'.
Here's all you need to know about what the UFOs could be, and why they are increasingly becoming a major breach of Northern American airspace.
A mysterious object was taken down over the Great Lakes on Sunday after being detected in US airspace. The Pentagon issued a statement saying its path and altitude had 'raised concerns'. It followed two other crafts discovered and destroyed over Alaska and Canada on Friday and Saturday, respectively, and a Chinese balloon taken down on February 4
WHAT HAPPENED?
US authorities were alerted to a flying octagonal object discovered in US airspace on Sunday – the third in as many days.
Three UFOs shot down in three days
- Friday Feb. 10: First UFO shot down (over Alaska)
- Saturday Feb. 11: Second UFO shot down (Yukon, Canada)
- Sunday Feb. 12: Third UFO shot down (Great Lakes)
More unusual activity:
- Saturday Feb. 4: Chinese ‘spy’ balloon shot down (South Carolina coast.
An F-16 fighter jet shot it down from around 20,000 feet over the Great Lakes at 2:42pm local time, following orders from President Biden.
Two other crafts had been discovered and subsequently destroyed over Alaska and Canada on Friday and Saturday, respectively.
China has admitted ownership of the balloon, although it insisted it was an unmanned weather surveillance aircraft that had veered off-course.
In comparison, the three aircraft that followed at the weekend are unidentified and their nature and origin are far less clear.
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE THREE UFOs?
The first two UFOs shot down over Alaska and Canada on Friday and Saturday have both been described as 'cylindrical'.
According to ABC News citing an unnamed US official, the first one was described as 'cylindrical and silver-ish gray' and seemed to be floating without any sort of propulsion.
Pictured, the 148th Fighter Wing F-16C that shot down the unidentified object over Lake Huron on Sunday. The missile is circled
Meanwhile, the second was also cylindrical and described as much smaller than the Chinese spy balloon of February 4.
China's surveillance balloon is still shrouded in mystery to some extent, but it's thought to have sensors, radar, and cameras
BOTH were believed to have a payload, either attached or suspended from them, according to the officials.
It's possible the Alaska and Canada UFOs were of the same design.
However, the third one was described as 'octagonal' with strings hanging off, but had no discernible payload.
Officials have said they would not definitively characterise these aircrafts as 'balloons' until the debris is recovered.
It's possible that all the objects are balloons that China has released to bombard North American airspace, either as a threat or a political statement.
WHAT HAS THE PENTAGON SAID?
Following the take-down operation of the third UFO on Sunday, the Pentagon issued a statement saying its path and altitude had 'raised concerns'.
The statement said: 'North American Aerospace Defense Command detected the object Sunday morning and has maintained visual and radar tracking of it.
'Based on its flight path and data we can reasonably connect this object to the radar signal picked up over Montana, which flew in proximity to sensitive DOD [Department of Defense] sites.
'We did not assess it to be a kinetic military threat to anything on the ground, but assess it was a safety flight hazard and a threat due to its potential surveillance capabilities.'
Pictured, the spherical Chinese balloon that was shot down on February 4 over South Carolina
Canada searching for object shot down over Yukon Saturday
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday said teams are looking for the cylindrical object that a US fighter jet shot down over Yukon territory on his orders a day ago so that they can analyze it and learn more about its purpose.
'Recovery teams are on the ground, looking to find and analyze the object,' Trudeau told reporters.
'There's still much to know about it. That's why the analysis of this object is going to be very important.'
Source: Reuters
COULD THEY BE OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL ORIGIN?
The Pentagon has refused to rule out the possibility that the collection of unidentified objects could be linked to extraterrestrials.
US Air Force General Glen VanHerck said intelligence services were exploring all avenues and would not rule out aliens or any other explanation yet.
'I'll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out. I haven't ruled out anything,' VanHerck said.
'At this point we continue to assess every threat or potential threat, unknown, that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it.'
Mr Pope says everything that's been shot down so far is some kind of surveillance device rather than an extraterrestrial.
'I'm sure there's life out there in the cosmos, and I'm open minded about the idea of visitation – to borrow the general's phrase, I don't rule it out,' Pope told MailOnline.
'But this isn't The War of the Worlds, it's spying, and I'm sure the US is making every effort to assess what damage has been done, and to mitigate the threat.'
According to Pope, VanHerck's statement was a 'generic response' that's used when people don't really have an answer, but it has had the effect of inviting an extraterrestrial hypothesis.
Legendary English physicist Professor Brian Cox has also weighed in with a tweet laced with a good dose of irony.
'I've always suspected that an advanced alien civilisation with the technology to travel at close to light speed across interstellar distances would arrive in Earth orbit unobserved and proceed to dispatch a fleet of small, easily detectable balloons into our atmosphere,' he said.
US Air Force General Glen VanHerck said they are still unsure how the three objects were staying aloft
All the same, the cylindrical shape of the first and second object has suggested a potential link with the famous 'Tic Tac' UFO of 2004.
Department of Defense admitted it is examining 510 reports of UFO sightings and an office dedicated to reviewing UFOs received 247 new reports since June 2021 (artist's depiction)
WHAT WAS TIC TAC?
In November 2004, US Navy pilots were conducting a routine training mission with the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz off the Southern California coast.
There they noticed the so-called 'Tic Tac' UFO, which was leaked in an official US government video taken aboard the Navy fighter jet.
Aboard was US Navy Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich, who first noticed an unusual 'churning' of the ocean surface before seeing the UFO.
The smooth, white oblong object – resembling a large Tic Tac breath mint – flew at high speed over the water, maneuvering and accelerating in ways which seemed to defy the laws of physics.
'It appeared to respond in a way that we didn't recognise', Dietrich told Reuters in 2021, and seemed to lack 'any visible flight control surfaces or means of propulsion'.
'We don't know what it was, but it could have been a natural phenomenon in human activity,' she said. 'But the point was that it was weird, and we couldn't recognise it.'
So could its characteristic shape give it any relation to the recently-downed objects?
Pope said he 'can't rule out a connection with the Tic Tac sighting' but cautioned that an overall explanation is 'still to be determined'.
'I don't have an explanation for the Tic Tac incident, and to the best of my knowledge the DOD and the US Navy are still categorising it as unidentified,' he told MailOnline.
The Pentagon has refused to rule out an extraterrestrial origin, but the shape of two of the objects recalls the famous 'Tic Tac' UFO of 2004
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
The hunt is now on by US authorities to find the fragments of the downed objects and analyse them to reveal more about their identity.
The Pentagon has said Department of Defense staff will now work to recover Sunday's object 'in an effort to learn more' about its purpose and origin'.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also said analysis of the object that penetrated his country's airspace 'is going to be very important'.
However, intelligence gathered from the investigations could be kept as closely-guarded secrets.
'The fact that this involves the intelligence agencies is one reason for the secrecy, and while more information will emerge, some details will doubtless be kept from the media and the public, for reasons of national security,' Pope told MailOnline.
'That will probably ensure that the conspiracy theories about aliens aren't going to go away just yet.'
Pentagon issues statement following downing of mysterious 'airborne object' at 20,000 feet
Today at 2:42 p.m. ET, at the direction of President Biden, and based on the recommendations of Secretary Austin and military leadership, an F-16 fired an AIM9x to successfully shoot down an airborne object flying at approximately 20,000 feet altitude in US airspace over Lake Huron in the State of Michigan.
Its path and altitude raised concerns, including that it could be a hazard to civil aviation.
The location chosen for this shoot down afforded us the opportunity to avoid impact to people on the ground while improving chances for debris recovery. There are no indications of any civilians hurt or otherwise affected.
North American Aerospace Defense Command detected the object Sunday morning and has maintained visual and radar tracking of it.
Based on its flight path and data we can reasonably connect this object to the radar signal picked up over Montana, which flew in proximity to sensitive DOD sites.
We did not assess it to be a kinetic military threat to anything on the ground, but assess it was a safety flight hazard and a threat due to its potential surveillance capabilities.
Our team will now work to recover the object in an effort to learn more.
Tic Tac UFO Filmed from a Plane Over Central California – A Detailed Account
Tic Tac UFO over California
A Southwest Airlines passenger captures a Tic Tac UFO on video, traveling at a steady speed over the skies of California.
On the evening of March 11th, 2023, passengers aboard Southwest Airlines Flight 2463 from Sacramento Airport (SMF) to San Diego (SAN) witnessed an unusual sight. A white, cylinder-shaped object, later described as a Tic Tac UFO, was spotted soaring through the sky over central California, near Selma in Fresno County.
The witness, seated on the left side of the plane in the middle section just behind the left wing, recounted the experience in detail. At approximately 5:57 pm (GMT-08:00), halfway through the flight, the passenger noticed the unidentified flying object moving at a constant speed, traveling westward perpendicular to the plane’s southward trajectory.
The Tic Tac UFO was described as a smooth white cylinder, devoid of any discernible features such as wings, windows, or markings. It appeared to have no visible means of propulsion or exhaust plumes, further adding to the mystery surrounding the object.
Although the object didn’t display any extraordinary capabilities such as rapid acceleration or hovering, its appearance and steady movement were intriguing enough to capture the attention of the witness. They managed to record the UFO on their phone for 18 seconds before it disappeared into a cloud bank.
Witness report
The witness, determined to learn more about the sighting, consulted Flight Aware and converted the time of the recording to Sun March 12, 1:58 AM UTC. This placed the plane’s location just near Selma in Fresno County. Further investigation revealed that there were no other planes in the immediate vicinity, nor any aircraft matching the orientation and position of the Tic Tac UFO.
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